#Fanfic question memes

[dracothelizard]

For the ask meme! 13, 16, and 18? :D

13. what’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow? You can't edit a blank page!

Meaning that some writing is better than no writing, because you can improve some writing but you can't improve no writing. I will machete through writer's block.

(Editor's block is a separate problem)

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Oh god too damn many. I have 19 WIPs for OFMD that have snippets, 26 OFMD fic ideas that are just brief sentences/words/links to discussion about the fic idea, and a What We Do In The Shadows WIP I refuse to admit is abandoned.

But one idea I have that is at 'brief sentences' stage is:

Stede is unaware Ed is Blackbeard and tries to poach him. Ed goes along with it out of amusement/curiousity, so Ed gets Fang to be Blackbeard because Stede doesn’t know Fang’s name yet and also Fang has a beard. Fang reverses the pet policy and Izzy goes along with it out of spite.

18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Usually after, once I've finished editing it and want to upload it, and then I go 'oh shit, it needs a title'. I usually go for a suitable song lyric from Depeche Mode, although for a bunch of my AU-pril fics I used Darren Hayes lyrics :D.

[crow-posting]

Mundane Guardian Asks

Do they celebrate their resurrection day? If so, how? If not, why?

Do they celebrate any holidays?

Is their house/"home base" mobile, interim, or permanent? Do they invite people over?

Would they rather be asked about their love life or their job?

What's their favorite [or least favorite] Small Talk Question? ("Where were you rezzed?" "What's your favorite color?" etc.)

What's their favorite song? -OR- What song would they choose as their personal theme/boss music?

What do they wear when running errands?

What would they wear to a formal event?

"What's in their pocketses?"

Do they have a food combo that's unique to them, like tajin and avocado ice cream?

Coffee, tea, soda, energy drink, or another caffeine source?

What kind of hobbies do they have? -OR- how do they fill their downtime?

What's a word/phrase people don't expect them to know, but is somehow part of their vocabulary?

What's their weirdest habit when using the Light/Darkness? (eg yelling kamehameha before casting Chaos Reach)

Any superstitions?

How do they counteract nightmares [bad dreams]? How do they counter Nightmares [Pyramid constructs]?

What kind of ship do they fly? Is it custom to their wants/needs or mostly stock?

On a scale of "constantly fishtailing" to "the next Marcus Ren," how good can they drive a Sparrow?

Are they close to their Ghost?

If they were playing "kiss, marry, kill", who would be their top 3 candidates?

What's a secret (small or large) that they will never share?

[cuubism]

some canon-verse trans Hob for the lovely @five-and-dimes who recently got top surgery! 🥳🥰 congratulations, I'm truly so happy for you, my friend. please accept this humble offering

--

“So, it actually started on a dare,” Hob says, on the day he tells Dream the story of him. Or of this part of him, anyway.

Normally, Hob gets a bit guarded the first time he tells someone he’s trans. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty how people will react, especially ones he’s just become romantically involved with. He’s had it go poorly, to say the least, in the past.

He doesn’t feel that way with Dream. It’s not because there’s so much trust between them—they’re still new, after all. No, it’s something about Dream himself. For all his prickly and standoffish nature, being close to him feels like sinking into a warm lake, into a dark sleep where secrets and hidden wishes float up like glowing reeds to the surface. Deep, personal feelings feel safe with Dream; he cradles them in his hands and soothes them. Or that’s how it feels, when Hob is touching him.

Personification of dreams, indeed.

“A dare?” Dream echoes.

“Sort of," Hob says. "Got frustrated with people saying women should or shouldn’t do this or that or the other thing, so I decided if they felt so strongly about it I’d just be a man. Moved somewhere no one knew me, dressed differently, got stronger, practiced the sword—and that was that. No one seemed to care much, once you were at war. So long as you could swing a sword and not get yourself killed.”

“A choice, then,” Dream says. He’s listening very intently, hands folded on his knees, untouched tea on the coffee table before him.

