#I made it about 4 years writing in this fandom like it was my JOB because the ship and their story are just so good

[dormarunt]

There's no God, capital G or not, to save me from what I'm about to post later. Brainrot of the highest degree, so much so that I wanted to get an alt AO3 account for this. Complete fever dream.

And only Berlermo in (one of the) themes.

[xanwyn]

animation for THE NEON VOIDD BABYYYY

this post is for @sugarpasteltmnt

‼️‼️MEGA YAPPING AHEAD PLEASE BEWARE‼️‼️

this might end up being really long and rambly and sappy but maybe not who knows.( it was) (and also featuring numerous spelling errors i am way too tired to fix and i am not re reading what i just wrote) SO. yknow how when chap idek..25(?) came out and i was all like “yeah so i made this animation for TNV and ill drop it when the fic ends” in your ask box? so. I FINISHED IT RAHHH. technically it has been finished since i sent that ask but ohhh my goodness did it need polishing. i haven’t animated in 4 years before that and omg it felt so good getting back into it but IDFK SOMETHING IS STILL NOT UP TO MY STANDARDS. i feel like i could have done so much more with it and i deffo wanted to but as soon as i told myself “oh yeah this is basically done” art block literally sucker punched me in the gut out of NOWHERE. I COULD NOT PICK UP MY I PAD. I COULD NOT DRAW. I WOULD STARE AT THE WIP ANIMATION AND BE UPSET BC I DDINT WANNA WORK ON IT AHH. that goes with saying. i kept having this thought in the back of my head “you need to finish it. you have a wip sitting. finish it. go do it. what are you doing are you STARTING ANOTHER PROJECT??? anddd yeah i got super distracted with other stuff and other projects and then i started spending my free time rewatching 2012 turtles and omg this summer has been a mess. i have all the free time in the world and i choose to be the least productive as possible with it even though i have a job that lets me literally sit on my phone and do whatever i want if no one is there. (i’ve brought my switch to work numerous times ☠️) what i was trying to get at is the fact that TNV has inspired a lot of the old me to come back and i lowk missed her. i really missed the point in all those words up there but im here now so whatever. BUT. TNV made me make a tumblr account, i got back in to animation AND digital art in general, got back into longfics that are ongoing, AND it also helped kickstart ideas for writing. i’ve got so many stories now!! you are such an inspirational person pastels i just- every time i read a new chapter of yours it made me wanna go get up and do something. i wanted to create something. because at the end of each chapter, i would think- “woah. a person out there just wrote this. they just sat down one day and committed. i wanna do that” so i did that. just huge thank you and shoutout to you pastel. like damn. idk no words from me here. just a bunch of platonic hugs and kisses and thankyouthankyouthsnkuou for this lovely heart wrenching but also sweet story. i love this fandom (tmnt) so SO much and i think it’s so awesome how interactive you are with your own personal NV fans. crazy how we’re all here because of a bunch of turtles. 

STUFF ABOUT THE ANIMATION:

okay i really like to talk and if you let me, i will run my mouth. this is the internet so im gonna do just that. so more words for you to read 😁. AHEM. so like i stated before in the genuinely scary mess of words up there, i haven’t touched animation in a while, like, 4 years a while. yes i’ve done digital art here and there along the years, i haven’t been doing it nearly as much as i need to to use some programs to their full potential. layers are still confusing, and don’t even get me started on multiply and all that jazz. shading never comes out right on digital for me, i gotta work that one out. so, for this animation, i decided to go with a very rough style. nothing needed to be perfect, i just wanted to live my little life of trying to experiment with a bunch of different things all at once in one short animatic. I wanted to do that little ball bounce thing all animation artists start with (i kinda included that with the key). i also wanted to have a go at lip sync (no hate it was my first time) and also timing the animation with the music. i wanted to see how smoothly i could move a figure in and out of and out of the screen as well, which honestly, i think that part might be my favorite. i think i did a good job, and thats what matters. the animation itself lost a bunch of quality on importing it- no clue how it happened but now the ending is grainy af. ignore that pls lol- but it was sitting in my flipaclip for god, i dont even know, 3 months now? i kept going back and forth on if i wanted to share it or not, so im throwing it to the wolves and i guess whatrver happrns happens and im good with that. yay. im actually rrwlly tired now sooo *leaves this absolute pile of words with a video attached at your feet and stumbles away quickly*

also i’ve genuinely never posted anything so i’m learning how to use tumblr too ☠️

[hedgiwithapen]

DAMMIT HEDGI DAY 2024!

Prompts are now OPEN

What is Dammit Hedgi Day?

Dammit Hedgi Day, the 25th of September, marks the 9th anniversary of the first "Dammit Hedgi" tag on one of my angst fics. Every September I accept [angsty, typically] prompts for three weeks, and then post a massive amount of oneshots and ficlets. Prompt fills range from 200-2000 words, and as the Poll dictates, will start being posted on September 25th

What Fandoms can be prompted for?

Dammit Hedgi Day started with the Flash and DCTV, but has grown! Previous years have seen ficlets for: The Flash (up to mid season 6? I make no promises after that) Supergirl (season 1) Legends of tomorrow (first 2 seasons) Stargirl (all three seasons) Leverage+ Leverage Redemption Blue Beetle (2023) Into the Spiderverse (ish) My Adventures With Superman Young Justice Big Hero 6 Avatar the Last Airbender The Librarians Books of Bayern and assorted original RPG character content That said, I'm not strictly limited to these! I've started watching Stargate SG1, and will accept prompts based on that UP TO MID SEASON 4. Do NOT ask me about things beyond the end of s4, I'm trying to be unspoiled. If you've seen me talk positively about a media, you can ask for it, essentially. I may not fill everything, but I'll try.

What kinds of prompts?

Originally an ANGST fest, it can get a bit more broad especially in recent years. Ideally: send me a fandom/ two characters and a line of dialog like one from a promptlist below OR fandom/ characters and a vague concept-- "Sokka in a time loop" is vague! "Leverage, Daemon au for the Big Bang job" is vague. "Stargirl, Rick and Cindy: "I'm never going to trust you" " is vague. Two full paragraphs that detail who says the line and everyone's feelings on the matter and the outcome is not vague. If you're not sure if something is too detailed, you can always send it in and see, though. Crossovers welcome. DHD is a smut-free zone, and it’s my day so  I will write about characters with my viewpoints so prompt with caution if you like a character I do not :)  You may attempt to rig your prompts for fluff but do not count on it. Do not expect shipping, this is a genfic event. A few ships may slip through at my discretion, y'all know who I Like. You can send me a couple characters and an angst prompt from a list like  this one or This one,  Or this ….or  if there’s a whump post out there that grabs at you, you can use that. If we've talked about an AU, you can prompt that! If I've made a post like " hey neat concept for [show]:...." you can ask for some of that! If there was a prompt from past years you liked and want More Of? (roundups for 2020 , 2021, 2022, 2023) hell yeah! Canon suffering!! Aus make everything worse!! Missing moments, what-ifs, alternate perspectives! As always, everything will be tagged with Dammit Hedgi Day and Dammit Hedgi Day 2024 for blocking the tag purposes.

[sgiandubh]

When you do not know a thing about the issue at stake...

...perhaps it's better to remain silent.

Some of you know, others don't - and that's fine - but my main field of expertise is labor law.

I just read this in anger and disbelief:

Look, lady. I don't care who the hell you are, what you do for a living or why you felt entitled to answer those insistent questions on your side of the fandom. I suppose you are North American and have no idea of how things work on this side of the pond. It is fine: I might know what a Congress filibuster is, for example, but I'd be severely unable to judge the finer points of competence sharing between Fed and state level.

The difference between you and me?

I keep my mouth shut and/or do my own research before opening it in public.

Have you no shame to write things like: 'It was discovered clothing factories in Bulgaria and Portugal made it and how workers were exploited, mostly women, because these factories were in special economic zones in these countries exempt from EU employee rights and regulations.'

HOW DARE YOU? What strange form of illiterate entitlement possessed you to utter such things with confidence, comfortably hidden behind a passive voice ('it was discovered')?

Portugal joined the EU in 1986. Bulgaria (and my country) joined the EU in 2007. I have given 5 relentless years of my life to make this collective political project a reality, along with hundreds of other people my age who chose to come back home from the West and put their skills to good use for their country. In doing so, I rejected more than 10 excellent corporate job offers in France and China. To see you come along and write such enormities is like having you spit in my face.

Article 4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (aka The Treaty of Rome) is formal and clear, as far as competence sharing between the EU and its Member States goes (the UK was still, back then, a full member of the EU - it quit on February 1st 2020):

That means that ALL the EU regulations are being integrated into the national legislation of the Member States. This is not a copy/paste process, however. And because it is a shared competence area, the Member States have a larger margin of appreciation into making the EU rules a part of their own. While exceptions or delays in this process can be and are negotiated, the core principles are NEVER touched.

Read it one hundred times, madam, maybe you'll learn something today:

THERE ARE NO SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. THE WHOLE FUCKING EUROPEAN UNION IS A SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE, THIS IS WHY IT IS CALLED THE SINGLE MARKET.

What the fuck do you think we are, Guangzhou? We'd wish, seeing the growth statistics!

Now, for the textile industry sector and particularly with regard to the Bulgarian market, a case very similar to my own country. Starting around 1965, many big European textile players realized the competitive advantage of using the lower paid, readily available Eastern European workforce. In order to be able to do business with all those dour Communist regimes, the solution was simple and easy to find: toll manufacturing.

It worked (and still does!) like this:

The foreign partner brings its own designs, textiles and know-how into the mix - or more simply put, it outsources all these activities. The locals transform it into the finished product, using their own workforce. The result is then re-exported to the foreign partner, who labels it and sells it. In doing so, he has the legal obligation to include provenance on the label ('made in Romania', 'made in Indonesia', 'made in Bulgaria' - you name it).

