#stopmopingstarthoping

[bladesandstars]

@/change!

formerly stopmopingstarthoping, now bladesandstars. Changed @bladesandstars-fics too. Changing my @ here, Twitter, and AO3 too. It was time for a change! <3

[xylianna]

Please tell me about your Sailor Moon OTP and all the wonderful things that make you love them so much! And congrats on 500 followers!

Hi hello and thank you for the ask!  My Sailor Moon OTP is Michiruka, a definite part of my gaywakening!  Michiru and Haruka, alias Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus, respectively.  For a fair part of my formative years I wanted to *be* Michiru... water is her element, she’s a musician, she’s so graceful and pretty and just *siiigghhhh*  (and she gets to date Haruka... heh heh)

This is a little spoilery, but in S3 they have a tragic death scene together, and it gets me sobbing like a baby every single time (even tho I know they get rezzed, since there are more seasons)

They are such fun characters, and I love the way their relationship is just so natural and not an exposition/explanation point.  In the American dubbed version, they made them cousins, and I recall as a child being *very* confused -- I sure did not act like that with my cousins, lol!  When I was able to watch a subtitled/properly translated version and I learned they were girlfriends, it made soooo much more sense!

Thanks so much for asking, Hope, and have a great night! <3

[notthelasttime]

For the writer asks - how about forever: do you balance fic writing with original concept stuff? 💖

forever: hnnng yeah I try to but idk how successful I am

so I’ve got two pretty solid (largish) original stories that have been stewing in my brain. the one that I’ve got the most for is a kind of subversion on fairytales (and the knight rescuing the princess), but set in a more modern fantasy world (almost skewed towards sci-fi, because magic has made technological advancement more rapid). 

so uh. my problem was that my story already had some (unintentional) similarities to nyx/luna and the attack on the city in kingsglaive (at least for the first portion of the story). but it was like… I was still in the baby stages of plotting and characterization for a lot of it when kingsglaive came out, and I started feeling like I was getting way too influenced by it, to the point where I had to step back and put it on hold. except now its been on hold for like a year and a half and I’m scared to go back and read what I have and be like. ah yes. my lunyx fanfic alskdjflkj

the other story was a play on gothic romance/period novels but I kind of lost the plot somewhere bc I got too sidetracked by lesbians running away from arranged marriages, learning magic and turning into birds… 

damn i should go back to that story…

thanks!!

[ninemoons42-lestallumhaven]

8 favorite (fics) from 2018

taken from @stopmopingstarthoping and @voxiferous

Year that was in my FFXV fic:

-  366,548 words across 53 fics on AO3, although I’m fudging this one a little bit because I finished my big nyxcor fic in 2018, but I wrote the majority of it in 2017. adjusted, that leaves me with about 332,226 words across 52 fics.

- I know I have 100+ ficlets and one-shots posted to this very same tumblr, but I’ve no way of doing a quick word count on those.

Quick list of my very favorite fics from the previous year:

Getting the honorable mention out of the way, the finale of  all of your flaws and all of my flaws, they lie there hand in hand. Nyx and Cor find Prompto, and they all try to survive a bitter war with most of their hearts and souls intact. I had to write that one because of feels and @notavodkashot and I’m glad it led me to all the places it did.

1. When I started this list I was talking to a dear friend on twitter about moon triplet -- smut, feels, and a threesome with a twist. I was not expecting to write too many emotions into that particular encounter, but it ended up good for readers too.

2. our little eternity (cross my heart and yours) -- I borrowed the themes of the K-drama Dokkaebi (Goblin) and basically poured my heart into a tale of supernatural love and fighting to accept one's self and one's beloved.

3. my two extended Gladnis fics go together because they basically have the same setup -- they're different from each other so how do they love? the colors of us involves a CEO and an artist/free spirit; long way home involves two survivors / veterans of a modern-day war.

4. closing walls and ticking clocks -- you'll pry my love for Rule 63'd characters out of my cold dead hands and this one is my favorite because it's promnis and I LOVE, unrepentantly, the flaws of them and the heat of their encounter.

