#antiphony

[cantareincminor]

For the character ask game! Franky & # 24 & 25 🥸

Hiiiiii bean!!!!! Thank you for asking about Franky, he's such a fun character!

24. What other character from another fandom of yours reminds you of them?

It wasn't until the infamous Nightfall & Franky chapter that I made this connection (along with other fans)...

Or more like when they first met...

Ahhhh this sociopathic ice lady is kissing me! She could kill me with a flick of a finger! This is bad!! Is it bad?? Wait is it good??

"But damn is my heart racing" indeed...

Krillin isn't super intelligent like Franky is, but he is an extremely loyal friend, fun, laid-back, all that. Great sidekick. And every DBZ fan knows that his death triggered Goku's Super Saiyan transformation!! One of the most iconic moments in anime history.

Hmm that makes me wonder how Twilight might react if Franky ever got seriously injured or (God forbid!!) died. Super Saiyan Twilight?

Although, one other key difference between Krillin and Franky is that somehow Krillin landed a hot girlfriend even before he met 18. Maybe Akira Toriyama wanted to subvert the whole "desperate short man unable to get a girl" trope...but who knows, maybe Endo will subvert it too! SxF is not over yet!

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

Honestly I didn't think too much about Franky on my first readthrough of the manga (I think Twilight's childhood flashback chapters had just come out at that time). He was the fun resourceful sidekick and sort of gag character with his bad luck with women.

It was only when I started writing fic that I realized I really enjoyed writing Franky's POV as a contrast to Twilight's serious, angsty, overthinking narration. It forced me to think more deeply about Franky's past and how he isn't just all laughs and sunshine. He also lost his friends to the war and suffered a lot. And I began to take his serial singleness seriously. I myself had bad luck with dating for many years, and constantly felt down on myself and quite lonely. So later on in Orpheus I wrote a more serious Franky POV where he wasn't just there to advise Twilight or babysit Anya. He joins the Forger family for dinner post-reveal and feels envious and even a little bitter about Twilight's newfound happiness (and guilty about feeling that way).

I started to admire Franky's character and personality. To be so upbeat and optimistic, always a "glass half full" type of guy, but also very wise to the world and able to run circles around the SSS, truly makes him someone special. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He's a loyal friend as we see many times throughout the manga, most recently when he rescues Teller from the SSS. Just like I wish I could be more like Yor in her kindness and patience with kids, I wish I could be more like Franky with all his positive traits.

I have joked to some fandom friends that my husband is like a tall Franky, lol. Sciency, upbeat, mellow, and loyal. Listens to all my fandom musings and gets all my quirks. I love him so much. He even contacted @apetronart, an amazing artist who drew fanart for my Aladdin fanfic, and worked with her to print my fic into a book with her art on the cover. Here it is:

This post somehow turned into bragging about my amazing husband. But I'd like to think that whoever marries Franky in future canon (please Endo, give this man some love), will be the luckiest woman ever because he'll treat her so well and give her gifts like this! I know @juuyeah and other Franky stans 100000% agree!!!

Ohhhh also, shoutout to all the amazingly talented Franky fanartists and artists who feature Franky heavily in their work, like @juuyeah, @marimarlak, @maximx23, @unhappy-sometimes and many more I missed!! And for amazing Franky-centric fics, check out tri_repetae, SokkaFanLawyer, macaroni_cannoli, and again many more!!

(Ask game)

[mentalcurls]

I took a few days to properly let my thoughts coalesce after finishing Antiphony, otherwise this post would have simply been a lot of screaming.

I think the main thing I found jarring was the choice for so much stuff to happen in a year or two about ten years after the war. Just, the concentration.

Chantala dies, Macael murders Andri, Enaeran and Sles Adran become Enaeran Adrani again, Liere has a baby with Macael, she trains in a few weeks to become a full fledged dyranarya, she has sudden clarity about her being in love with Senrid, she confesses and they get married, within a few months she's pregnant again. Meanwhile Senrid has to protect Malcolin Elsarion in Choreid Dhelerei, he is confessed to by Marend and has to turn her down, has to deal with Perideth threatening to invade and with Fox dying. And this is just in two kingdoms, without going anywhere near the whole Lyren drama, or Carl, or Chwahirsland, or anyone else. This is a pretty wild amount of thing to happen all at once after 8 or so years of reconstruction and stability.

Counting up just the weddings, we see six in one book, and Adam and Leander discussing the possibility of getting married (very, very disappointed by the matter being settled with a "we don't need it", but of course at that point writing another wedding would have proven tedious even for the most). And 5 of these include royals, 4 of these are preceded by a lot of drama both personal and political, so much so that they could spark wars. So. Bit much no?

Especially because, for several of these couples, we don't get to see how they grow together. For at least two, SS chooses to bypass that completely and tell us they just see each other again, after some time, and it's game over, like that. Senrid and Liere apparently go on a 48h sex-and-talking-with-dyra spree, Siamis and Clair just move in together immediately and get Old-Sartor-married at a waterfall. 0 to 100 in 6 seconds. And I feel the disconnect very strongly with these two couples, because the way they act after having their revelation is very different from how they were before, in particular Liere and Clair. Not just with respect to how they act within the couple, but they seem to have grown up all of a sudden compared to before.

