#(i actually have a way longer version of this written on a google doc lol but that will stay there)

[sejarcus-archive]

Modern Sejarcus au based on the lyrics of Good Luck, Babe!, in which they’re childhood friends who grew up in a homophobic small town, and though it came with a lot of pain, Sejanus was able to accept that he’s gay, but Marcus can’t bring himself to do the same and keeps living in denial, so when they eventually develop feelings for each other, all of this leads to a pretty toxic homoerotic situationship

[campbyler]

hey guys it’s me again…i was wondering if we could see a (non-spoilery!) glimpse of your planning doc? i’d love to see how you guys are keeping the story going smoothly through the three of you and also just. what it looks like. if that’s ok.

ok love uuuu bye running into the sunset

since we got a couple of asks about this i'm just going to answer them together :-) it's been a hot second since we've talked about our writing process and since we have a few chapters now and are no longer at risk for spoiling Everything in one fell swoop, attached are chapters 1-5 from our official outline document! this is the one we use to actually navigate and reference for the fic as we write, but we've had two or three versions before this where we did the majority of the actual planning/going back on forth on scene ideas. those got really difficult to navigate after a while, so we cut out a lot of the commentary (we are hilarious. #trust) and fluff and made this one pretty bare-bones, but we have the entire fic planned out this way and have had it planned out before any of it was ever written! it definitely helps with continuity, because other than some minor changes to the dates and stuff (we realized at one point that like three chapters all occurred within the span of one week lol) and some retconning to some vestigial scenes from our original fic concept - which was very different in some aspects when we first thought of it back in january - we've stayed pretty consistent to this outline while writing. we also have a million other documents as well - playlist organization, an entire document we used to plan out titles lol, a google slides presentation breaking down the timeline, etc etc. thea and andi are much better outliners than i am because i rarely do it for my own fics but this process might have converted me fr. to some extent. anyways! enjoy snooping! or don't. lol. hope you like my commentary xoxo

(side note: chapter 5 probably had the most retconning of the chapters so far - the closet scene was one of the first ones we thought of for the fic and therefore heavily relied on how we originally imagined their dynamic to play out, which was really really different than how we ended up writing them! needless to say i definitely struggled with it lol. but it worked out fine. i think.)

[viscerawrites]

status update 9/28/2024

just a lil post to announce what fics ive worked on/tasks ive crossed off my checklist today! its mostly for myself rlly fcngnhkk buuut its here if anyone's curious ig? Im just chilling

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what ive accomplished today:

wrote 492 words for chapter 2 of where love didn't exist

today was the first time ive been able to work on this fic (w/o anxiety) since i first posted it in january, so that's pretty nice! tbh i lost so much confidence in it after i lost my therapist since i was hoping to use it as a coping fic while i processed shit. but who knows, maybe it'll still help me learn things abt myself. regardless, im excited to be back at it!

wrote 156 words for my sleep token oneshot wip, the body as a temple ; got it to 913!

i havent worked on this one in a while either lol, mostly bc i started it right before The Anxiety started hitting me every time i sat down to write. i was honestly rlly nervous to return to it cuz i was scared I wouldn't be able to keep writing it at all. but im giving myself the grace to move slow, so. rare W for me.

retyped/sorta edited 582 words for chapter 1 of my hollywood undead wip the exorcism of jorel decker

i actually posted this 1st chapter a long while ago! then i deleted it, tried to rework into original fiction, realized i was having much more fun writing it as bandfic, and then foolishly orphaned the original version instead of just deleting </3 but the good news abt that is. idk if i still have it in my google docs at all. so at least i have that to reference LOL.

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soo.

today is saturday september 28 (this month is going by way too fast fr) and it's just past 6pm rn. got a late start today bc i was exhausted as shit for a while, then i talked to my mom incessantly for what was apparently hours. So i only got started around 3pm (but i still needed to warm up, soo it took longer. Bleh).

didn't set my checklist goals at the start of the day like i planned to bc i was having The Anxiety and a bit of decision paralysis. and was also worried abt.. Various things. so it doesn't feel as successful today, but ive still gotten shit done and that's what should matter to me.

out of everything ive typed today, ive done abt 1,230 words in total so far. Most of that was unfortunately just me retyping shit ive already written and am now moving from google docs to ellipsus (which i highly recommend btw). i typically prefer to retype into new software instead of pasting; it gets the brain flowing better.

but i did still write some new words, and a lot of what i retyped was modified and added to. or cut. Whatever it needed rlly.

im still trying to find the proper schedule for myself + the best way to juggle my millions of projects/ideas. I need to allow myself some wiggle room while still having some structure. adhd is making this a bit difficult (as it so often does), but it's rlly just trial and error rn. Plus a lot of self-acceptance and focusing on making things easier and more fun for myself - instead of worrying abt the "most reasonable" way to do things. Or anything others might recommend.

I do still plan on writing some more before the night is done, so I might be back w/ an update for this before I head to bed. I got distracted by my brother while writing this post so it's now just after 6:45 LOL.

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gonna close this post off w/ music ive been rlly liking today! bc,, why not.

