My favourite authors are writing a serial (soon to be novel) with Russian mythology elements and reading it just gave me such beyfae vibes and having some knowledge from beyfae really helped me get into the story. It was a nice familiar feeling. But it really made me want to know more Beyfae things, so should you ever be inspired to come back to it, remember you’ve got an eternal reader in me.
Ooooo I am so excited that you have been reading more stories with Russian mythology and that it's been reminiscent of BeyFae! Forgive me for getting emotional on main, but even though I have not worked on that fic in a while, whenever I do think about it, I also always think about your thoughtful comments and your support and it makes me feel so happy and encourages me to not give up on the story (even if it will take me a while to get back to it).
Also, if I am being perfectly honest, the prospect of working on it again has felt a little too real and too daunting with all the recent things in the region... but I dunno, maybe at the same time it's as good of a time as any? Either way, thank you for always being so supportive! I hope your writing is going well too. <3
2. talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said “fuck your plan, here’s what we’re actually doing.” (Good question given our last conversation LOL)
8. what’s your relationship with constructive criticism and feedback like? do you seek it out? how well do you take it?
11. what’s something neat you’ve learned while doing research for something you were writing? also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?
43. how did writing change you?
Ohhh thanks for sending these, these are fun ones!
2. Okay this one got really long my bad. So the one that’s given me the most headache is, hands down, BeyFae. The plot has a lot of narrative pieces and characters who are just— difficult. Like, imagine bringing your kid to the mall and they just suddenly decide that they are too tried to walk or even stand, so they collapse to the floor, and you have to figure out how to move them to get them home. Except your kid isn’t a tiny toddler but a gangly teenager who just passed the 6-foot mark in height. Oh and also there are several of them.
I have to wrangle the magic system — which includes magic used by the living, magical relics originating in the world of the dead that are supposedly immune to living magic, and several ways for how to resurrect the dead that are supposed to fit in with that; politics, not only between the nine main kingdoms in the Fae world but also satellite kingdoms and the human realm; and PLUS the huge cast of characters, many of whom had been alive for centuries, so I have to figure out what their motivations and relationships with each other are and how they might have changed over the years. To counter that, there are also these satisfying moments when some pieces just instantly click together in this brilliant “AHA!!” moment. But mostly it’s a lot of headaches ahaha.
The most notable moment hmmmmm. That would probably go to— Behemoth. That bastard cat Behemoth. Dropped a dead mouse plot line at my doorstep, looked me dead in the eyes, and said “have fun figuring this out”. In BeyFae, one of the main conflicts was always that the Threshold between the human and the fae realms had been sealed so that no one could cross it. But then this hellspawn of a cat showed up saying that he was able to go anywhere he pleased! Excuse me?? But what about the Threshold? He told his friend Svetlana he couldn’t cross it— was he lying about that? He refused to tell me! And then — and then — it turned out that there were a bunch of other characters who could also cross the Threshold this entire time!! Suffice to say I am still cleaning up the mess they all left behind…
8. I don’t seek out constructive criticism for my fics, although I wouldn’t mind if either my irl friends or my mutual writer friends gave it to me. My actual job is in academia, where you have to publish academic articles. Whenever you submit an article to a journal, a lot of times it gets outright rejected, and otherwise it gets reviewed by referees who purposefully provide constructive criticism on all the ways in which your paper can be improved. So, given that, I don’t really want to then also have to deal with that sort of rejection and criticism in the thing that I am doing for fun lol
11. *sighs like a sad deflating balloon* I do a lot of research. Probably way too much research, although it does depend on the fic. When I was trying to solidify how the magic system in BeyFae worked I watched a lot of videos on how thread is made and how iron is forged. I’ve also read (and reread) a lot of Slavic fairytales and folklore for that one. My favorite thing to learn about were the various versions of Morozko/Grandfather Frost that the many different ethnic groups who live in Russia have! For other fics, I started doing research on historical wars in England for the long Alucard x Alchemist!Reader series to pick locations of ritual sites. I also of course now know a bunch of names of bones in the human body because of Church of Bones. Probably most of my research goes into looking up locations and names.
