#WHY is some of my favorite writing some shit i wrote about a plot point in a game that i hate

[starstruckodysseys]

it’s so unfortunate that some of my best work is my self insert stuff. like i love it but none of you are ever going to see it <3

[hellonearthtoday]

canon is dead I rule the world. dsmp you are MINE

dsmpblrs ocs shared between the 5 (five) singular people that inhabit this fandom

I'm taking the chance to just talk about my personal dsmp au that is basically canon if you don't think about it

I don't think we as a community wrote enough about demon ctommy. he was always my favorite it just gives him this evil vibe that I think is sooo funny and I always see it in ctommy art but never in literally any fic. and that's fine but imp or whatever-he-is-Tommy will always be real in my heart. in my head he used to be a bird hybrid, but when he died for what was supposed to be the final time they took his fucking wings and gave him cunty demon horns and tail. Death made him emo. for the sake of this narrative his wings used to be white too. Pair this with religious ctommy and you get peak

ctubbo. I think about him a lot. I think personally he wears armor under his coat. You'd think it start to get hot under there, and it does. his solution is to just Never leave the Arctic.

At some point he started developing resting bitch face, because it used to just be resting (autistic face of neutrality) but now he kind of just looks tired all the time. Not like Tommy's rbf where he looks like he's kinda pissed and has a headache 24/7. but at least they're semi matching now. bff's!!! (?) I can't write too much about ctubbo because my cutbbo is like 20 billion contradictions stacked on itself. he's not as simple as my ctommy.

He doesn't wear the red bandana anymore but he can't tell you why and he's not insecure about the scar on his face but he's not proud of it either. I FORGOT TO DRAW CRANBOO AND HIS WEDDING RINGS IM AN ANTI WHAT THE HELLL okay ignoring that blunder, their wedding rings are meant to be on their horns 💔 you can't fucking see cranboos singular (1) horn because it's out of frame, they're too tall.

SPEAKONG OF CRANBOO!!!! snakes in his hair because Hahhaa hattte eye contact????? Medusa???? get it guys get it do you guys get jut

The snakes talk to him. Take that as you will. He's a chronic suit wearer and will literally not wear anything else unless it's under or over the suit. he would like to never try anything new ever he needs this constant in his life or everything will fall apart and the world will end. He knows how to kit up and wear armor but just as a joke he wears random bits of armor in places he literally needs it least. as a fashion statement. Tommy doesn't wear any armor usually bcz who gaf he's not doing that shit

in my perfect world the egg plot in dsmp actually got used better and becsme more than a background plot. it could've been everything. anyway my dsmp au is egg war las Nevadas craziness and I'm right goodnight

[elialys]

Per your lovely, lovely flawed show tag, I am curious what you think the flaws of Fringe are?

I’m sorry it took me so long to answer, I got distracted!

Fringe definitely had its share of flaws. I won’t even address the ones that can “be excused” by the fact that it was a show made before/early 2010s in terms of representations/inclusions, because you know, it is what it is.

I think my biggest ‘regret’/annoyance has always been the writers’ tendency to…shove traumas under a rug, or to not properly (if at all) talk about the consequences of some events that happened. I get that they had to make the characters go through a lot of drama because that’s the point of stories, especially on TV shows that have over 20 episodes per season, but the characters suffered through some terrible stuff time and time again, and they were just FINE. And it’s not like they didn’t know how to do it!

I’ve always loved the first few episodes of season 2 because they showed recovery. Olivia had a bad car accident, then she had to kill “Charlie”, and it took her time to get better from all of that, not just physically but emotionally, too. And yet, over and over again after that, she goes through horrible things and there’s…almost nothing? Like, I adore Marionette, I think it’s a brilliant episode through & through, but I still can’t believe Olivia went through all the shit she went through Over There (and coming back) and didn’t have some serious PTSD, on top of EVERYTHING ELSE she’d already gone through (aka why I wrote Shivered Bones). Peter too was barely allowed to mention what Walter did to him after he came back at the end of season 2, barely ever allowed to mention what Altlivia did to him either, except in some awkward bits of dialogue (I will discuss Peter’s character a bit more later).

Also, the whole REWRITING THE TIMELINE at the end of season 3?? Biggest cop-out. I mean, I’ve never hid the fact that any kind of ‘amnesia’ plot is honestly one of my LEAST favorite tropes, in anything. From the moment that season started airing and Peter reappeared being a complete stranger, I just disliked that so much on principle. But what will always pain me is how by doing so, the writers completely erased not just Peter but THE FIRST THREE SEASONS.

Like, poof, gone.

(adding a 'keep reading' because this is long 😂)

Conveniently, it erased Baby!Henry in the process, which the writers might have felt would be too much of an issue? Personally I would have loved to see that unfold. I know I’ve discussed this before on this blog, probably more than once, but they could have kept SO MUCH of season 4 the way it was, as far as the Bridge was concerned, could have come up with a brand new Vilain to do all the “NEW UNIVERSE” stuff Bell/Jones tried to do, while our core characters had to deal with the consequences of everything that happened in season 3 (including Peter being a dad, WITHOUT trying to force a stupid ‘love triangle’ down our throats, thank you). It would have made for great, impactful family drama, because who are we kidding. Anyone who loves Fringe typically loves it because it is such an emotional, family drama. So yes, I will forever mourn the universe(s) we had season 1-3, and endlessly daydream about what could have been.

