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Sanmeikitten - Blog Posts
Oh, fanfiction. Couldn't be me. In totally unrelated news, maybe I'm working on an Owl House fanfic which pays homage to our favorite tropes.
canon: they died
fanfic: fUCK YOU
Twenty-one sheets of paper. She'd started with just drawing the symbol—there had to be a better word for it. Rune? Glyph, maybe?—over and over, trying to recreate it without a reference this time. The first few didn't seem right, but the fourth clicked somehow. Her lines weren't perfect; the drawing lessons her father had given her so long ago were muddied by years without practice, but there was apparently some amount of leeway permitted.
A single tap and the paper crinkled upon itself and expanded into a dull glowing ball of light, and for a wonder, it didn't even hurt her eyes that much. In fact, she liked it so much that she drew it again and made another light, and then another, and then another, and before long she could draw the glyph from memory.
Twenty-one pages, twenty-one lights. If the light really had played any role in Eda's transforming back, Luz was certainly making extra sure the effect lasted as long as possible. Practical applications, practice makes perfect and all that. She wasn't just making lights for the sake of the sheer giddy joy of doing magic. Just... academic reasons.
"I'm the King of Demon Island and I can have hair as long as I want!" Eda leaned out the door to the lounge, wearing a scowl and an apron which read Over Thirty and Still Flirty in a saucy red font. "Yeah, but can the King of Demon Island reach the freezer to get his own popsicles? Checkmate, monarchists." - Six Tropes, chapter 2
Six Tropes: Chapter 2!
The second chapter of Six Tropes Walk into a Coffeehouse is live! The coffee's hot and plot's starting to plot. Actually, it's not just the coffee that's hot, and that's half the problem!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/64465600/chapters/166573918
Reposting all the art (that I can currently show off without spoiling unpublished content) that I've commissioned from the talented @gibbledygoo for my Owl House fanfic, Your Touch | Freedom to be Me. The timeline has been altered. Luz Noceda is sixteen and has been homeless for five years. Driven by a new resolution each day to survive, she perseveres through loneliness and trauma, even as the shadows behind her eyes continue to lengthen. When an impossible door offers an escape from a lifetime of horrors, the fact that she's entered a realm of demons offers no deterrence: she has found a home at last. It has been roughly two years since the Day of Unity collapsed uneventfully and wild witches are still on the decline as the Emperor's Coven gathers its strength and consolidates the once untamed eastern lands. Edalyn Clawthorne, the self-proclaimed most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles and accursed Owl Lady, is about to find a surprise waiting in the market that will change her life forever. Written as if for a new audience, this all-original story gives a fresh perspective of the Boiling Isles. Carrying her trauma like a constant companion, one PTSD-stricken teenager sets about changing the world one imperfectly mended heart at a time. Even for long-time fans of the series, nothing will be quite like how you remember it, except that our protagonist still changes the lives of everyone she touches.
Six Tropes Walk into a Coffeehouse
And the first chapter of my next side project is live! A humorous (for me) fic paying tribute to the tropes of fanfiction glory. There'll a fake relationship, an amnesic protagonist, a coffeehouse, a road trip, enemies to friends to maybe something more, Luz gets to say "fuck" as a treat, and maybe even a hotel room—gasp—with only one bed. https://archiveofourown.org/works/64465600/chapters/165532393
Chapter 30 of Your Touch is live!
This one made me very happy, even if it still didn't accomplish what I wanted it to. But... I think maybe next chapter? Or so I keep saying. https://archiveofourown.org/works/55091485/chapters/165428170
Anniversary of Your Touch | Freedom to be Me
Today marks one year since I began writing my first Owl House fanfic. In that year, I have published 29 chapters for a total of 271,868 words.
The reception has been amazing. I never expected it to take off. I never expected to still be writing it! It's gone so far off the original outline. I thought it'd be maybe a couple tens of thousands of words at most. Five or six chapters, Lumity in the early going, correct the balance of the universe caused by Moringmark breaking my heart, and pay an homage to the HomeLuz AU in the process. One year later, I'm 7500 words into chapter 30 and we've still got a ways to the season finale. After all, people assure me that Willow must girlasplode at some point in order to make way for the Lumity, and I have half a dozen commissions I need to make, and it needs to be at least 20% more queer. This is the main thing still keeping me going. I'm not done until life is done with me.
Six Tropes Walk into a Coffeehouse
A little sneak peek at my next short fic project...
Luz's head hurt.
Her ears hurt and wouldn't stop ringing. One eye hurt and couldn't seem to focus on anything. The inside of her skull hurt and her brain was stuck looping the chorus of that Carly Rae Jepsen song that played on the radio so often, it had to be doubling back through the space/time continuum for chronologically inadvisable exposure. A song couldn't possibly be played 28 hours a day, but Call Me Maybe sure managed it somehow.
