Hi! So I read your fic that focused on preening from the POV of Sanderson, and I was curious about the thing mentioned there about pixies going off to start their own companies when they grow up and have their own kids - I haven’t read everything, granted, but I don’t think I saw anything about that in your pixie worldbuilding and it sounds interesting, so I’d love if you could elaborate! Also, what do you think Pixie world would look like after a generation or two of this?
Thanks for your interest! (Heads up for minor #ridspoilers related to Origin of the Pixies, 130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash, and Devil's Backbone)
Useful Knowledge
- 130 Prompt #37 - "Grooming" - One-shot about Sanderson (who has separation anxiety) anxiously waiting for H.P. to call him in for their evening grooming / preening ritual
- Gyne & drone mindset info - If you don't know what gynes are, my replies won't make much sense.
- List of Gen 2 Pixies - I namedrop pixies below. Not required, but it may be useful to have their numbers and vague details
- Vice President Longwood's bio & main blog tag - Not required to understand this post, but there are some interesting old posts like "How do other pixies view the Longwood vs Sanderson rivalry?" & "What is Longwood's leadership style?"
- It's also helpful to know what Wolbachia pipientis is, but the only thing you really need to know is that Pixies reproduce asexually when they come of age, whether they want to or not.
Background
"I was curious about the thing mentioned there about pixies going off to start their own companies when they grow up and have their own kids [...] so I’d love if you could elaborate!"
Aside from Sanderson giving sneak peeks of what he knows of H.P.'s plans in "Grooming" (and occasional other glimpses into his mind), we actually don't get to this part of the lore until Arc 4 of 130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash.
For reference, I'm looking at the 130 summaries page and the next 'fic I post will kick off Arc 3, so it'll be a while.
Where we are in modern times (i.e. Timmy's time period), H.P. is down to his last offspring before his Wolbachia-forced fertility fades out- that's why Finley and Southmark - his final two children - are born tomtes: i.e., Fae without magic. Like a printer, he ran out of ink.
Art from the Eclipse House roommates post - Sammy, Poof, Foop, Finley
Coincidentally, Sanderson's Wolbachia-forced fertility kicks on right around the time, as he had come into adulthood and his body finished setting up everything it needed to inside him.
Those who've been around a while probably know exactly who Sanderson's first clone offspring is... Who's that pixie?
Art from the 2019 music meme post
It's... Cavatina Sanderson!
He's our cover image character for the Gray Train story arc and made his first in-story appearance as a teen (at Goldie's coronation) in "All I Ever Wanted." He is hands-down my favorite FOP OC, whom I've had since 2016 but have said little about since we've not reached his arc, and I love him very much.
Let's talk about companies, logos, some things we can expect from Vice President Longwood and Chief Pixie Smith, and a little about Cavatina... without getting TOO spoilery, of course.
Companies and Business
I can't say much, but I can confirm Sanderson opens a music store after becoming a dad and Cavatina often hangs out with him there.
The music store means a lot to Sanderson as it's the only place that's truly his (seeing as he shares an apartment with Hawkins, Longwood, and Wilcox for most of his life).
The funny thing about Cavatina is that he also likes tagging around after H.P., so you can imagine what that looks like. Duckling instinct strikes again...
Company Logos
A group of pixies can be called a company- not every pixie needs to run a business, but they're identified by special marks that organize them in family groups... Well, companies in a culture that doesn't like acknowledging family connections.
In other words, pixies have tattoos on their wrists that identify them despite being otherwise identical. These are Sanderson's:
From this post
These marks are called logos and are tattooed on the undersides of Sanderson’s wrists- He's Pixie 002 in H.P.’s company (left wrist) and Pixie 001 of his own company (right wrist).
Sanderson’s offspring have his logo tattooed on the undersides of their left wrists; they do not have H.P.’s logo at all. When they're old enough for their own company, they'll add their logo to their right wrist and their offspring will have that same logo on left wrist, so on and so forth.
While forcibly tattooing little kids may sound cruel... There is a good reason for it. DNA tests are absolutely useless in Pixie World because pixies are genetically identical. Every pixie is, technically, the child of Ambrosine and Solara- H.P.'s parents (which is why all pixies are tied to the same yoo-doo doll). Their pheromones vary slightly, but brand marks are the only reliable way to identify who a pixie is.
Worldbuilding detail- Fae heal quickly, but washing injuries (like tattoo pinpricks) in rosewater will prevent them from healing. Sanderson vaguely alludes to this in "Grooming."
H.P. had 507 (surviving) offspring, and he began reproducing when he was 491,536 years old. He was the first pixie infected with Wolbachia. H.P. wasn't born with Wolbachia- he was only infected late in life (human equivalent of 43). His offspring are born every time he would be coming into heat if non-infected, so his offspring are 500 years apart (give or take a year, with rare exceptions).
But Gen 2 (H.P.'s offspring) were born with Wolbachia, so they start reproducing shortly after adulthood (human equivalent of 22 or 23, give or take for the individual).
And there are a LOT of pixies coming into age around that time. Which is a huge population concern.
Near the end of my "7 Billion Years in 15,000 Words" post, I mentioned that after Foop makes the connection between royal jelly and gynes, that news gets out. Fairy parents experiment with feeding jelly to their kids, leading to a boom of gynes in the cloudlands (Playing into that culture of gynes being viewed "more attractive" and "smarter" and "more desirable kids" than drones... Obviously all social stereotypes, but that's the unfortunate way of the world).
That has a lot of problems in its own- Most notably, the fact that dominance instincts set gynes up to fight to the death and now there are a lot of them in Fairy World.
-> Foop actually... did not want that news to go public. For all his faults, he's very thoughtful and meticulous and he wanted to think over his discovery before people knew about it. It's devastating to him and he carries the emotional burden of his research for a long time.
Specifically, I said in that post that there aren't enough fairy drones to go around since many drakes developed into gynes, so a lot of them would probably seek the pixies, thus luring them out of Pixie World and integrating them more into Fairy World
I still think that's the most likely fate. There are simply too many pixies for Pixie World to thrive with an exponentially increasing population in a very small space.
Where Are We Going?
"Also, what do you think Pixie world would look like after a generation or two of this?"
I really like the Pixie expansion plot I have going on. H.P. is a gyne, and as his few gyne offspring grow older, the smart move is to separate them so they won't kill each other (or him). The vibe here is "princess" bees going off to be queens of their own colony, which is fairly accurate to a real bee or wasp hive, which I like.
Longwood Mayfleet was H.P.'s first gyne offspring and is due to take over Pixies Inc. after H.P. (and even become Head Pixie II someday).
That's all well and good, but that still leaves us with a handful of other gynes who need to go somewhere. Most famously, we have Darius Smith- The next oldest gyne after Longwood.
Who is Smith?
Smith is always butting heads with H.P., to the point that he's not even allowed inside Pixies Inc. most of the time. He oversees the warehouses and cloudships.
I also have a pheromone post scheduled for Sunday on the sideblog that discusses Smith's unique pheromones. Check that out for bonus info.
Smith's a really interesting character to me. He wasn't old enough to fight in the War of the Angels, so he's actually in charge of Pixie World during that whole arc (and comes into his adult wings during that time, his biology kicking in early since he was forced to take the reins young. It's a wonder he didn't start reproducing as soon as he became the dominant one...
Although he gives control back to H.P. (reluctantly) when he returns from war, this brief stint at running Pixie World really gets to Smith and his instincts... which is why he has a whole takeover plot later on where he chases H.P. out and takes control. Here's an upcoming scene I think is funny (and tells you everything you need to know about the H.P.-Smith dynamic):
While I lingered on the fringes of Pixie society, Smith struggled beneath a mountain of papers and politics. The Anti-Coppertalon dynasty fell six days after Commelina’s birth, and First General Anti-Cosmo rose to take the High Count seat. Good on him.
Smith had a hundred questions, and Emery relayed messages between us as a neutral party. I responded to each one in the same flat way: “You’re in charge. Figure it out. Maintain the professional brand image I spent your life building up. Don’t be dumb.”
But by Lugh’s spear, were they on a massive time crunch to plow through all that paperwork. According to Da Rules, midnight wasn’t to fall on the Lia Fáil while a major position of power lay vacant. Emery said Smith pulled every pixie together in the food court and had a job that normally would have taken a week (minus procrastinating) finished in hardly four hours.
“Good boy,” I said when Emery told me, sitting in my rocking chair with Commelina dozing in my arms. “Good boy.”
Origin of the Pixies - "The Fading of Light"
"Queen bee" pixie raising his own successor who wants to kill him and being so proud of him for almost doing so, my beloved...
Shout-out to what this does to Anti-Cosmo's backstory in Frayed Knots, where A.C. is going through one of the most intense things he's ever faced, but can't turn to H.P. for support.