Now let me talk about Peter Bishop, it’s been a hot minute. Peter Bishop, who was hated basically the entire time the show was airing, and still now is strongly disliked by a lot of viewers, and honestly, I can’t blame them? I’ve had over a decade to analyze his character, have spent hundreds of hours writing stories from his POV, explaining his traumas & mistakes, have written giant meta posts about him back in the days to explain his behavior, so I’m not exactly objective, but I’m also very honest about how flawed his character is. Not (just) as a human being, which is normal because humans are flawed. I mean, he’s flawed in the way the writers used him/wrote him.

He’s probably the most inconsistent of all the characters. He’s the character who suffered the most from the ‘let’s make this person act out a certain way to make sure it fits our plot’ syndrome.  I will never forgive the writers for how…clueless (for lack of a better word), they wrote Peter in early season 3 during the Switch. Yes, Peter was traumatized as a kid, yes he was in love, yes yes, I know all of that, I’ve written endlessly about it to explain his cluelessness so I know.

Still, Peter should have figured it out. Peter as we saw him in season 1 and 2, especially second half of season 2, would have figured out. He figured out BY HIMSELF that he was from another universe, ‘just’ from his dad and Olivia’s weird behaviors and the fact that he didn’t go ‘POOF’ on that bridge in 2x18. Peter went to another universe, he met Olivia’s alternate. He’d just spent weeks running from his life, trying to accept the fact that he was lied to all of his life. At best, he was suspicious, at worst, he was paranoid (as was mentioned in 2x20 in Northwest Passage). Literally 3 days after he gets to THAT OTHER UNIVERSE, and 3 hours after meeting Olivia’s doppelganger, Olivia ‘I hide from my own emotions’ Dunham comes tell him he belongs with her and smooches him, so he goes home. Yet the writers want me to believe Peter would not have still been reeling from EVERYTHING that just happened in his life, and not be a bit on edge?

Like, ‘damn, the woman I love and have come to know quite well these past 2 years is suddenly SO DIFFERENT? ALMOST LIKE SHE’S ANOTHER PERSON? A BIT LIKE THAT ALTERNATE VERSION OF HER I MET 48H AGO, THAT’S NOT A COINCIDENCE AT ALL’. But nope, Peter just accepts it, EVERY CHARACTER on that side just accepts it, when Lincoln and Charlie keep on looking at our Olivia like “Is this chick for real? WHAT IF THEY SWITCHED THEM?”

I’m forever frustrated. It just doesn’t feel believable to me, never has. It feels like the writers went “we want everyone, and especially Peter, to be clueless the entire time so we can write our drama the way we planned it.” And that’s a shame, honestly, because that whole damn arc is already so good as it is. But it would been even better if Peter HAD figured it out, if he’d kept on pretending for a bit, if HE’D conned Altlivia the way she conned him. Like I mentioned before, Olivia already went through so much trauma during the Switch, they could have found ways to make her miserable upon coming back, without Peter having slept with her alternate for a few weeks—and the knowledge that he didn’t realize what was going on. More daydreaming on my part about what could have been.

I could go on when it comes to the way they wrote Peter honestly. The whole “maybe Peter has feelings for the other Olivia” crap in the second half of s3, and “the universe that will survive depends on which Olivia Peter chooses”, excuse me??? Altlivia basically abused him??? She used him in so many ways, including sexually. She wasn’t even herself, she was pretending, playing him the whole time. HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO HAVE FEELINGS EXCEPT A LOT OF SELF-LOATHING AND MORE UNRESOLVED TRAUMA?

Anyway, I think you get my vibe and why I’ll forever be sad/mad about this. As a writer & storyteller myself, one of my strengths and favorite aspects of writing is figuring out the characters’ motivations, what drives them, and how it makes them behave. Peter’s character is just…wobbly, during those arcs. He’s inconsistent from plotline to plotline, and it feels off to me. He’s a lot more true and consistent to how I understand him in season 4, but in season 3, he’s a hot mess, meant as a plot device more than anything else, and that makes me sad. Characters are what drive stories and shape the plot, not the other way around. So yeah, I don’t blame people for always having such strong opinions/dislikes where Peter is concerned.

I could come up with more things, but this is already long enough 😂 In case that wasn’t clear, those flaws don’t stop me from having the deepest love for this show. What it did well, it did extremely well, and even all those years later, I still cry rewatching it, because the emotions were real. They're still real.

Plus it gave me Olivia Dunham, so really, it wins just for that.

[zutaralesbian]

I recently re-read my own fic not all heroes wear capes and thought it would be fun to answer some questions for @shamelessdvdcommentary ❤️

(Questions and answers under the cut)

Give us some stats - (when you wrote it, word count, how long it took to finish, is it a one-shot/multi-chapter, etc)

I wrote it back in 2020 for one of the rounds of the Shameless Big Bang. It’s a multi-chapter but a short one (only seven chapters and 37,560 words). I don’t quite remember how long it took me to finish it but it was at least four months I imagine, given I wrote it for the Big Bang and took up pretty much the entire time given.

What was the initial inspiration for your story?

This is probably a bit spoilerish of an answer but back when the show was still airing, I talked a lot about Ian’s hero complex. It’s one of my favorite aspects of his character and it’s what initially morphed my idea of what his role is in this fic. (If you’ve read it, you know what I’m talking about).

