So I've always wanted to sign up for the Rule 63 exchange because obviously like my prompts said I love AUs where one of my faves was always a different gender, and when I finally signed up for it this year obviously I was like, "well, time to request some AUs where my faves were always different genders!" and f!Scar was obviously among those requests because hot and awesome, and nb!Scar was obviously among those requests because hot and awesome and (I have always felt) perfectly fitting for the character, but you took those prompts and wrote something that I wouldn't even describe as a good fic about nb!Scar, but just as a really fucking good fic about Scar. Which I am super in awe of. <3
...but please do not discount the fact that it is. also. a very good fic about nb!Scar. it is both. everything. all of the above. And your writing is so beautiful.
Oh, and even though I don't think I really put any specifics about how I like nb characters to be handled in my prompts, you nailed it as far as everything I love to see in nb and trans character AU/headcanon fic where the character doesn't live in the modern Western world. I really liked how all that was handled.
Anyway! Thank you for a gorgeous and thoughtful gift, I feel so lucky to be the recipient of such a creation!
Her body was as it had always been; her soul’s yearning for God was neither sharpened nor sated.
This is soooooo beautiful. The clarity and precision of your writing is SO good.
Her priestly name was the name of the mother of the first sage to build a house of prayer to God, who was herself granted foreknowledge of his birth by God and settled in the place where it would be built. This was the name they would all call her by thereafter, even people who had known her since she was a little girl; she would let go of the familiar sounds without regret, cease to think of them as her and swallow the first shapes that came to her tongue and lips when she went to give out her name
#1 - this worldbuilding! You pack so much worldbuilding and so many character notes into a couple of sentences! I'm in awe and have so many more questions about your Ishval! I love this!
#2 - you handled the entire name thing perfectly, tying it into Scar's shifting sense of personal identity as well as her history and trauma, yet without being weird about her culture or her trauma or having her think of it in a way that didn't feel... I don't know, Scar-like, lol.
I would quote back the entire section about names belonging to other people if it weren't so long because it was absolutely my favorite part of the entire fic oh wow oh wow
And everything about Scar and Scarsis!
The dull shock at seeing the tattooed limb move according to her own will has diminished and eventually faded for good, even as the knowledge, in her mind, of having part of a woman’s body has begun to feel enduringly stranger.
AND THIS IS SO GOOD
After all that she’s done, she cannot turn back on that road and pick up her priestly name like a treasure she had let fall by chance. But, she thinks fleetingly, perhaps she can still be the daughter of Ishvalan parents, an older sister to someone or a lover to someone else.
And so is THIS!
“I don’t know yet,” she says.
<3!!!!!!
I'm ecstatic over this fic!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I feel like this whole comment is only the barest faltering beginnings of a proper explanation of how much I love the way you wrote this! It's a masterpiece and I will treasure it.
Aahh, I'm so glad you liked it! And thanks for giving me the go-ahead to take it in this direction - it felt like it really would work (hey, know who canonically has a deadname he doesn't want to tell anyone or be called by anymore and a body part he feels a lot of horror towards?) but it could, you know, also hit right down the middle of "trauma made them trans" unfortunate implications.
(hey, know who canonically has a deadname he doesn't want to tell anyone or be called by anymore and a body part he feels a lot of horror towards?)
AHAHA EXACTLY
Thank you for doing such a great job with it and for asking about it in the first place! I didn't get any vibes of that at all -- and rest assured I wouldn't have made any of the NB!character requests I did in the first place if I was worried about "trauma made them trans" implications -- but like I said in my answer to the original question, it was very considerate to ask.
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Koraki Sat 11 Sep 2021 01:44AM UTC
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reconditarmonia Wed 15 Sep 2021 04:06AM UTC
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Koraki Thu 16 Sep 2021 12:53AM UTC
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