The reason you might find less and less of those 'made in ' labels nowadays at Primark and more and more at Barbour, Moncler and the such is the constant raise of the workers' wages in Eastern Europe since 1990 (things happened there, in 1989, maybe you remember?). We are not competitive anymore for midrange prêt-à-porter - China (Shein, anyone?), Cambodia and Mexico do come to mind as better suppliers. To speak about 'exploited female labourers in rickety old factories' is an insult and a lie. They weren't exploited back in the Eighties, as they are not now (workers in those factories were and still are easily paid about 50% more than all the rest) and the factories being modernized and constantly updated was always a mandatory clause in any contract of the sort. Normal people in our countries rarely or ever saw those clothes. You had to either be lucky enough for a semi-confidential store release or bribe someone working there and willing to take the risk, in order to be able to buy the rejected models on the local market.

If I understood correctly, you place this critical episode at the launch of the limited SRH & Barbour collection, for the fall of 2018. How convenient for you, who (I am told by trusted people) were one of the most vocal critics of S during Hawaii 2.0!

And as far as Barbour goes, it never pretended to manufacture everything in the UK only:

This information is absolutely true. You can read the whole statement, signed in October 2017 by one of their Directors, Ian Sime, here: https://www.barbour.com/us/media/wysiwyg/PDF/Ethical_Statement_October_2017.pdf

And a snapshot for you:

Oh, and: SEDEX is a behemoth in its world, with more than 75.000 companies joining as a member (https://www.sedex.com/become-a-member/meet-our-customers/). Big corporations like TESCO, Dupont, Nestle, Sainsbury's or Unilever included.

I am not Bulgarian, but I know all of this way better than you'll probably ever do. The same type of contracts were common all over Eastern Europe: Romania, Poland, the GDR (that's East Berlin and co, for you) and even the Soviet Union. I am also sure your Portuguese readers will be thrilled to see themselves qualified by a patronizing North American as labor exploiters living in a third-world country with rickety factories.

You people have no shame and never did. But you just proved with trooping colors you also have no culture and no integrity. More reasons to not regret my unapologetic fandom choice.

I expect an angry and very, very vulgar answer to this, even if I chose to not include your name/handle. The stench of your irrelevance crossed an ocean.

[orange-demons-deactivated2024]

2 year 'Hiatus'

(long post/rambling)

Hello everyone! The day's finally come for me to start my 2-year hiatus.

I'll be starting school tomorrow, July 1st, from 8am - 5pm Mon-Fri. (Full time). So there won't be many opportunities for me to keep constantly posting here all the time.

I want to personally thank you all for welcoming me into the Street Fighter fandom and for taking the time out of your day to interact with my blog.

I never thought I would become a fanfic writer again after so many years of not writing and to meet so many of you throughout my stay here.

With my first fic, Mount, I was nervous about people not caring about it and for it to be lost in the Street Fighter algorithm because I joined the fandom so late. (March 2024). And originally, I planned to make that my only fanfic and call it a day. But after I got my first comment I was over the moon.

Then slowly I had people liking and following this side blog where I dumped all my random reblogs on. And that's when I realized, there were people still out there loving these characters as much as I did despite the slow traction on the street fighter dash.

So that's when I decided to make this random side blog into a SF6 fanfic blog.

I started to write strictly Bosch x Reader's in the beginning because he was the reason why I joined this space in the first place. Then I wrote for Luke, then Poison, then Ed, then Jamie, then at last Chun-Li. I learned to love characters that I first didn't give a second thought about and I learned more info. about some SF characters I wasn't aware of before.

Then my blog went from 0 followers to 38! Holy smokes, 38 people really cared enough to follow and read my ramblings? That's crazy. I never even expected to have 1 follower much less 38.

My favorite part about writing for this fandom was interacting with everyone in the comment section/reblogs. I enjoy talking to you all and writing silly blurbs whenever we get too into the hcs. Really, it makes my day better when I see people commenting and giving love to my works.

And to be 100% honest with you all, I was originally going to start including a lot more X Fem!Reader Inserts because I am a Cis Woman who never wrote for any other genders but Fem! ones. But seeing how little fanfics there were, I thought it would be unfair for me to exclude the other side of the SF6 fandom that wouldn't be able to enjoy any reader inserts because of their gender.

So I'm glad I didn't go that route because I got to find ways to be more inclusive in my writings without mentioning the reader's Skin/Gender/Appearance in any of them and to keep them gender-neutral.

And as a reminder, this blog is the first time for me to write this way, so if you guys think that some of my works sound Fem! based please tell me so I could fix it. Because the last thing I want is for people to tell me I'm more biased for my female audience.

I don't know If you guys knew this, but it kinda broke my heart when I found out I was accepted to this school. Granted, I've been trying to get in for 4 years.

But I honestly didn't think I would've gotten in this year because I thought I bombed my 5-panel interview with the school and they only accepted the top 25 people in my area.

I even started to make plans to work a full-time job somewhere else, take Muay Thai classes, write more fics, and give up on my dreams of ever becoming an X-ray tech. But then I got a phone call on my birthday saying I made it in!

I was overwhelmed with happiness for all my efforts getting into this school after so long. I felt like I was running behind all my peers who already graduated and got their careers started compared to me. But now I get to finally start mine and do what I've always wanted to do and to help people.

Then, I was hit with a wave of sadness because I barely dipped my toes into the Street Fighter fandom and now I'm already leaving. All my ideas for future fics, including the ones rotting in my drafts, may never see the light of day. I was really sad for everything to come to an abrupt end for something that barely even started.

What's going to happen to this blog?

To be frank with you all, I still REALLY want to post SF fics but I know that it probably won't be possible with my schedule for the next 2 years.

I do get a 1-2 week break every 3 months for my school so y'all might see something pop up in the SF6 feed every once in a while. I’ll mostly be writing on my terms and I won’t be answering anyone’s asks. But it's not guaranteed you will.

Plus, I bought the game, so it's not like I'm just gonna drop SF6 out of my life completely. I'll post things here and there that are not fics and maybe tiny drabbles in my free time but it's still up in the air if I will. You'll see me being active on here but not in the same way that you usually do.

Now that I'm transitioning to going to school full-time, I'm nervous about what's to come out of everything, since I've been looking forward to this day since I graduated high school.

I also want to thank you all for sending your requests in. They helped me learn where my writing was strongest and where I needed to improve.

I tried to get through all of your asks as best as I could but I believe there are 2 left in my inbox as of now. I’m sorry I wasn’t the best at being consistent and I hope to get those out as soon as I can.

Thank you all again, for making my time here memorable and I hope to keep posting more SF6 content in the future.

And please continue to support other fanfic writers in the Street Fighter fandom like:

@ruthlesscore

@chqolan

@randobisexual

@luvlyycy

@cosmichorrorsarestillnicerthanme

@scarletcoral13

@rosewood-writes-and-reviews

[irisbleufic]

Of all the current Devil’s Minion writers your playlist is the one I want to see. Do you have one? If not, are there particular songs you’ve been listening into to while you write? The vibe of your prose with them is hypnotizing like the short story about them in the books, it’s impressive, and does your music also inform this choice if at all?

Intense question, anon. Fourteen-year-old me fucking hyperventilated after reading the DM chapter in Queen of the Damned (me, on the floor of my bedroom at 3am because I don’t want to get caught reading this book, staring dazed at the ceiling; me, now, three weeks ago, sitting shellshocked on the sofa after watching S1 and S2 over two days as a binge; me, over two of those weeks following the binge, rereading the first half of the Chronicles and starting to see double, tilt the prism, see what happens when the narratives are overlaid and blurred), and it still feels like that. Likely my prose turning out the way it is in these stories is about 90% my giddy teenage self having access to my adult self’s writing experience to finally write this beloved pairing without fear of litigious letters (IYKYK, my fellow elder Millennials in the fandom). I don’t often love film and TV adaptations of my favorite books, but I adore this show. It’s flawlessly transformative; its improvements only make the resonances and overlaps that much more meaningful. No notes.

However, I have been listening to the same small handful of songs on repeat for 6 days as I write these pieces. I imagine they are affecting my sense of scansion at points; my writing life didn’t begin with fiction, it began with years of poetry before I ever tried prose. These tracks are as meaningful to me as poems as they are songs. It’s as good a starting point for a playlist as any; I’ll keep adding and put it together on Spotify at some point.

1. Vesuvius - Sufjan Stevens

Vesuvius, I am here

You are all I have

Fire of fire, I'm insecure

for it is all been made to plan

Though I know I will fail

I cannot be made to laugh

for in life as in death

I'd rather be burned

than be living in debt

This song was my entire first 72 hours of writing. I’m that Autistic weirdo who will listen to a single song on repeat for a month and think nothing of it. Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii being the nexus point of their love story from beginning to end in QotD, this is everything to me; I was never going to be able to write about the show incarnation of them without integrating this location and this imagery in the most reverent love letter I know how. This is why my series title for these stories is Caldera. Volcanic crater blowout if ever I saw one; I ran with it.

2. I Forget Where We Were - Ben Howard

Hello love, my invincible friend; hello, love, the thistle and the burr. For you, I have so many words—and I, I forget where we were. I haven’t known this song for all that long in the grand scheme, but it found me via Spotify shuffle in 2022 right after something awful happened. The longing in this song hinges on one of the lovers in it waking up to something they’ve forgotten about their relationship, something precious, and I’m thrilled to finally have a fandom application for it.

3. Make You Better - The Decemberists

I sung you your twinges

I suffered you your tattle-tales

and when you broke sideways

I wanted you, I needed you, oh

to make me better

Oh, to make me better

But we're not so starry-eyed anymore

like the perfect paramour you were in your letters

And won't it all just come around to make you

let it all un-break you to the day that you met her

No excuse for this one; it does a great job of speaking for itself. Front-man Colin Meloy is one of my all-time favorite songwriters, and his work is frequently dark, creepy, and/or gothic enough in flavor that I could find a few more.

4. Song to the Siren - Elisabeth Fraser & This Mortal Coil

On the floating shipless oceans

I did all my best to smile

till your singing eyes and fingers

drew me loving to your isle

and you sang, “Sail to me,

sail to me, let me enfold you—

here I am, here I am,

waiting to hold you.”

