I'm Lucky (she/her, not my real name), I'm in my 20s, and I write mostly fantasy. Thematically all my work is about grief or siblings (or both) and usually has something to do with religion/mythology despite the fact that I was not raised religious in the slightest. I also have some fanfic under my belt for Buffy (that I wrote as a teenager) and Ace Attorney (that I'm currently writing as of June 2025).
The reason this is my third (I think) writeblr intro is because stories don't come to me fully formed and I often change things as I go, meaning a lot of my character intros, wip intros, and writing snippets are incredibly outdated. With the rise in AI scraping, I'm hesitant to post my writing on tumblr (yes, I know about the ai scraping on ao3 and no, I don't care enough about that to hide my work from guests because I didn't make an account until my late teens and I hate to think that I'm taking the ability to lurk away from people). All of this is to say that if you decide to look through my blog, I'm grateful but don't expect frequent posts or anything.
With all of that out of the way, here are some links to things! I've posted a lot of snippets in tag games, in general, and in response to prompt posts. Individual snippets won't be linked, but I'll leave a list of tags to search if you're interested to read more about the characters/stories/worlds described.
THE SONG OF THE GOLDEN & THE DAMNED/THE SONG OF THE VENGEFUL & THE DEAD: My high fantasy reimagining of the stories surrounding Siegfried the Dragon Slayer. Combines aspects of the Volsunga Saga, the Niebelungenlied, and Wagner's Ring Cycle into one story about a dragon slayer fated to die and the ones trying to keep him alive.
CW: sexual assault (off page), death (on page), suicide (on page), suicide attempt (off page, heavily referenced), poor handling of depression.
IMMORTAL GLORY, LETHAL FATE: A retelling of the Iliad set in the same world as GATD and a sort of spiritual successor. Follows my versions of Hector, Paris, Andromache, & Helen as they struggle to survive the siege of their city-state, as well as my versions of Ajax & Odysseus as they grapple with the horrors Agamemnon, Menelaus, & Achilles commit.
CW: abusive relationship, war, violence, death (on page).
*These characters make appearances in VatD, and searching for thier tags might show results for that wip as well
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TBD fka FEATHERED WINGS & BROKEN SOULS: A story about a struggling young artist, a girl with wings, a princess from another land, and the corrupt god-king murdering his way to power. Plot/Character details are prone to change as I fix 16-year old me's plot holes, inconsistent world building, and inability to plan out themes. Know that because of this, specifics in these intros could be outdated, but the general things (race, age, name, etc.) won't be changed.
CW: fantasy racism, war, death (on and off page), death of a parent (off page).
WHAT MONSTERS WE BECOME fka THE BLEEDING HEARTS CASINO fka THE ZODIACS: A fantasy story set in a city inspired by how Americans misremember the 1920s and a religion built around constellations as deities. Corrupt aristocrats rule the country, corrupt criminals rule the streets, and neither will investigate the murder of a well-known backstabber. Power is not for the young, but that won't stop them from trying to seize it.
CW: death (off page), death of a parent/uxoricide/patricide (referenced frequently), police-like entity doing police-like things.
The Stuff That Hasn't Changed:
On Gods Part 1 & Part 2
On Magic
The Stuff That Has:
Wip Intro (The Zodiacs)
Viola (Character Intro)
Sasha (Character Intro)
Cynthia (Character Intro)
Phoebe (Character Intro)
Cyrus (Character Intro)
Thomas (Character Intro)
What It Is Now:
Wip Intro (What Monsters We Become) COMING SOON
Viola (Character Intro) COMING SOON
Luka (Character Intro) COMING SOON
Sasha (Character Intro) COMING SOON
Cynthia (Character Intro) COMING SOON
Phoebe (Character Intro) COMING SOON
Cyrus (Character Intro) COMING SOON
A Few Snippets From the Good Stuff:
Rooooll credits!
Cyrus's awful morning
Luka's walk
Sasha attempts to flirt
Grief; or something like it
A theft
Tags: wip: the zodiacs, the bleeding heart casino, what monsters we become, Viola Izmane, Luka Tubal, Cyrus McCarthy, Phoebe Evans, Sasha/Cynthia Sinclair, Thomas Briggs, Gabriella Livingston, Shae Whittaker, Ashlynn Boulvair, Alison Dayes, Lily Davis (to be changed), Beckham Silver, Adrian McCarthy
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FANFIC
AO3 Account
Promise Me (Buffy, Spuffy, 9x,000 words)
Curtain Call (Buffy, Spuffy, one shot)
Mama's Devilish Child (Buffy, Spuffy, one shot)
phoenix is typing... (Ace Attorney, narumitsu, in progress)
Exposure Therapy (Ace Attorney, narumistu, companion one shot to phoenix is typing...)
