#I'm writing a sequel right now (that's a lot less angsty and less of a personal vent than the original)

[hillbilly---man]

When your roommate brings up the embarrassing things your boyfriend did when they were in class together back in high school

My 30-something post-canon Saiki characters from my fic Friendly Fire (these guys are in the last chapter)

[scrunglepaws]

Tried to fit all my fic ideas on one page, but I still forgot some because they're like... scrawled on random pieces of paper all over my house/in different notebooks/ect. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I tried!

The little branchy-offy things are prequels/sequels of that particular series. Bleeped out things I thought might be spoiler-y to ongoing series. Things with * are super WIP-y titles because I dunno what to call them.

More ramblings under the cut! (Nothing spoilery for the ongoing series; just vague things!)

No Heroes Zone // - I have a lot more generalized worldbuilding, character notes, ect than actual stories. The story ideas are mostly vague/short... Though, I suppose I could stand to write some super short fics. - The exception is an angsty sonighty fic that's basically done, but I just have to fill in all the inbetween, connecty bits. And decide how sonighty-y I really want to go with it. That ship came outta nowhere, I tell ya. - NHZ is really mostly Tails (and Metal) angst, tho. The other day I was thinking about how he tries to latch onto Shadow and even Metal in the absence of having Sonic and was like "Wow, Tails, clingy much? What are you, Nine???" then I felt really bad. T-T; He just misses his brother...!

Kaleidoscope // - The name of this fic is based on an art piece I've been wanting to do for forever: A kaleidoscope of Tails/Nine/Mangey, looking at each other and seeing them each from their own perspective. Because that's the theme of the whole story, funky scifi weirdness aside. But uh, 1) didn't have a decent digital art program for a bit and 2) I'm not good enough at drawing the subtle differences in their appearances to really make it hit how I wanted. Also 3) Tails looks basically the same to all three of them, lmao. - "Mangey Remembers" is Mangey's backstory and "Loneliness*" is... Less of a backstory for Nine, more of a brief showcase of his character in general. Because we already know Nine's whole deal from canon. Same reason Tails doesn't have a backstory- he's supposed to be canon Tails. - "Starless Sky" and "Ruination*" are both poteeeential sequels, but I'm not set on doing them. Ruination would just be a short, noncanon "what if?" bad ending for the heck of it.

Someplace AU (Aquarius) // - Also halfway calling it Aquarius for now because I ended up continuing the first part of the story under that fic name.

- It was originally more focused on Sails, hence Someplace being a play on No Place. But now it's about equally Kit and Sails. I ended up getting SO MANY effing ideas for these dudes, man. ;w;

- "Hollow Existence*" isn't a specific story, but just a sprinkling of scenes/backstory bits that detail why Kit is the way he is. Mostly his relationship with Surge growing up.

- "Sails' Tales" is likewise a collection of random Sails backstory bits. I have a lot more specific/fleshed out things for him, though. BUDDY, did I have fun with the No Place lore. Also, his relationships with Catfish and Black Rose are so cute... ;A;

- The bits to the right are basically going to be chapters in Aquarius. They're vague enough not to be spoilery (other than the blipped ones...)

- "=D?" is a sequel that I'm very excited about. Probably shouldn't say much beyond that.

Everything Else // - CaveTails is a Journey to the Center of the Earth-esque silly, silly thing. That could maybe become a bit more serious? BAsically, I was thinking "Huh, kind of weird that my main kittails fic is with Sails. That'd be funny if I did ones with Nine and Mangey, too. Just for the lulz. Especially the Mangey one." This is the Mangey one. xD Except he's sort of like... Tails AND Mangey at the same time, character-wise? So? :? Also, potentially some wholesome Sonic+Tails moments because I weirdly haven't written any of those yet.

- "Kids" is just a continuation of that goofy Tails Doll+Cream oneshot. Just small ideas for another chapter or two. Cute friendship, fluff, and lots of comfort to make up for the hurt in the first chapter. :3;;

- "Alien*" is what it says on the tin. I have a couple different ideas for how it could go. One of them boots out Silver entirely and had Metal in his place. xD But I might have enough material to write an alien Silver AND alien Metal fic. We'll see whenever I get around to it. :3

- "Nine's Shadow*" is something I've wanted to write ever since I made that joke oc, Stales the Fox aka Zombie Tails variant from the Grim. Probably just a oneshot (or a few short chapters) fic that mostly focuses on Nine being "all alone" after the ending of Sonic Prime.

