#MMaMS-AU

[portableanimations]

So for the last few months, i've been cooking up a WW2 Human AU in which Aziraphale is a navigator in a Lancaster Bomber Crew and Crowley works as part of the ground crew that works on the maintenance of the aircraft's engines.

So here's Crowley with Jinx Oscar, a stray cat he unofficially adopts that hangs around the barracks and runway sometimes.

I have a couple of sketches I may post regarding what I've been working on towards this AU's story, including some more canon character appearances and Crowley and Aziraphale's general arc.

This whole thing was inspired after I watched Masters of the Air and as any sane hyperfixated-on-Good-Omens person would do, I imaged it as Good Omens, made it fit into the British context, accidentally* (scratches head) spent hundreds on a level 5 difficulty Lancaster B.Mk III Revell model set and tools despite having 0 experience in model building, made it all sad yet hopeful at once, then imaged it to Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevans.

Sooo... Childhood partners to be separated, only being reunited within the pinnacle of War in Europe. What could possibly go wrong?

It's title: Meet me at my Side (When Dawn Breaks over Britain)

* It wasn't accidental, but after I bought it, I then realised with horror that I actually had to build the thing. Several weeks later, and a chemical smelling bedroom despite being situated right beside an open window later, it now sits proudly on my shelf :)

[n7punk]

2024 Writing Wrapped

Buckle your asses in because this is a long one (when has it ever been a short one)

Stats:

Fics posted this year: 32 (it honestly feels like way more)

AUs: 25 Canon: 7

Updates (chapters, one-shots, etc): 97 (damn I thought that was higher too lol but that's an average of posting every 3.14 days for the 10 months I wasn't on hiatus and and posting 1.87 times a week if you include my hiatus period, and my goal this year was to hopefully update 1.5-2x a week on average, so that goal was definitely met!)

Total word count: 600,179 (my goal was 600k and I got it in with only a few hours left)

AUs: 400,695 Canon: 41,235

Fandom events: 4! (Big Bang, Sapphic September, AU-ctober, Sheratober)

Novels: 1

Personal projects: 2 (misc)

Writing streak: 730* days

I haven't actually written every day in there, I have a couple of rest days thrown in that I only allow myself if there are extenuating circumstances (power outage, sick, etc) where I give myself a word count of 0 because my counter still picks that up as writing. Having this streak is extremely motivating to me so it's worth the "inaccuracies" to have it force me to write on the days I normally wouldn't because I don't want to break it. Removing the freebie days from this year, they're 6, and going back to 2023 it looks like I had 1 since the streak started, so the "real" count is 723. When I port over my streak to next year I'll use the reduced number so it will be more "accurate". I want to keep those freebies in the single digits every year and I'm happy with that.

Retrospective:

1% of Catradora fics!!

that's how I started the year, posting 'stardust, glitter, and love', which let 'freak occurrence: confluence' become my 117th Catradora fic that took me to 1% of the tag (as of writing this I'm 1.17% even after taking nearly two months off lmao). This was a huge goal of mine I was honestly hoping to hit at the end of last year, but kicking the new year off with it was great too.

In late January/February I was working on EtB(LtF), but I got a little ahead and as I was slowly posting the final chapters, I also joined my first fandom event EVER! and wrote Lightbeam for the Big Bang.

The Big Bang was so fun. I want to shout out karo-lynn again for the absolutely GORGEOUS art that went above and beyond with multiple illustrations. Kitten Catra is soooo cute and the way the glowing effects came out is just 🤩 Getting to do Lightbeam for the Big Bang was really great because it was a "milestone" event for the 4th anniversary and the fic I got to write for it was almost a follow-up to my "milestone" fic because they were the only couple in freak occurrence: confluence that hadn't had their "home universe" fic come out, and Lightbeam was the genesis of a long-standing idea (kinda headcanonish) about Adora being the goddess of Etheria that I had, so thank you so much to Tippenfunkaport for arranging it because the final fic and art means so much to me <3 (and also even if I'm still working my way through them, there were a lot of good other fics that came out of it I loved reading!)

To my memory, February/March was a little slower working on MMaM and SYE, but I went a little crazy with OLIG in April/May and had so much fun on that project. I really, really needed it. I'm not going to get into it, but with stuff that happened in my family... this was honestly one of the scariest years of my life. I was trying to figure out why I have vague negativity associated with the OLIG project and then I remembered what was happening around then and realized it had nothing to do with the project itself and in fact that was the only thing that kept me sane. That's probably why I was having one of my troughs in mid/late-May through July. Everything I picked up after OLIG/the Big Bang I just couldn't spark my interest the same and I was tired, but I eventually settled on Slipstream and slowly wrote that for... ages. But I don't want to make it sound like I was depressed that whole time. March-June were really hard, but the main reason I didn't write much in July was actually because I was having so much fun, because I got to meet up with a bunch of friends IRL for almost two weeks. It was so incredible and ugh, I'm committed to making a meetup happen again because I miss them so much.

