#cnclr sparky

[sparatus]

Get to know your fanfic writer!

tagged by @teamdilf thanks j!!

When did you post your first ever fanfic?

i mean theoretically somewhere around 2012 on facebook and now lost to time, but the first one i could actually link you was 2013. it was twispitefic, bella goes to hell to be judged, i tried to mimic smeyer's style and everything

First Character(s) you wrote?

liz and kidd from soul eater. thank god for SE saving me from admitting the much worse animes i got into after it.

Main Character(s) you’re currently writing?

all from mass effect, the arterius clan and associates (saren, desolas, nihlus, abrudas, avitus, and macen), cnclr sparatus and oc family, and i guess shepard's in here too somewhere maybe. also axilus madelivio, another oc character. my baby boy.

Character(s) you haven’t written about before but plan to write about soon?

i was about to say avi but there was a whole summer when andromeda came out that i wrote nothing but avitus/macen macen lives au so. :thunk: i mean for some halloweenie challenge stuff i'm about to dive a bit deeper into more of the sparatus clan who haven't gotten spotlight, esp katus and the sylidros side of the family - katus is sparky's great-grandfather, great mountain of a man, probably single-handedly responsible for several of his descendants' large sizes, and also had an encounter with some 3000-year-old war ghosts imprinted on the shortwave radio. also we're going to dive headfirst into garrus's squad pretty soon, i've meddled with the story and oops i'm attached to characters doomed to die again

Fandom(s) you’re currently writing?

mass effect lol

Platonic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?

Saren Arterius & Desolas Arterius, Sparatus & Quentius, Saren Arterius & Nihlus Kryik & Avitus Rix

Romantic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?

Desolas/Abrudas, Sparatus/OC, Saren/Nihlus, Avitus/Macen, Garrus/OC, Shepard/Jack, OC/OC

Your top AO3 tags?

Pre-Canon, AU - No Reapers, AU - Canon Divergence, Alien Culture, Developing Relationship, Grief/Mourning

Current platform you use for posting?

AO3

Snippet of the WIP you are currently working on?

have the start of itlog ch18 - if bioware can have random npcs pop up to pass on mission-specific leads, so can i, and these ones have their own series to go with them

--

If Jack had been nervy at mention of this mysterious "Haasn" before, Shepard was sure Narcisa leading them to one of the private rooms upstairs didn't help one bit.

Nor did the turian's chipper warning to don't take the captain too seriously or assurance that he's just mean to everyone. That made them feel worse. They were half tempted to go back downstairs and insist Nihlus go deal with it himself, or have the conversation over text if he was so determined not to relinquish his precious owed favor.

The lock turned green as soon as Narcisa knocked. Too late.

Narcisa herded them in before her, then sidestepped and snapped an off-kilter salute. "This is them, Boss," she announced into the dim room. "You need anything from downstairs quick, 'fore the rush starts?"

A low rumble rose, bouncing off the soundproofing so it was hard to tell where it was coming from. If Shepard squinted, they could just barely make out a large, hulking shape lazing across the couch across from them. "We ordered food, see if Rielle's got it," a dual-toned baritone slid out of the mass. "Thanks, Narcisa."

She chirruped, then disappeared, the door sliding shut behind her and cutting most of the lights. All Shepard could make out of Jack beside them was a weak outline cast by the singular overhead left on in the middle of the room.

Fabric slid across fabric. "So this is the mighty Shepard." The new voice was just this side of synthesized, as if coming through a speaker. Off to the left of the big shape, a row of lights Shepard assumed were part of the sound system blinked in and out, and two moved forward – eyelights. "Your mentor is a crafty bastard, you know."

Shepard grimaced. "You appear to have us at a disadvantage," they pointed out, trying to keep their voice level and polite. "Humans can't see very well in the dark."

The big one, a turian they assumed, snorted. "Yeah, Thie, where's your manners? You're sitting in front of the dimmer."

The eyelights narrowed, but before their owner spoke, one light winked out with a soft pap and a giggle. The figure heaved a sigh. “You know what else can’t see in the dark, Ax?”

