Thanks for responding to my question about why you chose Theomione as the main pairing! I was really under the impression that Draco was gone for good when i asked that 🤣🤣🤣
Tbh after getting over the initial heartbreak i kind of liked him being dead (sorry draco😔) to the point that i was actively ignoring any hints and foreshadowing that he was coming back💀 but that’s only a testament to how much you sold me on Theomione!
Draco coming back and feeling BETRAYED by seeing Theo and Hermione together was so funny to me. He is such a little shit! The audacity and entitlement!! So you can have two lovers without communicating with either of them but they can’t have each other? BYE!!! 😂
I gave this a couple weeks since there was no way to post either the ask or the answer without spoilers (oh well!) but you definitely were not the only one who thought Draco was permanently out of the picture. Writing something with big plot twists well in advance of anyone ever seeing them can be such a funny process. We were certain so many times that things we were writing were telegraphing our intent and that no one was going to believe he was dead. And even with four people beta-reading this in advance, it's just like that sometimes, you really have no idea exactly how things will play.
And as far as liking him being dead, you for sure weren't the only person who felt that way either, and we genuinely love that. Neil and I talked several times about how we felt like Book II was a success in our eyes because we do truly think we could have kept him dead and the story still would have been beautiful and complete. I suspect it would have been much shorter, and the way it wrapped up likely would have been more focused on finding happiness after grief (also would have had to find a little time to take a dark lord down) but we could have done it. Ultimately though, we had another goal for the back half of the fic in mind, and we very much look forward to selling you on Draco coming back as hard as we sold you on the Theomione.
PS, Draco, the empath who couldn't find someone else's shoes with a map and a flashlight, will never not be hysterical to me, but WE WILL GET HIM THERE
I am LOVING bloodtoll and although i’ve never read theomione without draco, i’m obsessed. Genuinely i look forward to every update all week. Maybe you can’t answer this yet, but i was wondering about the reason behind choosing theo to be the main love interest (or at least the one who lives lol) instead of draco? Don’t get me wrong i am OBSESSED, but theo is basically a fanon character, while dramione is the more established ship, it’s an interesting choice and i’m curious about the reason behind it! Xx
Hey! Thank you, this was a really cool ask, and I'm probably about to make you regret it with the absurd length of my answer.
I got this several weeks ago but couldn’t answer it until now because while most of this, including the question, contains spoilers for beyond Chapter 17, which can’t really be helped (sorry to anyone who hasn’t read that far!), there is one aspect of this that gets into ENORMOUS SPOILER territory for Chapter 31 and beyond, so I'm going to put that below the ‘keep reading’.
But to answer you, there are several facets to this and I kind of felt like talking about all of them.
1) The first, which I realise is not exactly the question you asked, is 'why a second MMC (any MMC), in addition to Draco, at all?' / ‘Why two love stories?’ / ‘Why did someone have to die?’
When Neil and I first began batting around an idea for this fic in the summer of 2024, the arc of Book II was really the lynchpin of the story for us and that was what was conceived first. Book II probably has the most traditional ‘romance’ plot beats, and I think the conceit of it is most central to what we started off wanting to explore, essentially the overwhelming angst and guilt (on both sides!) of falling in love with your dead lover’s lover.
2) I think taking that as a given, the next question would be ‘why Theo specifically?’ as the Book II love interest, rather than any other MMC we might have chosen. He is, as you say, basically a fanon character — and we didn’t even particularly stick to that fanon characterization.
I’d say that for as much as Theo can often be a glorified OC, we do really like his possibilities, and we also have a very long-standing fascination with his structural position in fandom (which is such a unique thing and which I would genuinely love to read an academic paper on someday if someone ever wrote one). Despite such a broad fan consensus on who he is and how he ‘ought’ to be written, he's in some ways (great ways!) a blank slate, and in other ways he's ideally placed with certain elements of his background to slot into a very specific role.
Sidenote about THE DYNAMIC: We had a story premise that required a pre-existing, secret relationship between two alphas, and look, if we are talking M/M I have a weakness, and I won't speak for Neil on this one, but I know she certainly enjoys it too. And that weakness is for posh boy childhood friends to lovers, especially if there's an element of ‘tragically forbidden due to societal circumstance’, and especially especially if you can cross that with ‘we were soldiers together’. (And this didn't come into play in Bloodtoll specifically, but I also adore a side of daddy issues, obligatory shout out to Chin Up). In HP fandom nothing accomplishes all that for me quite like Dreo.
So if our story predicates two pureblood men, who are already in love with each other, both falling in love with the same woman at different points, there was really an obvious choice there in terms of preference for who those two were going to be.