This cover of Tim Buckley’s folk masterpiece completely transforms the vibe of the song, and in the kind of way you need for this pairing. This one is at responsible for the events and imagery in my “Still Life with Sunken Treasure.”

5. Hal - Yasmine Hamdan, Only Lovers Left Alive OST

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اطلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي شرّفي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وطلعت يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اتريحي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتلحلحي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وسمعت يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اتفرفشي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي قربي

لأ ما أقدرشي

فرشنا يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اقلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتجرأي

لأ مش ممكن

شلحنا يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اتغندريله

يا حبيبتي اتذوقيله

افهمي يا سيدي مش قادرة

وطبعا تقنعني مش واخدة

ايه يا عزيزة؟

ايه اللي إنتي عملاه ده؟

يا يا يا راجل يا هوه!

مش عيب عليك اختشي ونو

لأ ما أقدرشي

لأ مش ممكن

يا عزيزة اخلعي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي اتشخلعي

لأ مش ممكن

يا خيبتي يا ناس، مغلوبة يا ناس

يا عزيزة اتبغددي

لأ ما أقدرشي

يا حبيبتي جربي

لأ ما أقدرشي

وجينا يا ناس، غلبنا يا ناس

جينا يا ناس، غلبنا يا ناس

I don’t think the Arabic justified to the correct side when I copied this, but the translation is very easy to find. I don’t speak Arabic, but honestly the English translation is dull compared to the beauty of this language. If you haven’t watched Only Lovers Left Alive, what the hell are you even doing with your vampire-loving, monster-fucking life? All the tracks on it have the right vibe for DM, really.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Fanfic Writers...

So earlier I was reading a thread about Fanfic writers abandoning their fics, or deleting their accounts when they were no longer interested in writing anymore, because they felt the need to move on to other things (other types of writing, or life is lifing, etc), and I have to say this...don't delete your fics.

You never know wo needs to read that story (completed or not) years from now after you have forgotten/abandoned them.

Lemme give you an example.

Years ago, after the new Star Trek reboot came out in 2009 I was busy working a difficult job and struggling to write anything and just make a living. I'd always been a Star Trek fan since I was little. LIke seriously, I had a Klingon language handbook in highschool, I own a Star Trek cocktail dress, a messenger, bag, and a tiny replica of the Enterprise (that used to light up). I hadn't read or written fanifics in years, so I was out of touch with the fandom. When the reboot movie came out, I loved it, but I had hit a rough patch in a long term relationship, a lot of my friends were moving away to different cities and countries, and I was feeling depressed and not really finding much happiness.

About six years after the first reboot movie came out, I tried to find and old livejournal account I had that I used to write Blade, X Files, Star Trek, & other fics with. Perusing fandoms I dipped back into looking at new Star Trek content on other fanfiction websites and stumbled across some great new Star Trek fics that were amazing (My thing was the Spock/Uhura pairing). Baybee, when I tell you those stories from various writers lifted my spirits and gave me something to look forward to at the end of a hard day or week of draining work! I laughed, cried, fell in love, felt enraged, surprised, and so many emotions reading made up stories from strangers all over the world. A lot of these fics had been abandoned or the writers had left the fandom and weren't writing anymore by the time I found them...but I still had their stories. One particular writer had a 4 book Star Trek series that was better than the studio sanctioned movie book adapatations I bought at SF/F conventions or online. Just A+ writing and wordbuilding.

Reading those fics bolstered my confidence (and dopamine) to go back to living life again as best I could, and also writing my own fanfics again. I took time to write this particular writer to tell her thank you. I never heard from her (didn't expect to), but I was grateful to be able to read their work over and over again when I was feeling low, or needed to revisit old familiar friends.

All this to say, pleadingly so, don't delete your stories. Someone years from now, someone like me, may find your work and latch onto it as their lifeline to keep on getting up in the morning...have something to come home to. Or need that story you made up on the fly to give them a new way of looking at the world that will help them cope and keeping trying to make it out here.

Your stories are needed, your unique voices are needed on here, even if you no longer write anything for fandoms.

Le Fin.

[baxterstockmanisthecenterfold]

any current story WIPs?

I've honestly been a little secretive about it lately. But I have had a Stockman story in development for a long while now. Since about mid to late 2019 actually. It's a little dumb. But It was a while after i had watched "Into the spiderverse" & I loved the movie so much that it was an actual butterfly effect in terms of what it would later lead me to write & create a ton of stories & characters that I have hidden for now but I do genuinely want to share with the world some day, that'll hopefully be well received.

In the meantime tho, It also inspired me to do my own multiverse story (which I'm aware is as of now a very overdone storyplot at this point), that I did start working on in 2019 & 20. But after I left the TMNT fandom & dropped all my TMNT related things I stopped working on it too & it was pretty much left dormant for the next 4 years. Earlier this year tho when I did get back into the Stock side of TMNT, I did consider revisiting the idea & after a while I decided to finally get to writing it again & I'm already 4 chapters in. Tho like I said tho. It is a little dumb & overdone now. But just for my own personal accomplishment I want to finish it.

These old pictures I made aren't entirely far off. My current story premise is pretty much The Stockmanverse.

It's not a bad for bar copy of Spiderverse, but like I said it did inspire it.

The plot is, it's been a year since Owari & the Foot clan disbanded & Baxter had no other choice but to go back to his old miserable life & his old miserable job. But not for long as he wants to make a superior comeback so the world can finally recognize & remember his genius. Later in the night while looking for parts to start his plan of action he accidentally discovers a hidden underground facility full of refuge Triceratons all being led by Mozar who survived the Ulixes’power cores & Fugutoid's dark matter explosion but barely, as there's barely any Triceratons left. So they're building a machine that opens up a portal to the multiverse to get more Triceratons from all over the multiverse to rebuild their army & species & then take over the multiple galaxies. Baxter gets himself discovered & small hijinx ensues, and one of his MOUSERS gets caught in the mix of the machine. Baxter's barely able to escape but now he's constantly looking over his shoulder because of this new secret he learned, if things couldn't get bad enough, he finds out there's a new batch of MOUSERS running around. Only he didn't make them. Could a copycat be related to last night's discovery?

And that's pretty much the gist of it. I don't know when I'll be finished with it but I do know I plan to finish it & even share it if anybody's interested.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  @stevestark ! With fourteen Stranger Things fics and twelve in the Steve/Eddie tag, their charming works make waves in the fandom!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by @stevestark:

they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential)

i think your house is haunted (your dad is always mad)

i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart)

Eddie and Robin's Very Real Heterosexual Adventure

it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound (it’s hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you)

Whether their fics are under 5k or over 10k, their world-building is so good! they have a way of making our boys feel so natural and the progression of the relationship always feels realistic. they were one of my favorites back in 2022 when s4 dropped, and they've made a sudden return to the fandom this year with new stories that are just as good if not better than what they had written back then! I'm always so excited to see they've posted something new, no matter if it's a new chapter or a whole new story. -- anonymous

Below the cut,  @stevestark answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

After watching ST4 Vol. 1 I was obsessed. Steve Harrington was one of literally two characters I loved from the very first time I “met” them (the other being Jim Hopper, which is why he tends to feature heavily in my works as the resident Dad) but I had never really been into any ships for him up to that point. The immediate chemistry he had with Eddie Munson though? Woof. I knew I had to write them, and it honestly was like I blinked and had suddenly churned out multiple fics. I stopped writing in general around the end of 2022, but when I got fired from my job in April, I got bored and reread my own works, which drew me right back in, especially because I had already written about 10,000 words of they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential) but had yet to finish it. I wanted to read the ending so badly myself that I simply picked it back up, and then next thing I knew I was writing more and more.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

There’s so many. I’m always a sucker for some good old fashioned Hurt/Comfort or Angst With a Happy Ending, but I think my all time favorite has to be Enemies to Friends to Lovers.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

Definitely Angst With a Happy Ending. I don’t think I really know how to write anything that’s just straight fluff or even straight smut. There has to be some angst in there, and I’m not really one for an unhappy ending. I’ll maybe do ambiguous, but I was raised on Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers ⸺ we’re happy ending girlies.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

The One In Which A Time Loop Is Fucking Exhasuting. by badpancake on AO3. I think about that shit daily. Every part of it is absolute perfection, and I'm in love with it.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Fittingly with the last question, time travel! I have a title for a time travel fix-it already, I just need to let it ferment a little in my mind so I can figure out how to do it in a way that feels at least somewhat unique.

What is your writing process like?

Step 1: Put Taylor Swift’s folklore on repeat. Step 2: Open GDoc. Step 3: Stare at GDoc. Step 4: Start writing the first thing that pops into my head and hope it comes out coherent in the end. Step 5: Publish and then immediately reread my work after it’s already live, and pray I only find minor mistakes that I can quickly fix before anyone else reads the fic and spots them.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I always have the title before I even know what the fic will be! 99% of my fic titles are Taylor Swift lyrics, and it’s usually a process of me hearing a specific phrase and thinking “This is so Steddie coded.” After that, I begin the above process, and hope I do the lyrics justice, because I tend to choose the ones that are the most poetic to me personally.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Definitely when I finish writing. I’ve tried holding myself to a schedule before with multichaptered fic in other fandoms, and it just never works out the way I want it to. I actually have an ongoing Steddie WIP that I haven’t touched since April, because I’m waiting for the next chapter to come to me fully before I start writing it, and I do kind of regret posting it as a WIP in the first place. I feel much more accomplished when I can just push the whole work out at once, i.e. my season 2 rewrite where Eleven is found and taken in by Eddie and Wayne, which I had debated posting as a multichaptered fic as I wrote chunks of it at a time. I talked myself out of it though, and despite the fact that it took me weeks to finish, once I got there it was so satisfying to hit that publish button.

Which fic are you most proud of?

