#zombiearmor rambles

[zombiearmor]

WIP Wednesday Thursday.

WIP Whursday. Yes. Totally the right day. Thank you for the tag, @walrusface!!!!

I'm sharing a wee snippet from the prologue of the Verstave Knight/Prince AU that I'm working on with the lovely @thunderstyled! It has been so much fun world-building for this AU.

"I… I'm sorry for…" Gustave sighed softly and shook his head. "You could have said no." Glancing over at his father, he gestured around them as a wry smile pulled at his lips. "You had every right to say no." Diplomacy was his duty now. The king consort of the Rochéclair kingdom deserved to spend his time with their queen. How many missions had Gustave been on now? How many had he gone on by himself? And yet, Gustave had still worried at the thought of going through this one alone. Stendhal laughed quietly at his side. Their horses ambled along slowly, wanting to keep pace with the rest of the royal entourage. "No, no… It's alright," the man replied, reaching over to briefly grasp Gustave's forearm. "This one…" The king consort looked ahead of them, as if he could somehow see their final destination—which was still a few days away. "This one is worth attending to personally." The man nodded his head slowly. "As a father." Gustave's smile went lopsided. "If you say so." "I do, mon fils. I do." The moon hung high in the star-filled sky, and its ethereal glow bathed the ground in its pale light. Aside from a few flame-written lamps that hung from the sides of wagons that accompanied them, there was no other source of illumination aside from up above—a scattering of delicate jewels in an inky abyss. Long grass swayed in the chill wind on either side of the dirt road they were traversing upon. Nightfall had Gustave shivering in his robes and fur-lined cloak, and with a chuckle, Stendhal reached over and pulled his hood over his head. "Papa—" "Don't want you to catch a—" The man sneezed then, and Gustave quirked an eyebrow at him. "You were saying?" "Right, right…" His father pulled his own hood over his head, and they shared a brief smile.

I am tagging @thunderstyled, @theartsypumpkin, @mscoffeebear, and @arialerendeair if you feel like joining in! ❤️❤️❤️

[zombiearmor]

Eight Sentence WIP and Stuff Wednesday Mashup

Oh hey!! Thanks for the tag @lavender-tea-fling! 👀 This is fresh off the Sprinto! XD Just starting on my next fic: the Cheese/Pinot AU. TBH, the title will probably end up being something similar to that but. Yes. I promise I am not turning them into cheese and wine. 😗 Getting emotional whiplash between these different fic types I'm writing? Me? Absolutely. 🤣

Despite the furrow of his brow and the downward tilt of his lips, Verso couldn't help but absently think to himself that he was rather cute.

Said Frenchman sat down a few seats away from him, now hissing angrily in his mother tongue, and Verso did his very best to… try and not eavesdrop.

As Verso decidedly did not listen in, the poor fellow further down the row was angrily telling someone on the phone that he had already bought all of this cheese and that he was expecting to get paid for it—as promised earlier on. Whenever this man mentioned cheese, his prosthetic hand would grasp at his backpack at his side.

The likely holder of aforementioned cheese?

Verso absently reread the same paragraph of the news article he was staring at about ten times as his countryman muttered darkly about how he'd recorded the conversation with the other person on the line where they had promised to pay for the cheese.

Apparently this was no small amount of dairy product. No, this was several hundred dollars worth of cheese.

I am tagging @walrusface, @verenakauer, @anivy-chan, @thunderstyled, and @mhara if you are interested in playing! 👀

[zombiearmor]

jakfsl;djfsdf I have been working on a collab knight and prince AU with @thunderstyled for like... a month and half now? SO MUCH YAPPING. SO MUCH WORLD BUILDING. OH MY GOSH I LOVE WORLD BUILDING AJSDK;JDSF

I think we managed to nail down our rough outline for the whole thing tonight, and just. I'm so happy for us? We managed to corral all of our keyboard smash into something cohesive. But yes. JASKDDSJFK YELLING IN EXCITEMENT AND CAPSLOCK AHHHHH ADJFKSL;JFKSD;FJ

[zombiearmor]

SHARE YOUR PLANS ✍️✨

Ahhh, thank you for the tag, @mscoffeebear!!! I'm afraid my WIPS are ALSO all over the place, and I think I need to like... clone myself or something to get this stuff done faster. 🫠

Priority WIPS

Hnnnngh okay okay okay!!!!

