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n7punk · 7 months ago

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"Our Love Is God" Fic Notes

OLIG finished off yesterday! For once I almost nailed the length, I was expecting 12 chapters but didn’t want to commit early on. HI I TRIED TO POST THIS SO MANY TIMES but apparently it was TOO MUCH TEXT in a single block and it wouldn't give me that error, I just had to GUESS because I knew that's been a problem before. Anyway. Here it is finally.

Playlist:

Obviously the West End and Off-Broadway cast recordings, but also I did still primarily use a separate curated playlist:

Good For You — Dear Evan Hansen (original Broadway cast)

The Worst Person Alive — G Flip

Ego Talking — Fletcher

Take Your Time — Chloe Moriondo

You Don’t Want Me Like That — Rachel Bochner & XANA

leave me for dead — GAYLE

pity — Charlotte Sands

Bodybag — Chloe Moriondo

spite — Charlotte Sands

butterflies — GAYLE

Tantrum — Charlotte Sands

Killbot! — Chloe Moriondo

LOVE IS A… — PVRIS

I Don’t Like The Quiet — The Haunt

Celebrity (Blood Bunny Version) — Chloe Moriondo

Doing Better — FLETCHER

Bad Girl — Daya

Not To Be Dramatic — Zoe Clark

My Perfect — Gen and the Degenerates

Often — Lauren Sanderson

Pretending — FLETCHER

Epilogue Life:

The original cast of Heathers played on stage for just over a year before most of them move on to other projects with the major cast change. Heathers (gay version) runs for about two years, going through two more cast changes, before closing. The original cast does go to see the new cast and cheer them on, but it is kind of weird to see someone else acting out a role that became like breathing to them. Overall the remake is taken very well but has just run its course by the time it ends. There will be another revival in a few years and it actually uses both the straight and gay versions of the musical between cast changes.

Catra carries Shot in the Dark for its entire two year run before it dwindles into a temporary retirement and gets revived with a new cast a few years later (same sets and such). She’s the defining lead for the show and obviously on the cast album. She’s really, really proud to have originated a magicat-led show and makes her new origination goal a sapphic role.

After Shot in the Dark, she takes a supporting role in another musical for eight months before leaving early to join Adora and Netossa on a new project. They don’t actually interact a lot in the show and aren’t love interests or anything, and they’ve long since learned to balance their careers while in different shows, but it does allow Adora to propose to her during final bow (with approval from Netossa). Adora tipped their parents off and they’re both in the audience to watch her say yes.

(Adora knew she was going to accept, hence the public proposal, and Catra’s relationship with her mom has gotten better now she’s a successful, independent adult. Also Felina would have been So Sad to miss it so Adora told them both). Oh also they moved in together as soon as their leases came up lmao.

Adora led one show in the mean time between Chicago and their show together, but it was smaller, not as demanding as Veronica, and she was really excited to hop on a project with Netossa and Catra again. She decides to make originating a gay role and collecting cast albums her career goal, in addition to getting in a few specific shows she and her mom looked up to when she was growing up. She already feels pretty fulfilled with her early career though and considers everything else the cherry on top.

Rest of the cast quick hits: Mermista plays Velma center stage in Chicago along with Adora. Fitting her braid in that wig cap is definitely a challenge lol. Sea Hawk starred in a Hello, Again short revival run which Catra and Adora were dying sitting through, but they support all their fellow cast members when they move on to new shows. Perfuma finally got up the nerve to ask Scorpia out on their very last night performing in Heathers together, getting her flowers and then revealing after the show — when everybody was already crying about it ending — they were from her. It was a very confusing confession until Perfuma was finally able to spell it out for her that she wanted to go on a date with her. Scorpia enthusiastically agreed (still crying before the whole “last show” thing), and then gushed to Catra later about how she couldn’t believe Perfuma liked her while Catra nearly tore her hair out listening to the obliviousness. Glimmer and Bow got to play a couple that were already-together side characters in a musical and that’s what finally gets them together because Bow realizes oh, I can’t risk losing this, and Glimmer is done trying to play the jealousy game because it clearly didn’t work and she doesn’t really have a flirty relationship with any of her new cast so they can finally just be honest with each other.

Chapter 1: Auditions

⦁ Things like homophobia and Christianity are usually world aspects I avoid in my fics, but they’re both present in the musical so they had to at least be mentioned in this.

⦁ Oh I should say this will have mentions of all the triggers warned for in the fic.

⦁ Adora and Catra both gave good but not necessarily the best auditions of the day separately. Catra’s was really good when she got permission to do it in her natural register and threw in a growl (she wasn’t actually audibly straining yet, but Netossa scouted her specifically for her voice and knew she was pushing it up near the top of her range), but her Candy Store was a little more uneven thanks to the lack of practice and register change. Adora did just fine in her regular song and really good in her Beautiful reprise, but there were people that did sing a little better technically. That doesn’t mean they would have been better over the course of the show itself, though, and what Catra and Adora had going for them was it looked like they were considering involving fists (the sexy or the fighting kind, take your pick) the moment they were on stage together. They eyefucked their way through both songs with such insane chemistry Netossa was like oh we can sell Fight For Me with these two EASY.

⦁ (Fight For Me is the second song in the musical where Veronica basically see JD in a fistfight and thinks it’s so fucking hot she immediately falls for him, and then they actually spend time together and it seems like they have similar views of the high school around them. And they do! But they definitely have very different solutions. Anyway, it’s a quick romance plot setup that doesn’t pretend not to be based solely on sexual attraction at first but that works and is realistic! The actors just need to have chemistry to make it read right, and damn do Catra and Adora have that).

⦁ Okay, every Veronica has been pretty, but there was some metric that made them not perfect conventional. For the first two Veronicas this was pretty much being brunette with messy hair lmao. For the West End, Veronica was played by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who I think is gorgeous and has blonde curly hair, but she faced a lot of backlash for being “too fat” to play Veronica. Adora is close to the Hollywood ideal, which is the point Netossa is trying to make: someone who could play Heather Chandler in one version of this show ends up the Veronica because she commits the sin of not meeting society’s hetereonormative expectations. Bigots will throw you out for any association with queerness. However, still meeting all those other metrics is what allows her to slip in with the Heathers as long as she helps them out and dresses femme — that’s part of her transformation, going from jeans in the opening number to skirts for the rest of the musical until the final sequence. When show starts, she’s wearing jeans and a ratty flannel with her hair in a ponytail. It’s a quick change outfit, so she runs behind the set to pull it off to reveal her main outfit beneath, brushes her skirt into place, and lets Netossa fix a scrunchy with a big bow on it on top of her existing ponytail to complete her transformation into a feminine popular girl.

⦁ “Janis Dean” is a reference to Mean Girls, and yes, that’s in-universe.

⦁ Catra got the casting call specifically because Netossa needed someone to match JD’s register — plus the growls in the right places added a lot of emotions to his songs. Including the sex ones.

⦁ Changes in Netossa’s version: - The aforementioned “Pretty Veronica” thing. When the Heathers give her the makeover she puts on the iconic skirt and has to wear skirts for the rest of the show, performing femininity in every extra way she can, to make up for her “deviance” of being bi (also, she’s bi. It’s another thing where any degree of deviation is grounds for rejection). - The line delivery (and some content) has been tweaked for the fatphobic stuff to match the changed metanarrative that comes from Scorpia, someone who isn’t actually overweight, playing Martha. The commentary then becomes that nothing is good enough and society’s fatphobia is thrown into light as completely unreasonable. The whole point of that aspect of the show is that it illustrates how awful the characters are, but genuine fatphobia and using it as a plot device to show a character is morally corrupt looks awful similar, so by having someone who is basically just tall and strong play Martha it makes it extremely obvious that the demands are unreasonable. This ties in well with Heather M’s story, where she does have that model body type and is pretty and popular but develops an eating disorder because she’s afraid of losing that. - Obviously a lot is different with JD. She “chooses” to be a lone wolf/outcast because of her personality and views on society, but there’s obvious undertones in their dialogue in the 7/11 that even if she did want to choose differently, she couldn’t because she would be rejected for being a dyke, so is she really making a choice at all then? She goes by JD specifically because it’s more gender neutral than Janis. She couldn’t ever be a Heather and she couldn’t even be a Veronica either, because Veronica could at least be comfortable putting on a matching skirt with her friends while this JD is butch, so she hangs out in her trench coat at the fringes of society. There’s also undertones to her being the only magicat in school due to her father moving around and not caring if he brought her into a hostile — conservative, racist, homophobic, etc — area. - Heather M. is only in with the popular girls for safety and there’s some dialogue around this in the bathroom scene with Veronica. It’s kind of public information (not officially stated but implied in her social media) that her actress, Perfuma, is trans. This wasn’t planned at the time of the casting call, but Netossa worked on it during workshops and the backstory became that Heather M started transitioning how she could before high school and is continuing to “in secret” now. Some people have clocked her though and she sticks so close to the other Heathers to keep herself from being the target of terrible bullying. As long as the Heathers tolerate her (Heather C is on a bit of an ego trip about having blackmail material on her and essentially owning someone in the palm of her hand), she’s given a pass and “has the best (cishood) assumed” about her. - Veronica and JD’s relationship is a little more secretive in this version, but the Heathers do know and Duke later tell her to just be careful not to “dyke it up” at school or they would out her (currently she’s just kind of clocked by some, not confirmed to the whole school). After Heather C’s death, Duke basically threatens Veronica to stay at her heel like Heather M or she’ll out them both.

Chapter 2: Workshop

⦁ You would have to be fucking blind to not realize Adora and Catra have history even in the glances of them Netossa and Spinnerella saw, and Netossa spent the first part of workshop trying to unpack whatever was going on with them. She had to put together the clues to figure out what it was. Once she decided exes was a likely story, she confronted Catra about it because she figured talking about it was the only way to handle the resentment. She was partially using reverse psychology and partially being honest about not resolving all of it being good for the show.

⦁ I made Freeze Your Brain more homoerotic. In the musical, JD does his entire song facing Veronica or walking around the stage and then offers the drink to her at the very end. He does not get in close and offer her the drink and then sip from it after her in an indirect kiss with her lipstick prints on the straw, but mine’s better.

⦁ In the actual show, Heather Chandler doesn’t put on any death makeup. The Off-Broadway would shine a blue light on her after she died to give her an other-worldly appearance and the West End didn’t seem to do anything at all, which was a mistake imho. In this one, when she “rises from the dead”, she does it a bit more dramatically and zombie-like under a blue light, and then she on-stage reaches over for her vanity and starts powdering her face, looks back at Veronica and says “What? I want to look good for eternity” and finishes as Veronica and JD write the rest of the suicide note before collapsing so the cops can find her.

Chapter 3: Previews

⦁ Once again changing the staging for my version (jokes on you, this isn’t just a Catradora fic, it’s me writing my ideal version of Heathers). Usually Heathers has some kind of bi-level stage. This one has catwalks hidden along the backs of the lockers, but they also have more sets. They have house facades they slide in front of the high school set/lockers for the croquet scene (Freeze Your Brain is the closest song) through to Heather’s murder, sliding them away again for The Me Inside of Me. They come back for Our Love Is God, although the second level with JD’s window isn’t brought back until the very end of the show. Kurt tries to climb the same trellis Adora used to get into JD’s window to escape JD as he chases him down. The full facade doesn’t come back until it’s time for Meant To Be Yours so JD can climb through Veronica’s window (that was once his). It is wheeled out as the entire stage narrows in on the center stage for the pep rally and finale.

⦁ Veronica doesn’t rebutton her shirt until after the nightmare scene in the West End version (I honestly can’t remember for off-Broadway), but for this show Adora just isn’t super comfortable hanging out shirtless in front of crowds every night, especially knowing some people are perverted about the lesbian version of Dead Girl Walking, so Netossa said buttoning her shirt and putting her clothes back on before they fall asleep was fine back when they were deciding what Catra was going to do since JD rips his shirt off undoes his buckle during this scene. Adora could have done it (she wears the bodysuit for Mona, after all), but Netossa didn’t mind making that small tweak for her. Catra cared less, but also because she’s not in the kind of underwear that straight guys like. They decided she would have a high-coverage sports bra, the kind that can pass for a binder, on (for this scene and for the entirety of the show since Janis Dean is supposed to be firmly butch). Catra does most of JD’s usual choreo here, minus the belt thing, because they do the version of the choreo where they never stand up and Catra isn’t wearing a belt at all.

Chapter 4: Candy Store

⦁ No wonder she was what way indeed, huh, Catra? Well, multiple. No wonder she was so frustrated, because Catra is infuriating when she wants to be. No wonder she was so hung up on her, because Glimmer also wants to fuck her inexplicably. No wonder she lived and breathed the word homoerotic, because Catra made sure they lived on the razer edge of it at all times. No wonder she was down bad, because again — see the last two point. This line is less of an insult and more of Catra being too magnetic for anybody’s good, honestly, but that annoys Glimmer because she doesn’t want to like her (like that, or at all) so it definitely comes out like an insult and Glimmer is good with that.

⦁ I need you to picture Catra’s “What?” after the brat comment in the same tone of voice as Elle Woods saying “What, like it’s hard?” because Catra definitely wants it hard.

Chapter 5: We Can Start and Finish Wars

⦁ I was nervous about doing this scene just from a trigger perspective, but I figured it would be okay if I kept it all contained to this one chapter, and it was something I really wanted to cover. It was my first thought when I heard You’re Welcome (since it was a new song). I also wanted to explore the support a cast really gives. You don’t have to improvise every night or anything, but there’s always something that pops up over a show and you have to adapt for when you’re doing shows night after night. This is why casts really have to have each others’ backs and are often close. Every person on that stage would have done what they could to help Adora get through the show, but Catra, Bow, and Sea Hawk were the only ones who could have helped in that specific scenario due to their roles, and Adora was good enough at covering it up that only her best friends noticed.

⦁ This chapter was a turning point for them between the lines with the show and reality blurring and Catra realizing (though trying to repress it) how important Adora is to her.

⦁ They do workshop a version of the scenes where Kurt and Ram just don’t come as close in contact to Adora and end up being even more slapstick with each other in place of the more aggressive choreography moments, and during Never Shut Up Again they don’t even come close to Veronica, instead running around the stage to tell the audience/school. They only use it once on Adora’s signal, and Bow voluntarily opts for it once based on vibes and Sea Hawk immediately adapts, but Netossa is right: it’s a good thing to have, and she’s really glad Adora agreed to collaborate on something.

⦁ This last scene wraps up the rest of the show to verify it goes well, but it’s mostly here just to showcase Good Director™️ Netossa. She really cares about her people a lot even when she’s a hard ass.

⦁ Adora doesn’t keep up too much with comments due to what she mentions about knowing there will be homophobia in them, but she’s not totally tuned out on them and a long flood of notifications still draws attention. After this time she becomes more committed to not reading them much, though.

⦁ Yes they’re going to the same dinner place featured later.

⦁ While out at dinner, Glimmer and Bow try to ask her how she’s doing and she gives them an even more abridged version of what she told Netossa and Catra because she just doesn’t want to think about it anymore, but of course Glimmer and Bow are super supportive, and Bow is really enthusiastic about them choreographing an alternate version of the scene because he just wants Adora to be okay and is proud of her for taking that step.