43. This deserves a long, long answer. But suffice to say that it changed me a lot. I’ve processed a lot of my own personality traits, habits, and traumas through my characters. I’ve learned about my values by following my characters’ journeys to find theirs. Most importantly, it connected me to a lot of wonderful people, both in real life and online. I’ve learned that it’s something I am (decently) good at, and I can use it to brighten people’s days. One of my friends, after reading some of my stuff recently, said that they’d rediscovered joy that they had not known in a long time. They are even considering getting an AO3 account because they now want to read more fanfic! Most days I feel like I can’t really do anything meaningful to change the terrible things happening around the world — but hearing things like that reminds me that I do have my own special power to make the world a kinder, brighter, warmer place. I hope everyone can find that one thing that helps them realize that they, too, have that kind of power in them.
💾 The longest fic you have written (either with most chapters or most words)
🎨 Show us a sneak peek from a WIP! (Beyfae please!)
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I guess I am kind of a plantser, although where I am on the spectrum depends on the fic. And as I am writing this I am actually figuring out that while I do some planning beforehand, I mostly follow the process of “plan some scenes - write chapter - plan some more - write next chapter - fill in some scenes in future chapters that mirror the scenes i just wrote - write next chapter - plan - etc.”
BeyFae is EXTENSIVELY planned out because there is so much lore and so many characters and also so many dang magical items to keep track of (and I am still adding to my notes as I am writing the fic and figuring out what does and does not work). With Church of Bones, I started out with “sign post” scenes that I knew I wanted to get to. Now, when once I sit down to write I do my best to figure out what makes sense to get me from A to B and so on. In the process I might figure out that I actually need to veer toward the sign post that’s to the left of the one I originally thought I would take, or to rearrange the sign posts relative to each other, so I adjust as I go. And then with Welcome Home, Heart, all I basically had before I started was “all of the Strange variants are brothers in a regency AU! you try to romance each one of them! drama! dancing! kisses under the moonlight! wouldn’t it be funny if this was really just Hatoful Boyfriend but with sorcerers” and just… kind of went from there ahaha.
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Honestly the comments that give me the most warm fuzzies are probably the ones I get from fellow writers. It’s like, you guys know how hard this shit is!! And you all are amazing at what you do!! And you just read my thing and thought it was good?? What the heck?? I need to lie down—
Sidebar: your comment on tumblr (with the Haikyuu gif) that you wrote when I posted the very first chapter of BeyFae back when I was a noobie fanfic writer lives rent free in my head and as a screenshot on my phone 💕
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BeyFae, hands down (even just BeyFae I). I was sure that the next longest one would be the Alucard x Alchemist!Reader long fic that I am working on, but although it has a lot of chapters, they are actually not so long (where is this energy for Church of Bones???). Currently the next longest one is Welcome Home, Heart, but Church of Bones will probably overtake it by the time it’s done.
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ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE. I don’t think I’ve posted this excerpt yet, so here is the start to Chapter 10 (the next chapter), “In Possession” (under the cut). Quick recap: the team has just crossed over to Faemir (and gotten a taste of using magic), Ekaterina is hiding something from them, the boys are arguing trying to figure out what to do when Boris suddenly falls down screaming and clutching at his head. ENJOY! :D
“Borya!”
Sergey tried to catch Boris as the man sank to his knees, his entire frame now shaking. Ivan called out to Ekaterina, but the tsarevna was already racing back to them, quickly closing the distance with improbably large leaps. Yuriy quickly scanned the area around them. He could tell that something was off in the threads around them — but what? Was someone attacking them? If so, where were they? Yuriy couldn’t see anyone else aside from their group with his eyes, but even as he tried to trace the threads back to their potential attackers, he just could not zero in on a source.
“Boris!” Ekaterina skidded to a stop in front of the man, who had not stopped screaming.
“Ekaterina, what’s happening?” Yuriy asked, still searching the area for any clues.
“Boris, Boris. Just listen to my voice.” Ignoring Yuriy’s question completely, Ekaterina focused on the other man instead, putting her hands on the man’s upper arms. “This is going to pass. Just listen to my voice, don’t listen to anything else that you might be hearing.”
Ekaterina kept talking soothingly to the man, and although Yuriy could not tell that anything had changed in the threads around them, Boris seemed to calm down. He faltered, listing forward and threatening to fall flat on his face, but quickly regained his balance. The man blinked his eyes open and pulled his hands away from his ears. Tentatively looking around him, his gaze finally came to rest on Ekaterina. He blinked twice more, and then, with a uncharacteristically warm, relaxed smile, reached up to brush his fingers against Ekaterina’s cheek.
