#I can have a zillion fics in progress at once

[stergeon]

🌻💡💌

🌻 How often do you read your own fics?

uh well immediately after i post a fic, i re-read it like three times because, inevitably, i will find a zillion mistakes i somehow missed in my previous fifty rounds of editing. then i will be unable to look at the piece for a month or two. after that i’ll remember it exists and do another round of edits. usually this is the most extensive edit as i’ve had enough time away from the work to realize where and how i was talking out my ass. sorry to anyone who reads my stuff before this happens lmaoooo i hope it’s stomachable!!

after that, i can (usually) bear to look at the fic again and i’ll remember i wrote it for me and that’s why it contains all kinds of stuff i like lol. i’ll re-read and do nitpicky edits maybe once a month or so. more if i’m proud of it.

💡How many WIPs do you currently have?

ummmmm. let’s see. in no particular order, i’ve got a good chunk of progress goin’ on these right now:

the victors; the vestiges. chapter four is so close to being done but i have to keep touching it and touching it.

recognition chapter 3. this chapter is technically smut, but rather unsexy smut. twin character studies in a smut wrapper. apologies to anyone who’s subscribed to that as i have no idea if i’ll ever be brave enough to publish it.

yet-untitled edeleth smut that is purely about sex for sex’s sake. i’m having too much fun with this one

very angsty fic about byleth’s first days in enbarr

morrowind reincarnation-slash-modern au

a way too ambitious nerevoryn fic i’ll don’t think i will ever finish

that casphardt fic i promised you ten thousand years ago OOPS!!!!!

i’m also dreaming about doing a political drama set in fhirdiad just after the war but i’m not sure if i have the brain or historical chops to pull it off. maybe someday.

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

hmmm. i don’t think so? i really enjoy writing and exploring established relationships, but i wouldn’t say it’s necessarily my favorite as i enjoy writing non-romantic stuff, too. thematically, my favorite thing to write about is devotion. i’m pretty much always writing about devotion or grief (usually both).

[bleachbleachbleach]

2022/2023 Fandom Goals!

At the end of last year I set out to accomplish what then appeared to be achievable fandom goals for 2022. 

WERE THEY, THOUGH. WERE THEY. 

Let’s see:

2022 Goals (Review)

1. be more shameless on Tumblr - I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten at least a little better about this, though I guess it depends on the day. Posting things on the Internet causes me anguish, and I consider doing so an intentional conditioning process. All the same, I would still like to feel less anguish. But I also don’t want to be actively annoying or boring and simply be *unanguished* about it, LOL, and therein lies my hangup.

2. stop damning reblogs to Draft Purgatory - I have been very good about this this year! Browser tabs purgatory, on the other hand…

3. prioritize accessible joy - This one was about not abandoning Tumblr for months at a time, and I feel like I’ve actually improved here and merely abandoning Tumblr for 1-2 weeks at a time. One thing that was way more helpful than it had any business being was making a special "mini dash" that just has blogs that primarily post original Bleach content and/or mutuals who are friends, so that if I get overwhelmed I can jump ship and use that dash for a while instead, and still get to see a lot of my favorite things. I say this like my normal dash isn’t mostly Bleach and like I follow a zillion active blogs. I do not. That’s why it’s ridiculous that my mini dash is as great for me as it is. XD 

4. finish reading the Soul Society arc - I am on… Chapter 68 LOL, and Ichigo has not yet so much as entered Soul Society. Making progress on this re-read is challenging because there are a lot of ways to enjoy Bleach and this reread is the only one that’s not a moving target—the manga’s not going anywhere; I’m not going to 'fall behind' if I don’t read it—and I have a regrettably limited amount of Bleach time. But I think I’ve become more confident in my reading/ability to search stackexchange and read about grammar, so I am still enjoying this!

5. write my fanfic - I wish I had done more of this, but this was a Year—a huge number of moving pieces IRL. I think last year I had written like… 10k of this fanfic? And now I have probably 20-30k, and most of that original 10k got scrapped. This fic has done a lot of shape-taking this year, which is very good. I had these grand plans of finishing two full chapters (Akon and Matsumoto 5) by the end of the year, which I have modified to finishing one chapter. I have *one scene left* but I think it’s probably in the Top 5 of Scenes in This Fic That I Already Know Are Going to be Hard to Write, and I’ve already written and deleted it once. There were so many bugs in the deleted version, so many bugs for absolutely no reason. I don’t know what the scene will ultimately look like, but I can assure you you’d never guess what scene used to Have Bugs, because there is so little reason there should have been bugs.

2023 Goals

1. Write my fanfic! For the sake of SMART goals, let’s say at least 1 line per day, every single day. Come March I will have been writing this for two years and WHAT do I have to show for it.

2. No more tabs purgatory! I don’t know how obvious B3’s posting habits are to others—but for my part of the equation, I tend to be That Person who reblogs 15 long textposts and adds 90 tags to everything, all the span of the same 2-hour block. I don’t think this is actually a good way of using Tumblr and I’d prefer to… not do that. XP And to find ways of being more with the flow of the dash. 

This is mostly me needing to carve out better interstitial space for fun time, because I want this for my own pleasure and I also because I want the OP to know how VERY EXCITED I AM TO SEE IT and tabs purgatory feels like the opposite of being able to do that. SMART goal? Uhhh don’t let tabs languish for more than a week?

3. Make space for fandom, and for fandom things that give me most joy. Again, this is part of a broader life assessment that in a better world would boil down to "working less" but in this world is not accessible if I want to continue being employed. So I’ll settle for being extremely intentional about how I spend my free time, and by consciously thinking about ways to create the kinds of interactions I most enjoy. That sounds very cerebral but I promise I just mean things like "that meme where I asked people to send in random stuff they loved about their Bleach faves was super fun I should do that again sometime" and "try to make friends" and "talk about fanfic with people” and “make progress on that bleach reread occasionally.”

4. Be more shameless on Tumblr. YEAH I have no strategies here, but I’m gonna keep this one on the list.

[gumnut-logic]

Humidity

Fixed the technobabble :D Now I just need to work out what the plot is doing :D

But at least now there are twice as many words :D Still WIP.

And yes, there is a whump warning, sorry.

I hope you enjoy it anyway.

-o-o-o-

Water ran down the glass windows.

The thing was that it wasn’t raining, it was just all condensation caused by horribly hot weather and their sudden lack of air conditioning.

“I don’t know if I can take this anymore.” Alan flopped dramatically on the lounge.

Gordon rolled his eyes. “You could go down to the hangars. It’s much cooler down there.”

“No way. Virgil and Brains would snag me to help them and I barely have enough energy to breeeeathe.”

“A bit dramatic there, little bro. Go for a swim. We have an entire pool and Pacific Ocean.”

“Pool’s in the sun and the ocean is full of things that want to eat me. You’ve proven that multiple times.”

Gordon groaned. “Fine. Sit your lazy ass there. I”m going to go find Virgil to see if he needs any help.”

“He’s cool. Got Brains and Scott as his slaves.” A pause. “Maybe I’ll go keep John company.”

Gordon dismissed him with a hand as he strode from the room.

The villa was not itself today. The entire air conditioning network had burnt out, plunging the house into relying on the weather. Which was failing them miserably. Due to the effects of climate change sometimes the tropics weren’t as fun as they could be and today was one of those. Gordon’s shirt was soaked with sweat.

He knew where he would find Virgil and his work crew. When they had initially split up - Gordon to take Grandma down to Aotearoa and Virgil to tackle the issue at its root – his brother had already been grumbling.

The profanity from the control room was not a good sign.

They had a massive network of temperature control mechanisms on the Island. If one thing was an identifier of a civilisation, it was its ability to manipulate temperature. Tracy Island needed all the controls. Habitability was only a small part of the equation. Heat controls for launching Thunderbirds was a major thing, airflow to the hangars and more hidden areas of the complex was another. And somehow all of them were down for the count.

The hangars were definitely warmer than usual - more to do with residual heat from machinery and humidity than the sunny 38C day outside.

He ran into Scott in the main doorway. His expression wasn’t a good one, but it lit up at the sight of Gordon.

“Grandma, okay?”

“Set her up in the house. She’s stress baking.”

“Oh.” There was so much to be said after that statement. “I can see why you didn’t stay.”

Gordon shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? I’m a survivor.” He peered into the room. “How’s Virg?”

Scott sighed. “Not happy. Still hasn’t found the source of the problem. Not even backups are behaving. Has to be systemic. But first step is to get minimal service running so we can launch. Brains is working on it.”

Gordon stared at his brother. Launching One or Three without heat dissipation was very much not a good idea. Two, they could get away with. There was a reason she didn’t launch inside the facility like the rest of them. She was the safety factor.

But without One and Three their ability to respond to a situation was not great.

But a sudden crash and yelp inside the room had both brothers moving, all other thought discarded.

They entered to chaos. Virgil was huddled on the other side of the room, a bright and raw arc of electricity bouncing from point to point in front of him. The lights had blown and the only illumination was the eerie blue white lightning.

“Virgil!”

Electricity danced around the room.

Scott’s arm held Gordon back.

“Thunderbird Five, kill all the power on the Island!”

John didn’t say a word, the command in Scott’s voice requiring immediate action.

Everything fell into darkness.

John’s voice was eerily calm in the sudden silence. “All switches thrown. All generators disconnected from the grid and winding down.”

Smoke and ozone tangled in Gordon’s nostrils. “Virgil?” Down here it really was pitch black when the lighting was out.