Chapter 6: No Time to Knock (I’m a Dead Girl Walking)

⦁ Chapter title from DGW

⦁ Dead Girl Walking honestly didn’t look that different that night, and Netossa did miss them making out after the lights went down because she was scrambling looking for a scrunchy, but she could tell Catra was going further with the choreo than she was supposed to, especially with the kiss during the kitchen scene when Netossa had given up looking for it until the show was over, and in a situation like that Adora couldn’t say no or stop her without changing the intent of the scene, hence Netossa threatening Catra about the consent issue despite how Adora didn’t seem upset. It’s just something she has to do as director. I ended up reducing it to a one-sentence mention later in the fic, but I thought about having a scene where, after a few nights of them kissing on stage, Netossa goes to Catra’s dressing room and asks her if Adora ever gave her permission for that, to which Catra says yes she’s fine with that, and Netossa corrects her and says did Adora ever give you verbal, explicit permission for that at which point Catra goes quiet and Netossa then demands she go to Adora’s dressing room and secure it before she’s allowed to leave for the night. Cure Catra awkwardly standing in Adora’s doorway asking Adora if it’s okay for them to kiss during the show as Netossa stands down the hall and waits for her. Adora was very bewildered but could tell Catra was being put up to it from the way she kept glancing to the side so she just agreed because she didn’t want them to get in trouble and Catra quickly fled. It just didn’t even up fitting in the flow of the story because it meant verbally acknowleding what they were doing earlier than they were supposed to so that’s why I changed it to Netossa privately asking Adora instead of forcing a confrontation, which is the better thing for Netossa to do anyway rather than force Adora to deal with it if she really were uncomfortable (the reason she did it in this version of the scene was because she was 100% certain it didn’t bother Adora but was doing her duty as director).

Chapter 7: Happiness Comes / When Everything Numbs

⦁ Chapter title from Freeze Your Brain.

⦁ Forever thinking about ND’s “and it was” comic.

⦁ Real shoutout to the person who informed me about the official stage recording of the later version of the West End Heathers because I definitely did not remember any of the dialogue outside of songs and it let me take notes to write scenes like the croquet scene, which is like 50% similar to the one that actually takes place in the musical. A lot of the dialogue not overtly related to Veronica’s queerness is the same, but a little bit of the action was changed around to extend the scene for the extra dialogue and include using an actual ball, because Glimmer being frighteningly accurate at hitting things with a giant mallet felt right.

Chapter 8: Fight For Me

⦁ Heather tries to get Veronica to admit she’s into girls so much so that she can have blackmail over her to keep her in line, although she doesn’t actually need her to admit it, she just knows Veronica would be more afraid of the threat whenever she makes it if Veronica is aware it’s something Heather has 100% confirmed to be true.

⦁ I didn’t include it because I didn’t want to have to cover every scene with differences in here, but in the 7/11 Heather bothers Veronica more about clearly being into girls and is mildly homophobic to JD. Then, in the scene after Dead Girl Walking and Veronica’s nightmare, as Veronica is freaking out about getting to Heather and making amends before Monday, she tells JD in clear terms “She’s going to out me and tell the school I’m bi” which is what Adora was referring to in chapter three when she mentions this version of the musical having the word bisexual in the opening act.

⦁ I know what y’all are going to think this was inspired by, but it’s actually inspired by a fucking Try Guys Korean bbq video where they went karaokeing afterwards. I’ve never been to a karaoke place like that and it got me thinking.

Chapter 9: Big Fun!

⦁ When the show started, Bow and Sea Hawk were both given like packs of the exact same underwear (one in blue variants, one in red variants, and one in black variants) so they could match throughout the show. It’d be easier to coordinate if it was all the same pair, but they wanted the variety for people who came to multiple shows. They actually have a lot of fun coordinating and then, on their own, decided to get a pair of those classical heart-print boxers that they throw in occasionally. Sometimes that’s just based on a day when they don’t want to wear something as revealing as the tighty-whities they usually wear, but usually it’s as a gag.

⦁ It was too awkward to shoe-in here, but part of reworking the choreography around You’re Welcome included the decision to have robes backstage for Bow and Sea Hawk, which they don’t often use, but if it’s a night where Adora is getting overwhelmed intermission is a lot more comfortable if Bow and Sea Hawk aren’t wandering around naked. Sea Hawk’s has feathers along the collar and cuffs.

⦁ Glimmer’s best friends all have abs and she has no idea how sharp her elbows can be.

⦁ Glimmer did realize she was flying a little too close to the sun with Adora if she responded to Catra’s flirting.

⦁ Yeah Catra brought her strap.

⦁ Catra was just a little tired during that show, so she asked Entrapta for some of the drain cleaner as a pickup since it has a lot of sugar, and she was taking a few seconds to rest before she had to go be feral on stage again.

⦁ When I first told my friend Meta I was doing a Heathers fic, Catra downing the fake drain cleaner like shots was one of the first jokes they made and I had to include it.

⦁ Adora thinks there is — a chance — that Catra wants to be dating after this exchange where she says it’s not “a problem”, but she’s definitely worried about saying anything too soon or too presumptive and scaring her off, so she’s just going to lowkey keep acting like they’re seeing each other and hope Catra will open up enough for them to have a conversation about it eventually.

⦁ The people at stage door the night they got “dinner”, and the night they actually got dinner, and the night they went home together, all definitely thought they were dating but only the ones from the first night even thought that might be news. The girl who was a big fan of Catra kept it to herself and her friends, but one half of the couple publicly tweeted the picture they got with Catra and Adora that night mentioning they got to take photos before they went off on a date, but that picture didn’t make its way back to Catra because she wasn’t tagged in it and not that many people “noticed” per se. Final bow was when everyone was like ah so there is something fruity going on there, but even then a lot of people weren’t sure, and it’s something that just got solidified over the coming months as they were seen together more, kissed in public, got a little sappy on Instagram, etc and everyone retroactively realized they were right.

Chapter 10: Beautiful

⦁ Usually the chapter titles are either lyrics that match the chapter or a song that features in a chapter, but in the case of “Beautiful”, it was a thematic match. Beautiful features Veronica picturing her future and the next phase in her life. For this chapter Catra is also exploring her future and her next steps. And also she’s gay for Adora.

⦁ The First Contact scene started as a Mass Effect joke (iykyk) and then I ended up including it. I honestly thought I was going to cut it because it’s kind of random but the point was to show how long they’ve known each other and they have their own world of games and jokes that they lost when they lost each other, so I ended up keeping it.

⦁ Cheekbone > Clavicle > Cupid’s bow (aka Achimenes longiflora) > Gums (aka Alveolar process).

⦁ Catra freezes up after Adora asks what she gets for a good show because she can’t bring herself to say “Me.”

⦁ Shot in the Dark is one of the episodes of the show I’ve rewatched the most, when they find Melog and Catra learns about the power of friendship. The musical was either going to be called that or White Out tbh (real ones know my relationship with that episode) but Catra is playing a magicat specifically in this role so going with the Melog episode felt right.

Chapter 11:

⦁ The blanket came from Lance, actually.

⦁ What’s my ideal choreography for Meant To Be Yours? So glad you definitely asked. This scene is usually presented so abstractly I don’t think someone unfamiliar with the musical/movie would even know Veronica is hiding in her closet. My ideal version (with the staging already set up in this play) is the house facade with the window being rolled in on one side of set (only one just cuz there isn’t time) and JD appearing on the other side of the window (with the light off so it’s more like he’s creepy in the dark) and doing his knock knock thing. Veronica in the middle of the stage panics and runs to the back of center stage, where it’s carefully choreographed for the ghosts (Kurt and Ram) to be rolling in an open doorframe that she runs through and Heather slams behind her. Then Kurt and Ram would lean against each side of the doorframe making fed up and “can you believe this dude?” faces at each other as JD has his whole villain speech in center stage before going to pound on the door and finally wrenching it open to reveal Veronica hanging on the other side with Heather kind of “in the corner” making a comedic fake shock face looking between JD and Veronica as JD breaks down. When he leaves and Veronica struggles to get down for a second, Heather would roll her eyes and help as Kurt and Ram wheel off the door and then quickly move the house facade off stage as it transitions to Dead Girl Walking (Reprise).

Chapter 12:

⦁ My idea for this AU was that Catra would have a “stage mom” and then their acting coach would have been Shadow Weaver to get that Trauma Backstory™️, which means Catra needed actual parents. I already had the pair from Trade Today For Tomorrow, so I wasn’t going come up with a new set of names, but it does feel kind of wrong to have changed Leona to be a “bad” mom. In general, if/when I do use them again, I’ll be using their TTFT personalities. Also, in this AU Leona isn’t awful or anything, but she really wanted to be an actress and it didn’t work out so she has been pushing her child in that direction even when it was painful, which gave them a tense relationship. Most of my other Catras would be thrilled to have parents like this, but Catra doesn’t have that context for None or Very Bad parents, so she’s just another person with an awkward relationship with her parents and doesn’t think about it too much.

⦁ Catra used to spend Christmas ever at Adora’s house and then Christmas at her own/moms’ when they were kids.

Chapter 13:

⦁ My original idea for a childhood dream musical was to stick Adora in Wicked because you know Mara is a sucker for that show, but for mezzo-soprano it’s mainly Elphaba, and the whole point was giving her a role that wasn’t lead. I settled on Chicago because something LGBT is happening in that prison and I think Mara and Hope would both like the show. Adora is going to play Mona in Chicago, a fairly minor character who gets a solo verse in Cell Block Tango when describing why she killed her lover for cheating on her. She appears (namelessly) in more songs but also gets off-stage time, and that song is absolutely ICONIC, so Adora is really excited to get to take part in it, even if it’s pushing the absolute limits of her dancing ability. She does a lot of practicing leading up to the show, so Catra is worried for a bit about her getting too busy and their relationship faltering about, but it balances out after the initial push. Adora’s moms are super psyched when they hear she’s going to be in the show and the marketing team ends up releasing the Broadway cast’s version of Cell Block Tango online at the open of the show to drum up hype for it, so Adora really hits one of her big career dreams — though still with room to grow, if she can get it with a larger role and a full album. This role shows her that headlining isn’t all there is to musical theater, though, and having smaller parts can really by worth it for the off-time.

⦁ Uh so. Mona’s outfit. The outfits for the inmates in Cell Block Tango are usually pretty close to lingerie. Adora has a bodysuit, because it works for the song and she’s more comfortable being covered in something skintight than just wearing two pieces, but it’s still quite a Lot for her parents to see it. They know what they’re in for though and everybody just neglects to address it after the show when they praise her voice. Catra loves Adora in the outfit though.

⦁ Based on my previous formatting Shot in the Dark, Chicago, and Hello, Again should actually just be written out without italics, but because the nature of the titles (length and formatting) make it confusing without italics and clunky with quotes, so I ended up just being inconsistent between them and Heathers.

Original Outline:

I outlined this one pretty heavily going into it, in the way I used to for my fics where I’d write like a one-sentence summary of every scene planned in a chapter going in. Of course, I knew I would add and change scenes as I went, but I was pretty faithful to the outline outside of additions. I was outlined out to chapter 8 but thought it would expand to about 12 chapters between the ending I hadn’t outlined (I needed to be closer to it to know what the right conclusion was) and scenes adding themselves in along the way to up the count, and I finally put that count on the fic when I was writing chapter 10 or so, but then I realized I fucking forgot about the cast album and I got the idea for the bar scene so all of Chapter 12 ended up getting added and expanding it to 12 chapters.

The only “big” thing that didn’t happen was the catnip thing, which was mostly a joke I outlined anyway, but it was just too much from several angles so I cut it before I finished it. The idea was someone pulling a prank on Catra by putting catnip on her vanity and getting her lowkey high. Non-destructively pulling something on a castmate’s dressing room is pretty common antics, but this felt… very targeted and tense even though the castmate was doing it fairly innocently and just ignorant of that angle to it, so I didn’t want to go through with it. Catra was going to corner Adora though and demand if she fucked with her dressing room, and when Adora was obviously confused by the confrontation, fall into her arms and aggressively scentmark her even as she growled explaining the vandalism, which Adora offered to clean up for her and let her use her dressing room to change so she didn’t get more exposure to it. Again, the “getting a castmate a little high” thing, even accidentally (they didn’t realize it had much of an effect) was just not a line I — or the cast — wanted to cross, though.

Upcoming:

The 4th anniversary SPOP Big Bang is going to run May 12th-18th and I’ll be posting daily for the first few days with my magical realism AU Lightbeam along with my amazing artist partner who made an illustration for every chapter! Keep an eye out for it :)

#olig #ficmeta #fic notes

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macawritesupdates · 18 days ago

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Fic Writing Updates 11/10

Been super duper busy of late as I have a second job in the evening cutting into writing time and also having to get some art done for zines. Just been a balancing act ; w ;

However! Working on fics to get them updated so don't worry, the updates are coming I swear! <3

The goal this month is to get a lot of these long fics wrapped up so I have less stories to update on my plate which should equal faster updates!

JUJUTSU KAISEN LONGFIC UPDATES

The Yuuji Files: About 9k words into this chapter and just about to reach the halfway point so...it is a very large chapter, but feels short writing it honestly given how the action is flowing! Hopefully readers will enjoy!

Broken in the Ways No One Sees: Last chapter should come out today! That's the plan at least! I want to get this chapter out so the story can be brought to its conclusion <3 Spouse Wanted: Hoping to write and post an update today for this one if I can. Chapter is almost done, just have to write the final scene

Can't Help a Cuddle: Sorting out the notes and starting to work on it! A lot of suggestions to organize and work into a chapter so it has been slow going, but hopefully will satisfy readers <3 Lessons in Accidental Seduction: New chapter is in the works, slowly but surely!

Malevolence of Love: Taking a small break to sort out notes for the next chapter as the angst is heading for a conclusion now...

Who's A Good Boy: Once Broken is done, going to speed run the chapters of this story to get it completed. Think it is an easier one to clear out then some of these!

Careful What you Joke About: Working on next chapter slowly but surely, just making sure it flows how I like, but still on the docket for an update soon When You Have Two Grandsons: This is a comfort fic so it gets updated when I get inspired and needing something to write/relax from other fics. No new chapter just yet....

Mirrored Lives: Plan is to get this one finished out in terms of the rewrite to the outline and then push it out to get it concluded so it stops hanging over me :C

MY HERO ACADAMIA FIC UPDATES

Jealousy is Not a Good Friend: My other comfort fic. Especially as the readers are calling for us to be mean to Kirishima and break his feelings into tiny pieces...and you KNOW I'm here for angst.

Unsung Heroes: Working on it when I can, just really want to update it > . < but also want to take my time with it >.<

ONE -SHOTS

KiriOchaToga Oneshot: Because I want to write it and you can't stop me.

Once Upon a Blob: Because I want some Blobkuna....

FICS TO COME

Changing this fics that I'm actively working on writing as...too many ideas rattling around that I want to write >.< So these are fics that are on the docket to come and going to actually write. COLLAB FIC: Still working on this fic and excited to eventually share it with readers <3

Culturally Inappropriate: The first chapter is being prepared and I'm going to launch it once I finish some of the other long fics so can devote a lot more time to it! I want to do some art for it...but will make a poll of readers want to see that!

#Maca updates writing #Still working on things!#hoping to get a few things out today <3

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op-sys-chaos · 3 months ago

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Fic Tag Game!