- "Why is Babies?*" is the second idea I had for a fic. It's just Shadow being awkward and not knowing how to look after a chunk of the main cast that are suddenly tots for unknown reasons. It's very lighthearted, comedic, and cute. Originally a Shadow+Metal fic until I learned more about Eclipse and just HAD to include him. Dude is literally a struggling single parent in canon, how could I not include him in a story about his brother going through something similar? xD Also, I might call this fic "Rascals" as a reference to that one Star Trek episode with a similar premise. Because! Star Trek. 8D

- "The Fifth Element" ... I have put off posting anything about this fic idea for so long because I'm EMBARRASSED IT'S SO STUPID AND CORNY DON'T LOOK AT ME,,, In case you're totally lost, the 1997 film of the same name is my. Favorite movie. So naturally, this was my first idea for a fic. It's so all-over-the-place tonally, though. Obviously, got a LOT of silly, especially the parts that follow the movie almost exactly. But I also added a lot of original bits that help flesh out the characters' relationships. The protag is Shadow, who is very, very soft and introspective in it. Which, like, how did that happen??? But I love it. Metal is his co-lead and is mostly goofy because he's a fish out of water. Sonic is VERY, VERY goofy like goddamn (he's Ruby Rod- if you know, you know). Then there's just the silliest shit ever like Silver. Silver is Shadow's cat. It's stupid, but it's also fun, and maybe even matters to the plot. You don't know. Blaze is the president. Dr. Starline, Surge, Eggman, and The End are in it. Tails has the smallest part of any of my fics, but I think I cast him well. I need to stop now or I never will. Don't look at me. xDD

~

But yeah, as I said, I forgot a lot of other ideas. A few more (still forgetting some, I'm sure): - "Creature from the Black Lagoon" ft. kittails - Steam Powered Giraffe-vibes 50's thing w/ Tails, Cream, and automatons of Kit, Surge, Metal, Belle, Gemerl, ect - Tails Doll trying to be a Real Boy(tm) - Kittails-focused folklore AU with Kit as a kelpie and Tails as a normal mobian. Bunch of other people as fae creatures and villagers, including Starline as the main villain. - Maybe a whispangle oneshot from the above au (Tangle is a mobian, Whisper is. basically a magic wolf? xD) - Knuckles/Tails role-swap

[gaslightgallows]

September 2023 Writing Round-Up

I just checked my tags, and I haven't done one of these since… three years ago. Exactly three years ago yesterday (9/29/20), to be precise. Which was pretty much when my mental health and my personal life started to crumble in earnest, and it took my desire to write for public consumption along with it.

Most of what I did for the rest of 2020/2021 were either struggling to finish works in progress (and largely failing) or archiving stuff from my LJ days. I didn't post anything in 2022. I was still writing (a lot) but it was either for Patreon (…fuck, right, I have a Patreon) or it was personal, not meant to be shared.

And then Good Omens came back and ended up being really fucking relevant to my life, and @meldanya44 was there urging me to get back into writing for other people besides her. I think it was a good idea, over all. ♥

So… yeah. Thanks, Good Omens fandom, for reminding me that writing is meant to be shared, and that I am a prompt-based lifeform. (I'll be putting up a new prompt list tomorrow, if anyone wants an artisanally crafted bespoke ficlet of their very own.)

Anyway, here's what I did in September:

Authorial Intent (G, one-shot): Michael’s plan to erase Aziraphale from the Book of Life has certain… flaws. A revision of the final season of S2 Ep6, where the Metatron does not make an appearance. (Actually posted at the end of August but this is my list and it counts. Written very shortly after I finished S2 for the first time. Effervescing with joy.)

Put Out the Stars (T, currently a one-shot, planning to continue): Crowley stole the photo of himself and Aziraphale from the shop a long time ago. (Inspired by one of @fellshish's asks. Angst angst angst… with more to come!)

An Invisible Wound (T, one-shot): “I almost killed you tonight.” “I almost got you killed tonight.” Their first kiss, soft and futile, is in 1941. (Bittersweet canon-compliant 1941 truthers unite.)

