#more-nothing

[theladyragnell]

For the fic writer ask game: 3 (esp. bc i feel like i have a very defined notion of what "plot" i make up vs. "headcanon" i make up for a fic is but now that i think about it… what really is the difference?), 17, and/or 27!

Tell us about a headcanon you invented for a fic

Hm, so, I feel like I do this a lot, but rarely is it something that I get married to? I like putting little details about past incidents or preferences or things like that into my fics just for depth of character and POV, but those can absolutely contradict each other fic to fic. Some I do get attached to (in Les Mis days, there were multiple fics where in the background I implied things about Grantaire being close to or raised by his grandparents, for instance), but mostly I just pick whatever's convenient and interesting for the story! Like, thinking of Tortall alone, since that's where we overlap, I've assigned martial specialties to Neal's brothers, decided Aly and Lianne were probably friends because they're the same age, given all sorts of people hobbies and interests ... as you say, it's hard to find the line between headcanon and just writing!

Answered 17 yesterday!

Share a random sentence from a WIP. The less context, the better. Be confusing.

Well, my only WIP right now is an origfic edit, so confusing shouldn't be too difficult!

“When you said you were going out for walks, I assumed you were walking around Shefelia, not out into the fucking void!”

[fredricwertham]

for the ask game--12 and 17/18/34 (feel like those last three have a lot of overlap so whichever is the most ~generative for you). love your Takes the ecosystem needs more of them!

(12) Are there any comics you've read knowing they're bad and why?

I’m not a completionist (thoughts and prayers for those who are, lol) so I usually avoid stuff I’ve heard is bad. I’m also now at a point where I’ll drop stuff that isn’t doing anything for me—no sunk cost fallacy here, thank you—so most of the really bad comics I’ve suffered through were ones I read as they were published, and not ones I sought out with the knowledge that they sucked. So the worst comics I’ve picked up knowing that and read all the way through are probably Nightwing (2016) and Tom King’s Batman run.

I read Nightwing because Dick is conventionally one of my favorite characters and was moreover one of the few Bats (or maybe even the only Bat) who’d made it through N52 without becoming totally unlikeable to me (I gave up on comics around the time Rebirth happened and only got back into them last year, for context). I was also curious about the stuff I saw other fans of the character complaining about (especially Ric Grayson—what the fuck) because I’d become kind of addicted to getting upset on behalf of this fake guy through my experience with the N52 Bat titles. I don’t ACTUALLY think this is one of the worst comics out there or anything, but it’s so consistently mediocre and incapable of building up any real plot momentum or character development (there’s a reason Dan Watters was able to pop in and act like he’s more or less writing a post-Dickbats continuation of Nightwing ’96 that I’m surprised it wasn’t cancelled at some point.

I read Tom King’s Batman run because I wanted to know how the Ric arc was handled on that end, given that it’s where Dick got shot in the head. I tired starting with those issues, but was so confused by how different that Gotham was from the one I’d left behind with Scott Snyder that I looped back to start from the beginning. I finished the run trying to figure out if Dick was ever mentioned again after Bruce did in KGBeast. I’m pretty sure he’s not, but reading this made me feel like my brain was oozing out of my ears so I may have missed something. I didn’t even realize that Alfred had actually been killed of because it was so devoid of feeling that it read like a hallucination. I think that this is actually one of the worst comics ever written.

(17) Tell me about your least favorite editorial decision?

Bringing Jason back from the dead. He’s less interesting as a character than he was as a ghost, he’s crowded better anti-heroes like Helena B. or even JPV out of the plot through his redundancy, characters I like and care about more were seriously altered to accommodate him following the reboot, and bringing back one of the only significant characters who’d been permanently killed off destroyed the illusion of consequence created by that death. As to that last point, the decisions to resurrect Barry Allen and magi-cure Barbara’s disability (my runner up for worst choice) also had that impact, but I’ve never been as invested in the Flash as I am in Bat stuff and at least Gail Simone spent her entire N52 run on Batgirl aggressively setting up ways that Barbara’s cure could fail.