@'ed by my fabulous mutual, @brucewaynehater101

Rules:

Make a list of five (or so) of your WIPs for your followers to choose from

Post a snippet from one of your fics that you've worked on in the past week

Your followers get to send an ask with one of your WIPs!

You must then write a paragraph or so in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write a paragraph on it anyway and then another that you can share from something else

I do recommend adjusting the writing requirement depending on the size of your following. The point is to make some progress, so if you're not expecting a lot of asks, maybe make your goal bigger, and the inverse is true for large followings. Do you.

That's it! You can invite others to join in or just post.

No pressure tagging @batfambrainrotbeloved and @corkinavoid. If you see this and want to join, feel free to!

(for me, since I don't have a large following, I'm going to do this as chapters! If I get an ask, I'll write a chapter)

Fics and Snippets:

1. The Pit Made Me Do It (And I'm So Sorry): If Jason wanted his mind back, if he wanted to feel any positive emotion ever again, he had to kill his new adoptive brother [Tim Drake].

2. In Another Life: As he made contact with the [reincarnation amulet], Danny [Fenton] closed his eyes, and baby Dick Grayson opened his eyes in a hospital moments later.

3. Twins, or What It Takes to be Resurrected: Danny hadn’t seen his twin [Damian] since he was 7. He didn’t expect to see him again as a ghost.

4: A Message from the Dead: Looking for a Ghost: “Bruce received a video from someone named Danny two days ago. Someone with black hair and blue eyes. Someone who was the long lost twin of his other son, Damian. The video was apparently set to auto-send after three days. But we’ve actually been looking for Danny for a month now, ever since his bio-mom told us about his existence. Bruce is his bio-dad.”

5. Fragmented Universe: the Hope of a Wraith: As he finished the last word, the candles flared, and one bright flash of light later, Tim looked up and saw the grin of a clown, a crowbar swinging, and then stars as said crowbar collided with his head.

Just survive this, Tim, he thought to himself. You did the important part. You got Jason out of here. Now survive this without letting on that it’s you and not him. You can cry out in pain later.

And survive he did. After what felt like an eternity, the Joker set his bomb and left.

I have other fics as well, so you can also name one of those and I'll probably write for it, but these are the ones I'm guaranteeing I'll write more of!

#this will be fun!

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thenotebookwizard · 7 days ago

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I promised! (writing update)

No. No, I have not caught up on Tumblr yet. I want to, but - writing. And work. And writing. Lots of writing.

Which -

I promised an update on my writing, for those of you who pay attention to that sort of thing. Or have been asking me about it over the last few months of updates, since I stopped adding writing updates under the cut with each Defiance update. I stopped, because I thought I was annoying people, but since that appears not to be true...

A big update. Because I am not good at writing small or short things. (You may have noticed.)

Most of this under the cut so I don't clutter dashboards.

First off, news I thought I would never get to write: I finally hit a long time writing goal and have written a total more than one million words this year.

(Yes, I obsessively track my writing.)

I am very excited by this accomplishment. I've been working up to this level for years now.

So. Writing.

I will start with She-Ra since, that's most of what y'all read me for!

Red Crème Fizz

Installment five (currently otherwise untitled) is started, but moving at a glacial pace.

Hard to get into the fluffy mindset I need for that series at the moment. I'll get there. I always do. It's either going to be shorter than the last two installments or a two chapter fic. Not sure which yet.

Red Crème Fizz stories are like that for me. I plan, I start to write, and then things I didn't plan happen. It's the one series I'm a discovery writing with.

Kinda fun. Also kinda scary. (I like planning things. I'm very good at planning things. Stories that don't go according to plan are scary.)

Defiance

Defiance continues. I am writing away at it. And the side-stories.

That is the word count of the entire document, counting side stories and slush, but - it's a lot of words y'all, and it's only going to get bigger. Long longfic will be long.

We have 2-3 chapters left (depending on when this actually get posted) of the Sea Hawk sequence, with a chapter of transition.

Then we are deep into Adora's story for a good long while.

As of my writing this (Nov 21 2024), I have about 12-15 chapters of buffer written, and am deep into the next arc of the story, post Adora leaving the Horde. (And really, that's not a spoiler; we all knew that was inevitable!) I'm writing at a good place.

I do have some more side-stories coming up. One at the end of the Sea Hawk sequence, and a couple more before the end of the arc, and one between arcs.

There may be a week break at the end of the arc for one of the side stories, but I haven't decided on that yet.

One of those side stories has run away with itself - and me - and will likely be several chapters long (3-5, I reckon) and is the first side story I have regretted pulling out of the main fic. That story will cover some of Akrash's and Catra's past, and the writing on it has been really quite good.

I know some of my commenters have been concerned about typos in previous chapters, and while I'm not normally fussed about those things, as we come towards the major events in the next dozen or so chapters, I will probably - a chapter or two at a time - editing for typos and what not. This does not mean I want or need folk pointing things out. This is merely to say 'yeah, I know they're there, and I will get to them at some point. Probably.'

Typos happen.

Other Writing

I mean, such as it is. Defiance owns a lot of my words right now.

I am working in the background on a Star Wars: the Clone Wars fic - Barriss Offee/Ahsoka Tano, and it's a bit more than 100k and promises to be quite long. Not sure when I'll start posting it, but sometime in 2025 seem likely?

I have finished and sent my first Babylon 5 fic to beta, and am waiting to hear back on if I nailed what I wanted or if I am going back the drawing board.

I have a few more stories planned, here and there. A couple of things in Star Trek - one Next Generation and one Deep Space Nine, but nothing longfic or as substantive as Defiance or the Star Wars fic.

I have a longer Zoids fanfic planned and a fair bit written on that, but it's a very niche fandom that only some of you are aware of. Early to mid 2025. (I think)

I will probably have a CageBlade fic finished sometime after the start of the year, and I will probably have a few SWTOR (Star Wars the Old Republic) stories at some point. (Because that game won't let my brain go. Makes sense, I suppose. It's the only game I play.)

I am still working on the pre-emptive second draft (*cough*rewrite*cough*) of my first (and never published) She-Ra longfic called For Honor and I reckon I will end up talking about that more as I work on it more and assuming I remember to tumblr things.

Other concepts percolating in my brain are pretty much 'no plot, just vibes' right now and include (but are not limited to):

Trucker Catra/van-lifer Adora AU (canon species, with magic)

Adora as a veterinarian at an animal shelter Catra helps run. Lots of city politics in that one. Some social media influencer stuff, too.

There has been some discussion of me finally finishing an old Castle fic. (I did some great writing for this one, but I lost the thread of it after my fiancé passed. I hope I can get the same pace, cadence, and flow again.)

I have promised to (eventually) write an MCU story. It's started. The writing is solid. I just need time to plot and plan that one a bit better before I work on it more. I know the ships in that one one won't be terribly popular, but that's par for the course with me. Alas!

There is a Star Trek Tos beta-canon novel duopoly by Diane Carey I have always loved and wanted to write fic for, so I will probably be writing a longer fic for that at some point in the future. [Dreadnought! & Battlestations!]

Figure on more DS9 randomness for me throughout the next year. I have some somewhat random-ass things I want to poke at in that universe, but I have no idea exactly what those stories will look like yet.

Possible Babylon 5 side-character story nonsense and, as @derangedhyena would say - shitposting.

Recently, the r/fanfiction Discord server I help mod had our first FicWriMo event -replacing NaNoWriMo after the betrayals and shitty comments and AI endorsements of these past few years (if you don't know about any of this, then go look it up! Lots of very smart, very erudite people have told that tale in full - I do not want to rehash it here) and I did a bunch of writing about writing for that event. Some of the folks on the server found my writing helpful, so I have started the process of collating that into a PDF.

So that's something that will appear at some point in the next couple or three months.

(If anyone is interested in joining that server, it is a pan-fandom server focusing on being a supportive environment where writers can grow without fear of being bashed, having their fandoms or their ships bashed, and can talk about the things that make them happy. Our first rule is 'no bashing' - not fandoms, not ships, not media, not yourself, not each other, not everyone else's work. We do adhere to Discord's ToS, so. - no underage sex, no under 18 writers in the smut channels, etc. It's a great place.)

So, as always, thank y'all for reading - whichever of my (many and varied) fandoms you read.

Q&A

As to a question posed to me in one of the Discord servers I'm on. I was asked to answer it on Tumblr, so I am answering it in this post, because I am talking about my writing.

The question was - given that I am devastated by and terrified of the election results, and given that I am disabled, work with the the neurodiverse and disabled communities, and am an advocate, how will this affect my writing.

Fairly easy. I'm going keep voting, keep talking, and keep working. I will continue to be a voice in the digital wilderness when and where I can - as long as it is appropriate for me to do so. Which means, you'll see reblogs from me here on tumblr, for sure. But most of what I do and am involved in, most people will never hear about or know about. At least, on this platform. This isn't the place for me to discuss those things. There are a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is that most of what I do is working with people on an individual basis, and thus most of what I do is particular that those people. And I am not going to share their stories or their lives without their express and direct permission.

Nor do I believe I am going to convince anyone of anything here. I will always reblog things that vibe with who I am now, and I will support those causes important to me, and I will continue to do my best work for my students and their families.

I am also going to throw myself into gratuitous escapism. To echo @paganaidd, I am moving to Etheria for the next fours years. I'll take some road trips to a galaxy far, far away, the United Federation of Planets, or the Interstellar Alliance. I'll go to Zi on safari, but I think I'm going to end up back on Etheria for awhile. I have a lot of Catradora stories I want to tell (two long fics, my current one-shot series, and at least one other series in development).

But how I am going to write those stories is what is going to be affected most of all.

While Defiance has more than its share of angst, it also has hope and love built into the foundations of the story. Red Crème Fizz is a fluffy canon divergent 'what if' - and a lot of what I write over the next four years will be built around the idea there are heroes who want to be heroes, that good guys can and should win, and that evil should get shitkicked, curbstomped, and beat down.

Another friend (thank you @dei2dei) sent me this:

That sentiment appeals to me on a very deep level. (Aside from not being able to write comedy to save my life or anyone else's life.) But the sentiment is one I intend to carry over.

I've said before I am a noblebright writer, and I am. So my stories will not be devoid of angst or challenges, but - hope and love and happy endings are going to become strong themes, because I think the world needs more of that. But with hope, you have to have meaning - you have to have something to make purpose and hope and happy endings matter.

As a friend and I discussed recently, meaning is also more immediate - and I hope to show that through my stories. I also think that through meaning comes hope that isn't blind, and the ability to work for meaningful, lasting change.

Argue with me if you want to about 'realism' or whatever. I won't engage with you on it. I'll just keep writing what I want to write.

And so should you - no matter what it is. Another good friend created this for me some time back for the r/fanfiction discord server, and I toss it out like a party favor.

So I give this to each and every writer and creator out there who needs the reminder -

What we write matters. What we create matters. And you should write what you want, how you want, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

(Y'all, I have some amazing friends. I really do.)

#my writing #writing #writer's life #fandom #fanfiction #update

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riccissance · 3 months ago

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i’m actually getting back some motivation/energy to write (yay!) so i wanted to post a bit about what i’m working on to try and keep that momentum going (and pressure myself into following through)

-continuing you should have been mine is priority #1, my goal in the next week is to finish the current chapter and make detailed outlines for the next few chapters

-i have a few one-shot ideas in the same universe; first is a jackieshauna ft. crystal fic that takes place after yshbm, next is an akilah-centric fic that spans the 25 years between her death and travis’, and one tai and akilah fic right after tai’s death. the first one is mostly written, second is fully outlined but unwritten (and will probably take a while bc it’ll be loong, akilah lovers will eat well), and the last one is still being workshopped

-i have a few ideas for new jackieshauna fics once i finish all of that (a multichap, a one-shot, and a two-shot) and a couple ideas for lottielee fics (a multichap and a one-shot). i’m not ready to share the details yet, but just know i’m plottin’ and schemin’!

i also just wanted to say that i really appreciate everyone who’s read, commented, kudos’d, even just looked at my fics. you all help motivate me to keep writing and challenging myself, and i hope i can get more out for you soon!!

#if anyone has strong feelings about wanting to see any of the in-progress ideas lmk #still deciding what to start first after finishing yshbm #writers block is a bitch #so is being employed :/#finally getting a break from work seems to be exactly what i needed #idk if anyone cares about this #but anyone who might want an update this is for you #yellowjackets #my fic

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storyofmychoices · 11 months ago

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The beginning of 2024 had definitely already brought it's share of challenges for me, but I'm hoping that maybe things will still be improving from here! Thinking positive!

Writing Goals

Where to even begin? I have probably 100+ WIP ranging from a scribbled idea on a post it to an outline that needs to be typed. I'd like to put a dent in that? So far each year, that list keeps growing instead of shrinking. I find that I'm more of the in the moment writer. It's all or nothing. Either I finish a piece in one sitting or it never gets done. I'd like to try to find more of a balance in 2024.

In a perfect world, here are some stories I'd like to complete:

Mal's proposal: I started this fic last February, and would really like to actually write it. I have art for it. I don't know what I'm waiting for, especially now that I have their Blades 2 AU proposal done 🙈

Laser Tag with Brylivia: This is just a short little drabble that I think is like 75% written. It's from 2 years ago. I really have NO excuses lol

Love and Scotch: This series fell away when I stoped writing Ethan (for a number of reasons). I'd love to finish this series. I had several more chapters planned but I might just skip some and at least get to what I envisioned as "the end" aka Thomas and Alex's HWU AU wedding and a big turning point for Ethan and Ellie.

#HollywoodHacks: Does anyone even care about this series? Anyone even remember it? I feel like no. I was really only writing it for 1 person, but they're not in the fandom anymore...It might not be the ending I'd planned or wanted, but I think I could wrap the series in 1 or 2 (tops) more chapters. I had hoped that the story would lead to me writing more for Ben Parks and my #LoveHacks MC but that never happened

Tipsy Nia x Daenarya: an anon requested tipsy Nia hitting on Daenarya and I started it but then never finished it. It's such a small drabble it seems silly to even include it here, but here we are!

Blades 2 AU: At the start of Blades 2 I was doing a great job keeping up with the book and rewriting the chapters to fit my vision for the characters. That kinda fell apart around Chapter 5. I'd like to finish that rewrite and see how Iliana fits into how the rest of the book happened. Last I wrote, Daenarya didn't even know she was pregnant.

Rayden and Lydo's Adoption: Mal and Daenarya have already decided to adopt them. I've also written them as a family. But, I've never written the actual story of Mal and Daenarya telling the boys they were adopting them and they'd be a family forever, so I'd love to do that!

Pairings I'd like to write more of in 2024:

Thomas and Alex: I used to publish 1 new story a day when I first started writing them. It lasted over a year, then it gradually decreased. Last year, I only wrote them 10 times! I know the lack of interactions with their stories, has definitely made me want to share less and just enjoy daydreaming for them, but still, I'd like to keep their story going, regardless of interactions, because they are so special to me. Plus, if I could wrap those two series above that they're in, that would definitely lift my RCD/HWU fic count for the year!

Nyx x Aerin: I LOVE NYX! NYX is incredible and I love love love them. Aerin is kinda fun too. I would love to develop these two more this year.