“It’s wonderful to see you again, Katyusha.”
The entire team did a double take.
“Huh?”
“Boris, what the hell?”
“Well this is awkward.”
Ekaterina was stunned for a moment, unsure what to make of the address, then gasped — in recognition.
“Filipp?” Her voice was trembling.
Boris winked playfully. “Yours truly.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Sergey kept switching his gaze between Boris and Ekaterina. He grabbed Boris by the front of his jacket, giving him a light shake as he tried to get the man to look up at him. “Boris, answer me.”
“What just happened to him?” Ivan asked, completely lost.
“Ekaterina, Boris, what the hell is going on?” Yuriy demanded. He hoped that this was some sort of prank, with the two just pulling a fast one on the rest of them. Because even as upset as he would be about such a childish display, the alternative — that this was, in fact, no longer Boris, and instead someone else in possession of his body — was far, far worse.
“Ah, dear gentlefolk, I do apologize sincerely for such a sudden intrusion—” Boris flashed a sheepishly apologetic, almost shy, smile to Yuriy — a sight that the captain had never seen on Boris’s face before.
There could be no doubt that this was an impostor.
Meanwhile, the man continued to speak as if nothing was out of the ordinary. “—but I do have some important information that I must share with all of—”
“Filipp Sokolinsky!”
Breaking out of her stupor, Ekaterina roared up to her full height, yanking Boris-Filipp up with her and raising him effortlessly above her head.
“Ekaterina!” The team yelled in unison.
“Katyusha, wait, stop, let me explain!”
“What in hell are you going to explain?” Ekaterina was having none of it. “You decide to get murdered while I am under my hibernation spell, and now you have the audacity to cross the Barrier and take possession of someone right in front of my bloody face?! I taught you better than that!”
With that, Ekaterina chucked Filipp down the hill.
I will always and forever ask about Beyfae! 1, 2, or 3, authors choice!
You spoil me with author’s choice 😭 I’ll share a [particularly angsty] blurb from BeyFae 2 that I really like. So context: something just happened right before this scene that’s gotten everyone down and depressed (the scene is vague about what that was so I decided it would be okay to post it without revealing too much, although you could take some guesses) and now it’s time for some tough conversations between Yuriy and (your fave) Ivan. It’s been about six years since the end of BeyFae I.
(I guess spoiler alert Sergey and Boris DO actually get together between BeyFae I and II, but that was probably not too difficult to predict from how much I ship them ahaha)
Hope you like it and thank you for the ask! <3
Ivan sat on the edge of the skywalk, leaning on the pillar opposite Yuriy’s spot. He knew to give Sergey space but he also hated the idea of being by himself right now. His chest now hurt even more than during the whole debacle with Balkov. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t have the words to console his friend - maybe because he didn’t have words to console himself either. But even if they had to sit in silence, he was glad that he didn’t have to go through this alone.
“Did you know?” Yuriy suddenly asked.
“Huh?” Ivan looked over, puzzled by Yuriy’s inquiry. “Know what?”
“Did you know that Sergey and Boris were together?”
Fuck fuck fuck. This was not a line of questioning that Ivan was prepared to handle in any way, shape, or form at this time. But handle it he had to. He just hoped that in the seconds that it took him to come up with a response, his expression feigned bewilderment rather than guilt.
“What?? Boris and Sergey? Together?” Ivan exclaimed. “As in, together, like, in a relationship? A “couple” type of relationship? A—”
“Vanya,” Yuriy cut him off calmly.
Ivan bit the inside of his lip.
Yuriy smiled wryly. “You are really terrible at lying, you know that?”
Ivan exhaled in defeat, looking at his friend. “Yura, I am not terrible at lying. It’s just that you were the only one who could consistently see through my bullshit.”
Yuriy smiled, but quickly his expression fell again, a far-off look in his eyes.
“Vanya, how long had it been?”
Ivan braced himself. “Almost five years?”
Yuriy’s head whipped around so quickly Ivan was sure the man had pulled a muscle.
“Five years?” He shouted. “No one bothered to tell me for five fucking years?”
“Hey, you don’t have to yell at me!” Ivan could perfectly understand why Yuriy would be upset - heck, he had been a bit peeved that it had taken Boris and Sergey a full year to come clean to him, and even then he had technically found out the truth by chance. But Ivan wasn’t about to let himself be a punching bag at a time like this. “It wasn’t exactly my place to tell you about it.”