This guy is absolutely right. How can you "reclaim" voices from a culture that's not yours?? Ancient Greek women are not from your own culture - if you even recognize that Greek culture is its own culture, separate from yours.
On top of that, those authors have no idea about the History of Greek women. We have a voice of our own and you are not trying to amplify it. You just pretend you care so you can get your fame and money.
Okay I need to point one thing out though. E.S. McLeod's Andromeda is a story about blackness, they're reclaiming Andromeda's story because Andromeda was black (and Ethiopian, not Greek), and was constantly whitewashed through the ages. This is absolutely a case of reclamation happening! It's a black author reclaiming a narrative about a black character.
About E.S. McLeod's Andromeda: "Black" is not a global culture. The author is Black but she's not from the cultures that are included in her book. I understand that having Black representation matters and I don't disregard that. However, since the video talks about culture: it's still not her culture to write, or women to "rescue". Especially considering her proximity to British culture, education, and approach to the Greek myths.
One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.
Nobody tells you that rewriting is actually just grief. you built something, you lived in it for months, you know every room, and now you have to tear out the walls because the foundation was wrong the whole time. and you knew. you knew on page 4 that something was off but you kept going because stopping felt worse.
So now you're on page 80 holding a chapter you love that has to die because it's beautiful in the wrong story. cut it. put it in a folder you'll never open. mourn it for a day. then go back and be ruthless because the story doesn't care about your feelings about the story. this is the part nobody romanticizes. this is most of writing.
I think we can actually free ourselves about fantasy names. did you know that in real life there are names that are unrelated words in other languages? did you know in real life there are names that have multiple unrelated etymologies/origins? maybe we can all just play toys with all the syllables the world has to offer and leave each other in peace
This seems to have vibed with a lot of folks, so as encouragement: after posting this, I did in fact write a whole chapter. So you can do it too! You ARE capable of putting sentences together!
kind of a side thought from a couple of my posts about writing but I think it deserves its own post, so here goes:
when you’re writing a conflict between two characters or factions of characters, you need to consider whether their disagreement over the premise or over the methods. put another way: do they disagree on the problem or the solution?
this is a genuinely tricky thing to identify, especially in very complex narratives, so let’s do some very simple examples.
the situation: pacifist nation X is about to be invaded by empire Y. the laws and cultural practices of the Xians make violence and death so abhorrent that even accidental death is as minimized as possible. the Ylings, on the other hand, are totally cool with straight up murder and think diplomacy is for wimps, but are also pragmatic enough that they won’t waste troops if they don’t need to. the king of X calls in his council and asks for their opinions.
character A: It is more noble to die for one’s beliefs than to live having broken them. We should allow the Ylings to invade us and if we die, we die.
character B: If all life is sacred, then our lives are also sacred. We must fight back against the Ylings, even though that means we’d be committing violence.
A and B agree on premise but not solution: they both acknowledge that the Yling invasion is a bad thing that will lead to their deaths if unopposed and that the nonviolence code is important; what they disagree on is priorities and methods.
character C: We should invite them into our nation as honored guests. Maybe they’ll spare us or at least kill us more mercifully.
character D: We should propose an alliance and intentional annexation in exchange for our lives. Being part of the Yling Empire is a pretty sweet deal, actually.
C and D agree on solution but not premise: they’re both okay with just letting the empire walk in and invade, but C thinks the invasion would be a bad thing and is just trying to minimize the damage, and D thinks it would be a good thing and wants to maximize the rewards.
character E: We should fight the Ylings and stay a sovereign nation; the nonviolence code is stupid and holding us back.
character D: We shouldn’t fight the Ylings and try to be peacefully part of their empire instead; we’d be true to our code and reap the rewards of an alliance.
E and F disagree on both premise and solution.