“At first. Was only after I’d been living that way for a few decades—before and after we met—that I realized while there might be a handful of women out there living as men for the freedom of it, that they didn’t all like it. Given the choice they’d rather just be women in a more equal world. You know?”

Dream hums in understanding.

“But I didn’t want to go back,” Hob continues. “I felt like... who I'd become was the truth of me all along.”

“Identity, while not wholly immutable, is resilient against adversity and circumstance,” says Dream. “You found what your heart wanted you to be, if in a circuitous manner.”

“You seem very unbothered by it,” Hob observes, sipping his tea.

Dream frowns. “Why would I be bothered by it?”

“Dunno.” Apparently he can’t fully shake that this’ll put a wedge in us feeling. “People sometimes are. Feel deceived, or something like that. So they say.”

“If they are deceived, it is by their own assumptions,” Dream says, with disdain. “You should be as you dream yourself, Hob. No more nor less. Put aside these petty physical trappings.”

“I do actually have to live in these ‘physical trappings’ even if you don’t, you silly thing.” He can’t help laughing. “Besides, I rather like being some kind of living creature in the world, rather than what? A ghost? Best I can do is make this body as close to how it should be as possible.”

Hob’s come to like his body, for the most part, in the form that he’s made it. He didn’t always. But he needs a body of some kind to be alive, and he likes being alive. So what he couldn’t change, he made peace with.

Besides, they have hormone treatments nowadays. Brilliant stuff. Makes it so much better.

“Anyway, now you know. I wanted you to. Since we’re together.” It’s still a marvel. Together.

“Thank you,” says Dream, with evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to be gifted your secrets.”

“Not really a secret, but I get what you mean.” He takes Dream’s hand, just to touch him, and admits, “Telling it to you is like… I don’t know. Feels like when I was younger and first admitted out loud, ‘I’m a man. I want to stay like this.’”

It hasn’t been a proper secret in a very long time. But giving it to Dream is like the freedom of releasing a held breath, even so.

“I am the harbor and cradle of dreams,” Dream says in reply. He traces his fingers over Hob’s. Does Dream’s strange form just spring from the ether? Hob wonders. Or does he have to choose it? The way Hob chose his? “Dreams of being and becoming… these are most precious for they grow from tough soil. I can only protect them, I cannot create them. You must do that. And I expect that were I to find you in the Dreaming, there would be a fantastic garden there, indeed.”

Dream himself is the most fantastical thing. “Well, darling, just know your work is appreciated.”

Dream’s lips tip up in a tiny smile. When he meets Hob’s gaze again, his eyes have gone dark and starry. He folds Hob into a hug, and—

oh, it’s like being hugged by the universe itself.

Hob feels the light breeze of a warm dark night, when he’d lain by the dying fire in a war camp in the French countryside, and looked up at a million stars and first whispered to himself what if this is really who I am? Dream is that breeze and those stars. The dying embers that had lit him as he’d run his hands over his body and felt it differently than he ever had before, and been terrified because what would it mean?—but also thrilled and alive. Dream is the night wrapping around him in that moment, the night that was listening to his dreams no matter how quietly he admitted them, Dream is that and more and the voice in his heart telling him it would be okay.

A younger, more uncertain Hob would have needed this. Hob now is older, and he already knows who he is and what he wants, but he falls into Dream’s embrace all the same. A tear slips from his eye, and Dream kisses his cheek, wiping the tear away with his tongue before leaning their heads together.

“I could craft you any body you wanted in the Dreaming,” he says lowly. “However I think the one you have made with your own hands is more remarkable.”

Oh, God, he’s going to tear up again. “Dream, you are the most beautiful, wonderful thing.”

Dream hums in pleasure at the words, and lets Hob hold him close, lets him cradle his head to his chest, a dream kept close to his heart. One that he knew as soon as he saw it walk into the White Horse. Sooner even than he truly knew himself.