Beside him Scott was scrambling around in the darkness, likely looking for the emergency kit in this room. That covered, Gordon was going for Virgil. “Virgil? Answer me.”

The groan that answered him was wonderful.

The room was suddenly flooded with light and Gordon jumped, for a split second fearing the lightning had come back. But Scott had found the kit and the torch inside it.

They both beelined for Virgil who was still on the floor.

“Virgil, talk to me.”

Their brother turned his head to look up at them, and Gordon was convinced Scott could make anything happen just by issuing a command.

But Virgil didn’t speak. He opened his mouth but then looked back down at his hands.

Gordon’s eyes followed.

Oh, hell.

Scott was already moving, the emergency kit in his hands opening as he dropped down beside their brother. The torch was handed to Gordon and the mediscanner lit up the room.

Moments later, Scott was spraying burn foam all over Virgil’s hands.

Scott caught him as he slid sideways into his arms, his relief a physical thing.

“Thank you.” It was rough and more breath than voice. “‘xploded in my face. Wasn’t supposed to be live.” Virgil groaned and dropped his head against Scott’s shoulder.

A pair of lights bobbed into the room revealing Brains with Alan panting beside him. “What happened?” His eyes widened when he saw Virgil.

“Brains, don’t touch it. Keep away.” Virgil flopped one injured hand as if to swipe the engineer away from the console, but flinched. Scott caught his wrist and gently brought it back together with the other injured limb. “C’mon, let’s get you up to the infirmary.”

Gordon jumped in to help get his big brother of the floor.

Virgil’s groan hurt.

But they got him up and moving.

Unfortunately, the infirmary was quite a distance without the elevator network.

Behind them he could hear Brains talking with John a mile a minute. No doubt they would work out exactly what happened.

Alan was hovering behind him.

“Allie, go get a hoverchair.” Gordon didn’t need to repeat himself. No doubt his little brother was just happy to do something.

Helping Virgil out into the main hangars brought them all into the natural light from the massive skylight high up in the cavern. His brother straightened a little more as if he was a plant or something. “It wasn’t supposed to be live.”

“Don’t worry about that now, Virg. Brains will work out what happened.”

“No, you’re not getting it. My hands were on the console, not inside it.”

Scott stared at Virgil a moment. “Noted. John and Brains have it in hand.”

Virgil shook his head as if in denial, but groaned and closed his eyes.

Gordon gripped him a little tighter, his fingers fisting in flannel as his brother wavered. “They’ll work it out. You need treatment and rest.”

The swear word Virgil hissed was ever so appropriate.

-o-o-o-

TBC

[pilferingapples]

tagged by @takethewatch, who for some reason I cannot Mention?

Last Song: Backstage Romance, Moulin Rouge, or else the Japanese 80s cover of Bon Jovi’s Runaway, which is the theme of the absolutely Wild series Stepsisters, depending on if this only counts songs alone or songs as part of a show

Last Movie: Manto, a biopic sort of thing about progressive author Saadat Hasan  Manto, WOW it was good, it was incredibly good, I really wish more people could see it and i wish more biopic films were as good at integrating the work of creative types with the story and in showing what was going on in the era Currently Reading:  **cries in research fandom** The Real Musketeers, George Sand bio, O’Neddy’s The Enchanted Ring, a collection of SciFi from India during colonization, various articles? if I can ever get my ebook reader to talk to my computer again, maybe I can actually Read a Dang Novel once more...

OH and also @everyonewasabird‘s fic Not Even Miracles! Read it read it read iiiiit it’s currently living in my heart rent free and I’m Dying 

Currently Watching: DS9 (early eps yet!) , Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Shoujo Cosette (again), Stepsisters, Kiramager, gaah too many things to list ><  The problem is i only ever really watch shows With People and that takes Scheduling, so it takes a while and means I’m watching a zillion things at once in Slowtime:P Currently Craving: *sigh* stir-fried Flat Noodles from this one particular place in the nearest city  that I cannot  go to for obvious Plague Reasons, yes  I can Make my own flat noodle stir fry but I want theirs 

non-food-wise, Swimming, I have not been swimming all YEAR, what is the point of existence??every day I get emails 

Not sure who hasn’t been tagged-- @akallabeth-joie, @notfromcold, @aflamethatneverdies, @apaladinagain , @fixaidea, @betweentheheavesofstorm? if you feel like it/haven’t been tagged ten times already?:P 

[paintedrecs]

@mad-madam-m​ tagged me in the “list 5 OTPs from 5 fandoms” meme a couple days ago, which I laughed at her for because (a) she knows my otps FULL WELL (b) our lists are very nearly an exact match (which i am by the way delighted about because half my list right now is full of rare pairs, and I have never before known the hell of treading that landscape alone)

but!

I’m gonna do the meme and double it up as an announcement of what I am currently into and what you’re likely to see on this blog if I start picking up my activity levels a little.

I honestly have no idea how active tumblr is at this point - how many of you are still around, and how many of you I might lose if I start reblogging my other fandoms in addition to Sterek - but after doing a Pillowfort experiment for a while, I think I’ve finally figured out how to use social media again in a way that works better for me.

My old method, before tumblr kinda imploded and fandom got weird (filled with antis and ship hate and constant infighting, ugh why), was to create a separate blog for everything I was into, which is why I have appreciatederek, appreciateshiro, appreciatejack, and...is that it? See, this is why I need to stop scattering myself into a zillion different pieces.

So I’m going to consolidate more (like I do on twitter and now Pillowfort), and also hopefully get back to my fandom roots: digging into more meta, like I did 8 years ago when I first fell in love with Sterek, and posting fic recs, like I also did thanks to Sterek. (And sharing my own fics as I write them. Guess which fandom pushed me down that path, too.)

So it’s fitting that the first ship on this list is...well, an obvious one.

1. STEREK (Teen Wolf)

Y’all know this one. Sterek will always, always be the OTP of my heart. I love their dynamic. I love the creativity and passion of the fandom. I love that they brought my writing back to me and introduced me to so many of you.

I still have dozens of Sterek fic ideas; quite a few of them are partially written or have significant outlines, so at some point I will still be writing them. Life is just, as you know, very busy and very tiring and it’s so hard to fit everything into my days. I’m working on it, I promise. 

I’d like to start doing more updates with snippets of my upcoming fics, maybe a lil Q&A if anyone wants to chat about what I’m working on/my thought process behind what I’ve already written/what you’d like to see from me, etc. Interactive fun stuff! Sterek fandom is still the best and most supportive fandom I’ve ever been a part of, and it makes me happy every time I’m reminded we’re all still around and thriving.

And here’s some of the other stuff I’m into right now...

2. XANATOWEN (Gargoyles)

I have been sailing this ship entirely by myself since January, recently joined by the aforementioned M, who also created this gif for me while she was still in the patient “I’m your friend, I will listen to you yelling about this show” stage. (ha ha ha look at her now, that’s what you get)

I’ve been genuinely holding myself back from spamming tumblr with my thoughts about this show and this ship, which I’m beginning to realize is...maybe silly. I’ll still try to keep it a little bit balanced, but you can definitely look forward to more Gargoyles on the horizon, including:

Fics - 30k so far, with another 4.6k that I’m hoping to post this afternoon, after I look over it and decide if I still like it (ha ha fic writing amirite). I also have a fairy tale AU that I’ve done a substantial outline for, so I’d really like to get that underway.

Episode recaps/meta posts - these are currently being posted over on Pillowfort. The goal is to get the last two episodes of Season 1 up there, then to start crossposting them here.

As long as it’s not a gigantic hassle to paste over all the screencaps, because I uh. I have a lot of them. And a lot of thoughts about the show as a whole, but particularly about the relationship between David Xanatos and Owen Burnett: the meta’s currently averaging from about 1.5k to 2.5k per episode, whoooops.

I love them. I love them a LOT. See my meta posts for very detailed explanations as to why.

3. TREVORCARD (Castlevania)

I honestly did not expect to get this deeply invested in this ship. I watched and liked the first two seasons of Castlevania and really enjoyed the dynamic between Trevor and Alucard, but it wasn’t until the lead-up to Season 3 (and then the devastation of how absolutely terrible that season was) that I realized how much I loved these two together.

So now I’m having a very Sterek Fandom moment of “eff you canon, they’re ours now” in regards to Trevorcard. 

I’ve written one fic for them - it’s a 20k coffee shop/modern/college/artist/musician AU because they deserve all the fandom tropes and so much happiness together..

I don’t currently have plans to write any more, although if I do, it’ll likely be some sort of neighbors AU with wolf!Alucard, since my vast experience with Sterek fandom has taught me the absolute joys of exploring characters who can canonically turn into a beautiful giant effing wolf. 

I’ve also been steadily reading my way through every single Trevorcard fic in the AO3 tag, which unfortunately is only ~200. (HOW is this a rare pair. I will never ever understand it, they’re perfect together, and the animators literally said they intentionally storyboarded moments like the one above with the knowledge that people would start shipping them.)

Once I’ve finished up my AO3 tour, I’m going to compile the ones I enjoyed into rec lists. There are some really wonderful fics in there, and I’m excited to see what the rest are like.

4. TAIBANI (Tiger & Bunny)

I really don’t talk about this ship much, but it’s so immensely close to my heart. I have...so much...official merch of Kotetsu and Barnaby; it makes me happy every single time I see it. If I used my Tiger & Bunny stuff as the standard for what sparks joy during a konmari, the rest of my apartment would probably wind up empty.