So, that's Smith... Smith's two largest roles in the Prompts are in "Dignity" - where he's married off against his will (Mid Arc 3) - and "The Other One," where he's preparing to leave Pixie World (Arc 3's finale).
Fun Fact! I've had that Prompt's announcement in my queue for 6 years... Not my drafts. My queue:
I might redraw it when we get there, I might not, but... There's Smith!
So... What's going on with Smith? What's up with these hoops he's jumping through?
Smith is being set up to become the first Chief Pixie- a CEO of a subsidiary company outside Pixie World (Not counting Wish Fixers, which has been in H.P.'s family for generations).
Specifically, Smith will be running PixieCo in Hawthorn Haven: the cloudland colony that surrounds Planet Delk.
Sound familiar? If so, good eyes... We'll talk about it more later.
The thing about gynes is that only one can be dominant in the area at a time. They're eusocial insect people and their pheromones suppress other gynes' ability to reproduce.
Leaving Pixie World for Hawthorn Haven means Smith will become dominant and gain the ability to reproduce (thus making it useful to have a partner to help him raise kids, despite Smith's reluctance to marry).
We get some really interesting scenes because of that-
“It’s amazing to think I’m going to be the dominant gyne around, with my own drones to look after. And even more amazing to think that since I’ll be both dominant and of age, I’ll start reproducing within the decade. H.P. will be getting grandnymphs after all. Long-lasting ones, I hope.”
Sanderson said nothing. As Smith straightened up with the box in his arms, he glanced over his shoulder. “Am I treading on your turf a bit, Mr. Firstborn?”
Sanderson leaned his hands against the counter behind him, his fingers curling over the front edge. “Not necessarily. After all, I did beat you by a long shot.”
“Human children don’t count,” Smith argued, bending to grab a folder that had slipped to the floor. He almost felt the asterisk fizzle into existence over his head. Wait… Turning back, he found Sanderson still leaning in the same position, now with his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. “Oh. You weren’t talking about humans.”
“No.” Sanderson took a coffee cup from the stack and held it beneath the nozzle for grape soda. With his thumb, he pressed the lever. Cool purple liquid splashed against the sides. “It hasn’t been confirmed professionally, but I’ve watched how H.P. handles himself during pregnancy long enough to feel comfortable admitting it.”
Smith’s wings quivered for a single jealous beat, then stopped. “I assume you’ve told him.”
Sanderson’s eyes rolled above his shades. “You know the boss. If a bus rolls into town, he wants to be the first one to board it. If he attends a funeral, he wants to be the murderer. If one of his friends is expecting, he wants to be the father. He’s been so busy marketing PixieCo lately. With the official public reveal coming up, he’ll be furious if I steal all the attention. I’m waiting for the right time.”
"The Other One"
And that's where we kick off Arc 4!
Cavatina Mentions
Cavatina is one of the most notable things about the time period you're asking about- Pixies growing up to have kids - and he's also the reason I haven't shared much about this era.
I still won't share much because I've waited this long and I'm not spilling the details now, but I can compile some things we know about Cavatina into one place, and you can start putting the pieces together from there.
Keep in mind that 130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash is ongoing. You don't have all the info, but this is what you do have:
- His full name is Cavatina Klangfarbenmelodie Sanderson. He's Sanderson's firstborn son.
- He wears a green dragonfly pin, and has done so ever since he was a little kid.
- In "You'll Never Know," Foop claims the Pixies don't trust him anymore, but "compared to what the Head Anti-Pixie did, he's a saint."
- In "You'll Never Know," Foop claims Cavatina is selectively mute and that it disturbs him Anti-Cavatina doesn't chatter constantly, implying Cavatina didn't get quiet until sometime after his counterpart was born.
- In "Shadow," Foop's alternate personality (Hiccup) faced pressure to speak about Cavatina. Among other things, he hints Foop "misused pottery tools" in a past encounter with Cavatina. He also hinted Foop "meets Cavatina's parents" every time there's a Council meeting.
- Foop seems to be very paranoid about Cavatina, as he spent his time before the school dance in "Approval" searching everywhere for him.
- Cavatina appeared in "All I Ever Wanted." Poof claimed he was "twice as buff [as Poof]," "bad at small talk," and noted that Cavatina's dragonfly pin "made him famous." Most notably, Cavatina claimed he'd have Poof's head on a silver platter 5 years from that point, which Poof laughed off.
- According to Anti-Coriander's sideblog bio, she and Foop first meet at the Autumn Masquerade. Foop's commentary in "Approval" confirms Cavatina attacked Poof there.
- Apparently, Cavatina has a squirrel familiar (a familiar being a witch who finished mortal life and is now an animal body piloted by witch magic).
-> We know Foop has Denzel and Kevin as his familiars... Who do I know is a witch, associated with pixies, and possibly associated with squirrels?
Do with this info what you will.
I picked up my draft for "In Confidence" earlier this week, hoping to post it soon, but it's one of those weird timeline pieces that makes me hesitate. I'm not sure readers have enough context to make it hit yet. I might post it soon, I might not, but Cavatina and Poof both appear as small children (joining Mama Cosma and Sanderson at a dinner event), which is a pretty interesting dynamic.
I showed more sneak-peek scenes of Cavatina in that link, so... browse that "In Confidence" blog tag if you wish, but do so knowing those haven't been posted on FFN / AO3 yet.
What is Devil's Backbone?
Devil's Backbone is my far future ‘fic that picks up immediately following the 130 Prompt “Reality Doesn’t Work that Way” (the 2nd to last Prompt of the series- 130 Sums page).
It heavily focuses on Pixie World as well as things going on with the von Strangle family and the quest to find a successor... plus the closing of drama in the Celebrity Kids (Lavender Train) arc that we haven't gotten to yet.
Unless I decide to write one more closing ‘fic after this one, this is the finale of my Cloudlands AU works, so its target audience is readers who have read all the other Cloudlands AU pieces, as it brings multiple storylines together.
It has a complete outline, but one that can be shifted if I change plot points. My intention is to write a decent-sized multi-chapter - maybe 12 to 16 chapters. We'll see!
It's possible I'll condense it (or split some of the scenes off into one-shots) depending on what feels right when we get there.
This story takes place during an era where there are many pixies and a new Head Pixie is in charge of Pixies Inc. It covers the plot points I mentioned earlier about the population boom and some next gen characters, many of whom are pixies.
One of our most important characters is Longwood's son, Blackwood Longwood, whom I do not have art of. I checked my drafts, but I don't have any scenes I can share that aren't full of spoilers, so... Just know that he exists, I guess.
Blackwood is a very hard worker and I think he's cute. He has a strong sense of wanting to do what's right and wanting to protect others. He's pretty emotional for a pixie, but it's underlaid with cold logical expectations... He's very "We have to do this because it's the right thing to do even if it hurts, but I know it hurts, so I'll be right there with you." I hope you guys like him.
Like Cavatina, I designed him in 2016 and even wrote the ending scene of Devil's Backbone back then, as Blackwood is our very pivotal guy and lives up to his main character position there.
You may have guessed it from the hints above, but Cavatina starts out as a sharp, friendly, and humble kid, quickly consumed by a thirst for revenge... Justice is everything to Cavatina. From the released info, it's not yet clear what seemingly justifies this level of vitriol, though I'm always open to hearing guesses.
In contrast, Blackwood is stoic... Pursuing dreams of honor, justice, and duty. They're really fun to use together in a world that's seeing pixie families for the first time and doesn't know what to make of them.
Blackwood will probably have been an OC of mine for over 10 years by the time you guys see him... idk how to feel about that.
If anyone was wondering, yes I do get whiplashed every time I see the name Martin Blackwood cross my dash, but I only heard about that character in the last 1 or 2 years and I'm not changing this kid's name now, haha.
I'm not sure the 2016 ending will still be the ending of the actual 'fic, but there is definitely drama in Blackwood's character arc that I think is unique and fun. It's very tied to my lore and not something I'll ever get to repeat, so despite my hesitations that "oh, it might be weird, maybe people won't like it," I do think it's worth sharing as a story point. It's hyperspecific and I love it for that :)
Devil's Backbone plot points - including the finale moment - are actually foreshadowed several times in Origin of the Pixies and a couple other pieces. You probably won't catch them without the context of the 'fic itself, but kudos if you do!
So, that's an overview of things and that time period, and an explanation of why this lore about Pixie families comes really late in the timeline.
It's a tricky question to answer. "What will happen to the Pixies once H.P.'s strength and influence fade?" is probably the biggest "haunts the narrative" question in Cloudlands AU (and it's the big thing we're working up to), so it's inherently spoilery... but hopefully this is a satisfactory response.
"The world's smallest violin really needs an audience, so let me play my violin for you..." (x)
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New Origin of the Pixies chapter today!
Chapter 43 - “Letters and Numbers”
Read on FFN || Read on AO3
Start from Chapter 1
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Since Sanderson came into his adult wings last chapter, it was only a matter of time before his younger coworkers did too. Tensions rise as Longwood and Smith begin to assert their dominance, and H.P. does what he can to ensure his position as Head Pixie remains secure.