Then Dream looks up at him with a hopeful expression. “With these truths revealed, are we able to be intimate?”

Hob laughs so hard he has to tip his head back against the couch. “Wow. One track mind with you, isn’t it? I spill my heart and that’s what I get?”

Dream grumbles, tucking his face in against Hob’s neck to press his lips to Hob’s throat. “I find myself impatient of late.”

“Knew all along you were only with me for my body.” He’s grinning, though. Can’t stop.

“Well. Considering it is such a lovely one.” He plucks at Hob’s shirt buttons. Lecherous little nightmare.

It feels fucking good, though, to be desired.

“C’mere, then,” he says, and drags Dream into his lap.

Dream settles there with a purr, starts playing with Hob’s hair, but says, “I would not truly derail this moment, nor distract from your feelings if you do not wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it. You’ve no idea how much I want you right now. You’re like a prize.” He cradles Dream’s beloved face between his hands. “Stick around for long enough and you’ll get the most incredible Dream at the end of it.”

“Or at the beginning,” Dream says, and Hob’s heart swells so much to hear him voice that that he has to kiss him.

When he does, Dream makes a low, pleased sound, settling deeper in his lap. Yes, this moment, this life, is certainly the prize for all of those years hanging onto those dreams:

the dream of his lover

and the one of himself.

[hmslusitania]

There’s like. So I like collections on ao3, I think they’re a good feature, I generally do not have any issue letting my works into collections whatsoever (I know others do and there’s a few popular posts that go around, most of them with some outdated warnings about collections functionality) but like.

I got a collection request. That was a collection for “to read later”. And I am still boggled over it so:

[sabspoetic]

Question of the day, would you rather jump out of the tall building or say how many WIPs do you have?

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Hey, you remember all those vague asks about someone angrily writing a Sans x Barnaby fanfic?

Yeah, well, I did it.

I'm working on the rest of the fic, gonna have at least 10 chapters with a bunch of lore sprinkled in between, but here, have this snippet for now:

All was peaceful in Home, as it always was. That's what Barnaby loved most about it. Everyone was friendly, playful, always willing to listen to his jokes (even if some of them were bad, and he got a tomato or two thrown at him in response.) He especially enjoyed spending time with Wally and Howdy, always willing to teach Wally a new joke or two, before using those new jokes in Howdy's Bugdega.

This particular afternoon, however, Barnaby was lazily lounging under a shady tree. Howdy was busy with some new stock in the shop, and Wally was playing a new complex game with an excitable Julie and a reluctant Frank. As for the others, Eddie was busy delivering mail, and Poppy was helping Sally with a new playscript. So, here Barnaby was, alone and letting out a loud yawn while coming up with some new comedy acts.

“Hm… maybe an airplane joke? Nah, nah, I've already made plenty of those. Something about bones? That could work, but how would I include the topic into an act…?” He mumbled to himself, putting a paw up to his chin in thought.

Then he felt the ground under him… shift.

Sink.

Slowly sinking deeper beneath him.

“What the..?” Barnaby looked down, confused as to why the grass seemed to be growing higher around him.

The sinking began to grow faster now, panicking the big beagle.

“W-Woah, woah, what's going on?!” Barnaby tried to scramble off the ground, but before he could, the grassy ground fell under him all at once. He yelped as he fell beneath the tree's roots, falling down a tight twisted tunnel. Barnaby reached his arms out, in the hopes of latching onto a stray root to climb his way out, but to no avail. He let out a grunt as his head harshly hit a rock on the way down, and his vision went black.

Barnaby didn’t know how long he was out for. However, he did know that, instead of waking up at the bottom of a dirt tunnel like he expected, he woke up in… a snowy forest?

“Ugh…” Barnaby groaned, wincing as he slowly sat up, rubbing the back of his head. With another wounded groan, he looked around in his new environment. The sky seemed to be replaced with a rocky roof, indicating that he was still underground, but… that doesn't explain the evergreen trees or the snow that seemingly fell from nowhere.