Now, all possible permutations of this argument are fine. “Is this the best way to solve the problem?” and “What actually is the problem?” are both great sources of conflict. Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s entire plot is an argument over the methods to prevent death and crime, but everyone agrees that crime is bad; one of Zuko’s big character development moments is when he realizes that the problem with the world isn’t the other nations ungratefully rejecting the prosperity and unity offered by the Fire Nation, but that the Fire Nation routinely commits genocide in their quest to colonize the rest of the world.
The issue is when a disagreement over methods is treated like a disagreement over premise. The characters are positioned like one side’s entire worldview is correct and the other is wrong, but it turns out they actually disagree with what the other does rather than what the other believes.
A big giveaway that what you’re seeing is about methods and not underlying beliefs? If at any point it is said or implied that one character “goes too far.” “Too far” implies a point before that cutoff that the other characters or the reader would be okay with. You can’t go too far if going any distance in that direction is wrong. “Frollo in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes too far when he tries to kill all the Romani in the city” implies that the problem isn’t racism in general, but mass murder specifically, and that if Frollo was only nonviolently racist, that would be fine!
Like, you know the joke about the guy who offers a woman a million dollars to sleep with him, then ten dollars after she accepts the million dollar offer, and when she’s offended and says she’s “not that kind of woman,” he says, “Oh, we agreed you were that kind of woman, now we’re just haggling over price”? If your characters are arguing about the best way to solve a problem, they have already agreed about the existence and nature of the problem. Now they’re just haggling over price.
Again: that kind of storyline is okay if you actually do want to discuss extremism v. moderation of the same basic principle. It’s okay for two characters to argue over the best way to free all of their country’s slaves. It’s also okay for two characters to discuss the best way of practicing slavery, if you want to show how ingrained it is in society or how even the character you think is a moderate is still evil or something. What doesn’t work is if your intention is to say how awful slavery is, but then the entire conflict is over the treatment of slaves rather than whether slavery is okay.
tl;dr: setting up the conflict as one over premise and then having all the action be a fight over methods undermines your story; at best it’s just confusing, at worst it turns your characters into hypocrites.
I would add a third piece to this (or really split out “solution” into two pieces):
There is the problem, the end, and the means, and those are all things that can be disagreed with in different ways.
Let’s take a very basic scenario. Two people live together. There is a bookshelf full of books and there are books all over the floor.
Disagreement on the problem:
Person 1 thinks there are too many books on the floor. Person 2 likes having books on the floor because it makes the house feel lived-in.
Disagreement on the end:
Person 1 and 2 have agreed that there are too many books on the floor. Person 1 thinks the ideal end is that the house has exactly one bookshelf worth of books in it. Person 2 thinks the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house but simply being somewhere that is not the floor.
Disagreement on the means:
Person 1 and 2 have agreed that the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house and being on a bookshelf. Person 1 thinks they should buy more bookshelves to fit every book. Person 2 thinks they should double- or triple-stack their shelves rather than spend money on new bookshelves.
This is obviously a very light example, but I think it’s not just problem/solution but “do we agree what problem we are solving, do we agree what the solution should be, do we agree on how to get there.”
No, you see, I wish to be an author. Not in marketing. Or an influencer. I wish to tell my stories, be told I did a fantastic job, and then go back to my hovel to scribble some more. I am delicate of constitution and awkward in crowds.
Humans are the only species in the universe with concepts of hatred and vengeance, and this is what makes us so warlike. The galactic council’s decision to punish us for exceeding their arbitrary “population cap” backfires HORRIBLY because of this.
“I surrendered,” Commander Mag says. He’s been saying those two words over and over again since his capture two hours ago. He rubs his antennae together, desperately not looking at the smoldering wreck of his ship floating just outside the station’s viewing deck. “I surrendered.”
None of the humans guarding him have even spoken to him. He doesn’t recognize the expressions on their mobile faces— that wasn’t on any of the flash cards given to him when the humans first joined the federation. They look still, like their flesh has hardened into exoskeleton. Their eyes gleam when they look at him.
He doesn’t know why it unsettles him so much. He wants to fly away, but his wings are bound much like all three sets of his thoracic arms. That’s another new thing – he did not know the humans had built devices like this, shackles and bonds strong enough to accommodate his species’ anatomy.
A flash of memory: Laser canons strong enough to tear through his ship’s shields and the horrible sound of ripping metal as their attackers latched onto the exterior hull and tore through it. Who could have known the humans capable of such savage interstellar warfare? Who could have foreseen?