3) Which brings us to ‘Why have the two love stories play out in that order?’ Or said another way: ‘Why not cast Theo as the enigmatic fast burn who dies saving them both and Draco as the angst-ridden wild card slow burn who picks up the pieces?’ This is, I think, closest to the question you actually asked (sorry I am only now getting to that after hundreds of words).
First — plot dictates. We needed the love interest in Book I to be a highly secretive, unreliable legilimens and the love interest in Book II to be a bit of a loose cannon mess who, crucially, cannot protect his mind or read anyone else’s. It isn’t inconceivable we could have made that Theo and Draco respectively, but at least where Draco is concerned, it’s a lot less in keeping with his fanon reputation, and even a bit of canon. On the one hand I could generally give a shit about characters being OOC — I can be convinced of anything if it’s well written, and in a sense all fanfic is out of character by a certain degree or the events would play out exactly as they do in canon. But taking other factors into consideration, it did feel more fitting to play it the way we did.
Second — It didn't escape our attention that, as you've pointed out, there is a massive and well-established ship for Dramione, which is nothing like the case for Theomione. We had a specific plan for how we wanted to tag this fic (the hows and whys of which are probably the subject of a different very long ask), and that plan was to retain as much surprise about the course of the story as possible. What that meant in practical terms was that we were aware that a lot of people were going to start this story as a WIP, expecting something Dramione-only, only to be hit with *Not That*. We anticipated A LOT of people dropping it after Chapter 17 (and even some after Chapter 13) and we were cool with that — we were pretty clear up front that this story wouldn't be everyone. Surprisingly, this didn’t actually happen, and as it stands at the end of Book II the number of people who are subscribed to the story is well above what it was before the events of Chapter 17. I suspect that if it had been tagged as only Theomione from the start we would have had a vastly different and much narrower subset of people reading it, but, to be clear, that in itself had zero effect on anything about what we chose to write.
Neil and I would write for literally only two people (and we do in a sense) if we believed that was the best version of the story we wanted to tell—but something that did factor was our general overall impression of how fandom views Draco.
Draco is a bit of asshole in Book I, not only to Hermione, and to Theo, but also to the reader in some ways. He withholds a lot of information, he does some questionable things without explanation, etc. He's an unreliable narrator, and there is a certain level of the reader simply being on board with that that we knew we were going to need in order to make Book I effective. And we knew that there is a particular subset of fandom (certainly not everyone, but definitely a big chunk) that will forgive Draco of almost anything. This is in no way a value judgement btw, Neil and I both ship Tomione so hard we're 200K into another cowrite at the moment. It doesn't change the fact though that in a lot of fics out there Draco gets a pass from readers on some absolutely *wild* shit.
Conversely, Book II is intentionally structured around not only selling Hermione on Theo, and selling Theo on the concept of Theomione, but also selling the reader on Theo and Theomione. We wrote those 120K+ words with the express objective of getting whoever didn't immediately unsubscribe after Draco's death (and was tentatively willing to see how it all played out) to the point that by the end of it they are as desperate for those two characters to be together as the characters themselves. It is enormously cheering to get messages like yours, and others from readers, talking about how this is not a ship they've ever rooted for or considered, but which we've convinced them of. There is nothing more flattering to a writer than "you did such a good job that you sold me on something I didn't think I could be sold on."
So not only did certain character aspects necessitate the order of their respective love stories, but also, at least on a meta level, how they’re regarded by fandom, and we were kind of counting on some of the things you mention in your question (fanon invention vs established ship) to support that.
And last:
4) To return to the question of why we chose to kill Draco…
If you’ve finished Book II (and you better have if you’re reading this because I don’t want spoiling on my conscience):
We didn’t. Happy Birthday Draco, you get to live. 🥳
The premise I mentioned back up at the top wasn’t only ‘What happens when you fall in love with your dead lover’s lover?’
It was also ‘What happens when it turns out they’re not dead?’
A lot, apparently, if the fact that we're only 50% through the story is anything to go by. Book III is going to be a lot of fun.
Hi! I’ve been reading Bloodtoll since the first chapter and I’m obsessed. I’ve seen discord mentioned by commenters and from what i understand there is a server where readers discuss the story there? To be honest i don’t really understand how discord works but when i downloaded it, it seems like servers are invite only so i just wanted to ask here if the server is for all readers and anyone can join bc i’d love to join if that’s the case, i was embarrassed to ask for an invite on ao3 in case this is like a private server for people who are already friends/know each other or something 🙈 maybe i missed it but i don’t think u guys have ever included it in ur author notes so that’s why i’m asking because i don’t know how people know about it, i’m not really involved in the HP fandom and i don’t know anyone i mostly just read alone so i just wanted to ask first lol totally fine if it’s a friends only thing
Hi there! First, it is so lovely to hear when people have been following along since the very beginning. It makes a massive difference to us as authors when people are willing to read our work as a WIP no matter what the fic is, but especially this one, because of the amount of trust you’ve given us despite the minimal tagging. Anyone who reads this story once it’s complete will be wonderful and welcome, but they won’t be like you guys, who gave us the beautiful experience of your shock and delight at all the twists that won’t really be twists for the readers who come later. So that’s huge to us.