“… the hell..?” He mumbled, confused and unsure what to do.

“Hey, buddy.”

Barnaby stiffened at the sudden voice, turning around slowly. There stood a… a skeleton?

“I think you dropped this.” The skeleton spoke in a lazy voice, wearing a blue hooded jacket and a seemingly-permanent toothy smile on his face. In his left hand, he held Barnaby's hat, tilting it out to the beagle. Barnaby must have dropped it when he fell down here.

“Uh… thanks.” Barnaby hesitantly took the hat from the strange skeleton, trying to offer a friendly smile in response, before putting his hat back on.

“No problem,” the skeleton replied simply, putting his hands back in his pockets. “The name's Sans. Sans the Skeleton. What's yours?”

“… Barnaby. Barnaby B Beagle.”

“Nice to meet ya, Beagle. So, what were you doing on the ground? Didn’t look like you were making snow-dogs or anything.”

[loki-cees-all]

Dramatized re-enactment of actual events.

[itzmaztercom]

Bill def looks good in yellow. He looks good in any color really.

🌈

Rainbow bill just for you🌚🫶🌈

[daddiesdrarryy]

Me to my favorite fictional characters/ships:

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Alright someone tell me how tf Naoya is above Nanami?? How is that little shit before Nanami?

Rinko is offended. She also isn’t surprised Gojo won but she says his head is getting way too big.

Where do you think Rinko would land on this poll if she were canon? 🤔

[enlitment]

[ironhusband]

Ok serious question; if I posted my Cherik hunger games au would I have an audience for it?

[agathazinha2009]

I FEEL STORY COMING

This is so a talk before a big explaination flashback

[clairegregoryau]

AO3 Fic Meme

I was tagged by @denizbevan!

What ratings do you write most of your fics under?

Explicit (50) Mature (17) General Audiences (3) Teen And Up Audiences (2)

What can I say? I've always been intrigued about the ways people relate to each other through sex, so it's most often a part of the stories I tell. What are your top three fandoms?

Our Flag Means Death - 71 Jurassic Park/ Jurassic World pirate crossover - 1 Deadloch - 1

What is the top character you write about?

Edward Teach (67) pips Stede Bonnet (65) for the most-written-about.

What are your top three pairings?

Edward Teach/ Stede Bonnet- 65 Oluwande Boodhari/ Jim Jimenez- 5 Lucius Spriggs/ Black Pete/ Fang - 3

What are your top three additional tags? I'm gonna do my top ten actually 😂 I am nothing if not consistent.

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting (37) Anal Sex (29) Blow Jobs (22) Happy Ending (17) Hand Jobs (10) Complete (9) Post-Canon (9) Mutual Pining (9) First Time (8) Voyeurism (8)

Does any of this surprise you?

Nope! I'm a strongly Ed/Stede, mostly explicit writer, though I also have a lot of stories that focus more on the mystery or historical plot, which accounts for a lot of the M ratings. The one thing I'm kinda impressed with is that voyeurism made it into the top ten tags- it's a trope I enjoy but I've now clearly used it a lot (we're gonna blame the Olympic diving boys and the Tree Change boys and the Lucky One Hundred camboys for being hopeless exhibitionists, and maybe a little bit the chaos spies and the current future sex club boys, because all of them angle that way).

Tagging in @ghostalservice, @petrichorca, @veeagainsttheday, @fakestgeekboy, @adhduck, @xoxoemynn, @bizarrelittlemew, and anyone else who'd like to answer!

[xiaogesword]

"There was a sort of unspoken understanding between the two of them — that the exchange was a certain, rare kind of comfort. It was the kind that was found once in a blue moon – far less often than it was needed. The kind that was surely not normal by society's standards, but was so innocent that it need not be explained to anyone who didn't care to try and understand it."

Oh don't mind me, just busy crying over this excerpt about unconventional comforting from a XieHua friendship appreciation ff I recently read... 🥲

( link to fic)

[ussjellyfish]

fic author q & a

Thank you, @fiadorable for tagging me!!