On the fandom side of things, he sits at the nexus of all of the worst discourse: is Robin a child soldier? Is mourning somebody the wrong way evil? Should Batman kill people? Here’s why a white guy who has a gun and isn’t afraid to do what needs to be done would fix society. Here’s why killing rapists and people who sell drugs to kids is leftist and NOT historically racist far right rhetoric. There’s a kind of person called a “bad person” and if we just kill all those guys everything will be great! All of the characters who think murder is bad only think that because they were brainwashed and probably tortured by Bruce Wayne. Anyone who ever wrote him as a villain did that to undermine the validity of his critiques. Have you considered that my favorite school shooter was sad when he did that stuff and is therefore the real victim of everyone else? It’s actually worse to be rude to a murderer than it is to do murder. Here’s why every single comic ever written about Jason Todd is actually slander from people who hate him. Judd Winick is a good writer.

And it was anti-democratic!

(18) Which character got fucked over by the reboot the most?

There are so many ways I could answer this. Obviously there’s everyone who didn’t exist anymore, but honestly those guys dodged a bullet. I think Dick was fucked over in the most interesting way, because I’m fascinated by the mean-spirited edge applied to anything that had to do with him and it showed how much damage could be dealt to a character who sold well, had a large fandom, was well-liked by creators and was male—I mean, it's 2025 and there are people who think of him as a side character rather than one of the tent poles of the DC universe, which is crazy from the perspective of somebody who started following their comics when he was Batman. Meanwhile the changes that were made to Tim confuse me the most. I’m really tempted to say it's Barbara because of the ableism-misogyny combo move that resulted in the decision to get rid of her disability while The Killing Joke was kept in continuity, and all of the insane mandates that were imposed on her character:

(So she can’t have any of the traits she’s ever had, in other words?)

But Batgirl (2011) ultimately one of the better N52 Bat books in spite of that, at least prior to Batgirl of Bed-Stuy.

I’m going to step away from the Bat books for this one through and go with the Amazons, like, as a unit. Themyscira has always been a bit of a reflecting pool for men’s fear of women, but the decision to re-imagine a society that had been defined from the outset as a paradise outside of the patriarchal world order as one dominated by savage rapists deserves to be unpacked in somebody’s dissertation, especially in conjunction with the decision to make Diana Zeus’s daughter as opposed to being sculpted from clay by her mother. Yikes.

(34) Which retcon do you hate the most?

This isn't a real answer to that prompt, it’s just a hilarious thing to write about a character who was killed off through the popular vote. At least 5,343 people (not including those who were actually making decision at DC) disagreed with that assessment. Famously. More people thought he should die than any other character in DC’s history, as far as we know.

[theladyragnell]

Congrats on the novel draft!!! I've come to chum the ask game waters with various off-the-wall Tortall next gen ideas, no pressure to pick up all of them:

Considering you've done so much with Neal, I'd be so curious to know if you'd ever be interested in writing a Jessamine fic? I'm not opposed to AUs where she goes for knighthood either instead of/with Neal, but I almost wonder if it would be more interesting to have her pursue more of a healer's path (Neal takes up his brothers' role, and Jessamine takes up Neal's). The gender play there is perhaps a bit more complicated, since I find magic to be, if anything, female-coded, but not by any means the 'proper' sort of femininity that a noblewoman is supposed to pursue! Especially cool I think if Jessamine doesn't just go the typical university route here.

My other thought is what you might do with any of the, well, sort of "textually missing but quasi-canonically existing" page boys, the sons of people like Gary/Cythera and Corram/Rispah, who really probably should have been at page training with Kel, but never appear on-page. On one hand, they're a blank slate for wholesome brotherly figures, but on the other, it could be cool to explore divergences between the next gen and their parents through them. Which is to say: what if they were bystanders to Kel's bullying? Or worse, what if Joren wasn't from a new fief, but rather Naxen or, irony of ironies, Trebond? The latter is so evil but I do like interplay between new nobles choosing progressivism vs. conservatism to shore up their shaky class standing... Your fics do class-through-marriage-politics it would be interesting to see how that stuff shakes out in other contexts.

Because I'm me, and have no shame about fishing for your lore, Elwene of Tirragen fic? How long can you use femininity to escape the shadow of your uncle before you trip head-first into the Delia of Eldorne trap?