Animals - Ice Nine Kills (maroon 5 cover)

Disturbia - The Cab (rihanna cover)

What I Never Learned In Study Hall - Ice Nine Kills

[bestbuddybobby]

writing meme: about me

I saw @fandominstability do this and it looked fun so here is my version! ◡̈

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

When I was around 11-12 I used to write a looot of written RPG. A few years later I got into reading fanfiction, but I never wrote it until I found some of those old RPGs again and my love for writing was reawakened. With some encouraging from @lavoixhumaine I finally decided to actually write for Bathena and post it on ao3.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

I have only written for 9-1-1.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

Since November 1st 2023!

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

Absolutely 100% read. @mattoidmeerkat likes to call me 'seeing eye Bee', because I read a ton of fics and recommend them to her and my other friends afterwards, lol.

5. What is one way you've improved as a writer?

I think my fics are more readable by now. Shorter paragraphs and I don't bury the dialogue inside those paragraphs anymore. Makes it waaay easier to read imo. Plus I write smut now, huge step!

6. What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

It must be baby related for my baby oneshots!

7. What's your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

Ohh I enjoy every comment I get (this is so cliche, but it is the truth!) but I love the longer ones telling me what part people exactly liked in the chapter!

8. What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

I don't think I write about any fringe topic or trope. My fics are pretty fluffy and standard, lol.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

I can't do multichapters OR angsty stuff for the life of me so I am gonna stick to smutty and/or fluffy. ◡̈

10. What is the easiest type?

10000% fluff and baby fics. I am knee deep in my baby Zuri era, just ask @scar-letter, because she is the one who had to listen to me talking about her. ◡̈

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

I write only on Google Docs, because that way I can write pretty much wherever inspiration strikes. I only post them on ao3, because that is also the only platform I use to read fanfiction nowadays.

12. What is something you've been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

I am not necessarily too nervous or intimidated to write anything, but I would love to be able to write really good angst fics and/or multichapters. There is something special about sitting down and read a 50,000+ worded fic about your favorite blorbos. That's absolutely on my writing bucket list.

13. What made you choose your username?

I have another blog (nature related) which I first used to look up Bathena on here, but when I wanted to be more active I realized I needed a new blog. I really wanted it to be 9-1-1 related so I racked my brain and ended up with BestBuddyBobby.

Look at the idiots (affectionately) who got me out of my 10+ year writing hiatus!

[baejax-the-great]

I have genuinely spent countless hours with nothing but All That Glitters on the brain since like mid December. As it comes to a close I just wanted to thank you for your writing. I’ve gotten so much happiness from it. (And also sadness but in a good, escapism-y way). I don’t think i’ve ever been so attached to a fic before. So sad to see this story end but grateful to have been blessed with ever encountering it in the first place. ❤️❤️

🎽👟🥇🐕

Thank you for this lovely message, Nonnie. I'm going to use it as an excuse to ramble way too long instead of writing the epilogue.

When I wrote even if it's a lie, I played around with a lot of tragic backstories for Achilles, though mostly non-seriously. I didn't really plan on including it--his relationship with Pat was basically comic relief. I wasn't even going to have it in eiial other than allusions to his fame and his clear fall from whatever fame that was, but a couple people asked, so I decided to have him give the abridged version to Zag.

Someone said they would read it if I ever elaborated on that story, and I remember thinking, lol I'm never writing that. Partly because at the time I assumed that painting Achilles in such a negative light just wouldn't go over well. But I also didn't really have an angle for how I wanted to tell that story, so it didn't interest me.

I don't totally remember how/when I came up with the plot for Gold, but I know @johaerys-writes was the one who really encouraged me to write it and I think @juliafied helped me with it a lot. I believe I posted the first chapter the day before I went out of town on what would be the first of many trips this autumn/winter. It's one of very few fics I wrote on google docs, mostly on my ipad because I don't own a laptop.

I think I was only a chapter or two into Gold when I started writing what is still titled in my docs as "Post-Gold." This fic ended up being such an interesting challenge because I had written what happens before and what happens after, and now I had over 20 years to cover to explain it all.

Here's what I knew at the start.

1. Patroclus got thrown out of his house the minute he got home from Seoul.

2. Achilles sets his own life on fire and Patroclus takes the blame for it, resulting in Achilles moving to Tartarus in shame and not returning until 2022 with Zagreus.

3. Because I'd already written it in eiial, the first time Patroclus sees Achilles in years, the first thing he does is make out with him. (I regretted this one a lot, but hopefully I made it work 🤣)

4. A 39yo got a silver medal in the javelin at the 2020 Olympics. As a result, one of the first lines I wrote was "Take me to Paris, Achilles." That entire scene changed, but I kept the line.

So then it was a game of filling in what actually happened (so much math to figure out the years and their ages lmao), and figuring out how to show the journey of two men growing up, growing apart, and then putting their lives back together. All the years were written out of order, which is why the different sections start the way they do-- originally it was just a system to help me keep track of what year it was and make sure I covered each one.

And with all of that, I thought this fic was going to be shorter than Gold. I figured each year would just be a snapshot--maybe 500-800 words to get a sense of it. Short and sweet.