The questions:

Why do you write fanfic?

Which of your posted stories do you think about the most, even though the story is "finished"?

If you could give yourself fic advice from when you first started writing fic, what would that advice be?

What's your relationship to fic stats?

Is there a pairing or scenario or friendship you miss writing? If so, why? If not, why not?

Why do you write for the fandom(s) that you write for?

If you're stuck writing a WIP, what do you do?

What do you wish people knew about comments?

Maybe there's a question you wish had been on here. What's that questions (and answer)?

Why do you write fanfic?

I enjoy, so much. I love dialogue, I love trying to write something that's feels true to the characters in the moment I'm writing. Some of it is writing things that are simply not feasible/wouldn't film well/aren't things shows would bother making.

The worlds fiction creates are interesting to me and I like expanding them. I'm particularly into little hurts and comforts, and I have a specialty in the long epic that takes place around a pregnancy. I also really love f/f pairings and those are not usually offered in the canons I enjoy. (Maybe there's one...).

I like writing the things I would like to read. I love the community around it, exchanges are fun because you get to make something and someone makes something for you. Existing with people who also find writing fun is a neat and creative way to connect.

It's the freest creative outlet I get in my life, and I really love that.

2. Which of your posted stories do you think about the most, even though the story is "finished"?

Right now, Quantum Variations on a Love Theme, because I love that story, I invested so much of my life into writing it, and it stopped in a good place, so it's done, but it's a world I made that I am fond of. There are fun little friendships in there, and I built their relationship well. I had fun. I don't know if I have anything to add. It feels done, but I love it.

Two ficlets I really liked and feel like they could have more to them in a "proof of concept" kind of way are "legends of the space lanes" which is where Laira has amnesia and thinks she's space pilot much younger Laira (which was fun) because I really think space pilot Laira could go somewhere. So I think about that one because I write to write a more complicated fic vaguely in that direction.

I also think about Federation Labor Code Section 51A-11, subparagraph 2, because it's adorable, and I have such a soft spot for Laira doing her job, and feeling terrible while she does it, and only Michael knowing. This idea makes my heart mush in my chest. There are so many more labor codes to make up and fun ways to break them and it's cute, they're cute together.

3. If you could give yourself fic advice from when you first started writing fic, what would that advice be?

Worry less about what other people think about it. Comments are fun, they're wonderful, but the writing itself is a journey. You get better the more you write, and the process is what you enjoy. Write things that make you happy, enjoy writing them, don't be ashamed for liking what you like. I do the same thing over and over, but I enjoy it. Other people do this too, and enjoy themselves, I would feel better if I let myself write without shame.

4. What's your relationship to fic stats?

They're fun! I like that ao3 has been tracking things for me for 15 years. There's little fun things in there. In a good year, I write around 200,000 words. I'm almost to 3 million words on ao3. I'm almost to 1 million hits. These are fun things. I like knowing they are out there. It's little ways to motivate myself.

5. Is there a pairing or scenario or friendship you miss writing? If so, why? If not, why not?

I can't think of one at the moment. I miss the people who talked to me while I wrote some of my previously pairings. I seem to swap friend groups as I swap fandoms/pairings and I miss people when I don't talk to them any more. Lately they get too busy, move on before I finish something, and then I finish it on my own, and it's rather lonely. The last two long fics I've been really into (Michael Burnham/Laira Rillak) and ( gen Philippa Georgiou) have gotten me through since 2020. I definitely have a candle for all the pairings I've been really into. (Elizabeth Weir/John Sheppard - Stargate Atlantis, Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard - Star Trek: TNG, Kathryn Janeway/Chakotay - Star Trek Voyager, Beverly Crusher/Kathryn Janeway - TNG/VOY, Melinda May/Phil Coulson - Agents of SHIELD, Maleficent/Regina Mills - Once Upon a Time, Regina Mills/Emma Swan - Once Upon a Time.)