The turian, Ax apparently, and Shepard tried very hard not to jump to conclusions about what it might be short for, snorted as the lights came up. The eyelights were, in fact, a quarian, a rather scruffy-looking one in a suit of sun-faded blue and lots of patchwork. Their mask was blue, too, but laced with translucent white etching in a stark, triangle-heavy pattern over where their cheekbones, forehead, and chin would be. One hand held back a little periwinkle asari child, who was sticking their tongue out playfully as they stretched out their chubby little baby arms towards them. “Your spawn.”

--

tagging @nightmarestudio606 @otemporanerys @heymacareyna and anybody else who wants to!

#councilor's notes #tag memes

[autistic-council-spectre]

Zan also has a space tiktok/vine an 90% of it is them fuckin w their crew/the spectres

an also lots of vids of them going "vibe check" an going around kissing everyone on the cheek

there's also at least one(1) vid of them picking ppl up which is hilarious bc 80% of their crew mates are taller than them and YET somehow they Will carry them and cannot be stopped

#Zan standing on a table to try an kiss cnclr sparky (in a fam way dont be weird): sir pls do it for the vine #zan tries to pick up Garrus #ends up using their biotics 2 do so

[sparatus]

xenopolitics is my passion. if it were not 3:30am i would make myself a new banner with sparky and maybe quenty + the salarian cnclrs too maybe idk with that slogan because sorry to anybody who wanted exdiff behind-the-scenes shit but no it's xenopolitics all the way down over here

#councilor's notes

[sparatus]

11, 16, 26 and 40 for the fic writer asks pls?

yessss thank you!!

writer asks

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

hfsdlfh i dont read fic very often but let's go digging. gonna challenge myself to find some NOT written by my friends cause otherwise it's too hard to pick favorites :lmao:

No Love, No Comfort by NoCoincidence [Stellaris] is a "i dont go here but this fucks severely" stellaris fanfic that @lightspeedpowerpunk recced me a while back and i inhaled the whole thing in one go, it's about an emergent AI that learns to be aggressive and eradicate organic life as an act of self-defense because its creators tried to kill it first and oh my god it's just so fucking good trust me

To Ourselves and Our Posterity [Mass Effect, orphaned fic] is an old favorite, shakarian childhood friends au where hannah dies and leaves custody of young jane to cnclr sparatus, it was never finished and im obviously no longer onboard with the hannah/sparatus among other aspects but it was one of the first fics i ever read that cast sparky in a genuinely kinder more sympathetic light and honestly i would love to give rewriting it a shot it has a spot in my heart forever

The Wedding Crashers by DasMervin, MrsHyde [Twilight Saga, Supernatural] is a spitefic originally posted on livejournal moved over to ao3 to dodge lj's posting limits, leah clearwater has broken free of jacob's shitty awful pack that's shitty to her and fucked off to go hunt sparklepires, unfortunately renesmee's wedding to jacob turns up and she's forced to attend so she brings the winchester brothers. shenanigans ensue. it's tongue-in-cheek and one of my favorite fun goofy rereads just trust me bro

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

well right now i'm thinking about a short "same scene, different pov" thing for the climax of itlog feat. garrus and tasora, mostly for the comedy of running into garrus's parents (because of course castis got an invite to the anniversary gala, and asadia isn't a frail delicate thing that will shatter if she thinks about leaving the house castis vakarian of course they should go don't try to use her condition as an excuse to be a recluse), because naturally garrus HAD to latch onto the ONE person in the whole embassy who would think his dad's nerdy poindexter routine is attractive

tasora, comfortable enough around garrus to go a little feral: hey blue guess what garrus, literally just got back from not dying horribly on omega: if you say my dad is kind of a dilf i'm walking into traffic

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

blood in the water? blood in the water. it's got half-mad cyborg salarians, it's got batarian worldbuilding, it's got transformers expies, it's got balak, it's got hegemony conspiracy bullshit, what more do you want from me

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

i mean ok i know the cool dramatic action scenes and climax bits are always what people want to see art of but honestly i think my strength is more the somber poignant moments that are quiet but still carry all the weight - The Man in the Mask would be a really good one that i'd love to see art of, with all the symbolism of desolas hiding in the shadows and valis only just able to see a small piece of the whole, or on a similar note ch2 of The Weight of Memory has some really good imagery with the arterius clan watching the sunset from the porch while they talk about the horrors of war, esp this bit:

“We’re ninety, Val.” Desolas didn’t get up, just faced forward and settled his elbows on his knees and chin on his clasped hands. Trebia had fallen low enough to kiss the tops of the trees far across the yard, and as its rays traced over the crags and cracks in his brother’s face, Saren could almost see the ghosts of the man he’d met above Shanxi tracing their hands over his plates once more. Shadows turned to bruises, old scars glittered blue, a weary half-lidded eye swelled shut, teeth disappeared from bloody gums. “We haven’t been young in a long time.”

