#asks etc

[seaweedbraens]

i feel like youve been asked that a thousand times but how did you even plan wcwsthwas? like it’s such a massive story, how did you plan that big a fic, how did you figure out what to include what to change, how did it all come toge? I’d just love to find out what the process was for it all

dw this is a good question!!! i think i was very lucky in the sense that the timing was just right! i had just graduated and covid had just hit so i was stuck in lockdown with not much to do. i really dont remember HOW it all happened but the idea of a pjo/hoo rewrite was always lowkey stewing in my head, y'know? i've been very vocal about my issues with how hoo wrapped and i knew i always wanted to try it myself. ofc i didnt know what a massive undertaking it would be but…oh well

putting the rest under the cut because i do tend to ramble

i really cant be sure of what triggered it, but suddenly i got the idea for the mistranslated prophecy and it felt like such a lightning in a bottle moment that i immediately grabbed a notebook and wrote it down. and truly... what followed after was like possession. i was like a maniac. the broad strokes of everything came together in my notes in a matter of days. i wrote the opening intro and the mirrored conclusion. i figured out who i wanted to kill. i picked and chose plotlines from the books i wanted to keep and i started to outline ways to make it happen.

so all of this was in early 2020 and i told myself i'd start publishing the fic only when i wrote ALL of it since my track record with chaptered fics was...horrendous lol. that didn't quite work out but in the year between coming up with the idea i'd finished writing chapters 1 and 2, most of 3 and 4, and bits of 5. of course, if you remember the years as i was publishing wcwsthwas, i figured out in real time that this fic was a monster i was wholly unprepared for, and i kept having to make room for new ideas. it was super fun tho! i'd never change it for the world.

as for planning out the fic itself, once i figured out my beginning and my ending i just started to draw the path between them. i'd ask myself questions and break them down into sub-questions,

"how are they going to find out about the real prophecy?" well, ella tells them.

which led to "how are they going to find ella?" they need a reason to go looking for her.

which led to "what reason do they have for finding ella?" it makes sense for someone like annabeth to want conclusive proof that the prophecy they'd all known for years was wrong.

which led to "how would annabeth find out the discrepancies in the prophecies in the first place?" obviously percy would blurt it out to someone, and then the ball would roll from there.

not sure if that works for everyone, but it sure did for me!

for my actual writing, i answered a previous ask about the nitty gritty of how i broke down my wcwsthwas chapters here!

i'm not quite sure if i answered your question haha BUUUUT tl;dr: it was an absolute fluke lmao and i can only hope i made the most of it. ty for the thought-provoking question, anon!

[maladelusio]

8, 15, 21

(Please and thanks)

you're so polite!

8. uh. ................... ummmm... like, the fact that I can take ideas out of my head and actually create things that exist and can be seen? uh. on the aesthetic side. i like... my color combinations? I do kinda like the squidgy quality to my sketch/lineart

15. 3-dimensionality. perspective is just *waves hand* i dunno it just never works quite how I want- my stuff tends to turn out a little 'flat' somehow

21. incomprehensible ominous floating frisk. please read the whither then series

[nicollekidman]

i’ve been offline all day but is anyone else’s formatting totally fucked up

[quietlyeccentric]

tagged by @trans-orpheus - thank chum !

rules: tag 10 followers you want to get to know better.

name: ...Alex I guess?

gender: nonbinary/genderfluid/ahh who knows

⭐ sign: Gemini although I very rarely relate to the horoscope !

height: 5'2.5" :/

sexuality: hopeless gay (for women, generally speaking??)

what images do you have set as your desktop/📱 wallpaper: desktop is sort of n/a because I don't have my own computer... Both my lock screen and home screen were different pictures of Kate Lindsey’s Nicklausse (from the met production of Tales of Hoffman) until very recently but now they’re Sesto and Vitellia (lock screen), and Annio and Servilia (home), from the Met Clemenza ! While on the subject tho @trans-orpheus u may be interested to know that before I followed you or got into opera I created a genderfluid oc called Kit who I later disovered looks/dresses almost exactly like Kate Lindsey's Nicklausse haha

have you ever had a crush on a teacher?: hhhhaha yes

where do you 👀 yourself in 10 years: Oh God I’d be almost 33... um I find it very difficult to envisage a future for myself but I'd like to think that failing the rather unnreaslistic expetation that I’d be living in a clean and cosy little house in a green area of London with animals, an art studio and a Person, then hopefully my family and I will have moved to a nicer and slightly bigger house and I'd have my own room and I'd have improved my writing and art greatly, have read several hundred books, hopefully I'll still be doing something similar work-wise to what I do now but in a more professional capacity, and I hope I'd still be close/closer to my current friends and have made more friends... And it is v important that I have a dog and/or or a cat...

if you could be anywhere else right now, where would you be: in a warm, fire-lit pub in the Lake District or Scottish Highlands overlooking snowy mountains, listening to live folk music and drinking baileys & hot chocolate or sth

what was your coolest halloween costume?: I was a dementor once which was fun, and also I think the ghost of a murdered Victorian Lady ?

what’s your favorite 90′s show: I’ve discovered that Blackadder was just before the 90s and Black Books just after, so failing those, Father Ted and Frasier ?

who was your last 😘: n/a, oh woe et cetera

have you ever been stood up: the opportunity has never arisen

have you ever been to las vegas: nope

favorite pair of shoes: I have a pair that I've hardly ever worn because they're small and uncomfortable but they're like, lace-up multicoloured striped canvas (red/earthy tones) with heavy black soles

favorite fruit: mango (which is Amazing with mint sugar btw), & also passionfruit, pomegranate and figs for the aesthetic as much as for anything else (I’m pretty allergic to figs but the pain and swelling is worth it haha)

favorite 📓 book?: hhhh I mean ignoring the unfortunate fact that I haven't read a book in longer than I care to remember: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince...