The show (which is finally getting a second season in 2022 - Kotetsu & Barnaby had better be getting married) is wonderful. I genuinely can’t recommend it enough. Great writing, wonderful character development, beautiful animation, and Kotetsu and Barnaby are absolutely perfect together. Here’s an old post where I talk about that a little bit.

I’ve only written one fic so far: a canon compliant established relationship future fic that focuses more on their family dynamic as Kotetsu’s daughter adapts to turning 18, becoming a hero, and living with her frustratingly affectionate dad & his new husband.

I have ideas for two AUs: a single dad mature student/young professor one and a sorta weird circus/steve irwin-inspired one. We’ll...we’ll see if I ever get around to either. What I end up writing always surprises me, so I sorta give up on planning what words will come out.

And oh wait! I totally forgot about the third idea, which will be roughly canon compliant, with “Kotetsu sets Barnaby up on a series of blind dates that Barnaby initially thinks will be with HIM” angsty/funny fic. Hrm. I should get back to that one, I’ve outlined part of it.

I haven’t actually read a ton of fic for this pairing, because the more I like canon material, the less I seek out fandom content to “fix” it, but I would like to start going through the AO3 tag after I finish my Trevorcard project. I did an initial rec list ages ago and would like to follow up with another.

5. SHEITH (Voltron: Legendary Defender)

Here’s the last pairing I write fics for. I have several more in progress that I’d really like to finish - including a dragon AU that I wish someone else would just finish for me so I can read it, hahhhhhhh sigh. I wrote 15k, did a ton of research, and basically intimidated myself out of continuing, because it’s one of my Big Projects. Not gonna be like, PDIW length or anything, but it should be a pretty hefty fic once it’s done.

Then there’s the roommates AU, the burrito shop AU, the....wow. I really need to get back to these, don’t I. A couple of them are super close to being finished, too.

I’ve also compiled a few fic rec lists, although I haven’t updated those (or my Sheith blog) in a while.

This fandom has been...interesting. Rough sometimes. Sliding into some of the other pairings on this list has provided a good break for me, particularly since they’re all such small fandoms that they’re relatively free from drama and hate. Once I’m fully refreshed and re-inspired, I’d love to get back into writing Sheith. They’re such a perfect, feel-good, extraordinarily balanced and supportive ship, and I am disappointed every single day I remember that Voltron didn’t stick the landing with making them canon.

Look at that almost-kiss. Just...look at it. And tell me they aren’t in love.

[cdelphiki]

So how does Scrivener work cdelphiki? Any specifics? I think you talked about it a fair bit before, early in November, but I can't quite remember.

Scrivener is awesome!! Basically, it’s a word processor on steroids specifically for writers (and not student/business purposes, like Microsoft Word/Google Docs) Although you can use it for student or business purposes, if you wanted.  

Basically, you use it by first creating your project. It has a lot of templates to choose from, and once you pick what you want to do, it has instructions of how to structure your project in your newly created file.  There are a ton of template options, but I’m here for the novel format: 

But you can write pretty much anything you can imagine in scrivener.  

Pick what you want and click “choose” then save it somewhere. I have the app for ipads/iphones, so I save all my projects on dropbox so I can access them from my phone or computer. (This is how scrivener is set up for synced across platforms: over dropbox, not icloud for mac users. It took me a hot minute to figure out.) It has you name and save it up front so it can start backing up your work!!

Once it’s got the project created, it will give you the informational page for the template you selected. Read through it for a lot of good information on how to use all the organizational tools for your specific project. 

Now you basically just start working. There is no real wrong way to go about putting together your story.  I use scrivener for both one shots and multi-chaptered fics.  I actually keep most my one shots in one project, titled “Tumblr Prompts,” just to make it easier than having a zillion project files for single stories.  

If you want a pretty detailed walkthrough of how I use scrivener, I put it all below the cut. :D

Here’s one of my my well-used project files: 

There’s a lot going on here. The left column is your navigation bar. This is basically your entire book. As you can see I have folders within folders. The main one, called “Manuscript” by default, is basically the book in its entirety. I then use more folders for each chapter.  Right now, since I’m still drafting, I actually just have it broken into ‘events,’ rather than chapters. This is just a me thing and is what I figured out to help me keep better track of everything. 

So I have the Prologue, and then event 1.1 (act 1, event 1), 1.2, 1.3, etc.  In 1.3, as you can see, I have both chapter 3 and 4 as scene cards.  1.4 has five scene cards that will likely turn into 7 chapters, once I do a revision! 

All the various colors of text are revisions.  By default, the first draft is written in black.  

When you’re ready to do a revision, you can turn on revision mode and select which version you’re on. I’m on my third revision. I really like this function because it lets me see my progress. 

Now, inside all these folders you can see a couple different symbols there.  You can actually change the symbols of these things yourself by right clicking on the object in the navigation pane and selecting “change icon.”  I put the pencil on all my notes, so it’s very easy for me to know what to get rid of when I’m cleaning up and about to call something “done.” On Precedent, for example, whenever I publish a chapter, I go ahead and name the chapter folder in Scrivener and get rid of all the note cards so all that is left is what I actually published.  

Probably one of the best things about Scrivener, is when you want to get rid of something, you don’t have to erase it entirely.  On this project here, you can see I have a file a couple under the file selected for viewing called “trash pile.”  Whenever I remove large chunks of text, I actually just copy it over to a blank scene card so it’s not ‘lost.’  I then “move to trash,” so it’s not in the way, but it’s always available to me.  Scrivener does not delete anything you ‘move to trash’ unless you specifically move to that trash bin and make it delete it.  This is great because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ‘thrown something away’ just to realize, sometimes months later, that that exact scene would work perfectly now! And good thing I saved the draft, so I had something to start with!  

Now, back to these ‘scene’ cards.  Scene cards are just the files you actually write on. I don’t know if Scrivener calls them that or not, but they’re set up like notecards. I don’t know if you ever did the notecard method in school, where you wrote major points on note cards and then arranged them into a logical order on the table? That’s basically what this is. 

To get to this screen, I selected the folder for section 1.4.  You can pick any folder you want, even the over all manuscript to get here.  Then you pick the view option, where the top arrow is pointing.  The first view option shows it as a document, as my other pictures have already demonstrated. 

What the notecards are going to show you is your synopsis, if you have one written.  Each and every file, even the folder itself, has a spot for ‘synopsis’ and ‘notes,’ which do not count into your overall word count.  It’s really nice for keeping stuff out of the way.  I’ve found I prefer having my notes as actual scene cards, but the notes section is handy for throwing important things.  I also save the link to where I’ve posted stuff on tumblr for easy saving or research so I don’t lose anything.  

If you do not have anything written in the synopsis section, the card will just show as much as the text as it can in a dark grey, rather than the black ink of the synopsis.  I rarely use the synopsis section, so you can see all my documents just have the first bits of text.  

On this screen you can start dragging around cards and move them however you think things need to line up.  This works remarkably well if you write in a lot of small scenes, and need to reorganize because you realized that Tim needs to have a panic attack before he faces Ra’s.  Or whatever.  You can also reorganize at any point in the navigation pane itself.  I drag stuff between folders all the time.  That’s another reason I love having my notes on actual scene cards, because a lot of times I end up punting scenes off into the future, and it makes it way easier to drag and drop it into the next chapter folder to deal with later.  

Another feature I really like is ‘targets.’ 

To get here, I selected the overall manuscript, and then switched to the third view option, up there next to the note cards option.  It shows me my whole book this way, as well as the status of each folder or document (which I have to set myself.)  It also shows me if I had a target word count, and how close I am to reaching it.  I like my chapters to be about 3k words, so I make that my target. (set your target by clicking on the target icon on the bottom right corner of a document while in document view.)  The purple goes from a dark purple to a lighter one the closer you get. (This is because I am using the ‘theme’ “Purple Haze.” The color is based on your theme. I forget what the default is.)

You can also set daily word goals, and up at the top, below the project’s name, it’ll show you progress toward that goal. I’ve written two words today.... so I don’t have a progress bar yet.  The bar above the project’s name is for the overall word goal set. I have this project set to 100k. 

I think that’s pretty much it.  The only other feature I use regularly I haven’t mentioned is the split screen.  

Basically, click where the arrows are pointing. When you’re in just regular view, it’ll look like a split screen, rather than a single document view button.  When you hit it, it opens your currently selected document twice, on both sides of the screen. Click on the bar for the document you want to change and then select whatever you want from your navigation pane.  I use this mostly for putting my notes on one side and my actual working document on the other. Yesterday I was using while revising, throwing anything I didn’t want anymore into my ‘trash pile’ by just dragging it across.  

Once you’re done with something, you can run spelling and grammar check (because it does not check as you go, unless you go into settings and make it do that. It’s turned off by default. I find the squiggly lines distracting, so I love this feature) and use the various text tidying tools, such as the one that turns all multiple spaces into single spaces! 

So yeah! That’s Scrivener. I love it so much. It has made writing so much easier. I wrote most of Life Happens in a single Microsoft Word document, and that was a huge mess and horrible and really difficult. I’ve written two long fics in their entirety now on Scrivener and I won’t ever go back.  

Oh, and if anyone was curious, this is how I use Scrivener for my one shots: I just label the folders with the main relationship or the collection they’re from, rather than treated the folders like chapters.  I then name the scene cards either with their actual titles or a brief description (if I didn’t give them titles) to let me know what’s been published and what isn’t done.  

