hello and welcome to the circus, hope you enjoy your stay
about me
you may call me v (or null). any pronouns are fine
on my twenties, catalan
im currently a math student so life tends to get in the way
open to tag and ask games :]
i will follow from my main @error404vnotfound and i interact with other writblrs from @visresponding
about my wips
im a fantasy writer and artist with a focus on worldbuilding and developing magic systems. most of the times my characters are on the wheel and i'm just around for the ride (you are welcome to join). i write about grief, time, and finding where you belong
i post my work in here and you can also find writing related art here: vsnr art
v's library:
(i'm terrible at summarizing and explaining what my stories are about, i apologize in advance. i will also add a link to each story's post once i make them)
SHORT STORIES:
a white death on resting in peace
event horizon on circular time
microwave background on linear time
the revolution of silence on the future
five am on ghosts and time loops, probably
PÚLSAR
fantasy - science fantasy set in a preindustrial revolution past
standalone
dual first person pov
currently posting as i translate/revise the Spanish draft
A dying island and her people. Should be enemies that are forced to work together to avoid certain doom: a girl who wants to keep her family safe, and a boy that fights to keep the promise he made
UNTITLED PROJECT (UP)
fantasy set in an early medieval era
five tomes series
wip (working on plot details and logistics
a world where gods are no more than light and smoke, where time is circular and some are blessed with remembering. this is a story about saying yes: to time, to your life, to your choices, and, most of all (and eventually), to death
the master of death, once a kid filled with wonder, who has now forgotten what it felt like to be human, eternity their only constant
the messiah, taught to accept his destiny since he was prophesized, now fighting against what has to happen to right time.
a soldier, doomed from the beginning.
and a priestess, who remembers things which never happened.
i call this a mess (affectionate) for a reason
WIPS I MIGHT TALK ABOUT OCCASIONALY:
cor vitae (cv)
fantasy • standalone • magical creatures, monsters and gods
project:némesis (p:n)
sci-fi • three independent books series • fucked up politics, codes and puzzles, and teens doing the adult's work
tales from beyond (tfb)
folk fantasy • short stories • the tales of a kid that can see ghosts and his teen half fae brother as they go on adventures and solve the murder that occurred in their house centuries ago
time loops and prophecies are easy. you just have to have circular time so everything makes sense 👍
also the secret to my stories is that i was NOT okay when i came up with them, but i am better now so i can work on making everything worse (AND making sense lmao)
time loop with two people in it but one person refuses to acknowledge the loop and pretends to be looping with everyone else. meanwhile the other person is freaking out
first of all: 💀
why does every enemies-to-lovers dynamic either hit like a literary gut punch… or feel like two cardboard cutouts aggressively flirting?
there is no in between. i don’t make the rules.
and if you’re here, i’m guessing you’ve tasted both. the elite. the devastating. the oh my god i need to lie down after this confession scene kind…
and also the ones where you’re like “why do you hate each other again? because he smirked?? be serious.”
yeah. we’re fixing that today.
⚔️ if you’re writing enemies-to-lovers, we need to talk.
because most people aren’t writing enemies.
they’re writing:
mild annoyances
workplace rivals with ✨tension✨
people who had one (1) misunderstanding in chapter two and never emotionally recovered
and listen. that’s fine. that’s a trope. it’s cute.
but it’s not enemies-to-lovers.
🩸 step one: define your enemy
an enemy is not someone who:
is kinda rude
disagrees with your protagonist
has a “bad attitude” (???)
an enemy is someone who cannot coexist with your protagonist without cost.
read that again. PLEASE.
their goals? incompatible.
their values? clashing at a moral level.
their existence? actively making the other’s life worse.
what i'm talking about:
opposing sides of a war
hunter vs hunted
“if i let you live, everything i believe in collapses” energy
if they can just… avoid each other and be fine?
that’s not enemies. that’s tension with good lighting.
🗡️ step two: make the hatred make sense
this is where people fumble it CONSTANTLY.
they jump straight to:
banter → sexual tension → accidental hand touch → oh no i’m in love
NO. come back. sit down.
before attraction, there needs to be justified hostility.
and not surface-level “you insulted me once.”
i’m talking about (and yes please quote 'rin t' on this!):
betrayal
loss
ideological opposition
deeply ingrained bias they don’t even realize they have
the kind of thing where, if someone asked your character:
“why do you hate them?”
they wouldn’t hesitate. they’d have a list
the twist:
👉 both sides need to be right. (or at least feel right)
if one is clearly wrong, you don’t have enemies-to-lovers.
you have “problematic person gets redeemed because they’re hot.”
and we are not doing that today.