.... basically any of my shit with the arterius bros, huh. especially desolas. be kind to my big brother he's been through a lot he can have some beautiful but melancholy imagery

#press conference #thetrashbagswasteland

[sparatus]

OC alphabet soup ask - do you have an OC for C?

YESSSSS i have. a lot for C actually thx bb ily!!

OC Alphabet Soup

ok i have Quite A Few for C but the first two to come to mind are calvetorin and calvetana, i had a bad day and need my morally gray harpoon grandma don't get to feature calvetana nearly as often as callie so let's do her

calvetana sparatus is the maternal grandmother of cnclr ierian sparatus. she's roughly 150 by the time of me1 and retired, but in her heyday she was a fisher and the leader of the polar mariners' union in the city of acalin in the palavenian north pole continent of tiirtias. the mariners are uhhh very similar to the teamsters, both in terms of their importance to the city staying alive and in (very well-deserved!) reputation for having the cops and government by the balls, and calvetana lived up to it. she actually has 3 teeth taken from the mouth of the shitty ex who scarred her sweet shy grandson's face, obtained by having her men beat the shit out of him and then having him pull them out of his own mouth and present them to her, because you simply Do Not Fuck With Vzgliy or her clan. she has a harpoon that she uses as a walking stick. everyone on that side of the city has either seen her spin it around and use it, or knows somebody who has.

after she retired, her grandson ziphian (sparky's first cousin, hilariously the one cousin born just a few months after him who he was so close to people asked if they were twins for years) took her place, and she took up a spot by the fire in the locals-only tavern by the docks that also doubles as the union's hq, where she spends her time playing games with her elderly friends, swapping stories... and continuing to scare the piss out of everyone, because she's still a gruff old fisher, retired or no, and she's also an absolute mountain of a woman who can pick up her grandson in one hand ("keeps 'im humble"). she's just kinda un-fuck-with-able and the entire district respects her accordingly.

she's also very fond of ierian, he's her little buddy, he named his only daughter calvetorin for her and she cried about it for days.

#press conference #dandenbo #sparatus family #calvetana sparatus #AND CALLIE BARELY SURVIVED INFANCY BY THE SKIN OF HER TEETH ADDING MORE EMOTIONAL WEIGHT TO BEING NAMED FOR HER POWERHOUSE GREAT-GRANDMA--- #utterly deranged about the sparatus clan so sorry you had to find out this way

[sparatus]

heyy

💋(or suitable turian alternative)🍦💖💞 (I think I know who but feel free to babble about them I'm all ears)

hell yeah thank u 💍

Fanfic Emoji Asks

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

LOVE LOVE LOVE god i need to write more im so weak, especially for when it's two characters who've been friends a long time but haven't been able to bring themselves to admit their feelings until at some point everything comes to a head in an emotional moment and AUGH YES

🍦 What's the sweetest fic you've created so far?

i already answered this one here but let's be honest i've got a lot of soft sweet shit under my belt, lol. Where the Wind Rests definitely gets a shout-out, part of a series and has spoilers for the end of broken mirror but god tender reunions and marriage proposals my beloveds. i went looking through my desabrudas stuff to pick one out but honestly any of the stuff i wrote about them post-shanxi with kids is just pure cavity fodder, i need to write them more everything is oLD

💖 What made you start writing?

i used to be a semi-famous rper in the facebook rp community (back in. 2012. yes it was a thing fb used to be an easy haven for rp) for a. certain anime community i'm not going to mention you must be at least a level 3 friend to learn this fact. but that started it, and then i had a couple friends from that community who helped foster that and got me writing - i have an old twilight spitefic still up on ao3 (do not read it. cannot emphasize enough it's very old and i was mimicking smeyer's writing style and the characters have evolved since then) that was inspired by one of those friends!!