Next time we see these kids, we'll be off to war...
(First 1,000 words under the cut)
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Letters and Numbers
Spring of the Yellow Tailfeathers
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Longwood hovered by the tram station, his shades pushed into his hair and his arms crossed. As I drifted up to join him, I raised an admittedly exaggerated brow. "And you're absolutely sure you don't want me to call your Refracted counterpart?"
"I am."
"You realize that after today, you can never enter a Daoist shrine again. Without her kiss as a juvenile, you're impure. Your window of opportunity will have closed. If you ever want in again, you'll have to travel to the High Kingdom and meet on her territory."
"I get it, H.P." He smiled thinly. "I'm Zodii. I'm all Zodii."
I suppressed my sigh. "All right. No ceremonial coming of age kiss. Well, if we're not going to be spending the evening witnessing a dance, I'm glad we're going out instead." I picked up my coat and pulled it on while Sanderson watched from the stairs. "Where do you fancy? Preferably someplace with soda."
Longwood sized me up with a rueful sideways glance. "H.P., I'm 164,000. Adult wings or not, I can't legally drink for 25,000 years."
"… Right. I knew that. So where do you want to go? Hawkins and I went hiking, and Wilcox and I spent the weekend soaring above the cloudlands as geese. You and I have to go somewhere- anywhere you want. A getaway for just the two of us. That's Pixie tradition."
"I want to go to the Leaves Temple and present myself before Thurmondo."
Oh. I wrinkled my nose. "Um. That place by the Frozen Garden Palace? That's what you want? Am I even allowed to go there?"
Longwood nodded. "You're allowed to be on the lower two levels. The echo chamber is on the top floor. H.P., I know you don't believe, but I want you to come and meditate with me. That's my birthday wish."
I watched his face for any hint of ulterior motives. "What exactly do you plan to do while I'm there?"
"Just pray, and think, and listen. It's the Temple of Curiosity. It's sort of a play area up front for the nymphs and pups, and more of a museum in the back. Lots of little puzzles to fiddle with and solve. You'll like it."
"Okay. If that's what you want." I glanced over my shoulder. "Sanderson, you're in charge. No parties."
"Yes, sir."
We took the pilgrimage without magic as best as we could. I would've been content to ping there and be done with it, but Longwood insisted on the trams. At least using magic on the way home wasn't against their self-imposed rules. Longwood and I arrived in Cornflower City on Wednesday, then paid the temple a visit in the morning. I'd glimpsed the temple in passing: lush plants that betray the frosty outdoors and all of that. I'd never been inside before. Longwood walked me to the door. We entered together.
The noise hit me first. Longwood led onward and we stepped from the hall into an enormous brightly lit room.
"Holy chaos…"
Everything was a puzzle. The floor. The walls. The tables and chairs. Puzzles of cloudland cities. Puzzles of the Rainbow Bridge. Puzzles of famous monuments. Puzzles of planets. Puzzles of farms, animals, factories…
I turned a full circle, sliding my hands up to grasp my hat. Mazes of wire. Mirrors that alter your appearance in nonsensical ways. Children's toys strewn all over the ground (Ah, so that's how the Zodii lure you in young). Fairy nymphs and Anti-Fairy pups raced and poofed back and forth, shrieking and chortling as they zipped from one place to another. Amused parents sat on benches along the walls.
Longwood looked at me, awaiting any further reaction on my part. "If it's too much, sir, on the other side of the room, there's a door that leads into the meditation hall. It's quieter there."
I squinted. There was laughter, and crying. Bright construction paper. Train sets with engines and tracks. Interactive wall panels. Tunnels. Slides. Climbing bars. Trampolines. Squishy blue mats. Ringing rainbow xylophones. Spinning hoops. Wooden blocks. Sports balls. Foam balls. Toy blasters to fire those foam balls. Adventure quests and target games you could work your way through with a pretend wand in hand. Scoreboards?
It was every doctor's office waiting room, playground, splash pad, nymph gymnasium, and socializing nursery I'd ever imagined contained under one roof. My awareness zinged in a thousand directions at once, trying to track every rapidly moving kid, shot ball, and thrown toy. Every toenail, every hair, every dust flake, every skin cell.
Howls of pain. Bruises? Blood? Snot? Barf? Pee? There was no way to know what wild kids did when ducking through the tunnels and enriching themselves where adults couldn't see them. I am almost positive everything in there was liable to give you some contagious disease at the simplest brush of your hand. Nothing in there was sanitary. Nothing in there was safe. It wasn't right.
"Longwood," I whispered, "I can't do this. I can't stay in here. Nothing in here is organized. I'm going to have a meltdown. In front of all these people."
"Really?" He looked again around the Temple. "I thought you'd like solving the puzzles and filling in the coloring sheets."
"I will. Oh, I will. Longwood, I'm glad you have the ability to focus on just one thing at a time. To set up just three of a hundred dominos, to rotate a wheel filled with beads just half a turn, to flip an hourglass over when it hasn't timed out, to roll a play cloudcar a short ways across the floor, and then move on with your life."
I met his gaze, tugging my hat lower. "But if you start me on this, I swear I am not leaving until every one of these puzzles is done at the same time, and stabilized that way. And I do not care how many nymphs or full-grown adults I have to bowl over to do so. Either let me absolutely loose, or get me out of here- now."
Can you share some of what your planning process for long fics is like? What kind of outlines do you do or what prep do you do to get in the zone?
Thanks for the ask! [Tagging #ridspoilers for minor plot outline, birthday, and alien planet calendar spoilers for Origin of the Pixies, Frayed Knots, and Factor It In]
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I write on Google Docs; it might not be for everyone but it's what I've found to work well for me after a lifetime of writing (Ex: When I was a kid, I used WordPerfect and Dropbox and it would take hours to sync my documents before a long road trip... I travel between two locations a lot, so these days I just pop open the Google Docs app on my phone or use the Edit Offline extension on my laptop and it's always up to date, which works great for me!)
I also like Google Docs because I can link between documents and have lots of open tabs [along the top of the browser] in "one tab" [along the bottom bar], which isn't something I was able to do as a kid or with Microsoft Word, and it just helps me feel clean.
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Masterlist Doc [1 per fandom]
I keep all my Fairly OddParents 'fics in a doc titled FOP 'Fic Masterlist. I have my most important resources at the top and they're all broken down with clear labels and doc links.
This way, even if I haven't accessed a doc in a while [meaning it doesn't come up when I type its name in the URL search bar], I always know where I can find it. Also, thanks to my edit offline extension, all I need is this one link and I know I'll be able to open any doc I need.
I have a lot of 'fics, so this doc is several pages. If you've ever read my FFN or AO3 bios and saw that note about how I keep a queued Tumblr post containing links to my unfinished 'fics in case I unexpectedly die, that queued post links to this doc!
You'll also notice that I have distinct scrap docs for Origin, Knots, and the 130 Prompts. I change or cut a lot of stuff and it's nice to keep the old WIPs in case I ever want to look back on them (each of those docs is 25k words just of scraps). Sometimes those scenes get recycled, but usually they just sit there. It's a lot easier to cut things from a story when you have a place to put them and you're not deleting them forever.
[Cnt'd under the cut]
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Table of Contents Doc [1 per long 'fic]
All my long 'fics have a table of contents doc, which I highly recommend for anyone doing a large multi-chapter project. I always slap the cover image, a height chart, or a character reference on top to make it pretty, then the doc will contain some notes I might need. For example, Origin's doc has two height charts:
and this-
Makes it easy to know where to find things. Also, you don't have to draw your own height charts, but I recommend keeping a list of heights on hand. Even if you don't tell the reader someone's exact measurements, it's always nice to get a feel for how characters compare to others and whether they should be looking up or down.
Come What May's doc has this screenshot comparison on it, which I put together by measuring different characters who appear next to each other as carefully as I could, and it works too:
Obviously Kevin and Molly never appear in the same episode, but since they're about to become step-siblings in Come What May, it was important to me that I knew how tall they were, so I measured Molly against Timmy and then Timmy against Kevin. Same for Mrs. Crocker, who I measured against Timmy to get a feel for how tall Kevin is compared to his grandma.
I know it's a fanfic so it doesn't really matter, but you have to do self-indulgent things sometimes :)
Frayed Knots also has Sunnie's character reference [i.e. Anti-Cosmo's patron nature spirit, the water dude], which I just want to show off because this is still really good art for something I drew in 2017:
Other things I keep in my table of contents docs are lists of episodes where certain characters appear, random notes that I need to keep track of (like any canonized character addresses or allergies), and chapter title ideas. I also keep track of the starlight levels [i.e. which season it's bright outside vs. dark], school year reminders, and Anti-Fairy migration season.
