#Gwen’s whole cat motif

[yeahsoapy]

Playing around with anodite designs

[astriddestelle]

In light of discovering I’ve been a friends to lover girlie this whole time. Here’s are my top ten friends to lovers of all time canon and non canon.

1. The ship that started it all admittedly I liked Raven more so I shipped her with Robin, but my god Robin and Starfire were cute a whole ass ship I didn’t even realize I was shipping until they kissed in the movie and I was squealing like well I was a kid lol. My favorite episode aside from the Raven ones were always the ones focused on their relationship. Stranded was chefs kiss. I’m not a girl I’m not your friend. Date with Destiny had me gagged. Sisters the arm reach as she’s kidnapped beautiful. No other couple will compare.

2. God when this was airing what a time to be fucking alive. I was so obsessed with this ship. My first fanfic ideas were about this ship. I used to roleplay this show at school. They were so fucking messy with their just friends bullshit. Just friends my ass. I used to watch episode 22 routine on repeat and yes I have it memorized they almost kissed then spent the rest of series pretending they weren’t down bad for each other. They never actually made it official either which will forever haunt me to this day.

3. This one crept on me. I didn’t realize I shipped it until I shipped it and there was no going back. I mean come on. The look of love is literally their theme song. What do you mean Langa only likes skateboarding when Reki is there to watch and cheer him on. What do you mean Reki is afraid of Langa getting hurt not himself but Langa. Cindereki need I say more. The most casual friends to lovers cause they don’t even realize till the end. I went to skate infinitely with you who says stuff like that to someone they’re just friends with. How they adopt each others love languages through your the show. Ugh.

4. Alright imma be honest. This one started as me just wanting to read more Itadori fics but my god. If gege wasn’t a coward they would’ve been official (jk mostly) but Megumi only wanting to live a domestic life with Yuji, regaining the will to live after Yuji says he misses him, not having a reason for saving him not wanting him to die, start by saving me itadori…yeah. And itadori never giving up saving fushiguro, first words out of his mouth are always fushiguro, tells Sukuna to give fushiguro back. I mean how could I not.

5. Might be too early for me to be adding them to this list but so far Momo and Okarun have all the makings of being just as great as Robin and Starfire if not better. Two idiots sharing one brain cell the way they actually communicate with each other, Okarun getting salty when people insult his wifey, Momo getting jealous when people flirt with her husband. Okarun straight up telling Momo he can’t read her mind but he cares about her and values her friendship. Momo straight up saying she wants to talk to Okarun and loves hanging out with him. I’m into deep and it’s only been nine episodes. First time I’ve been this invested in a straight ship in years.

6. Back to the classics with this one. And I’m lowkey starting to sense a pattern. Cause why do they all involve redheads in some way and do I have a type? (yes) Kim and Ron are the original boss wife/fail husband. They’re so cute cause if you rewatch the series there’s all these little hints that they always liked each other (it took you 12 stinking years to kiss me) (I mean me and Kim sure everyone expects it but) but like didn’t wanna ruin their friendship fucking cute as hell idk if it was intentional on the writers part but yeah

7. Gwen and Geoff from Total Drama Island. They had one episode together and I was a goner. Idk I just love my sun and moon motifs as yall can clearly see. Something about the black cat golden retriever dynamic just tickles me I guess. I know yall see the potential. I rewrote total drama island just to get them to together it was bad

8. Harry and Luna from HP. Idc he shoulda been with her and not Ginny. No shade to Ginny but I just feel like they would’ve been such a great couple. Harry with someone who understands him and will never make him feel like he needs to live up to the savior role and Luna with someone who will never judge her for being different or odd. Sigh. So much wasted potential. So stinking cute oddly doesn’t exist as much anymore sigh.

9. Birdflash. I will not deny a huge part of this stems from really liking Wally West and that’s pretty much it. And I wanted more fics about him. I did not like Artemis at all, no one else shipped him with Zatanna or Rocket or Batgirl or Megan so Robin it was lol. But I mean I’ve been eating since so I can’t complain.

10. Ok while I don’t like this ship anymore I can’t deny I was obsessed with it for a hot minute. Danny/Sam from Danny phantom so much freaking potential and actually really cute from 10 year old me’s pov too bad they don’t hold up as an adult. I was very much obsessed with goths as a kid huh.

Honorary mentions

Adrien/Marinette: I haven’t seen enough of this show to put em in my top ten but my god is it cute af sometimes I just need to cute sunshine’s falling in love that is all. I’ve seen enough to know I’m rooting for both of em. A

Jade/Andre: I was obsessed with the episode he had a crush on her. Also in canon he’s the only one she calls a friend, they have lunch dates, she isn’t ever mean to him not as mean as she is to everyone else. I think it’s be cute af alright. Plus Andre wouldn’t flirt with other girls and make her jealous

Tododeku idk yall I just think they’d be cute af together not much else say. Same goes for Mina and Bakugo. Idk I just like em.