What was she doing lying flat on her back in the middle of the parking lot, listening to some girl incessantly singing about her crush, anyway? And why did it feel like she'd just gotten her ass royally kicked by said crush's pickup truck?
Shoes slapped the pavement, growing louder. Someone was running up to her. Maybe she was hogging the good spot in the parking lot and other people wanted to lie here?
"Luz! Holy crap, are you all right?" The owner of the voice swam into sight overhead, accompanied by a slightly translucent exact duplicate who phased in and out of his body like he was performing history's least enthusiastic astral projection. Like, stepping outside his body, but the way a cat stood just on the threshold of an open door waiting for their human servant to turn off the bad weather.
It's hard to look right at ya, baby. Yup, you said it, Carlie. Now can you shut up?
But stranger than that was the feeling that she ought to know who this was, but didn't. Could a face evoke the same feeling the way a word did when it was right on the tip of your tongue and wouldn't quite make that last step out into something you could say, so you wound up sputtering and looking like you had a sneeze stuck in your sinuses? Like, it was just barely out of reach, and she could swear she knew him, but the phrase coming to mind was snot puddle, which wasn't helpful.
Well, astrally projecting or not—which, probably not, but she wasn't gonna say so and potentially hurt his feelings—he looked decent enough. Black kid, maybe a little younger than herself, hair back in a combination of afro and a top knot, and a uniform that sort of matched the one she was wearing if you discounted the illusionary twin he had going on. He really ought to get that checked out.
"Luz!" Out came a phone as if by magic and, yup, he was dialing the magic number that made ambulances appear and finances disappear. She tuned in with half an ear—the other half was hearing you took your time with the call, I took no time with the fall—as he explained that he thought she'd been hit by a car, which, no, it was Carlie's would-be boyfriend's truck, hello. Apparently put on hold, he checked in with her again. "They asked if you think you can move or if your neck might be hurt."
Move? Well, her neck felt all right for the most part. To be honest, everything hurt at least a bit, but it was her head that felt like she'd just squared off with a territorial hippo. Luz experimentally rocked herself back and forth a couple times, then threw her momentum forward and sat up. She meant to let out a sarcastic whoo of triumph, but sitting upright promptly made the world spin so violently that she settled for a sound like a wet alley cat.
"Okay, she was able to sit up, but she's not looking too hot," the guy and his astral projection—scratch that, there were three of them now!—reported to whoever was on the other end of the phone. "She's got a bad gash over one eye and I don't know if she's really with it. Hold on, I'll check—"
He covered the receiver and asked, "Do you think you need to go to the hospital?" Then, with a frown, he added, "Did Amity do this?"
Hospital. Nope. Her mom would kill her if she was anything less than dead before winding up in a hospital. With an effort of will, Luz put on her most reassuring smile and laughed nonchalantly. "I'm fine! Who's Amity?"
This did not go over as well as she'd hoped.
A Role to Play: Finished!
Part 3 of RTP is done! This encompasses several months in the domestic life of Vee and Masha and the significant developments in their relationship. It is very spicy.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/59673937/chapters/164143651
I do have some notions for future RTP content, but otherwise, I'm calling this done and moving on to chapter 30 of Your Touch, and starting up another side project I'm calling Six Tropes Walk into a Coffeehouse — a humorous human AU, beta Lumity story! A little preview:
Amity is the heiress of the Blight family fortune. Luz is a small town girl—or maybe boy; she's not always sure what she wants to be—who's been putting up with her snooty behavior for the last two years, and if she hears "service with a smile!" from her manager just one more time after a visit from the insufferably catty young woman, she might take a bat to his head. They're as different as could be, from social class to the grades they get in school. They mix like oil and water, if the oil's on fire and the water wants to kick its ass.
So when Amity comes into the coffeehouse to ask a huge favor, Luz is determined that she's going to get her money's worth before she agrees to anything. Amity needs a date for the biggest business dinner of the next ten years. Every major competitor will be there, vying for the attention of investors like the Blights. Mergers will be discussed. Deals will be signed. Futures will be carved out between billionaires and their kids, and the kids won't necessarily have a say in matters.
Amity needs a date. It's the only way to ensure her parents won't try to sell her off at the first opportunity. The problem is that any of the people she calls friends are exactly the kinds of people she'd rather not wind up married off to, and since they're already on her parents' short list of approved company…
It's a perfect opportunity to get this unbearable, self-important snot out of Luz's life for good. One night of shaking hand and speaking in a fake rich person accent for a pile of money and never seeing that ridiculous dye job in the customer line again? She's down.
There's only one small problem, and it just ran her over in the parking lot.
"Luz, are you okay? Did Amity do this?!"
"I'm fine! … Who's Amity?"