Definitely i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart). There’s a whole entire 58 track playlist to go along with it that I carefully researched and curated before writing even a single word of the story, broken down into specifically themed mixtapes in a GDoc; it's linked at the end of the fic, with a breakdown of which mixtape each set of songs belongs to, and it is my absolute pride and joy.

How did you get the idea for they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential)?

I had a passing thought one day about the fact that Steve seemed to just tangentially know who Eddie was by the time we met him in canon, and wondered what it would be like if he had actually sort of known him, and what that would look like. Then I thought about the legend of King Steve, and the fact that he probably did know Eddie, if only as a dealer, and the whole thing sort of wrote itself after that.

When writing they told me all of my cages were mental (so I got wasted like all my potential), what was something you didn’t expect?

Definitely how long it ended up being! The plot was truly just a passing thought, and I honestly believed I would write little vignettes of the two of them getting to know each other at parties over the years, but what actually transpired was some deep character work and a true slow-build to anything substantial between Steve and Eddie.

What inspired i think your house is haunted (your dad is always mad)?

Honestly the title itself! Sometimes, when I pick a Taylor Swift lyric and decide it would be a pretty fic title, that’s where the inspiration ends. With this one, I thought about the fanon (and somewhat canon) belief that Steve’s parents are assholes who don’t really love their son, and even though I’ve known the lyrics to folklore backwards and forwards since the album dropped in 2020, for some reason that line hit extra hard in April of this year, and all I could think about was how badly Steve Harrington wants to be loved and wanted, and I just started writing and didn’t stop until I was satisfied.

What was your favorite part to write from Eddie and Robin's Very Real Heterosexual Adventure?

The entire thing. I’m not just saying that, either. Sometimes, such a good idea falls into my lap that I actually do a proper outline, and with this one, I fully had little sketches going on and everything. I meticulously planned every date they would go on, and I knew exactly how it would end. Though, if I had to isolate any single part that was the most fun to write, it would be the last few lines. Just pure chaos. It makes me laugh every time.

How do/did you feel writing i was hitting my marks ('cause i can do it with a broken heart)?

That was one of my favorites to write, and it flowed out so easily; I had just finished rewatching all of ST, start to finish, for the first time since right before ST4 Vol. 1 dropped. And the only thing I could think about after finishing was that even though it made sense for Max to be cursed, it would have made infinitely more sense for it to be Steve. All we ever see in canon of Steve Harrington is his insecurity and feeling that he’s never enough for anyone; season 1, he thinks Nancy is cheating on him with Jonathan, and they try to keep him out of the Upside Down stuff. Season 2, Nancy actually leaves him for Jonathan, and tells him that he ⸺ and his love, and loving him ⸺ is bullshit. Season 3 is literally the story of how King Steve became a nobody who never wins a fight and falls in love with people who will never love him back. Even season 4 ⸺ when Dustin comes rushing into Family Video to try to track down Eddie somehow? Steve’s immediate reaction is “Oh, your new best friend Eddie who you think is cooler than me because he plays your nerdy game.” He’s never not a mess of insecurity and self-loathing, and nobody around him ever really does anything to rectify that feeling for him, so he’d be perfect Vecna bait. And the whole thing started with the playlist, really, because I had this idea that Steve is a vibes guy for music, rather than a style or genre guy, and then it was just a matter of writing around the mixtapes I’d mapped out. Which, naturally, led to breaking my own goddamn heart writing what I think it feels like inside his head, because I was  ⸺ and still very much am ⸺ that person in the friend group. Never the first pick, always an afterthought, the one people always think is fine but never bother to actually check if they are. So, I guess, it felt cathartic to get it all out somehow, but it was also just so deeply sad, because that feeling never really goes away completely, and I hated doing that to Steve.

What was the most difficult part of writing it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound (it’s hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you)?

Probably just the physical aspect of shotgunning, honestly, and also trying to accurately describe the high. Weed doesn’t do anything for me mentally, and I don’t like what it does for me physically ⸺ to the point that I actually wonder if I have a mild allergy to it ⸺ so it’s not really something I can pull from personal experience in regards to describing it, which made it more difficult than I was prepared for.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Definitely the opening bit of there’s something about you in the moonlight (but your eyes go so well with the day). Both the Eddie intro and the Steve intro. It was just so fun to tap into that feeling of being a kid and getting hit with the lightning bolt of why people have crushes, but I especially have a lot of love and fondness for the way I described Steve’s desire to find his perfect match, and how it’s not rooted in sex like people thought of King Steve, but in his desire to find someone he’d have fun with forever.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I’m currently working on a multichaptered fic where Eddie lives, but leaves Hawkins the very night he’s released from the hospital without telling anyone; he does stay in contact though, and he and Steve end up falling in love through letters and phone calls, until, eventually, Eddie realizes that he ran away from the one thing that made him feel the most alive. At last edit, which was yesterday, it’s at 15 chapters and 18,000 words, and I’ve only just gotten to the point where Eddie and Steve are playing phone-tag. Also, if anyone is interested in a non-Steddie but still relatively Eddie-centric fic, I rewrote the entire season 2 canon in are we out of the woods? (are we in the clear yet?) and I am currently working on a season 3 rewrite, which will be followed by a season 4 rewrite, wherein Steddie will become canon. It’s definitely for the long-haulers, but I think it’ll be worth it. Actually, despite being non-shippy so far, it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve ever written. There’s just something about Wayne Munson as the world’s best dad that does it for me, and, as we’ve seen in canon, Eddie is surprisingly really good with kids. I like to think that he’d have been an excellent brother, and I got to explore that with him and Wayne deciding Eleven was theirs.

Thank you to our author, @stevestark, and our nominator! See more of @stevestark works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[andthisisdia]

🫧Hi🫧

Name: call me Dia💎

Age: I was born in 2002 and I'm too lazy to update my age every year💅

Nationality: Italian (English is not my first language so I might make some grammatical errors)

🏳️‍🌈: I'm a bisexual and demisexual/demiromantic girl (I use she/her pronouns)

MBTI: ENTJ (Don't stereotype me. I'm just really into doing things right and I like to have a plan for everything. I always try to find a solution to people's problems)

Something about me: I'm autistic 🪐 and I'm very extroverted, I like to socialize and meet new people. So if we have any interests in common, feel free to write to me🌌 (Read the continuation to find out more about me and what I post, it's important. Thank you)

(I made this edit using picsart stickers that represent my interests and something about me)

🎮Favorite video games:

•League of Legends (I play on the European server)

•Wildrift

•Valorant (I don't play it that much because I'm not very good)

•Overwatch

•Team Fortress 2 (my hyper fixation, I need to talk to other tf2 fans. I'm going crazy, I don't know who to talk to about it, I'm afraid of appearing boring to my friends who aren't fans😭😭😭)

•Life is strange (this game made me realize I'm not straight)

•Detroit Become Human

•Danganronpa (I discovered this thanks to tik tok during the pandemic. It was very trendy at the time)

•The last of us

•The Sims 3/4 (I never had the chance to play the previous ones)

🍿My favorite TV series are:

•Shameless

•Love, Death & Robots

•Bojack Horseman

•Arcane

•She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

•Ever After High

🎼Singers I like:

•Madison Beer

•Mitski

•Ariana Grande

•Ashnikko

•Kali Uchis

•Girl in Red

•Marina and the diamonds

•KDA ("Akali that girl, 'kali go grr 'Kali don't stop, 'kali don't skrt 'Kali got a job, 'kali go to work 뜨거워 언제나 don't get burnt" 🗣🗣🗣)

•Gorillaz

•Queen

•Molchat Doma

•Arctic Monkeys

•Mother Mother

•Jack Stauber

•Cavetown

•TV girl

•Bo Burnham

I actually listen to a lot of artists but I don't remember them all c:

🫧Things I like:

•Lost media

•Liminal space

•Dreamcore

•Nostalgiacore

•History of cinema (especially animated films)

•Psychology (and all other branches of this science. I also love anthropology and sociology)

•Travel and discover new places

•Everything that has to do with creativity (Drawing, writing stories and fanfiction, creating things like accessories for your clothes and such very cute things. I really admire people who can repaint dolls)

•Having fun (going out with my friends, watching films - if they're trashy films it's even better -, sending each other memes and tik tok videos and things like that)

🪷Hobby:

•Cosplay (Especially cosplaying my comfort characters)

•Drawing (I haven't drawn seriously since 2020. I'm waiting for inspiration)

•Collecting dolls (I love Monster High, Ever After High, Rainbow High and L.O.L O.M.G. I also collect Funko pops and figures from other brands. I also have many books and comics -which I have to finish reading because there are too many-)🧸

•Roleplay (Doing roleplay with me means that I have already organized the whole plot. But I also listen to the other person's ideas)

•Find out about the topics that interest me (Most of the time they have to do with culture. I'm a very curious person and I love to inform myself)

💿What I post on Tumblr:

•Things about my fandoms (Mostly I repost cute icons, headcanons and wallpapers) I post things related to my fandoms. I like making wallpapers, icons and moodboards (Maybe start writing some headcanons)

•Positivity (Especially mental health or pride posts about being a member of the LGBT community. Be yourself🌈Be unique)

•Aesthetics (If I see some nice photo of a sunset or the sky, I immediately repost it because I feel like it. I also post a lot of things related to nostalgia because as I said before I like the "nostalgiacore" aesthetic. And I'm very nostalgic, they were beautiful times when the only worry was "which Monster High character am I?")