5. oh don't you wonder when the light begins to fade? -- which @stopmopingstarthoping had a direct hand in, because musical inspiration. I wrote that in a fever of feels and wound up making myself -- and readers -- cry so I call it good.

6. a waking lightning flower -- doesn't matter if this is an obscure teaser of my own obscure AU, I just wanted to write a thoroughly powerful version of Aulea Lucis Caelum and I hope to have the chance to carry her story forward in 2019.

7. compass rose -- which is short, sweet, and makes people hungry. Four boys on the road, four entirely different approaches to comfort and love and caring for the self and for others. (do not read on an empty stomach, is the obligatory warning.)

and final / lucky number 8. black madonna & golden knight, my ongoing Mafia girls AU. I did get stalled out on it mid-2018 but I'm glad to keep winding on back to it, slowly, but surely. I love this story to bits and I'm determined to finish it this year.

[aliatori]

Congratulations on 400 followers, Ali! ❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉 Could I request some Cor/Aranea for the prompt "slight" please? Thanks and hooray!

Thank you so much, Hope, and my apologies this is so late. Please enjoy some Cor/Aranea for the prompt “slight” below.

A slight miscalculation.

That was Aranea’s excuse for crash landing next to the Marshal off a high jump, earth shaking beneath her spear, the metal in her grip reverberating with the force of the fall. It wasn’t like she needed excuses—they’d never served her well, not when she was a lowly merc and not as Commodore. The truth was often easier, and in this instance, it was right in front of her face: Cor Leonis’ stern gaze, catching her off guard.  Aranea was used to intensity, but the Immortal’s particular brand of ‘zero fucks given’ snatched the air straight from her lungs.

Not for long.

“You’re aware I’m not a hostile target.” Cor didn’t make the sardonic words a question, his piercing blue eyes threatening to pin her like a butterfly to a board.

“Then stay out of my way.” Aranea grinned, planted the butt end of her polearm firmly in the dirt, and executed a fast and graceful spin around it.  It was a showier version of a leaping kick, but her boots landed in the face of the waiting daemon’s face just as effectively, snapping its neck and melting its corpse into smoky ichor.  When gravity righted itself, she took up her lance once more in both hands.

“Tricks like that are an easy way to an early grave,” Cor deadpanned.  Despite the monotone, his mouth gave the barest twitch.

“I’ve got plenty of tricks, Marshal. Ask me nicely and I may just show you them one day,” Aranea replied with a wink.

Before she could register Cor’s response, before she could examine the own flicker of desire deep in her chest, Aranea leapt into the air once more, soaring through it as comfortably as others would walk across solid ground.

Nothing, not even someone as deadly and vexing as the Marshal Cor Leonis, could keep Aranea from the sky—from freedom.

Not for long.

[raidelle]

WIP Seven Sentence Meme

So the deal here is apparently to go to the seventh page of your WIP, seven lines down, and copy and paste seven sentences.

I got tagged by @stopmopingstarthoping but I don’t have seven pages of WIPs (at least in one single WIP), so just have seven sentences instead. ^^;

(I already showed this to you, Hope, and it’s also more than seven sentences. HAHAHAHAHA. I’m sorry for breaking the rules.)

It was loud and crowded, and smelled like a mixture of cigarettes and pot and sex. Nyx used to enjoy this kind of thing but he soon grew out of it -- which was something he didn't expect but was certainly a welcome development -- and now preferred to just stay in and drink some beer.

“Fuck,” Nyx muttered to himself. He gotta get Crowe hooked up ASAP so he can leave.

Fortunately, Crowe already had her sights on someone. “See that girl over there? Blonde hair, great guns?” she shouted in his ear.

“Yeah. Aranea Highwind,” he shouted back.

Crowe glared at him. “You know her? Fuck you!”

“We had two engineering classes together,” he shrugged. “Wait here.”

He made a beeline straight toward Aranea and, after a few choice words, was soon motioning Crowe over. “You owe me big time.”