I think I finally finished Slipstream in August, and that's when it happened. I saw the Sapphic September prompts. I already did individual retros on Sapphic September and Sheratober/AU-ctober, but needless to say: I went fucking insane. The unhinged era returned. And I had a fucking blast. I do want to do more fandom events in the future, but we'll get to that in the future plans section.

I will say, after those events, I honestly felt a little tapped for solid fic ideas. So like, I have a list of 7 ideas I'm interested in (and 1 WIP I'll try to finish and post in January), but I have no thoughts for an actual plot for those 7, it's literally just a tagline, like "Wedding Crashers AU" and that's it (using What a Beautiful Wedding as an example). So there's something there but plot calling to me. The Catradora whirlwind combined with future plans I'll get into later (I promise I'm not going to keep saying that) motivated me to finally pickup my novels again as my next project after the month was over.

I also did something new this year and wrote fanfics without the intention to publish them at any point. I talked about how I lied to myself I wouldn't do it with SB,WCFM to make me start it but lowkey knew the whole time I was going to. That wasn't the case with these other two. One I knew would be bad and had no interest in making good, and the other was for my OCs. For both I wrote 10k in one day. And it was bad. But it was also good. It felt good and the quality or missing scenes didn't matter since no one but me would ever read them. I'm not going to make this a "habit" but I'm definitely open to doing it again, especially for my OCs lol. And though one day I would love to turn them into published characters, I think there's some kind of conflict of interest issues or something with me posting fic of them on the internet, so they will probably continue to stay just for me, but hey, let's talk about novels!

Novels: Oh My God What The Fuck is NaNo Doing

Alright. So, if you don't know, NaNoWriMo used to be a huge thing for me. I won it 4 years straight 2012-2016, and picked it back up in 2020 when I got into writing again because of Catradora. In 2020 I just did a collection of fanfic for it (SLAS/OTOS/misc), and in 2021 I did my first original novel since 2016 in it. When 2022 came around I was burnt out from writing a whole novel that year already, revising the one from NaNo, and trying and failing to start a third novel that summer, so I didn't do NaNo. And, uh. Well. In 2023 there was no way I was finishing even a fanfic project at 50k with adjusting to my new job, so I ignored it.

And can I say, what the fuck. Shit went down. If you don't know, there are plenty of rundown posts and like a 2 hour video essay on it. It's fucking insane. A lot of people lost the motivation to participate, and thus the motivation to write at all for some of them. Not me. I got these emails throughout the year begging and pleading they've changed and it made me actually consider writing a novel on my own - outside of Nano - for the first time in 2 years. I hit my stride and was feeling really high during Sapphic September and was like you know what I can actually do this, and god knows NaNo is continuing to pull garbage every day to keep that motivation up. Once I knew I was doing the events for October I thought it was perfect to do those two theme months and then take a break for my novel on my own.

I now have a week to finish the last two chapters by the end of the year (my goal) and I swear to god I'm going to do it. I'm at almost 90k (I know, I'll trim it in revisions, y'all know how I am). My Novelember 2024 retro post has more details on how that has been going. I just hit a run of writers block over ONE SCENE, but I'm past it now and hopefully these last two chapters will be fast. That's like 3 days each I should be able to do that.

And then... let's talk about

Future Plans:

For the first part of January, I'm actually going to be working on outlining a second draft for that novel I wrote back in 2021. It's a sister book to this one so I want to get it to a stronger place. I do want to finish and post the one Catradora WIP I have tho (brace yourselves it's very stupid). Once the Femslash February prompts go up, I'll start working on those and posting throughout February. I miiiiiiiighht do the Big Bang again if I have an idea I think will be long enough and "cinematic" enough for art. I know I'm going to be super busy 2025-2026 (doing a training course for work 6 hours a week this spring, probably changing roles in the summer, hopefully going full-time in winter of 2025/2026, definitely moving in 2026 and maybe doing a smaller move in summer 2025, etc) so I'm trying to be realistic about what I have time for while also trying to set myself up to hit my big goals anyway because I'm honestly so scared to go full-time because I worry I won't have any motivation or time to write. After the last year and a half of letting my novels languish I'm really concerned I'll never write them if I'm fighting through the difficulty of a full-time job while disabled too, so I want to set myself up for success with being ready to query by then because if I had an actual agent/book deal I think it would keep me motivated (or at least force me to work on them lol) and I want to get these novel out there, the characters are super important to me and the thought of never trying is horrifying.