If the story is written from a character’s POV, why did you choose this character?

It’s mostly told from Mickey’s POV but it does change to Ian’s from time to time too. I chose Mickey to take up the majority of it because I wanted Ian’s role in the story to be a bit more mysterious.

What was your favourite scene to write?

A scene in the middle of chapter two, where Ian and Mickey come together and talk about what split them apart. (The story is a post-S3 canon divergence with a twist). I remember really enjoying writing the dialogue between them in that scene because I love writing hurt/comfort. And I think the finished product turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

(Off topic side-note but after re-reading that whole chapter, I realized that I wrote the sex scene to be much more explicit than I remembered. Which is strange for me because I’m usually only confident in writing sex between wlw ships. I normally go fade to black with Gallavich).

How did you come up with the title?

Titling is one of the hardest parts of writing fic for me, for some reason lmao. It literally just randomly came to mind. I think it’s corny but it goes with the theme of the story so 🤷‍♀️ I’m not good at titles so I can’t really be picky on that front.

Was there anything you struggled to write? If so, how did you overcome this?

The action/fight scenes. Which sucked, considering the main plot of the fic lol. Writing those was like pulling teeth. But I pulled myself through, even though I don’t think they turned out all that great. I’m much better at writing emotional stuff.

Favourite line in the story?

“We were kids,” he clarified at Ian’s questioning expression. “And things were shit. We never stood a chance.”

It just sums up my feelings about S3 Gallavich tbh 😭

Did the storyline change in any way as you wrote the story?

Not really during the writing process. But when I was first trying to plan it, I debated whether to make it a canon divergence (which is what it ended up being) or a straight up AU. I ended up doing what I did both for the angst factor of it being post S3 and because I personally find full on AU’s to be much harder to write than fics that are based at least somewhat on canon.

What are you most proud about in the story? (plot, characterisation, dialogue, twist/cliffhanger, etc)

I’ve had a few people tell me that the fic “kept them guessing” as they read it. Which happily surprised me because while I was trying to be at least a little mysterious while writing, I didn’t really think I had succeeded. So I was proud of myself when a small amount of people validated me on that!

Are there any deleted scenes that didn’t make it to the final story?

No specific scenes but I did originally envision a small interlude towards the end. Ian and Mickey hit a rough patch at some point in the fic because Mickey discovers a big secret that Ian kept from him. In the finished product, Mickey forgives Ian relatively quickly. At some point, it was going to be a more angsty and longer process. But I ended up not going in that direction because I felt like it would drag the story out a little too much.

Reading back the story now, is there anything you’d change or add?

In the story, Sandy (who plays a supporting role in the fic) and Debbie are exes and Sandy eventually dates an OC. Given that I’ve grown much fonder of Debbie over the years, I think I would give her an actual role and keep her and Sandy dating if I wrote it now.

I also would have done a better job at a certain flashback scene towards the end because, along with the action scenes, it’s one of the weaker parts of the story imo.

Would you ever write a sequel to this story?

Nah. Maybe a one-shot sequel of sorts if inspiration ever hit.

Were you nervous or excited to post this story?

Very nervous! It was my first multi-chapter Gallavich fic and first time participating in a fandom event like a big bang.

Did you have a beta or a friend who helped you as you wrote?

Yes! Given that it was a big bang, I had a beta assigned to me. shame_less18 on ao3! And she did a fantastic job! (Not sure if she has a tumblr unfortunately). Part of the reason I chose this fic to do this commentary for is because I know it’s most likely the one with the least amount of errors for that reason lol.

Anything else you’d like the readers to know about the story?

This is probably my favorite fic that I’ve written. (For Shameless anyway). Mostly because it was a lot of fun. My life was simpler back then and the Shameless/Gallavich fandom was fairly popping with S10 having just aired. I’ll always look at it fondly.

[saxandviolins88]

Since you and I both have such a bone to pick with John Barber's writing and I rarely see people criticize the actually offensive things he wrote, I wanted to send you an ask about this thing that has bothered me for ages: one of the issues by him I especially hated was RID #32, where he wrote Prowl thinking it was a good idea to point a gun to Jazz's head to get his attention (!) but then Barber also tried to tack on some kind of friendship moment at the end of the issue anyway? How he think he could have both? I mean, that's obviously ridiculous and racist (and Barber making it so that Jazz was also once a cop does not improve it).

But there's another minor thing—um. Why did Barber also have Jazz making fun of Prowl's weight in that issue??? What was that? And isn't it extra weird when RID Prowl is a character with a distressingly THIN waist??? There are tons of amazing fat Autobots like Ratchet, Ironhide, Inferno, Grapple, and Trailbreaker, so this felt extra disrespectful. How could anyone look at Jazz and be like, you know what would make this character better? If he made fatphobic jokes! —arceespinkgun

Oh! RID is Gr8! Except when it's not.

It's so odd, there WAS actual good character work in JB's work... But when there wasn't, you get someone like Jazz.

Jazz, for me, in the hands of John Barber is really a lost character, he tries to cling on his G1 personality while still adding that gritty John Barber grime of his, but I feel it doesn't work. Especially when he brings in Costa's god-awful writing, yeah, I know JB's thing is building on what came before (take a shot every time AHM comes up), but the cop murder stuff was egregious and brought Jazz's character down imo.