After the Rain (T, one-shot; for @meldanya44): The Second Coming has come and gone, and Crowley was calling him ‘angel’ again. (Wonderful quiet post-series fluff.)

Like Petals in a Storm (M, currently a standalone but working on a sequel; for @meldanya44): Between the discorporation and the almost-execution, Aziraphale’s having a bit of trouble keeping body and soul together. (My reputation-mandated 'one partner helps another bathe' fic.)

The Taste of Salt (G, one-shot; for @iamhisgloriouspurpose): The lingering taste of ox ribs are bitter and rich in Aziraphale's mouth, and he isn't sure what he believes anymore. (Continues the 'I'm not taking you to Hell, angel' scene in the Ep2 minisode. Nice and angsty. No one seems to like this one and I'm not sure why.)

Pipe Dream (G, one-shot; for @unwholesome-gay): All Aziraphale has ever wanted is to give heaven back to Crowley. (Domestic fluff about Aziraphale buying the South Downs cottage for Crowley. Fun fact: I struggled to write this and finally posted it in dismay and tried to forget about it. And then my inbox exploded with HEARTS, so I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought.)

The Patience of Angels, Chs 1-4 (M, multi-chapter WIP): An old enemy is on the hunt for the demon known as Crowley, and it will take all the powers of one very protective angel to save him. But in keeping Crowley safe, Aziraphale will uncover more of the terrible truths of Heaven than he ever wanted to know. (The longfic I first conceived of in 2019 and then never got around to finishing enough to post, and am now trying to revise the HELL out of in real-time because the original version doesn't work anymore. I love this fic with a burning passion and hope it finds an audience someday… which it probably will if I can update it, y'know, more often than once a month…)

Fics Posted: 8 Word Count: 28,182

I'm never going to be as prolific as I was when I was in the MCU fandom and had a much less-hectic job, but I'd call that a decent comeback. Thanks, everyone. ♥

[echo-bleu]

Writing thoughts

I've been in something like writing limbo since the start of the year. Wordcount-wise, I've written about as much in three months as I often do in one (45k), and I've had more days of no writing at all than I've had since, uh. 2018, or thereabout. It's a combination of work picking up and tiring me out, and being kind of confused about what fandom I'm currently in xD

What I wouldn't do to be a full time writer, though.

The truth is, I've found myself at a loss, procrastinating, aimlessly scrolling, and generally doing nothing (aside from rereading LOTR on my usual writing/drawing time). While it's certainly needed at time to not be productive, it's not actually good for my mental health right now, so I'm going to give myself a bit of a motivation boost and sign up for Camp NaNo with a 40k goal. It's okay if I don't meet it, but it's a fairly reasonable goal for me and it will force me to at least attempt to write every day. I'm here, if anyone wants to be buddies.

I've hit a bit of a burnout regarding Witcher, and at the same time I got (back) into LOTR and started thinking about fics there but I'm not fully in, so to say, so this will be episode #TooMany of 'Echo tries to juggle two fandoms at the same time'. For the record, every other episode failed miserably.

Things I want to write (at least bits of):

Original short story that will remain a mystery for now: it's going to be fairly short and it's well in progress already, with a full plot and a deadline, so it's the priority.

Witcher fics: - that thunder in your lungs: I was steadily writing the main fic of this series when things went sideways... And I have far too many ideas for the rest of it. - for all the things that drum: Again, many ideas! The priority is the sequel to Dandelion Season where Jaskier's powers are actually explained, but then the rest of the series will be after his jump back in time. - if your voice begins to crack: I need to sort through the writing I already have to see what can be posted, because it's a shame that it's all just sitting there waiting for a part I'm struggling with. And then write said part, hopefully. - left you behind just standing there: I have four chapters ready to go, I just need to get my ass into gear and write out the rest.

LOTR fics: - Long fic that's probably too niche for anyone to read, but I'm stoked about it, and I'd like to at least properly plot it out. It's a heist! It's dark and angsty! Sauron has the Ring! It's very fucked up but I love it. - I have started two different parts of a series of Faramir-centric fics set post-canon, that include a variety of queer and disabled characters and a lot of recovering and trying to heal from trauma. Less high-stakes, they'll mostly be short-ish one-shots, hopefully.