I'm an idiot, of course. Just the reconciliation that took all of three sentences in eiial required over 15k words for this fic, and it could have been longer.

It was so fun to imagine all these eras of their life. I went from writing about guys who were much younger than me to men who were older than me. The way the world has changed between the year 2000 and the year 2022 is kind of astounding. Someone asked me why the boys couldn't just text each other in Gold and it's because it hadn't really been invented yet. We barely had wifi. They would have had an answering machine at their first apartment they shared with a goofy message recorded together.

To make a long, unnecessary essay short, this fic went from something I had no enthusiasm for and was certain I wouldn't write, to something I'm really proud of. I'm going to miss it.

I was talking recently with someone about this fic from Achilles' perspective-- over the 22 years, which moments would he pick as important in their lives for better or worse, and how many of them would match up with Pat's. I have no intention of writing that story, but it certainly would be a way to sit in this universe a little longer.

[readathousandlives]

Your page is so fucking cool. TEACH ME.

Terminal 03 v0.98

Press [ESC] to exit

Type "HELP" to get help using the terminal

Type "COMMANDS" to list all commands

\\Root\LOG TUTORIAL

Loading log, tutorial, progress : 100%

Thank you so much! I spent so long trying to make a mobile theme that I liked (ಥ﹏ಥ)

I took heavy inspo from the game GTFO, more specifically, the terminals that you can use while trying to sneak by creepy creatures that will fuck you the hell up if you wake them...

I don't know if you were actually looking for a tutorial or not, but I'm giving one to you anyways lol...

There will be many sections to this post, with some links sprinkled in, and it's a bit long, so it'll be under the cut...

-#: TEXT

While simple, this is easily the place where you can make or break your theme. While tumblr does supply alternative fonts (i use chat for my theme), others are not as nice (lucille im looking at you bitch)...

I have two different places I go to for my fonts. I have a custom keyboard on my phone (it has a subscription option for more fonts that I refuse to pay for), and a website that I copy and paste from. The website has more options, and it's completely free, so I mostly use that...

𝖙𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 — 𝕥𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 — 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 — 𝓉𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 — 𝙩𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜

Keep in mind that using an abundance of fancy text could make it hard for people to read whatever's written in that font. That, and i find using only the copy pasted text to be quite ugly. I've seen someone use the second testing font entirely for their pinned post, and it is not a good look...

The same can be said for making all of your text small, though I personally haven't had issue with small text unless I'm reading fanfiction in the dark...

Text colour is also a nice addition to pull together a theme. While there are some bright colours that you can use from what's provided, it's not much...

This text post goes through the steps of adding custom gradients or colours to text, if that's something you're interested in...

Also, please, for the love of god, put a fucking read more on any text post that's longer than one(!!!) mobile screen in length. The amount of fics that are good that I refuse to reblog because you have to spend 5 minutes just to scroll past it is infuriating and saddening, we don't need a text version of "do you love the colour of the sky?" Okay? Okay...

-#: DECALS?

It's the little things that tie everything together, so I suggest looking here or here or here for some ideas...

To make things easier for you, I would suggest copy pasting anything you like into a google doc, so that you have everything in one place for future use...

-#: DIVIDERS

There are many different ways you can spice up a text post, and dividers are one of them! animated or still work just as good, you just have to find what works with your aesthetic...

There are many places you can find dividers gifs or static, let me know if you would like me to compile a set for you from what I have saved...

-#: PICTURES

Pinterest is my go to for aesthetic pictures. There's a huge variety, and making a pintrest board for your theme will help to curate more options if you wanna change something up...

You can mix multiple pictures together, up to three side by side...

Or you can make it look like there's only one picture by putting white/black/ transparent photos on either side, depending on your theme...

Keep in mind that a post is limited to 10 pictures, so you might have to break out a photo editor if you planned on using a lot of media...

-#: OTHERS

A good place to start for making your theme is to look at the anime fanfic community here on tumblr. The way these people make pinned posts look like works of art...

Some of my favourites:...

#. @bykii #. @eijirhoe

#. @aitarose #. @21-06-1996

#. @tteokdoroki #. @kurosukii

!NOTE! Many of these blogs are 18+ please follow their dni before interacting with any of their content...

Some shameless self promo:...

#. @lxvlxck #. @pythonees

In the end, all that matters is what you like. I tried to keep things vague enough, though I don't know how well I did as this is my first tutorial...

Hope this was helpful! Enjoy making your aesthetic pinned post, or a cute template for your fan-fiction!...

[internerdionality]

Question game! Tagged by @dragonmuse and @thetardigrape 💕🙏🏻😊

if you're a writer and you see this, consider yourself tagged if you want!

Do you write in order?

Nope. Frequently quite the opposite. I tend to start with the climactic scenes of a fic, the big emotional cruxes, and then figure out how to get the characters there.

There's definitely exceptions, especially when writing more humorous or lighthearted fics, and I've been experimenting more in the last year with posting works-in-progress, which requires writing much more sequentially than I used to!