I keep my Vatajasa name chart in Knots too:
Factor It In's table doc contains a list of villains who appear in the 'fic (Red for ones who don't appear, green for those who do). It also links to the Wiki page for the Evil Villains Association so I can remember which villains are and aren't in it. It also has my timeline details:
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Timeline Notes
Factor It In is set in 1998, and my table doc has all the notes I used to narrow down to that date (ex: I originally planned to set it in 1987 because I felt that the late 80s fit the technology level we see in the show before I re-watched the episode "There's No V In Team," which specifically refers to the year 1987 as having happened in the past).
One of the reasons I liked using 1987 originally was because Factor It In is a story about Kid Math training under WordGirl, and it takes place shortly after the Kid Math episode, which aired in 2014. Factor It In opens in early January, so I like the Easter egg that the 2015 calendar would be the same even if we took its airdate literally. 1998 was the only year in the 90s that also matched the calendar, so that's what I ended up with.
I like keeping my timeline notes around so if I take a hiatus, I can always come back and remind myself why I picked stuff. Also it's way easier to expand your worldbuilding if you kept your notes... it's awful if you threw your math away and have to start over (I once redid an entire timeline because someone said I'd messed up the dates on my chart, and I believed them and redid it all, only to realize several months later when I ran into a timeline problem that my math had actually been right all along :') Don't be like me. Record your work and leave notes explaining why.)
[I always use THIS calendar website when I'm planning timelines. It tracks moon phases, which was important when @zachbrightside and I were working on the FOP timeline and heavily relying on moon phases as a guide, and you can easily type any year and month into the URL bar so it's super easy to navigate.]
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Birthday Notes
I also kept all my notes on determining birthdays (very important for long 'fics with lots of characters that take place over several months! One of my FOP resource docs is specifically for birthdays and annual events, ranging from parades to anniversaries to carnivals).
My headcanon for Becky Botsford's birthday is July 28th. We know she starts the series at age 9 and has a birthday in Season 1 episode 4, meaning she's 10 for much of the series. There are at least two episodes where she cites her ages as "10 and a half," and we saw that in her next birthday episode ("A World Without WordGirl"), her cake had 11 candles on it.
Show canon implies that time IS passing and that the show doesn't exist in a timeless void (see also, Timmy Turner wishing to freeze time for 50 years), so it was important to me that I nail down her birthday. I knew I wanted it to take place after Rhyme and Reason if possible since there are no more birthday episodes, though I would also be fine with having "Rhyme and Reason" shortly after her birthday [to ensure she stays 10 and 11 for the majority of show canon].
Here are some of my notes on her birthday for anyone interested (Hopefully they're not too squished):
^ Like I said, I switched 1987 to 1998, but yeah. Rex's birthday comes out to June 13th, 1989 and Becky's is July 28th, 1986.
Clickable links for Rex and Becky on the age calculator if you're curious... Important for me since one of Rex's math powers is to always know how old someone is to the day.
Fun Fact - I deliberately gave Rex June 13th as a birthday so he would share a birthday with Foop, who is also a Season 7 Episode 1 debut kid over in Fairly OddParents :)
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Having birthdays planned is also nice for when I want to write multiple 'fics in the same world, even if they're not the same 'fic. In my story "Flypaper," which takes place in early June, Rex is eagerly awaiting his 17th birthday and Becky muses on how she'll be turning 20 at the end of the summer... Just a nice detail not only to set the scene, but also to help the story feel grounded and realistic since one of the themes of "Flypaper" was that Becky felt time was slipping away from her.
It's also important to note that Rex and Becky are always among the youngest in their school years since they have summer birthdays. Tobey is 12 for most of the time Becky is 11... Little details that don't take a long time to plan for, but can really help a story feel like the author put effort into the world.
Again, I highly recommend leaving clear notes to yourself about why you're doing certain timeline things. I much prefer having the breakdown of the episodes I looked at over simply leaving a note to myself that Becky's birthday is July 28th!
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Character Arc Notes
Before planning the events of the story, it helps to get an idea for what themes and character traits you want to focus on. Frayed Knots is about love and betrayal- it's about Anti-Cosmo pushing for what he wants even though it hurts his loved ones (appropriate theme for a villain backstory 'fic).
I want to show some notes I have for Factor It In because I think they're interesting. Factor It In is my first attempt at doing a story that deliberately focuses around two protagonists and their separate but equally important character arcs, and I'm excited :)
Everything that's in my doc is the "tell" part of "show don't tell." The story tries to show what I have in my notes:
Rex arc - Lack of Stability / Lack of Control - Failing, getting tricked, being unwanted, not good enough, not understanding things. Being in foster care is scary. Unfamiliar planet is scary
Show Kid Math always being super inquisitive. He always wants to learn. He knows the most, he is the best, he gets upset when he's fooled or when he fails. He was 2nd best in school. He feels lost when he doesn't know what's happening in his future. Gets upset when WordGirl doubts his decisions. In the opening scene of Factor, he's mind controlled by Mr. Big. Literally has no control
Kid Math clings to his superhero certification / Hexagonian education. He was raised by his aunts and has basically no relationship with his parents (though he tries to hide the fact that this hurts him). He feels like a burden; he feels like his mom considered him "too much work" and that his father considers him "not worth bothering to visit." Rex constantly struggles under this fear that he's a burden. He wants to prove himself a good superhero so that his education (and life) aren't "a waste."
Conflict: Kid Math has already spent his entire life feeling like he's no one's first choice; that he's only "second best" (because he was second to top of his class in school). He understands that he and WordGirl are sharing the city, but it's important to him that he's considered an equal. He wants people to like him. It hurts when WordGirl comes on too strong and makes it obvious she lacks faith in him, because he feels like a burden: his worst nightmare.
Throughout the story, Rex internalizes his successes and failures. He cannot separate his superhero identity from his civilian identity. He always sees himself as "Rex, who trained to become a superhero." He calls himself Rex and has no distinction in his mind. His secrets slip, he uses his powers when he's Rex, and he expects people to attribute KM's failures to Rex (Ex: school kids laugh at how he falls for tricks as Kid Math and it upsets him as Rex).
Rex values control, and will do all he can to avoid losing control. His deadly sin is Wrath, but he has a lot of emotional control and will try to remove himself from the situation. As long as he has his safe space and his comfort things, he's okay. We get several scenes of him wanting to break stuff when he's upset but he holds back... with the underlying tension of wondering how long he'll last before he snaps (pitting his nightmare of losing control against Becky's nightmare of losing his friendship).
I want to highlight the part about how Rex cannot separate his two identities. This is something I showed even back in "AlgoRhythm" - Rex always calls himself "Rex" inside his head, even when he's dressed as Kid Math. However, when I write from Becky's POV, the third-person writing swaps between calling her "Becky" or "WordGirl" depending on how she's dressed.
I also have notes about how Rex's character arc relates to the story's finale, but that's spoilers. Since Rex's character arc is about how he hates not having control, then the worst thing that could happen to him is not having a say in things: hence why the plot about bouncing between foster families is such a hard thing for him to go through. Eventually, he'll also be put in a position where he needs to think about who he is as Rex vs. who he is as Kid Math, and we'll see that in the story climax.
Becky has a fun arc too:
Becky arc - Loss / Change - People being hurt, losing her friends, hurting or losing her family. Fear of change.
Show WordGirl being upset when relationships fracture, even with people who aren't super close to her. She struggles with the idea of Kid Math befriending her villains or losing her position as a hero and getting replaced by Kid Math.
Put simply, WordGirl is a control freak who refuses to admit this to herself. WordGirl struggles to relinquish control to Kid Math (which is where they come in conflict since he ALSO feels stressed when he doesn't have control). WordGirl is a bit of a helicopter mentor; she hovers around Rex, interferes with his work, and just generally gets in his way (which is pretty funny imo since Rex never got in her way during "Kid Math"- he's capable, he just causes problems with social interaction and not with the actual fighting... WordGirl gets the social interaction part but definitely gets in the way).
Conflict: WordGirl doesn't enjoy having Rex around, but she can't tell him that because it might hurt his feelings and that would cause her "loss and change" pain. She would feel guilty and sad.
Rex being Exposition Guy's foster kid is a big source of conflict between them, as Rex believes he should "get dibs" on info EG shares. WordGirl stresses when Rex doesn't do things "her way" and Rex gets frustrated that she doesn't trust him. Tensions keep rising because WordGirl starts seeing "the bad" in Rex; she keeps seeing Miss Power traits in him and she worries that Miss Power might have been his teacher back on Hexagon.
Her nosiness strains Rex's trust in her and he starts pulling away emotionally... sending her into a spiral about change and loss (especially as more and more villains and civilians grow familiar with Kid Math and start to think he's cool). Lots of resentment towards Kid Math for "replacing her" even though she NEVER admits that to herself; she still has trace amounts of jealousy towards him in later stories like "Flypaper..."