•My posts are tagged "Dia's post"

🦦Other random things:

•My favorite musicals are Heathers and Ride The Cyclone (the name of my blog is a mix between two of these songs)

•I'm terrible with numbers and sometimes I read the wrong words (I have a learning disability -be patient-)

•In my blog there are posts about Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss BUT IT'S NOT A SPECIAL INTEREST OF MINE. I recognize that they are two series with a lot of plot holes and nonsense. But it still reminds me of time spent with my friends. I actually like hearing people analyze and criticize it. I'm fond of the character of Vaggie and I like the ship between Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb but as I wrote before: it's no longer a special interest of mine. I am neutral towards them

•I'm an atheist

•I am very interested in the meaning (and world) of dreams

‼️ Sometimes I also reposted something related to when I feel down. Unfortunately I have a lot of trauma but I'm trying to move forward and get better‼️

🔞I'm a girl from 2002 so I have young adult maturity‼️ For adults (because I know we are not all the same and not everyone likes some things) I would like to point out some things that I could reblog: I might reblog paintings or sculptures with naked people BUT also drawings with people semi-naked or shown in a sexy way. The artists I refer to are: Fumetti Brutti by Josephine Yole Signorelli and EvviArt. They are the only ones I follow but it is to make you understand what type of art I like. I could reblog posts where sexual topics are written: from the classic "use protection when having s3x" or raise awareness about some topics related to this theme. I want people to be informed about some aspects of this topic (I'm not talking about p0rnographic things ) such as the importance of using protection and above all how important consent is. I don't reblog kink-related stuff or explicit porn because it's not a topic of interest to me. And I don't even have kink because s3x isn't a topic that interests me. It doesn't shock me to hear about NSFW things (it disgusts me if disturbing topics are included in this topic). Many of my interests (TV series or video games and things like that) involve adult themes. I prefer to specify that I could publish things like this because I know that many people don't want to see these things. And in any case I want to talk to people my own age. If you like some wallpaper made by me, there are no problems because a wallpaper is a normal thing and everyone can use them. But if you don't like adult things then don't interact (especially if you're a minor) In summary: you can like icons or wallpapers or memes (these are innocent things and everyone likes them. Everyone uses icons and wallpapers) but interact with me if you are adults🔞

🧜‍♀️Comfort characters:

•Jinx (League of legends/Arcane. She is my main and for certain things I see myself in her)

•Seraphine (League of Legends. didn't like her at first but I love her gameplay. And I think she has the best skins -along with Jinx, of course-)

•Evelynn (League of Legends. She's a Goddess)

•Chloe Price (Life is strange. She made me understand that I like women too. I love this punk)

•Sunset Shimmer (Equestria Girls. She is one of the few ENTJs to be a positive character. I really like how her character has evolved)

•Reagan Ridley (Inside Job. We are very similar in certain things)

•Entrapta (She ra. I love this chaotic neutral autistic scientist princess. Again, I see myself in her)

•Kotori Minami (Love Live! When I was in middle school this was my favorite anime)

•Dia Kurosawa (Love Live! Sunshine. Love Live is an anime that accompanied me as I grew up. I'm very fond of it)

❕️I'm looking for young adult people like me (young adult means being over 18 and under 30). I have no problem with NSFW (I prefer artistic nudity) and I have no problem with swearing. I have a certain maturity so I want to interact with people like that.❕️

‼️ This is my safe space🗣 SO DO NOT INTERACT WITH ME IF YOU ARE: racist, homophobic, ableist, transphobic and against the LGBT community, do not interact if you are a pedophile and if you harm animals.Don't fetishize queer people. We are people, not nsfw categories. And don't romanticize the Mafia. Be kind and open-minded. Don't interact if you are against feminism (which I remind you, means gender equality), don't interact if you are people with ideas of hatred and discrimination. No ignorant people about mental health or what is happening in the world, because we are in 2024 and we need to have a minimum of culture. If you think abortion is murder, I would say you can also go elsewhere because I support women's rights and human rights in general. In general, don't interact if you are a person with bad ideas (that kind of bad ideas. Go away)‼️

🌟Talk to me if you are a normal person (and if you're nice and send funny memes. Or if you want to talk about some fandom in common or something. We can also play some video games together or talk about philosophical things like "what's the point of life?" or things like "do aliens exist?")🌟

[spazzcat]

Spazzcat's (Incomplete) YOI Fic Rec List

@alexseanchai said yes please, so now you all get to hear me ramble about the YOI fics I've been reading! I may do another one in the future since I'm still working through the archive but for now, these are the ones I've enjoyed and hope you will too! Note: Unless specified otherwise, all these are completed works.

Until my Feet Bleed and my Heart Aches by Reiya

‘…Of all the rivalries in the world of sports over the years, perhaps none has become so legendary as that of Russian figure skater Viktor Nikiforov and his rival, Japanese Yuuri Katsuki…’   A single event changes the course of Yuuri’s life, throwing him into a bitter rivalry with Viktor Nikiforov that spans across his entire skating career. But as the years go on, rivalry and hatred begin to develop into something very different and Yuuri doesn’t seem to be able to stay away, no matter how hard he tries. Hatred and love are two sides of the same coin and even though everything changes, some things are still meant to be.

Wordcount: 200k Sex scenes: Several, plot-critical Additional notes: This is the first installment of the Rivals series, which probably everyone in the fandom has heard of but I can't not include it. The sequel, Of Bright Stars and Burning Hearts, covers the story from Victor's POV. An absolute banger of a series, and a real treat to reread as well as read for the first time after learning what was happening on the other side of the conversations. Expect lots and lots of miscommunication and heavy emotions throughout.

2. Stargazer by Fahye

"No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win."

Wordcount: 23k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: To paraphrase the author's notes, this is a sports AU of a sports canon, where the sport is a made-up sci-fi sport played by royalty. It sounds absolutely insane, I know, but trust me, the world-building is perfectly executed to tell you everything you need to know without getting bogged down with unnecessary exposition. Has an Otayuri-centric sequel.

3. Dear Mama by Ferrero13

In which Victor writes letters to his mother, who is fifty percent of his rationality and self-control.

Wordcount: 30k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Epistolary format following canon from the perspective of Victor writing back and forth with his mother. Just a very cute and funny insight into Victor's head and heart.

4. How the Mighty Fall (In Love) by braveten

Every Victor Nikiforov fan has three things in common.

1. They have unrealistic expectations for romance. 2. They mark their calendars with the dates of his newest book releases and the premieres of his latest movie adaptations. 3. They either passionately hate or love his greatest rival, a mysterious author whose pseudonym is only two letters: “KY.”

Wordcount: 30k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Authors AU, just an all-around fun read of meeting, falling, and some hilarious mix-ups and mistakes along the way.

5. My Fun Fact Is: by stillmadaboutpetra

Yuuri fails to mention to his new non-skater friends who he is or who his husband is. Or that he even has a husband.

Wordcount: 6k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: The identity reveal trope is one of my favourites, and this is my favourite fic out of those.

6. Written in the Stars by pheonixwaller

Yuri Katsuki is a scientist aboard a deep space research vessel. Their mission is to chart and study a black hole, but when there's an accident Yuri is forced to abandon ship. Alone and adrift he can only watch as his husband, Phichit, and all their friends are killed. Then, with rescue likely years away, he goes into stasis. Victor Nikiforov is the young captain of an exploration vessel. Known for his charisma it is his job to make first contact and establish friendly relationships with other space-faring societies. But his curiosity is piqued when his crew detects an old distress signal, and finds a lone survivor from a ship lost nearly a hundred years before.

Wordcount: 90k Sex scenes: yes, not plot-essential Additional notes: Far future sci-fi, be prepared for character deaths right at the beginning and grief/mourning throughout. Really well-thought-out sci-fi experience with romance as part of the plot but not the entire focus.

7. Tale of a Sleeping Prince by phoenixwaller

In a world where soulmates exist, but may not be alive at the same time, those born first become "sleepers." They go into self-induced hibernation that can last centuries until their soulmate is of age, and close physical distance. At the age of 12 Yuri Katsuki sees a photo of the living legend, the oldest known sleeper, Victor Nikiforov. It sets in motion a desire to get close to the other man by training to be a caretaker. Eventually he finds himself in Saint Petersburg Russia, ready to work as close to the sleeping man, but as he approaches the Living Legend awakens.

Wordcount: 16k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: I am weak for soulmate AUs and this is a really unique one supported by fantastic worldbuilding.

8. Trust Me, I'm an Alchemist by metisket

In which Yuri Plisetsky began life with the name Edward Elric, and this has made the world of figure skating a significantly stranger and more alarming place. “Are you saying you lived a life of crime before you began skating?” “I’m gonna have to check the statute of limitations on a couple things and get back to you on that.”

Wordcount: 55k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Crossover with FMA, but knowledge of that canon needed to understand this should be minimal, I think. Focuses on Yurio and is one of the most hilarious fics I have ever read in my life, if you only read one fic from this list let it be this one, you won't regret it.

9. Empty Ice by phoenixwaller

Yuri Katsuki is considering retiring from competitive figure skating after coming in sixth at his first Grand Prix Final, but an accident only days after the final leaves his idol, Victor Nikiforov, in a coma. Grief stricken, Yuri decides to dedicate his season to the fallen skater and throws himself into the sport. He puts everything on the line for three final competitions. Then, dreams shattered, he retires. Adrift, grieving, and unsure of his place in the world Yuri turns to photography and quickly becomes known as one of the best figure skating photographers at competitions. It is this that leads him to the one thing that lends a sense of catharsis: recreating famous photographs of Victor, except in empty ice rinks. However, soon strange artifacts start to appear in his photos, and a presence calling itself Victor attaches itself to him. Yuri is left to wonder if he is going insane or if he's being haunted, and whether the strange artifacts in the photos are at all connected to the comatose skater.

Wordcount: 78k Sex scenes: yes Additional notes: Mind the tags, but trust me, it's worth the weird.

10. Miliy by fangirlandiknowit

Viktor finds himself in a sticky situation – referring to more than the mess in his pants after watching his favorite camboy’s show. In other words, how do you tell a camboy with a celebrity crush on Viktor Nikiforov that you are, in fact, the very man you role play with him as? The answer - you don't.

Wordcount: 66k Sex scenes: several, plot-important Additional notes: Lots of sex scenes (it's a camboy AU, what do you expect) but still manages to pack in an impressive amount of plot, drama, and feels.