Trystan and Lilah: I've only written them a few times and I'd like to get to know them better

Beckett and Emma: I haven't written them in a long time and when I did write them it was for 1 particular series (them in Detention). With the Book Club replaying TE, I'm hoping I might be inspired to see what they're like outside of the library.

Troy and Astraea: I love these two but I haven't had time to explore them more. I don't think I'll have time to participate in the group reread right now, but I would still like to reread WTD at some point this year and keep developing them.

Daenarya x Maiele (@lilyoffandoms) + Mal x Tyril: In 2023, Lily and I started to develop these relationships more. I loved every second of that and I hope 2024 will bring us more of these four lovely characters.

Mal's Orphanage: Blades 2 destroyed the orphanage storyline. If PB wanted to steal it they should have done a better job of it. Like there was literally no point in them having that storyline since they abandoned it the first chance they got. I'd like to fix the Blades 2 orphanage storyline but then go back to focusing on my original orphanage because those children are my favorite.

Other Goals

Catch up on reading and be a more active reader

Follow and support new Choices accounts

Continue with the book club and other events I host but find a balance with hosting that I still have time to create and read/support others

Try my hand at drawing again. I had been drawing chibi's a while back and I haven't had time/the courage to try again, but @lilyoffandoms's incredible art journey this month has inspired me to add it to my list this year

Keep editing Aerin in the sluttiest Choices outfits I can find

Flesh out more of Olivia's pediatric practice and how she transitions from Edenbrook to Sunshine Pediatrics

Be kind to myself and let myself rest when I need it. I am my biggest critic and if you ask me what I'm good at, I'd say nothing and I would tell you everything wrong with anything I've ever done, including all of my pairings. I see the mistakes and I want to let myself see the good and focus on only that this year.

#lovealexhunt #storyofmychoices #writing #2024 goals #choices countdown to 2024 #thomas hunt #bryce lahela #mal volari #lovehacks #hollywood u #red carpet diaries #nyx selenastra #aerin valleros #troy hassan #trystan thorne #beckett harrington

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ladylooch · 1 year ago

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Letters in Your Last Name- Chapter 1

Visit the Series page here.

A/N: She's here! On Tumblr! The AU that brought me back to fan fic 🥰 I am going to post one chapter a day until it's all over here. I originally posted this on mibba, but Tumblr has been kind to me and I want to share these two with you! Note, I did change Alex's kids names because it felt like the right thing to do. K, enjoy!

Word Count: 4.1k

Warnings: swearing.

“Alex Stalock!” I screech at my older brother as he tries to grab the mini stick out of my hands. “Your son needs to learn how to lose.” I insist, reaching out my hand for him to give it back to me.

“Sam, he’s 5. Let the kid get at least one shot in.” Alex laughs, giving me a light shove.

Alex and I are playing mini sticks with his oldest child, Sawyer, in the living room of my brother’s sprawling home in the outer suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m determined to score on him just like I was when we were kids playing in our parents unfinished basement, 10 minutes from where we are now. Alex is my youngest, older brother and currently plays for the Minnesota Wild as a goalie.

“What time is Kevin going to be here?” Felicia, Alex’s wife of almost ten years, asks after taking a sip of her red wine. They were high school sweethearts and she’s been a part of our family for as long as I can remember.

“6:30.” Alex answers as he sets himself up in the net again.

“Who is Kevin?” I wonder as I reach for the ball on Sawyer’s stick in a lame attempt to take it from him.

“New guy. Just got traded here from Nashville.” Alex says as he exaggerates a dive. Sawyer shoots and the white ball sails into the netting. He lifts his stick and cheers, pumping his fists in the air and yelling.

“Daddy, I’m Eric!” He exclaims, mimicking Eric Staal who is known for his excited, goal scoring celebrations on the team.

“You’re definitely quieter than that guy.” Alex snorts. “Kevin is your age.” Alex finishes to me, grabbing a sip of water from his glass on the coffee table.

I’m the youngest of my two siblings, but I’m actually considerably younger than both my brothers. Nick, the oldest, is 12 years older than me while Alex is 9 years older. It goes without saying, but yes, I was a complete surprise to my parents, who thought they were done after having two boys. My older brothers were smitten with me from day one, but Alex and I have always been the closest. He taught me how to skate, tie my shoes and throw a punch. Mom wasn’t too thrilled about the last one. The teenage years were a struggle, especially considering Alex liked to scare all the hockey boys away from me in high school. Overall though, we have been thick as thieves and rarely notice the age difference.

“Honey, can you help me put the salad together? Serena needs me to help her go potty.” Felicia reaches for their daughter and scoops her up into her arms. Serena is the youngest of the two kids, turning three in a few short months.

“Yep!” Alex agrees, swiftly leaving our game.

“Alright, little man. You’re toast now that dad’s gone.” I grin mischievously at Sawyer.

“Doubt it.” Sawyer replies. I laugh loudly and glance at Alex who gives me a wicked grin.

“That’s my boy. Get her.”

Sawyer and I duke it out while dinner is being prepared. He allows a couple soft goals and I let in a few just to keep the fun going. He’s winning by two goals when the doorbell chimes throughout the house.

“Got it!” Alex yells from the kitchen, jogging out to the front door. “Hey man!” I hear Alex greet our guest. “Come on in.”

I stare Sawyer down in the net, looking at the gaping hole he left to the right and instead, shooting directly into his stomach. I let out a groan as Sawyer giggles excitedly.

“Nice save bud! Time to be done though. Please go wash up for dinner.” Alex says as he walks back into the living room with Kevin Fiala in toe.

“No! I’m about to beat Auntie.” Sawyer insists.

“Lies,” I shake my head at him, giving him a joking snarl. “Nobody beats me in mini sticks.”

“Well, if you rage slash everyone when you lose, it’s in everyone’s best interest if you win.” Alex grins wildly at me. “Sawyer, that wasn’t me asking. Go.”

“That was one time.” I pout at him. I glance to his left and take in the newest member of the Minnesota Wild. What I see is as good of eye candy as you can get. Strong jaw, deep brown eyes, a smile that invites you in for one drink and the next thing you know you’re screaming his name in pleasure. Yikes. I shake my head, putting on a pleasant smile and forcing my eyes back to my brother.

“Kevin, this is my little sister, Sam. Sam, Kevin.”

“Nice to meet you.” I wave at him, grabbing the sticks and goals to move them out of the way. Kevin walks towards me, grabbing the goals out of my hand.

“I can help.” He offers.

“Oh, thanks.” I say to him, smiling. “They go in the playroom down the hall.” I tell him. We enter the playroom and I step over stuffed animals, cars, and legos to get to the back corner where the knee hockey stuff lives. As he places the goals down, I take an opportunity to look at him. Damn, this guy is gorgeous. Not even in the trying too hard kind of gorgeous; It’s all clearly natural. A combination of his bone structure, 5 o’clock shadow and brown hair flipping out slightly from his hat makes me weak in the knees. He’s wearing dark jeans and a white Adidas sweatshirt that showcases his broad shoulders. He glances at me and when our eyes meet, I can feel my body tingle in response. Our gazes hold for a breath, but it’s enough for my heart to beat faster in response.

“Alex says you live here?” He asks me when our hands are empty.

“Um, yeah. Alex is gone a lot during the season, so I help out with the kids when he is out of town. At first, it was just for long road trips, but it works to always have adults outnumbering the kids.”

“That makes sense.” He nods in response, hands going into his pockets. “So you’re the mini sticks champion in this house?” He tilts his head as he looks at me through shining, bright eyes. I laugh and give my eyes a quick roll.

“Alex likes to talk shit, but yes, I was always the champion growing up between my siblings. Being the only girl has it’s perks sometimes.” I shrug. “As for this house, I’ve been known to let Sawyer win a time or two.”

He leans his head back and genuinely laughs. I bite my lip, taking in the sight of his relaxed posture, his easy smile, and his tongue as it licks over his bottom lip. My stomach dips in response. I swallow hard, looking away from him.

Sam, you’re going into dangerous territory.

“Um, I think Felicia said dinner was almost ready.” I say, considering he is between me and the door. I know we need to move along, otherwise Alex or one of the kids will get curious.

“Sure. Well, maybe some other time you and I can play together. I’d love to challenge you for your title.”

“Oh really? Even after the rage slashing story?”

“What can I say.” He says with a shrug. He turns towards door, but pauses and looks back at me. “I like a girl with some fire in her.” He distinctly looks me up and down, pausing briefly at my lips, then grins like wild and walks out.

Uh oh.

- - -

Dinner is filled with carbs, wine, and plenty of light, Midwestern conversation. Kevin tells us that he is originally from Switzerland, but stays in Sweden during the off season. He played there before he was drafted into the NHL and fell in love with the country. He visits for multiple weeks in Switzerland before and after the season where his family still lives. He was drafted by Nashville in 2014 and had a rough journey through his NHL career so far.

“I appreciate the support I’ve gotten from the Predators over the years, but I can’t say that I’m sad to not be there anymore.” Kevin tells us after taking a drink of water. “Towards the end it became clear that I was never going to find my place in the organization.”

“I get that.” Alex tells him, “I’ve been with three different teams in my career and each one offers a different atmosphere. Some you can thrive in and others seem to hold you back.”

“Yeah, and being a European far from home adds another level of frustration when things aren’t going great.”

“I bet. I feel grateful I can play in the place where I am from and have my family at every game.” Alex nods. As he finishes, Serena lets out a large yawn. “Well, kids, it’s about that time.”

“But I’m not tired.” Sawyer tells his dad. He’s been fascinated with Kevin’s stories of his time in the NHL and abroad.

“I’ve seen a few yawns out of you too.” Felicia insisted, “Plus it’s bath night so we need to get moving.”

“If I’m holding you all up, I can head home.” Kevin says, moving to rise from his chair.

“No! Stay as long as you want.” Felicia insists, putting her hands up to stop him. “Al, why don’t you help me with the kiddos and Sam can stay with Kevin.”

“I can clean up.” I tell her. The kids are gathered up by their parents, leaving Kevin and I alone with a table full of leftovers and dishes. “You can just relax. I’ve got this.” I insist as he starts clearing plates.

“The least I can do is help clean up. The food was amazing.”

“Yeah, Felicia is an awesome cook. You’ll have to come back when she makes biscuits and gravy. Although, you should plan a nap into your day right after.” I laugh, grabbing a few glasses and walking over to the sink.

“That sounds like an off-day kind of meal.” He jokes as he hands me the plates. Our fingers brush and electricity slips up my arm and down my spine. Our eyes meet over the plates and I find myself unable to look away.

“Yeah, but it’s well worth the discomfort.” I say to him, trying to not sound as breathless as I feel.

“Some things in life are like that.” He gives me a small smirk before heading back to the table to grab more dishes. I force out a slow breath as I rinse the dishes before putting them into the empty dish washer. I don’t know what it is about him, but there is this undeniable force between us that feels like it’s pulling me to him. We work steadily in comfortable silence, him grabbing dishes and me putting them into the dishwasher. I take great care with each interaction to focus on the dishes in his hand and not let our fingers touch.

“So tell me about you.” He says as I’m putting the last few dishes away. I glance up at him, shrugging.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you’ll give me.” He leans back against the counter, arms crossed, waiting. My skin tingles beneath his gaze and I feel my cheeks grow pink at the awareness of his eyes on me.

“Born and raised here in Minnesota. I’ve never been to Sweden or Switzerland, or even Nashville. My favorite things are hockey, my family, and pasta. Coffee is my drink of choice and ice cream is my weakness.”

“Yeah, I’m a sucker for sweet things like ice cream and pretty women.” He mentions casually. There is a suggestion in his voice and the look on his face. I smile in response, sliding my gaze back to the dishes.

“FiFi, “I say using his nickname from Nashville that he told us about earlier in the evening. “Are you flirting with me in my brother’s kitchen?” I shut the dishwasher door, very aware that was the only barrier between us.

“Well, you having to ask is a bit embarrassing.” He bites his bottom lip and folds his arms tighter across his chest. “But I hope it’s still working.” I hold his gaze and breathe out a laugh.

“Maybe. But I’m not sure this is a good idea.” I say, pressing the start button. The machine clicks to life and I turn to grab containers for the leftovers.

“Ah. I get it. Your boyfriend isn’t interested in sharing?” He moves closer to where I am standing, grabbing a container and filling it with the leftover bread. He snaps the lid shut. As his arms move in this motion, I can feel the heat from his body through my sweatshirt.

“Smooth.” I acknowledge, scooping the pasta into two separate containers. “But, no, I don’t have a boyfriend. Is your girlfriend still in Nashville?” I wonder.

“I’m not the kind of guy who flirts with women when he has a girlfriend.” He says seriously. “So, what’s holding you back? I haven’t been charming enough?” He bats his long lashes jokingly.

“My brother would not be okay with any semblance of us.” I shrug. “Al and I are really close and he pays my bills, so I’m not super interested in messing that up.”

“I get it. I’m close with my sister too.” He tells me. “It’s too bad though. I’ve never met someone I’ve wanted to know every part of before.”

I let that sit in the silence as I walk to the fridge and place the leftovers in there. When I turn, I meet his gaze. There is this look in his eyes that is difficult to place. Wonder? Desire? Need? In normal circumstances, attention like this would be something I would laugh off. Those lines he’s using? Cheesy with a side of fluff. And yet, it’s working. There is something about him that makes me want to know him too. There is this chemistry between us and even though this is my life, it’s hard to believe that we just met for the first time mere hours ago. He feels familiar and comfortable. Someone I could fall right into and never bother getting up from.

Kevin pushes himself from the counter and walks across the kitchen to me with a container of leftover salad. He pauses in front of me, looking down into my face and I feel like I can barely breathe. His brown eyes search my face and whatever he is looking for, he finds because his lips pull apart into an easy smile again.

“Kids are down.” Alex’s voice carries to us. I can’t stop my body from jumping in response. I slide two steps back from Kevin and attempt to keep my face neutral. Judging by my brother’s squinty eyes, I look just as guilty as I feel. “Kev, want to play some chel before you go?”

“Yeah, hope you don’t mind getting your ass kicked though.” Kevin says as he brushes passed me, our arms touching briefly. I blow out the breath I was holding as they disappear to the basement where Alex’s gaming consoles are. I glance to the living room where Felicia is tiding up from the day now that the kids are asleep.

“Be careful with that.” She tells me as she folds the blanket and drapes it on the back of the couch. She gives me a knowing smile and I find myself fidgeting under her gaze. “He does look like fun though.” She winks.

“Yeah, something tells me he wouldn’t be boring.” I giggle, grabbing a can of blackberry Bubly out of the fridge.

“Well, what Alex doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

I help Felicia clean up the rest of the living room before deciding to call it a night. I have to be up early tomorrow to drop Sawyer at pre-school. Serena has a doctor appointment and with Alex leaving town in the morning, she can’t be two places at once. I wander down the stairs which lead into the family room where Alex and Kevin are playing the latest NHL game on Xbox. Kevin groans as Alex scores in the top right hand corner.

“Top titty!” Alex laughs, taking a swig of beer as the game resets for the next face off. Kevin’s eyes meet mine and he give this head a shake.

“Your brother cheats.” He insists

“Cheating does run in the family.” I shrug before continuing on down the hallway, passed the bathroom and into my room. As much as I’d love to linger in the room and watch, I know Alex would be suspicious of my presence.

