#sept replies

[shadoedseptmbr]

i am obsessssssed with your writing. idek how to explain it it just feels so human and natural and real. amazing stuff

Oh gosh, nonny. thank you so much!

i've been struggling with a story for a few weeks, now, and you probably have no idea what a real delight this comment is. it's always my goal, to make the story, characters, and moment real and accessible and i'm so glad that's true for you <3 thank you

[shadoedseptmbr]

Since you apparently followed some Olympics, I have a question about that. Are Olympics something big in the states? Like, something culturally important? (besides winning medals, you did great about that) I can never tell, with how big college sports is and stuff like baseball and others, if things like the Olympics are "as big" in the states as well? Like, here it's broadcasted all day long on the biggest national TV stations and such. Not everyone will care, but it's pretty big. (and Paris did great with it, alas now the French hunger games will continue, or maybe the break also included the paralympics hopefully....)

hmm

i will say *yes* we do follow it. one of our major tv networks (we don't have a national network) bids for it, this year it was NBC, and for the full two weeks (depending on the difference in time zone) rebroadcasts the more popular sports (gymnastics, basketball, swimming, the track and field events) here for "prime time:" 6:30 PM to 10 PM (1800 to 2200) and then after the evening news for highlights, interviews, and less popular sports and for a few hours at a time during the day all weekend. This year, there was full coverage on NBC's premium pay network and online.

Most local news show medal counts and do "this athlete in this sport you only hear about every four years is from here" specials. There's always a lot of talk about the athletes that are from the bigger university "oh these college rivals are teammates, now." The men's basketball team gets A LOT of coverage because it's all the stars of the game playing together.

The big newspapers do medal counts and the sports sections are full of articles, usually there's something on the front page as well. Magazines get put out, medalists get covers of the bigger news and sports magazines. We have a nationally carried cereal brand called "Wheaties" that loves to put the athletes on the box. Coca Cola always has a broad swathe of the advertising and sells "olympic special cases and cans"

This year seemed like better coverage, the venue, and interesting competition made for more people talking about it than i've seen in a while. What usually comes up is the "okay for two weeks i'm patriotic" people who aren't sports people and "i have a lot of opinions about this sport i've only been watching for five minutes." wE love the underdog stories, we love when smaller countries do well, we like to beat certain countries just for the fun of the rivalries (the Australians in swimming, for instance) so yeah, It's a pretty big deal and, at its best, when we let it, it brings us together a little.

[shadoedseptmbr]

OC Musical Tag

Thanks @writernopal for tagging me in!

Rules: Share 1-3 songs you feel best embody a character from your WIP/s, either in general or at this moment in the plot.

Let's be honest, it is always Aedan Shepard hours up in my brain but she doesn't have a typical relationship to music. It's all noise to her, since her Reds days- popular music especially (there's an exemption for the church music of her early childhood) i've always said there's nothing in her head but screaming and shredding guitars but she's got soundtracks so let's take her from the second game- Smells Like Teen Spirit- Malia J

theme song of Reds days, reprised because Cerberus reminds her of nothing as much as being back in the gang Biting Down- Lorde

Aedan gets mean when she's unhappy- and all of that focus goes towards hurting everyone around her in little jabs for a while after she wakes up

Wolves- Down Like Silver

and that last little plea, next time she dies let it be forever, let her name be forgotten, let her go- just let her get the job done first

Thanks so much for asking!!!!

[shadoedseptmbr]

Aedan, my beloved. When she was a kid, did she have any dreams of what she wanted to become when she grew up? How did that change over time? And how does she think about her young self's dreams when she's all grown up?

She... didn't really, no.

She briefly thought about being a nun, not with any real ambition but once one of the sisters told her when she asked why S'ter became a nun and she said that she'd done a lot of things but realized she was certainly in the world, but not really of it, thst it didn't really want her and something struck baby Aedan as true about her, too.