[rahirah]

Okay, I KNOW you've reblogged that "DVD commentary" meme at some point in your life, so: would you like to do DVD commentary on the opening scene of "My Baby Is A Centerfold"? (Or less detailed commentary on the whole "My Baby Is A Centerfold"?)

My Baby Is A Centerfold DVD Commentary

I wrote this story in 2004, fifteen years ago, so fair warning, I don't recall a lot of the minutiae that went through my head when I was writing it. However, I will do my best!

This was one of the first short stories I wrote set in the same universe as my novel series. I wrote it for the Summer of Spike community over on Livejournal – Summer of Spike was, I believe, the first of the "seasonal" fic communities, and inspired a lot of imitators (including Seasonal Spuffy and Summer of Giles, which are still going to this day) but it only lasted for a couple of rounds. Anyway, someone had recently asked me what happened to the Trio in my 'verse. I already knew that the Trio had started their careers as criminal masterminds while the events of Necessary Evils were going on, and that after NE ends, Warren would try enslaving Katrina in pretty much the same way, Katrina would end up dead, and Warren would try to frame Buffy. Buffy being in a very different frame of mind by this point in my 'verse, while she initially panics at the thought that she accidentally killed someone, Spike and Dawn are able to convince her to investigate first. And of course they discover that Katrina's been dead for several hours, so they call the police and that's when Terminal Line takes place, and Buffy makes first contact with Detective Nguyen, who becomes a recurring NPC and eventually the captain of the Sunnydale PD and is instrumental in Buffy's plan to bring the supernatural out in the open and ANYWAY.

For this story I wanted to do a lighthearted buddy cop sort of thing with Spike and Dawn, and it occurred to me that the Trio would have had to have set up their spy camera system, but since they all got arrested after the Katrina incident, they never had the chance to do anything with the footage. And in my 'verse, some of that footage would have been pretty racy. So what would happen if Buffy and Spike found out about it? The story pretty much wrote itself from there.

I could tell something was wrong the minute I walked in the door. The house had that too-quiet thundercloud feeling about it, and it wasn't just because of the blackout curtains. Buffy was still at the rink, Tara was at her summer job, and Willow was probably asleep (she's not as much of an early riser as Spike is). Normally this means an afternoon of bad TV and junk food with Spike, but the TV wasn't on. Spike always has the TV on.

So this story takes place between Necessary Evils and A Parliament of Monsters, when Spike has moved in with Buffy and Dawn, and Willow and Tara are renting the Summers's basement. It always bugged me that the characters on the show only had to worry about work when the plot required it. When the writers get bored, Buffy can suddenly support a dozen people on a starting school counselor's salary. So while I try not to make a huge deal of it in my 'verse, I do a lot of thinking about how everyone supports themselves. Especially people like Tara, who's sure as hell not getting any money from her family. And with Buffy I wanted to give her a day job that A) she would enjoy, and B) would be flexible with regard to slaying. Which is how she became a skating instructor.

When Spike moved in there was a whole big reshuffling thing, like musical chairs with bedrooms, and Spike ended up getting my old room as an office for Bloody Vengeance Inc., the demon-hunting business he and Anya started. I figured he was probably holed up in there downloading porn or something. Never overlook an opportunity to collect blackmail material is my motto. I dumped my library books on the couch and snuck upstairs with super-Slayer's-sister stealth, which wouldn't do me any good at all if Spike was actually, like, paying attention to his super-keen vampire hearing. Which apparently he wasn't, since I got all the way upstairs without a single physically impossible threat bellowed in my direction.

I had an argument about this with another fic writer once – she felt that Spike threatening Dawn with physical harm was abusive and horrible, and Dawn would be traumatized for life. I pointed out that A) it's canon that Spike does this when he's worried about Dawn's safety, and B) even if you're not a soulless vampire, it's really common for fear in a de facto parental unit to express itself as anger, C) does anyone seriously believe that Spike would ever follow through on any of those over the top threats? Seriously? And D) Dawn canonically blows off said threats and does not appear to actually feel threatened in the slightest. We ended up agreeing to disagree.

Spike was in the office, all right--I could see his hair glowing in the light of the computer monitor. I couldn't see what he was looking at, but whatever it was, it must have been really good, 'cause his eyeballs were practically SuperGlued to the screen. Or maybe really bad, because he looked horrified, not turned on. OK, what horrified William the Bloody? Besides the prospect of squiring Buffy to "Fantasy On Ice?" This I had to see. I rounded Spike's desk and peered over his shoulder. "Hey, mister, you got feelthy pictures?"

If it was Willow? Two clicks of a mouse's tail and whatever was in that window would be closed, password protected, PGP-encrypted, and accessible only through an FTP server in Outer Mongolia. Spike's way better with technology than some vampires I could name, but when he's taken by surprise he still resorts to more primitive methods. He scrambled around in his chair with the panicky flail of a cat falling off a windowsill and slapped a hand across my eyes. "Don't look!" he ordered, about half an octave higher than usual.

This story is full of early 2000s-computer jargon. It's not quite as dated as the show itself, but I give it the ol' college try.

Which meant it was a moral imperative for me to put some of that self-defense training he'd been giving me into practice and kick him in the shins--oh, come on, you'd have done it, too. "Fuck!" Spike yelled. He grabbed for his ankle, overbalanced, and banged his head on the edge of the desk as his chair rolled out from under him. He crashed to the floor, leaving me with a free-and-clear view of the computer.

For someone who's been accused of writing the Everybody Loves Spike Show, I sure have him behave like an idiot a lot.

Now, I want to make it real clear that I'm a sixteen-year-old of the world. I know all about the birds and the bees and the vampires. I've even done a little buzzing myself. And of course I know that my sister and Spike have--well, 'having sex' is way too tame for what they do. Anyway, I know all about The Sex in theory. I also know how sausages are made, in theory. That doesn't mean I'm panting for an up-close at the gooey details of either process. Especially when it involves a grainy RealPlayer file of my very naked sister bouncing up and down on my very naked best-friend-and-platonic-lust-object in Barbie's S&M Playhouse.

I may have written this whole story just to have an excuse to use the term "Barbie's S&M Playhouse."

I may have said something. It may have been 'gleep.' Luckily for my retinas, at that minute Spike lunged up over the edge of the desk and put his fist through the screen. The monitor exploded in a shower of pretty green sparks, and Spike stood there glaring at it all clenchy-jawed and snarly, breathing hard through his teeth. He turned the glare on me. "I swear by all that's unholy, Bit, the next time you sneak up on me like that I'm going to put you in a two-by-three box without benefit of hacksaw!"

Monitors! With! TUBES!!!

I glared right back--no way was he going to make this my fault. "How was I supposed to know you were watching Vampire Pervert Theater 3000?" I snapped. "I thought you were just watching NORMAL porn! Jeez, Spike, if you and Buffy are gonna to videotape your stay in the Satellite of Love, at least--"

I had another discussion with a beta about whether or not Spike would download porn. My argument was "He's a guy." 

Spike vamped out and hurled the monitor clean off the desk and into the wall with a roar (and when I say 'roar,' I don't mean 'loud yell,' I mean 'roar') of "WE DIDN'T BLOODY WELL TAPE IT!"

Wow. I never knew monitors were made up of that many pieces. "You mean you taped it without telling her?" I squeaked.

"NO!" Spike flexed his computer-punching hand (bloody knuckles, shards of glass, v. sexy) and shook off the lumpies. "Someone soon-to-be-departed did! I've never seen the sodding thing before in my life!" He looked really bewildered underneath the homicidal fury.

It's really very interesting to go back and compare Early Barbverse Spike to Late Barbverse Spike in terms of what progress he makes (or doesn't make) in controlling his temper over the course of the series. Hopefully I make the progression believable.

"OK, where did you find it?" I asked. I didn't exactly want to say so, but it occurred to me that maybe Buffy had taped it without telling him. Buffy may play it all Sandra Dee on the outside, but on the inside? Pure Gypsy Rose Lee. She had to keep it all bottled up during The Angel Years, and during The Riley Years she had to be really careful not to break him, and now, well--Exhibit A, currently lying in ten zillion pieces on the floor. "Was the file just sitting on your hard drive, or...?"

Spike looked super-guilty all of a sudden. His head ducked down between his shoulders, vampire ninja turtle style. "Mighthaveclickedonalinksomethin'boutSlayers," he mumbled.

"In other words, you were surfing for Slayer porn?" I folded my arms and settled in for some primo foot-tapping. "Don't you get enough of that at home?"

The interesting thing about the Buffyverse is that the supernatural ISN'T really a secret. Tons of people know about it. It's just no one admits to knowing about it. Which makes my Buffy's job a lot easier when she decides to drag it out of the closet. Which is a roundabout way of saying, if you know where to look, of course there would be Slayer fetish websites.

"I was not! I just...happened on it, like, looking for something else!" Spike is the world's second worst liar (Willow is the winner and still champeen) and he could see I wasn't buying it. "And anyway, it's a bloody good thing I did! Christ knows how long that's been out there for any spotty little deviant with their mum's credit card number to--" His eyes went Inuyasha-huge as fresh horror overtook him. "How long has it been out there?"

Barbverse Dawn is a Sesshumaru fangirl for sure.

"I'm more worried about who the cameraman was," I said. Spiders walked up my spine for a second. "I mean, that was your bedroom, right?"