My big goals for next year are this:

Participate in Femslash February of course, hopefully for at least 20 prompts, though I'd love to do them all if they're good ones for me (After February, I'll either work on Big Bang fic - which means I won't be posting anything - or I'll go back to revising novels).

Participate in one more writing/fandom event (whether it ends of being the Big Bang or something else like Sheratober).

Update/post fic at least 32 times (usually my goal is 1-2x a week, but I'm probably going to be on hiatus working on novels for a few months, so I'm kind of halving 52 weeks and then adding a bit more to it for this goal, hopefully I actually still end up with a weekly "average" but I don't want to set up myself for disappointment).

Revise my novel from 2022 at least once.

Get one novel to the state where it's ready to query by the fall (probably requiring 2-3 revisions, unsure if it will by my current novel or the 2022 one yet).

That's all I can think of right now, but I do want to end as I always do with my thank you for reading because without y'all I don't think I ever would have gotten the confidence to actually pursue publishing but all your kind comments and messages have really changed my life and helped with my imposter syndrome so much <3 Ignoring the confidence thing, I would not have written as much as I do with the motivation I do without those comments, so thank you so much 💖

[themeetmeatmidnightworld-blog]

A little insight on Bonnie Bennett

If you haven’t read chapter 8, go ahead and read it here, then come back and read this if you’re interested:

 https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13212484/8/Meet-me-at-midnight

If you have read the chapter, this is for you. I’ve gotten many PMs and anons asking me about Bonnie and why in the world she was upset with Damon. Some people were very concerned for her as well, in a sense that she is becoming too prudy or not as smart as they’d like her to be.

First of all I would like to remind everyone that this is an AU fic and everything you know about these characters from the show should be left behind. We are not doing that here. I want the characters in this fic to have their own new personalities. 

Now, lets move on to Bonnie. 

MMAM Bonnie is very different from your average girl. She keeps to herself, she isn’t into anything mainstream and she is very reserved when it comes to feelings. However this in no way means she is prudy or shy. She is a private person who cares a great deal about her family and friends. She is also very insecure when it comes to relationships.

Enter Damon. 

She’s starting to fall for him, very much. She feels it, very much. And on top of that, she realizes he is starting to feel the same. 

Instant connection. Instant attraction. Sounds perfect, right?

That’s what Bonnie thought as well. Then she found out he had a girlfriend all this time and he told her nothing about it. 

The reason Bonnie was so surprised and hurt by the whole thing was exactly that. She was finally ready to open up to someone, something she hasn’t done for so long.She was ready to be vulnerable. She cared for him deeply. She broke her own rules for him and he messed up big time. 

On top of that we have Elena. Why wasn’t Bonnie her usual sassy self around her? The girls just got her heart broken and she is getting crap from the one person she is least ready to hear it from. It’s kind of a lot. Now I know all of you rooted for Bonnie and wanted her to go full savage on Elena, but let’s be real here, in real life that wouldn’t have happened. 

Most people would choose the high road. Especially someone as intelligent and calm as Bonnie. She doesn’t need to add fuel to the fire. She is too smart to get on Elena’s level and that is something I wanted to showcase in this chapter. 

I hope this clears it up.

Sorry for the rant and thank you to everyone who reads the story! You guys have been the best through all of this. Feel free to hit me up with more questions or remarks here or on FF. I’ll gladly interact with you (duuh, interaction with my readers is the best part of all of this!).

Love you all!

[n7punk]

btw, writing update since it's been... awhile, since i posted something. im working on three fanfics concurrently. im trying to be, like... chiller about it, so i don't get burnt out since i could feel myself feathering against it. im drifting between the three as they call to me and usually writing a few hundred words a day. im still developing the plot for two of them, too, so it's kind of slow going. i would say it's probably going to be a week from now before i would even think about posting something, or for all i know it's going to be another two weeks lol.

ive removed the unhinged era from my blog title because i want to preserve the Sanctity™️ of it now im cooling off (even if one of these fics is... insane). all these AUs are planned to be on the shorter side (more like Hurricane Adora) but because of the way im meandering between them i havent made significant enough progress to start posting on any of them lol. i have one (MMaM) that i got three chapters into and then hit a roadblock, which is the furthest ive gotten in any of them so far