I choose the basement for my room as it gives us all some privacy from each other. Sometimes, it feels a little weird to be living with my brother’s family. I’ve been with them for two years now, but it didn’t start to feel weird until after I graduated from college. I attended the University of Minnesota, Go Gophers, and earned a B.S. in Business Administration with an emphasis in Leadership. After college, I struggled with knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I loved the interworking of businesses, but the corporate world just doesn’t feel like a fit to me. When Alex asked for me to come nanny for them almost a year ago, it felt like a welcome chance to delay entering the professional world. Now, seeing my peers with their entry level positions, I worry that maybe I’m behind. With everything Alex has given to me, I feel guilty leaving them to pursue just anything.

I walk to my desk and sit at my laptop. I spend a few minutes flipping through various social media sites before I pull up Netflix. As I’m plugging my headphones into my ears, I hear footsteps down the hall, entering the bathroom next to my room. I know it’s either Kevin or Alex. My heart beats harder in my chest hoping it’s the Swiss native. A minute passes before I hear the click of the door. I click open an episode of One Tree Hill to not look like I was waiting for whoever was in there.

“This your room?”Kevin pokes his head into the doorway with a soft knock.

“For now.” I say as I pull my headphones out of my ears.

“I see you like the color purple.” He notes the lavender walls and my dark purple bed spread.

“I do. Our family was big Vikings fans growing up.” I notice the confusion on his face. “Our professional football team.. American Football.”

“Ah.” He nods his head in understanding. “They any good? I went to a few Titans games in Nashville.”

“Mmmm depends on the year.” I tell him honestly. He walks a little further in and looks at the picture I have on my wall next to the door of Alex, Nick, and I at Alex’s first game for the Wild. Kevin smiles at the picture then looks at me.

“Nice room. Maybe I can see more of it sometime.”

“I’m sure you’d like that.” I tell him with a smirk.

“Bed looks comfortable.” He gives me a playful smile that hints at sinister things.

“Oh my god.” I laugh, hiding my pink face. “Don’t you have video games to play? You better get back before Alex really starts to cheat.”

“I probably should.., and yet I’m much more interested in what you’re doing in here.” He shrugs, leaning back against the wall next to the door.

“Pretty boring stuff. Just Netflix without the chill.” I motion for him to exit the door and he laughs, nodding his head.

“Hint taken. Hopefully I’ll see you around.. Sam Stalock.”

“There’s a high chance you will. My brother is your teammate.” I remind him, sticking an ear bud back in. I’m trying to play it cool like I could take him or leave him, but my insides are all squishy at his presence.

“Hey Sam?” Kevin calls to me as I’m about to turn back to my computer.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for the fun night. I don’t get to hang out with many people my age when I’m in America. So, it was nice joking around with you. But, I really do hope I’ll see you soon.”

“Me too, FiFi.” I respond. His nickname comes out playfully and I watch as he licks his lips suggestively. He hovers in the doorway for another moment before lifting his hand in a brief wave. I wave back and watch the doorway long after he leaves. I hope this isn’t the last I’ll see of him.

Later that night, after Kevin leaves and I’m winding down for bed, there is a small knock at my bedroom door.

“Come in!” I yell and Alex opens the door slowly.

“Hey, just checking if you need anything before I head out of town tomorrow.” The Wild are gone in Canada for the next five days visiting the Calgary Flames and the Winnipeg Jets. This should give me a few days to cool off and forget about the team’s newest member.

“Just a couple of wins.” I answer him, smiling at my own cheekiness.

“I’ll do my best.” He laughs. “Can you take some video of Sawyer’s practice on Thursday? He wants me to show Suter, so he can get some pointers on his stride. Kid is a hoot.”

“My goodness. What happened to being a goalie?” I laugh. Alex shrugs.

“I think his mom has been the influencer behind that shift. She thinks he should be a defensemen.”

“Well, it is less stress for a hockey mom.”

“Yeah that’s probably true. Sometimes I still think mom is going to have a panic attack when I’m starting.”

“To be fair, you like to rush out to play the puck at the blue line a little too much.”

“Hey, it works.” He insists. “Alright, I’m going to go finish packing.”

“Safe travels, Al.” I tell him, turning to pull my comforter back and slide into my flannel sheets.

“Night, Sam.” Alex begins to pull the door shut but stops and pops his head back in. I look at him expectantly and watch as his face twists into a frown. His blue eyes meet mine and he pushes out a sigh. “Look, there seemed to be something between you and Kevin at dinner tonight. I’d appreciate it if you could avoid getting entangled with him. Kid has potential to be a stud and he’s a good looking dude. But things are going well in the locker room right now and we don’t need any distractions as we head down the playoff stretch.”

“Okay.” I roll my eyes at him, resisting the urge to call him a few choice words. Why do men always think women are distractions?

“Sam.” Alex’s voice has gone low and serious.

“Alex.” I say back, mimicking his voice.

“Stay away from Fiala.” He doesn’t give me an opportunity to respond before he is out the door, leaving me with the sense that this topic isn’t up for further discussion. I stare at the door, his words echoing in my head.

There seemed to be something between you and Kevin at dinner tonight.

A few hours ago, I would have told Alex no problem. But now, I’m not so sure. How do you avoid someone that you inexplicably feel drawn towards? I glance at the picture of Alex, Nick and I from last summer. It was my 21st birthday and we are all wide eyed, cheeky smiles, and a bit sunburnt from spending the day on the boat. I smile softly, remembering. Alex has been my best friend, biggest supporter, and protector since we were kids. My thoughts turn to Kevin and the connection we were both feeling tonight. To find someone that you have instant chemistry with is rare. I know this. But I also love my brother and know I should tread cautiously from here.

I turn off the lamp next to my bed and slide further down into my sheets. I pull the comforter up close to my chin and sigh. No matter what is potentially brewing between Kevin and I, mine and Alex’s relationship is more important. I owe it to him to put aside my other feelings and stand with my brother as the team pushes for the playoffs. This should be no problem. All I need to do is avoid the Swiss native all together. If I don’t see him, I won’t feel any of the connection and can easily honor Alex’s wishes.

Yeah. That is what I’ll do. Avoiding Kevin Fiala should be no problem.

I close my eyes, trying to ignore the sadness that has settled into my chest. Sleep comes easy, but relief from reality doesn’t. Within a few minutes, I’m dreaming of brown eyes and a Swiss accent.

#letters in your last name au #kevin fiala #Kevin Fiala Fic #los angeles kings #my writing #hockey fan fiction #hockey writing #NHL writing

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ghostintheheadset · 11 months ago

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watchmojo's top five headphones_haver fics of 2023 (not clickbait)

I'm looking at my 2023 stats on ao3 and fandom disparities are really funny to me lmao, my main fandom at the moment is fe3h, and of the 22 fics I posted this year, 19 of them were fe3h.

All three of the non-fe3h fics are my top three most kudos'ed fics of the year:

It goes without saying ofc that these numbers don't really matter, if I was only doing this for the kudos I'd be writing m/m genshin fic, and it's not really surprising why the numbers are the way they are- both my Pokemon and Zelda fics were posted within a few months of the game coming, and gwitch is also relatively new and I was writing for far and away the most popular ship. Meanwhile, 3h is now past the 4 year mark, and largely m/m dominated while the majority of my fics are f/f. While I would certainly enjoy all my fics getting popular, seeing the numbers like this makes it easy to remember that engagement isn't a metric of quality.

(In that vein, Falling is probably the fic I spent the least amount of time on this year, being impulse-written in about 2 hours. Sometimes niche fics you pour your heart and soul into can't reach the same level of popularity as wider-appeal stories you wrote much more quickly, and that's okay)

That said, though, I am happy with the fics that made top 2. There's something satisfying about my first and last fics of the year being the most popular, and I am very happy with how the both of them turned out. They're both representative of the themes I like writing about and are both wholesome yuri, so I think they "belong" in the top 5 as much as any fic could be said to.

Numbers 4 and 5 are kind of a surprise to me- Pegasus Knight Dysphoria is a gen fic about a trans girl and Someday is an f/f rarepair. Of the 19 (wow) 3h fics I've written over 2023, these are not the two I'd expect to break into the top 5, but it's a pleasant surprise that they did!

Anyway, none of that actually matters beyond being mildly interesting to me specifically. Onward to 2024:

According to my stats page, I posted 126k words of fic in 2023, which averaged out to a little over 10k words a month or about 345 words a day. Not bad! Looking to get those numbers up next year though. If I don't, then that'll be okay, but 126k is the Word Count To Beat if possible.

I would also like to do some more fandom events! Apparently there's a FE rarepair week happening literally right now that I wasn't aware of until yesterday. Hoooopefully I'll be able to see more of that kind of thing now that I'm here, as they've always been a lot of fun when I could participate. I'm not leaving 3h just yet, but I would like to branch out a bit more- I definitely have more gwitch fics lined up, and I'd like to also branch out a bit and write for some other fandoms I haven't gotten around to yet.

Big writing goal is to finish Together We Ride, and also work on it more consistently. I was putting off starting it for a while because I wanted to "wait for a good time", but I realized if I kept that up it would never get started. Considering I started it in April and there's currently 7 chapters, it was in fact "not a good time", but! I am committed to seeing it through in the upcoming year.

That's about it I think. It's been lovely writing fic over the past year (and a great way to unwind from the Grad School Stress), and I'm very much looking forward to exploring more next year.

(might do a roundup later today of some fics from this year I really liked we'll see)

#ramblings

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clevercatchphrase · 11 months ago

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2023 Year In Review~

at the time of me writing this, it is 8:11pm on tuesday night, january second. Let's see how long it takes me to type this entire thing. I expect no less than two hours. This is gonna be a long one, so I'm gonna put it under a read-more. Proceed only if you dare!

So! Another year down, another begun, and this is my.... 5th? time looking back on my year and assessing what I accomplished and what I did. Lots of changes and new things happened to me this year! Not nearly as many good things as bad! But first I'm gonna dig up my old resolutions list and see how well I did on them. Let's see... for 2023 I had 9 goals, six of which were serious and 3 of which were more casual. those goals were;

Read 12 new books in a year (one book a month)

Finish the Snowdin Arc before Ghost Switch's 5th birthday

Rewrite the 3rd draft of my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22

Write 4 one-shots for BSaPT

Solidify the details of the waterfall arc

The one secret goal

Finish writing the last 4 chapters of Clemency and finally post the dang thing

build a comic buffer of 8 pages, and finally,

write the crack fic

Of these nine goals, I achived... 4 of them, those being reading 12 books, finishing the snowdin arc before june 18th, rewriting my 2021 nanowrimo project, and finalizing the waterfall arc for Ghost Switch. All of these were serious goals, which I am proud of! but it was still less than half, which was a little disappointing. As in past years, I'll go into more detail below:

Read 12 books I BLEW THIS ONE OUT OF THE WATER! the grand total of books I read this year was THIRTY-SIX! three times as many! In fact, I forced myself to stop in order to have more books to read for 2024! Most of the books I listened to this year were through librivox, and mostly on my commute to work. Great way to pass the time! I wrote short little notes about the books I read on a personal discord with only me in it, so let me see if I can just copy and paste all of that here... (all of my original notes will be italicized, while additional thoughts on it now will not be)

1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Short, cute! Inspirational. About self actualization. Read by richard Harris. People call this a demonic book?? Apparently a fourth part added in 2014. Look it up later. (Edit; I never did look it up later. there's an audiobook for this on youtube, and while the voice is nice, there is, like, a solid 10 minute segment with a single violin note playing in the background and it is GRATING) 2) fire bed and bone. Ok. Middle of the road. Too focused on people and not the dog, but I get that's the point. it's ~symbolic~. Like the use of no dialogue and no name for the main dog 3) dogs of the spires book 1: reads like fan fiction (derogatory). Sentences go on for 4 or 5 words too long. Used the word orbs for eyes 3 times. Duke is ALWAYS FUCKING GRINNING. Half-brother reveal makes no sense and comes out of nowhere. How… Big/old is Step? Talks waaay too mature for a kid. What happened to Twig? Very tell and not show. Pink foam pink foam pink foam. Why are dogs separated? Hoe do the packs work? Why training? Not given enough to care for characters. Feels like a warrior cat reskin. Too rushed and yet nothing happens at the same time. (I was very curious about post-apocolyptic xenofiction this year, and this was one of the books I could find on the matter, but it's very childishly written and just... bad. Surprisingly, there seems to be a very tiny but dedicated fandom for it on youtube? the series has a fandom wiki anyway...)

4) old granny fox. Very cute! A little repetitive, but passable for a children's novel. Great introduction to xenofiction for kids. Wonderful audio book. 5)the adventures of Sammy Jay. Short sweet also a lot of fun. Both books are Definitely of their time with their usage of the word "queer" as a synonym for "strange/odd"

Now, this is a little known fact about me, but I'm secretly a massive furry. yeah, who could've guessed, right? Anyway, i'm always on the look out for good xenofiction, and when I searched through the "animals" playlist of the librivox youtube channel and stumbled across the books by Thornton W Burgess, I was INSTANTLY enamored. Old Granny Fox, and The Adventures of Sammy Jay were the first two I read/listened to, and was immediately captivated. I MUST give extra props to the narrators of these audiobooks, with some of the more frequent readers for this series doing unique voices for each character, which really added to the charm (Jude Somers and John Lieder particularly come to mind). I WISH I had these books as a kid. I love the way they describe animal behavior and reasoning. While it is anthropomorphized, it never crosses a line into "too" human, if that makes sense. There's another book on this list that is very similar to Burgess' work, with talking animals, but in that book, the animals make and read signs on the doors of their houses, and go to animal tailors to get their clothes fit. this doesn't happen in Burgess' work. Sure, they talk about their homes and the coats they wear, but it's all very intentionally conveying their natural states and habitats in a slightly more human way for us to picture them. Sure, the art on the covers of the books may say otherwise, but it's never depicted that way in the actual text. All their behavior is very animalistic, too, explaining their thoughts and actions in a way that would make sense for a wild forest creature. These books are a little gentle when it comes to the cycle of life. While the predator characters do need to hunt, they are always juuuust out of luck when they are the main character, and the prey characters juuuust manage to escape each time they're the focus. I will definitely be reading more of Burgess' books this year (the man wrote over 170 of them!), but expect quite a few more titles of his to pop up on this list.