Two seconds later we burst in through the door of Mom's old room, now Buffy and Spike's House of Ill Repute. I dove for the closet and Spike ripped open the door of the big old mahogany wardrobe he'd dragged over from the crypt. (But he didn't go inside, because as everyone knows, it's very foolish to shut yourself inside a wardrobe.) I stared at the crush of cute tops and kicky boots, ooh, I bet Buffy won't miss this one, she hasn't worn it in weeks... "How many shoes does she OWN?" I pulled a box free and the whole Leaning Tower Of Gucci collapsed on me.

My fic is usually a game of Spot the Narnia Reference

"Stop larking about," Spike growled, grabbing my feebly waving hand and yanking me out of the sea of footwear. "By the angle it's got to be around here somewhere..." He did one of those effortless vampire leaps and chinned himself on the top of the wardrobe, peering over the facade of wooden curlicues on the top. "Got the bastard!" He snaked one arm over the rim and jerked something small and black free, and dropped back to the floor with a thump. "What the hell...?"

It was a tiny, palm-sized camera with a little antenna sticking out of the top. Witness the creepiness. "I'm freaking out here," I said, plopping down on the bed. "Someone actually broke into our house and hid that up there!"

Spike snarled and closed his fist, and the camera joined the monitor in Electronics Heaven before I could yell, "Wait, that's evidence!"

"Not any more, it's not."

"It could lead us back to whoever planted it," I said impatiently. "We could have woken Willow up and had her...I don't know, do something technical."

This is why Spike needs Dawn around. She's the criminal mastermind in the family.

"Point." Spike shoved his lower lip out and scowled. "If there's one, there may be more. In fact, there's got to be."

I blinked. "How can you tell?"

He looked guilty and embarrassed again. "Ah, well, you see, the web site said...

For a guy supposedly unable to feel remorse, Spike does guilty and embarrassed very well.

*****

"Oh, as they say, my God." Xander stared at the tiny repeating clip with sick fascination. "'The Hottest Slayer in a Century Meets The Coolest Vampire Ever, and Guess Who Gets Staked! Sizzling Action With Cold, Dead Seed!' And this is just the teaser. You can order a whole DVD, only $49.99. Hours of fun for the whole family."

I am pretty sure that Jonathan got Andrew to write that advertising copy.

"Well, I must say both of you have excellent technique," Anya said with an approving nod. "And Spike has a large and well-formed penis, though personally I prefer circumcised men. But I can certainly understand why you're upset if you're not getting your rightful share of the profits."

"Spike, could you cool it with the growly noises?" Willow asked, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "It's distracting. OK, there's definitely more cameras... six at least. The Magic Box, the skating rink, Spike's crypt...this one's dead... Directory, directory, who's got the root directory...hah! Xander, hand me that Unicode list."

I actually researched what all Willow would have had to do to hack into and take over the camera network. I've forgotten it all now, but for about five minutes there, my skilz were l33t.

"What I still don't get is why someone bothered to break into our house and plant cameras," I said from the opposite end of the dining room table. I was staying as far away from follow-the-bouncing-Buffy as possible. "Especially considering Spike would have ripped their heads off if he'd caught them, and Buffy would have gotten REALLY mean. If you want to make a sex film, why not just go over to one of the frat houses on campus and hire a couple of college students?"

"I hate to say it, Dawnie, but I don't think they were making a porn film." Xander tore himself away from Willow's laptop. "This is surveillance camera footage. Someone's been spying on Buffy, and the porn film is just a happy byproduct."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Willow muttered. She picked up one of the larger camera fragments with a pair of tweezers. "Look, it's all dusty, and the battery pack was dead. This hasn't worked for weeks, maybe months. Do we have any toner cartridges we could break open? I think we could use the toner as fingerprint powder, and if whoever installed these left any prints, and if Spike didn't smudge them all up with his macho camera-crushing..."

This was back when printer cartridges had loose toner in them.  I had just come off working for a place where we bough giant bags of loose toner and refilled our own cartridges because it was cheaper, and by God, that stuff got EVERYWHERE.

"Oh, right, blame the victim," Spike groused. "Christ, I need a fag." He stomped over to the kitchen door, and I got up and followed him out to the back porch, which was in shadow at this time of day. He lit a cigarette and stood there puffing furiously, all formal and stiff, and it weirded me out. I mean, Spike doesn't just walk or stand or sit. Spike struts and lounges and sprawls and tucks his thumbs in his belt all "Hi, I'm Spike, and this is my crotch!"

On the other hand, somewhere underneath Spike, Vampire Sex God, is still a guy who grew up when ankles were an erogenous zone. "Spike...are you OK?"

"Didn't want you to see that," he said at last. "Not right. Not proper."

He looked absolutely miserable. Any other time I'd have patted his shoulder, but I figured I'd better roll my eyes instead. I leaned against the side of the house, ultra-cool and sophisticated and untroubled by the certain knowledge of Naked Spike a mere two layers of cloth away. "It's OK. Honest. It's not like I've never seen a naked guy before--"

So in my verse, as in canon, Dawn had a crush on Spike. And she knows perfectly well that Spike's in love with her sister, and doesn't see her that way. And she loves her sister, and wants her to be happy, and she doesn't want to be (as she puts it in another story) "pathetic" about it. So she's tried very hard to squash her crush down and pretend it doesn't exist. But sometimes...

That was a mistake. Spike went yellow-eyed, achieving zero to over-protective in six seconds. "And just who the hell--"

"You and Xander, dope, when we all went skinny dipping after that clambake. Get your mind out of the gutter." Of course vague glimpses of guy-parts decently veiled by darkness and ice-cold seawater and didn't quite, uh, measure up to, well, let's just say I'm going to be comparing my future boyfriends to Spike in more ways than one, but you know, I wasn't going to let this be weird. Spike is a total hottie, and maybe, just maybe there have been a few daydreams. Detailed daydreams. With a sound track and special effects. But there are hotties all over the planet, and not all that many guys you can talk to about important stuff like whether or not you really existed before two years ago, and whether the monks that created you remembered to add a standard-issue soul to the mix, and how incredibly annoying older sisters can be. "On second thought, I'm deeply traumatized. I think I might get over it if you talked Buffy into letting me get my navel pierced."

Spike stared at me, various bits of him twitching. "Dawn--"

I patted his shoulder, because I could. "You're gonna be inhaling filter in a minute. Let's go inside."

When we got back inside, Willow had bit and pieces of camera wired up to the laptop. "Curiouser and curiouser," she said. "The server this camera was supposed to send information to doesn't exist any longer, or at least, it's not turned on. The web site's on a regular commercial server, and the domain name's registered to Horatio Hellpop--pseudonym much? Good news, it looks like the site's only been up for a couple of days--" She broke into a triumphant grin. "We're in!"

"What're you waiting for, then?" Spike doesn't usually use his sire-to-minion voice on Willow, but he was using it now. "Take it down!"

It's not relevant to the tale at hand, so I don't belabor it here, but this Willow is a vampire with a soul. It's a long story.

"Patience, Grasshopper." Willow typed a few more cryptic strings of symbols into the laptop. "Bad news, it's going to take me a few hours to find out who the owner really is. I'll have to hack into Paypal to get his bank account info and track IP addresses and stuff."

I did not research what it would take to hack into Paypal. I have my limits.

Spike began pacing back and forth, tense and borderline vampy, looking like he really, really wanted to kill something. Or someone. "And in that time this berk could run off a hundred more copies and pass 'em out to friends as door prizes."

"Or keep them and sell fifty-seven of them to the list of people I'm downloading now," Willow said. "OK. I've disabled the site and changed the passwords, so no one will be able to order any more." She cracked her knuckles. "Give me six hours and I can clean out Larry Flynt Junior's bank account, ruin his credit history, and send anonymous tips to Donald Rumsfeld that he's a terrorist child pornographer." Willow's a little less scary without her magic, but really? Not by that much. She looked around. "Not that I would ever do anything like that."

I mean really. "Hacker" may be a 90s cliche, but I still wouldn't want one mad at me.

Spike snatched the list of names and credit card numbers off the printer and squinted at it. "Bloody hell. There's addresses all the way from Juneau to Key West." He looked at the list again, and smiled. Need I say it wasn't a very nice smile? "I think it's time to pay a visit to the locals. Could be some of them have an idea who they're ordering from. Harris, you want to take out the rest of those cameras, and--" He turned to Willow. "Will, when Buffy gets home, for God's sake don't let her suss out anything's wrong. If she finds out about this..."

My Spike still needs glasses, but is too vain to wear them. I have a number of canonical justifications for this headcanon.

All of us shuddered in unison. If Buffy found out there would be an explosion of thermonuclear proportions. Spike grabbed his motorcycle jacket and blanket and headed for the front door, and I leaped to my feet and ran after him. "Wait up! I'm going with you!"

He scowled at me. "I think not. You're going to stay here, and distract your sister like a good little minor."

"Uh-uh." I used all of my hey-Dawnie's-tall-now height to advantage. "Look, Spike, all this stuff getting out does to you is make you mad. If Buffy finds out, she's going to be..." I floundered for a minute. " Humiliated, and nobody humiliates my sister except me. I'm gonna go with you, and we're gonna find out who did it and...and... kick their butts with pointy-toed shoes."

Spike glared, but it was the old I-disapprove-on-principle-but-you're-all-right,-Niblet glare, and I knew he'd be caving in ten, nine, eight... "Move yer girly arse, then," he said with an unconvincing growl. "We've got villains to apprehend."

