erstwhilesparrow

[erstwhilesparrow]

God I love “We’re enemies, but we’ve been enemies for a long time, which is sort of like being friends.” Great trope.

[erstwhilesparrow]

you in me

[erstwhilesparrow]

questions for fic writers

a collection of questions i, as a writer, would love to be asked !!!

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

6. What’s one fact about the universe of [insert fic] that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

9. How do you find new fic to read?

10. How do you decide what to write?

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

19. If you wrote a spin-off of [insert fic], what would it involve?

20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in [insert fic], what would it be?

22. Who is your favorite character in [insert fic] and why?

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue?

27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for [insert fic]? Explain your choices if you want!

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read?

33. If you write chaptered fics, what’s your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read?

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

36. Do you visualize what you read/write?

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written?

44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

[erstwhilesparrow]

When the silly is so strong you have to try something out of your comfort zone

Enjoy my Shelby Shubble not clowning around :3

(I , I )

[erstwhilesparrow]

for @mcyt-aro-week , based on the Feb 23 prompt ___ to Friends / Adventure / Baking !

content warnings: brief suicidal ideation, internalized arophobia

---

Jimmy wakes with an ugly pit of dread in his stomach, breath smothered against the blankets. Tango isn’t clinging to him or anything — he’s been careful enough to stick to his side of the bed — but Tango’s body is warm. The bed is narrow. There’s a bit of light slipping in through the rough windows in their front doors.

Tango mumbles something sleepily at him when he gets out of bed.

“Nothing,” Jimmy replies quietly. “Just getting started on the bread. It’ll— take a while.”

The rustling of sheets. Jimmy pictures Tango, the rise and fall of his breathing, and then he can’t. He just can’t, so he goes to the chests, where all the real stuff is, the wheat and the water and the bowls.

It’s not hard, making bread. It takes a while, is all. A lot of it is about waiting around. He listens to the sound of the blankets, the occasional creak of the bedframe, while he mixes ingredients and kneads dough. It’s early morning. There’s light coming in, but not much. There’s a little bit of a snore in the way Tango breathes.

Jimmy dumps the dough in a bowl and staggers out into the dewy morning air. He gathers wheat. He replants the seeds. He thinks about the long drop down to the river at the bottom of the ravine. It wouldn’t even kill him. He’d just fall, unless he missed the water.

Oh, but he doesn’t want to be like Martyn, does he?

—

Jimmy wakes up, same pit, same smothering, same light. He fucked up the bread again. It’s not even that hard. Even you could get it right, Tim, comes Grian’s voice, though only a memory. It’s just him and Tango in this house. Just them and the morning light. Tango mumbles something and Jimmy feels Tango’s breath tickle his cheek.

He gets out of bed and goes straight outside this time. He’ll get it right this time. He’ll keep an eye on the dough as it rises, make sure to dust everything with flour, double check that he greased the bowl but not too much. It’s a lot of waiting around, a lot of watching something until you don’t realize it’s changed, but— He’ll get it right this time.

He almost pinches himself to wake up, the early morning mild around him, but Tango’s still sleeping. It’s like a wire between Jimmy’s teeth, tugging at his jaw. His soulmate will feel it if he pinches himself.

Jimmy collects the wheat. Jimmy checks on their gates, their walls. Jimmy does not hesitate in front of their door. It’s just his soulmate in there, dozing, waiting for him. It’s Jimmy’s turn to handle the food. Fresh, perfect bread for the perfect partner.

—

The next time, Jimmy makes it all the way to breakfast.

“You did the bread,” Tango says, tearing out a haphazard chunk of one of yesterday’s loaves and sticking it in his mouth. Chews. His hair is falling in his face, strands like stretched dandelion flowers. “I can feed the animals.” He glances in the direction of the pen. “They could do with some culling, honestly.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy agrees absently. “Yeah, I’ll… Erm. What are we short of?”

Tango snorts unflatteringly. “Everything, man.”

“Right,” Jimmy says. “Right, yeah, we’re really—” He laughs a little. “We’re really poor, aren’t we?”

Tango cants his head, amused. “This is the part where you say all we need is each other, Jimmy.”