WDYDWADS and A Fucking Duel, my most popular fics so far, each started with a very cracky premise and I had no clear idea where I was going when I started with them. I had the occasional out of order moment—I've been sitting on the next chapter I'll be posting of WDYDWADS since July, because I wrote it and then realized a bunch of other stuff needed to happen first, and the third chapter of A Fucking Duel was written before the second. But mostly they were written in order and I posted up each chapter before finishing the next.

But my longer fics like Soaked to the Skin and Mutually Beneficial were written much more chaotically. Chapters 17 & 18 of Soaked to the Skin have some of the earliest scenes I wrote for that verse. It's been a bit longer since I wrote Mutually Beneficial, so I don't remember the exact order, but I know that the moment in Chapter 14 where Clark goes to his knees was the first one I envisioned and one of the earliest ones I wrote.

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try?

I tend to think over the scenes first, and then workshop sentences and paragraphs as I'm writing them, so it depends what you mean by "first try." Most of the time, the fic as you would read it after my first fully written draft is pretty close to the final version. It's just fine-tuning after that, unless something isn't working.

However, sometimes something isn't working, and then it can change a lot. For example, the aforementioned Chapters 17 & 18 of Soaked to the Skin were originally one chapter, and all from the Lucius' POV. After I'd written a bunch of the rest of the fic, I realized that we desperately needed to see what Izzy was thinking during it, so I ended up splitting it in two, expanding both parts, and flipping the POV in the second half. That doesn't happen to me very often, but pretty much every longfic I've written has at least one chapter that ended up getting overhauled, sometimes multiple times. The one I tend to remember with agony is Chapter 9 of Welcome to the Mouth of Hell (please mind the tags if you follow that link)—I actually swapped out one of the major characters in that scene twice before finally figuring out how to make it work.

How many drafts do you go through?

Well, that depends on what you consider a draft, lol. The longer and more serious the fic is, the more I tend to pore over it. I also tend to reread and fine-tune earlier chapters of a longfic to get back into the right mindset before writing more, so chapters written earlier may end up getting fiddled with a lot more than later chapters. But it's all a pretty incremental process, so I don't usually have multiple "drafts" of the entire fic in the way I did when turning in assignments in school.

If we're counting every time the text changes as a different draft, though—at least two? At the very least, I'll write out a fic in Google Docs, import it into AO3, and read it over again in the rich text editor, looking for import errors and fine-tuning as I go. I think the most I've ever gone over a chapter before posting it is probably around ten times? I do also reread over my old, posted work sometime (especially the smut, that's why I write smut!), and I'll fix typos and fine-tune sentences even years later if I notice them.

So an old smut like A Private Nightmare... and Fantasy, I've probably gone through three or four "drafts" since it was originally posted. As far as drafts that are substantially different from each other though, the record is three, for that chapter linked above.

Tell me about your process.

Well, I think I covered a lot of it as I blathered on through the previous answers! I tend to seize on something that seems important or interesting (preferably both!) to me, whether it's a dynamic between two people that I couldn't get out of my heard, or a piece of emotional growth that I went through and want to model, or exploring a sexual kink or orientation that resonated with me, just a particular premise that I thought was funny! (Or well, sometimes it's just 'write the smut you want to see in the world'...)

I usually try to have at least the broad strokes of what I'm going to write worked out before I start, although as mentioned previously, there are exceptions! With longer fics, I write outlines—I'll use the heading feature of Google Docs to lay out the main beats, then block out how many chapters I think I'll need, usually with a little summary of what I'm trying to do with each one.

I get somewhat overly married to (what I think are) clever story structures sometimes—for example, the alternating POVs in Soaked to the Skin, or each chapter of A Fucking Duel aligning to a number in The 10 Duel Commandments. I have one outlined WIP that using a four-person rotating POV. We'll, ahh, see how that goes if I ever start actually writing it.

[sarkywoman]

Writing Asks

Tagged by @under-the-shady-tree, thanks!

20 questions, writer’s edition, let’s go!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 85

What’s your total AO3 word count? 712708

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Oof, uh... since like, 1999? Um, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Andromeda, Supernatural, Heroes, NCIS, DC, Marvel, The Umbrella Academy, Kingsmen, ASoIaF/Game of Thrones, Borderlands, Community, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Misfits, I think I’ve forgotten some...

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM)  A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones)  Young God (Borderlands)  Story and Sorcery (Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel)  My Shame is True (The Umbrella Academy (TV))

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I try to! Comments are so important in the fanfic community and I know how hard it is to think of something to say about a story, even when you’ve loved it to bits, so I don’t want people to feel ignored. Especially because I appreciate comments so, so much! I will say though, I have lapses, often when my mental health isn’t good, where I simply don’t know how to respond to people and then months go by and I feel weird about replying... so sorry if you’ve ever commented on one of my stories and got silence - it was me not you!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? The Aimless One (Misfits (TV 2009)) Straight up the saddest story I’ve written, no question. Normally writing sad stuff doesn’t make me sad but I had to take a break in the middle of this to just try and grapple with the idea I’d had because it tapped into a lot of depressing thoughts I have about life and death in general. The comments were all complimentary but so upset that at first I was like ‘hooray, it had the desired impact’, then after a while I started to think ‘why did I want to hurt people like this?’