Aside from the couples, the thing I missed was time with some of the characters: we miss so so much of what makes the character who they are when we meet them again in this "ten years after" timeline. What has Jilo been doing, been feeling, how did his relationship with Seshe grow. How did Shontande deal with the aftermath of war, with being cooped up again, with his increasing loneliness. How are Rel and Atan, aside from being parents, how is the reconstruction of Eidervaen. Aside from having a baby, MV and Mildred? How's Crow? How are the mage guilds, how are Arthur and Roy, did they get married? At least give one (1) same sex marriage, SS, you coward.

And I'm not even go near the vicinity of Erenlara Sofar Queen of the Venn aka Eren Magic-Bringer, apparently. Nope, not touching that with a 20ft pole.

The good part of all of these threads being tied together in this ten-year-after timeline is that the story really feels complete, I got a true sense of closure, even after so many books. Of course there's so much else that one could explore, but the main threads are all brought to a satisfactory ending point. And there are still my favorite things, the small details that reference past books and Inda's time. Fox at 80+, being a marvel as usual. Inda's wedding shirt, so lovingly embroidered by Tdor Marth Davan, for all that her family name seems to be completely erased as well as most of her story except being Inda's wife. The Cassadas. The Deis. A princess being kidnapped in Colend by foreign operatives and the Chwahir being involved (Seshe). And Lyren's kidnapping on horseback! Honestly, Lasva Lirendi wishes her kidnapping would have been handled with as much grace. Alarcansa in general, Caid Mathias Lassiter and his parallels with Caidas. Carola Delfinian would have disdained Talian, and Talian would have followed Carola around like a puppy trying to learn and imitate her.

Despite some flaws, I think this is going to remain one of my favorite fantasy series for a long long time.

[apetronart]

Antiphony by @cantareincminor

~*~ Chapter 3 ~*~ (part 5)

There! You are caught up so far. I know this one looks familiar, hopefully I'll get the following colored and up in the next couple days. That was a long hiatus.

[erisudraws]

did a redraw of this scene with Mozenrath and Jasmine!

[tauntingcrow]

The warlock, the sorcerer, the rogue. And the hitchhiking druid.

—

Savos - @tamisrandom

Otho - @wehavekookies

Antiphony - @bladeverbena

And our amazing dm herding this flock of cats - @commandersrest

[tamvmat]

Sooo this is what all that beardy goodness was for <3  Gotta love our party name XD ~also on Redbubble  https://www.redbubble.com/people/tamarandom/works/38197146-waterdeep-daddy-heist?asc=u @commandersrest @tauntingcrow @bladeverbena @wehavekookies

[cantareincminor]

FicSnips Day 31: Antiphony

Seemed fitting to close this FicSnips month with Antiphony, an Aladdin fic I wrote ~15 years ago. It's still on Fanfiction.net along with all my pre-SxF work.

Premise: Mozenrath (an evil sorcerer from the Aladdin TV series) challenges Jasmine to figure out his latest scheme before he can enact it. She gets in way over her head in discovering the source of his power and encountering new threats.

I was young when I wrote this, and didn't have a strong grasp on the craft of storytelling. In the excerpt below, it's obvious I could have cut out a lot of words (all the secondhand observations of "she could see," etc.). And yet this fic is very special to me because it was the first time I finished a long fic (180K words), and because of the many friends I made in this small fandom, some of whom drew amazing art for this fic: @darkelf19, @scaragh and @apetronart for example (the latter began drawing a breathtaking Antiphony light novel). I even met another author in person and collaborated on a fic at their dining table.

I have tried to write the sequel to Antiphony many times, but could never sustain the momentum. Now I'm wrapped up in SxF. Still, I hope that one day with the writing experience I've gained since then, I can take another shot.

This excerpt is from a key moment in Mozenrath's past where he overthrows his master and claims his most powerful weapon for himself. (In canon, he gave up all the flesh on his right arm for the power of the gauntlet.)

Shortly before this scene, Mozenrath speaks with the ghost of his mother for the first time since childhood, and she shows him what his life could have been like if he hadn't willingly become a necromancer's apprentice. This is his reaction, so beautifully illustrated by @apetronart:

[cantareincminor]

You are indirectly the reason I got a huge scholarship for my master's degree. I stumbled upon Antiphony back when I was in college of my junior year and after reading the first couple chapters I was so hooked I actively decided to binge read that entire monstrosity instead of studying for my thermo midterm. I failed so miserably my parents got on me so bad and I went crazy for my finals and managed to slide out with a B and that was enough to bump my GPA up where my profs nominated me for a full ride 😅

So thanks for that!

What??!!

First, hello former reader! What was your username on ffnet so I can look up your comments?

Thank you so much for reaching out after all this time. It is such a delight to hear from you and your admittedly tragic/panicky memories of reading Antiphony. I’m so glad you turned it into a win in the end!

These days looking back on that fic I tend to feel a certain amount of regret and cringe. I wrote that fic when I was near the end of college myself and then revamped it slightly a couple years after that. I cringe because I had such strong shipper glasses on that I think I glossed over story elements that should have been there. Sometimes it is hard for me to feel proud of it. But I think I am hard on myself (and my readers by default), and should just feel grateful I was able to finish the story and have so many people enjoy it as it was written. Every couple of years I pull the outline of the sequel out of the dust bin and take a shot at writing it but then my mind fell into the whirlpool of Spy x Family. I am not sure if I’ll write Height of Faith but if I do, I’m heartened that readers like you still hold fond memories of the original. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!