The doors in front of him slide open and the human Captain strides in. He doesn’t know her name, but he recognizes her from the brief message she’d transmitted to him before the attack. Commander Mag feels his unease slide away. Finally someone of adequate rank to understand that he surrendered!
“I surrendered—“
“Yes, I’ve heard,” the captain says. She strides toward him, her footsteps oddly heavy for a being half his size. She stops in front of where he’s been forced to kneel. Her eyes, like her crew’s, glitter. “I suppose you want my thanks.”
so i have finished a psychological thriller novel, and have begun the process of doing research so i can prepare to query agents. now, my novel has some pretty intense triggers in it, so i am aware it’s a bit of a hard sell– that being said, many agents have a “do not send me your novel if it has these things” list, so that’s what I’m looking for so i don’t accidentally trigger someone.
so i’m going down this list, and i find this agent. their “do not send me” list includes the following: non-consent/sexual violence, age gaps, teacher/student relationships, stalkers, cheating, everyone dies at the end, miscarriage/pregnancy, and abuse masked as love.
okay, cool! everyone has different tolerances for stuff, and it’s perfectly reasonable to not want to be involved with a story that has stuff you’re uncomfortable with. not the agent for me, but good on them for defining their boundaries.
but then i scroll back up and they’re requesting for gothic horror.
excuse me?????????
gothic horror without pregnancy or miscarriage? gothic horror without cheating? without stalking? gothic horror without major character deaths? GOTHIC HORROR WITHOUT ABUSE BEING FRAMED AS LOVE AND THE INTERROGATION OF THAT DYNAMIC?????
when you start writing something, do you already know how it's going to end?
yes
no
the despicable nuance
Voting ended onApr 21
pre-planning/outlining before drafting doesn't count as "writing" for the purposes of this question. i just wanna know if people generally know where they're headed by the time they start producing actual prose. also, have polls always been limited to either 1 day or 1 week??
I can’t believe that in order to tell a story I need to withhold certain information from the reader at first. I’m excited about it and I want them to know.
Most writers don't have a writing problem. they have a finishing problem. and finishing is its own completely different skill that has almost nothing to do with talent. finishing requires you to be okay with the thing being real, being done, existing in the world where people can have opinions about it.
And a lot of people would rather keep it unfinished and perfect in their head than done and flawed and out there. an unfinished draft can still be anything. once you finish it, it becomes one specific thing with specific failures that specific people can point to. so you keep tweaking. you keep saying it's not ready. you go back to the beginning again.
And the years pass and you are a person who is always working on something and never the person who made something. and those are two completely different people with two completely different relationships to this thing they claim to love.
In a Victorian world of eternal night, where crystal lights flicker and vampires lurk, a mysterious death suggests more at play than meets the eye. Runner Owen Rosedown investigates…
It's an ordinary little house, this Honoria. Owen does not trust it, or the ones who live inside. The lady of the house is dead. Her husband is far more eager to move on than he should be, and far too close to his dead wife's nurse. Was Mrs. Albright's death a suicide, fueled by heartbreak? Or is this exactly what it seems to be?
Owen writes a letter, never to be sent, explaining it all.
Cast of Characters:
Owen Rosedown: Our hero, a young trans man employed by a prince. Why would a prince's servant care about this situation? Read and find out.
Mrs. Albright: Perfect wife, perfect mother. Perfect woman in the eyes of society. When she became disabled after an illness, words became her sanctuary. She had nothing else.
Mr. Albright: A barrister, openly callous and clueless about his wife now that she is gone. His attention is locked onto young Miss Wellstone. What does he really want?
Miss Wellstone: A former painter turned personal nurse, she was hired by Mr. Albright to care for his wife and the house when she became too ill to leave the sickroom. What else does she care for?
Miss Dolly: Mrs. Albright's maid, a deeply loving young woman who is devastated by the loss of her former mistress. She makes excellent tea.
Honoria: a small home in a very good neighborhood for the upper middle class. A tiny gothic marvel of stone and wood, in front it mourns with black ribbons. But out of sight, the garden is overgrown, and inside it is as silent and cold as the grave…
This WIP is a gothic story. It is meant to disturb you, scare you, and titillate you in different and sometimes overlapping ways. This series will only get more intense as it continues. Hope you're ready!
Today’s writing tip? Change the scene before you change the story. I was stuck on a conversation until I moved the location. Suddenly it flowed. Writers block? Outsmarted again. (Until next time.)