11. Lessons in Love by fangirlandiknowit

All Viktor wants is for his son to be happy - and if that means spending countless hours at the ice rink, a million more in the ballet studio, and devotedly cheering for Katsuki Yuuri at every competition he enters, then that is precisely what he'll do. He just didn't expect to become a fan, too. (He didn't expect to fall in love.)

Wordcount: 180k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Broke: fake dating. Woke: Pining so hard everyone around you is convinced you're already dating. Strikes a great balance between a Victor who takes the important things in his life very seriously and a Victor who is a complete disaster when Yuuri's around. Very sweet, very funny, however you may have to suspend your disbelief regarding the physical and mental development of a ten-year-old.

12. No Storm Can Venture There (orphaned fic)

General Viktor Nikiforov stands, hands in his pockets, facing the man he so desperately needs on his side. "We've got four Jaegers and we're missing a pilot," he states. Pauses. The silence stretches, pulled at both ends by both stubborn wills. Finally- "You know I won't," former Ranger Yuuri Katsuki starts, turning his gaze aside, standing, shoulders tense, "can't." Viktor closes the distance. "Of course you don't think you can when you've been hiding from the possibility."

Wordcount: 180k Sex scenes: Otayuri glimpsed only briefly Additional notes: Going in, this fic starts off seeming like a beat-for-beat Pacific Rim rewrite with YOI characters. If you give it a chance, however, it is very much not, and goes further and further away as the story progresses. Very much a wild ride.

13. you're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be by roserelease

More than anything, Yuuri wants to impress his cosplay role model Viktor Nikiforov, aka Nike Cosplay. But after a horrible start to a convention weekend, he panics and backs out at the last second to meet his idol. Normally this would be fine, except Yuuri discovers too late that there's a little Viktor related secret inside the con vlog his best friend filmed over the course of the weekend for him... It's fine, he thinks. Embarrassing, but not the end of the world. And it's not like Viktor himself will ever see the con vlog, so why worry? (Except for when one fateful, lonely night, Viktor does.)

Wordcount: 200k Sex scenes: yes Additional tags: Be very mindful of the tags, while being a very positive story overall this one does touch on some heavy subjects and the second installment in the series even more so. Fourth installment is in progress and last updated Jan 15, 2024 at time of writing.

14. empty spaces between stars by astudyinrose

Victor gets just as drunk as Yuuri at the Sochi Banquet, and they disappear together after the dance-offs. They wake up the morning after with rings on their fingers, and pictures of them kissing after getting married the night before are all over the tabloids… but neither of them remembers a thing. They decide to stay married for a while for the sake of Victor's sponsorships, and in exchange, Victor coaches Yuuri through nationals…

Wordcount: 225k Sex scenes: yes Additional notes: Be mindful of the tags again for this one, otherwise a nice juicy slowburn of relationship development.

15. The Coin, The Stone, & The Rose by Silver_Scribbles

Crown Prince Viktor Nikiforov once had the world at his fingertips; he was rich and powerful and handsome, and he had everything his heart desired. Now, he is a Beast, imprisoned by an Enchantress' spell; hiding away from the world in the never-ending winter of his shame. Katsuki Yuuri is . . . odd, to say the least. Beautiful, but odd. While the rest of the villagers put one foot firmly in front of the other, Yuuri would rather loose himself to his dancing and his daydreams; always wishing for something more than his provincial life. Each is captive to circumstances beyond their control; trapped by unbreakable spells and impossible dreams. However, an unlikely meeting is about to change everything. Hope makes a final play for their salvation as the sands of time run out; but as Yuuri and Viktor learn to find themselves in one another, they also make discoveries that they're completely unprepared for . . . some wondrous, some wretched . . . and some treacherous enough to permanently tear them apart. For who could ever learn to love a Beast?

Wordcount: 270k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: While the first chapter is a well-executed tribute to disney's Beauty and the Beast, this is very much its own story that takes some of the basic elements and creates something entirely new and suited to the characters. Be advised that as the story progresses it does get a bit darker and heavier in some ways that aren't tagged for such as blackmail, forced marriage, and violence, but it does end happily.

16. The Rules for Lovers by ADreamingSongbird

Prince Yuuri Katsuki has a duty to his country, above all else (his desires, his dreams, and his happiness included), and he knows this alliance will help to ensure the safety of his people. That’s the only reason he accepts Prince Nikiforov’s hand in marriage. The pleasant surprise, of course, is the part where they fall in love along the way. The unpleasant one, well… That’s a long story.

Wordcount: 325k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Fascinating AU mixing not just royalty but magic, with a background world that diverged from our own. Does take the realities of court politics and political intrigue seriously and gets fairly dark at points, so approach with some caution.

17. Let Me Fall For You by HuntressFirefall

Victor Nikiforov was on his way to becoming a Living Legend in the sport of figure skating. After hitting his stride and winning back-to-back World Championships, the sport's biggest star was the overwhelming favorite to win gold in his third Olympics on home ice in Sochi, Russia. But when Yuri Katsuki pulls off the upset victory in Sochi at the young age of 21 and takes the gold, Victor begins to see his world and the people in it in a very different light -- and it turns out they see him differently as well. No longer knowing who he can rely on and finding he didn't know those close to him as well as he thought, when his skating career falters Victor makes a shocking choice that turns his world upside down in ways he did -- and didn't -- expect.

Wordcount: 400k Sex scenes: yes Additional notes: Takes a very serious look at the pressures of high-level skating and the consequences of that. The heavy emotions lead to the ending being satisfying beyond belief.

18. The Nature of Things by Zombubble

Lonely, tired, and stuck in Detroit for two months due to competitions, Viktor Nikiforov decides he's staying. He's not sure what he expects to find, but it's certainly not love, and he certainly doesn't expect it to come in the form of the World's Cutest Barista. But when the pressure of his career threatens to strain his burgeoning relationship, and long-held secrets come into the light, he finds his love tested in ways he'd never anticipated, with life-changing results.

Wordcount: 465k Sex scenes: None that I can recall Additional notes: What starts off looking like a meet-cute with skater!Victor and barista!Yuuri turns far more complex and serious when Yuuri turns out to be secret royalty. Long, emotion-heavy, and just touching on some of the darker facets of court reality.

19. All Our Yesterdays by Kitsunebi_UK

York, England, 2120: Yuuri Katsuki is a dime-a-dozen techie, spending his days doing routine repairs at the university. He hangs out with his friend Phichit, goes for a drink, watches holograms. It’s an existence – but is it a life? Crowood Castle, Yorkshire, 1392: As the son of a baron, Sir Victor Nikiforov makes judgements where lives hang in the balance. As a knight, he must sometimes end them. It’s what he was born to do – but what of the heavy burden on his soul? Death is all too commonplace, while life and love remain elusive. When a brilliant scientist goes rogue, journeying to the Middle Ages with the world’s first time machine, Yuuri is stunned to be called on as the last hope of preventing her from changing history. After an abrupt departure, he lands at Crowood Castle disguised as an enemy of the Nikiforovs, Sir Justin le Savage – and will need to act the part if he is to survive. It’s a tall order for someone who can barely tell the back end of a horse from the front. But if Ailis, in her own disguise, discovers who he is, his mission will end in a blaze of laser-gun fire. He must not give his real identity away, even to the beguiling knight he’s falling in love with…

Wordcount: 1.02 million Sex scenes: yes Additional notes: A wild ride from start to finish, with truly exceptional attention to detail in creating a believable future and a realistic past, plus some scarily believable worldbuilding for the time periods in between. Expect period-typical violence for all eras that come into play. Does get downright heartbreaking near the end, but hang in there, they do get their happy ending, I promise.

20. Equivalent Exchange by writingfromtheshadows

Without the Katsuki line to protect and maintain the laws of magic, Great Mages have become so few and far between that many believe the age of magic is coming to an end. However, when he comes across a young man weaving tales with figures of fire, Viktor begins to wonder if magic is truly dead, or if it lives on in the body of the storyteller with warm brown eyes.

Wordcount: 200k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Wonderfully constructed fantasy setting, intriguing magic system, and an intense plot bringing it all together.

21. When the World Stops... by Miled

When an injury sidelines Viktor from competing as a skater, Yakov encourages him to take up coaching even if he kind of sucks at it. On the other hand, Yuuri is absolutely devastated that he can no longer strive to compete with his inspiration. Instead of giving it up, he dedicates one last season to honoring Viktor's career...but then Viktor takes notice.

Wordcount: 200k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: Just a really interesting what if possibility!

22. L'ultima volta by goodbye_blue

“Hey, Mila,” Viktor looked up at her, bleary-eyed. “You don’t know any theoretical physicists, do you?” “…No?” She replied hesitantly. Yakov had seen enough. “What the hell are you doing?!” He stormed, rounding the table. Oh no, he thought when he saw the video. His stomach sank a little. It was that Japanese skater, Katsuki. The dark horse who had just demolished the competition at Skate America.

Yuuri and Viktor find themselves years in the past, right at the start of the fateful season where they first met. Now, if only they could figure out whether they’ve come back alone.

Wordcount: 25k Sex scenes: none Additional notes: They're idiots, your honour.

23. eternity will be born from hope by vivi_writ3s

On the tail-end of being dropped by his junior coach mid-season, Yuuri Katsuki is hit by a car and realises the universe must have a sick pleasure in fucking him over. Or; Twenty-nine year old Yuuri wakes up in his seventeen-year old body and decides fuck it, if the universe decided to screw with him, he’s going to screw back.

IN PROGRESS Additional notes: This is the beginning of a rewrite of a fic by the same name and author that they decided to alter because they realized they went OOC for Victor's age in the story. The pre-rewite version is still up as the first fic in the series and is absolutely worth reading as is (there are several scenes I go back to regularly).

[optiwashere]

WIP Wednesday

Holy shit, it's actually on a Wednesday this time?

I really wanted to do one of these this week since I've gone a bit rabid on a few WIPs.

I'll post a little bit about each of those WIPs later, some snippets and a blurb about why I'm so excited. But first! Folks to tag! Since I'm so excited for these, I'm gonna tag a lot this time.