WordGirl doesn't mean to be jealous or greedy, but it's always been one of her flaws (i.e. someone else getting a key to the city, or when she snapped during Miss Power special about Chuck getting a collectible unicorn, wanting to show off a bit during "Invisible Hand"). She's a very nice person but Envy is absolutely her deadly sin.
So yeah! Fun times ahead; I'm excited.
We've already started seeing cracks form between her and Chuck... In Chapter 4, Chuck confronts her, asking if WordGirl is retiring and if he'll still get to see her. Chuck has his own little character arc in the background, which is that he broke his foot a few days before the story starts- he has to sit on the sidelines watching the other villains get "WordGirl time" while he has to watch Kid Math go through hero training.
A lot of other characters have small arcs too, though Chuck's and Victor Best's are probably the most notable-- Chuck and Victor are both characters who struggle with being "the second best" compared to a more successful sibling, so they resonate heavily with Rex's character arc.
WordGirl's arc is about control, so Mr. Big and Tobey (mind control and robots) are pretty obvious choices for her, along with Dr. Two-Brains... but actually, Granny May and Eileen are two villains I really wanted to look at in Factor It In. Granny May's life hinges around being a "people person" (to the point that she had an episode about how she could be way more successful with a different schtick; she just likes talking to people too much to trade that for success).
Granny May is super calculating and manipulative and she also struggles with little losses of control in her daily life (getting on in years, mobility issues, and the episode "Granny's Book Club" where the Evil Villains Association tried to force her to retire). I like Granny May because she looks like this sweet old lady but she also, like. can fly and has a robot suit, which is SO funny.
With her cold, calculating patience and her manipulative ways, Granny May represents the worst of Rex AND Becky at the same time, which is great. I'm excited to get to her chapters. Eileen is also a fun villain to juxtapose Becky because she's the embodiment of envy, which Becky struggles with, so I'm looking forward to that too.
A lot of characters are also working on school projects, so they always have "something to do" or "something that is causing them stress." Mapping out the background character arcs and conflicts can help the story feel more alive, and I think that's a useful part of outlining :)
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Once you know your character arcs ["What is my character's biggest fear, what is something my character will do wrong, what event forces them to face their fear, and how do they resolve this situation in a way that shows them growing as a person?"] then the story sort of writes itself :)
Make sure you have a goal or a problem and make sure there's a reason they can't achieve the goal or solve their problem in the first chapter. Here are some examples from 3 of my long 'fics:
Origin of the Pixies - Fergus (i.e. H.P.) fears being responsible for others... His father wants him to study psychology and take over the family therapy business (Wish Fixers) even though carrying the weight of others' emotional problems sounds like the worst fate imaginable... so Fergus cuts ties with Dad, drops out of the Fairy Academy and runs away from home. Now he only looks out for himself, can start his own business if he wants to, and he can drink and party all the time. What could be better than that?
Fergus's nightmare of being responsible becomes unavoidable when he (a pixie) starts reproducing asexually... during a time when no one really knows what pixies are and Fairy World has a baby ban in place. Fergus pursues a life of business and money-making, fighting to provide for Sanderson and the rest of his clone offspring (some of whom are predisposed by their genetics to kill him when they come of age, which is fun). Things get even worse when Fairy World and Anti-Fairy World go to war... Being responsible for kids during a time of peace was hard enough, but war? Forget it.
After successfully navigating the chaos of war, Fergus is ready to settle back into a peaceful life, but tumultuous politics keep him on his toes. His best friend - the leader of Anti-Fairy World - gets overthrown by hotshot Anti-Cosmo, and Fergus is forced to re-evaluate his friendships, priorities, political alignments, and personal needs if he wants to maintain political piece between the Pixies and Anti-Fairies.
While raising his pixie clones, Fergus has always kept them at arm's length and called them "interns" or "employees" or even "nephews" to avoid calling them his sons. The older he gets, the less he's able to do the things he liked to do in his younger years - goof off, wrestle, attend parties - and the more he needs to think about putting his pixies first. As death looms nearer and nearer, Fergus grows increasingly desperate to ensure his pixies will still thrive without him... and he'll do anything, regardless of who it hurts or how badly he endangers the magical world, to ensure they do.
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Frayed Knots - Anti-Cosmo fears being unloved; his father isn't in the picture, his older brother is aloof, and his mother isn't kind to him. He's desperate to not grow old without a soulmate by his side. When he fails to match with a partner during a betrothal ceremony, he lies his way through it and tricks his peers into believing Anti-Saffron is his fated match.
As the centuries pass, it becomes more difficult to maintain the lie and Anti-Cosmo begins questioning whether maintaining his relationship with Anti-Saffron is even worth it. Breaking things off in a society that believes in luck and fate, however, is incredibly risky and could get him labeled as an outcast for the rest of his life.
Anti-Cosmo struggles to balance his dying feelings for Anti-Saffron with his growing feelings for Anti-Wanda, and things get trickier and trickier as his friends realize he's been lying all his life and start pushing him away. Finally, Anti-Cosmo has to choose between his comfy lies and his betrothed or else throw away everything so he can chase after Anti-Wanda... who might abandon him too, just like his friends did, and leave him alone and unloved.
Anti-Cosmo maintains his lies as long as he can, hurting his loved ones in the process, and struggles to pick up the pieces left behind. Even if no one else forgives him, he can't keep living in the past; he has to learn to forgive himself if he hopes to be approachable and trustworthy again. Being an evil villain, though, I guess whether or not he grows as a person is up for some debate...
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Factor It In (Rex) - Rex values his personal achievements; he finds joy in superhero work and regularly brags about himself, his schooling, and his home planet Hexagon in general (right down to the fact that his planet has "the tastiest raisins in the universe.") Unfortunately, he's stuck in a cycle of giving his all but never feeling satisfied with his achievements because he's "never the best." One of his greatest fears is being confronted with evidence that he really is a burden and a failure, which would absolutely crush his spirit.
Rex doesn't love the way that Becky pushes him around; she's not mean, she just tries to guide him towards foster care even though he doesn't want to go. He doesn't speak up about it because he wants to put his faith in her and believe that he can learn from her and become a better person (since "being a good person" is the one thing he values above personal pride). He still feels inexperienced and overwhelmed in the early chapters, so he's hesitant to speak up and explain why he doesn't like what Becky's doing... up until she starts crossing his boundaries and then he has to draw the line.
Rex's desire for independence leads him to trust very easily. He puts his faith in Victor, Tobey, Chuck, and Granny May, who steer him down a wobbly path of moral grays. Becky keeps pushing him further away, so Rex continues bonding with the villains because he feels safe with them. Obviously this doesn't end well and he has to face the consequences of choosing the villains over his friendship with WordGirl.
In his determination to mend things with WordGirl, Rex accidentally lands both of them in a terrible situation and puts them (and therefore the rest of the city) in danger. In order to fix this, he has to push through his personal pride (Ow), accept his mistake (Double ow), and go against his training (which became useless while Bad Situation is in effect) so he can find a new way to save the day.
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Factor It In (Becky) - Becky values her identity as a superhero and how much work she puts into protecting the city. She fears that Kid Math will be a worse hero than her (endangering people) but also fears Kid Math will be a better hero than her (blow to her self-confidence).
She can't resolve this problem in Chapter 1 because she's scared of hurting his feelings and would rather try other options to avoid direct confrontation; instead, she deals with her concerns by trying to "fix" Kid Math. She trains him and pushes him towards foster care. As long as she feels like she's helping him, she's assuaging both fears: she's proving she's "better" and she's helping him not be worse. Ergo, she "no longer has a problem."
Becky's already on a path that puts her in conflict with Rex, who desires control over his own life and has to deal with her pushing him around until he can't take it any more. Conflict arises when Becky oversteps boundaries and breaks Rex's trust in her. Things get worse when she makes a mistake that sours the city's attitude towards her. Her worst nightmare is coming true: she's "not as good as Kid Math" and people might get hurt without her.
As things keep getting worse for the city and Rex is struggling, it's obvious that she and Kid Math need to team up again. That means repairing their friendship... which she can only do if she proves that she really does trust Rex to do things by himself. Therein lies the pickle...
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Anyway, I really rambled on there, but... Point being, a lot of fun stuff goes in my table docs, and this is the type of outlining I like to do for characters and story plots.
I highly recommend having a table of contents doc for long 'fics. You don't need to bog it down with all your worldbuilding notes (Hopefully you have a separate place you can put those, like a Tumblr blog or other docs), but for things that you know you'll definitely need and are worried you might not be able to find again, I highly recommend keeping them in the table doc.
You shouldn't normally be editing your table doc after you've done your outlining, which means you're less likely to accidentally delete important notes (compared to keeping them in a story doc) and you won't bog your story doc down with stuff you need to scroll past.
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Chapter Docs [1 per chapter]
I have links to all my individual chapter docs (important to me since my chapters are normally 10k+ words... Can't fit everything in one doc or it would be a pain to navigate and take an age to load).
