#returnofahsoka

[klainelynch]

hello, could you help me out here please? the shadow and bone series on netflix is a bit confusing. it's made out of two different book series right? so if i don't much care for alina and her chosen one plot (i assume that's the actual shadow and bone book) but just want to read about kaz, inej and jesper, is that six of crows? those three are all i care about sgdhfjsjfk

Yes Netflix has really muddied the plot! And I love your instinct for only caring about the Crows because that is VERY much my jam \^o^/

You can skip right to the Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom duology. There will be vague references to events at the end of the Shadow and Bone trilogy (which covers Alina's chosen one plot), but you will be just fine. I read the duology YEARS ago, and only just read the Shadow and Bone trilogy once the Netflix show came out, and I understood everything and had ALL of the feels.

If you do end up reading the books, please liveblog and/or message me any and all reactions 👀

[ihamtmus]

hi gabi i just had a funny thought agshfkfkdll

do you think the ever given is somehow crowley's fault xdd??

ohmygosh this is ABSOLUTELY something he'd do ehakwdhsc

it's exactly the kind of low grade evil he prefers, and it's technically evil but it's something that has made so many people smile in the middle of a pandemic and that's absolutely his style, i'd say!!

[archaeos]

3, 6 and 14 for the history ask game please! hope you are having a nice day em!!

Thank you, Kam! I hope you’re having a lovely day too :-)

3. What’s your favorite obscure historical fact?

Oooh. It’s more obscure if you’re not an archaeologist, but my favourite “obscure” historical fact is about the Macellum of Pozzuoli, which was a Roman marketplace in Southern Italy that due to its unique geological placement has sunk and risen over the course of its history, so much so that there are traces on its columns of molluscs as it was at one point beneath the sea (this was later used as an example in the 19th century when discussion about geological uniformitarianism sprang up). 

6. What’s your favorite piece of historical fiction (book, film, series, etc)?

I’m 24 and still have an enormous soft spot for the British children’s book series The Roman Mysteries which is about a bunch of kids around 79 CE Italy who solve mysteries while living through a very significant time in Roman history. It was the first book about history I ever read that made me feel like the past was a place where life was as complex as life today, with all the good and bad of it. The author studied archaeology at university and her love of the past really shines through, but at the same time what I appreciate about the books is that it’s not culturally relative — the good and bad of Roman society is examined but the characters don’t act modern, which I think is really important in any historical fiction.   

14. What’s the closest object related to history around you right now ? Books don’t count, because it’s too easy!

A Roman-style terracotta oil lamp that my best friend bought me for Christmas! (She’s my best friend for a reason.)

Thanks for asking!

[klainelynch]

1, 11, 21 and 24 for the end of the year fanfic asks 💕

Ahhh these were such great questions, thank you for sending them my way!

1 favorite fic you wrote this year I've managed to write a lot of fic that I'm really proud of this year, but I think (unsurprisingly) what will you leave behind? has to be my favorite. I've already babbled on about how much this project means to me, so I won't get into it all over again, but I will just say that it's been very strange and gratifying to have a fic that was so personal and that I feel like I did a great job writing actually resonate with people (because it's been the case in the past that I poured my heart into projects that received minimal attention/feedback, and while we're not necessarily owed anything by fandom, it was very gutting and made me wonder if I wanted to keep writing fic at all).

11 fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this year Absolutely Fullmetal Alchemist, and especially Royai! It's hard to believe that when I finished the anime back in February, I knew that I would want to read all of the fic, but I wasn't sure if I would personally find a way in with my own writing. I started with missing moment from Riza's POV (because of course I did), and from there, the writing just flowed in a way that I hope will continue for a long time. This world is so rich in its characters and world building, and I still have a few ideas bouncing around in my head for new fics in 2022.

21 most memorable comment/review

I just went back through all of my comments and wow I truly could not even pick a single one, because I feel so loved by all of the amazing people who have read my writing and felt compelled to leave a comment, many on more than one fic! I do want to give a shout out to @musing-and-music and @nightofnyx8 for always leaving amazing comments, especially on the SpiritfarerAU. Each of y'all made me cry more than once!

24 favorite fic you read this year

Yeah I’m gonna have to cheat on this one too, because I read WAY too much amazing fic, and I’m leaving out some amazing stuff, I know, but I tried to narrow it down, and unless I wanted this post to be longer than the color of the sky, this is where I landed. In no particular order, some of my favorite fics that I read this year include:

A way of keeping you by @by-nina. This fic includes every single thing about Royai that I love, from their banter to their trust when their backs are against the wall and especially their tenderness.

where there's smoke by @kickedshins. This was a JOURNEY for Royai, and it murdered me at least five separate times.

oil spill by lilantis. If you want to know how to write a kiss that is wildly sensual and still rated T, please read this fic like wow. Put it in the curriculum for a creative writing class during romance week.

Care to Dance? by wishingforawand. Oh I’m telling people to read about Royai dancing as teens and later as adults, with all of the tender parallels implied within that premise?? Must be a day that ends in -y!!!!!!!! BUT SERIOUSLY HOW DOES THIS FIC NOT EVEN HAVE 500 HITS???? proof that we might be in the worst possible timeline

Inheriting The Wind by @appassaddle. I love Tenzin so much, and this fic just nailed his characterization, and all of his insecurities and growth that he went through before we finally meet him in Korra.

my faraway friend by @lunati0ns. I think I said it best in my bookmark for this fic: I didn’t cry when Atul left in the game, but I SOBBED reading this fic.