Yuriy bristled, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders. Ivan watched the other man for a bit, his breath pluming out more visibly than before. As much as he was planning to stand up for himself, Ivan realized that he wasn’t being fair to Yuriy either. Both of them were hurting, but finding out that two of your best friends had kept a secret like this from you all this time had to sting especially hard right now.
“Yura, listen,” Ivan started, resolving to just do his best. “It’s not like the guys didn’t want to tell you. They really did. But there just wasn’t a right time for it.”
“What kind of right time were they waiting for, exactly?” Yuriy’s tone was full of venom.
“You know, it’s not like you were really around for the past six years. And I mean physically and mentally.” Ivan held Yuriy’s gaze when the other man turned to look at him, a messy mix of affront and realization reflected in his eyes. “Man, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve been a wreck since… you know. We’ve been trying to reach out to you, but you just kept pulling back. Remember when you went rogue and went around the world destroying everyone’s beyblades years ago? Well, this was like that time, except now, we couldn’t actually ever get close enough to you. Boris—” his voice cracked. “Boris almost took off at least twice to go looking for you,” Ivan chuckled at the messy memory. “But we managed to talk him out of it.”
“You weren’t planning to come after me?” Yuriy asked bitterly.
“You needed space, Yura,” Ivan explained. And it was true. How long they had talked about it - hundreds of hours? - only Learned Cat knew, but they had decided that while not their favorite option it was probably the best course of action. “Space and time. Whether you noticed it or not, we did keep an eye on you. We were ready to come help you if you needed us. But we realized that when you went away time and time again, we just had to let you grieve.”
The oscillation of emotions Ivan was witnessing in his friend even while the latter wasn’t saying anything was astounding. Ivan felt terrible about— well, frankly everything, but this just gave an extra twist to the dagger that had already seemed to have been thrust into his chest. The same seemed to be true for their captain.
“I think they felt really self-conscious, Yura. They were so happy, they just felt like if they told you, they’d be rubbing it in your face. And they didn’t feel right doing it so soon after—” Ivan trailed off.
Yuriy ran a hand through his hair, no longer able to project anger. Now he simply looked betrayed. “I— I can’t believe they wouldn’t want to tell me,” he looked up at Ivan, almost pleading. “Did they really not trust me to be happy for them?”
Ivan had nothing to offer back. “I’m sorry, Yura. I wish… I wish things were different right now.”
And so the two sat in silence, no words in existence capable of filling either the empty air between them or the deep voids in their hearts.
for the ask sending part of the WIP meme. well i don't know anything about the other fandoms so beyfae III it is, if you wanna share something lol!
OHHH thank you for the ask!! So (minor) spoilers and context, the main antagonist of BeyFae III is Rasputin, back from the dead to finish the work that he started before he was oh so unceremoniously bound and thrown into the frozen Neva River by Ekaterina, Svetlana, and the rest of the White Guard. In the process, Rasputin breaks the barrier between Iav’ (the world of the living) and Nav’ (the world of the dead), which creates all sorts of problems for Yuriy and the gang (it is quite unfortunate when all of the bad guys whom you’ve thought you killed for good in the previous two books are now back for revenge—). However, this does also make it easier for the good guys to raise other heroes from the dead. Probably one of my favorite scenes is when Yuriy is trying to escape a horde of hellspawn and he ends up summoning one of the previous Morozko for help — and in the process realizes why there is a period of time in the lives of his previous reincarnations from which he never regained his memories.
Blurb below the cut! Viy is kind of like the main demon/ruler of Nav’. Also, this takes place approximately 7 years after the events of BeyFae I.
To summon your past selves, you just need to dive deep and to call them by their name.
"Zhenya!"
Yuriy's voice echoed through the clearing. The horde stopped in its tracks, silent, as if blocked by an invisible wall, barely budging a centimeter forward.
Yuriy held his breath. Had one of the others caught up with him and cast a barrier or binding spell? Was it Ekaterina? Hiromi? Max?
And then he felt it.
The chill that ran through his hands and up his arms was so sudden and piercing that he had to drop the skull. As the skull struck the ground, the land beneath it flowered with frost that spread out from it like starving vines. The grass withered and died, the only sound in the entire forest clearing the ominous crackling of winter. Yuriy retreated a few steps back, his arms and fingers stiff but slowly - thankfully - regaining their feeling. As the frost spread beneath his own feet, he held strong, but the cold was like nothing he had ever felt before, cutting right through his very bones, into his heart.