I feel contentedly done with most of them though.

Beverly/Kathryn is probably the one I'm most likely to go back to. Elizabeth and John get a little nod every October. Mostly my heart moves on, and I write my specialty for a new pairing, and I see how long I hang out there.

It seems like I will write Una/La'an babyfic at some point. They're adorable. It'll be fun.

5. What motivates you to write?

It may honestly be that femslash babyfic doesn't write itself. It's an unpopular corner of an unpopular corner and usually my favorite pairing is tiny. Some of them haven't been, and it's really fun to be part of a big ship. It's also fun to be part of a tiny little ship when people sail near you in their ship and wave. That's kind of where I am at the moment, and it's nice.

I don't remember a time where I didn't write fanfic. I wrote Addams Family fanfic when I was nine. I have ancient self insert TNG fic from when I was thirteen. I love support and friendship and feelings and vulnerability and little things that aren't important enough to be a whole episode that are important enough to me. I love building relationships and figuring out how to make something sound like it's from the show, and keep it vaguely close enough to the characters that it makes sense.

It's fun. I get a creative outlet and a challenge and friends and something I like reading at the end

6. Why do you write for the fandom(s) that you write for?

I like women with power and underlying vulnerabilities, often when they're terrible at dealing with their own feelings. I lead towards scifi or fantasy, lots of Star Trek. (probably two thirds of my works are Star Trek of some kind). I like being able to make things up, I love casts with lots of women.

I love the freedom of science fiction and fantasy. I love weird stuff. I'm not that intrigued by things too close to reality.

Usually I find a character I like and fixate on her and then decide whom I ship her with. (Often it's the person who would fuss over her if she had a headache). Sometimes they have scenes together, sometimes they don't. I've shipped several f/m pairings in the past, lately it's all femslash.

I care more about the mutual looking after each other when it's a f/f [pairing, I am kind of biased towards the female character in most of my f/m fics. She's Barbie, he's just Ken. Barbie/Barbie is much more fun for me.

I love it when the characters have people who love them around them, and I like building the friendships that go with the relationship. I like to make this place where they look after each other, or expand it. It brings me joy.

7. If you're stuck writing a WIP, what do you do?

Start another one! (i wish I was joking). Take a walk, paint, play video games, go do a chore. I rarely have enough time and energy free to be stuck. It's either going well or I'm too tired to write. Usually now my problems are not, I have time to write and I don't know what to write. It's I don't have time or energy to write. I have to work, I have chores and I…

I am filling this out instead of writing but this is fun and I've been meaning to do it for ages.

I talk about my WIP with anyone who will listen or write another fic, if I am stuck but have time to write. Rarely does this occur. Usually I have no time / energy, which is different than stuck.

8. What do you wish people knew about comments?

They're a fabulous way to make friends, if you want. I would love to hear the little things you didn't put into a fic when I comment on yours. If you're reading something for the 10th time, I'd love to know. I mean to reply to them, I try, and sometimes I forget or they get buried. I treasure them. Thank you for taking the time. It means worlds to me.

9. Maybe there's a question you wish had been on here. What's that questions (and answer)?

@fiadorable chose How are you feeling about writing today? and that's a good question. So I'll go with that.

I feel good about writing today. I'm finishing up my Discovery Big Bang, and that's going well, it's been fleshed out where it needed to be and I know what happens in the end I just need to drag all the threads together.

It's been a few weeks since I had the time and energy to write anything and it's nice to be on the upswing where things feel hopeful and fun.

It's genuinely been fun to add on little things and pull the big bang fic together. I'm excited about it.

Tagging @onmytallesttiptoesspinning @astrotrek86 @pilcrowtudinous @mylittleredgirl @moomkin77 @concentfortea @an-inky-fingered-lass @lenfaz @havocthecat @bessemerprocess @elephant-in-the-pride-parade @divinemissem13 @lorcaswhisky

if you feel inclined.