6) adventures of jimmy skunk 7)adventures of paddy beaver (not much to say on these two. both were charming, but I feared I would have sounded repetitive if I just kept writing "cute!" in my notes) 8) my father's dragon Short, cute and silly. Listened to the audiobook. Does the physical have pictures? Not really so much about the dragon. Wish there was more after the ending, like what became of the dragon? (I also watched the netflix movie adaptation of this book. I.... could not stand the dragon in the movie. I'm sorry, he's annoying as hell) 9)adventures of buster bear

10)adventures of old mister toad.Favorite one so far. Puts toads in a positive light and describes them as beautiful instead of ugly or gross. [Burgess] Really appreciates all animals and their unique abilities and traits

11) The tale of freddie firefly. Ehh, okay. Not as great as Thorton Burgess' books, but still enjoyable. Not the same 'voice'. (this book was written by Scott Bailey) 12) The adventures of Chatterer the red squirrel. Fine~ Fun. 13) The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tales. Funny, short. Would make a good 22 minute short film 14)tale of master meadow mouse. Alright~ why do the animals know what groundhogs day and February are? How does mouse know how to write, and fox to read? Do they wear clothes? Mention a tailor frog. Oars for a raft. Don't like the animals being described as "(color) person". Feels like it's missing an adjective, ie "feathered" or "furred". (This is what I was talking about above. Scott Bailey wrote very similar stories to Burgess, but something was just... off about is writing style. ) 15) the adventures of reddy fox. Okay. Feels like an earlier book. Not as kind as the other ones. (I later looked it up and confirmed this was one of the earlier books in his series, and this one was, like, his tenth ever published one)

16) the adventures of jerry muskrat

17) the tale of doctor Doolittle. Fun! Kiiiiiinda racist in the africa parts, but an overall good time! (I'm more familiar with the Doolittle movies, but was surprised to learn that Doolittle's ability to speak to animals was something he learned with effort and practice, and not a magic power or weird innate ability of his. It was an interesting read!) 18) Nomads of the North. Fun animal romp. I Flinched at the use of "fat" "tar baby" "half breed" and "Indians". First half is mostly about the bear, then a sudden sharp turn to mostly about the dog. Kinda meanders, has no over-arching through-line, conflict or plot. (Apparently a movie was based off of this book, but focused more on the humans than the animals. Eh, it was the 1920s. what can you do) 19)falcons of nerabedla; short sci-fi novella about a bodyswap time traveler. Its… Fine. Not the greatest. A little too confusing and kind of wish they explained things more earlier on. Not really about the falcons. Even for a sci-fi, still pretty sexist in the future.(honestly I don't even know if I should count this as it's own book. I'm pretty sure it was a short story inside a bigger magazine?) 20) south American jungle tales. Enjoyable! Very strong jungle book vibes with a South American flare. The story with the racoon was pretty dark, though. 21) a gryphon's journey. Too fast pace. Characters have a habit of spilling their entire backstories onto arias without prompting. Not enough show, not enough explanation of how the gryphons work. Some aspects completely pushed to the sides, like the satyrs and naugi until the end. Very rushed. The skyhaven arc could have been its own book, the stygagryph arc could have been it's own book. The heron gryph arc could have been it's own book. Not enough time to get to know the characters or care about them. Arias speaks far too maturely for his age, I feel. (Still on a gryphon kick from the last... two years now? Mostly I'm waiting for the fourth book in the Griffin Ranger Series to come out before I read the third. The author said it would come out before the end of 2023, but that date came and went and it still isn't on amazon at the time of writing (which is now 9:26pm, jeez...) I want to read isthmus so bad, but I don't want to wait on a cliffhanger) 22) myths and legends from Alaska. Okay. Feels very white washed and overly simplified. missing nuance. Reader is so deadpan and monotone that the audio book was a slog to get through (One thing I was determined to do for my own enrichment this year was to read more legends and mythologies from other cultures. There are SO MANY cool creatures and monsters and ideas out there, and I just feel so LIMITED by the small amount I know. We humans come up with some of the craziest shit imaginable!) 23) the white czar; a story of a polar bear. Bad, boring, incredibly racist. Barely about the bear at all! 24) the twins of buster bear. Another thornton w. Burges book. Its middle of the road. Certainly not bad, but my least favorite so far. Just kinda dull, and the audio book was horrendous. (honestly if the audiobook wasn't so bad, I wouldn't have disliked it so much, but it was a CHORE to listen to this one. I mean, thank you librivox for doing all this work for free, but is it too much to ask for some sort of vetting process for your volunteer readers??) 25) the wishing stone stories; BEST thornton w burges book so far! I would have been obsessed with this book as a child. Transforming into animals to learn about their ways. Not super PG like the others. The animals hunt and kill and get killed. 10/10

26) lightfoot the leaping goat 27) Toto the bustling beaver. Both alright. Nowhere near as charming as thornton Burgess, but endearing none the less. A little more 4th wall breaking. Toto audio book fun with silly voices, but I don't like the description of "tramps". A little too humanized for me. Lightfoot audio book fucking trash. Almost gave up. (Both of these books were written by Richard Barnum, another children's xenofiction writer of the time, but I quickly came to realize that his writing style is just not for me. I listened to a handful of his books too, this year, but they left me feeling uncomfortable more often than not because common attitudes of the time period reeeeeally show through his work.) 28) the adventures of poor misses quack. How do these qualify as adventures. She lands in a pond, dumps her backstory for 60 percent of the book, finds her mate and lives happily ever after. Not very strong, not very adventurous. 29) Mother West Wind "When" Stories; a lot of fun, charming, Aesop fable-esque. Fun mythology for children. A little too much peter rabbit, but I understand why he's there 30) the adventures of tamba the tame tiger. Yeahhhh, this series isnt my thing. A little too humanized, and the audio book is fuck GARBAE. (Pretty sure I meant to say "fucking garbage" there, but "fuck garbae" is funnier)

31) joust 32) alta 33) sanctuary All really good! All revolve around dragons and their usage and care. The books are a liiiiiitle too serendipitous, with the right thing always happening at the right time. Vetch/kuron doesn't "fail" enough. Second book is the best so far because the magi are a legitimate threat and it feels like time is running out so they must always stay one step ahead. (All written by Mercedes Lackey, all about dragon husbandry with a nice Egyptian flare! Check them out! But... maybe skip Aerie, the last in the series. It's not really worth it.) 34)aerie weakest one. Ahketen was absolutely unbearable and I didn't like the literal deus ex machina at the end with the actual gods coming down to help. Final ranking in order from best to worst; 2)alta, 1)joust, 3)sanctuary and 4)aerie. 35) the adventures of johnny chuck. Fun, average. Simple but doesn't need to be complicated. First of the thornton books ive read where the main character forms a family with children as the main focus 36) blacky the crow. Fun and charming as always. Feels a little simpler than the others with only 3 main mini stories, two of which involve stealing eggs. I wonder if I can find a box set of these books. (Aaaand that wraps up all the books I read this year! 15 of them were from thornton w burgess, and I hope to read even more from him this year! If you know of Burgess' books, tell me your favorites! I'd love to discuss them with someone~)

2.WHOO! the time is now 9:50, and I am just starting on talking about my second goal, which was to finish the snowdin arc of Ghost Switch before its 5th birthday. I did this! I did this exactly on june 18th! (for public readers, anyway. Anyone on my patreon got the page early, but a one week difference isn't much in the grand scheme of things.) I also get to say that I passed the Snowdin Test this year! "What is the Snowdin Test," you might ask? well, it's something a mutual acquaintance of mine, from the Fan Fic Paradise discord I lurk in, made aaaaall the way back in 2018, right when I was just startin' out with Ghost Switch. (Hi, Vikingaspoke, I don't know if you follow me on tumblr, or even have a tumblr for that matter, but I want you to know I thought about your thesis every single day since you first posted it, and have been determined (har har) to succeed where so many other undertale stories have failed. I did it once with my Epic-long fan fic, You Monster, but to do the same in comic form was a new and unique challenge. it took me almost 5 years, but I got there in the end! Cutting out the memories, I've officially concluded snowdin and started waterfall just this year!) I've also got to mention that I think my estimation on how long it will take me to finish Ghost Switch is slowly unfolding to be oddly accurate. I've never made a comic this long, but back in 2019, when I made an anniversary comic for Ghost Switch's 1st birthday, I guestimated that it would take me roughly 11 more years to finish the story, meaning it would take me 12 in total from start to finish. Well, we are rapidly approaching the half-way point of the comic, and if I haul ass it get to 312 pages out by the 6th birthday, we very well might actually hit it. I haven't drawn up to page 312 yet, but it's strangely close. Granted, my guess didn't account for the length of the flashback segments, which may push it back, but the sheer Idea that the "vibes" I got on how long each arc would take just by roughly judging the time it took me to finish ruins as a baseline to compare... it's just weird, man. I just "felt" that snowdin would be 1.5 times as long as the ruins, waterfall 2 times as long as the ruins, and hotland+New Home also 1.5 times that of the ruins. I have no metric for this since the final scenes were not written out yet. It just... feels like it should be that, and I'm kinda scared at how on track it's been.

3. Third goal was to Rewrite my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22. I did this as well! It's still no where near a final draft ready for beta readers or anything, and towards the end of the year I got distracted writing the second book in the trilogy because this is an epic fantasy story so it just HAS to have three books. Maybe I'll self-publish these stories one day. it sure is the most passionate I've ever been about something original i've ever written, but I want to make sure the entire rough draft of all three stories is done first so I can easily go back and add hints in previous parts without having to retcon anything later down the line. I've already had to do it once, so no doubt in my mind I'll have to do it again when I start trying to wrap things up in the final book. Speaking of the sequel, that was my nano project for this year! I won, but much like 2021 and 22, I didn't finish the book. my 21/22 project ended up being roughly 80k words, and I still expect to add about 10k more when I add some missing scenes and flesh out some description. I don't think that will happen with the second book. If anything, I expect it to barely stick around 50k in total because I just know I wrote a lot of filler and junk and repetitive stuff in the first draft this year because I was STRUGGLING with nanowrimo this year. Idk yet if I'm going to make a rewrite of book 2 my nano project for 2024. we'll have to wait and see how I'm feeling once september/october rolls around.

4. My fourth goal was to write 4 one-shots for my fic collection of Blankets, Socks, and Pillow Talk, over on AO3. I didn't do this, mostly because I was too distracted with my original fiction this year. i DID write one one-shot, hilariously during nanowrimo when I was suffering from writers block. Hopefully this year will be different. I would like this fic collection to at least hit 50k words so it could be a full novel of short stories all on its own. I think I can do it, I just need the time and inspiration.

5. My fifth goal, and last one I achieved this year was to finalize the details of the waterfall arc. I'm sure I've said it before in the past, but all the major story beats for Ghost Switch were planned out well before I even drew the first page, but the scenes connecting them were filled in more as I went. Rest assured, I make sure the entire arc is scripted before I start it, but my dirty little secret is that the snowdin arc wasn't completely written until I nearly finished drawing the ruins arc, and I was well into the snowdin arc before the final scenes of the waterfall arc were written down. It is now, and has been for at least 10 months. This was a goal I always knew I would achieve. Sometimes the resolutions I make are things I know are gonna happen whether I want them to or not. Sometimes you just gotta give yourself a guaranteed win to boost your self-confidence, you know? (now I just need to do the same for the Hotland arc. I think it's gonna take me 3 years minimum to finish waterfall, just like it did snowdin, so I got time, but the sooner I figure out the dialogue, the better. Will I make that a goal for this year? Ehh, probably not. I just wanna focus on building a buffer first)

6. The one secret goal was not achieved. If it was, this post wouldn't nearly be as long and you all would have heard about it as soon as it happened. Idk if it will happen this year, or anytime soon. A vicious combination of anxiety, the economy, and the uncertain state of the world make me hesitant to even attempt this goal.

aaand those were all my serious goals for this year! the time is now 10:37, I am tired and dizzy. I'm gonna save this as a draft and get back to it tomorrow~ nighty night~

OKAY! IT'S JANUARY 3RD NOW, 8:34AM! LET"S CONTINUE!

my three casual goals, none of which I accomplished, were;

7) Finish writing clemency. While I didn't do this, I did think about the story a lot. If you've been around since late 2022, You'll know that when AI writing generators started gaining popularity, news broke that the internet was scraped for data sets, including fan fiction websites like AO3. This extremely pissed me off because Fan Fiction is... well, I guess there's no better word than "sacred" to me. The unadulterated desire to write, create, share and expand on media that has touched us, inspired us, (hell, even angered us!) and to do this all purely because we can and we want to, just to make connections with other people who were fans of the same media, people we may never meet, thousands of miles apart from us, who we can touch and inspire in turn... Fan fiction is a gift. it means so much to me, from the professional writer who writes ficlets as an exercise, to tweens just starting their creative writing journey by imagining themselves hanging out with their favorite characters, to the hobbyists who wanted to imagine how things would change if just one thing happened differently, to those who feel underrepresented in media, and want to see themselves be the hero. People working through shit, people who are just bored, people who love a story so much they will retell it a hundred times over so it never has to end. Young, old, girl, boy, fluent writers, to writers in fandom where english is not their first language. It's an amazing, nearly incomprehensible melting pot that can connect us all... and some CEO jerkoffs just wanted to steal all this heart-felt work and feed it to a machine to make a quick buck. I was so enraged, so violated that works of passion could be abused this way that I locked down all my fics on AO3, and you now need to be logged in to read any of them, and I didn't write a word of fan fic in over a year. Every time I thought my anger had cooled off, more news would come up about "AI" generated stories appearing in the kindle app, or authors having works published under their name without their consent because thieves are trying to make a quick buck with their identity to trick fans, or hear that tv show and movie writers being told they are worthless and replacable, and I would get mad all over again. I'm still mad just remembering it, and until actual laws are in place regarding the use of "AI" in art and writing, I'll stay mad, and my stories will be under lock and key. If some good has come out of it, I focused a lot more on original fiction this year, which I haven't shared online at all, so no fear of that being stolen, but I do miss writing fan fic more regularly, yet I can't stand the thought of something I make for fun being taken and used by someone else to line their pockets. It's like... the antithesis of the purpose of storytelling to begin with and makes me sick to my stomach.

WOW! That sure was a rant! Let's move on! My 8th goal and second casual one was to make a comic page buffer of 8 pages. I almost did this one! At one point, (like, the second week of december) I had a buffer of 5 pages because I was finishing up Memory 5 of ghost switch, but then I realized I could line up the end of the memory with the end of the year, and I ended up posting all of my reserve pages in, like, a week! During those weeks, though, instead of making more pages to keep the buffer supplied, I played a lot of video games instead, which I hadn't done since... october? because I didn't touch my PS4 at all during november while I was writing for nanowrimo, and I missed playing Horizon Foridden West and wanted to get back to it. Maybe this year, though? I'm dead set on trying to get to 312 pages before Ghost Switch's 6th birthday, which is, like, 30 pages away, so I gotta improve my output process regardless.

And the 9th goal of mine and the last of the casual ones, was to write that crack fic. This goal has been on my resolutions for a couple years now, but I still haven't done it. I'm gonna blame my AI hatred grudge for this, since it made me not to want to write any fan fic at all this year. I'll get to this someday, but maybe now I should put it on the back burner for some newer goals and projects~

Okay! The time is now 8:57! if you're still reading this stream-of-conscious ramble of mine, it's time for me to list off my goals for this year!

IN 2024 I WOULD LIKE TO...

Read 12 new books this year (one book a month)

Reach 312 pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th (the 6th birthday)

Build (and maintain!) a comic buffer of 8 pages

Go walking on 3 new greenways around my neighborhood

Go camping by myself

Make at least one new song comic

Finish 4 video games to as close to 100% as I can (currently looking at Horizon Forbidden West, the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue, Carto, Alba, Stray, Journey, Unraveled and The Talos Principle 2, as these games currently entice me the most, but I still want flexibility and options if one game ends up not clicking)

Finish the first rewrite of my 2023 nanoproject (this will probably end up being my nano24 project, if i'm being honest with myself)

Write 4 one-shots for BSapT

-- These 9 goals I want to be serious about, but like last year, I have some casual goals i want to do as well. They include...