If you have anything you want to share WIP writing-wise, please do... @quitefair @bottombatch @siyurikspakvariisis @causticcontemplation @jasminethetransvampire @underworldobsessed @assarivanguard @amorficzna @funwithnix @askweisswolf @linka-from-captain-planet @tief4tief

If you don't want to do this, or have nothing you want to share, feel free to ignore. If anyone else wants to do this, please feel free to consider yourself tagged. Now, onto my obsessions.

WIP 1: New chapter of Nightsongs

After spending some chapters in a kind of angst zone after the relatively light (relatively) first 4-5 chapters, this next chapter is going to be a kind of upswing. There's lots left to do with the AU, so I'm expecting to chug along and write more and more as time permits.

This AU is a lot for me to handle, especially after having so many chapters ready to post and then... falling way behind on writing the chapters afterwards. But it's fanfiction, and we're having fun here. So, who cares? The game's fandom heyday is already over, so at this point I'm just writing whatever feels best to me.

This chapter is mostly done, I think. I'm giving it a few days/a week to sit before I go back to edit it with fresher eyes. Also, we return to Ash's POV!

Lae’zel walked into Ash’s back office without a word on the seventh day and Ash nodded her way without looking up. Papers sat in strewn piles all over the desk, a handful of old incident reports and assessments that still needed working for Wulbren’s accountants. The absolute worst part of the job remained for the year – paperwork – and Ash intended to get them caught up in the hours that remained of her day. It was a useful, meaningful task. It gave her something else to think about. Anything other than green eyes. “We should talk,” Lae’zel said, sitting down without being offered one of the folding chairs in front of the desk. “Aren’t we doing that?” Ash scanned the paper in front of her and quickly jotted down her signature. [...] “You begin working on a van,” Lae’zel said matter-of-factly, counting off on her fingers as she spoke. “You talk to a pretty girl. You suddenly work more often on that van. Then, you disappear inside yourself and act bitter all day because suddenly the girl no longer shows up. There is more to it than you say.” “I think this might be the first time you’ve spoken more than five words to me, you know that?” Ash chuckled. “Am I that obvious?”

WIP 2: New chapter of Blades in the Night

The need to write more plot for this has been burrowing in my skull for a long time. I initially stopped myself from writing too much of it because I wanted to do Nightsongs first in its entirety before getting to this, but I think I'm just too impatient for that.

I also love the fact that this fic turned from a simple PWP one-shot into this much more expansive, plotty story that's now pretty important for what I want to do with my babies post-canon. Something about that makes me smile.

Plus, you know how I've been lamenting my inability to write happy endings for certain characters?

Either way, this isn't really complete, but the hardest part is complete and now I just have to start connecting the dots and filling in the blanks. I'd say it's about a third done?

The room filled with the same aura of a distant gaze leveled their way that Shadowheart had felt back in the cloister. Asheera had made an oath to protect Shadowheart then, and the flooding of a dense, real presence had nearly swallowed her whole in the cloister's barracks. A weight of importance sunk down on her shoulders there in Hobb's Hovel as well. A smell like molten metal cooling lilted in the air with a lingering, acrid tang. It tasted of blood in Shadowheart's mouth, as if the forging was tainted with some other foul presence in the mixture. [...] Little could have compared better to that feeling of a weight lifted from her shoulders. Worry disappeared and gave way to earnest joy in Shadowheart, and she thrived on it. She hadn't felt such keen happiness since she'd been so readily accepted into Asheera's family by her parents.

WIP 3: Gauntlet of Shar fic

Wow, I know! I've been talking about writing this fic for so long that it's almost become a sort of mythical never-to-be-slain beast for me. I'm not normally someone that talks about my ideas too often, I just write them before they can flee me.

I tend to also get in my own head about what I "should" be writing in the first place. Frankly, I'm getting kinda tired of writing so many ships, though fear not - I'll still have ideas that can only work with ships that aren't Shadowheart/Asheera. It's just that, for a while, I want to focus back on my loves.

This fic is one of those that I've wanted to finish for months. I know that at this point in the fandom's life cycle, I'm pretty much writing just for the dedicated, lovely folks that still read my stuff and I'm extremely happy to have y'all around! Maybe this will make Light Casts a Shadow ring a little more true for some, maybe it will be just another fic that I post, who knows.

Also, one thing I'm planning on experimenting with for this fic is alternate endings for Fun. This is a fic where the ending hinges on choices that Shadowheart makes in the game, so it's only fitting that I explore what would happen if she made those other choices.

But anywho, enough blabbing. Excerpt time!

Those touches and more, Asheera cherished. She watched in silence as Shadowheart turned her devotions to each of those tasks. Perhaps it was the nature of clerics to give themselves entirely to seemingly mundane tasks much the same Asheera felt compelled to consider her oaths in nearly every conversation, battle, or even moments like Shadowheart carefully buckling a cuisse to her leg with straps of leather at the backs of Asheera's knees. Fingertips trailed against her clothed skin, and Shadowheart stood up once more. "There," she said, "all's taken care of, then. Tell me, how's my handiwork? Be honest. I can handle the criticism." Asheera brought her balled fist to her chest in an arm curl. She flexed the elbow out and tested her shoulders, knees, ankles, and hips for motion. None of the plates caught on one another, and none of the straps across her hands, arms, knees, or chest restricted her. "Perfect," Asheera said at last. "Marvelous work." Shadowheart offered a quick smile. "I'll take a Gondian's compliment on such things any day." "Can't say I would've done a better job." "Ah, there's the honesty I was waiting for. Truly, where would you be without me?"

[queseraone]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by the fabulous @cfr749. Please go read her fics and join me in screeching over them!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 28

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 103,520

3. What fandoms do you write for? The Rookie (Chenford), and previously for Chicago PD (Linstead)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? - stay - i want you to be happier - i don't wanna think of anything else (now that i thought of you) - all at once this is enough - now everything is easy (cause of you)

5. Do you respond to comments? I didn't when I first started posting fics (though I often think about going back and replying to them now, but that would probably be weird lol). But yes, now I definitely respond to comments. I am absolutely giddy over every single one I receive, and so I love to express that appreciation!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hmmmm I don't think any of them? I tend to leave even the angstiest fics on a hopeful note. But I suppose either just close your eyes (you'll be alright) or you know the greatest films of all time were never made just because of where they land in relation to the events of the show?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Probably in paper rings, in picture frames, and all my dreams, because, hello, 💍

8. Do you get hate on fics? Thankfully I have only seen positive feedback, which is so so lovely. This fandom is wonderful 💖

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I do not, because I'm too chicken. Maybe one day? (iykyk)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? No. I can't stand crossover fics. 😬

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?  Not by me!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes! My babe @timandlucy and I have a collab that we started a while ago and have recently talked about picking up again! And we have an idea for another one brewing too! And @makeitastrength and I have on that's sitting on the backburner, but hopefully we will make happen!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Chenford!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I want to say none because I'm way too fucking stubborn to give up on anything. But *sigh* Home... 😬😬😬😬😬 (it's been 5½ years, so it's not looking particularly hopeful)

16. What are your writing strengths? Oh man, I don't know? I hope I do a decent enough job of getting their voices right? Dialogue is often a battle, but that's probably because of how insane particular I am. I will say things out loud, play around with words, etc. to make sure it really feels like something they would say.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Being too indecisive and my lack of confidence (which, frankly, go hand in hand).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I haven't done it, but I would definitely be looking to lean on a native speaker to ensure I do it correctly!

19. First fandom you wrote for? Chicago PD (Linstead)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? So hard, but i want you to be happier has a special place in my heart. It was a challenge to write, but the words still came so easily. And when I go back and re-read it, I don't cringe, so that's a win right there!

Thanks Lana! 🥰

Tagging @timandlucy @roguetwelve @makeitastrength @silverskull @goodgirlssayiloveyoutoo @chenfordspiral @sisterofficerlucychen @thisnightissparkling089 💕

[rainbow-nerdss]

Fic Writing review 2023!

I was tagged by: @just-my-latest-hyperfixation @aidaronan @exhuastedpigeon @jamespearce9-1-1 @theotherbuckley @aspecbuddie @thewolvesof1998 @daffi-990 (And possibly others, i may have missed one or two, sorry if i did!)

I can't believe 2023 is over, honestly. This year has had some ups and downs for sure but overall I'm so proud of what I've achieved. I started the year mainly writing Stranger Things fics, and while I still love that fandom and all of the wonderful people I met there, my inspiration for writing it was beginning to fade.

And along came 9-1-1. I am so happy with where I've ended up, and for all the new friends I've made since I found this show back in April!

Here's an overview of my year in fic:

Words posted to ao3: 235,060

Words written: 250,465

Works posted: 38

Fandoms posted for: 3 (Stranger Things, 9-1-1, MCU/Captain America)

Specifics and tags are under the cut!

Longest fic:

Crawling on Back to You 109k words, 30 chapters Stranger Things, Steve/Eddie, Rated E

Shortest fic:

Keep on Walkin' and don't look back 521 words Stranger Things, Steve/Eddie, Rated T

Top 5 by kudos:

1. Right in front of your eyes

9-1-1, Buddie, 15k

He and Chris, and Buck. They work, they’re a unit. Why should it matter that he’s single? Buck is watching him, like he’s reading every thought on his face. “You’re already planning to lie about the date. Why don’t you just tell her you met someone yourself?” Eddie shrugs and tilts his head to the side, squinting in thought. “She won’t set me up on dates if she thinks I’ve got someone,” he muses. “But she’ll want to meet whoever it is.” “So... Introduce them?” Or: Buck offers to fake-date Eddie so Pepa will stop setting him up on dates.

2. Pinky Promise

9-1-1, Buddie, 1k

Christopher Diaz doesn't mind that his dad's dating someone new. He's not dumb, he knows there's someone. The way his dad has been smiling lately, the way Chris catches him staring at his coffee, daydreaming like he isn't a grown man. The sleepovers Chris is suddenly allowed to go to on almost a weekly basis. Chris is happy for him, really he is. He’s just not planning to let himself get attached to whoever it turns out to be, just in case. He doesn't need a step-parent, because he has Dad, and he has Buck, and that’s enough. Whoever his dad dates, well. They'll probably leave, eventually. Chris doesn’t need to worry about them. Or: Eddie and Buck come to Chris with some news, and he doesn't take it very well at all.