I scooted for the DeSoto before he could change his mind. Maybe he thought that it would be a good idea to have someone soul-having around when he was this mad, just in case. Or maybe, and I really prefer this version, he just wanted a partner in crime because it's more fun that way. Spike flung the blanket over his head and copied my dash for the car, and we flung ourselves into the DeSoto's dark interior just as Spike was beginning to sizzle. "You come along, you mind what I tell you, yeah? I say stay in the car, you stay in the car. I say you run, you run. I say you take that fucking pathetic excuse for music out of the CD player and toss it out the window--"

"--and I ignore you like always," I said cheerfully, turning up the Jennifer Lopez.

"Fine. If anyone dies tonight, it's on your head. Some things are beyond any self-respecting vampire's endurance." Spike slammed into reverse and backed out of the driveway with a screech of tires. I grabbed the door handle. Driving with Spike is always a character-building experience, and today was no exception. "First on the hit parade?"

I scanned the list. "Vernon Blakely, 1583 East Beechwood. What are we gonna say to Mr. Blakely when we get there?"

Spike gazed out through the little clean space in the windshield, obviously pondering which limb he should rip off first, and peeled out like there was a mob with torches after us. "Improvisation is a virtue, Bit."

I had absolutely no idea how they would get the DVDs back. The next several scenes are just me letting the characters take the reins and do whatever the hell they wanted to.

**********

Spike was smoking gently beneath his blanket when the shade-deficient door of 1583 East Beechwood opened to our urgent hammering, and a middle-aged guy with thinning red hair and freckles and a pot belly opened it and blinked at us. He looked like Mr. Weasley gone to seed. "Mr. Blakely?" I said with my brightest, shiniest smile.

The Blakely looked from me to Spike, and the contrast seemed to produce some kind of cognitive dissonance on his part. "Can I... have we met?"

"Only in spirit." Spike leaned heavily against the doorframe, with a smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring, but which made him look like he was sporting fangs even when he wasn't. Spike isn't a big guy--in fact, he's on the smallish side, but he's got, you know, muscles. And this air of being able to rip your liver out. Also did I mention the muscles? "I'm given to understand you made a purchase recently from...ah..." He glanced surreptitiously at the paper in his hand. "...Mad Genius Productions?"

Mr. Blakely looked at me, dubious, and at Spike, nervous. "What of it? If I'd done anything like that, which I didn't."

"We're from the, uh, department of quality control," I chirped. "The DVDs are..."

"Radioactive," Spike put in. "Rot your goolies off just like that. " I gave him an elbow-jab.

"Defective," I said firmly. "Glitches. Pixelization. It's criminal the kind of shoddy merchandise we put out. We're recalling them and giving you a replacement at absolutely no charge!"

Spike held up a jewel case and flashed it under Blakely's nose. "Director's cut. Added scenes. 40% more filth for the price."

Suspicion was gathering in Mr. Blakely's watery blue eyes. "Hey, you're that guy from the video," he said.

Spike heaved a melodramatic sigh. "All right, all right, as you've twisted my arm, I'll autograph it for you."

I honestly did not expect him to say that, but somehow there I was, typing it.

The watery eyes brightened. "Really?"

Five minutes later we were dashing for the car again, with the confused Mr. Blakely waving us goodbye. "So what's he going to do when he discovers he's been suckered for a bootleg copy of J-Lo's latest?" I asked, as we tore away from the curb.

"Long as it's got some bint with her tits hanging out on the cover, I doubt he'll notice the difference." Spike grinned. "There'd just better be some hitting involved in the next one."

**********

"I don't believe there's any such thing as a Department of Quality Control," Mr. Angusson said, looking us up and down. "What the hell kind of scam are you pulling?"

"All we want to do is to replace--" I started.

"Look, missy, I bought that DVD nice and legal, and I don't give a crap if whatever goombah and his girlfriend put on plastic fangs to do it is having second thoughts now. So you and your boyfriend just toddle off and--"

"HEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPP!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "HE'S SHOWING ME HIS THING! IT'S ALL GROSS AND PURPLE AND--"

I didn't expect Dawn to do that, either. And yet!

Angusson disappeared and reappeared in two seconds flat, chucking the DVD at our heads.

"Better," Spike said as we tore out yet again. "But I'm still feeling a lack in the hitting things area."

Mr. Fishbein retreated a step from the threshold. "I'm not giving you anything, and I'm not letting you in," he quavered. "What do you think I am, stupid? You're a vampire!"

Honestly, it's Sunnydale. SOMEONE has to get it.

Spike rolled his eyes. He's learned from the masters. "Oh, bollocks, you don't really believe--"

"Oh, yeah?" Fishbein challenged. "Step through that door!"

I stepped through the door, grabbed Fishbein's hand and gave him a good hard yank, right across the threshold and into Spike's waiting fist.

"What was that?," Spike caroled, drawing back for another punch. "Come on in and have a cuppa, Spike? Better repeat it, I'm a touch deaf in that ear."

"That was unnecessarily bloody," I said as we hopped into the car and stepped on the gas, one DVD richer.

"He'll live," Spike said dismissively. "Probably. Next?"

**********

I figured I had to give Spike SOME violence, or he'd get mopey.

"Can you see--?" I hissed, trying to get a better view through the front window. It was getting dark, and I was out of practice at sneaking around not-really-abandoned buildings. Spike shushed me and crept around to the door. I peered through the sad straggly thevetia hedge, cupping my hands against the dirty glass. The place was just crawling with innnnnnteresting monsters, all huddled around a crappy old black and white TV. There's some law against demons watching flatscreen color, apparently.

"Oh, my God, are they really...you know....doing it?" The Gorthesch demon bumped a couple of Fyarls further down on the couch and plunged a scaly paw into the bowl of popcorn as they all stared at the flickering screen. "With a Slayer? I mean, I heard about it, but I didn't think even a vampire could sink that low."

"Real vampires don't," the lone vampire in the crowd protested, voice dripping disgust. "Maybe great big Slayer-whipped pussies do, but--"

"Shut up!" came a chorus of squeaky, growly, and croaky voices. Despite the complaints, everyone seemed to like the show. There were tongues hanging out. At least, I hope they were tongues.

"Yeah, it's just gettin' to the good part," a Syvithis demon whispered.

"Oooh! The one with the pommel horse?"

"No, where the Slayer goes down on him in the graveyard and he--"

I actually wrote a PWP detailing all the scenes in The Spuffy Sex Tape. An edited-down version eventually got incorporated into A Parliament of Monsters, when Angelus gets a hold of one of the copies that Spike and Dawn aren't able to track down in this story.

The front door imploded with a crash, splinters flying everywhere, and Spike strode into the room over the wreckage, a gleam in his eye and a really, really big axe slung over one shoulder. He surveyed the assortment of demons with a grin almost as big as the axe and about twice as vicious, ran his tongue over his teeth and and tucked his free thumb in his belt loop, fingers splayed over the merchandise. Just like old times. "Looks like you're right, mate," he said. "We are just getting to the good part."

**********

"OK, I take it back," I said as we headed for home. "THAT was unnecessarily bloody." It was after midnight, and we'd collected twenty-two DVDs, broken and entered fifteen houses and/or lairs, killed or maimed eight demons, broken five human fingers accidentally-on-purpose, and signed two autographs. Spike had definitely achieved his hitting things quota, and it was a safe bet that no one in Sunnydale would be mentioning Spike and Buffy's brief but eventful movie career in public any time soon.

"All right, p'raps the railroad spike was a bit much, but a bloke gets nostalgic." Spike stretched, all luxurious and satisfied, and lit up a fresh cig, trailing smoke out the window. He had a black eye and a split lip and a scrape right across the place where his cheekbone goes all knife-edgy, and the stretching made things creak inside that probably weren't supposed to creak, but he was in a much, much better mood. "He'll grow a new head."

Where did Spike get a railroad spike on short notice? I have no idea. He's just resourceful that way.

"If you say so," I said, a bit dubious. "Doesn't that only happen when you cut the old one off?"

"So it'll take a bit longer." Spike bounced a little in his seat, all hepped up on the old ultra-violence. "Still haven't found the bastard who's selling the things, though. Must be a bleeding criminal mastermind if--" I Wanna Be Sedated beebled from the cell phone in his pocket. (Like I said, a lot better with technology than some vampires I can name. He can even program it, though considering the songs he picks, sometimes we wish he couldn't.) He grabbed the phone one-handed and didn't slow down even a bit as he zipped through freeway traffic. (Well, he is evil.) "Yeh? You must be joking. You must be--fuck. That little--I'll tear his soddin' head off! Yeh, I know. I'll just bruise him a little." He clicked the phone off and stuffed it back in his pocket, spun the wheel and zigged across four lanes of traffic towards the off-ramp, leaving a chorus of screeching brakes behind us. "After I tear his soddin' head off."

"Where are we going?" I yelled.

Spike hunched over the wheel, eyes grim. "Off to see the wizard."

We pulled up in front of one of the cruddy lease-by-the-month apartment buildings over by the UC Sunnydale campus. Maybe it was the same one Dad and I stayed at when he came down from L.A. to take care of Buffy's estate that time she was dead--the second time, I mean, not the first time. Some of the grease spots in the parking lot looked familiar.

It just struck me as I was describing the building that it was almost identical to the one I'd described in Necessary Evils, so I thought I'd better lampshade it.

"Apartment 42B, Will says." Spike sucked in his cheeks and narrowed his eyes, scoping out the disintegrating stucco overhead. "There at the end." He slapped his hands together and bounded towards the stairs like he was scaling Everest. I followed like I was scaling a rickety stepladder. (Hey, lack of supernatural stamina here. I was getting pretty darned tired.) The lights were on in 42B, and we paused outside the door, which was painted in barf-making 80s turquoise. Spike pounded on it with one fist. "Open up! Land shark!"