Verstave and CHEESE PINOT. CHEESE PINOT AJSKDL;FJKDLF. If I don't get this out this weekend, I think I may very well yeet my keyboard out the window. I am one (1) proofread away from finishing, and I feel like I've been "almost done" with this fic for weeks now. I need to finish this. Please. PLEASE!!!!!! 😫

Restave Vampires. I technically have two Restave vampire AUs, so this one is slightly different from the ficlet I posted uh... back around the holidays. It is based off a little ficlet I wrote for @walrusface and more or less fleshes it out a bit more. :3

Verstave KNIGHTPRINCE. GUYS OH MY GOSH. I'M SO EXCITED FOR THIS. This is a collab with the AMAZING @thunderstyled!!! KNIGHT VERSO! PRINCE GUSTAVE! I have been having SO MUCH FUN with the world-building. Like. Ridiculous amounts of fun with ridiculous amounts of world-building. Nyoom can vouch for the fact that I have been bringing up such interesting topics such as irrigation and latitudinal placement of continents. (Along with much less interesting topics such as how Other Creative Groups would work like Painters and Writers in this world.) The plan for the series is that it'll have three acts over three separate fics, along with several side stories, and I am just ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED to get back to long-form writing again. :3 There will be political intrigue, magic, fights, and, of course, romance.

Backburner

I hesitate to call these backburner WIPs because I am chomping at the bit to write these as well but I only have two hands and one brain. :( And sadly, I work and require human things like sleep and food? What?

Spite 3 the Spitening. My WWI Verstave D/s AU! The going will probably be slow, but gosh, I would LOVE to get these two sad Frenchmen to their endgame. This is one of those where I have SUCH a clear of idea what that would look like, but the middle section is... a bit fuzzy haha.

O Brawling Love Good Ending Sequel. Also Verstave! Guys, I love researching for my fics, and guess what? I'll be getting to do some on location research for this one soon. (Ftr, the location of the fic was chosen well before my vacation was planned, but I like how a joke has become a reality and that this is actually happening now!) Beyond excited for this--for the trip and the writing haha. Writer!Gustave will be doing some mystery solving in this one. :3

O Brawling Love Bad Ending Sequel. Still Verstave! This one actually came together a lot more quickly than the good ending haha. This is my take on a dark!Writer!Gustave and involves him getting revenge on those who have wronged him.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN MY EXTENSIVE WRITING LIST. I would be here all day if I continued, so I'll just leave this here for now. I've had a few people (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) who have poked and prodded me into bumping a few other ideas into higher writing positions and just. Can I just cease with the adulting and just write? Please? 😭

I am tagging @walrusface, @hairyecballium, and @anivy-chan if you feel like playing!

[zombiearmor]

Writing Requests Game

Edit 7/1/26: Requests are now closed! ❤️

Wals is an amazing enabler, so I'm back for another round of this because I was reminded of just how much fun it can be. 👀👀

Send me a pairing (or ask for gen!) and a prompt, and I'll write a little ficlet for it. :3 Prompts can be a word, line, image, or whatever else you can fit into my ask box.

I will write:

E33. The brain rot remains strong.

Gen or Gustave/anyone!

Can be a fresh prompt or something related to one of my fics.

Crossovers are okay if you think I know the other media!