“Is it?” Jimmy asks, startled into earnest surprise.

Tango laughs. He turns in his seat so he can stretch his legs out beside the bare, haphazard table. A lot of Tango, besides the colours, is unremarkable.

“I’m not actually done with the bread,” Jimmy confesses. “It’s taking a bit.”

“Just waiting for it to rise, yeah?” Tango says.

Maybe that’s the problem. It takes so long, and Jimmy keeps putting it off. They’ll be out tonight, if he’s not quick about this. And not that they don’t have other food, it is a ranch after all, but if they’ve planted all this wheat, why waste it?

Jimmy’s had a lot of time to think about that. He tries to forget while he eats the chunk of bread Tango hands him.

“Do we not even have two bowls?” Jimmy mumbles, taking another piece of bread and scattering crumbs across their table.

“You used the other two,” Tango points out. He doesn’t make a fuss about much of anything behind closed doors, but sometimes he gives Jimmy this look—

Jimmy sighs and puts his head to his palm. “I forgot.”

As if to salt the wound, when he finally goes to check on the dough, he finds he didn’t even remember to cover it properly.

—

It was different with Scott, wasn’t it? They didn’t trade breath like that. And there was all that business with ‘being married,’ but…

No, we have to share, Scott told him once, in that flower valley with their backs to the border, him rummaging through Jimmy’s chests while Jimmy squinted at him. We’re married; that's how it works. See? I even left a flower for you.

It all struck Jimmy as a very Scott sort of thing to do.

—

This time. This time. He’s put the cover halfway on the bowl already, and he’s got the grease out in the other bowl. He left Tango breathing slowly in their bed and remembered to wash his hands. He’s collecting wheat when he looks up and Pearl’s peering over the wall.

“Hi, Jimmy!” she chirps.

Jimmy laughs weakly. “How are you so chipper this early in the morning?”

Pearl hauls herself up onto their wall so easily it makes Jimmy want to grab his sword. “I guess I’m just a morning person. And a nighttime person. And a middle of the day person. I haven’t been sleeping very much.”

Jimmy puts away the wheat he’d been holding. “You looking for something?”

“You think I’m looking for something?” Pearl asks, grinning too wide.

“Hey now. No funny business,” Jimmy says.

“Funny business? No, no,” Pearl laughs. “Nothing funny at all about this.”

Jimmy crosses his arms. Pearl’s gotten strange, but really, what did anyone expect? Her and Scott breaking off like that— “You should get going. I’ve got baking to do.”

“Ohhh,” Pearl says, eyebrows raised. “All right.” She snickers. “Everything’s harder with two mouths to feed, isn’t it? Tilly’s like that too.”

“Your dog isn’t— Don’t be silly.” Jimmy bites down on his burst of frustration. It’s pathetic is what it is, to be soulmates with a dog. Everyone looks at you and knows. But it doesn’t do to antagonize reds, and whatever Pearl is is close enough. “Just go.”

“Jeez, okay,” Pearl mutters, climbing down the wrong side of the wall and skipping over their wheat. “I thought we were friends, Jimmy.”

Jimmy imagines his chest splitting open, the wicked edge of an axe killing him from the other side of the world.

“We are, we are,” he says. “I’m just— busy right now.”

Pearl laughs again, more brokenly this time. She leaves.

—

Never let it be said Jimmy doesn’t know how to stick to a plan. He’s staying inside for this one, watching the bread rise while Tango eats.

“Ren told you?” Jimmy asks. He’s eyeing the flour they made together. It’s definitely enough, but he’s itching to make more anyway.

“Mm,” Tango says. “Poor guy. But you gotta feel sorry for Grian, too, right? First he gets teamed with Scar, and now this? All that history, the whole server finding out you’re cheating is like—” His voice dips, rough with sleep. “Yeah. Insult to injury.”

Jimmy isn’t sure he can stay where he is another minute. Is he sorry? Is he sorry? Is he sorry? “Poor guy,” he echoes, feeling it reverberate in him, heart and lungs and spine.

“You okay?” Tango asks, the edges of him still soft in the little light that gets in.

Jimmy grins. “Great. I got my soulmate, I got my bread— What more could I want?”