Let's go to the beginning of RID, shall we? Jazz after the war basically becomes a NAIL, which I loved actually! The whole theme of RID is moving on from the war and the past! It does get derailed a little when issue #15 comes in and we have Jazz saying Sky-bite (Decepticon turned NAIL) should help the injured because all he has been is a stone-cold killer (not murder-hobo levels of fanon, but eh). But his "moving on" arc is quickly(?) resumed when he DOESN'T join the Autobots in exile and joins Starscream... as security? OH-KAY!

This whole "NAIL" Jazz doesn't last, as RID #31 makes a point to have a flashback scene to remind us of the JUSTIFIABLE cop murder and have him back in the Autobots after he's doomed to the cop purgatory.

Granted, I'm making my way through the "Optimus Prime" comic book, I tried to read those but got bored(I get bored easily sorry) - I'll make an addendum if I have anything to say about that.

What really bothers me with JB's RID Jazz is that he seems really locked in that role, but I don't have any suggestions that wouldn't be awfully anti-Barber, yk? Like 'forgetting that dog-shit Costa plot point' isn't something he'd do. Hey, but imagine Jazz helping rebuild Cybertron along with Wheeljack or something idfk.

Also, having THE black Transformer be associated with violence, cop violence more specifically, is sure a decision ig.

LOL that bit in RID #32 is SO CLUNKY!! It's a shitty pay-off to a cliffhanger on RID #31!! The cliffhanger that was just made to make the reader wonder: "Is Prowl betraying the Autobots?!" This was the game JB was playing in the Earthfall arc, which was the arc that made it clear that Prowl really is JB's favorite character...

WDYM? I LIE AWAKE WANTING ALL MY FAVES TO BE FATPHOBIC??!? sigh... John Barber is my greatest enemy.

But take my opinion with a grain of salt, maybe when I finish OP it all makes sense and it was just a long game.

[thebrandywine]

20 Questions for Fic Authors

@catgirladjacent tagged me! and i like to infodump! let's go!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

97 including some that are under pseuds, though I did orphan a few once I started fixating on Resident Evil more fully. I was embarrassed lmao

2. What is your AO3 wordcount?

865,796 o__o

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Resident Evil exclusively now!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

don't worry about this one cuz it's under a pseud lol

[every picture tells a story], 387 kudos

[lantern], 376 kudos

broken machine, 356 kudos

[the quality of mercy], 332 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

I do!!! more often than not it's just with some emojis now lol but i relish and treasure every single comment i get

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh, this one has yet to be published :) don't worry! <3

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

hmm... probably Two Cakes (which is coming out this month)? made me feel all sappy at least :]

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not now, but I definitely got some hateful comments on things when i was a lot younger-- mostly people complaining that i was a bad writer or that i should delete (which i did, so they got their wish lol). now if anything i mostly get people who comment on my stuff to kind of pressure me to update XYZ (the nivannedy catboy fic is notorious for this, which is why i haven't been working on it very much lately). the block button is my friend tho <3

9. Do you write smut? If so, which kind?

yeah :)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest crossover you’ve ever written?

Nope!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

no

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i think someone wanted to at one point and then never did lol

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i've talked with some people about this before but we've never gotten around to it :P

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

i love chreon but there's just SOMETHING about nivannedy---

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

the lethan re7/re8 rewrite. i really want to keep working on them but i just have so much more on my plate that i keep pushing it off, especially when it'll require the research of rewatching playthroughs a few times to reimaging the plot points. maybe one day tho!!

16. What are your writing strengths?

i've been told that my dialog is good which makes me happy because there are a few fics where i'm actually really proud of it :3

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

describing things, especially people! for some reason i always feel like it breaks the flow so i just... am like "there is a man. anyway--" sorry readers but it's your job to imagine him skjfnskdnf

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i only speak english and i'm also VERY american. i don't personally want to mess around with that because it would be google translate type shit and that's just sad imo :/ so since i don't know enough i will abstain

19. First fandom you wrote for?

pokemon!!!!!!!!! i literally found THE first fic i ever wrote which would have been somewhere between third and fifth grade because i PRINTED IT and DREW PICTURES. it is called The Mysterious Manaphy and makes no sense. i read it aloud to my partner and they howled. yeah, it was just that good

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

listen, i love broken machine, but dualities has seriously taken the cake!!!!!!!!!

thank you for tagging me claire :3 i tag @flurrin @fonulyn and @silvercap!!!

[widebrimmedhatsblog]

Nights for the Ask game!! 💕

(I’m still behind on OTRA so don’t want to get spoilers 😭)

I'm doing one night and then another for this ask, and the one night one shot on another ask!!

Favorite Scene: I would say the bit with Liam in the library, where he kisses the top of her head. I have NO idea what chapter that is because I haven't re-read the whole fic in full, but that was the first scene that popped into my head. I also love every scene in the Xaden POV flashback, but especially the Imogen scene because that's precisely how I imagine their pre-apostasy dynamic to be.

Favorite Chapter: The original one shot or the epilogue! I love the dynamic in the original one shot, the confined setting, the lap sitting, all of it!! And in the epilogue, I love the symbolism of them having such a calm moment. Also, ALL of my 14k Xaden POV chapter (I should not have started answering this when AO3 was down, because I have no idea what number that was...8?)