3. Peek-A-Boo

Stranger Things, Steddie, 1k

Eddie tried not to stare. He really tried. He didn't notice at first, too preoccupied with the tub of pringles he'd been making his way through while talking about Corroded Coffin's last gig. Sure, he'd noticed the shorts. The ridiculous amount of leg Steve was showing, the way they hugged his ass, but it wasn't until Steve moved, lifted one foot to rest on the cushion, knees spread, that Eddie noticed another feature of the shorts. Or: Steve puts on a bit of an accidental show.

4. Definition

9-1-1, Buddie, 2k

It keeps happening, time and time again. People get it wrong. Whatever people say, it feels wrong and they don't know how to set the record straight, until Chris takes it into his own hands. or: 5 times people get Buck's role in Chris's life wrong, and 1 time they set the record straight

5. take my hand (knot your fingers through mine)

9-1-1, Buddie, 4k, written with @pock-o-pea

At least Buck’s okay. He’s outside, safe, doing his job. Buck’s okay, which means no matter what happens inside this van, If the crushing weight of the fridge takes him before Buck can get to him, if the van pancakes or flips or any number of likely disasters occur, if Eddie dies in here, alone, and in pain, then… He thinks of Mallory, of Jo. How they’d called out for each other. His eyes shut briefly as Mallory’s words echo in his head. “She’s not my daughter. Jo’s mother was my best friend… she saved me so many times.” Or: what 6x18 could've been

2023 Events I've participated in: AUgust, Fandom Trumps Hate

Current works in progress:

The bodyguard fic (somebody to someone) -One chapter posted, 3 more written and (almost) ready to post!

Steve time travelling in the upside down (of moments and unmoments (of time lost)) -One posted, two more in the drafts 😁

The break-up fic (you were my town) - Two posted, the third almost ready to post

Season 7 fic: 10 chapters, currently being edited to post

and then a bunch of isolated oneshots I've yet to figure out an ending for: 5+1 times Eddie sees buck with kids that aren't his, friends with benefits, secret relationship, Teacher!Buck, Buckley siblings kiss of death, Buck in the stairs (just started this one last night!)

Goals for 2024:

I want to finish posting all of the WIPs which are already on ao3, post my s7 fic before March 14, keep working on all the WIPs I have in my docs and of course write more and keep sharing!

Most of all I want to keep participating in this wonderful fandom I've found on here, I have had *such* a good time over the past year in fandom 🥰🥰

No pressure tags (sorry if you've already done this and I missed it!)

@hellwrites @the-emdash @wildlife4life @disasterbuckdiaz @loserdiaz @jeeyuns @callmenewbie @911-on-abc @bittersweet-in-boston @kwills91 @trenchcoatsandtimetravel @spotsandsocks @devirnis @housewifebuck @lover-of-mine @gayhoediaz @mojowitchcraft @wikiangela @steadfastsaturnsrings @sunflowerdiaiz @cardamomsage @velvetjinx

Also tagging anyone else who might want to look back at the year and I've accidentally missed!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass but don’t feel like you have to do this either.

[ussjellyfish]

fic author q & a

Thank you, @fiadorable for tagging me!!

The questions:

Why do you write fanfic?

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

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

What's your relationship to fic stats?

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

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

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

What do you wish people knew about comments?

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

Why do you write fanfic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. What's your relationship to fic stats?

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

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

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

I feel contentedly done with most of them though.

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

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

5. What motivates you to write?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. What do you wish people knew about comments?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

if you feel inclined.

[chaos-era]

Moonflower [Deena/Selena]

So, I've been completely brain-rotting over these two for a while now (if it wasn't obvious given the sheer amount of art I've done and the fact that I plan on making a full fancomic off the premise). I was going to wait to implement and write all this out through the comic, but frankly, I'm a full-time student AND have a full-time retail job. Free time does not exist.

So, my solution is to word vomit all my ideas about these two, their story/relationship, etc. Things are subject to change as things progress but lord only knows I believe I will simply implode if I can't throw this all Somewhere.

So I present to the five of you active in the Nexomon fandom:

An ungodly long textpost about a relationship that an autistic 20 year old is very mentally ill about:

So, some basic questions out of the way:

Who the fuck is Selena?

Selena is the name I gave the female protagonist from the first Nexomon game. I've given her own character and backstory that follows the first game's plot and all that jazz with some added details relating to her family. Basically, I actually made the protagonist from the first game an actual character.

Why Deena/Selena?

This entire ship became an idea in my brain solely because of the canon appearance of Solus's human form. I saw blue hair and an unknown second parent, thought about the sheer angst of it all, and my brain went on a god damn spree. With some time, I thought even just first game Deena/Protag was cute, so thus, the brain rot continues.

Moonflower?

I think having ship names be something more than just smashing their names together is better. The name itself is from Deena's whole plant/flower/life thing and Selena is because, y'know. Selena. Name relating to the moon. Moonflower. I'm real creative.

Why the name Selena for the protagonist?

Similar to the whole Moonflower name I just based it off another thing, that other thing being Solus/Omnisun. Sun and moon. Once again, I'm super creative.

How close to the canon plot is this AU/story?

So for most of the plot of the first game, it's pretty close. Some scenes would be expanded on, developed relationships more, etc., but otherwise the plot was fine. Soon as we hit the complete ending? Take the previous plot and go ahead and chuck it out the window.

There are similar elements, of course. Raging tyrants, Vados and Amelie, Solus (obviously), but the timeline and characters present is completely different and thus relationships between characters is also very different. Characters like Metta (James) and Ellie are not only still around but are active parts of the story instead of being swept under a rug.

---

So, the way I explain things best is through a QnA sort of format, wherein someone asks a question and I answer it, and go from there. So that's how this is going to be formatted. You can skip around and stuff easier that way too :)

Plot holes that I filled:

Why was Deena a similar age to the main protagonist of the first game?

So, the main protagonist is canonically a child, around 15. They're called a child, act like a child, very clearly a child. The Nexolord (Metta/James) is very clearly an adult. All seems fine there. The problem is:

How is Deena so much younger than all her family?

Deena is canonically kid number 4 out of 7, yet she looks and acts the same age as the main protagonist. And it's not like she just looks young, we see her in Nexomon: Extinction as a whole ass adult, same with the protagonist.

My "fix" for this is to make it that she was not in a place where time ticked by the same way. That place being the Netherworld.

In canon, time doesn't move the same way in the Netherworld that it does in the real world. It seems to either put a complete pause on it, or it moves really, really, slow in comparison to the real world. Which, given it's the Nexomon equivalent of the afterlife (not sure if it's just Hell so I'm just gonna stick with it being the afterlife), makes at least some sense. Time doesn't matter once your dead, whomp whomp.

So how/when did Deena get to the Netherworld?

In my AU, she flees there after being disowned by Omnicron. More specifically, she flees at the beginning of Ulzar's crusade against Omnicron. She knows he's hunting down the children of Omnicron, and after all the damage her siblings and father have done to humanity, she knows he's not going to listen to reason. Not wanting to be found by either her family OR Ulzar, she takes her chances in the Netherworld, where she hides out for a very, very long time. She watches her father and siblings be defeated and their souls are locked away in the Netherworld, and believes all will be fine. All of them are in a place they can't just get out of and do more damage, and she's also safe from them - separated.

That is, until a certain bowling ball with ribbons starts resurrecting them.

Deena catches on to what the Nexolord is doing, and, realizing she can't sit idle as her family tries to destroy the world again, decides to return to the real world. But, because she's been separated from her family for so long and time just doesn't work the same, she looks and acts like a fifteen year old girl. She doesn't know how things in the modern era work, she knows plenty about history, and so hides her lack of knowledge under the guise of being an explorer.

---

Now, onto the more fun part:

How the hell did that relationship become a thing.

On Selena's side, it's real simple - human emotions and all that. There's a joke somewhere about how in my AU Ellie was her childhood crush and something something green hair, light eyes, etc. but that joke comic was made already and go find it on my page /lh /j. Selena's just a simple girl who thinks the green-haired ditz is cute and will follow her around like a sad, lost puppy.

For Deena, however, tis a bit more complicated, but it can be summarized akin to meeting someone who's as passionate as you are, someone who matches your passion and drive and energy.

Selena and Deena both want both monsters and humans to live together happily. The one thing that made Selena "different" in comparison to other people with those ideals is that instead of wishing and waiting, she actually went out to try and do it. She chased down the Nexolord, she fought Omnicron's children, and she never once turned back.

That bravery is something Deena aspires to have. She fled from her father's wrath before, but now, here, was this mortal girl with no special powers facing off against demi-gods without a second thought because she believes in her cause. That, to Deena, is worth so much. That's what makes Selena so special.

All that to say, their relationship is complicated. It's impossible for it not to be. But that whole "fighting for what she believes in" comes in again for Selena - she does really, truly love Deena. She did before and after finding out about her true identity - that didn't change anything for her. And it's through Selena that Deena can really see the best humanity has to offer, and she doesn't want to lose that. Selena has devoted herself entirely to Deena, not as some godly figure or because she's a scary monster, but because she's just Deena, and it's the first time she's been appreciated as herself and not as a title.

They're not perfect. Deena hides her problems and bottles up her emotions while Selena doesn't know when to sit down and stay down when it comes to fighting for what she believes in. They get frustrated with each other, they argue here and there, but they work on things.

And that progress definitely gets accelerated by Solus being born. Hard to argue with one another about how they shouldn't bottle up their problems or should stop letting comments get under their skin about a dumb plan if your trying to keep a small, helpless creature destined to become a literal God in your care.

That's all for now from me but I am ALWAYS open to questions. Anon or not I do not care I am ill about them :3