10. Get reacquainted with Neocities and make a personal website

11. Learn to code to improve said website/learn to make games

12.Listen to the entire royalty free youtube library for reasons

13. Research every d.o.n.g. ever featured on VSauce, for neocities reasons.

I feel like I had a couple more off-handed things I wanted to do this year, but these 4 casual things are the only ones I can remember at the moment. Maybe I'll come back and add to this list later.

Alright! The time is now 9:37AM, and I have to go run some errands/do some house chores! Saving this again as a draft to come back to this later!

Okay! Done with errands, and it is 11:30am on the nose! Time to resume my inane ramblings and hopefully finish this thing within the next two hours.

One thing I mentioned in my recap/review of 2022 was that I never actually felt like I was looking back on the year in depth. So much was forgotten or blurred together with other years because I didn't keep track of it. Well, this year I kept a monthly diary, again in my personal discord of 1, and wrote in it whenever I felt anything of note or significance happened to me, or whenever I had reoccurring thoughts or feelings. i managed to write in it at least once a month, often times twice, that being every two weeks. I found the whole experience quite therapeutic, frankly, and I'll share snippets of it now, though I will cut out the more personal entries. Be forwarned! A lot of the following text is straight up copied and pasted from my diary entries, so there is a lot of misspellings and short hand. I'll try to fix some of the more obvious ones, but these paragraphs are just as stream-of-concious writing as the rest of this massive post. Anything in parentheses with A/N is me adding context right now on the present day!

january 5th, two very close coworkers of mine quit due to upper management being petty. These two employees had worked here for nearly two decades. They were married to each other and were the mom and dad of the work base, with everyone else relying on them, looking up to them, and going to them for their problems. Them walking out scared everyone lower on the pecking order, because we felt that we were no longer protected from manager bullshit with them gone. I was off the day they walked out and didn't get to say goodbye. the grief I felt upon learning they left caused me to have my first ever anxiety attack that night. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my life. I try to keep in touch, but we don't talk much due to our age gaps and busy work lives.

in January I also had a body-horror nightmare that still makes me squirm just thinking about it. I dreamt no one in the world wore pants, but we were all cool with it because we had pockets built into our legs. Not like... fabric sewn into skin, mind you, I mean naturally evolved extra flaps of flesh over our thighs like the pouch of a cartoon kangaroo. flesh pockets. even in my dream I could feel them. the insides were surprisingly dry and smooth- no sweat or hair in there, but the sensation was uncomfortably irritating, like when you rub your knuckles too much and it feels sore. worst part of this dream was, I woke up, thought "thank god I'll for get this in a few hours", but then watched cartoons later that day and saw a... tom and jerry(?) short where tom also had built in pockets on his body which made me remember everything, and now I can't forget.

February 8th. Watched The Flight if Dragons. Good, campy 80s feel. Drags in some parts, rushed in others. Some aspects feel like they have 0 explanation. (How did peter separate from gorbash? Did peter know that denouncing magic would vanish him from the safe haven? What happened to the princess's parents? EVERYTHING with the wolf and whatever was going on between the huntress and knight. I also Watched 1996 dragonheart. Slow start, but good fun. Pretty decent cgi. Acting is downright TERRIBLE in places, but it was good campy fantasy fun in the end.

On february 14th, I dreamed of a haunted house, but the house wasnt malicious. It felt like a friend that worried for your safety when you left, because it was rooted to the spot and could not come to you when you were in trouble. I did not stay long, and felt melancholic when I had to leave. Once outside, I turned around and said "goodbye house" and waved it farewell. Then, in all the curtains and windows, dozens and dozens of shadowy human arms waved goodbye to me in return, wishing me well and safe travels. It would miss me, but not keep me prisoner, because a house is only a home if you had the freedom to leave and return when you wished.

March 18. I got recommended a video on YouTube about screen savers, and it reminded me of one that our family computer had in the early 00s. After searching for a while, I rediscovered it; the createacard screensaver pack. So many buried memories unearthed. The sense of wanderlust and inspiration and not over such beautiful art came rushing back to me; https://youtu.be/zFPKmnegK0c

I was generally tired for all of march, not having much energy for any project outside of my comic, and even that was starting to wear me down.

I played a lot of kingdom hearts 1 in late February/early march. Synthesized the Ultima weapon for the first time. Cried farming sniper wilds and stealth soldiers because they unsettle me. I'm trying to grind to level 100 before the game is over. Debated on doing a kh song comic this year (A/N: This did not happen)

I want to redo my personal website. Wix added an image file size limit, and my whole site currently surpasses that twice over. The wix site editor is slow and finicky any way. Looked into blogspot and WordPress. I want to start a xenofiction book review podcast. Are solo podcasts popular? I Looked into neocities. Felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and child-like wonder. Made my own account/basic website, but haven't edited anything yet.

I got hit with the seasonal depression late February/early march, watched some home gardening videos on youtube and got inspired. The videos I watched were about people building actual massive scale pond and lakes, but I just went to home depot and Lowe's and Wal-Mart, bought, like, 12 different kinds of vegetable and flower seeds, 3 long rectangular planters and 2 massive bags of dirt. I also bought some peat seed starters, a plant heating pad (which I might just give to my cat) and a plant light. I spent over 150$ total.

My cat turned 5 years old on the 15th this march as well!

In late april I got really into analog/digital horror args and unfiction realities. Been watching a lot of Night Mind and similar analysis videos (I'm too lazy and dumb to try and solve them myself).

April 28th. Maternal grandfather might be passing soon. He's been in and out of hospitals since late January, needs around the clock assisted living, and my mom and her sister are constantly having to take time out of their lives to help him. I hate it. It's stressful and aggravating to mom, the assisted living people are incompetent, and my mom is stretching herself thin, running ragged trying to do everything at once. It's not fair to her. It's not fair to anyone.

May 11th. Mom's computer has a solitaire program with hundreds of versions of solitaire, most of which have gone unplayed. Ive been trying new games and learning them through trial and error (the "rules" tab doesnt work because it accesses a file that is no longer installed on this computer). Ive found new favorites in "twenty" and in "carpet". It makes life just a little bit more interesting.

June 4th. Been really into watching blind lets plays of undertale from 2022/3 lately, as well as dissection/discussion of undertale's music. Also into shayy's undertale mods. Glad the fandom is still having fun with this game. Got interested in pokemon infinite fusion. Downloaded it, but havent played yet. Getting back into PMD, though I have to grind now for leveling and evolving mons I cant recruit. Took a break from listening to librivox books, but might pick it up again. Same with checking in on flight rising. This year will be it's 10th birthday iirc

Looked at my ao3 recently and noticed I havent written anything in over 6 months. Still mad about the AI data scraping. I didn't stop writing entirely though. I spent all of October, November, January and February writing an original story, and still really proud/excited about it. Finished typing the rough draft on Wednesday, taking a break before I start edits.

All my flowers I planted in February are dying. Has a lot of rain this year. I think they're getting over watered.

June 6th. Been thinking a lot about Hawaii recently. I miss my old school and house. Went to Google earth to look at it again. I think our old neighborhood of [REDACTED] was razed and rebuilt becuase the streets dont look the same. This makes me feel… Not quite sad or bitter, but hurt none the less. I knew ever since we moved here chances of going back would be slim, but knowing my most nostalgic childhood home is gone forever…

Saturday June 17th fucking sucked for everyone. Two coworkers got seriously injured at work. My car battery completely died and couldn't be jump started. Had to call for a tow and wait 2+ hours for it to arrive. Wanted to cancel but they told me I would be charged even if the tow never arrived. Got charged 80 extra dollars for a "wench fee" I didn't need, but they talked to fast for me to think about it. Massive accident on the 4-lane highway home put all traffic down to 1 lane, and we were stuck there an extra hour. Dairy Queen's lobby closed early, going to drive through only, sonic was OUT OF ICE CREAM, and the local grocery store was almost sold out too. Did not get home until almost 10pm. Both my car AC and my mom's car a.c. don't work. I FUCKING LOVE OWNING A CAR. IT'S SO MUCH FUN AND SO FREEING.

June 28. Been playing a new video game recently; horizon forbidden west. Price dropped by 50% on Amazon and I had a 10$ gift card so I got the game for 1/3 the launch price. It's okay so far. Been slowly exploring and uncovering the map, ignoring the main story and discovering secrets. There is definitely A LOT more to do in this game than in the first. Dont really like a lot of Aloy's line deliveries. Some of the controls are different which throws me off. Robo enemies cool as ever, though noticeably fewer dinosaur ones.

Mom continues to take care of her dad. Aunt does too. All of mom's free time and energy this summer has been stolen by him. She keeps insisting she won't have to look after him as much when he gets better. I don't think he's ever getting better.

All my flowers I planted back in March have died. It's just too damn hot for them. It's too hot for everyone. We have just hit ten straight days with weather in the triple digits. I'm miserable.

Might have to replace my laptop soon. It's almost 12 years old, the battery doesn't work anymore, it overheats, and it's super slow. Looking into gaming laptops.

June 29; grandfather passed away last night. All I feel is relief.

July 11th. I got gifted my grandfather's bed, but had to switch it back out with my old bed because it was too soft and fucking up my back. No lumbar support.

July wrap up: month went by sooo fast I can hardly believe it. Its too fucking hot. Texas is stuck in a heat cyclone. Havent played solitare in a while, or listened to audio books. I managed to do 7 jigsaw puzzles this summer, and hope to do one more. each one has been 1000 pieces minimum, with two being 2000 pieces, and 1 being 3000. I should have taken more pictures of them finished, but it's fun to know we finished one puzzle per week this whole summer.

August 5th; Wish I recorded some smaller details throughout the year, not realizing id want to recall the last time I did something. When was the last time I intentionally watched a movie or listened to a specific song? (but then again, how will I know I'm going to think the exact thought; "when was the last time I did X specific thing?") I rewatched wolf children 2 months back for the first time in years, same with relistening to HeyHiHello songs. Been having a lot of lower back pain lately. Stretching helps, but I can no longer sit or sleep in my favorite position without cramping up. I need to be perfectly straight and i hate it. (A/N: The very next night I pulled a muscle in my back so bad I thought I was paralyzed. for the first time in years, I had to call in sick to work because I could not physically move from my bed)

August 19th. Went to a chiropractor. No pinched nerves or slipped disc, just a pulled muscle. Stretching helps and have been wearing a back brace. Finally had grandpa's memorial on the tenth. It was nice to learn he made friends at his community center. I'll try to be out going when I'm old too. Doctors would not sign his death certificate for 7 weeks because they just didn't give a shit, and we finally threatened to call a lawyer. He finally got cremated.

August 30th- recently had to go to pepboys to get my car fixed again. It was "stuck" in neutral. Grandma came and picked me up to let me go home. She said she doesnt plan to be driving much longer and intends to give her car to me. I dont know how to feel about this. Grateful for the future gift? Sad that she is getting older? I had to have my car towed and had to leave work early, which I hate doing because it makes me feel like I'm leaving everyone else to do my work, but I did not want another repeat with the towing situation that happened in june.

September 19th. I finally put on my brave face and ordered a new laptop for myself earlier this month (the 5th to be precise) and today it finally arrived. I bought myself an HP omen gaming laptop. It's so nice, but also different and a little scary trying to adjust to all this new interface. I went from using windows 7 for the last 11 years to jumping into windows 11. It'll be an adjustment. Gotta re-download all my old programs and transfer my files. Hope my drawing tablet will still work on this laptop. Might have to buy a new one of those as well. I already hate the subscription model being used if you want to do ANYTHING with the tech YOU BOUGHT nowadays. Goodbye microsoft office! It was fun while I knew you! I got libreoffice now! Fuck off adobe! OpenShot and Shotcut are my video editing programs now! I still need to learn my way around OBS, opentoonz, and pencil2d, but I gotta say there's something.... rustic? homey? about having a desktop full of opensource programs made by people who want to help other creatives free of charge. I miss the days where you buying something meant you own it forever, but free homegrown programs updated by community feels friendlier than just owning a shiny "offical" big named piece of software, I gotta admit.

The new laptop is wonderfully fast and silent. It cost me 2 grand so I hope it lasts just as long as my old one. There is no removable battery from what I can tell, which is sad. Also no disc drive. The keys light up rainbow which is cool (but I had to turn that feature off to improve battery life). I customized the desktop background to some concept art of the videogame RiME. (I thought I had saved the default bg pic from my old laptop to my external hard drive, but I guess I hadn't?) Funny to me that in the 10+ years of owning my second ever laptop, I never changed the wallpaper because I liked the default art so much. Might add more art to a file and have the wallpaper rotate. I want to replay RiME again too. Love the simple gameplay and strong colors of that game.

October 4th. So much has happened in 2 weeks, it feels much longer than that. I pretty much completely switched to using my new lap top ad my main computer, transferred all the files, downloaded a bunch of open source software for writing documents, video editing, streaming and animation. Fuck you Microsoft. I shouldn't need an account to use basic microsoft word. Hope to bring back page making streams next year for patrons~ ive even been playing some steam games that my old laptop just couldn't run, and quite a few new ones as well. Candleman, carto, so many fun and charming titles~ replaying snakebird because all my progress was lost 🥲I'm not mad. I love snake bird.

I have so much desire to do so many things, but not enough time to do them. I need to queue up my november posts for tumblr before I go on break. I need to get my oil changed soon. I want to go back on steam and play more humongous entertainment games. I want to write, I want to draw, I want to animate, I want to learn how to quilt and crochet and garden. I want to do it all right now all at the same time. I want to go on a nature walk. I want to see my friends.

Its finally starting to cool off. We still get in the 90s easily, but it rained last night for the first time in weeks, and we havent hit 100 degrees in a couple of days. Been reading a lot of webtoons lately. Been having the urge to start my own with my original storylines, or at least use webtoons as a backup/mirror for my fan comic. So many unique stories there all ready. So many fun art style and worlds to get lost in. I love stories and the people that tell them. The joy of creating a tale and sharing it with the world is humanity in its purest form.

November 1st: youtube is cracking down on adblockers. Havent had any problems yet on desktop, but on this day, my default youtube app on my lg smart phone started showing me ads for the first time in the 8+ years I've had it. I was so mad that i forced stopped the app, and logged into youtube through an ad block browser app instead. Some of the app's features will be missed, like being able to watch a video and search at the same time, but these little annoyances are nothing compared to the fury I felt at being shown ads. I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to for nanowrimo today because of this.

November 6th: I turned 31! Both my friends forgot my birthday, and I wasn't able to reserve a camping site for the April 8th eclipse next year! 🙃 ive been writing like mad for nanowrimo, but I'm still falling behind.

December 17. Has it really been a whole month since i last made a diary update? Thanksgiving came and went. No drama at our house but my mom and I watched an argument unfold in the yard of our neighbors. The one mobile game I play, dragon's world, officially shut down for me 4 days ago. I'm a little sad I could never 100% it, but glad I got as far as I did, and even managed to buy some dergs so it didnt feel all my hard earned gems went to waste. Havent uninstalled the app yet out of nostalgia, even though I only played this game for a year and a half. I made the mistake of reinstalling the google play store to look for a new dragon raising game, but none had the same appeal, and the reinstall caused my discord app to update and hate it ):< I kinda want to learn how to make a mobile game of my own like dragons world, but with gryphons instead and a focus on rescue/rehabilitation and zoology angle. (I mostly just dont like how common fighting is in these kind of games.) Finally been playing horizon forbidden west after a few months away. I'm not progressing the story, just trying to max upgrade all my gear. It's a fun challenge~

December 26, 2023. Got bit by a dog at work on Christmas. Right on the nail of my middle finger. He broke my nail but not my skin. Its odd. Thankfully I can still draw without much issue. I got a tetanus shot and flu shot just to be safe. Mom got me a tent for Christmas because I plan to go camping by myself next year, even though I wont get to see the eclipse on my outing.