The skull began to tremble, and Yuriy held his breath as it slowly rose into the air, a head enveloped by snow followed by a scrawny neck, small shoulders, a thin body, and gangly legs. The snow grew more and more dense, the outlines and details of the Fae long gone taking more precise shape, until before Yuriy stood a child no older than thirteen or fourteen, skin like ice, unkempt hair like a raven's wing - and eyes like those of a starved wolf.
The two Morozko held each other's gaze, the world around them ceasing to exist. Then, the shorter Morozko looked out at the horde of the undead standing frozen at the edge of the clearing. There was a small ripple of movement that went out through the hellspwan but they remained as silent as ever.
"Zhenya... Morozko," Yuriy spoke quietly, tentatively, licking his lips against the chill that kept them dry. "I need your help. Russia needs your help. Viy's demons have broken out from Nav'--"
"I know," the teenager replied, unimpressed, still surveying the horde. "I'll deal with them." They turned around, perplexed to still see Yuriy there. "You can go."
Yuriy hesitated. The way the threads resonated with the newly resurrected Morozko reassured him that he didn't have to worry, and Yuriy was eager to find the rest of his team, but still he didn't feel quite right about leaving a child to fend for themselves.
"You don't want my help?" Yuriy asked.
"No," Zhenya replied without sarcasm or malice, speaking plainly, just stating facts. "You're too weak. You'll get in the way."
And right there the conversation was over. The undead Morozko turned back to face Viy's army. As they stepped forward, the threads went taught, and the cold that struck was so biting, the air may as well have had teeth.
The horde grew agitated, a few demons snarling here and there until the ruckus spread and grew deafening, each hellspawn itching to be the first to sink their teeth into the new challenger Fae. At last, a single demon broke rank and raced forward. A handful followed suit, and then, like a flood breaking through a dam, the whole swarm of them surged forward.
Zhenya, unfazed, did not move.
As the demons neared alarmingly fast, Yuriy was ready to pull at the threads to strike them down, to buy Zhenya more time to remember how to use their magic. But he was too slow.
The threads vibrated and screeched high like the strings of a violin. The shorter Morozko raised their arms and the first rank of demons stopped dead in their tracks, covered in a thick sheet of ice. The hellspawn that did not collide with the frozen bodies halted, quivering in trepidation. Zhenya threw their arms down, a violent draw of the bow across the instrument, and hundreds of bodies rained down to the ground, shattered, in a cascade of tiny icicles. The sky above darkened and hail began to pummel down, the temperature dropping lower still as the threads grew louder and louder, like a dissonant orchestra.
“Leave, now!” Zhenya barked the order without turning around.
Yuriy didn’t need a second invitation.
And as he dashed away, the cold air burning his lungs as he ran, Yuriy finally understood. He understood why those few years during the Great War were a pitch black void in his memory. Zhenya was the cold and hunger that ravaged the world to its core, that struck down entire armies as if they were made of brittle paper and dry sand. Zhenya's winter was raw and unyielding power that only belonged on a war-torn battlefield. A power that no one could be allowed to possess or remember how to control.
I’ve been very lucky to have received some really thoughtful, lovely comments from quite a few people (including a lot of wonderful folks in the Beyblade fandom). But this comment, which I got right after I posted the first chapter of BeyFae, still holds a very special place in my heart:
(Yes I have screenshots of this comment saved in my photos)
I adore @zadien’s Beyblade fanfics, so to receive such a glowing endorsement (with a cute gif and extra tags??) after I had been so nervous about posting my first serious multi-chapter fic— I still remember how giddy and excited I felt. It just meant so much to me and really made me excited to keep writing and sharing my writing with the fandom.
Hello!! I just wanted to say I adore your story "The Bey, the Fae, and the Journey Across the Threshold"! It's fantastic work: the world is engaging, the character dynamics are on point, and the lore is just *chef's kiss*. Thank you for writing it!
Hi Anon, and omg thank you so much for your lovely comment??? I was not expecting that today but this makes me so happy. Seriously, comments like this just make me so glad that I decided to write and share this story, even if I am so bad at updating. Thank you again for taking the time to send this thoughtful message, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!!