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? Probably  Realising All You Ever Wanted, a Hobbs/Dirk fic for the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency fandom. There’s such minor conflict in that one that the sugary sweet ending isn’t out of place. 

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? Well. I have some fandoms that are sort of crossovers already, things like Marvel where you have comic versions and movie versions and it doesn’t really feel like a crossover to be picking and choosing. Same with a Dirk Gently/Thor fic I did, because Thor cameos in the DG canon, but not this Thor. I think the most ambitious crossover I’ve worked on was a collaborative chatfic with @freshgratednutmeg that we’re never likely to post, where the need for more background characters in an Umbrella Academy A/o fic led to it being crossed over with Marvel and Brooklyn 99. (Leading to such amusements as Diego sparring with Rosa, and Five competing with Shuri in class.)

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Yeah, but it’s never been very well-reasoned so it’s been fairly easy to dismiss. Some people expect everyone to share their own perspective of the characters and it’s weird.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? Not really. I can go there and have done on occasion, but it doesn’t interest me very much. I think I did it more when I was younger because I felt like it was a necessary aspect of grown-up fanfic writing (when I started I was a teenager amongst mostly adults... or other people lying about their age too lol). These days I’m more likely to fade to black or allude to the acts. But I’m not averse to writing it or anything, but it’s never the focus of my story.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Only in the sense that I see them on other sites I didn’t upload to, sometimes in other languages, sometimes not. They normally say my name somewhere on them so they’re not stolen as such, but it’s still uncomfortable to see my work circulated to other sites without my permission.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not with my permission, but yeah. I don’t know how to feel about translations. Obviously I want people of other languages to be able to read my work, but at the same time I’m not fluent enough to be able to check the translator’s work, so I won’t know if they’ve done any better than google. Word choice is pretty important in fiction. A bad translation can totally warp a text.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not for posting or sharing, but me and @freshgratednutmeg cowrite all the time.

What’s your all time favorite ship? All time?! That’s impossible to answer. I’m a multi-shipper for starters, in pretty much every fandom I’ve been in. When I find a ship I love, I love it intensely above all others for the duration of the fixation. Then eventually it gets set aside when I find a new fandom. I’m also indecisive enough to not really have an all-time favourite anything. 

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones). I can’t begin to describe the pages of notes I have for this beast. Unless I threw them out, which... scanning my room... is a distinct possibility. Ouch. I’d hoped to parallel the books for a long time with this one, but the amount of work for a project like that is too much when you’re no longer as passionate about the source fandom. I suspect what I might do is scenes with interconnecting notes, just so people get some sense of closure.

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, baybee! Kinda makes me want to be a scriptwriter. People are always telling me that the characters ‘sound like’ them. I think it’s from reading voraciously from when I was young and being quite a social child, that moving speech patterns and quirks into writing is something that comes very naturally to me. Too natural, in fact, because IRL I write how I speak and that’s not always suited to the situation.

What are your writing weaknesses? Most things other than dialogue. Even thought processes are an internal dialogue, so they’re okay, but then like... a fight scene? A sex scene? Just even... what are their hands doing while they’re talking? How are these people physically present? Where are they? Are they inside, outside, is the building on fire? My descriptive skills are lacking, to say the least. It’s something I’m working on.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I’m not quite sure what’s meant by this. I’m not fluent in anything other than English so I don’t see that would work well for me. I know a few phrases in German/French/Welsh/Latin/Spanish but nothing useful for conversation. Dropping in words can work, if it’s the same way the speaker would use them amidst their English. Most of the time the characters I’m writing wouldn’t be speaking in another language anyway. We can blame the tag-team of English colonialism and American media for that one I think. I think that sometimes authors utilise a character’s language in a way that just exposes how little the author actually knows of the language and that’s a bit cringe for me.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. None of those are online atm because they’re so so bad XD I should post them just so people can see improvement but... I can’t even read them, they’re hilarious. The most gratuitous self-inserts, the most ludicrous arguments, the most out-of-character romantic declarations.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Hmm, that’s a quandary. I think I’ll differentiate between favourite to write, and favourite end product. Favourite to write was probably  Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM) because it was just a romp through my favourite themes. Given it’s one of my most popular stories, I’d say that just proves you should write what you want! I was going to quickly say  Young God (Borderlands) is my favourite fic for quality of the finished product, because I pretty much just sat down one evening and spilled it into a word doc then reread it back and thought ‘huh, did I write that? Awesome’. But I’m happy with a couple of more recent things I’ve done for The Umbrella Academy fandom, notably  The Price of Parenthood, which is very different to what I usually write and is a look at the life of one of the mothers who gave up her child to Reginald. Also The Water Calls, which was the only thing I managed to write for the recent MerMay event. It took me a little while to puzzle out how it all fit together, then once I had it worked out it came together wonderfully and I was very happy with the tone of it. 

Tagging anyone who fancies doing it.

[porta-decumana]

Rules: Bold/color the things that you relate to and then tag some people to play.

tagged by: @frostmantle

I write: daily | most days | a few times a week | a few times a month | random

Lately I’ve been averaging at least 2k words a day but I’ve been in a huge writing mood.  I would say on average, I tend to write more days than I don’t but it depends on what is going on.  I try not to write if I’m feeling ill or if IRL is hectic.  Additionally, if there’s FFXIV patch hype (particularly an even number patch), I’ll get distracted from writing because I’ll be busy playing FFXIV.