Not looking to write anything dead dove at the moment! Still cooking like... three/four projects in the background right now, but I shall poke at these as fun treats in between writing. ❤️

[zombiearmor]

WIP Wednesday

Woo!! Thank you @walrusface and @as-frightened-as-you for the tag! I'm sharing a snippet from my no powers WWI AU (...compared to the in-universe WWI AU that is slowly eating my brain) since I feel like it would be weird to share a snippet from the very last chapter of WWCA. 😂

The anger from his capture lingered, as did the pain from where his arm had been. Sharp, excruciating, and unpredictable, it had Gustave biting his lips to the point of bleeding on some days and screaming in agony on others; nights were made of lonesome hours of writhing in bed and soaking the sheets in sweat as he bore the agony of that day of infamy over and over. It once again made him wonder if it wouldn't have been better for him to have been killed that day back in Verdun. He would have been a hero then, right? But no, now he was an invalid without an arm, shuffled off to some German camp in Konstanz to sit out the rest of the war. Gustave had been shoved unceremoniously into an enclosure with his fellows. The world around him was gray: gray clothes, gray faces, gray demeanors, and he found himself wishing for the reds that Sophie liked to wear and the blue of the sky of the French countryside. He missed his workshop where he could get oil and grease on his hands and the smell of leather and heated metal permeated the air—not sweat, human waste, and slow decay. It would have been better to have died on the field. With honor. With purpose. His heart still beat in his chest, much to his dismay, and he thought that he would just end up rotting away here with all of the other walking corpses that surrounded him. There was a hollowness in the eyes of everyone around him, and if given the chance with a mirror, Gustave didn't doubt that he'd see it in himself, too. They were prisoners of war, but in truth, most of them were mere ghosts of their former selves. But not him. No, not the man with sharp silver eyes and raven-black hair. Verso Dessendre.

I am tagging @anivy-chan, @hairyecballium, @shinpm, and anyone else who may want to play! 👀

[zombiearmor]

For the ship ask game - 6, 7, 15, and 19 for verstave please 👀

Eeeeeeee!!! Thank you for the ask, Nyoom!!! 👀👀👀

6. A song you think of for this ship?

Haha, we were sort of talking about this in DMs earlier. XD I'm not great with lyrics, so my leanings for songs related to characters or whatever tend to be more vibe based, I guess? I strongly associate Gustave with the cello and Verso with the piano (obviously), so I think this version of the Verso song with both instruments really does it for me as a ship song.

7. What would a lovechild between them look like? Have fun!

NGL, I have never considered this before. 🤔 If they had a lovechild, I think the kiddo would end up with Gustave's hazel eyes (though a bit lighter than his own) and really dark brown, wavy hair--dark enough that it probably looks black in most lighting. Strong jawline. Sharp features and a relatively lean build when they grow up. Between Verso's puppy dog eye capabilities and Gustave's doe eyed version, I imagine this kid could win any and all arguments by looking appropriately sad enough at anyone, including the parents. 😂

15. One to three AUs you would like to see explored with this ship?

I HAVE TOO MANY. ajskdf;jf Spy AU where Gustave is the leader of the spy organization, and his former lover Verso has gone rogue. Prince Gustave and Knight Verso, who pledges his loyalty to him after a daring escape from the Dessendre kingdom! More WWI AU. Both of them. 👀 I could literally be here all day with Verstave AUs. Sob.

19.2. What was the moment in canon that made you go "Yeah, I ship it"? If they haven't met in canon, what influenced you to ship the characters?

THANKS FOR TELLING ME THAT THERE WERE TWO 19S. XD

So. I did not consider Verstave as a ship right from the get-go after finishing the game. XD When I first saw the ship floating around the internet, I was like, "Huh! Okay! Sure!" and then continued on my way. After repeated exposure to some amazing fanart, though, I started to consider them more and what sort of dynamics would be at play between them.

We, Who Come After was, in some sense, my exploration of how the ship could work in a canon-compliant background and to make it make sense in my head. (Little did I know how long it would end up being. I swear, it was originally supposed to be like. 30k tops. 🫠) So what was supposed to be me just testing the waters ended up allowing Verstave to just completely eat my brain, so here we are now! 😂

I think this is one of those cases where the passion of the ship fans really drew me to it? There is a ridiculous amount of talent here, and people have been so generous with creating for Verstave. Hard to not enjoy it and join in!!

Thank you for all the questions, Nyoom!!!! I had a lot of fun. XD

[zombiearmor]

First draft of the final chapter of WWCA is done. I still have to finish editing and proofreading both endings, so why does it feel like saying goodbye to an old friend?