Crowe just grinned at him.

Tagging everyone who sees this, LOL. I gotta get back to work! :D

[chocobrotherapy]

I used a motion by とぅ to make this beauty. I don’t have time to animate anything so before you assume pls don’t request any animations

Just imagine there’s salt okay shh sh hsh sh shs hs HSHshSH

-Mod Pupper

[ninemoons42-lestallumhaven]

(you know what? I have three days off, I have fannish things to do, I have time to write, and I have things I want to write. also, I have exactly 97 fic/lets in my Quick Fic Pick tag. you know what that means: time to go for the century!)

(and in honor of @ignyxweek and my best @stopmopingstarthoping, here’s the first one.)

(writing inspiration: here. the song is called “araw-gabi”, which translates roughly to “day and night”.)

Quick Fic Pick 98: threw away ten thousand songs

The last drops of rain slide a chilly path down the back of his neck and it’s all he can do to fight off the sheer prey-animal fear that rolls sickening down his spine -- he hates the feeling of having to look over his shoulder even in these places, in these corridors, all these rooms of stone and fortified glass and -- out beyond them, shivering on the edges of the city -- blue-light protection.

Best not to think about the source of that protection, either, or he’ll find himself having to fight off the dry-heaves as well, and just as he’s ducking into a quiet alcove, just as he’s reaching to turn off one bank of distant overhead lights so he has more shadows to hide in -- he hears it. Tentative, in the whistle of night-scented wind along the cold floors. In the draft and the lingering scents of the last of the autumn blooms, the bracing sea-breezes -- 

He would gladly fill up his lungs with that brine-scented breeze, but he’s drawn to the piano, to the rising music: and it starts out almost gentle, almost tentative, almost drowned out in these dark cavernous halls.

No way he’s letting it go, when it calls to him, when it sets the hooks of sweet powerful melodies into his skin, into his heart, and he takes off almost at a run, trusting his battle-honed senses to send him not into the the raging heart of the fight, but into something far gentler, far far quieter, and even as he runs the notes falter and almost trail off, and then rise again --

Open door, and one single shaft of wavering light, that he crosses in his headlong rush.

When he hears the voice, the startlingly tuneful words in the voice that he knows as a refined accent, calling out strategy and tactics or otherwise swearing up a strangely profane song -- he stops dead, whirls, doubles back.

And Nyx Ulric fetches up in that deserted chamber, wide-eyed on the threshold, eyes straining to pick out the lit candles. The graceful shadowed bulk of the piano, the graceful broad shoulders of the man at the piano, singing, his voice filling in between the notes, as the music is caught between wistful and steadfast.

Arch of that neck, sweep of an arm thrown out to the treble end of the instrument, hair fallen down from its spikes to brush gently against a still-crisp collar. Glint of candlelight catching on crystal-points in the otherwise plain white sleeve, the sparks of reflected light as delicate as the music and the rising voice --

It must be his gasp, reverent and quiet though he tries to keep it down, that catches the attention of Ignis Scientia: and the music stops mid-measure, mid-stanza, and Nyx nearly jolts himself to attention, apologetic. Still whispering, still hoping not to break the spell any further -- he turns away, and says, “I’ll -- leave you to it.”

“Wouldn’t you rather hear the whole thing? I’d like to hear your opinions.”

Quiet, unsteady, careful: all of these things, in Ignis’s voice. 

The same voice that had been singing -- that Nyx badly wants to hear again.

He clears his throat. Scrapes his boots along the floor as he moves closer -- he stops a few feet away out of respect for Ignis’s space -- but that means he gets a closer view of Ignis’s shoulders falling into their easy grace once again, and the music starts over.

The voice starts over: and Nyx still doesn’t understand the words.

But does he need to, when Ignis motions him around in a pause of his left hand -- when Ignis’s mouth pulls into a small but pleased smile, the moment they can see each other. When Ignis’s eyes light up as he sings one more phrase, that’s only become familiar because it seems to be part of the refrain of the song, repeated and finally drawn out into a gentle aching descant.