I write most often: when I first get up | later in the morning | afternoon | evening | the wee hours of the night | whenever

Typically I write whenever I feel inspired to.  That used to be in the evenings but since I’ve been raiding, it’s usually more like early afternoon/night time.  

In one sitting I tend to write: a few sentences at a time | a few hundred words | a few thousand words | a complete chapter/section matter how long | An outline | whatever comes

If I sit down to write and I find the words aren’t coming out, I usually default to playing my Switch instead.  So a typical day would have me write several thousand words.  On a super productive day, I’ve written full 15 page chapters (Times New Roman, 12 font, 1.5 spacing, no spaces between paragraphs) in a single sitting.  It really just depends on what I have going on and what the mood is.

I tend to write scenes: in chronological order with no skipping | mostly in order but with some filler/skipping | whatever scene I feel like | who knows what’s gonna come out????

I used to be hardcore “no scene skipping” as I wrote but I’ve changed my opinion in the last year on that.  I used to treat the special scenes I was yearning to write as a reward for dealing with the scenes I didn’t want to write.  Now, I write things mostly in order but occasionally I’ll draft out future scenes with the mentality that they will probably change if they end up not flowing well with the full fic.  For example, I had written out a version of a flashback scene between Gaius and a young Livia a few weeks ago but I ended up changing it as I was doing research and as I got to the part where the scene would fit in.  I don’t typically write scenes out of place that are too far ahead of the fic, however.  A couple chapters at best.  

The things that comes easiest to me are: dialogue | description of senses | description of action | description of characters | exposition | other

Anything emotion or dialogue-driven is easiest for me.  Emotion-driven stuff is probably my favorite to write.  Or emotional-and-slightly-spooky.  Fun fact: In my writing, I used to add a lot of notes about heart rate and I still do sometimes.  But most of that stems from the fact that I lived a few years with heart palpitations and had no idea it was abnormal to constantly feel your heartbeat.  So that’s fun.  It’s all under control now. 

 I find that I struggle the most with action (namely fight sequences) but I’ve been told my action scenes are still enjoyable to read, so that’s good!  It’s hard sometimes trying to put what I’m picturing into words without being too wordy.  If the action scene gets too wordy, then it starts to feel like it’s dragging so... I just don’t wanna be too descriptive and wordy and take away from the action.  Exposition can be tricky too.  Same with transition sequences.

I tend to write: on a phone | on a laptop | in a notebook | on whatever paper I can find | with speech to text | in the blood of my enemies | it doesn’t really matter to me | on paper first and then typed up | old school typewriter | on a computer

I have the benefit of having both a laptop and a PC to write on so I pretty much ditched writing with pen and paper years and years ago.  My hand cramps so easily now, it’s embarrassing.  I usually write in Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

When I take a break from writing, it usually: lasts a few days | a few weeks | a few months | it’s kind of random

I haven’t taken a break in some time, I would say.  Probably a couple of months?  I take them whenever I want for however long I want to prevent burn out.  Usually not much longer than a few weeks but it can vary.  I actually told myself I was going to take a break on all non-FFXIV writing this month then I worked on something non-FFXIV related anyways.  So it’s just kinda on a whim when I decide to take a break.

My favorite thing to do when I’m on a writing break is: recharge with other creative hobbies | read/ consume other media | do something physical | catch up with old friends | work on my WIP in other ways like with playlists or art | other | play video games | get lost in work

I have this issue when I read something like a book or another fic, I immediately wanna go write.  So I try to avoid reading too much because I want the break to be full of me not thinking about my WIPs and thinking about everything else.  I usually recharge with video games or doing other things.  I’m going to be DMing a DnD campaign soon so that’s one way I’ve worked on being creative but not on my writing projects.  Another way is just sketching.  I’m not good at art by any means but sometimes having a podcast and sketching is just good for the soul.  Playing video games also helps a ton.  Recently, I’ve been playing Minecraft, Bravely Default 2, and, of course, FFXIV.  

In general, I think my writing habits are: pretty much what I need them to be | okay, but I’m working on making them better | non-existent | not great :/ | i’m excited to develop them further | totally random | perfect for me

I would say the frequency that I write is great but sometimes I worry that my style is too repetitive.  I want to focus on reading more stuff because I feel that’s the way I improve the most.  It’s impossible for me to read without analyzing how authors tell a story-- syntax, method, how they spin their narrative, etc.  But again, the biggest problem I have with reading is that as soon as I’ve started, I just wanna go write.  I gotta get that urge under control.  

Whew that was fun!  I don’t think I’ve ever really thought this hard on my writing habits before!  

Tagging: Anyone who sees this because idk who’s been tagged yet lol

[aemondtragaryen-archived]

31 but with whichever fic youre proudest of 🥰

Hi Mia! Thank you for sending this!! <3

31. What was the development process of [Fanfic Name] like?

I’m going to talk about Entirely Yours, which I have talked about a lot today. Sorry if this is annoying to anyone lol!