Here are some snippets of my outlines. As you can see, the descriptions I have in my table docs are loose and vague:
This is from Come What May:
Come What May is special because it takes place over just a few days (while my long 'fics span months or even thousands of years). It's based around Kevin's appearances in Fairly OddParents Season 10.
I wanted to share this because even though my notes for "Cold Shadow" are basically nothing, it still gives the info that's actually important for me to know when returning to this project after a hiatus: "Here's exactly what day it is in the timeline. This episodes shows kids turning in a homework assignment on the founding fathers, which means we need to see Kevin doing this homework assignment (or at least acknowledging it) in prior chapters.
Regardless of the weird supernatural stuff Kevin is dealing with in this 'fic, it's still intended to be canon compliant, and I know that's a detail Future Me could easily forget but would want to know. It's like what I said earlier about birthdays and timelines: leave yourself clear notes. You'll never regret having too many notes, especially if you intend to return to a project after a long hiatus.
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Origin - I unfortunately scrapped my descriptions for all previous chapters of Origin and Knots so forgive the "spoilers," ha ha
Origin was originally drafted in a single document, which I later split into separate chapter docs. That's why I have notes like "Hawkins hand scene." I know exactly what that's referring to and my table of contents doc helps me remember which chapter it got moved to.
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Knots - I wanted to show these to emphasize how vague some of these are:
Even though they're vague, you can get a good sense of the direction the story is going. Outlining doesn't have to be a painful, in-depth process. You can knock out the basics in a single afternoon if you just sit down and do it.
I picked one chapter and opened it at random ("Fox's Folly") and it has 8k words in its draft right now. "Tipping Scales" has 15k. At the time of making this post, Frayed Knots only has 34 chapters posted in public, so we're at least 1 or 2 years away from getting to this point, yet there's already a lot of draft info I can go back to. I've added a lot of bits and pieces to these chapters over the years and sometimes I just open them when I'm in the mood for reading something fun.
Having the documents already set up in advance brings you one step closer to opening them and throwing stuff in them and I highly recommend that.
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Factor - These chapter outlines are more detailed (minus the early ones... the first 3 chapters were drafted as 1 chapter originally). If you've actually read Factor thus far, however, you'll notice that the scenes in my outline don't match perfectly with the finally chapters. And that's okay! The outlines are just guidelines and the final chapter can be different:
Lots of screenshots but I feel like my Factor doc is the most authentic look at my outline process (since it's recent while Origin and Knots were outlined like 7 years ago). I use black on my initial draft and red for things I change on a later sweep.
There are little notes to myself and sometimes I switch the order of things around. Also, "Torus" was written from scratch (no outline) since I came up with ideas for it later, and the nice thing is that I felt comfortable doing that without feeling like I'll write myself into a corner or wreck the pacing.
Having a story outline and all these separate docs means I already know where the story is going and I can jump in and write from anywhere in the timeline when the mood strikes. I think having a lot of options on what to write is the best way to fight writer's block, so this system works well for me.
Origin was drafted in 2016 and Knots in 2017. I create new scenes all the time (and scrap others), but a lot of the early story beats are still the same.
That about covers what I do in my outline process :) Thanks for asking and hopefully this was a fun and interesting read!
"If you wanna stay young, get both feet in it! 18 'til I die!" (x)
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6 years ago I posted this art on my blog, and now it's finally time to share the story that goes with it! New Origin of the Pixies chapter today!
Chapter 42 - “The Unicorn Years”
Read on FFN || Read on AO3
Start from Chapter 1
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Today's the day that Sanderson celebrates his adult wings… By which I mean it's the day that H.P. celebrates Sanderson's adult wings. I'm not getting ANY flashbacks to how Ambrosine treated H.P. when HE was young. Come say hello to the newest adult in the cloudlands (and party on)!
(First 1,000 words under the cut)
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The Unicorn Years
Autumn of the Murky Roots
I have to confess, it amused me how mortified Sanderson was to have his first real birthday party. He'd always been a difficult nut to crack. I knew of little that could fluster him. Of all the things to do it, it would be a birthday celebration. To my own surprise, I actually didn't mind the event… or the shifting of attention from me to him. Let him have his day. Things would be back to routine again soon enough.
"Are you still sore?" I asked when I fetched him from his apartment that morning. Hawkins and I had already started cooking breakfast in the other building. It wasn't like Sanderson to be late when it was his turn to help. Granted, at 159k myself, I'd been a loudmouthed rebel- but Sanderson? Nah. He was too dependable to bail on me without a two weeks' notice.
… Huh. I'd been 174,000 when I fled the Academy, jumping from Fairy World to Earth. I was over 491,500 when I came crawling back. And over 650,000 now, though Venus Eros had worked the best magic on my body that she could in an attempt to keep me youthful. How strange. A full 650k years of life experience under my belt, and sometimes I still felt only as mature as that sharp-tongued little "fairy" juvenile who dropped out of school. This body that I wore had been twisted up, dunked in the wash, scrubbed with bleach, and hung to dry again. I lived now on extremely borrowed time and Venus held my leash in the palm of her hand. That's not a favor I can ever repay. I am in her debt for the rest of my existence, and I suspect the rest of the pixie race is too. Which is just peachy. Love that for me.
"Incredibly sore, sir," Sanderson mumbled. He gripped my forearm with both hands, every step slow and wobbly as we made our way through the apartment hall. He'd put on fluffy snowflake socks that I didn't remember ever seeing him in before. No shoes. Still had his casual clothes on. His heels scraped along the thin carpet, scritching and scratching.
"It will pass."
Sanderson glanced over his shoulder at his new long, sweeping wings. I drank him in too. He's grown several inches taller than he'd been as a mere juvenile. Not quite as tall as I was, but getting closer. His wings now matched mine in length, though mine glittered transparent blue. His were tender, still smudged and milky-colored from the moulting. They reminded me in their haunting way of that afternoon nearly 160,000 years ago when Kalysta held him to her breast, nursing him until the flight casings cracked off his wings. He said, "The return to normalcy can't come soon enough, H.P.… I don't think I've ever ached this harsh in my life."
I trailed my eyes to his again. Sanderson, weak and winded, hadn't put on his shades. Those little lavender flecks looked just like mine. How strange. As a gyne, I was bulkier and more freckled than he was, but we shared every single one of our genes. We even shared the Ivorie brand cowlicks in our hair.
"That's only to be expected," I told him (in response to his complaint about the soreness). "You've just shed every pore on your body and put on several inches. The elasticity in your new skin isn't fully developed yet. Things will hurt more than you're used to. That goes for both inside and out. Be careful."
I didn't pressure him to help with breakfast, and especially not when he kept scratching off flakes of skin. His scalp had gotten the worst of it, so he kept pulling off little flakes from around his hair follicles. The younger pixies badgered him constantly about his new shape when he arrived at the pavilion. I had 320 of them now. 320 pixies who left me dripping with exhaustion and insanity every other day. Pregnancy had dealt a heavy blow to my once-youthful body, even though I didn't carry them the way that Fairy drakes did, but so far, Venus's medical intervention was winning. Hadn't died yet. And when we were in the pavilion and I sat across from Sanderson with my plate… it almost seemed a guarantee.
159,426 years.
Sanderson had his adult wings now. I'd known it was coming. Not the date, but I was just over 154,000 when I moulted into mine. He'd used less magic growing up than I did, aging more slowly because of it, but apart from that minor delay, our shedding patterns seemed nearly identical.
159,426. His inner organs, up until now the size of raisins in his tiny juvenile body, finally had room to grow. Exactly 500 years from now, he'd be fully fledged. Capable of reproducing… Well, if he were a Fairy, at least. I wasn't sure how things worked for pixies… I hadn't had Sanderson until I was almost 490k. Would his body draw the time out equally long? Or would there be third-generation pixies just a few centuries from now?
Three generations. My employees with offspring of their own. Yikes. Was I getting that old?
Bayard, holding little Featherstone (who scrambled over him), let out a whistle as Sanderson clumsily tried to push his new, longer legs between the picnic table and its bench. "Well, moulting sure acts fast. Your hips have already gotten wider, studmuffin."
"Have they?" Sanderson lifted his shirt and started to check himself over. I yanked it down down.
"Not here. Wait until you're alone."
"Yes, sir."
I contacted the Eroses during breakfast. Drk. Cupid answered my call, but he and his brothers had their hands full of work. That was fine by me. I was just glad a responsible adult - Drk. Ludell - poofed out in their place with his clipboard and wooden examination tools. Sanderson protested his probing, still wanting to eat his breakfast, but I held firm.
"Stay here and let him run his tests. You're the first adult pixie besides myself the Eros family has ever been able to observe. I need to get in contact with your Refract anyway. While I'm gone, show due respect to the Triplet of the Evening. He's overworked and underhyped."