Sheen/Libby very refreshing to see a black girl get a love interest and not be discarded later. Sigh too bad that hasn’t happened since like 2006

can also throw on numbuh one and numbuh five from kids next door for similar reasons above. As well as numbuh two and numbuh five

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #27

words

Finished:

Counting Out Stitches by chinuplargepup (chinuplilpup) on ao3 ough... Dick and Joey....what an excellent point in time to set this too

The King is Dead, Long Live the King by Havendance on ao3 an excellent fic about what if Batman actually for real died and stayed dead. sad, interesting, very well written, I'd been meaning to finish it for ages and just this past week finally read the third and final chapter

a conversation at 4:30am by xscintillate on ao3

the rest of the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast's fiction backlog:

"Cardinal's Gambit" by Catherine Lundoof, narrated by Onerae Clark "Your Fingers Like Pen and Ink" by Jeannelle M. Ferreira, narrated by Violet Dixon "Give Us This Day" by Jennifer Nestojko "A Soldier in the Army of Love" by Diane Morrison, narrated by Laura Pinson "The Adventuress" by Catherine Lundoff, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "Margaret" by Eleanor Musgrove, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "Moon River" by Mandy Mongkolyuth, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "Abstract" by Kat Sinor, narrated by Jasmine Arch "Palio" by Gwen C. Katz, narrated by Violet Dixon "The Spirit of Cabassus" by Ursula Whitcher, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "A Farce to Suit the New Girl" by Rebecca Fraimow, narrated by Violet Dixon "The Wolf that Sings on the Mountain" by Miyuki Jane Pinckard "From the Bird's Nest" by Jennifer Nestojko, narrated by Emma Ross "The Pirate in the Mirror" by Catherine Lundoof, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "To the Fair Muse who, Loving Me, Imagin'd More" by Annemarie KD, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "The Salt Price" by B. Pladek, narrated by Jasmine Arch "Battling Poll" by Rose Cullen, narrated by Heather Rose Jones "Daughters of Derbyshire" by Daniel Stride, narrated by Heather Rose Jones

my favorites were "A farce to suit the new girl" and "Battling Poll"! check them out, and check out the whole podcast

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian like I said last week when I started reading it, enjoyable but not super compelling! But i like the relationship dynamic that's set up between the leads, so it was sweet and I finished it

"Consent" by Emily A. Owens absolutely a must read in terms of thinking through what the place of consent is in discussions of sex and sexual violence

"Sexual Violation and the Question of Experience" by Linda Martín Alcoff

"On Not Being a Victim: Sex, Rape, and the trouble with following rules" by Mary Gaitskill an essay on date/acquaintance rape, and how we understand being and feeling violated. it takes a little digression into attitudes about PC moral purity in opinions about media. all of it written from a personal anecdotal perspective that I think is written deeply compassionately to one's past self and will be sticking with me. however I don't like how it picks up race as a topic at the beginning and then quickly drops it

"Convicted Rapists' Vocabulary of Motive: Excuses and Justifications" by Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla

"The Right (Way) to Represent: The Emotional Politics of Remembering Mass Rape in Germany After 1945" by Katherine Stone

Always the Almost by Edward Underhill recently released YA romance I read for the queer lit bookclub bc its a gay romance involving a newly out trans boy. I have many complaints but the group chat has already heard them

Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 12 by Kamome Shirahama, translated by Stephen Kohler I finished reading this RIGHT before I saw the trailer for the anime. i am overjoyed! excellent art and storytelling as always

Uzumaki by Junji Ito finished reading this right after the new Shelved by Genre episode came out, bc its due back at the library soon! has the sort of dramatic denouement that I was missing in Tomie

"The Unwanted Guest" by Tamsyn Muir borrowed @quiriusblack's copy of Nona the Ninth to finally read this bonus story. i love palamedes he's so insufferable

What Did You Eat Yesterday? Vol. 11 by Fumi Yoshinaga, transalted by Jocelyn Allen cute as always

Started/Ongoing:

You Should be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian set in the same friend group as we could be so good, this one has marginally more plot and I'm liking in better! love the main couple, and I like that they have similar struggles to the first around like living authentically as gay people in the 1950s and 60s and also trying to live safely

The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 11 by Kousuke Oono thought I had already read this but I guess I had not! as always light silly fun

[katebishopshands]

Not a fic ( I know I’m sorry)

But Across the Spiderverse was so good I had to hop on the spidersona bandwagon.

Introducing Lamp Light, a spider person with a love for moths so intense she made it her whole motif. She’s inspired by a death head moth :)

Bitten by a radioactive spider while at her job as a camp counselor, she’s been the one and only Lamp Light for going on two years now.