“Iron,” Tango suggests with a sardonic look. “Diamonds.”

Jimmy snickers along with him. He even gets to cut open the dough before putting it in the furnace this time. It burns.

—

Okay. Fine. So it’s not working. So the certainty weighs like a stone in his guts. Jimmy decides on a different tack.

He wakes up — still the pit in his stomach, still the faint light from the door. Still the sheets. But he tries to take a full breath, and he pictures it in his mind’s eye. Outside, once the morning sun has burned away some of the mist. Taking a full breath of cool air. Carrying the dough in the bowl in his hands out onto the wooden platform pressing sinuously along the cliffside. Tearing off a piece of the dough and hurling it, as hard and as far as he can. Like a snowball. Doing that again and again, until all of it’s gone. Until it’s just him, and the air, and a heartbeat in his ears.

Sure. That helps enough. Jimmy gets out of bed. He goes to their chests and follows the steps he’s followed a thousand times. As he’s mixing, he looks down into the bowl. Like a snowball.

No, he’s not doing that. He’s here. He’s got Tango. None of this swanning off to be with chosen soulmates, none of this messing about with snow or cactus or the sharp edge of an axe. Certainly no cheating. Him and Tango, they’re going to get it right, exactly right. He’s going to do it all right this time.

[erstwhilesparrow]

misadventures MYTHICAL SAUSAGE drawing i did in school :D

i used crayons for the first time since i was like 7

he kinda looks like fwhip but shhhhh we dont talk abt that….

ALSO I DID IT FROM MEMORY SO IK THE CLOTHES ARENT ACCURATE🙏🙏

[erstwhilesparrow]

209. Sleepy

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vintage seiko 21-7510 URUSHI

[erstwhilesparrow]

the deeply stupid thing about me is that most of my work experience is in places where i'm doing primarily technical behind-the-scenes stuff and none of the clients know my name, and when i get addressed as "Writing Team" or "IT Guy" my first reaction is "yay :] so true :] i am just the nameless guy who helps you with a thing :]"

[erstwhilesparrow]

hi sorry if this is a weird question but are u viewing your selective editing/meta posts from a “character” angle or an rpf/irl angle? bc sometimes i’m like ah yes. ur talking about the cubitos. n other times i’m like i feel like this is getting into the real psyches of these people LOL

no problem if u do either or, just wondering abt ur perspective and where you are coming from :)

please keep on doing what you’re doing bc it’s SO so good!!

it’s not a stupid question!! don’t say that!!!

short answer: my perspective has always been that I’m talking about the characters and not the actors playing them, UNLESS it’s funny. or hot. or both.

long answer:

just to be clear, I have no issue with rpf as a concept as long as it doesn’t cross the three age-old lines (1. don’t bother the actual people involved; 2. understand that it’s just a fun game; 3. leave actual irl partners and family alone). it’s not usually my thing, but I’ve spent a decade or so in bandom-adjacent spaces so I’ve seen my friends in the trenches, basically. rpf is fine. I don’t really go in for it, but I also don’t think it’s any worse than seeing a picture of a celebrity you find attractive and thinking you’d want to kiss them. it’s human nature really.

the editing stuff does kind of push up against a weird c/cc boundary line* though, I think, because obviously the characters themselves are not doing the editing. scott-the-character is not filming storytime vlogs about abusing his husband, or whatever. it would be really fucking funny if he did, by the way, and I am now distracted by imagining this, but that’s not what’s happening. I don’t even think scott-the-real-person is doing this; I choose to assume that they have all talked about it and no one is being forced into anything. you can see in some povs (but not all. which is another interesting example of selective editing... martyn tends to cut out references to the mid-session break, but ren doesn’t, for example) that they do check-ins before, during, and after each recording session. these people are all friends outside of minecraft, in various combinations. I think grian (real) is probably pretty good at making sure everyone feels comfortable. and multiple of the real people have specifically said they create storylines and lore for their characters (off the top of my head: martyn obviously is notorious for this, but grian also, and pearl, and even the likes of etho, et al.). I choose to believe that, if anyone crossed a line, they would talk about it. because the alternative is imo kind of rude to assume that these grown adults can’t have a conversation about what’s okay to roleplay and what’s not. et cetera.