Everything else is going below the cut because I'm yapping!!

Hardest Scene to Write: Mmmm, every scene involving the actual plot? Is that a good answer? Specifically, that first conversation she has with Xaden about Naolin and Brennan and the forcefields. I forced my IRL friend to read it for me because I was SO nervous about the plot making any sense. Also, the scene where Vi reads Brennan's letter, and Xaden helps her through it. I got really hung up on writing that one, because I really wanted the emotional intensity to be there. For some reason, at that point I was really struggling to judge the emotional intensity of my OWN writing, but in everything I've written since that has an intense emotional component (OTRA, looking at you bestie) I've been significantly more confident!

Favorite Character to Write: Nights Xaden my beloved. In terms of comparison to my other fics, I seriously prefer nights Bodhi to OTRA Bodhi.

Favorite Dynamic: Riorgail!! I was constantly on edge about it not being in character for Xaden to be mildly emotionally available, but since decided I don't give a fuck! They were so fun! Especially at the end. Some of the comments I got quoting things Xaden said in those last couple chapters baffled me.

Why I Chose The Title: I can't remember! In terms of nights-verse as the series title, I thought it was a silly in-joke for me, because the whole fic until the very end only takes place at night. This was supposed to limit me and make it shorter so I could get back to writing original stuff/my plane crash AU sooner, but that actually didn't work! Evidently.

A Fun Fact About The Fic: I think this is something most of you partially know, but it was NOT supposed to be a long fic. I wrote the one shot for Alli and Amy's birthday bash, and a lot of people asked for me to continue it. I think they meant like...add a sex scene. But, I started thinking about writing my own long fic, especially because my favorite long fics in the fandom were both on hiatus at that point. Anyway, all that was backstory. The fun fact is that I sort of spontaneously came up with the force fields idea, and then I decided it was bat shit insane and no one would read it, so I told my IRL friend about it, and she encouraged me to write it!

[chaifootsteps]

The issues with Stella are so goddamn easy to fix it's actually painful any time she comes on screen and they have to find a way to bend over backwards to make her as unlikable as possible to artificially prop Stolas up as well as avoid the classism plot that THEY WROTE INTO THE SHOW.

Just establish very clearly AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW that both of them were okay with the other sleeping around (since neither liked each other and neither wanted to get married) but have Stella get mad specifically because Stolas was caught sleeping with an imp, and that reflects badly on her. If you want her to be a villain, you don't need her to be cartoonishly evil and completely bereft of personality and likeability beyond bitch (derogatory) even as a child; she can just be classist and obsessed with status. (Also maybe don't make her stupid? Maybe don't have her creepy incest-vibes brother around at all? Give her some agency as a villain, you know? Maybe let her be funny? MAYBE LET HER TALK TO HER FUCKING DAUGHTER ON SCREEN?)

But fixing Stella would force the show to actually acknowledge the classism that they've set up and have been trying to ignore in lieu of writing fluff one shots of their favorite ships. And it sucks because she could be a really, really interesting and entertaining lens into how the upper-crusts of this setting actually behave. She SHOULD HAVE BEEN the face of that plot. If you want her to be this evil scheming funny girlboss bitch (affectionate), LET HER BE ONE. Hell, she can even be sympathetic and redeemable if you play up the fact that her behavior comes from a fear of being othered by the Goetia.

As a side note, why are arranged marriages even a thing when divorce exists and vice versa? If it's a eugenics thing for blue bloods why is marriage even a factor when they could just have the kids without it? If they're immortal outside of specific weaponry why do they need heirs in the first place? How DID Striker get all of his angelic weapons? How did Stella even meet Striker, who HATES the upper classes? Why does Striker even work for her when she's the ONE CHARACTER explicitly shown in-canon to embody the things he hates about the system at large?

I guess my point is that fixing Stella's writing would kind of cascade out into actual worldbuilding, stakes, more screen time for female characters, and more coherent better-constructed plots so Spindlehorse won't do it because they want to focus exclusively on a middling romance between two characters who have ZERO CHEMISTRY. If they wanted to focus on that, great, but why on EARTH did they set up all of this other shit? Season one set up conflict and interest and season two has done nothing but blue-ball me by dangling those plot threads in front of me and yanking it away at the last possible second. I WANT the show to be good, but it desperately needs better editing at the script level which I am CONVINCED only goes through one draft and are written several weeks apart.

ALSO THE LATEST EPISODE GAVE ME MOTION SICKNESS WHY WAS THE CAMERA MOVING SO MUCH WHEN THE CHARACTERS WERE STATIC HOW MUCH BUDGET AND TIME GOT WASTED WITH THE UNNECESSARY FUCKING SHAKY CAM?

(Sorry for dropping this huge chunk of text on you, it was supposed to just be about Stella originally but holy fuck that last episode made me nauseous and I got a bit carried away.)

No apologies needed; it was an excellent chunk of text.

Stella deserved better, and we as an audience deserved better, which isn't to say she needs to be redeemable or even likeable. But she does need to be human...to do something outside of scream and drink wine and exist. She needs to do more than just prop up the show's main ship. Give her something she thinks about, cares about, and like you said, let her talk to her fucking daughter.

