#wild-type

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Hello, so nice to see you! I have a general fandom question for you. Do you know if Wild-Type by Merkase, the dragon AU. Is a general fandom thing, Eruri spesific or an entirely original plot? Was dragon shifters a trope back then or is this one of a kind?

Hello @zxcfgh, nice to see you too! How lovely to get a question about Wild-Type by @merkase, it's one of my favourite fics. For those who haven't come across Wild-Type it's an amazing story where Levi is a shape-shifting dragon (yes you read that right), and survivor of an underground fighting ring, and Erwin is the cop who rescues him. Levi isn't the only dragon in the story, Moblit and Nanaba are also dragons, and the fic features the dragon version of the Iditarod race. It's an entirely original concept dreamed up by merkase, with the most incredible world building, plot and characterisation. There hasn't been anything quite like it in the fandom either before or since. I must admit I slept on Wild-Type for a long time before reading it because the premis sounded so ludicious but boy was I wrong. I still think the characterisation is some of the best ever written in the fandom. merkase also wrote a couple of Wild-Type side stories that aren't on AO3. You can read on their blog here:

Like A Boss (Mikenana)

Allure (Eruri)

Although Wild-Type is entirely original, there have been a few other dragon fics written over the years. There are 19 works tagged Levi Ackerman / Erwin Smith and Dragons on AO3. I haven't read all of these, but ones I can recommend are

The Dragon Speaker by @everythingshiny

Bestiarium by Mysh_mysh

Erwin the Unassessably Wealthy by AvatarMN (Mind the tags on this one. It's VERY nsfw, but it's also so far over the top it's very funny.)

[merkase]

Hello, I am alive! What did I miss?

The shortest and the nicest way to explain where I’ve been is probably just the words, ‘real depressed,’ but I feel like that doesn’t adequately account for the time I’ve been offline. MDD is a foul place to be and I don’t want to go back there, so that’s the best explanation I can give. I had too much happening too quickly and I reacted by transforming into a ghost. I kept meaning to come back and yet I never seemed to have the energy. Too much time passed and then ... I dunno. So! Uh. NEWS! News in nice bullets:

I want to finish a couple of my Attack on Titan WIPs. Wild-Type is my first priority, but I will need to re-read it and I will probably edit as I go so that I can look at it without being hella embarrassed. News on the other WIPs to follow.

The original version of Wild-Type (and the other things I wrote under the pseudonym Kasey Delamer) are currently offline. I took them down abruptly after some shit hit the fan. First, my aunt found my pseudonym by doing some very creepy sleuthing and threatened to read everything. Y’all. Everything. My family is socially conservative, Southern, religious, and Republican, and my aunt doesn’t keep secrets so when I tell you that my panic was very real and very blinding I don’t want you to mistake it for hyperbole. Julie, if you’re reading this, you suck and you are the reason I’m so paranoid. Anyway. Around that same time my parents’ friends heard I was writing an unspecified adult romance and called me a slut while they were all drunk, which my parents then proceeded to defend by saying I was making it up. So when my aunt found my pseudonym I snapped a little bit and took it down.

That being said, the horror has worn off and the anger has set in and I’m very seriously considering republishing it under my real name because yeah I write “slutty” gay dragon books and I’m not actually sorry.

I do want to rewrite it though. Because I feel like that story could be told in one book and planning for three makes me want to cry a little bit because I’m working on another original trilogy right now and that’s just too much y’all.

I now have five birbs. There will definitely be pics.

[pintosketches]

RELAXOLOTL ITS AN AXOLOTL

[eli-block]

A pretty process shot

[ghiaccioecatrame]

"Fuck you and your toxic human toast." Another photo of my Levi cosplay from Wild-Type by @merkase

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Lost! I have a rec for you. It’s a WIP called Listo by drowsycricket. It’s circus eruri and I am lowkey obsessed. I hope it is a welcome find if you haven’t come across it already.

also, I read Wild Type and it ruined me (in a good way!!) thank you for helping me take the plunge. I think I saw something somewhere about it possibly resuming. Have you heard anything recently through the ether?

Thank you @bodylikeawave! Listo by drowsycricket has been on my list for a while now, I'm looking forward to reading it. I've had a circus AU languishing in my drafts folder for years now. I doubt it will every see the light of day, so I'm delighted that someone else has written one! Fwiw, this is my quintessential Eruri circus AU song.

I'm so glad you took the plunge and read Wild-Type by @merkase, it really is a one in a million fic. I've lost count of the number of times I've read it and it's never less than devastating. Sadly I haven't heard anything from the author for a couple of years now. They said in their last tumblr post that they were reviewing Wild-Type and intended to finish it but that was two years ago. Where ever they are now, and whatever they're doing, I wish them well. They left the fandom with an amazing legacy.

[merkase]

My son is “helping” me work on WT this morning. This is Loki, my adopted green cheek conure. I did not name him, but he lives up to his namesake.

[merkase]

an update for all the things

Hi guys. I just wanted to let you all know that I am still clinging feebly to life and my fics have not been abandoned, just critically neglected. Real Life has been beating the dog shit out of me and this is the first time I’ve actually picked up my entire computer in ... I don’t even know. A long-ass time. A really long-ass time. I don’t want to hash it out on tumblr because I want to keep this area as free from my real world garbage as possible, but I’ve been almost completely shut down for a long time, just kind of trying to make it to the next day. 

I want to apologize for disappearing because I know it’s a bullshit thing for an author to do. I kept waiting for all the Real Life stuff to blow over, thinking, ‘next off day, I’ll write!’ and never feeling up to it when those days arrived. Then time got away from me. I’ve been feeling the itch to write again for the first time in months, so I’m going to start with Wild-Type and read back over the last couple of chapters tonight so I can pick it back up ASAP. I doubt I’ll be able to immediately start updating every week like I was doing, but I hope to build myself back up to that point eventually. Right now I’m taking baby steps, so everything except Wild-Type is still on hiatus until I get my groove back. 

In a fit of emotional turmoil I also bought myself a tiny baby tarantula on impulse. So now I have ... one of those. I won’t go into detail about that because I know arachnophobia is a thing.