#ssm asks

[qqueenofhades]

you can fuckin bet i'm rereading starlight and strange magic for the fourth time!

Aha, excellent. That is also one I myself enjoy rereading from time to time, so I am happy to hear that you like to revisit it. I do love that verse and SSM is probably my most popular Garcy fic on AO3, so yes.

(And we all thought that 200,000 words was the longest that Garcia Flynn could possibly take to give a woman what she wanted. What utter fools we were, truly.)

[qqueenofhades]

hilariousness142 replied to your post: sfjktsajmvbmlogdawccnkfzbmu THEY. FINALLY. KISSED....

NO STOP LET THEM HAVE KISSED BECAUSE THEY MISSED EACH OTHER, NOT BC OF THE RAVEN KING :((((((

Lmao!

They absolutely did miss each other and are desperately in love with each other while being in total denial about this fact, as we know. They were genuinely relieved to see each other and it was their own decision to kiss. But it was also a very heightened/emotional/magical moment, which I think let down some of their inhibitions and made it easier for them to actually go for it. It will not be as easy for them the second time, when they have to make a conscious decision to do it and to face what it means.

This is because, as ever, they are scared emotionally wounded turtles, and Feelings (especially like this) are hard for them (especially You Know Who). But I am 30% hopeful that it won’t take another 50k words, so.... we’ll see.

[qqueenofhades]

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my trash heart for Starlight and Strange Magic. It is the most perfect AU for our most imperfect dumpster couple and you’re doing SO GOOD SWEETIE. Also please give the Sokolovs a happy ending ilu

Ahaha. Thank you.

Honestly, one of the fun parts about posting a new chapter is the inevitable cascade of screaming asks I get afterward, even if at this point it’s mostly me being like YES. YES. YES I KNOW. I ALSO HATE THEM AND WISH THEY WOULD JUST GET THEIR POOP IN A GROUP. I FEEL IT. I FEEL YOU. So yes. You may rest assured that you have my sympathies on that front.

But... also, Garcy has always been the most Majestic (tm) of slow burns, and there has been a lot of that in this fic (to say the least) and the properly done slow burn should have you screaming at them that They Are In Love And Should Do More Than Tentatively Brush Their Goddamn Pinkies And/Or Gaze Adoringly At The Other One While They Are Fucking Asleep, so... success?

(I will be shocked as much as you if anything ever really happens, in other words. They are the worst.)

[qqueenofhades]

THEY WERE CRyiNG AND KISSING EACH OTHER WHAT THE FUUUUBSKXUEOBFKFHDOBFKFHF WHAT KIND OF TRUE LOVE LAW DEFYING BULLSHIT WHAT KIND OF TENDER !;@;$9:$:9!((4 Ps I did not miss how Matija basically served as the one to spell it out for both of them “hellooo shes the equal exchange because of HOW MUCH SHE FUCKING MEANS TO YOU DOES NOBODY HEAR THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?!?! DO YOU MORONS NOT REALIZE JUST HOW MUCH YOU LOVE EACH OTHER” AHHHHHH just kill me

See. Seeeeeee. This is why all the people yelling at him/cursing him make me cackle a bit, because ever since he showed up they have:

made out in the snow

cuddled all the way to Arkhangelsk

held onto each other while he was getting his leg fixed

shared a bed/cuddled/nearly kissed

had the “good morning my love” moment (and then Panic)

Matija being like “yeah so why does that dude not give you what you deserve”

had more Panic on Flynn’s part after TRK showed up to talk to Lucy in person, came very close to feelings confession

had the “I’m not good enough for you” moment

had the most Tender (tm) of makeouts in the bedroom

actually outright defied the damn Raven King (both of them) when he asked for Lucy to come with him

had him then spell out for them that these two fools are in desperate love and belong to each other

more cuddles, emotional talks about their pasts, close quarters snuggling and heartfelt apologies

AND SO ON.

I mean, Matija’s methods might be a little bombastic, but he has pretty much single-handedly forced them to get their shit together re: each other, and for that, I feel he should be congratulated. And he’s still their biggest shipper as a result, at least indirectly, so yes.

[qqueenofhades]

sfjktsajmvbmlogdawccnkfzbmu THEY. FINALLY. KISSED. ((p.s. I almost dropped dead when I first started reading and you had Ada introduced & I'm LIIIIVVVVIIIINNNG for lil old lady Ada)). ALSO THEY FUCKING KISSED. BLESS YOU HILARY

Ada Lovelace, Grand Old Dame and gleeful Victorian eccentric, whose father was Lord Fuckin’ Byron and thus cannot possibly be shocked by anything whatsoever, is here to kick ass and take names, and she is all out of names. Poor Mr. Woolsey just kind of has to show up and go along and figure out instantly how to do whatever she needs done, while constantly being horrified in the background that she’s all “so Lucy, have you and that horrible man banged yet, if not why not, I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER HERE.”