stupidest thing you’ve ever done: I didn't ~actually~ do this because I managed to find a way to take both subjects in the end but i very almost took art GCSE rather than Geography (which - as well I knew - could have forfeited my chance to go to uni to study what I'd wanted to study for over half my life) bc I uh,, had a crush on the art teacher... whoops :/

I'm tagging @abernathae @gothicwhoreoine @abernatty @newmoon-differentday @bunny-in-space @slowroar @istanbultrafigi @luckythelab @u-n-d-e-r-t-h-e-i-v-y if u so desire~~

[seaweedbraens]

i wanted to ask you bc youre one of my fav fic writers ever and i genuinely love how you write. do you have any advice on writing, the whole process and stuff? bc i want to start but im scared it wont be good, or ppl wont like how i write etc

hi hi!! sorry for getting to this so late; i started typing out an answer to you and then i realized i had answered an ask vvv similar to yours a while ago. and then looking for that ask took FUCKING AGESSS but good news!! i found it and it is here!

i think everything i could ever want to say is in there but also remember: the best way to get better at writing is to START WRITING. do not worry about it being good or how many kudos its gonna get or if people will like it or not. i started posting fic like 50 million years ago and i can say with confidence i wrote like a fucking FOOL lmaoooooooooo. this is a process that's always evolving and i'm STILL not happy with my skills. take in every bit of advice or critique that people may give you and use it to get better! read a lot to improve your own vocab and figure out what style speaks to you. don't be afraid of ppl not liking your work!!! in my experience people may be critical but most people arent outright MEAN, especially if you ask for feedback in your author's notes.

on the process itself: i describe mine in the link i attached (oop here it is again) but this is what works for me and may not necessarily work for you! for instance i know lots of writers write while listening to music and i cannot do that at all. see what gets you motivated. feel free to tinker w different things and see what suits you best.

good luck, u got this, and REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN! online spaces can be a shitshow but fanfic can be such a nice place to just have fun and make friends. enjoy the ride and feel free to message if you need anything else :)

i tried to keep this short but i still ended up rambling. sorry bout that :}

[seaweedbraens]

What was education like for the demigods? With Percy on the run since he was 12, how did he go to school? Did Annabeth arrange for online school for the kids in the Bunkers?

LMFAOOOO they all got on zoom every day and learned their abcs and 123s

anyway the way i see it, most of them can read and write but that's about it - dyslexia fucks shit up anyway and they dont need to read english for anything more important than signboards and food labels when theyre on a quest or supply run.

HOWEVERRR since theyre bascially quite literate in greek/latin, they are still smart, you know? bunker six is basically a library full of all kinds of books hoarded over the years in book greek and english, and older demigods made it a point to teach the younger ones, tell them stories of their own history. every demigod knows their own lore, because in their world, who knows which myth might come true next?

with almost everyone on shift for supply runs, they catch glimpses of current events but they're obviously not well-versed, other than leo, who stole phones just to keep up with memes, and a bunch of aphrodite kids, who would grab those trashy magazines from supermarkets for a dose of some celebrity gossip.

basically, it's like they've been homeschooled but only in specific subjects, if that makes sense. any kind of greek/roman history? they're like experts. greek literature? they've read the iliad. but shakespeare? nada. geography? veery specific. they know a lot of it because they've traversed it firsthand, and they're good at directions, they know to use a compass. children of demeter know a lot about crops and soil and farming techniques, but that's about it.

economics? zero. civics? worse. they can do basic maths - leo in particular is incredible at it, but most of the rest would balk at a quadratic equation. bunker 9 and 6 know physics the best, bunker 10 (aphrodite) knows their chemistry, and bunker 5 (ares) is surprisingly the best at biology - but that's mostly anatomy. they need to know every part of the body so that they can learn what hurts it, what part of an enemy to go for to immobilize them, what weak points people might have. most demigods also have a base understanding of zoology, though, since theyve got a lot of ancient aristotle-y books.

i didnt expect to have so much fun with this question - honestly the last part of this is me just popping off and saying what makes sense to me, but i'd love to know if anyone else has thoughts!!!

ty for the great question, anon!!!

[seaweedbraens]

ITS BEEN 10 DAYS SINCE WCWSTHWAS ENDED. NOW TELL ME THE HAZEL EASTER EGGS!

fully forgot i'd talk abt that!! its really nothing just something i had in mind while writing -

so her prophecy line was what comes from the earth must return to it or something along those lines, right? obviously that applies to her, but i also kind of made it work in another way.

what comes from the earth also applies to what hazel summons - i.e the big chunk of pure bronze that she gets for leo's spheres in chapter 2. she says that her being pluto's daughter is enough for the law to be overlooked in this case, but when leo dies, festus is in part burned to the ground, and not all of him is recovered, so the exchange still applies and occurs. the bronze that hazel had brought from the earth was eventually returned, albeit in a completely different way.

and that's why the gemstones she summoned always had, in hazel's own owrds, such 'bad energy' to them - they were cursed to be returned in one way or another, which usually meant that the owner would die. i didnt really talk about hazel's curse in the fic because i didnt want to complicate her story more, but this is something i always thought about in the back of my head. and, in the fic, all who touch hazel's summoned pure bronze die: jason, leo, and beckendorf :) the lowkey exceptions to this are frank and sammy, who were given gems after hazel herself died, which made up for the exchange. besides, once they died after living good lives, the gems would go back anyway.

for the LIFE of me i couldnt figure out how to write this into the story, but it still lives between the lines :) idk if it even makes sense but there u go! fun lil' easter egg for ya! thank you for asking, i'll probably rewrite this more coherently and put it into her doc <3