I admit I was trawling for some easy smut to read and got Underline the Black. Usually I back out when the story doesn't go how I expect and instead I've binged the whole thing in six hours and find myself painfully relating to Efni's gender and sexual trauma.

I don't know how to describe it but I'm AFAB and grew up Christian with all these expectations and secular ones and I was so scared I rejected everything and tried to be this person I thought I had to be. And I've done that over and over and I'm thirty now and I think I'm finally coming to terms with my place in gender and sex and all that.

It's still a long journey and idk I know a lot of trans people get squicked by ABO stuff and it's based off bunk wolf science but. Idk. This is the most I've ever felt seen I think. So thanks.

Hi hi,

I really love omegaverse, you might be surprised how many trans people are writing it on AO3 - trust me when I say it's a lot of us. :)

A lot of the reasons trans folk can find omegaverse squicky is actually a lot of the same reasons why trans folk can find it cathartic or interesting or crave reading it. Everyone's reasons for ending up in omegaverse are different, because it's really just a huge umbrella term for like, countless different genres, tropes, levels of worldbuilding, sex, and types of story.

I don't really mind that it's based off debunked science, hell, I've even written a logical explanation for that in my Perth Shifters series lol. There's a lot of science we have today that was initially based off of bad science, that scientists then went 'oh yeah, that's not great, but we might keep the terminology anyway, because everyone's using it.' So that works out just fine. It's not like all of our science in reality started off in the best places, some started off in pure medieval spaces and then just kind of...grew up over time.

I apologise for the lack of easy smut though in Underline the Black! I have a lot more of erotica / smut in my other works, like Spoils of the Spoiled or Game Theory, so far we're still a while away from anything more than the handjob that's coming up in a couple of chapters re: Efnisien and Gary, that's definitely a slowburn! :D

(You might like Underline the Red though, which has some alpha/beta smut instead!)

And yeah, gender stuff is so hard. I'm glad you're coming to a place that feels right or is starting to feel right re: gender. I know I started that journey for myself in my early 30s and now that I'm in my early 40s it's only really started to settle into place. This stuff can be rough, especially when you're raised in repressed and oppressive and harmful societies.

Being able to explore gender stuff in Underline the Black has been a lot of fun for me. I much prefer doing it this way, than doing it with the genders we already have irl, tbh, because it lets me detach a little, but it also means that the omegaverse genders can become metaphorical for a lot of different issues, and I enjoy the power of something that can work in a few different ways. :D

(Also just a note, in the future can you please write it as a/b/o or just say omegaverse, because otherwise you're just writing a horrible slur towards Aboriginal Australians and we're generally trying to avoid that. Appreciate it going forward thank you! :) ).

Re: your - totally valid! - feelings on writing more Augus & Gwyn as MCs. Do you find still writing the Nascent Diplomat emotionally taxing bc of that? Like, I adore that story and would love to read more ofc, but if it doesn't bring you any joy that would dampen my own enjoyment too. Personally, I'd much rather you put TND on pause and maybe pick it up again in a few years, but just write the stories you are excited about for now! Idk, just, pls write what makes you happy, Pia💗

Hi anon!

Let's talk about this in more detail and hopefully you'll understand better at the end of it. :)

I can still write The Nascent Diplomat partly because it's not a conventional romance story (Gwyn is developing relationships not just with Augus, but also with Kimerrin and Temsen), partly because I started it before I burnt out on Gwyn/Augus as a couple, and partly because the feel of the story is so different to general stories where Gwyn and Augus are present.

Augus' sadism has been muzzled by Gwyn's traumatic past, and putting Gwyn with the vench means he can't use his stoicism and his stubbornness in the same way anymore without literally disabling himself and suffering, so they've both had to become as much different people as they could possibly be within the scope of who they are.

I've found a lot of the time, the things most folks want from Augus and Gwyn is - understandably - when they are most 'themselves' in new stories. So Augus as a sadist, potentially taking Gwyn (or another character) down or taming him or being an incredible dominant. Or Gwyn being stoic and repressed and having a traumatic family background and needing to be hurt until he has no choice but to accept comfort and being a submissive in denial that he's a submissive. And I've now written versions of that narrative about 6 or 7 times. Gwyn being with Temsen would be a similar enough dynamic to classic Augus/Gwyn, that while it's fun to think about, I just can't write that same journey again with either of those characters any time soon?

And The Nascent Diplomat isn't that journey either, it's one of the reasons I do enjoy writing it still (though I don't think I could write more than one chapter a month, which is why I...only release one chapter a month, so I stay fresh with it and can stay present with the characters).

And one of the comments tND gets most as an AU, is that it's incredible how different this version of Augus and Gwyn are, compared to all the other versions, because of circumstance/s.

But any time a new AU idea or something similar comes up, what folks want most - say even with Gwyn/Temsen - is very classic Augus/Gwyn dynamics, and I'm just... not writing those with Augus/Gwyn because I've done it 6~ times now across over a million words, and I no longer feel fresh with it, with those characters specifically, as a concept. And I feel like if I kept forcing myself to write the dynamic people ask for the most from them, or expect from them, that's when I would really truly burn out. And tbh anon, I did just...stop writing them in that dynamic actually years ago. Even the epilogue that Augus/Gwyn are in, within Fae Tales, is very different from COFT and GT content. I had 'Gwyn is too traumatised for sex' to fall back on, but I deliberately could not write something similar to what they used to be. In some ways that was a win (we got to see a different kind of love between them, and a different way of coming together for them), but... *thinks* it's been years since I've written 'classic' Gwyn and Augus and my burnout hasn't gotten any better. To me, The Nascent Diplomat isn't very classic Gwyn and Augus at all. And it makes me happy to know that Augus will likely never be able to be truly sadistic to that version of Gwyn, because it means I can't be sort of...driven back into that version of that story for those two.

So while I appreciate your concern, anon, I wouldn't write a story I didn't want to write or didn't know how to write. I'm not that sacrificial and I care about my mental health too much to do it, which is why I constantly say I won't be (or will not likely to be) doing it anymore in new stories, lmao. Even if that risks the displeasure or dislike of other people.

The Nascent Diplomat gets to sit in its own window. It helps a lot that it only demands 12 chapters a year from me, so it never really trips off that burnout in the same way. I'm sure if I had to write more of it more often, I may have put it on hiatus, but I don't need to because I found the sweet spot for it.