And yes. As noted, they did in fact kiss, though I’m gonna put that 90% down to the Raven King, as I’m not entirely sure they would have done it otherwise. And will probably have hang-ups about doing it again. They are the worst, and yet I love them.

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I'm the angsty anon that suggested wyatt eat Karl, and Lucy trace triangles on Flynn. I want you to know I jest when I say such things. However- this fic is amazing. I always look forward to a new chapter, and this one gave me so many feels. Even more than their kiss. Flynn's feelings are like heart eyes on fire- and I am dying while I am being transported into this beautiful, thrilling and enchanting story. There's garcy love, an excellent plot, and so much character depth. Thank you.

Aww, thank you so much!

And don’t worry, I always enjoy your comments and they make me giggle a lot, so by all means please keep sending them. (The mental image of Wyatt eating Karl made me cackle, especially Karl’s indignant expression as he is just SO UNDERVALUED, DAMMIT.) So yes.

Anyway, I am so happy you and everyone are enjoying the story so much, and all your comments and reactions to it and other shouting and/or Emotioning feeds the muse (which doesn’t really need any help, ahem). I am, as you can probably tell, having a lot of fun with it, and it is always gratifying and encouraging for a writer to hear that the audience is doing the same.

[qqueenofhades]

Can I just flail for a minute? So, Timeless as a whole makes me want to get a more in depth study into American history. My hubs is an American history PhD, so naturally we have so many books for me to read. But now with SSM, I want to explore and research more European history. You are incredible! Looking forward to the next installment!

Hehehe, as someone whose primary research focus is European history, this obviously is something that pleases me greatly. SSM is technically alt-history, but that is mostly because of the magic, and my not-at-all-exhaustive list of the real Victorian-era (and other…) figures included/mentioned therein is presently:

AlexanderIII of Russia

CharlesBabbage

Elizabeth Báthory

JosephBazalgette

JohnBellingham

HelenaBlavatsky

George Boole

IsambardKingdom Brunel

Lord Byron

LewisCarroll (Charles Dodgson)

PerryCollins

ThomasCrapper

BenjaminDisraeli

Feodor Dostoyevsky

Vlad Dracula

Edward VII

Guy Fawkes

WilliamEwart Gladstone

GraceHumiston

Jack theRipper

SophiaJex-Blake

Abdul Karim

Matija Korvin

Leopold IIof Belgium

Ada Lovelace

AlexanderMackenzie

Karl Marx

Samuel Morse

Nicholas IIof Russia

Louis andMarie Pasteur

Robert Peel

Queen Victoria

MadeleineShaw-Lefevre

Hiram Sibley

Wacław Sieroszewski

Mary Somerville

Henry MortonStanley

Peter Stumpp

Alfred LordTennyson

MadameTussaud

Jacques deVaucanson

EugeneFrancois Vidocq

Oscar Wilde

I am far too lazy to go through and link to everyone’s Wikipedia, but yes. (Also, if you ask me if my favorite person that I got to use was Thomas Crapper, I will look at you strangely and answer that of course my favorite person that I got to use was Thomas Crapper. Because we are all secretly 12 years old at heart.)

[qqueenofhades]

EXCUSE YOU, WRITING A CHAPTER LIKE THAT AND MAKING ME CRY REAL HUMAN TEARS THAT DIDN'T TURN INTO DIAMONDS. I LOOOOOOOOVED IT. And look at Matija finding some humanity again! Because of Lucy! I love him! I love my two idiots, who aren't being as idiotic anymore!

Yep, I think that was what happened, that she helped him feel/experience a bit of his lost humanity after 400-odd years in Faerie, and that he didn't want to do the same thing to her that he had done to his last wife. I was very conscious of the fact that I wanted to subvert the trope of two men fighting over Lucy (as Flynn already noped out of doing when he pointed out he couldn't fight Korvin anyway and would not stand in the way of Lucy making the choice if she did want to go with TRK). So it's not that they have to fight their way away from Matija and that he remains in his old/toxic masculinity ways of doing things, but rather that he is changed for the better by meeting her and by seeing Lucy and Flynn's love and not wanting to do the same thing again. And that is what makes him voluntarily decide to let them go, and to decide that laws without mercy might be bad laws, and that he wants to change his own behavior as a result.

As noted in the chapter itself, there are also some literary echoes (Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot) and a call back to traditional fairy tales where the lovers find their way into Faerie and have to prove their devotion to each other through trials and thus become worthy to return to the world (aka Hero's Journey stuff, heh). So that was where my thinking was with that, and it was fun to play a bit with Faerie and the magic of that.

AND GOD YES. IT ONLY TOOK 200K WORDS FOR THEM TO STOP BEING IDIOTS, APPARENTLY. I LOVE THEM BUT I AM ALSO STILL SLIGHTLY WONDERING WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT. GUYS. JEEZ.