She hates grubby handed children, bug spray as after her transformation she’s allergic to it, and being called a spider

She loves the woods, her beloved cat ( who she sometimes takes swinging in a baby sling) and her own Gwen Stacy 🕷️🕸️

[cwritesfiction]

Planning & Outlining a Novel

My personal planning process 

I’ve discussed my planning process before, but after getting some questions, I decided to consolidate everything into a single post. This post summarizes how I plan my novels, including how I use spreadsheets to keep myself organized.

A forever disclaimer: Everyone's writing process is different. I'm sharing what I do in case it helps others, not because I think this is the "right" way. 

A smaller disclaimer: I went through a long trial and error process. This post focuses on the things that worked, not on what catastrophically failed. But please know: I catastrophically failed. And then I tried again and again until I figured out what to do. I didn't learn my process in one sitting, so don't stress if you don't either.

Planning the first draft

Before I start writing, I don't list every single thing that needs to happen in the story. Instead, I focus on story beats.

A beat is a moment in the story. If you want to get specific, I plan my beats around Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, which is an awesome plotting resource. I also use Gwen Hayes's Romancing the Beat as a resource for romantic plots or subplots.

The bottom line: I plan big story moments to hit, which I organize in a spreadsheet. I’ll share the spreadsheet for Under No Illusions, broken up so it’s easier to read.

The first two columns are the Save the Cat beat I'm trying to hit. The last column is for romance beats (I moved it over for the sake of the screenshot.)  

The description is a brief idea of what I want to happen.

The notes are any other things I want to remember while I'm writing; they usually get tacked on later.

My outlines are never perfect. It's okay if I don't know everything exactly, or if some of the descriptions are vague, like "they argue" or "she leaves." Often, my descriptions have more than one option. Even more often they're littered with profanity and memes because hey! This isn't serious! The whole point is to get an understanding of the story structure so I don't get lost while drafting.

First Drafting

Other than aesthetic boards, playlists, and ranting in my writing discord server, planning my beats is the only thing I'll do before diving into the first draft.

A fact about me: I'm a chaotic first drafter. I'll axe characters, switch narrative POVs, write summaries in brackets...I'll do whatever it takes to get from start to finish. My first drafts are more like glorified brainstorming documents, otherwise, my nasty perfectionist side rears its ugly head.

Before I first-draft a scene, I'll write a quick bullet-point list of what I want to happen based on the story beat I need to hit. I don't hold myself to the outline; it's just a way to stop myself from getting stuck.

Re-Outlining

After I finish a draft, the first thing I do is figure out what I actually wrote. This sounds like a job for a spreadsheet!

This is the spreadsheet I used to re-outline Shark's Eye:

For the summary, I skimmed each chapter and summarized what I'd written on my spreadsheet.

Shark's Eye had a few reveals I wanted to keep track of, so I added a column for foreshadowing and motifs so I could see where I'd dropped hints.

The notes section was anything I wanted to change for the next draft.

Word count is self explanatory. I didn't worry too much about this in my early drafting stages, but it was a way to spot red flags.

Shark's Eye needed a ton of restructuring after the first draft. (I had to write a POV narrator out of the story. Yikes.) I made a new tab on my spreadsheet and rearranged the scenes the way I wanted them to appear in the next draft. I also wrote descriptions of new scenes I needed to write and new versions of scenes I wanted to change.

Second Drafting

...was a little bit of first drafting. I started by rearranging my draft so the scenes were in the right order. Then, I wrote any brand new scenes before I made chapter-by-chapter revisions. Once I was done, it was time for...

Re-Outlining 2: Electric Boogaloo

Yep. I did the same thing I'd done before, only this time, my spreadsheet was a little more detailed.

The first part of the spreadsheet was the same: chapter and description of what I'd already written.

I added some more columns based on details I wanted to track:

Location is self-explanatory.

Character intro is also self-explanatory.  I heavily re-outlined this story, which is why I added both of these columns to keep track of when I introduced certain things.

Magic could've been called "plot." This is where I listed what plot exposition was given in each chapter to avoid leaving things out or being redundant.

I added a column for each main character to track descriptions and development.

Notes & word count were the same as before. (Fun fact: The present version of this chapter is about 4k words. Amazing what changes in editing.)

And then I wrote a third draft

After this point, I got started getting feedback, and I found it easier to make notes directly on my document rather than on the spreadsheet.

Even if this isn't the way you plan, I hope my explanation helped to spark some ideas. Please feel free to ask questions if you have them. Happy writing!

(Tagging some people who’d asked to be tagged: @writing-with-roses @gingerly-writing​ @tea-and-pirates​ @stories-by-rie​)