Singer Street. My poor poor original novel that I keep putting on the backburner. Would be really nice if I managed to get back into that one.

[louwhose]

Wind of the Desolate

This was my BOTW2 speculation fic that I spent too much effort on to let it die. But in an effort not to clog up everything with a long post, I'll put it all under the cut. Warning: this is basically just a rant.

So we're going to start this story back in March. I had just finished playing Breath of the Wild, and wasn't... really in the fandom too much yet, but rather just enough to know that there was a sequel coming out. So I went and looked up the trailers, and of course went crazy over them, quite naturally.

At some point in April, after the delay announcement, I somehow started thinking about BOTW 2 incredibly too much, and theorizing and everything, and decided to just do a speculation fic.

So the first thing I did was comb through the trailers, getting as many relevant screenshots as I could, literally going frame-by-frame in places. I literally have over 100 screenshots from that. And then I printed some out and went and made a conspiracy board before plotting.

...and it was more or less at this point that I started getting ridiculously inconsistent about working on it but I did work on it some? It was July/August that I really started working on plotting it in any consistency again

And I did finish the plotting it out bit. It was a lot of struggling but I did sometime in August. And somebody remind me never to extensively plot like that again because as soon as I finished I had basically no motivation left to actually write it on top of feeling pretty lackluster about some of the later parts on account of finding it extremely difficult to try to world build at all in a fanfic.

And so here's where I'll say that in some ways I'm sad that the Tears of the Kingdom trailer totally ruined my plans for this, in some ways it's a relief. And so here's an abbreviated version of the story based on my outline with an emphasis on I CANNOT WORLDBUILD NON-AU FANFICS

-

First we'll start with the Prologue that I actually posted (you can read it either on tumblr or AO3) because it kinda works on its own. I was trying to go for something like the irony of them being glad and thinking that their adventure is over and they will never have to face Ganon again... only to have the rest of the story start and ultimately find that to not be true.

And so we get to the first chapter that I actually started writing and has a few things I enjoy but is ultimately... not nearly there. And also a good portion of why I was losing motivation, because I was having trouble convincing Link and Zelda to explore the cavern or whatever deeply enough to get to Ganondorf and therefore the story.

And now that I've got the entirety of ranting out of me, I'll basically just give a rundown of my favorite things about the story because I already tried just slowly doing each bit summarized and it was NOT working for me:

After Zelda falls away, Link stupidly tries to fight Dehydrated Ganondorf and like,,, ends up getting his arm and the sword consumed by malice... so they're both actually in really impressive condition considering that.

Zelda is down in deep underground caverns where she gets an axolotl friend. Once I had the idea I tried doing research to confirm that they lived underground but I guess they don't, but I decided to disregard that fact and do it anyhow.

Link just being so dramatic and angsty in this. It probably actually more about me than about him.

Zelda has the Sheikah Slate, but it's too far underground and away from any signal to actually teleport out of there, and it's uncharted underground caverns so of course there's no maps. But she ultimately figures out a way to like,,, program it and stuff so that she can create a new map or whatever and slowly works on getting out. That sounded really dumb but it seems cooler in my head, I swear. I'm just bad at explaining things.

Link meets giant... weird robot lizard thing in the sky? idk how to say it, but he fren :)

Link goes to see the Gerudo to see if he can find out more about Ganondorf. Right before this, Zelda is chilling and looking through all of Link's clothes on the Sheikah Slate and sees the Gerudo outfit and is like, "hope he doesn't need this." Cut to Link needing it. And then going around to the back of the town to pester Riju until she gets him some new outfit so that they can talk.

That climax in the middle where Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf were all at Hyrule Castle and there was a boss fight and Zelda and Link got to be happy together for a little bit until Ganondorf somehow made the castle go into the sky

Mopey Link and Zelda that are apart once again.

Zelda going, okay, well I'm stuck in the castle again, might as well do some... espionage

And okay basically that summarizes what I'm happy with in the last half of the fic until the ending

Zelink marriage (naturally)

Also Link letting the arm go because in this story it was the Previous Hero from 10,000 years ago that held back Ganondorf for that long and it was like, He deserves a rest, too.

Anyhow that is a gross simplification of what it was but I needed to post something to get it out. If you read this far... good for you, I guess? You know about a fic that will never be written.