Sanderson rolled his eyes, but that was the most youthful rebellion I saw from him.
It’s been much too long since the last Origin chapter. That changes today! Please enjoy a chapter that focuses on H.P. rebuilding his broken relationship with Anti-Bryndin and counting down the moments of the 18,000-year life expectancy he was given back in Chapter 22.
Chapter 39 - “On the Notion of Cutting Ties”
Read on FFN || Read on AO3
Also, consider voting on my recent poll about which day you like to read ‘fic chapters to help me decide what day to upload in the future. Enjoy!
Obligatory pride month post, talking about one specific topic: the acespec kiddos in my 'fics!
This year marks 10 years since I learned the words aromantic and asexual, and I'm still just as happy to know I'm ace as I was back then. I'm most likely arospec as well because I've never felt drawn to anyone, and I usually say I'm cupioromantic if asked directly.
This post is a shout-out to the aces I've written over the years, but only the ones from my FOP 'fics specifically because otherwise we'd be here all day.
(Under a cut because this shouldn't be so long it breaks)
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Sanderson! Heteromantic asexual. Feels romantic attraction towards girls, but often hides that because he feels ashamed as a pixie. He carries the weight of being H.P.'s firstborn and being the "good stereotypical pixie" so that's hard for him, but you go, little dude. You're valid. Sanderson refuses to call Cavatina's milkmother his girlfriend, but they're on good terms and Cavatina loves his mom.
Cavatina! :'D He is firmly aro/ace, but due to a lot of trauma he went through when he was young, he's not sure if he is ""truly ace"" or ""just has trauma."" Poor thing does not understand that it's okay if you think your trauma might have an effect on your identity. If he feels comfy with the aro/ace label, he can still use it. Feeling unsure doesn't mean it can't be a true label if it's the one that fits his experiences and makes him feel right. 10/10 would wear pride buttons.
H.P.! He's akoiromantic asexual. Has occasional celebrity crushes (romantic spectrum). My favorite joke is that line in "Health Bars" where H.P. says he only likes celebrities and Anti-Cosmo just stares into the void mentally questioning if he, a politician, is a celebrity and if H.P. is trying to imply something slkdfj
H.P. doesn't like admitting his feelings, but they do exist. Has had two QPRs over the years, so good for him! Things have been rocky for him as he's tried to figure out his identity, but I'm proud of him for trying to explore it even when he makes mistakes.
Lots of other pixies tbh!! Not all of them are acespec, but a lot of them are. Bayard, Chidlow, Jardine, Madigan, Keefe, Springs, Mullins, Tolbert, Faust, Rosencrantz, and Southmark off the top of my head are canon aces [and I also know Newman, Hamilton, Hawkins, Wilcox, Longwood, McKinley, Thane, and Smith are not].
/ The pixie race reproduces asexually, but asexuality as an identity and parthenogenetic reproduction are not the same <3
Chester! He's aro/ace and adores spending time with his friend group. He doesn't feel attraction to anyone, but he's super supportive of his friends and a great wingman. He loves meeting his friends' partners and tries treating them all with respect, whether he's known them for 5 years or 5 days. He has pride buttons that he likes to wear. I like to think he gave his identity a lot of thought over the years, even wondering for a while if he might be bi, but in the end he found something that worked for him.
I am forever obsessed with my headcanon that Chester gets into acting because then he upgrades from living in a trailer park to living in a movie trailer, wheeze... He's always been ace and happy, and any kisses he shares in the acting world are strictly professional. He loves that his friends never ditched him when they got partners. Get you a friend like Chester! <3
Juandissimo! He's demisexual [Spoke about it in this post HERE]. Felt attraction towards Wanda and fell for her hard, and he's never really found another person who clicked with him. He doesn't know what demisexuality is and just kind of flits about fearing that his life is over and he'll never fall in love again... he has a hard time with those feelings. But he's also channeled a lot of his emotions into showing his beloved godkid Remy the parental affection Remy never had, and things are looking better for them both.
Remy! My grayromantic graysexual. I never pinned down exactly what his experience is. If you told him about asexuality then he would immediately say "That's me" because in his mind that means "I don't want a partner or sex," but I never really decided where he is on the aro and ace spectrums. Hence, gray zone! I think he would feel content that the ace label fits him though, even if he doesn't have the mental stamina to dive deep and learn about the details.
He chooses not to marry because he saw how rough things were for his parents and he doesn't really want a partner, but it's my headcanon that he takes in a miserable orphan girl one day and it's a real rags to riches story for them. His parents neither notice or care, but he's happy.
Anti-Cosmo! He's panromantic demisexual / gray-ace. Although he deals with nymphomania [hypersexuality], that doesn't invalidate the gray-ace part of him. He dislikes it and doesn't really understand it. Anti-Cosmo's specific experience is that his attraction tends to fade out when he realizes he doesn't know someone as well as he thought he did, or when they show a side of themselves that makes him believe they aren't really his friend. He struggles a lot with that and it's confusing for him, especially before he married Anti-Wanda.
Now that he's older he's happy to stay married to her long-term with full trust that his attraction to her will come back, but it was very confusing when he was younger and he felt like his mind and body were playing tricks on him. He has a lot of flaws and chronically cheats on people, which is not a good thing to be doing, but he is definitely one of the guys who has ever been!
10/10 would wear pride buttons as a teen, but the modern flags didn't exist back then. I do have an entire scene written where he explores the pride symbols of his world, but I'm not sure if it'll make it into the final draft of Knots since that was originally going to be the way that he found out Blonda was into Anti-Fairies, but that's not necessary since she came out to him in a different way in the current version. We do see Anti-Marigold wearing Hiccup's pride hoodie in the "Temptation" prompt, though :)
Also, not relevant to the ace topic of this post, but Anti-Cosmo would also have a pronoun button that clearly states He/Him because as we saw in Knots, he gets annoyed when called They/Them even when it's for Anti-Fairy cultural reasons. Give the man a button.
Jorgen! You could drag him over hot coals and he still would not face the fact he's ace because it is Scary to him, but he is. He deals with a lot of anxiety regarding his role in the von Strangle bloodline, seeing as he's supposed to pass on the family name. He delayed marriage until really late in life because of that anxiety, but the Tooth Fairy has always cared about him and supported him and she makes sure he always feels safe and comfy around her.
If you're curious, in Riddleverse Classic canon they do end up having kids, but it's in-vitro with a surrogate because it was important to Jorgen that he continue the family line even though it was a rocky decision for him (Didn't want it interfering with career, also lots of discomfort from political pressure and limelight, plus perfectionism issues).
Once the twins are born he's quite nervous as a father, but once he slides into the role then he finally feels in control of his life again, and realizes that the choice he made was okay. He starts relaxing a ton and finally starts opening his emotions more to the Tooth Fairy. She always supported him even when he kept himself closed off. They're sweet <3 And the twins cameo in the upcoming 130 Prompt "Approval" so you'll meet them eventually.
Anti-Marigold! Biromantic asexual. Being a counterpart who is forced to mirror your counterpart (and mirror the relationships and children they have) can be really difficult, especially when your counterpart loves chasing after boys. She struggles with her ace identity and doesn't really like it, but she is still valid and I love her.
(Also bonus nod to Foop for being aromantic even though he's not ace; he can still say hi in this post because the aro & ace solidarity between Foop and A.M throughout their teens is one of my fave secret subplots... They are 150k years in the future and do not know what aromantic and asexual mean but they are doing their best to support each other <3)
Noon / Anti-Lance! He's aro/ace and always has been. Anti-Cosmo respects the heck out of him and tries to respect his boundaries even though he has a crush on Anti-Lance. Their relationship has its ups and downs throughout the years, but they've always respected their friendship even when confessions and conflict make things awkward. Anti-Lance would definitely have pride buttons on his school bag.
There's a scene in the upcoming Frayed Knots chapter "Crossroads" where Anti-Cosmo mentions Anti-Lance's identity in casual conversation, and I like that moment because there was never a coming out scene for Anti-Lance, it was just something implied to have happened off-screen.
They are just two boys who are friends and it didn't even register in Anti-Cosmo's mind as important enough to share with the reader because... it's just a normal thing for his friend to be and didn't need to be a huge thing :)
Bennett Buxaplenty, AKA Remy's dad! :) He's aro/ace, but doesn't really understand himself. He's convinced that everyone feels the same way he does and he thinks his parents (who had 11 kids) were "just weird." He's a posh 90s and early 2000s businessman who doesn't discuss sex or attraction in polite company, so he doesn't have exposure to information that could help him understand himself. He mostly just reads his adventure books.
He likes dragons, which was genuinely something I didn't notice until after "Whatever" had been up for a while, because I had just given him a book to read and didn't even notice the dragon until a later look, ha ha.
We saw in "Whatever" that he withholds sex [and all affection tbh] from his wife Seneca, much to her distress. Their relationship is strained because she wasn't prepared for this when she married him but she also can't leave because they are Rich and Fancy, So People Would Talk.