i got started writing mass effect specifically because my partner @lightspeedpowerpunk was writing a fic about our ocs, which eventually grew into Rise & Reign (we're rewriting it soon i prommy plans are in the works i miss my dumb stupid boys) and around chapter. idk, 10?? 12 or so?? i started contributing to writing it myself, and that just kinda kickstarted everything. everybody say thank you to the ogs axilus and thie'haasn for my [checks notes] jesus christ 84 mass effect works on ao3

💞 Who's your comfort character?

m. many,,,,, definitely cnclr sparatus, obviously, and also my oc for his wife, aediteia. the way i've written sparky has taken nearly the full 8 years i've been in this fandom to slowly build, and he's very near and dear to my heart. conversely, teia has also grown along with him, and their narratives both personal and together touch on a lot of things that are somewhat personal to me and my own growth as a person.

in the same vein, the arterius brothers also count - i can look back and see how the way i've written saren has changed over the years as i myself have grown. i write him less depressed now, he has a support system, in yes-reapers yes he's still having a Bad Time because sovereign is fucking him up and the reapers are tied to his brother's death but it's less. idk. gloom and doom emo sadboi 24/7, he's allowed to have moments of peace now. desolas in particular i've kinda realized is also reflecting a lot about myself, ESPECIALLY in no-reapers. his arc in my no-reapers au, and in fact a major theme of the entire series, is all about recovery from trauma and how our choices make us who we are; no-reapers desolas has been through a lot of shit, so much, 89 years of it, from his parents being killed to having to help his baby brother through his own trauma to his career to 314 and everything in-between, and he's been in a really bad place and learned really bad habits and attitudes, but after shanxi he makes the active choice to grow and move on, at first just because valis needs him but with therapy also comes to do it just for himself because he's tired of being sad and hurt and angry. and that's a very personal story for me, even tho i certainly didn't set out intending des of all assholes to be the one carrying most of my weight, lol.

nihlus and (valis) abrudas are also in the same boat, characters who've been through a lot of shit and got mad about it and have their own ways of dealing with it. something that's going to become apparent to shepard in itlog is that saren was nihlus's morality chain, not the other way around - saren played a large part in nihlus learning to heal from his father's death and move on as a person, and now that he's been hurt in this whole thing nihlus is starting to slide back into old habits. valis, on the other hand, is the lone sane man in the whole clan, trying to keep her head on straight and above water while her friends and loved ones are drowning, and i've had to be that friend myself and boy i really do appreciate that kind of character, especially for somebody like desolas who's been drowning so long he's forgotten what the surface looks like.

god i have so many emotions and thoughts about sparkyteia and the desabrudas/kryterius group (i like to call des + valis + saren the evolution trio, personally, as they're all in it, but nihlus makes a proper group name hard :lmfao:) they're all my comfort characters i come back to them every time when i get stuck in my head and start Thinking About Stuff i probably have others but this is already rEALLY LONG,

#press conference #callista-curations

[sparatus]

4, 16, and 20 for the deep fic writer asks!

thx bb kissu

Deep Fic Writer Asks

4. what fic of your own do you read for comfort?

i mean i absolutely keep rereading the last couple arcs + conclusion of broken mirror and the post-script of bitw, honestly, they're really good and i'm proud of myself for them so it's reassuring that i CAN write real good sometimes

but otherwise!! i'm really fond of these ones:

the driver (OC-centric, Cnclr. Sparatus's driver has a bad first day)

annual tribute (Canon/OC, holiday fic, Cnclr. Sparatus and his wife go through the year's Solstice gifts from political allies and suck-ups)

three kids and a reaper war (Jai Shepard and OCs, Shepard finds 3 turian refugees and helps reunite them with their family)

the start of something new (Canon/OC, Cnclr. Sparatus anxiously awaits the birth of his first child)

especially the driver and something new tbh, man sometimes i make myself emotional over sparky bonding with his newborn son, and i really love aurigas a lot for a character who was meant to just be a one-off joke inspired by a shitty earthquake movie, i want to revisit him and the rest of the security detail sooner or later

16. Do you re-read old fics? Is there a time in your writing you won’t go back to?

occasionally! as stated above lol, but past about uhhhh 2017 or so i tend to not reread much, it just hits a point where i see more flaws (and, in some cases, influences from people i no longer tolerate) than i can really ignore to just enjoy it. i've improved a lot as a writer and past 2017 i kinda just. mmmmm no i'm better than this don't look at it