[ihamtmus]

gabi this is crowley and aziraphale throughout your fic

KAM WLEHDLAWJD

you’re so RIGHT omg 😂😂😂

[archaeos]

5 (you can take this to mean an actual ship, not a pairing of a characters, i know you like them. or it can mean both. whatever you feel like answering xdd) 💛

5: What’s your favorite fictional ship? (Canon or otherwise)

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but my absolute favourite ship is the Uluburun, which for those of you who don’t know, the lovely @enkidusbi wrote up here and long story short (for those who aren’t Kam) is a Late Bronze Age trading vessel that was likely carrying kingly gifts (probably for diplomacy reasons) and sank off of Turkey around 1300 BC. Eric Cline, in his great book 1177 BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed, suggested it’s possible that the amber and tin found in the Uluburun came from the Baltic and Afghanistan (respectively) which is just SO COOL. 

Thanks for the ask! :-)

[klainelynch]

3 and 9 for the writer asks please ^.^

Thank you for sending these questions! I was hoping that someone would ask me #3, and then I wrote just as much for #9 🙈

3. Tell us about a headcanon you invented for a fic

So much of how I write Heymans Breda comes back to how I wrote him in chapter 5 of what will you leave behind?. He's a very behind the scenes character in canon, and is often not prioritized like other members of Team Mustang. So what was this character going to leave behind? In order to figure out that, I had to figure out who Breda was. These are some things I decided, and they've come up since (both in published writing and in a WIP): - Hawkeye assembled the other members of Team Mustang, and she first invited Breda because she saw his intelligence and dedication in tackling any task, plus he was a kind person. Breda accepted membership only if Havoc was also allowed to join. He worried it might have been presumptuous of him, but Hawkeye saw his loyalty for the strength that it was and that she and Mustang needed. - Breda is the youngest of three, and his two older sisters are very talented alchemists. He was just as intelligent in his own way, and was top of his class at the military academy. However, unlike his sisters, he never felt like there was a clear path he needed to or should take, which led to some internal struggles. - Breda and Jean met in the academy, and their friendship was easy and intense right from the start. Neither could imagine life without the other, which is why chapter 6 of that fic happened the way it did. - Bonus headcanon not about Breda but which came from this fic too: Kain Fuery? Oh that boy is gay!

9. The two fandoms you’ve written the most have been suddenly crossed with each other! What AU are you writing?

That would be Fullmetal Alchemist and Avatar: the Last Airbender! I have actually written one AU where Roy is a firebender with ambitions of teaching the next avatar and Riza is his girlfriend who has just brought him information about a new move he should try to figure out. I'm not typically a crossover/AU writer (though funny enough both of these questions deal with that) so I don't have an idea off the top of my head, other than a few specific headcanons from that fic that didn't make their way into the actual story: - It's in the story that the next avatar would come from the Earth Kingdom, and it's no small jump for the reader to assume that the avatar would be Edward. Izumi would have been his earthbending master, of course. - I'm not sure how Ed and Al's human transmutation would translate to this AU, though I have to assume that spirits would come into it somehow. Maybe they made their way into the spirit world to search for their mother, stumbled into some dark spirits or just a place they didn't have any business being in, and ended up fused with spirit material like Wan's friend in Legend of Korra. - Roy would approach Ed about teaching him, Ed would HATE that idea because of Roy's general smugness, and it would take Riza and Al smoothing things over before Ed realized it was a good idea and Roy realized he needed to cool it (pun intended). - May Chang would be his airbending master, and she is able to explain difficult concepts better than any master Ed has had before. There are parts of airbending that will always be inherently difficult for a native earthbender, but air is not Ed's most difficult element. - That would be water! Ed's stubborn and explosive personality does not do well with an element that requires adaptability. Once his teacher helps him understand the creativity that he uses to approach the other elements is the missing key to his waterbending, his waterbending just clicks. Only problem with this headcanon...I have no idea who his waterbending teacher would be.... So a lot of nuggets of ideas and no desire to put them together xD My transformative works permission statement does allow for any sort of inspired work, so if anyone wants to run with any of these ideas, feel free to do so (with the "inspired by" button!)

[klainelynch]

8 and 40 for the fanfic asks please!! and have a great day!

Thank you for the asks!

8. Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

I love writing the end because I love editing, and I love going back through a story and finding threads that I can tie together in the end. Any time I can refer back to an earlier moment, give a small moment more significance, or especially make a circular narrative, I'm going to do it.

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

I have been lucky enough to have friends create fanart of my work, and it always leaves me a puddle of goo!! I do have a transformative works permission statement in my AO3 profile so that people know they are free to play around with my works with things like fanart, so in general I would love to see fanart of a moment that really stuck with someone for some reason. If I could pick something specific, I'm still obsessed with my Spiritfarer!Riza fic, and would love an angsty fanart of the scene on top of the orchard roof from chapter 14.