Remember to communicate with your partners! Don't be Bennett.
Happy Peppy Gary! He's aro/ace, but doesn't know what that means and would probably squirm a little if you tried to get him to label himself that way. Hates kisses, but grew up pressured by H.P. and Anti-Cosmo to kiss Betty on occasion so he could temporarily pass his genie DNA to her (and genie powers along with it). He had a lot of conflicting feelings about that, but didn't know how to stand up for himself and his comfort levels (Shout out to that time in Pink and Gray he was like "Growing up on a golf course prepared me to feel like rental equipment" wheeze).
Gary's a witch with a 500-year lifespan and he's still holding out, wondering if some kind of attraction will kick in when he's older. He's not sure if he wants it to or not because he mostly just feels lost and alone. He doesn't have anyone to talk about it with (well. he's got Crocker but that's a whole thing).
He doesn't hate himself, he doesn't mind who he is, but struggles socially because he feels like Betty dropped their 10-year friendship to start a romantic relationship with someone else, and when he asked to keep in contact, she started drawing lines. She is setting healthy boundaries for herself and Gary wants to understand that, but it's still very hard for him. He's valid and I love him.
Chloe! She's demisexual. I like to think she didn't really examine her identity growing up because she's always been what her parents expect of her (Good Girl Who Will Marry a Nice Boy and Have Kids), so she was in her late teens when she found out about demisexuality and said "Oh, that sounds like me; this explains a lot about my life and I'm happy to figure this out even though I don't plan to do much with this information."
She confessed it to Timmy because he's her best friend and he just /stares back a little blankly and gives a thumbs up even though he doesn't really get why this matters to her, but he wants to be supportive anyway.
Chloe's not over the top about it, but it's important to her because it helps her understand her own feelings, especially when there's so much about herself she's afraid to question.
Kevin also doesn't totally get it, but he has two thumbs and loves supporting his girlfriend. He loves feeling warm and fluttery when she gets excited even if he doesn't know what it means. After she told him though, he definitely cooked a color-coded meal and got her flowers and balloons, and teen Chloe feels very grateful to have a boyfriend who cares about things that are important to her even if her revelation doesn't seem like an earth-shattering, life-changing thing. They're in love, your honor. They are holding hands.
Honorable mentions:
RR!Sanderson! The Sanderson we see in Reedfilter Rules has a different personality than Riddleverse Classic!Sanderson. RR!Sanderson is sex-repulsed while Classic!Sanderson isn't. He's still ace, that didn't change, ha ha.
Longwood and Poof! They are not aromantic or asexual but in fact a secret third thing: the equivalent of asexual in the preening world. There's not really a word for that, but they don't have urges for preening licks.
Poof realizing this about himself was the focus of the 130 Prompt "All I Ever Wanted" and we'll see Longwood face this soon in Origin. The pixie Smith has a very high preening drive, though, which we will also see soon in Origin, where he acts as a foil for Longwood. Yay for spectrums.
Imaginary Gary! Being imaginary, he does not age and will never experience those urges because he is perma-locked in his 5-year-old mindset. Technically he is aro/ace although he would probably switch to being pan if he got older. Labels can be fluid!
Finley! He never gave himself the chance to explore his sexuality because of his physical health [i.e. born without magic; cannot mate or he would literally die] so he doesn't think about it. He never explored those feelings, so he identifies as a homoromantic asexual even though he isn't sure about the ace part. He identifies with the label that he thinks fits him, though in a world where he didn't have health problems, he'd probably give it some more exploration and maybe adjust his choice. He still believes the term fits him and we respect that :)
There might be additional characters we can add, but these are the ones who came to mind today. I love being an arospec acespec author writing arospec and acespec kiddos and I love having a wide range of them so I can show their different experiences <3
"You can play it sensible... a king of conventional..."
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New Origin of the Pixies chapter today!
Chapter 41 - “King Unconventional”
Read on FFN || Read on AO3
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The Head Pixie doesn't like reviewing certain moments of his past. This special chapter is told in Sanderson POV! It recounts his experiences growing up in Pixie Village, learning to preen, and going to school with Idona. Enjoy!
On FFN, this chapter puts the story over 600,000 words! Wowza!
(First 1,000 words of this chapter under the cut)
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King Unconventional
It's Sanderson
Yo, it's your Sand Man. H.P. asked me to write a chapter for his book today. I'm not 100 up on what was drafted so far, but I get that the gist of it has been Pixie history up until my first break-up with Idona. H.P. said he'll pick up the story with stuff that came after I got my adult wings. That leaves this mega gap of 130k years for me to cover in brief. I've been asked to describe what growing up in Pixie Village was like during this period, sort of glance at the nests and the honeycombs, and give my perspective on the experience of developing into an adult pixie body (since I took more specific notes on that than H.P. did when he was my age). So, strap down and let's work with this, boys.
Back in my early 30,000s, Pixie World was not what it is today. We called it Pixie Village (Sprigganhame on paper) and it was a full-on hive estate. H.P.'s caisleán stood in the center almost exactly where Inkblot City's square and Pixies Incorporated stand today. His office had a glass door to the outside so we could go and look at him if we wanted, and sometimes Rice (who usually lay on the cushion by his desk) would come out to romp around. He spent a lot of time watching Keefe. Emery had her own room too in the early years, until her courtship with Ranen turned serious and she took a new place in Faeheim not far from ASPRA headquarters. If I remember right, she ran the Boudacian godparenting branch until after the war, when Needlebark stepped down from supervising the angels.
Being the young pixies we were, the caisleán was the sun of our solar system. It was there we could visit H.P. and show him our accomplishments of the day, or sometimes wiggle a story out of Emery. We could feed and pet Rice, who was always very patient and let us dress him up in suits if we wanted to. He had nice things to say about all of us, even though looking back on it I'm not sure why he bothered. I guess he said them because they were true. In the caisleán we could take baths instead of showers in our tháir, and we could all gather on the couch for presents and fat meals every Season Turn. Everything was bigger in the caisleán, and it smelled more strongly of H.P. than it did anywhere else. That's where we felt at home.
Circling the caisleán were the tháircha, or drone cabins. In a traditional hive estate design, there only would've been one such cabin and three or four drones would have resided there, each with a bedroom and personal office space to call his own. However, it became necessary for Pixies to organize differently. During the early years we had eight tháircha in the village, each with a single kitchen, living area, and washing room on the lower floor that housemates shared. Up the stairs was the loft where we kept our beds. There were twelve of us to a tháir because H.P. said a dozen was a perfect number, and we didn't question it because our social instincts agreed.
My bed was in the best corner, next to Hawkins who had the window spot. I liked my place because it was near the grayfish tank and bookshelf, and I was closer to Wilcox than to Caudwell who always stayed up late and Bayard who used his wand as a nightlight. As we grew and there started to be more of us, we drones made it tradition to wrestle every Naming Day. The winner got to pick the bed they wanted that year. Hawkins and I always won, but I always beat Hawkins. I was the biggest and the strongest back then. Pixie drones still wrestle at the start of every new year to this day, though we don't trade bedspaces anymore. Switching delivery addresses would be additional paperwork we wouldn't get paid for. Instead, we use it to decide who has to be designated pinger at parties, or at least pay for the cost of going out. If you rank high enough and stay consistent, you'll never have to be the sober loser at all.
We do a lot of wrestling. We're a lekking species, so when we hit the sugar bars in groups, we play for damsels' entertainment. Now that we're adults and my position as chéad grá - alpha drone - is undeniable, the others mostly let me win. I don't see the appeal of flirting, but I like that I always get first dibs. There's something powerful about crouching over one of your co-workers at a party, all the while checking over your shoulder at the damsel who's had our mutual attention all night, straining to see if she was watching our match. They usually watch. I've never actually kissed anyone except Idona, but I like the conversations. I try not to talk too much when I'm out on the job with H.P., so times he isn't around work best for meeting my social needs.
Though, H.P. at a party is unique, to say the least. It doesn't impress anyone if he beats one of us in a fight, and most Fairies back away from his pheromones, so he heads out in disguise when he's in a particularly itchy mood. With sticky-lenses instead of glasses and a scarf around his neck, he's not so easily recognizable. Some of my coworkers don't even know he's circling a party unless they happen to recognize the limp in my leg as I follow incognito from a respectful distance.
H.P. firmly believes mates are unnecessary and swore off physical pairing after Iris, but every few Fairy Reunions when he finds someone his age he recognizes, sometimes he wants to steal a kiss. It used to embarrass him to have me around those nights, but I think he's realized now he's too advanced in age to flip his brain in the sharing magic mood without someone to compete against. It gets you on, you know? Makes you put in the blood and sweat. He challenges me to drinking contests most nights like that, swearing he'll up my next bonus with every glass I down after six. And he buys the drinks, so it's always a win-win for me. Like I said, entertaining.
