What Was Your Inspiration To Write The Story?

This is so unbelievably stunning!! I love everything about it! Thank you so much for creating this and for being one of my readers 💕

Another romance cover-esque piece, this time inspired by @honeybumi's The Tides Pull Us Closer, a skk pirate AU!

textless version and reference cover under the cut

Cover inspiration from the 2006 French edition of Kinley MacGregor's A Pirate of Her Own (Pirate de mon coeur)

Heyhey!!

Would you, theoretically, be okay with someone pointing out some small grammar mistakes in your fic? I've noticed a few super minor ones, like an extra word here and there. Would it bother you if someone, say, mentioned it in a comment and then deleted the comment afterward? Totally understandable if it's not!! Sorry if my wording is weird but i hope u got the point!! :)

All the best to you and can't wait for the next update!🤍

Hi! I wouldn’t mind it :D!

I don’t have a beta and whenever I finish a chapter I get so eager to publish it that I definitely overlook mistakes…

Needless to say, I’m not the best at proofreading lol. I edit a few things here and there whenever I need to reference past scenes/dialogue but other than that I rarely read my published chapters since it’s all in my notes.

(All the best to you too <3 and sorry I took so long to get back to you ;-;)

Hello!! I have two questions about the story:

1) How big is Dazais ship and crew? I just can't imagine how big the ship would have to be for it to comfortably fit 40+ people (that estimated number comes from chapters 11-13)

2) In what part of the world does this story take place in (if there is a specific region)? I suppose they speak japanese in the story, which would mean somewhere around there?

(also I can't describe how excited I am about the next update sugsjvslbahaus)

Thank you!! 💙

Hi!! Happy to answer:

1.) The ship is on the larger side! I searched up a lot of ships while outlining the story but none of them fit the plot like I needed it to (yep, even the ship has lore!) until I eventually settled on a three-masted frigate. The crew is made up of about 50 members, which is a small number when compared to the size of the ship, a type which can hold crews about three-times the size. Btw I referenced this diagram (and then took a few creative liberties) with the structure of the boat:

For reference, here’s a few examples of frigates:

2.) The environmental setting is fictional with some real-world inspiration. They do speak Japanese but there’s also a monarchy which is loosely based on the English throne (hence the references to gold and red uniforms). But really, I won’t use any real-life names of countries or territories, every place they visit will only exist in their story so if you want to picture them in a specific region, go for it!

I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to come back but I will!! 💜

is there a chunk of writing you’re extremely proud of?? like a paragraph, sentence, etc. that you wrote and you went damn bitch i did that

i love your writing and i’m curious to see what parts stand out to you as the author

Oh great question! I recently had this feeling when I went back to read the story up until this point (it had been a while since I had due to the hiatus) and I had a lot of "wow, how did I do that??" moments lol. I guess I can say chapter 7 gave me that feeling the most with Chuuya's internal dilemma, the action, and the reveal! I remember I spent a long time planning it out and circling through a bunch of drafts to get it right.

Oh! And I'm also proud of the fight skk had in chapter 10 and the buildup behind it because I remember sitting in front of my keyboard after that and going: okay now, how am I going to make them make up?? And then BAM, I figured it out!!

Then there's this scene too:

Good luck for your last exam! And happy belated birthday!!

Thank you!! <3 I can't believe I'll be done soon :D!!

don't want to write I want to think very hard about my fic until it emerges from my head fully formed like athena

Not to be creepy but can I ask what country/time zone you’re in? Just so I can know when “tonight” is so I can plan my day around reading the new chapter as soon as it drops 😂

I’m in Pacific Standard Time!!

oh my goodness life has hit me rlly hard too but I just checked in on the tab i have for ur fic and my eyes bugged out of my skull at seeing two new chapters i am so hyped for when I finally have time to catch up 💞💞

Hi! I remember you!! Welcome back, I hope you see some sunnier days soon <3

And I hope you enjoy the updates :D

Hiiiiii i hope u r doing well ummm i've got some questions if its not a bother soooooooo , is there a chapter or a scene ahead in the story that you r nervous about ( i dont know if someone has asked this question before ) and are we geetting any kousano in the future chapters ♡(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)♡

Hi!! Of course it's not a bother!

There are a few scenes I'm nervous about and one of them pertains to Dazai's backstory. Lately I've been outlining how it's going to be weaved into the story and as I was going through my notes it suddenly hit me that I've never written anything as tragic before, at least not to that degree. So I'm nervous about how the finished product will look like and the reaction.

And then there's the second thing, which is that there will eventually be content (as promised in the tags) that will cause the fic to have a change in content rating and that's definitely something I've never written before.

However, despite being nervous, I'm also looking forward to the challenge!

As for the kousano content, I'm sorry to say that there will only be breadcrumbs at best. I did toy with the idea of making it a tagged ship in the beginning, but once I planned out the story, it didn’t end up fitting the narrative.

Are Dazai and Chuuya the same age? If I understand correctly Chuuya is 18 (he said that when he was 13 he got that scar in chapter 10 and that it had been 5 years since then so 13 + 5 = 18). It was said in the first chapter that Dazai couldn't be older than he is, so the logical conclusion would be that Dazai is 18 as well? Is it true?

Yes it is! They’re around the same age but Chuuya is slightly older (similar to canon). However, he’s closer to being 19 now and will probably reach that age by the time the story ends. I considered aging them up considering I added canonically younger characters but these ages made the most sense when I got to Chuuya’s backstory and when I found out that pirates were usually in their early to mid 20s. Poe, Ranpo, and Yosano are older than skk by two or three years and Aku and Atsu are younger by one.