Nothing about this shaky-cam show makes sense or feels fleshed out. Agreed completely that there's no way it's going through multiple drafts, and the longer these 30 car pileups of plot holes and characterization problems continue to go on, the closer the show gets to a point where no amount of revising is going to save it.

[11queensupreme11]

Your favorite and least favorite things about ror and pjo?

PJO

favorite things:

pretty much the entirety of the first series!

i love how rick was able to perfectly (imo) entertwine the ancient greek world with the modern world

i especially love how most of percy's journey was similar to the ancient greek heroes' journeys in the myths

THE FACT THAT PERCY REJECTED GODHOOD TO TRY AND GIVE DEMIGODS AND MINOR GODS A BETTER LIFE HE'S SO SWEET I LOVE HIM OMG

no seriously, i LOVE how instead of being selfish and becoming a god, he tried to actually fix the root of the problem so no other child would ever go through the same things his generation of demigods went through THATS HOW YOU END AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME, I'M PROUD OF YOU PERCY

everything about the last olympian. he writes war and battle SO well, my heart was literally pounding throughout the whole book!!!

the character deaths.... they gutted me, but they were executed so well

least favorite things:

the gods weren't very similar to the mythical counterpart.... like how pjo!poseidon was a chill, mostly nice guy whereas in the myths he was a rapist psycho.... and how pjo!ares was implied to be abusive towards clarisse whereas in the myths ares respects women and killed his daughter's rapist (tho i get why he couldn't do that since this is a kid's book)

the entirety of heroes of olympus 💀

no seriously, i didn't like any of it

the lost hero and the son of neptune were okay, but after that things started getting messy. probably because of how many main characters he had to write about

the plot was very very.... weird??? especially around the part where they were looking for the physician's cure. a side quest took up a major chunk of the book

BLOOD OF OLYMPUS WAS SHITTY OMG

the final battle against gaea was so lame!!!! the seven weren't even fighting here, only a few of them were!!! the fact that piper was able to put her to sleep too even though rick literally wrote a list of ways charmspeak would fail AND GAEA CHECKED EVERY ONE OF THEM???? yet piper succeeded anyway???

no seriously, i was expecting the last olympian kinda shit in blood of olympus, but i got NOTHING

rick's shitty view of 'feminism' wasn't feminism at all, it was more misandry (the hunt) and piper ESPECIALLY had some glaring internalized misogyny

i get he was trying to make her a feminist icon, but he really failed with piper. piper clearly hated femininity and looked down feminine girls AND SHE WAS PROVEN RIGHT because 99% of her enemies (major or minor) were girls that were comfortable with their femininity and rick had her triumph over them every time

rick's favoritism over piper. her charmspeak worked on opponents that it shouldn't have worked on (gaea and khione), every other female character suddenly gets downgraded whenever she's around (drew, aphrodite, annabeth, the entire fucking aphrodite cabin, etc), none of her actual flaws were called out (this is mostly because rick never intended for her internalized misogyny and obsessiveness to be her flaws, they were created by accident and noticed by the readers).... and you get the point

ROR

favorite things:

the character designs are sooooo 🤤

99% of the characters have 8 pack abs OR MORE

THE GORE!!!! WOOHOO I LOVE THE VIOLENCE (in the manga at least.... the anime censored it smh 🤦‍♀️)

there isn't really much worldbuilding yet but i love what we've been given so far!!!!

the fact that the mangaka was able to create a universe where ALL the gods of ALL the pantheons are in it and it doesn't look like a hot mess??? much respect!

THE FACT THAT FAMOUS HUMANS ARE FIGHTING TOO!!!

THE MATCHUPS ARE AMAZING LIKE IMAGINE BEING TOLD NIKOLA TESLA WAS FIGHTING THE DEVIL

the death scenes!!! yes they're tragic, but they're so well done!!!! the way lu bu's men rallied up to join him in niflhel, the way every human grieved when adam, their father, died, how tesla's last words were to give hope to humanity, I LOVED IT ALL 😭😭😭

least favorite things:

i really need them to explain wtf a demigod is cuz i get how humans are considered demigods (they're humans with the strength of a god) BUT I REALLY NEED AN EXPLANATION ON HOW THE VALKYRIES ARE CONSIDERED DEMIGODS 💀

the gods were.... kinda underwhelming. they seemed more like superhumans than actual gods. poseidon didn't use his water powers? hades didn't summon the dead? no lightning from zeus? most of the gods were fighting physically and not using their actual powers which was kinda...... meh

the list of fighters for both humans and gods.... the gods literally have 5 greeks and 3 norse gods whereas the humans have 4 japanese fighters 🫤 i'd like a lil more diversity

the way the fight scenes are animated in the anime..... they are so bad..... like SO bad 😭😭 my jaw dropped when i watched them

the censoring of the violence and gore in the anime 😔

[eusuntgratie]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

tagged by @jdeanmorgan 😘

How many works do you have on ao3? 264. holy shit!

What's your total ao3 word count? 428,688

What fandoms do you write for? men's hockey rpf, rwrb, rwrb rpf, 911, 911 rpf are the ones i have current wips for although its been a minute since i've written buddie. i'm an rpf bitch lately.