Entirely Yours was incredibly difficult to write. This is largely due to the fact that it was my first ever smut fic and was new territory. The process of getting the fic up here was pretty long for me.

First, I had to figure out what I wanted to write. I had a very loosely formed idea of wedding night smut with George but had no idea how I wanted it to - er - pan out if you will. The first step was literally thirsting (shall we call in brainstorming? lol) with my a few of my friends about this idea. I was able to have a few more concrete ideas of what I wanted to happen in this fic. If it wasn’t for Katie, Mere, and Zahra hyping me up I simply would never have actually written this, so thanks, babes.

Second, was outlining. Full disclosure I never really outline, but with this fic, it had to be done. There was no way I could sit down and just type it up like I usually do with fics. Once I knew what I wanted to happen, I outlined the entire plot and smut before writing the fic.

Third, writing the fic. This took so much longer than it usually did for me. I’m so awkward in all honesty so I couldn’t type for a long period of time before having to get up and take a little break. This turned out to be a 4k fic, so you can imagine how many breaks I required lmao. I ended up writing sections of this fic then coming back to it later in the end.

Fourth, editing. I’m, a lax editor as many of you, unfortunately, can tell. Often times I will not edit at all, which is something I have tried to be better at. (Pro tip for writers: download Grammarly onto your browser. The free version corrects your critical grammar and edits much better than google docs imo.) But with this fic I edited it to the extreme. I almost edited it too much in the sense I was freaking out over nothing so terrified people wouldn’t like it. 

So yeah, Entirely Yours was quite a process and this is an extreme version of how my fics are written. 9/10 I will get a random idea or see a tiktok and turn it into a fic within an hour or maybe two. But with Entirely Yours I really put my work in and I’m quite proud of it.

[the-elemental-sides]

all of my god dang WIPs

In an attempt to put my life in some semblance of order, as well as have a convenient place to check back on the thing I should be writing at the moment, I am putting here a list of every single in-progress Sanders Sides story in my Google docs. There’s like, 15 of them, listed roughly in order from “has not been touched in 1000 years” to “worked on fairly recently.”

Oh yeah! And if any of these stories are listed as “dead” but you like the concept, feel free to take it! Let me know if you want to see what I had written.

Sanders Script

Last Modified: February 18, 2018

Status: Dead

Summary: A fake episode script where the Sides explain the Sanders Sides fandom to the recently-accepted Anxiety, who’s been staying away from the whole ordeal. My first Sanders Sides writing! I started writing it just after catching up with the series because I thought, no way could I write any kind of non-script-style fanfic out of these characters.

The Joan Thing pt II

Last Modified: March 30, 2018

Status: Dead

Summary: The first attempt of many to write a sequel to The Joan Thing. It failed. However, its concept might be something I revisit later. 

Architects

Last Modified: April 30, 2018

Status: Dead

Summary: Gods/creators-of-the-world AU sort of thing where the Sides are all creating aspects of Earth (sea, space, underground, sky) with Thomas as their supervisor. Got fired because I thought the concept was too complicated/theological, and it started feeling kind of like the Sims. 

Guardian Angels

Last Modified: April 29, 2018

Status: Most Likely Dead

Summary: In a world where many people have guardian angels, Patton finally gets his in the form of Virgil. The Sides didn’t feel entirely in-character to me, so I changed the names and started an original fiction version. Then I still wanted to write the Sides version and got confused. 

Angst

Last Modified: July 20, 2018

Status: Dead

Summary: Yep, the doc’s just called “Angst” because I wanted to practice something sad. Roman goes out on a mind palace adventure, breaks his leg fighting a monster, and can’t get home. Virgil finds him. I wrote ‘666′ soon after this and was satisfied with that.

First Person Fusions

Last Modified: July 22, 2018

Status: doesn’t look good, chief

Summary: I did publish a chapter of this on Analogical, and I have a bit of the Logince chapter done. Not sure if I’m still interested in it or not, especially since I don’t have ideas for the combined headspaces of the rest of the ships.

From The Other Side

Last Modified: July 31, 2018

Status: Hiatus

Summary: I have the prologue published. I love this idea, but I don’t know if I can finish it any time soon. It’s kind of a longer fic! We’ll see what happens to it.

Talyn, The Take Two

Last Modified: September 9, 2018

Status: Needs a miracle

Summary: This doc is a conglomerate of most of the other “Joan Thing sequel” attempts. Sorry, fans of the story, it’s just weirdly hard to write??? It’s difficult to push the concept any further without playing into even more of the unintentional D.I.D. similarities of the first. I need a really solid idea to continue this one.

A Morality Story

Last Modified: September 10, 2018

Status: PURGATORY

Summary: All right, this story is a weird case because it’s in my Tumblr drafts. It’s RIGHT there. I even got a beta for it! But I’m very self-conscious about sharing it. It’s an experimental little exchange between Morality and an OC of mine whose whole deal is morality too. Eh, maybe I’ll hit post one of these days.

Ask Prompt Doc

Last Modified: September 18, 2018

Status: In Progress

Summary: Vy and hayleycreagine/nextstep17, this one’s for you! Your asks have been in my inbox for m o n t h s and I’m still working on your suggestions. Sorry for the wait, but they SHALL be finished. Someday.