Chapter 29
Dear stars. At long last, chapter 29 is finished, clocking in at over 18,300 words. I may have let this chapter get completely away from me. https://archiveofourown.org/works/55091485/chapters/163481692
Chapter 29 is now over 12000 words. Not too much longer now, hopefully. It'd be nice if things would stop being on fire for a little while, but we'll see if I can catch one single bloody break.
My brain has been extra crispy lately thanks to, well, stuff, but work on both Role to Play and Your Touch is continuing. I'll probably post chapter 29 sometime in the next week-ish? No idea about RTP Part 3 yet, haven't put as much work into that as I'd like (I feel awkward about working on an explicit fic around friends, go figure), but I sunk 628 words into it the other night. If folks want more frequent updates, I post my word count every night in The Owl Trust, our Discord server for TOH fanfiction. If that's something you'd like to check out, hit me up for an invite.
Just a little sneak peek of an upcoming commission piece by the magnificent Gib...
Apparently, once I finish Role to Play*, I'll be doing a silly, potentially spicy fic of Vee in a massive polycule. :p An Extra Dose of Vitamin Vee * Current plans are for RTP to consist of three parts. I do have ideas for a fourth part, but if I write it, it'll just be bonus material.
A Role to Play
Part II of my spicy Veesha fic is up! I needed a bit of a break after chapter 26 of Your Touch, and chapter 27 is going to be hard as well - Odalia continues to be Odalia. But until then, we have 12,685 words of Vee growing into a young adult, setting out on her own, learning a little about life and a lot about herself and how weird relationships can be. I say this is a Veesha fic because that's the central relationship, but it's got a lot of Vee and the unnamed cheerleader girl from episode 1, who I've dubbed Clara McKinley. It's no secret that if I wind up writing a Part IV, Clara will be part of the cast. Clarveesha anyone? Word of warning, the spice levels have ramped up considerably, and the next part (aka the part I actually started this fic to write in the first place) will be straight up incendiary. My works
Baby Boscha!
This time, @gibbledygoo blesses us with adorable Boscha baby pictures! Featuring in chapter 17, the grudgby star and bully wasn't always an irredeemable witch, and she certainly didn't come from a broken home. Somewhere along the line, she just... lost what it meant to be loved. Something set her apart from others and she didn't understand what it was. Only Amity seemed to offer what it was she wanted, but what she wanted wasn't very healthy... Maybe she'll get the opportunity to give Amity that bracelet someday, if she ever finds out what happened to her. As always, this art is for the fanfic Your Touch | Freedom to be Me, part of the Broken and Beloved AU. Luz Noceda, orphaned and homeless, finds a mysterious door which leads her to the Boiling Isles two years after the events of the canon universe have taken place. Luz takes the lessons of the street and brings a whole new dimension of empathy and compassion to witch culture, much to the discomfiture of a certain grudgby captain.
A Role to Play
I've taken my first foray into spicy fanfiction. It's a Veesha fic covering the gradual deepening of intimacy throughout the years of their relationship. It being me who's writing, Vee's trauma plays a heavy role in things, and a lot of development takes place before it gets to anything adult-rated.
Find it from my AO3 profile if interested.
As usual, time for a little expansion after the Blaze burns out. ^_^ I actually had never intended to write Willuz content, but discovered midway through the scene where they first meet that I had crafted two versions of these characters who needed each other very badly. I take it as a major compliment how many people have admitted that they don't ship Willuz, but love the way I've written them. Of course, the fact that I'd begun this fic for Lumity content and still intend to make it happen does mean something's going to have to change, doesn't it? Maybe folks would be interested in reading along to find out how that develops...
A Kiss Beneath the Mistlefoe
In honor of chapter 13, Willow and Luz share their first kiss beneath the mistlefoe! After hearing how much Luz has gone through to be the person she is today, Willow gives in to her heart's desire. As you can see, her feelings are very much reciprocated. This scene is from my fanfic, Your Touch | Freedom to be Me, part of the Broken and Beloved AU. In this universe, Luz became homeless at an early age and spent several years on the run, only arriving in the Boiling Isles two years after the events of canon had already taken place. So much is different, but some universal constants remain... The artist behind this amazing piece is Gib.
A Kiss Beneath the Mistlefoe
In honor of chapter 13, Willow and Luz share their first kiss beneath the mistlefoe! After hearing how much Luz has gone through to be the person she is today, Willow gives in to her heart's desire. As you can see, her feelings are very much reciprocated. This scene is from my fanfic, Your Touch | Freedom to be Me, part of the Broken and Beloved AU. In this universe, Luz became homeless at an early age and spent several years on the run, only arriving in the Boiling Isles two years after the events of canon had already taken place. So much is different, but some universal constants remain... The artist behind this amazing piece is Gib.
Chapter 22!