Top five fics by kudos: open my heart and let it bleed onto yours (sterek, teen wolf), (be a) good wolf (sterek, teen wolf), safe (sterek, teen wolf), partner (buddie, 911), home (sterek, teen wolf) these haven't moved in a while my new fandoms are not as big as teen wolf those fics did some numbers

Do you respond to comments? nearly always! i love engaging with readers, but even if its just an emoji or a thank you i usually respond.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? probably hold me like i was forgiven (tknp, men's hockey rpf)

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? recently, and in the most traditional sense, maybe dance with me so we don't cry (firstprince, rwrb)

Do you get hate on fics? i write a lot of rpf, so yeah. not on hockey fic, but actor rpf tends to bring it out in people 🙃 i got more comments that irked me on disaster than i'm used to bc i didn't do what some people expected, but only one or two of those i'd consider hate.

Do you write smut? yes! the fic i posted today, you could've texted (ryliver, 911 rpf) is pwp.

Craziest crossover: i don't think i've written one? i'm not opposed but. not yet.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that i know of

Have you ever had a fic translated? no but i would love that! eventually i will tackle translating one of mine into spanish.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? i've cowritten a series but not a fic, but only the ones i wrote are still up

All time favorite ship? impossible question. i don't ever really get over/move on from a ship completely i just shift to mostly reading/writing something else. stucky, sterek, buddie, firstprince, tknp, and sidgeno are probably my big ones that are like, ingrained into my soul at this point. but they absolutely are not the only ones i care about. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? i have a bunch of sterek and buddie wips that i'm not sure i'll ever get back to. the buddie ones certainly have more of a chance but. i don't know. shadow (buddie) and stilinski construction (sterek) are two i think about every so often but i'm not sure i'll finish.

What are your writing strengths? who knows. dialog maybe? when i have it nailed down for a character which isn't always. giving a little glimpse of a world and situation in a short fic, maybe? sexual tension, perhaps. i feel like i write good blowjobs.

What are your writing weaknesses? uh, plot? action? why would my characters DO anything when they could just talk and think and fuck. kissing is so fucking hard to write.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? on the rare occasion it actually makes sense for the character im fine with it. i've written some spanish dialog in fic. but just because a character speaks another language doesn't mean they'd randomly start speaking it in the middle of a conversation or something.

First fandom you wrote in? stucky/captain america/mcu. my first fic was Captain America and the Winter Soldier Read Thirst Tweets

Favorite fic you've written? if i had to pick right now it would be disaster and forgive me, father for very different reasons <3

tagging @lostcol @bigassbowlingballhead @jbarneswilson @voxofthevoid @oxfordslutphase @onward--upward and anybody else who wants to do it!

[gilbirda]

I fee like people are milking the Anger Management ship a little too often now when there are other ships they can go with. The only Danny x Cass ship that sailed and I’ve seen is in Lex Luther’s Ascent from Supervillainy to Fatherhood 😃 I kind of want to see Jazz and Dick getting closer because of being the oldest and/or Danny and a super kid! Danny x Duke is a ship that no one wants to dip their feet in 😔 they could bond over having powers or maybe everlasting quartet 🤔 (sam x danny x val x tucker) sorry im good at giving ideas out im just horrible at executing them 😭 also, Jazz x Babs? their ship Name could be Oracle Specter? Bc some hc jazz as a liminal and oracle liminal doesn’t sound as good 😀

Friend, I'll be real with you, I don't see the point of this message.

The following answer is not for you specifically, is to everyone out there that has said something similar. I can't just ignore it anymore.

I will say this once: why the need to stomp on something to highlight another? Why start with "I think Anger Management is too common/used/repetitive, when we could be doing this instead."

I'm sorry but this rubs me the wrong way, and I cannot find in me the energy to play nice when it isn't the first time I've seen people stomp on my favorite ship for the sole purpose to try and highlight other ships.

The sad part? I like other ships. Jazz/Dick (Nightbirds), Danny/Cass (Dead Silent) and all those you mentioned are okay.

(Jazz/Babs is Red Dead Redemption, but it can be changed)

Like, what's the point? Guilt trip people into making content for other ships? Make me feel bad enough so I write for other ships instead? I am not the DPxDC ships wizard, I don't wake up one day and decide which ship becomes popular.

I just saw the potential for Jazz and Jason, how interesting their dynamics could be, and run with it. I'm happy that my rarepair has become so popular that it has antis and detractors, it's such an honor to have started the fire that took my OTP out of rarepair hell.

But, please.

If anybody out there likes other ships? That's great!

Now go make content for it.

Don't go into mine, or other writer's, inbox and try to guilt trip people into making content for your ship. Or make vagueing posts in the Anger Management tag complaining about it.

Be the change you want to see.

I wrote nearly 100k words of my ship before I saw other people that wasn't me making posts and AUs about them. Before I saw more fics with that ship posted in AO3.

I just sat down and made content.

"Why are people sleeping on these ships?"

"Why isn't [CharacterA/CharacterB] more popular?"

"Anger Management is great, but I'd prefer if it was done this way instead."

THEN GO MAKE THE CONTENT YOURSELF.

Again, this isn't an attack on you personally, is a PSA to anybody out there being pissy about Anger Management and shitting on it just to make other ships look better or more interesting; or wondering out loud why this ship is popular and their ship is not, behaving as if it were all a plot to make Anger Management more popular on purpose.

Stop that.

Multiple ships can coexist in peace, no need to put down the popular ships unnecessarily. Is not rocket science.