The Elemental Sides

Last Modified: Nov 2, 2018

Status: WILL be completed

Summary: My longest story, and the one the blog’s named after. It’s about Thomas discovering four spirits with elemental powers trapped in an amulet. Currently, I do have enough for another chapter written, but it’s all definitely in first-draft mode.

G/T Sides

Last Modified: Early November

Status: Hiatus

Summary: This one isn’t in a doc, but amazable01 requested a continuation of an unnamed story about Logan having a brownie, Patton, take up residence in his house. It’s currently an unfinished Tumblr draft. I don’t wanna disappoint amazable, so I’ll do what I can!

Project Doll

Last Modified: February 1, 2019

Status: In Progress

Summary: I can’t talk too much about this one because it’s my Reverse Big Bang fic. The plot is *continuous screams of horror for an hour*. See ya when I post it in April!

sides ideas

Last Modified: February 2, 2019

Status: In Progress

Summary: This one is actually pretty close to being done. I fell in love with a Sanders Sides fic and wrote my own chapter for it: an interpretation of some events that were covered in a letter. Can’t wait to finish it and talk more about how much I love this fic!

W***** L*********

Last Modified: February 5, 2019

Status: not even started yet but I made the doc

Summary: This one’s the fic I’m gonna write for the regular Big Bang (I might be getting ahead of myself, but the mods recommend we use all the time we have). I have to censor the title so I don’t spoil anything, but maybe you can guess??

Analogically

Last Modified: this morning lol (feb 6)

Status: In Progress

Summary: Based on a recommendation by theresneverenoughfandoms, this is an Analogical oneshot. Hopefully I can keep up with writing it...unlike many many stories on this list!

[crystallized-iron]

1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15 since you wanted an ask about Lost and Found here it is. Keep up the good work guys!

Hello there, anon! Thank you for the support! ^-^

Lost and Found

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?I’m not quite sure what the question is referring to honestly lol. It’s probably simpler than I’m making it out to be, but well...

The whole “let’s make Captain America HYDRA” idea came from that comic that came out last year, I posted on facebook Bucky’s supposed reaction to learning that Steve was actually a HYDRA agent all along. My co-author @ladydarkphoenix-blog continued with it and after a couple more posts back on forth on my page, we switched over to a facebook group. We’re figuring out what to do with his past involvement now lol.

As for the format, we go post by post by post on facebook and then put it into google docs (I have to throw it into wordpad first to get rid of the special characters and coloration from facebook otherwise it’d take forever to load into google docs, @ladydarkphoenix-blog I believe copies and pastes post by post on her phone, right?) It started out as a game but it got longer and longer and we were like ‘this story is really good, let’s share it’. It wasn’t until January that we finally got it posted because, why not start the new year off with a fic, right? Lol.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?As for me, I love that I’m writing it with one of my best friends ever. We’ve done round-robins in the past with a few fandoms (Fruits Basket, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Cardcaptor Sakura, Harry Potter/Fruits Basket crossover, and a few originals with angels) but this one is sticking around the longest. Omg, I would love to find these again though.

I guess also the fact that it’s Marvel and I’m so into Marvel right now, and I don’t ever want to leave this fandom, you guys are all so awesome.

7: Where did the title come from?Actually @ladydarkphoenix-blog came up with the title and it fit so like, yeah. She could maybe give a better answer to this one.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?On my side, no. I don’t think so. I have been watching videos of Robert Downey Jr. though and I wouldn’t be surprised if anything from him leaks into my version of Tony, but I dunno.

11: What do you like best about this fic?I personally love the overall story, and that includes our ‘drabbles’/prompt fills. We both wind up using our Lost and Found universe that we’ve created. Will these end up in the fic at some point? We don’t know. They might seem a little odd right now since AO3 is only up chapter 4 now, and our prompt fills tend to be either where we are right now in writing, or even further ahead than that, and we’re using characters that we haven’t introduced yet, but you can kind of get an idea of where we’re heading.

But yeah, like, I love everything about the story.

12: What do you like least about this fic?How difficult it is to reformat everything, for me that’s the most annoying. Also having to bring up 2k+ posts for some of these threads. It’s a pain but with the way we have it written, it’s day by day (we’re gonna have to work on the timing and pacing pretty soon, we’re coming up on something big) and sometimes more stuff happens in one day, other times maybe not a lot happens. But yes, reformatting in a pain.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?If there’s anything to be learned, I guess how fucked up humans can be, and what they’re willing to do to accomplish their fucked up goals.

Other than that I don’t think there’s a lesson here lol.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?For me... I learned how to use AO3. Learning more about different kinds of relationships, and.. toys, and... learning more about the characters we’re all familiar with, and rewatching things and catching onto stuff I didn’t notice the first time around. We’re developing original characters and learning more about them through ask games and prompt fills. I’m relearning how to write stories and how fun fan fiction had been. I hadn’t written fan fiction in years until this one. I stopped writing altogether for a little while. So thanks to this, I’m relearning my love for it.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog would you like to leave any answers of your own?(^-^)/