I heard some rustling and thumping noises inside, and a crash like a bookcase falling over. "Go away!" a strangely familiar voice yelled. "You can't get in here anyway!"

"Yeh? Maybe not, but I can stand out here till you starve to death. Or set the building on fire, or...uh..." Spike paced the catwalk for a second, smoking like a fiend, which I guess is appropriate. I was pretty sure the fire thing was a bluff, since Spike's not usually one for indirect mayhem. He's got the whole hitting things fetish, after all. Then his eyes lit up and he grinned. "Maybe I can't walk through your door, but there's nothing says I can't kick it down and send in my terrible mute minion, Paco." He whirled around and unleashed one of his shitkicker boots at the door. BANG! The whole building shuddered (which sounds impressive, but considering it was probably made out of pressboard and Kleenex, isn't so much). WHAM! A hinge sprung and the doorframe cracked. I buffed my nails and waited--obviously Spike was holding back.

I don't know why more vampires don't do things like this.

"I'm gonna lose my deposit!" the voice inside wailed.

"My heart bleeds. Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Open up, or--"

The door flew open, or tried to (Spike had knocked it kind of cattywompus, and it stuck halfway.) A face peered out, pale and pear-shaped and nervous under slept-in dark hair. Behind it was a barren little studio apartment littered with pizza boxes, comic books, and boxes of DVDs and padded mailers. There was practically no furniture except a mattress and a desk with a pretty sweet computer and home studio setup.

My hand shot out and I grabbed Pasty-face by the ear and pulled, hard. "Jonathan?!" I yipped. Jonathan squirmed and batted at me, but I dug my nails in. "YOU'RE the criminal mastermind?"

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" he yelled. "Let me go, don't let him kill me, I didn't mean to, it's not my fault!"

"Oh, for God's sake, quit whining," I snapped, letting go. "Spike hasn't even touched you."

Spike took a drag on his cigarette, peeled himself off the railing and sort of glided over, all slouchy and menacing, with the angle of the floodlights leaving black caverns where his eyes should be. Jonathan squinched in on himself. "You just don't learn, do you?" Spike asked, soft and pee-your-pants scary. "How long've you had those cameras on us?"

Jonathan backed away with a panicky shuffle. "They're not mine! They were Warren's, and they haven't worked since the police confiscated all his computer stuff! Honest! I just happened to have some files I'd saved for, for--"

"Wanking material?" Spike asked, excessively sarcastic.

"Research!" Jonathan reached the wall and sat down very abruptly. "I didn't mean anything by it! All I wanted was to raise some money so Warren and Andrew could get a better lawyer! Someone who knows about demon-related cases, like Goldberg & Osbourne, or Wolfram & Hart. I didn't think you'd ever find out, and I'm really, really, really sorry, please don't kill me, please, please, PLEASE don't kill me--"

Goldberg & Osbourne is a real law firm in Phoenix, AZ, known for being sleazy ambulance-chasers. A joke that only I ever got.

"Didn't mean anything by dragging a lady's reputation in the dirt?" Spike roared (and again, by roared, I mean, well, roared). He grabbed Jonathan by his Robotech jammies and hauled him up nose-to-nose--Jonathan's one of the few guys Spike can look down on. "Well, maybe I won't mean anything when I rip your balls off and stuff them in your eye sockets, how's that?"

"Why?" I asked, grabbing Spike's arm. I realized I'd been wanting to ask that question for a long time. "Why, Jonathan? I mean, I get Warren and whatsisface--they had grudges against Buffy, but you used to be--" Well, not her friend, not really. "She saved your life! You gave her the Class Protector award! She let you off the hook when she turned Warren over to the cops--you were an accessory to murder, Jonathan, and she let you go! I don't get it. Why are you helping them?"

Jonathan yanked his pajama top out of Spike's grip and pulled himself up like he'd taken a dose of Insta-Spine. "Because they're my friends," he said, very simply, meeting Spike's yellowing eyes head-on. "And I know they're not much, but they're all I've got. Whatever else happens, you've got to stand by your friends, right? Or what's the point?" He sighed, squared his shoulders, and looked up at Spike with a little smile. "It's a fair cop. I guess you'd better do whatever it is you're going to do."

I wanted Jonathan to redeem himself a little bit, kinda?

Spike stood there looking at Jonathan, head cocked in the His Master's Voice pose he gets when he's trying really, really hard to figure out the motivations of the souled. And I knew what was going through his head. Spike was looking for a reason not to kill him.

See, Spike doesn't have a soul. He doesn't do good stuff because it's right. He can't. He's not wired that way, as he puts it. But he can do good stuff if there's a reason--like if it helps him somehow, or makes someone he loves happy. Or if it makes him feel, for a minute, like he's a man and not a monster, which is a feeling he really likes. And that's the cool thing about Spike, the thing I really love about him, and I think probably the thing Buffy loves too: not the cheekbones or the attitude or the mad combat skilz or what's under those jeans, but that he does like that feeling, and so Spike looks for those reasons. Looks real hard. Harder, I think sometimes, than some people with souls.

I'm just sayin'.

"Right," he said at last. And he hauled off and punched Jonathan right in the nose.

"YEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOW!" Jonathan fell over, clutching his face, and gore splattered everywhere. "By dose! You broge by dose!"

But still, well, evil.

"Just be glad that's all I've broke," Spike said. He wiped his knuckles on his t-shirt instead of licking the blood off, which was a pretty big compliment, really. Congratulations, Jonathan, you've graduated to Not-Food! "Christ, where's the fun in beating the shit out of a pathetic little wibbling sod like you?" He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket (that's another moderately cool thing about Spike: he carries pocket handkerchiefs) and tossed it to Jonathan. "Grab the goods, Bit. It's time to call it a night."

Jonathan sat there snorfling blood into the hanky while I ferried the DVDs and Jonathan's hard drive out to Spike--I figured Willow could check it out for contraband and return it, so we weren't stealing it exactly. As we started down the stairs with the last armload, Spike turned back to Jonathan, almost amiable. "Word to the wise. I don't forget what your friends put Buffy through. If you want to do your pals a real favor, maybe you ought to remember that while I'm out here, and they're safe in stir, no one's likely to get eaten accidental-like, eh?"

Now this! At the time that I wrote this, I had NO IDEA that Warren would come back and cause trouble later, and that Spike would, in fact, end up eating him. Indeed, by the time I wrote "The Lesser of Two Evils," I had completely forgotten that I'd written this line, and when I stumbled upon it when re-reading a couple of years later, it was this totally serendipitous piece of foreshadowing. Sometimes writing is so cool!

Jonathan stared at him, and nodded a little. And we left.

**********

It was past two o'clock when we got home. We locked the DVDs in the trunk of the DeSoto, which had been the closet for a lot of other skeletons in its day, and after a short consultation on how to best avoid Ordeal By Buffy, we strolled into the house as if we were coming in from a late patrol and nothing in the universe was wrong.

Willow was still tapping away at her laptop in the dining room. "I'm just tracking down the copies on eBay," she whispered, "and sending out fake cease and desist orders from Mad Genius Productions. Buffy's in bed. She doesn't suspect a thing." She noted our alarmed glances and added, a bit huffily, "Don't worry, Xander took care of the the subterfuge part. Did you get him?"

"Yeh, he's got." Spike rolled his head and rubbed back of his neck. "Battle of the ages. Christ, I'm glad that's done with." He eyed our crumpled list of victims thoughtfully. "Wonder if I could fake a business trip to Juneau."

"Don't press your luck," Willow said drily.

"Someday I'm going to sire someone with a minimum of respect for their elders," Spike growled.

Willow grinned, smug. "And they'll bore you so much you'll stake them inside forty-eight hours. Shoo. Buffy's waiting for you."

So we headed for the stairs, and as I put my foot on the first step, I heard Spike heave a big sigh behind me. "Thanks, Bit. Couldn't have managed without you." When I looked back, he was staring at the toes of his boots, all awkward and embarrassed. "I just hope this hasn't... hasn't..."

"Spike, I'll always think of you as my brother." I waited two beats, and added with a perfectly straight face, "My brother with the enormous schlong."

I got three whole steps before Spike came after me and chased me all the way upstairs.

This story is the second of three I wrote ("The Road to Byzantium" and "A Dark and Stormy Night" are numbers one and three) which has Dawn moving on from her crush and into a more grown-up friendship with Spike as a major theme, and hopefully it works. And they all lived happily ever after, at least until I got another idea!

[xmenthefanficseries]

Sigyn MCU Headcanon - Part Ten

This is a continuation of my personal canon-compliant Sigyn headcanon which I would like to write into a fan fiction but it would take way to long. So here are the highlights.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | TL;DR

Journey Into Mystery Season One Episode Three to Thirteen

 Okay, so the story goes on, they search for the hearthstones, battle amazing JiM creatures, visit amazing and fantastical places, it’s pretty awesome (which is why I want a JiM Netflix series so bad!!! Though legit I want a Jennifer Walters one just a tad bit more).

 Episode Six: There is some kind of explosion at the end of this episode that knocks out Sigyn, and possibly Darcy and Selvig.

 Episode Seven: The beginning of the episode is a flashback. Loki has short hair ala Thor and is shirtless (cause why haven’t we had that yet?) and looking like he’s getting dressed and ready to leave. Sigyn walks in, draped in nothing but his green cape.