in that other post I said that memory is fallible and editing is memory, which is a tidy summary, I think! each character’s pov is representative of what (and how) they remember events and interactions. ergo: spreadsheet comparing multiple perspectives.

apologies in advance that most of these involve scott somehow. I have my biases and have never intimated otherwise.

so, for example, in limited life martyn and scott were A Thing. what kind of Thing is up to interpretation; I know martyn (real) has said they were a queerplatonic relationship, and you could definitely come to that conclusion if you only watched martyn (fake)’s pov! but in scott’s pov they were definitely fucking. and martyn cut out a lot of references to that:

in my editing-is-memory theory, this represents martyn specifically blocking out the memory of him and scott hooking up because he doesn’t want to think about it. fair enough lol.

or, another example, scott choosing not to remember ren’s terrible accent in 3L (big same, buddy. I also wish to forget):

or, y’know, jimmy choosing not to think about his own discomfort with tango’s anger issues:

but I also think of this sort of memory-editing as a purposeful thing, sometimes. a great example would be that whole ‘scar, protect me’ scene in 3L where scar cut out half a second of grian saying that:

this is in the middle of a conversation and makes for a frankly quite awkward edit. I do not think that scar genuinely ‘forgot’ that grian said this. I think scar made a conscious decision to focus on the rest of the conversation instead of acknowledging this, because he is protecting grian, by not acknowledging it. this is very maddening and sexy of scar imo. and also grian is just way more complicated.

another classic example that I think really feeds into the idea that this kind of editing can be interpreted as misremembering/not remembering what actually happened is, of course, lizzie specifically redubbing a line to say she was proud of jimmy, when in the original scene she did not say that:

anyway! if you buy into the whole ‘watchers’ lore thing, specifically the idea that they feed on emotions, a lot of this also makes sense. personally I am mildly disinterested in a lot of ‘watcher’ headcanons, but I don’t care about evo and martyn’s not my fave, so that’s probably why! I don’t begrudge anyone their fun.

in conclusion, I will end with one of my personal favourite examples. have you ever purposefully tried not to think about an ex because you’re not quite over them and it feels weird? yeah, scott has also:

also I like to think he cut this because he forgot what kind of fish jimmy was (not a salmon).

TL;DR do you remember the exact colour of your first crush’s eyes? do you remember what you had for lunch a year ago today? do you remember every time you said something kind of mean to one of your friends? well, neither do these guys.

—

*I mean in the sense that it leans up against the fourth wall. if ‘not pointing out editing choices’ were to be listed as a ‘boundary’ by any actual content creator then I would simply have to laugh at them for 1000 years and then disregard it, because that would be insane. there are reasonable boundaries to set as a public figure (‘don’t send me ship content of my characters’) and unreasonable ones (‘don’t ship my characters’).

[erstwhilesparrow]

GIANT LIZZIEEEEEEE, my piece for the traffic zine ^^

[erstwhilesparrow]

JACK: It's Yukai smoking one of these things and then an image of Yukai smoking one and then an image of Yukai smoking one and then an image of Yukai getting grabbed by a Hexcoat. He looks all the way up at it like, "what the fuck?" (Perpetua Prelude 06)

[erstwhilesparrow]

If i had an evil doppelganger i would simply invite it to come live with me. if i can get a wfh job so can it, i'll even let it borrow my resume. Cut our housing costs in half. Double our odds of getting chores done because we each know the other is Watching And Judging if we don't do the thing we said we were gonna do. Way easier to make the bed. Write twice as fast by trading off outlining and drafting. Sure i'd occasionally lose some sleep from holding my bedroom door shut at 3 a.m. while it tries to force its way in to murder me, but what roommate is perfect

[erstwhilesparrow]

my interpretation of tr!Owen :^)

[erstwhilesparrow]

I'm still alive chat i just didn't feel like making art

ANYWAY

I've been obsessed with pirates smp for a minute so let me just

WOOOOO

I have drawn an Owen :3

I miss Pirates smp please come back 😔😔😔

[erstwhilesparrow]

practice working on scenery that got a bit out of hand ft autumn cove

[erstwhilesparrow]

Buginitay