Finally, Conté or Pirate's Swoop kid free space, but honestly I'm low key curious if you would ever write the (inevitable? tragic? legendary) Conté/Pirate's Swoop family romance arc and, if so, with whom? Hang on that's not a premise it's a prompt, so let's go rapid-fire: Lianne/Alan (bog standard love-doomed-by-the-necessity-of-political-marriage narrative), Vania/Thom (mage4mage? but maybe Thom's magical style is much more Conté-coded, builder of the realm, and Vania is a loose canon always trying to do dangerous great workings? you could also go lavender marriage here?), and for a real wildcard... Jasson/Alan (youngest son complex? named after the worst family member out of all our siblings which is saying something complex?).

This got SO long sorry!! Again no pressure to pick up on all of it :)

Tortall next gen messy business is SO fun!

I'd not thought of doing a Jessamine fic before--a healer's path makes sense for her, but I also very much like the thought of, mm, duchies are big and complicated to run, and Baird and now Neal have tangled themselves up with a LOT of other duties and seem to keep their spouses with them, which means probably younger siblings are going to get involved! So Jessamine needs a match with someone who is worthy of a duke's daughter but either isn't going to inherit his own title or doesn't mind splitting time, which is a fun tension in a society based around patrilineal inheritance. (See also part of the reason it's hard to match off Maura.)

If you peek, Jonthair of Trebond is is around a wee bit in one or two of my fics! And truly, I know Pierce wrote herself into corners, but WHERE are all these implied young men. I'm a bit too weenie to write any of them as villains in Kel's story but it really is sad that they aren't around the same way it's sad Maura's not around in Kel's books.

Elwene of Tirragen! I'm not sure what I would do with her (although her marrying Gary's invisible son would certainly be a hell of a thing) but really, I had her for one sentence in the manifesto and had to restrain myself from going down a rabbit hole.

And man, yeah, some Conte/Pirate's Swoop stuff would be fascinating but I've never quite found my way in on it! Like, I imagine Thom Jr. spent some time pining after Kally, but she'd be too smart to encourage that. Alan and Jasson is a VERY fun combination, though, of the options you threw out there I think that's where I'd be most likely to go. I have not introduced enough queerness to Tortall! (Says the woman, in all fairness, who wrote 70k of polyamory.)

[theladyragnell]

Okay I was going to leave this as a reply to my last ask but I actually think it's more efficient to run it back and ask: Maura/Dom for the ship game?? I'm SO intrigued by this, I was just recently talking with another friend about how a lot of Maura fic stops just short of actually picking someone for her to marry, despite the fact that she's usually characterized as very accepting of that duty. We could only come up with Bad Options (which are compelling in their own way), but Maura/Dom has so much potential!

You and @myrtaceaae both asked to hear more about this one!

(And man, yeah, everyone does skirt giving Maura a husband! Like, fully respect the Maura/Kalasin tragic shipping that happens, but Maura does need to get married, and who to marry her to is a massive interesting political question, especially if she's going to be duchess in her own right! I think the problem is that she needs someone who's not an heir, and most of the young men we meet ARE heirs, presumably, knight training does seem to be an eldest son thing primarily, though I suppose there are families where younger sons do the training--not least the Contes, but also thinking of BOTH of Neal's older brothers being knights/in training before their deaths.)

But anyway, yes! Ship it! At least in the sense that I think they'd make good political sense, I'm still percolating what their actual interactions would be like, so maybe this answer will help me with that.

What made you ship it? So, while I was thinking about my political marriage universe, something I am fond of doing, I was considering Maura, especially since she showed up in the Scanran hostage bride fic so prominently, and how she should REALLY be getting married soon, and wondering if I'd have to make up an OC for her, and I genuinely can't remember how I realized that "oh shit, Dom is single in this universe because Kel has Paramours," but it did attract me as an idea! It's sensible for both families and both parties, even if it would require Dom's retirement from the Own (so it might have to be a universe where he's badly injured in the latter half of the Scanran war? Or one where Raoul badgers Jon into making an exception? Not sure). And I am weirdly fond of a sensible ship.

