#I think I'll do the bit with Bel's family showing up next

[each-uisge-and-glashtyn]

Fic Author Self-Rec Chain

Got tagged by @hotsuqueen to self-rec my top 5 favorite fics I've written. Let's see...

This one and the next one have got to be tied for my absolute favorites. Yes I reread my own fics and 90% of the time its one of these two. The Frog Prince is my only "long" fic, and it's a P5 shukita retelling of my favorite fairy tale: The Frog Princess. No, not the Disney one, the Russian folk one with Vasilisa the Wise/Beautiful. I poured every bit of my love of the characters, the folk tale, and the arts depicted into it, and I think it shows.

My other favorite, To Paint a Dream, is just as full of emotion to me, but much much darker. D.N. Angel and (presumably) one-sided satodai, it's focused on Satoshi's emotional fallout after a job goes horribly wrong. Pay attention to the tags on this one, please! Spoiler: he does not deal well, and that's the point of the fic. It does have a happy-ish ending though! And is the only fic of mine that I regularly debate commissioning art for (if anyone wants to illustrate the paintings at the end hmu 👀👀👀💰💰💰).

Breaking Locks and Stealing Hearts I think is still somehow one of my favorites, despite it being the very first fic I wrote and imo obvious for it. I'm just so fond of it for breaking the ice for the next 50+ fics! P5 shuake clinic shenanigans that plays with the idea of what if Akechi was closer to shattering and just needed a good spicy push to do so.

Baby Shark Rescue is the newest on the list, and I don't think I was more delighted to be writing a fic ever than I was this one. Every single word is just gleeful sandboxing with some of @hotsuqueen's AUs and bullying my favorite characters. P5/Devil Survivor 2 smashup, set more in P5 than DeSu2, where Yamato's family are yakuza to rule all yakuza, Iwai is a distant cousin, and there are some familial differences in thought about how children should be taught and treated. Featuring child Yamato being a brat! And beloved anyway. The only fanfic of mine I've made art for!

The Devil Within was also delightfully fun to write, inspired by this post by @ belfire. Devil Survivor kazunao in which Naoya might have forgotten to mention Kazuya would need to consume magnetite after becoming King of Bel, and then he helps Kazuya make up the difference. It was very much fun leaning into the base and messy as they went for it, as well as patching up game lore to make it work.

So that's my five! I'm supposed to tag 5 people now, but I hate putting people on the spot for things like this... So, please consider yourself tagged if you wish to be! If you send me a message, I'll even put you in here To Be Official.

#my fic #my writing #persona 5 #d.n.angel #devil survivor

[legacyofabsolutewalnuts]

Is there probably a canon way that Theron gets a hold of the Outlander’s ship? Yeah. Do I remember it? No. So my personal headcanon is that Bel’s crew tried to keep it between them until about two years or so into the war with the Eternal Empire when Vector returned to the hive, and Lokin finally had to go to ground. I think Lokin would have cleared out the ship for the most part, and then handed it over to Theron for safe keeping, because it’s Lokin, and he absolutely knew Lana and Theron were going after Bel. More importantly, in my personal headcanon, Bel sent Gertrude, his service akk dog, back to the Phantom when he realized he might not be coming back from Marr’s flagship, so now Theron has her to contend with. Anyways, consider this a part of the whole fic I suppose I’ll eventually write, set sometime after all that, and before they get Bel out of carbonite. Under the cut bc I’m a wordy bish

There was thumping somewhere in the ship and Theron cursed under his breath, hand going to his blaster instinctively. Silence reigned for a long moment, then another thump, and then claws scrabbling.

Right. Gertrude. Of course. Theron relaxed a little, made sure the ship was on autopilot and then turned to go tromping down the hallway. "What? I fed you, I tried to pet you, I gave you treats while trying to pet you. What else do you want?"

She barked at him. Loudly, from further in the ship. And then continued barking as he found her. 

"Okay! Got it! What do you want?"

She was looking at him with absolute derision. Which was not surprising. She'd barely tolerated him when he'd first met Belville on Manaan, and finally on Ziost she'd at least allowed him to touch Belville without looking like she was thinking about biting him. 

They'd gone back to her occasionally looking at him like a snack. Which was probably fair. 

She was standing at the door to Captain's quarters and Theron grimaced. "He's not in there. Sorry."

She gave him one more baleful look, and then continued scratching at the door. Theron turned to let her be when she gave the most pitiful whine he'd probably ever heard. He held still for a minute as the whining continued, and made a face as he finally turned back and palmed the panel. "Fine then, go-"

It was locked. Which he should have expected. And it was more ridiculous that he actually spent a half hour trying to get in, eventually ending up cross-legged on the floor, the entire control pad dismantled and surrounded by wires and bits of metal.

For a dog. He was doing this for a dog. And his own burning curiosity.