Second, this was such a sweet ask! We did indeed fail to put the discord link anywhere in our author notes, but it was an oversight and probably because we were so busy rhapsodizing about banyas and French tarot that we forgot.
The discord channel people usually use to discuss the fic is on the Wizarding World WIPs server, and it’s not private, you’re absolutely welcome. It is mostly a lot of very lovely people chatting about a lot of very fun theories that Neil and I have to try very hard to be quiet about. Or asking us the occasional question about the writing of it that I end up responding to with way, way too many words (do not ask about our writing process unless you would like a novel in response, once I start I cannot be stopped, see the ask I’m about to answer after this for reference). Also Neil has memes.
Anyway, the link for the server is here, it would be lovely to see you there: https://discord.gg/TRatg4Yr9S
Wizarding World WIPs is a place to flail and celebrate WIP fics in the HP Fandom | 1625 members
I've been re-reading TLTB and I got curious — did Narcissa have some ulterior motive for sending Hermione to Sirius? Or was she simply alarmed by Pollux's story and wanted to move an indecent muggle or smth like that further away from her son?
Thank you for the ask, I'm beyond flattered you're giving the story a reread! Re: your question, this is not something I ever really delved that far into in the fic (obviously, or you wouldn't have needed to ask) but I left a few hints lying around for anyone who was curious.
Spoilers and a bit more on that below the cut:
Without trying to introduce a lot of extra-textual information:
There's an undercurrent where one could probably conclude that Lucius is abusive to his slaves, likely in any number of ways. Hermione observes the general vibe at the manor, along with a couple very unfortunate encounters with the man himself and nothing suggests that that isn't the case.
Narcissa has probably witnessed this behaviour over the years and something led her to request that Mary acquire a male slave, rather than Hermione.
Sirius is, if not actively disinherited in this version of the world, very much on the absolute fringe of respectability, which he maintains purely for whatever good it might do the Order and Lily.
Narcissa is essentially on the precipice of madness for most of the story, but for this period of time she's lucid enough that she's aware of some salient faces: She has a cousin she doesn't like, doesn't get along with, has barely spoke to in years, and who has reassumed residence at Grimmauld. She has a son who is her foremost concern, and she is well aware that there is absolutely nothing good that can come out of any sort of interest he might hold, sexual or ortherwise, in a slave in his household.
I had several people comment at the time I posted the chapter that they thought Narcissa had sent Hermione away as some act of compassion, and I don't think there is anything in the story to support that, but I don't think it necessarily needs to be read as solely to do with blood purity or 'indecency' on Hermione's part either, although that isn't not a concern.
In the end I think "Young Lord of the Manor conducts himself in a manner unbefitting of his station with The Help" is a problem as old as the aristocracy, and in this case there was an equally aristocratic solution: send The Problem packing in the tidiest way possible. If you lack the time and maneuvering room to entirely get rid of her, some other out-of-the-way family property is probably the next best solution.
So all that to say, I think its likely closer to your second guess than any complex hidden agenda of Narcissa's.
Hiii when can we expect you to post your next story i’m going through withdrawals after tltb 😁
Hello! Neilistic and I are currently in the midst of writing the last few chapters of Bloodtoll, I would expect we will probably be finished in September. After that’s finished there will be some minor edits to make. We’ve been editing as we go but when there is this much world-building (a lot! It’s set primarily at Durmstrang, and there are like three canonical facts about Durmstrang to work with, the rest had to be made up) and this much plot (even more of this!) and these many words (like half a million, what is wrong with us!?) there are a lot of things that have to be checked for continuity. This morning I wrote a sentence in Chapter 54 that is going to require adding a line in Chapter 1. So all that to say, gun to my head we will probably start posting some time in October. Thankfully though I do not have a gun to my head, and am therefore making no promises. That’s a fool’s game when it comes to writing, especially where it intersects with real life and especially when you have a co-writer (Neil is both prolific and insanely fast, c’est moi, I am the problem).
TLTB withdrawals are slowly subsiding. Looking forward to more of your writing!! will your next piece be Dramione? Do you have a timeline? No pressure (Tyrone biggums head scratch)
That is very kind, thank you! I’m having a bit of a withdrawal in my own way, although I do indeed have that next fic to distract me.