What are your favorite things about the ship? I think that Dom's easy charm and sense of fun make him a good political spouse rather than being holder of a title in his own right, and I think his command skills and general warrior competence would make him respected in the north and by the array of immortals who count themselves as Maura's citizens. I think Maura's clench-jawed sense of duty and her competence would appeal to someone who's fond of Kel, and that her wild streak would keep Dom very entertained.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I mean, inventing it out of whole cloth from nowhere means my only unpopular opinion might be "coming up with it at all"!

[theladyragnell]

For the ship ask game--as thee preeminent Kel/Neal/Yuki scholar, I'm sooo curious what you think of Kel/Dom (feel free to compare to the OT3 if it makes this ask more fun to answer).

Ship it! Just in a way where I don't find it terribly interesting to write anything long for it.

What made you ship it? So the thing is, I'm pretty easy? If love interests are canon, especially in books, I'm generally pretty willing to go with it! (I realize this is very funny if you just read my post about The Tomb of Dragons ship, but there are always exceptions.) So when I first read this, and it became clear the series was leaning Dom-wards, I was happy with it! Dom's lovely, he and Kel have fun banter, they're compatible in interests and goals and life experience, and while there's an age gap it's not as egregious as some Pierce does. It's just a happy ship for me! They like each other!

What are your favorite things about the ship? I keep on accidentally answering the questions before I get to them, but, y'know, see above! I like that they're both commanders, but at different experience levels and scales. I like that they banter, and that she can have fun with him despite being a very serious person!

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? Mmm, not that I can think of? Again, Tortall fandom is not large.

[theladyragnell]

for the fic writing ask game--2, 5, and 22!

Just answered 22, but I'll happily do the other two!

Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to?

Yes! There are always things percolating in my head that haven't coalesced enough for me to write them yet or that my skills simply aren't up to yet (as opposed to percolating in my head because I haven't had the time to start getting them down). I've had an origfic time loop murder mystery novel in my head for years now but I'm not good enough for it yet. Fic-wise, I've got a Killjoys AU for 9-1-1 that I want to write, and I'm not ready for the Alex/Thom epic in my head either. Need to find ways to write both of those that won't eat my entire life!

What's a tag you never want to use for your works even when it applies?

Oh, you know what? Embarrassing: the G rating. It's partially me being silly and going "I am writing ADULT stories for ADULTS" even when some of them could probably be read to 8-year-olds as bedtime stories, and partially a distaste for getting labeled Wholesome And Sweet Oowoo.

[theladyragnell]

Going to buck expectations and ask about Haname/Lerant for the WIP game (because as much as I love Alex/Thom, your Haname is so special).

(Look, the Alex/Thom is largely the backstory/encompassment of those ficlets from the summer, I love fics that reckon with the whole Roger Mind Control thing and sometime when I have the brainspace I am excited to dig in.)

Haname and Lerant, though! Another one for my next gen political marriages series and I genuinely can't remember which direction I came at this from? I think from Haname's side, though.

Essentially I feel like Jon's political marriage focus has SO much been on making foreign allies, which is reasonable, got to build those bridges after Jasson's conquering might have made people nervous and then Roald seems to have just utterly ignored foreign policy, but as we know, Tortall has some pretty deep divisions! And as you in particular are very aware, hill country is one of those major divisions.

So, while waiting for Prince Roald's children to get old enough to make more alliances that might bring conservative fiefs into line, you know who makes a great stopgap? The future's queen's trusted ladies-in-waiting!

I think this is less something that Jon or Roald or even Shinko requests, and more something Haname seeks out! (Probably they'll meet on Progress, I can't leave Progress alone.) Yuki is making her own strategic alliance with a strong supporter of the crown, to build that coalition deep, so it's her job to broaden the coalition, and I think Lerant, as the son of a traitor house who is very visibly and stubbornly trying to prove his honor and loyalty, would be appealing to her for that reason! I'm going to make the not-directly-contradicted-by-canon assumption that Lerant is the heir to Eldorne, and that given what we know of him, his pride might be hurt by the obvious political ploy but he also likely wouldn't turn it down because it might help him start repairing Eldorne's relations with Tortall.

Still looking for a way in on this one, but of the Tortall fics on my WIP list, probably likely to be written first!