Gertrude hadn’t actually left, instead nosing her way into the mess but kept her muzzle well away from any live wires without needing the command, which was appreciated. She still didn’t seem that impressed with him, but Theron decided it was worth counting being in a shared space as a win for longer than five minutes as a win.

It hadn’t even crossed his mind to send Gertrude with Lokin, if he was to take Bel’s ship, it only made sense for her to stay with the ship. She’d meant too much to Belville for Theron to contemplate separating her from what remained of Bel. And then he’d had to spend a day with her, attempting to feed her, and find out she’d been trained to use a toilet. Which was...fascinating. And said a lot about Belville, really.

It was nearly an hour, and probably the longest Theron had taken to break into anything in a long time when the door finally slid open. Gertrude went scrambling into the room as he fell back, mostly without control to lay on the floor and groan. Cipher or not, no one could ever be allowed to know exactly how long it had taken him to crack Bel’s security.

Gertrude was making noise deeper in the room, snuffling around in the room and Theron sighed, slowly getting up and following her inside. “I know, I’m sorry, he’s not- oh.”

She had shoved herself into the closet, pulling down clothes and was currently turning circles in an amongst Bel’s clothes. He watched for a moment until she settled in, burying her nose into one of Bel’s sweaters and whining softly. Theron swallowed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ya. I know. I wish he were too.”

She whined once more and fell quiet and Theron let her be, scanning the room quietly.

It didn’t look like it had been entered since Bel’s disappearance. Or if it had been, someone had put it back together expertly, which seemed more likely, although he’d be forever annoyed if Lokin had gotten into Bel’s quarters faster than he had. But everything looked as  he remembered, when he’d caught a ride with Bel from Rishi to Yavin 4, although he probably could have paid more attention to the surroundings and less attention to the man that had been under him.

He took a seat on the bed for a lack of anything else to do, leaning forward to rest elbows to knees. The air was stale enough in the room that no one had been in it recently, and he couldn’t smell much more than that, but there was something oddly comforting about being in a space Bel had owned so thoroughly, and whatever smell remained on his clothes was clearly enough for Gertrude if Theron could be any judge of her snuffling.

A part of him wanted to begin rifling through Belville’s things, the part that had been SIS for so long. He doubted Bel had left any immediate intelligence simply sitting around, but there were things he could learn about the man from the things he had left behind. Some other part of him just wanted to look for pieces of the man that had left them all behind. Something that would feel a bit more real than the ghost they were chasing that he was hoping was a bit more substantial than it felt.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t believe Lana, and didn’t want to get Bel back, and didn’t trust that Bel had come back from worse. But it was beginning to feel a lot like they were looking to resurrect a pipedream. It would have been nicer to have Bel here now, probably very annoyed that his room had been broken into by SIS. Nicer to have someone who’d stepped up against impossible odds like this before at their side. 

Really, it just would have been nice to just have him there, possibly get to see him one more time before the Eternal Empire wiped them all out. 

If Lana was right, then it would be decently rude for Bel to come back and find out not only had his room been broken into, Theron had also gone rifling through his things. He kept his hands to himself. It was odd to think he’d only been in here once before, and even at that, Bel had kept him thoroughly distracted to prevent any snooping. Still, there was enough of the man left in the room it felt like he ought to walk back in a moment later. That presence wasn’t one that he could forget. Even if Bel himself pretended not to be aware of the effect he sometimes had on people.

He wanted to say he didn’t miss Bel, but that would have been a lie. It was stupid, considering they had both agreed they weren’t going to work, that they weren’t going to ask each other to do things that would endanger the other, to cross their boundaries to make it work. They had agreed not to even think about asking the other to betray everything the other stood for. He hadn’t wanted to ask Bel to step into danger for him, and Bel had been very clear that he didn’t want Theron attempting to protect him at his own expense, ever.

This could probably be considered a violation of what they’d agreed to. Facing off against the Eternal Empire to get him back was definitely endangering himself for Belville’s sake. But if they failed then Bel would never know, and if they did, then he could handle the lecture later. It was very much a case where Theron hoped he’d have to ask for forgiveness about it.

He’d give a lot of things to be able to ask Bel for forgiveness about this. 

He jumped a little as Gertrude hopped up on the bed, one of Bel’s uniform shirts in her mouth. She circled for a moment or two, then unceremoniously shoved her head under his arm and into his lap. Theron huffed out a half-hearted laugh and scratched beneath the armoured ridges over her back. She settled down on his lap and rumbled happily.

“Ya, I know. I’ll get him back for you. Promise.”

#swtor #my writing #swtor oc #pre-kotfe #Cipher Nine/Theron Shan #Imperial Agent #Belville/Theron Shan #I think I'll do the bit with Bel's family showing up next #or something with my wrath or Consular