To answer your question as far as which ship it will be focused on, there will absolutely be Dramione—Neilistic and I wanted to do something a little differently with this one and lean into the tension of not knowing what might come next (sort of like that feeling with the original books), so [useful] tags will be few and far between, although there will be an abundance of ridiculous ones—but that will be one of the few things of that sort which we will tag at the start.
As to the timeline (don’t scratch too hard!) — if we write at the pace we’ve sustained for the last seven months or so I would expect to be done around six weeks from now, but realistically it will likely take longer, perhaps double that, or more. Coming to the end of a long work is tricky, no matter how eager you are to finish it. At a certain point the directive flips, and you are no longer opening new doors, but having to close them behind you. Instead of the freedom to write your guy into situations, you are now actively having to write him out of them and ensure you are tying up dozens of plot and character implications into neat little bows as you leave. Plus, with the length we are at, practically every new sentence requires someone to go look up something in the hundreds of thousands of words we’ve already written: Did we already use this line before? What did we name that street? What did we call our made up Russian magical currency? And that obviously slows us down too. All that to say, while I don’t want to summon any AO3 curses by making promises, or using the word ‘definitely’, I would be very surprised if we didn’t start posting this autumn.
Why does fanfiction hurt so good? I just finished reading The Lights That Burn and needed a quick hair of the dog ;) to recover, so I picked up Dogs of London by Neilistic. Now I’m sitting here with that ache again—an ungraspable longing, a kind of bruised yearning both fics left deep in my chest. I don’t know what I’m missing, exactly, but whatever it is, it’s burning a hole through me.
I read a lot. Everything goes, fiction and non-fiction, classics and the strange, modern, boundary-pushing stuff. When it comes to fanfiction, it's mostly HP especially Dramione - Manacled was my gateway drug (no love for JKR whatsoever). Since then, I've fallen down a rabbit hole of beautifully written, emotionally devastating fanfics that often leave me feeling more than traditionally published literature ever has.
I don’t know why I’m writing this much, but maybe I’m seeking a diagnosis. What is this specific ache fanfiction gives me? Do you ever feel the same?
Dogs of London is so wonderful! Neil wrote that for me for birthday this year and it was an amazing present, truly there is nothing like having close friends in fandom who will write you custom PWP out of the goodness of their heart.
As to whether I feel the same, the answer is yes. I also read widely — I have had a few people ask me on occasion about favorite books or fics and the answer is so paralysingly broad that I rarely know where to start and consequently usually do not end up answering.
But I do think there is something about fanfiction and that ache that is maybe found less frequently in original work.
In choosing to read these characters over and over, they become hundreds of different versions of themselves, and we can’t help but introduce a little bit of ourselves into that either. To read a fic is to choose to reject the canon in some sense (even the most minor change is still a change), which often means we are opting to view a character through another lens. And maybe that lens is one that resonates more with us. I think there can end up being something very personal in that, in a character which you have decided to shape more to your liking (even if you didn’t write the fic you’re reading) than in the original story. And to do that over and over and over again is to occasionally brush closer to certain stories which fill that space inside us better than others, and change what we thought was possible, or make us understand more about ourselves and what we’re looking for.
Hello! So a bit of a strange ask? I was working on a typeset (for personal use obviously) for The Lights that Burn now that it's finished for a Bookbind and I was wondering what Font you used for the Title itself if you know? A quick Google search doesn't show anything that matches it quite right?
Not at all! (Also, how exciting, please share pics when you’re done so I can scream about it!)
The font I used was Mason Serif, which I think may unfortunately be on the pricier side if purchasing, but the heart wanted what the heart wanted.
A Sidenote, when I was looking up the link for this I discovered that Adobe apparently includes little facts about the fonts at the bottom of the page. I assumed it was named Mason as in, like, medieval masons because it certainly has that vibe and it looks like that was sort of correct but (this is gold):
In its design, Barnbrook was influenced by nineteenth-century Russian letter forms, Greek architecture, and Renaissance Bibles. The font also displays many references to popular culture, politics, and typographic history. Mason’s postmodern attitude is undeniable and, like Jeffery Keedy’s Keedy Sans, Mason emerged during the explosion of digital typefaces in the early 1990s, both products of the technological and cultural influences of the time.
Barnbrook originally called this typeface Manson (after American serial killer Charles Manson) “to express extreme opposite emotions of love and hate, beauty and ugliness.” After releasing the font, Emigre came under heavy scrutiny for glorifying a murderer, and decided to change the name to Mason, as the letter forms also evoke stonecutters’ work, Freemasons’ symbology, and pagan iconography.