The fan game undertale yellow came out on the 9th… Which was before my last journal update? I've been enjoying the game play but the story is just a little... eh. the sprite work is phenominal, though, no complaints there. I hate that it's making me want to write my own AU version of it already to "improve" it, since I think the story loses its way pretty much once you leave the ruins. (maybe I can try to shove it into Clemency in stead since i still haven't finished that either).

I watched a documentary on kangaroos on netflix this month. I had to play it at 1.25 speed because I swear they slowed down every single clip for the film to get it to a certain length. I also watched "dog gone trouble" which had terrible voice work and awful character design, and then "back to the outback" which was surprisingly well made even if the characters stumbled sometimes, but I'd easily recommend it. I want to watch more Christmas movies before the year is through. (A/N: this also did not happen).

Finally uninstalled dragons world today. My phone's been acting up. Hope I don't have to replace it soon. I don't like how, nowadays, the technology I pay for, I don't actually own, and features are being removed left and right. I'm afraid any "new" phone on the market offered now won't nearly last as long as my current one has.

Aaand that was a brief glimpse into my year! The time is now 1:10pm! I already have one other post going up today, so I'll queue this one to go up on thursday instead~ if you managed to read this far, thank you so much, i guess! I hope my ramblings don't make you see me differently as a person. It's odd reflecting on where I was in my life over these past 12 months, remembering my state of mind and the feelings I felt as I wrote these entries. I'll be sure to do it again this year.

Overall, did I learn anything?...no, I don't think so? I did come to the realization that at the end of every year, in multiple youtube videos and tumblr posts, people mentioned how hard the year was for them, but like... after june, for me, everything improved quite a lot. it doesn't feel right to say that 2023 was hard for me. It was unbearably sad for me at the beinging. annoying and (physcially) painful half way through, but once august hit... everything slowly started to get better, despite the small petty things I complained about in my journal entries above. youtube ads, car troubles and discontinued apps of games I enjoyed still feel like small potatoes when compared to what I accomplished. Finished writing a draft of personal fiction, finished a major arc of a fan comic, got a new laptop to stream and share art with others, played a bunch of new video games, and generally enjoyed life for the latter half of this year.

And it almost feels selfish to say that... I'm happy.

I hope I can stay happy in 2024 as well.

Thanks for reading~

Have a safe and joyous 2024~

#long post #year in review #new year's resolutions #2023 review

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machiroads · 11 months ago

Text

Machi's 2023 Year In Review

'23 was a bit of a wild one. A toast to the last twelve months (both in fandom and IRL) under the cut.

Fic

Here's what went out the door in '23:

Naruhata Noir

I started posting NN in December '22, about a month after finishing 9L. At one point last year I joked about finishing the entire thing in the week between Christmas and New years. Evidently, this did not happen for a variety of reasons:

A) A series of events occurring in my personal life that do not merit further detail that I will herein refer to as "the conga line of nonsense". That kicked off during last year's holiday season and bled into like...May. Which leads directly into:

B) Tears of the Kingdom came out. And;

C) A general loss of motivation in the project.

During the aforementioned Conga Line of Nonsense, I had a goal of finishing before TotK came out, but I only managed to cobble together another 4 chapters between January and May. After somehow managing weekly to biweekly chapters for 9L, NN was much more sporadic, and at one point I had people asking me if I was still alive. Which. sucked, since I generally strive to be a somewhat reliable person.

Once the TotK hyperfixation hit, I managed maaaaaaybe another 2 chapters before I finally got bored of grinding monsters to upgrade outfits. I did manage to meet the third self-imposed deadline of finishing before going to Japan for 2 weeks, so at least that's one W.

In addition to the distractions of Life, NN was more challenging to write for a few main reasons:

Aizawa is not the narrator. Look, I'm mature enough to acknowledge that he is Blorbo From My Shows, and everything I write wants to revolve around him. Taking a step back from that and trying to get into another character's head after spending 8 solid months on 9L was an adjustment. It took me a bit of time to find Shinsou's voice.

Most of the relationship dynamics in this fic are non-canonical, and pulled directly out of my ass. Shinsou's relationships with the Hottas are central to the back half of the fic, and his relationship with Mirko also becomes prominent at times. NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS HAVE EVER INTERACTED IN REAL LIFE I'M JUST SMASHING DOLLS TOGETHER LIKE I DID AS A 7 YEAR OLD.

Trying to parallel something I already wrote several months ago is hard. I wanted NN to make sense on its own, but also follow the relevant bits from 9L. This was next to impossible to accomplish without sounding clunky. Almost from the very beginning of the fic, the outsider's perspective of Aizawa's first steps, I felt the urge to change the dialogue because the story that I wanted to tell from Shinsou's perspective was different from the one I wanted to tell from Aizawa's perspective. I locked myself into that rigidity for a while, until I finally decided just to say fuck it at the end and modify the 9L dialogue slightly because the story had taken on a life of its own.

Erasermic took a major backseat in this one, but I still needed to scratch the itch, and I think that's why I ended up writing 2 emic one shots in between chapters.

I don't think a direct parallel spin-off is something I would try writing again, and the fic was probably a lot longer than it needed to be, but at the end of the day, I'm satisfied with the way it turned out, and I'm happy I was actually able to finish it this year.

Here's a collage of my inspo for Aizawa's apartment cobbled together from google maps and japanese real estate websites.

Being No One, Going Nowhere

The first of the 3 one shots that I put out this year, and a proof of concept that I can slap together 3k in a day and a half fever dream and call it a fic.

This one in particular was instigated by one of @o0fyuu0o's tweets that refused to leave me alone. And maybe also the two broken arms story from reddit, but you know, like, less incesty.

Mic was extremely pathetic in this one, which is immensely fun to write. Just a pathetic little meow meow. Sopping wet cat of a man.

College AU was fun to write, emboldened in part by @kyurilin's fic Stray. After being married to canon-verse for both 9L and NN, this was an exercise in just making shit up, and also living vicariously through the memories of the house I lived in for the better part of 2 years as an undergrad. I graduated 7 years ago and it is still crystallized in my memory.

A Tumultuous Sea, You and Me

I've been nursing a healthy crush on Pirate!Aizawa (or Paizawa, as the kids on JP Twit call him) since the Volume 35 character page came out in June '22. Paizawa even killed a 2 year long art block, that's how powerful he is. (Look!)

I do not remember what exactly spurned this one on, but it also got written in the span of about 2 days. I think I reread The Art of Drowning at some point this year, but I do not remember if it was during the writing frenzy, or sometime before it.

Aizawa gets to hold the meow meow card again in this one. His 2 sentence rivalry with Vlad is one of the best things I've ever written.

Of the 2 days I spent writing this, I probably spent 75% of that researching pirate ships. I used almost none of it, and have forgotten almost all of it by this point.

I feel like everyone that dips their toes into the realm of merpeople has a different interpretation on it, but I wanted to spend approximately 0 minutes on worldbuilding, so it's just kind of a chill coexistence between the pirates and the mermaids in this one lol. People were intrigued by said "worldbuilding" however and wanted more, but I think I've scratched the mer-pirate itch for now haha.

1966 Ford Nutstang GT350 Shelby

@kyurilin made a tumblr post that misspelled "mustang" as "nustang" and I skim-read it and saw "nutstang" and was like "you know what would be a terribad nickname for the car? Nutstang." At which point I immediately informed her, which led down the rabbit hole of a very loose RP (as it often does) and I decided YOU KNOW WHAT? I SHOULD JUST TURN THIS INTO A CRACK FIC.

At which point I had to sort of construct a loose plot around the entire bonkers concept. Nemuri held a key role in the pseudo-RP, but I ended up wanting to keep the fic tight and her role was mostly cut. But rest assured she is there in spirit, though, judging.

The plush nutsack is just a bastardization of a kangaroo ballsack coinpurse I saw in a Crap Souvenirs From Around The World calendar I had many years back that has imprinted on my memory. At no point did I seek out visual reference for it, and neither should you. It is up to the reader's imagination.

On the topic of bastardizations, the reappearing nutsack plotline is borrowed from the drawfee gnome saga.

Mic yelling GOOD MORNING and Aizawa banging his head on the underside of his desk is S tier slapstick.

PEOPLE MADE ART????

Some wonderful listeners readers are still making art for 9L, and we have been blessed with two beautiful new pieces this year:

Mic and Eri's selfie, from @kaleidoscopedrawsjpg

The Only One Bed scene, from @guiltyfixations

@obsessed-dragon also drew the photo of Shinsou holding Miso from Naruhata Noir, and Black Spider Eyes drew Aizawa dangling out the window from Tumultuous Sea.

Every time a piece of art drops on my dash, or I see my fic being recommended to other people, my brain does a lil short circuit and I have to go get up and walk around for a bit. I'm not sure words can express how much it means to me that people have enjoyed my writing enough to recommend it to other people, or sit down and create something of their own based off of it. It's humbling, and I'm truly grateful for every kind word or "sketch I should have maybe spent a little longer on" hahaha

Stats!

Look, I'm an engineer. I can't resist the thrall of Microsoft Excel. So here's A Chart.

I value Bookmarks the highest of all the stats that AO3 spits out. Views are pointless (skewed higher in the context of multi-chap fics). Kudos are an indicator of how many people read and liked enough to leave a kudos, but bookmarks are my indicator of how many people liked it enough to keep it around to read again, or recommend to others.

The bookmark-to-kudos ratio is (in my unscientific opinion) a measure of how many people loved the work vs how many people just liked it.

From the chart above, we can propose the following conclusions:

9L is still, far and away, the most popular, and most well-loved thing I've ever written. I'm fine with that.

The Nutstang fic was a certified cult classic, with a bookmark-to-kudos ratio of almost 0.3, second to only 9L.

NN is at a respectable ratio of 0.24 (middle of the pack), but in terms of number of kudos, is not that far ahead the mer-pirate fic. NN was not tagged as erasermic, so I do think this checks out in terms of sheer exposure.

Still Cooking:

FFXII AU

I started this one in March during the conga line of personal life nonsense. I somehow lured in Robbirdthe8th and @o0fyuu0o and @obsessed-dragon and got a solid month of drafting done before I was like "maybe I should work on NN again" and then it sat dormant until like. October.

It's up to almost 30k across 3 partially written chapters already, and I outlined 9 chapters. It is almost certainly overambitious, and I will almost certainly run into the same motivation issue I had with NN because it's a rooftop 4 fic and not just erasermic, and it has a demographic of approximately four people as an AU of a game that came out in uh........2006.

I thought I'd get at least some of it out in '23 but I'm taking it easy and just writing when inspiration strikes at the moment.

Fortuneteller AU

I started this one maybe a week-ish ago, in my quest for a pitch for the erasermic zine (surprise! they haven't made official announcements yet, but I'll be in it. this is an easter egg for those of you who made it this far). It's going to end up far too long for the 3k word limit for that, so I'm just co-opting it for another one-shot. Taisho era urban fantasy dabbling in some Violet Evergarden/FMA-esque post-war themes. Mic with pince nez. Aizawa in hakama. Gratuitous amateur tarot. It has gripped me by the throat.

More from the Nine Lives Extended Universe (canon-willing)

I've got 3 more spin-offs to 9L simmering, just waiting for canon to figure out its business. These are:

When The Battle's Lost and Won

A final battle post-mortem in 4 parts (if 3baka all make it out alive that is). Every few chapters of canon that come out, something gets added or tossed. Extremely fluid at this point, but there are some good quality blurbs and bullet points in there.

Kintsugi

The erasermic epilogue to 9L, from Mic's perspective. An exploration of their relationship beyond the final battle, with an overarching theme that I've borrowed from a Dorktown documentary on former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb: Not at all, and then all at once.

This one's just pure body worship, punctuated by an extremely casual marriage proposal. A lot of people still comment on 9L like "THIS CAN'T BE IT, WHERE'S THE REST OF IT?", so I hope this will satisfy those looking for some closure from a relatively open ending.

The Way of the Househero

With the impending graduation of the hell class, and a body that doesn't quite move the way it used to, Aizawa has a bit of an existential crisis and semi-retires so he can be a full-time parent to Eri while figuring out what's next for him. Mostly slice of life. No real plot to this one yet, mostly just vignettes. Aizawa finally gets cats of his own, makes mom friends, and becomes more of a knife slut (only its in the kitchen now instead of on the streets).

IRL

Painting

Every room in my home is painted some sort of bland pastel, and this year we managed to purge pastels from four rooms: my home office, our living room / dining room, and our bedroom. I am enormously pleased with how each of these have turned out.

Gardening

We moved to this house in January '22, and last year was mostly seeing what came up in the garden. This year we cleared out a lot of the decorative shrubs in our backyard (turns out you can hock shrubs on facebook marketplace), and planted a veggie garden. The extent of my gardening experience prior to this year was mowing the lawn as a teenager, so this year was a continuous learning experience, and likely will be for many more years to come.

We had some big wins (potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, cherries, squash, dear god the squash), and some losses (apples that were infested with tent caterpillars, arugula that bolted, and lettuce that got eaten by bunnies to name a few).

In addition to veggies, we also did a lot of general cleanup around the rest of the yard, including clearing out some invasive species and thinning out some partially dead shrubs. We mostly let the yard do its own thing last year, and the previous owner of our home died about 6 months before we moved in, so it was probably neglected for a while. I cut out a blackberry cane that was as long as our driveway. I bought a wood chipper and a compost aerator and am learning the art and science of turning yard trash into yard treasure. (I have not peed on my compost pile yet, as recommended by /r/composting. Maybe some day.)

I also adopted a clipping from my sister-in-law's monstera, which has done quite well (except for the parts my cat has taken a mild interest in nibbling on from time to time)

Travel

Probably too much travel this year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3 Weddings (4 if you count the one in December '22 that's included in the Conga Line of Nonsense). Got covid at 2 of them. Invited to a fifth next year. Wishing everyone of marriageable age I know IRL a very elope

Trips for work to Winnipeg and Calgary (to which I have never been before, but are both underwhelming). Also got to fly on a floatplane for the first time, which is noisy, but the views are unbeatable

I turned 30 this year, and after the Conga Line of Nonsense, I said fuck it, we're going back to Japan for my birthday. 2 weeks, 8 cities. L: Shimanami Kaido cycle (still somehow 30 degrees in September x full sun x forgot sunscreen x 80km = pain) (my husband has proofread this and insists that this is not an L but agree to disagree) W: Hokkaido (beautiful scenery, incredible food, not 30 degrees in September lmao)

Anyways

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for your love in '23. I hope to provide you with more of the same nonsense in '24. Let me know if you want a spinoff cats + gardening + DIY blog, since that's just my life now. Happy new year 🍾

#Machiwrites #long boi under the cut

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