 Loki: “I’m going to need that.” Sigyn: “Yes, because you’re leaving, already.” Loki: “Thor’s coronation is fast approaching. There are… details that need  sorting before then.” Sigyn: “You’re not going to do something stupid, are you? Like glue his helmet to the table… again.” Loki: “I make no promises.”

 This entire episode is interwoven with flashbacks of this scene as it progresses. I have to admit, I haven’t completely worked out the whole scene in my head, what exactly the dialogue is. I’m sure I will in a few weeks but I’m posting this headcanon now.

 Basically, this scene is a prologue to everything Loki does in Thor. It shows the undercurrent of self-loathing and depression Loki already has, and how discovering his Jotun heritage just fucks him up and leads him to do what he does. (Cool Motive. Still Murder.) And it shows the likely reason why Loki didn’t go to, or send for, Sigyn in Thor. It was the first reason, that she would stop him. But also, Loki thought she would reject him as well.

 (It will be hinted later on that the reason for him not contacting her after he became Oden was for the second, that she would help him. Sigyn basically can’t win here because she is Loki’s blindspot, he knows it, and so he purposefully avoided her.)

 That’s the B-plot of the episode. The A-plot is that Sigyn and possibly Darcy and/or Selvig are captured by the bad guys of the week and it’s made pretty clear that they plan on killing them and all that jazz once their boss gets there. It’s a very quick episode, takes place over maybe a day? Anyway, it’s an extremely psychological episode that involves a lot of Sigyn talking to the individual guards as they do things like bring food, check chains, swap watch duty, etc.

 Then at the end, when the boss is there, and the three are lined up for execution, and it’s clear Sif and Leah haven’t found them yet, Sigyn says only a few words and all hell breaks loose. The men proceed to slaughter each other, Sigyn and Co staying out of the way of the massacre. Sif and Leah get there just as everyone has died and the group is making their way from the carnage.

 Leah: “What did you do?” Sigyn: “I pulled at the strings. Molded their loyalities until they became like a snake eating its own tail.” Leah: “This isn’t at all like you, you would never have done this before. What changed?” Sigyn: “I didn’t change. My priorities simply shifted.”

 Alright, so, something went down while Sigyn was off screen between Thor and now… 0.o

 Episodes 7 through 12: Everything happens, hearthstones are found, Enchantress minions are battled, etc. There will be at least one bright point where Sigyn and Leah are reminded of the good times, share a pretty hot kiss. I want to continue the tradition of Loki in chains and somehow ending up on his back but not sure if I can work it in as Loki or Leah. This is the tail end of the fan fic, so I’m allowed to be a little less sure of the details.

 Episode 13: Leah is revealed as Loki, Sif is none too happy. Sure, they get all the hearthstones but it’s revealed that Loki was after something else, Enchantress related, and so yay, he wins. He would have liked to have gotten the hearthstones, and maybe one day he will, but for the moment, he takes what he can get. Sif is about to put the smack down on Loki but he’s saved by Sigyn who basically pulls the JiM equivalent of “bitch, get in the car if you want to live.”

 Everyone returns home, Asgard is returned-ish, I’m not 100% on this, again, it depends on what we find out about Asgardia in Infinity Wars. For all I know, they could do the whole Broxton, OK, thing which I really want them to do because I’m from Oklahoma and seriously that is awesome.

 Final scene, after all is said and done, is Sigyn and Loki walking through a fantastic forest into a clearing with a small but awesome looking house.

 Loki: “You sure this is safe, no one will find me here?” Sigyn: “It’s safe, it had to be.” -Sigyn grabs Loki’s arm and stops him, makes him look at her – Sigyn: “Loki, I need you to understand something. You put me in an impossible position. You died, twice. You tried to destroy worlds and subjugate a planet. You aligned yourself with the likes of Thanos and the Grandmaster. I know it was for survival, but you made enemies and I couldn’t risk it. I had some very difficult decisions to make. You know what you mean to me, Loki, but in the end, my priority was to them, to protect them, at any cost.” Loki: “What are you—” -off screen- “Mother’s home!” -Loki looks to see two children running forward from the house, Sigyn still continues to look straight at Loki- Sigyn: “Remember the last time we saw each other?” -Loki is speechless, imagine the scene from Ragnarok when Odin says he loves him, only like a zillion times more everything-

 Sigyn introduces Loki to his son’s, Narvi and Vali. Asgardians age differently, so they can be whatever age I want them to be, was thinking like maybe the same age as Thor and Loki were in Thor? I dunno, the point is, Sigyn had twins! But not exactly twins.

 Narvi takes more after Loki, and so when he kneels down and touches his face, the child starts to turn blue and that causes Loki’s hand to turn blue as well. It travels up his arm and half of his face turns Jotun. Vali is more Aesir, but Loki embraces them both, arms wrapped around them, holding them tight. One half of him Aesir, the other Jotun.

 It’s all EXTREMELY EMOTIONAL and everyone tells me they hate me as they ugly cry.

(that’s the dream, anyway).

 So… yeah, that is my Sigyn MCU Headcanon as to where she is and why we haven’t seen her. You can pry it from my cold dead hands. But I’ll gladly share it with any and all who want it.

  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | TL;DR

p.s. I also have, like, a dozen more plot bunnies, as to where it goes from here… things that I’m just waiting to see if I can turn into canon once the rest of these movies come out… someone please stop me, this is clearly a cry for help

[diedraechin]

I have so much love for bysotid! And you! Thank you for brightening my week! Heh, I'm oddly surprised reading fics without Nakagawa now. :)) Do you have any fanfic recommendations yoi, hp, or otherwise?

Thank you so much!

I’ve been out of HP fandom for so long that my recs would all be like 10 years old. Ha!  So I’ll stick to YOI.

That said, there are a ton of fics that I like.  So when I went to compile this list, I made myself promise to do ONE THING and that was not to put something that had been recced a zillion times.  Because I’m sure you already know about those.  You can’t go five seconds on tumblr without hearing about them.  So yeah, you won’t find the old reliables as I’ll call them on this list. :D

(Seriously everyone reccing the same five fics over and over has always been a pet peeve of mine.  Yeah, I know, everyone loves them, which means almost everyone has read them, so how are people supposed to find NEW things to read? *sigh*)

Sassy’s YOI Rec List of Underappreciated Fics (In her Not So Humble Opinion)

So obviously I have a bit of a thing for Soulmate AUs. (I wrote one after all)  They can be incredibly cute.  So I’ll start with a couple of those:

Drunk on Love by kiaronna:  So this is actually a collection of Soulmate AUs.  The author tries to go with different takes on them that you haven’t really seen before.  My favourites are probably the first one (once you meet your soulmate the further you get, the more drunk you become), the second (Petnames written on skin. Yuuri has tons and Viktor only two) and the eighth one (Substitutions… Which is hard to explain in a sentence)

Eros in Progress by trixiechick:  This one is less about the soulmate angle for me and more about the worldbuilding.  I love a good fantasy, but I am crap at worldbuilding, so I am awed.  Basically think of the opening of the anime as magic.  Sorcerers create colors with their performances and bring happiness, this ability is highly sought after.  Yuuri, of course, thinks he sucks at it while Viktor is amazing…

You can have everything… by @shysweetthing:  “AU. Before the Grand Prix Final starts in Sochi, Yuuri finds Victor’s phone. He returns it–and hijinks and heavy flirtation ensue.”  Obviously written before Kubo said that Viktor knew who Yuuri was, but I really enjoyed it. :)

Goldskate88 has logged in by katsudonfemmefatale:  The formatting might not be stellar, there are parts that have just a tiny bit “wall of text” feeling to them, but I personally think it’s worth it. “Phichit encourages Yuuri to join an online figure skating forum, but what he doesn’t expect is for a certain user to change his life forever. Every time he sees the username GoldSkate88, Katsu92’s stomach can’t help but do a flip, but how will this affect his upcoming Grand Prix competition?”  Explicit (for message sex/skype sex)  Lots of plot, but porn too.

Might as well keep the porn together

silver by @pageleaf: Post GPF in Barcelona.  Viktor won’t kiss silver.  Yuuri uses that.  I like this because it actually delves into their dynamic a little with Yuuri as the dom.  And it keeps building the tension as well.  Explicit.

From the smut to the funny

Who is Coach Yuuri? by glitteryimagay:  Four teen skaters have been selected to be coached at Viktor Nikiforov’s rink, but Viktor has other obligations and can’t personally coach them, so it falls to Coach Yuuri.  And they have no idea who he is and just never think to google it. XD  A little farfetched, but I love it.  It’s funny. The four OC characters are pretty decently built up too.

Life in a Beautiful Light by Budinca:  “Yuuri’s moving in was a complicated process.”  Yuuri moves in with Viktor in Saint Petersburg.  This one is a little hard to explain.  It’s a very introspective piece.  Soft and Lovely.

Repeat After Me by queenieofaces:  “Victor learns language through mimicry, hears phrases and repeats them back until the inflection becomes second nature. Yuuri seems to communicate best through euphemism, through metaphor, through talking around the subject rather than approaching it head on, and so Victor tries his best to mimic him, to take his words and echo them back.”  It speaks to me mostly because I live in a country where I don’t speak the language yet (seriously trying to find time to take language classes while taking care of a toddler is hard).

There’s another fic that is similar and quickly making the everyone recs list and while I love it, I won’t list it because of reasons.

I was looking for, but I can’t find it in my history… I really should get better about using bookmarks… but I think this is enough to start with.  I’ll dig up more if people actually like this.  (And I still won’t rec those fics. :P)