Echoes falling away into a shivering anticipation of a silence.

He watches Ignis bow his head and -- 

Impulse, instinct, propelling his feet along and he -- can’t fight the pull any more. Can’t fight the insistent line that has led him into Ignis’s orbit, that has left him helplessly orbiting Ignis, that has gotten him into this here and now and he takes a breath, and doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s done with the movement, with falling all into Ignis’s back, the entire front of him onto the breadth of Ignis’s back and shoulders -- and Ignis, the bastard, doesn’t even catch his breath, doesn’t even feel surprised -- only pushes back a little, enough that Nyx feels nothing more or less than caught and known.

Pinned, now, where there’s no more escape and no more room to hide, and he mutters, “This was all you, wasn’t it? You wanted this? You -- ”

“As you wanted me,” is the equally quiet response. “You stole it from me. The truth. The part of my heart I could give away. You stole it from me, and you just -- I fully expected you to throw it all away and laugh and -- that wasn’t what you did at all.”

“I stole it back,” he says. “You had already taken the heart that I still had. That I didn’t know I still had. You took it and I stole your heart back. Fair trade.”

“Is it?” But Ignis is laughing, is moving, is rising -- Nyx doesn’t have time to protest the dislodging because Ignis is somehow clearing the piano bench -- he’d love to know if it was magic or something else altogether, those powerful legs maybe -- except that then Ignis is falling onto him, is kissing him, and Nyx gasps loudly and clutches at any part of him he can reach. 

Fists in Ignis’s shirt, over his heart and his shoulder-blade, hanging on for dear life as the tempest builds and builds and builds between them -- razing him, Nyx, all the way down into his smallest thoughts, his faintest hopes -- he throws his entire heart and his entire mind into the conflagration, and if there’s salt on his cheeks afterwards, if there’s a broken-gentle echo of the song on his mouth, only Ignis will know, and they can keep each other’s secrets and each other’s hearts.

*

(fast-forward, to a tragedy)

Line of flash-fire, and Ignis falls to his knees and screams, the world blurring into ash and dust -- he sees the face of a child, wide-eyed, blue-eyed, brightest smile in the world -- he weeps, then, tasting the bitterness of this thing that might not even be a victory, this everlasting curse of the world he’s about to lose --

More than enough to tear him down and -- he’ll die, he knows this, he’ll die and be judged again -- and be found wanting again -- but first: Ardyn Izunia -- and he gets to his feet. He throws out his hand, throws the wrath of the Lucian Kings and Queens out, scouring him, watching as Ardyn mocks the flame and -- backs away, backs down slowly step-by-step --

“Don’t die.”

Even this strange other-world is falling away from him, dripping away in tears shaped like flame, like ashen stars, and he turns his head.

Shock roars through him, then: not the bravado that he’d mustered to challenge the Lucii and the Ring. Something more profound. Something that leaves him even more shaken.

Braids and ink-lines nearly lost in tangling lines of burned scars and blasted flesh, and a smile that nearly drives him down to his knees again.

But that is indisputably Nyx, holding him, propping him up, and the swirling lines of purple-hued flame adding to his own. 

“Don’t die,” says that ravaged ghost. “I won’t forgive you, if you came to me like this, if you came to me now. You have a duty.”

“All I am now is duty,” and Ignis doesn’t even have the rage to power the words. He only has himself. He only has those broken truths.

“I’m sorry, Ignis, I’m sorry this all happened the way it did, but -- ”

“But. I know,” he says, bitterly. “I know. So -- there’s nothing else for it. Help me, Nyx, help me, guide me, I think I know what the price is -- don’t leave me.”

“Never, Ignis, never leave you, not now -- ” 

The Ring’s power flares out then, last time, last light, and Ignis laughs and cries and -- sings, as Ardyn retreats, the edges of him and the Scourge blurring into ash -- even the memory of the bright child Noctis had been blurs out, too -- but the last thing he ever sees is a tear-stained smile, and ink-arrows in burned skin.