She sees the stars on a charity camping trip up to the mountains and she wants them, knows somehow fundamentally that they're *hers* but there's no real connection with what that meant and once she runs away to go find them and fails, it crushes that part of her pretty deep. She's never ambitious about being a Red, she finds her place and she's content with it but even the bad guy in her story is more ambitious for her than she is- seeing sixteen is a surprise to her.

The only thing she ever reaches for before she enlists is that stray chance, the recruiting posters she finds in her stolen car that gives her maybe, maybe one more chance to get her stars. And it almost gets away from her.

Aedan doesn't really look back except in one way - she owes that little kid to make the most of it. To appreciate every free bed, every easy bite of food, every "good job" for as long as she gets to be in the stars. And she still thinks a little that the nun's philosophy suits her.

(thank you so much for asking!!!! 💜💜💜)

[shadoedseptmbr]

love at first sight for your trope takes?

....

*do* i have any love at first sight stories...wanders off to my writing tag

i have a fair few *lust* at first sight stories for my sex drive driven characters and a few where it was clear there was some sort of connection between people who would eventually fall in love.

i think the only storyline i have that would be considered love at first sight is my Kieran Hawke/Anders 'verse that Small Gifts takes place in and i don't go into the "falling in love part" i don't think. Or...hm, the Hawke/Sebastian vampire au :D but that was probably obsession over love. if i was going to write it, i think it would have to be something similar to that, some gothically Romantic situation where someone young and impressionable was swept off their feet by the actions of the other, making them a rather heroic figure and someone it's easy to wind stories and hopes and dreams around. Kieran falling for Anders, as he reaches beyond where he should to save his friend, to enact Justice, then the next time she sees him, he's saving some kid's life in the sewers. YEah, she was a *goner*

[shadoedseptmbr]

Ooh, for the Dark OC asks, 1 and 12 for Aedan?

Excluding murder, what is the worst thing your OC has ever done? "When the numbers start to stack, murder's just a statistic." Is Aedan's first response to that, heh. She's done a lot of terrible things. she's run drugs and tempted addicts to make her quota. She's ignored people in pain and lied when it suited her, despite the fact that the lies would hurt people. She's willingly done work for people with terrible motives. The thing she might lose sleep over is the choice to walk away from the Rachni Queen, during the war. Being the reason a song gets silenced is a gap she never quite heals from. 12. If your OC was arrested, what would the charges be? *when* she was arrested, the charges were multiple counts of murder, including officers of the law, destruction of private property, a couple counts of arson, possession, assault, and conspiracy to corrupt justice. The next time she was arrested was for mass murder and treason, lol. As long as she's a SPECTRE, all of that can be handwaved and it's one of the reasons she's not all together happy about being a SPECTRE. In her opinion, everyone's safer if she's got a rule book and some accountability in place.

Thank you for asking! <3

[shadoedseptmbr]

Having seen that gorgeous picture of Aedan again, I'm curious: does she get the gun tattoo on her neck removed? If not, does it cause disturbance e.g. In diplomatic context? Have you written fic about it? 👀

OH, thanks for asking!!! <3

She does get it removed and i have written a little fic about it, based on a word prompt a while back. My headcanon is that the Alliance has a rule about gang related tats and most of hers are, so they have to go. Anderson ends up paying for it under the guise of "oh the Alliance has a program" and when she realizes later (another enlisted has been given a deadline and can't afford it) she tries to pay that forward. In her own 'verse, she only keeps the ace of spades on her arse and then in the devilverse she also keeps the hourglass between her shoulderblades, since those are not *obviously* gang related.

[shadoedseptmbr]

Wait wait wait. Someone on a Discord said women shouldn't write fanfic?! Have they... have they ever been IN a fandom? Like ever?!

boiling down the "should only write one hundred percent what they know, otherwise it's objectification, because no woman could ever do the research or ever questioned her own sexuality or gender blah blah blah" yeah