20. What’s the greatest gift you’ve gotten from your writing?

a creative outlet and a way to explore aspects of myself i otherwise never would have gotten a chance to, and more recently a way to lay out what i'm thinking and feeling and start to heal. even beyond the fanfics posted on my ao3, a lot of my original work that i started working on in high school and early college were hugely influential in helping me work out traumas and feelings i wasn't aware i had until i sat down and realized the trends in my work - especially sympathy for the devil and "maybe god wasn't so great to begin with, did you ever think of that?" while i (raised catholic) was having a major crisis of faith and grappling with what i'd been raised to believe vs my actual experiences in the church. instructions unclear, projected onto literal lucifer.

if you look carefully, and are at least a level 7 friend who has unlocked the fucked-up backstory lore, you can see where the themes and recurring character arcs in exdiff mirror some musing i've done on somebody i've cut out of my life. lol

#press conference #korblez

[sparatus]

ALSO on the same subject tbt when i knew somebody who tried to get me to REVISE MY OWN HEADCANONS so that sparky had two wives, one of which is a human woman. not just like, telling me about her own idea. straight up trying to get me to go “yes my specific interpretation of cnclr sparatus has his turian wife, my oc with many years of development and care, and also now this other oc who does not fit my established hc of his sexuality at all, you’re so right.” and when i said no thx ierian isn’t xeno and isn’t poly and is very happy with his current marriage and beloved wife she threw a FIT and stopped talking to me abt him forever. like. ma’am,

#councilor's notes #like you can have your own interpretation all you want!! #i'm gonna side eye you a lil cause it doesnt make sense given what we know of him #but go ahead!! do whatever!! #but oh my god don't try to force somebody else to rewrite their own stuff to suit you?? #ierian and aediteia have existed for YEARS i'm not scrapping half a decade of work on these characters just cause a random stranger asked

[sparatus]

axilus madelivio being related to cnclr sparatus was actually the first part of the sparatus family tree i ever mapped out, then i had to plot out more of it to figure out how they were actually related and put them at first cousins once removed

ax’s dad aephis is sparky’s cousin, ax’s grandma/aephis’s mom is sparky’s aunt corinn, retired polar fisher and feared union boss calvetana sparatus is both axilus’s great-grandmother and sparky’s grandma

#councilor's notes #sparatus family

[autistic-council-spectre]

thinking of my father mr cnclr sparky an i Distinctly remember a mini fic/txt post @sparatus did about like. him using fake swears instead of real swears bc he was hanging around his grandkids

and then i was thinkin about the things I do bc of being around small children

so im not saying cnclr sparky has told at least one Spectre to use their listening ears/walking feet but like. he has

minor edit 2 add: he also has definitely at least once told someone to use their inside voice possibly udina

#nihlus: scuttles somewhere an trips an falls on his face #sparatus: and that's why we use our walking feet

[sparatus]

cnclr sparatus has an uncle (technically first cousin once removed, but he and sparky's mom meana are close enough they consider each other siblings, so, uncle) named tarandus, a dazduus herder like his big brother jaxiter (aka sparky's uncle jax)

and yall it is an honest to god struggle to decide whether i should say his nickname is goddamn "randi"

#ierian's ocs #sparatus family

[sparatus]

i think a small art goal for the summer will be designing tiirti traditional wear, using both cnclr sparatus and his son verres to show the contrast in age and how stuff gets added on the older you get

with bonus ceremonial gear, sparky being a clan elder and verres being a dancer

#councilor's notes #verres is very proud of his culture and dances in the big ceremonies!! he loves doing it and has a lot of fun!! #sparky used to dance when he was younger but once he was a councilor he didn't have the time to dedicate to practice

[sparatus]

i need to do more with the sparatus kids and grandkids. token cishet areus the astronomer and his wife sivia who he loves more than the stars he's admired all his life. daddy's girl calvetorin who almost died shortly after birth and also her cool pro athlete trans lesbian wife rinni. casbius who wants to be a prosecutor and maybe also councilor like his grandpa. viteltiria who was born blind and is her grandpa's little buddy. tia the chaos god and her crybaby twin ollie who just wants to play with his blocks in peace. listen i have so many little stories abt cnclr ierian "sparky" sparatus and his dearly beloved family never ever doubt who my favorite is

#sparatus family