🔥 step three: attraction should feel like a problem
this is where it gets fun. :)
when they start catching feelings, it should not be:
“oh this is inconvenient but kind of exciting :)”
it should be:
“this is catastrophic. this compromises everything.”
love = risk.
because now:
their judgment is compromised
their loyalties are tested
their identity starts to crack
they should be actively resisting it.
denying it. sabotaging it. making worse choices because of it.
if falling in love doesn’t cost them something?
you skipped the entire point of the trope.
🕯️ step four: force proximity (but PLEASEEE make it hurt)
you can’t resolve enemies-to-lovers from opposite sides of the map.
they need to be stuck together.
BUT-important distinction-
not in a cute “one bed at the inn” way (yet. we’ll get there. don’t worry.)
in a:
forced alliance
mutual threat
political arrangement
survival situation
where they have to rely on each other…
while still fundamentally not trusting each other.
this creates:
tension
vulnerability leaks
moments where they see each other as human (ugh. disgusting. hate that.)
and every time that happens?
it should complicate things further.
💔 step five: the shift is not soft. it’s violent.
i need you to understand this.
the transition from enemies → lovers should feel like something breaking.
because it is.
their worldview? breaking.
their assumptions? breaking.
their sense of self? yeah. that too.
there should be a moment where:
they realize they were wrong about the other person
and it doesn’t feel good.
it feels like:
guilt
confusion
grief for the version of reality they believed in
this is what makes the payoff hit.
not the kiss.
the reckoning.
🗝️ step six: they don’t “fix” each other
if i see one more enemies-to-lovers arc where:
“he became a better person because she loved him 🥺”
i will simply pass away.
they don’t fix each other.
they force each other to confront things they were avoiding.
that’s different.
love isn’t the solution.
it’s the pressure that reveals the cracks.
🖤 final thought (and a gentle threat):
if your enemies-to-lovers could be replaced with:
friends-to-lovers + mild inconvenience
and nothing changes?
you didn’t go far enough.
push them harder.
make it uglier. riskier. a little bit devastating.
so, question to you my chaotic writers... what’s the real reason your characters hate each other?
not the surface answer.
the one they’d never admit out loud.
i’m nosy. tell me everything. 👀 I LOVE HEARING your thoughts (i reply because yes, i am a real person!)
I HAVE DIGITAL PRODUCTS!!!
if you're writing dark academia feel free to check out this packet filled with all the juicy prompts to spark ideas!
A gothic prompt pack for writers who love cursed universities, secret societies, and scholarly rot.✎ Write the Darkness ✎A 75-prompt horror
need help with your opening pages?! i have a free ebook for you all (aesthetic, cohesive and actually informative! it's free! but tips are highly appreciated!)
✦ A free (and actually helpful) guide to leveling up your first 10 pages ✦If you're unsure whether your opening is ✨doing enough✨ to hook re
This is all well and good, but "workplace rivals with ✨tension✨" is not a common tag on Ao3 (however much I might love this new description for an old favorite trope of mine) so I think this really comes down to prescriptive vs descriptive definitions.
The above is an academic, prescriptive take. Ao3, the feeding grounds of enemies-to-lovers consumers, is an environment largely divorced from the ivory tower, and our diets must by necessity become more diverse or else our filtering skills more precise (using additional tags like "angst with a happy ending" or "heroic breakdown" to find the exact type of eucalyptus we need to survive).
I would not call the post "academic" at all. It's simply written from the perspective of someone who has noticed (as many have) that a lot of supposed Enemies To Lovers stories - not just in fanfiction!! - lack any of the bite that makes the trope effective, and is offering advice to writers for creating that bite. If a writer doesn't mind lacking that bite because they want to "tag for reach" or broadly advertise rather than accurately label, then the post simply isn't for them.
Some of us are also broadly interested in analysis of what makes a story tick. "Just learn to filter better" is a weird response to such analysis, and not really relevant to the original romance sphere.
@/pwiscila on twitter / x / x / x / x / A Temple of the Holy Ghost, Flannery O’Connor / Love of the Wolf (translated by Keith Cohen); Stigmata: Escaping Texts, Hélène Cixous / De Profundis, Oscar Wilde / unknown / Ophelia, Act IV, Scene V
okay so im turning the sketch into an illustration digitally and i'm genuinely making myself upset with it. literally sick to my stomach. i've drawn my characters in upsetting situations before but for some reason THIS takes top one. i did not know drawing wonky circles could make me feel this terrible