It bugs me so much that AO3 going down seems to have kneecapped the usual bump in views and comments I get after a new chapter. I need my dopamine fix! XD
Hello all who appreciated this! I'm not very good at navigating tumblr, so I'm not sure if any of my replies went out to anywhere they actually get read, heh. A few general comments on this piece: The artist is @gibbledygoo and I cannot recommend their work enough. I've commissioned them three times and they're brilliant when it comes to taking my meandering prose and turning it into exactly what I imagined. I have aphantasia, meaning I can't picture things in my head, so their ability to consistently take my blather and turn it into a gorgeous piece is nothing short of magical to me. I've blazed the last couple of pictures they did because work this nice deserves to be seen. If I can drive any new traffic to their commission page, so much the better. This particular picture is for my fanfic Your Touch | Freedom to be Me, an alternate timeline AU in which Luz ran away from home at the age of 11 and spent five years homeless before finding her way into the Demon Realm, two years after the events of canon took place. Many of those events continued in her absence, meaning that the timeline is very different from the show canon. It was primarily inspired by HomeLuz, but makes several nods to other influences such as MoringMark's comics and fics such as Painted Green, Covered in Red. A recurring theme throughout the fic is mental health, as many of the characters face real challenges which shape their outlook and impact the way they function in school and society. Luz in particular carries the trauma of homelessness and suffers guilt, a distorted perception of herself, and panic attacks from having had to live so long in survival mode. Characters struggle, are supported, and are loved regardless of the challenges they face. As an older writer (to put it one way, my last fanfic was written in 2003), I approach the worldbuilding as if the reader were new to the series, intertwining headcanons with established canon in ways I hope make the writing both accessible and intriguing. It's also very, very queer. I reckon to be about a third of the way done, so I'm expecting around 60 chapters or around half a million words before calling this one good, but I could be very wrong! After all, I expected to be much, much further along in story development by this point, so maybe this will turn into the next Angel of the Owl House. Who knows! Hopefully I make it worth reading regardless. You can read it here.
A home for Luz
Gib has done it once again! Commemorating chapter 6, "What we Owe to Each Other," we have a beautiful domestic scene of our owl family coming together, finally acknowledging the familial bonds between them. It's taken a long time for Luz to heal enough to trust that this is real and won't be yanked away from her, but at long last, she has finally found a home and people who love her. Gib's art Your Touch | Freedom to be Me
A home for Luz
Gib has done it once again! Commemorating chapter 6, "What we Owe to Each Other," we have a beautiful domestic scene of our owl family coming together, finally acknowledging the familial bonds between them. It's taken a long time for Luz to heal enough to trust that this is real and won't be yanked away from her, but at long last, she has finally found a home and people who love her. Gib's art Your Touch | Freedom to be Me
Milestone!
I just hit chapter 20 in my fic. 160,990 words' worth of angsty teenage goodness intermixed with a dollop of fluff, found family, and enemies-to-friends and a metric buttload of added nuance and character complexity. And Luz and Amity still haven't even met.
Copying over my chapter 14 postmortem from Twitter.
In my fic, Luz thinks of herself as a bad person trying and failing to be better. That's her core character trait, her innermost motivator: the ways people hurt her and what she had to do in order to survive have imprinted upon her as evidence that she's irredeemable, but it doesn't stop her from trying. She can't help her past self, so she seeks to help everyone else today and will never feel like it's enough to make up for what she's done. The fact that no one is condemning her is drowned out by how much she hates herself first and foremost among the humanity she hates at large. When they broke her, they broke her faith in people. She gradually regained her trust in others with the unconditional love of Eda and her owl family, but that faith in herself remains shattered. She is Broken and Beloved.
the people i love don’t hate me enough
It doesn't work with how I interpreted Boscha in my fic (no major surprise since there isn't even an AO3 tag for how I decided to headcanon her), and yet not incompatible with a scene I have in mind for the future. Amused that weaponized kindness seems to be the evident approach we'd both think of for this witch. "Oh, so that's your problem. Guess what? I care about you now. And no, you don't deserve it. Tough; I'm gonna do it anyway. Deal with it."
Boscha (1/2)
The Hexside Skittle Squad!
Might as well post it here too! Thrilled to have received this art I commissioned from @gibbledygoo in honor of the Skittle Squad: Morgan Terry, Not-So-Average-Fangirl aka Elijah, and Wee Scottish Reacts aka Mosco! These lovely people helped stoke my passion for the Owl House, leading me to finally take the plunge and come out of retirement to start writing my first fanfic since 2003! As thanks, I'll be including their Hexside counterparts in a cameo in the upcoming chapter 19 of the fic in hopes of sending some new faces to their channels to repay the many hours of entertainment and inspiration I've gotten from their reactions and analyses of this series and many more! A link roundup: Gib Morgan Reacts Not-So-Average-Fangirl
Wee Lass Reacts The fic in question: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55091485/