[thisapplepielife]

20 Questions for Fic Writers!

I'm very belated for this, but thanks for the tag @hbyrde36!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

18! But a lot of those are in the Wildflowers series. (Maybe it should have been chaptered? I still don't know what the right answer was, lol.)

So, I basically have 3 things to read, if you count the two parts of the Jagged Little Pill series as one, and I always do. Wildflowers is for those that wanted more of Tuesday's, and not that many people wanted to read Tuesday's in the first place, haha. So it's a niche of a niche. But I hold it close to my heart, and it makes me happy that a few of you have been so on board with it, too. ❤️

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

487,289. Which is kind of crazy. I just looked, and I started writing You Oughta Know on July 30th, 2022. From then until today, that's 457 days. That's averaging over 1,000 words a day. That seems wild. (And I've got a lot of unpublished words still in the chamber, haha.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Just Stranger Things right now, but I'm not opposed to branching out as the mood strikes. I think I'd love to take on David/Patrick of Schitt's Creek someday.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Take the Money and Run (by a country mile, lol)

You Oughta Know

I'm Brave, But I'm Chicken Shit

Tuesday's Gone With the Wind

You Don't Know How It Feels (I didn't realize it had overtaken the first part of Wildflowers, so that's fun! More readers must have enjoyed the look at the Corroded Coffin boys, and I dig it.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I definitely try to respond to them all. Sometimes I'm a little slow about it though, sorry!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I like a happy ending. But Time to Move On, I guess? It's just a part of a series, so it's not like the ending is permanently sad, but that one does end at a sad point in their lives.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of them are pretty happy, but I'm partial to the epilogue ending of Take the Money and Run. That will always have my heart. ❤️

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've gotten a very little, so I feel pretty lucky.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes, and I write what fits the larger story, I hope. I've written M/M and F/M, so far. I haven't done a full PWP, though some of the parts of Wildflowers were supposed to be that, but the dang plot kept getting in the way. Whoops.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Just little brief ones, so far. There's a couple in Take the Money and Run that I find fun, but if you don't get them, I don't think they detract from the story.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, and I'm not sure it'd work for most of my stuff, with all the mixed media.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I'm not sure how good I'd be at that. I write by jumping all over the place. That'd probably be annoying for someone else to deal with, lol!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

All time? Man, that's hard. I'm obviously deep in a Steddie hole at the moment. But I'll go with my first. Pacey and Joey of Dawson's Creek. They brought me into fandom, into fic, so they get the gold star. (For more current ships, definitely Steddie and David & Patrick of Schitt's Creek.)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I don't really post anything I'm not basically finished with. But from my private stash, I like the idea of Here You Come Again, but I just have been writing other stuff. I'm going to take on my other Steddie (Untitled, But Not Really) WIP during NaNoWriMo. I've never done that before, so I thought might be fun, since I saw you can go rogue and write 50,000 words on something that isn't brand spanking new. So, even if that fic doesn't need 50,000 words to finish (and I'm not sure it does) it might give me the push to try to finish it up. I've been sitting on my hands on it since I decided to sign up, which is fine, I needed to finish up Wildflowers. (And get ahead on my Steddie Holiday Drabbles: I've finished 8 of the 30 so far.)

16. What are your writing strengths?

From the comments, I'm going to go with that I can make readers laugh from time to time, which makes me so happy. I also like to dig into the research.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Um, also the research, lol. Sometimes I'll be researching until I'm just wasting time. Some things really don't matter in the big picture. (But they do to me!!) And I need to learn to let them go.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

That's not something I've done, I don't think. But I have tried to respond to comments that were written in a different language using Google Translate.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Dawson's Creek. Many, many moons ago. At the turn of the millennium. (That's fun to say, ha!)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Unpopular opinion time! I know Take the Money and Run is more popular. By, well, a lot. And I do love it. It gave me the bug to write long fic again. But I have big feelings for Tuesday's Gone With the Wind. It was such an undertaking. All the mixed media. The endless research. And I fell in love with those characters in the process.

It wasn't as popular as TtMaR, but that's okay. It makes me very happy that it reached even as many people as it did. I know that author's note was enough to scare anyone away, haha. Add in the CNTW and it's amazing anyone read it at all. Thanks to those of you that did! You've made me so happy. ❤️

I'm so late for this, I'm not gonna tag, but if you haven't done it and want to, please do!!

[thedawningofthehour]

💫💞🍭

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

The long ones that analyze everything.

The ones that basically liveblog the entire chapter.

The ones that ask questions.

People are always apologizing for leaving me long comments, like BRO. I am in a constant state of salivating over the thought of talking about my blorbos. When I see a long comment I literally want to do a dance.

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

The straightforward answer, the characters. A story can survive a dumb plot, it can survive silly worldbuilding. It cannot survive a boring cast. That's what you remember of a story.

My own answer, how the story makes the audience feel. The plot takes a backseat to manipulating the readers into feeling things. I didn't keep Donnie chained to a table for fifteen chapters because it was a riveting plot point, okay, I did it because that was necessary to make you guys feel shit. Specifically the shit I wanted you to feel when we did move onto more interesting plot points.

🍭why did you start writing?

I think...way back when I was a little kid, when I started writing little stories in notebooks meant for school. I was a voracious reader, pretty much the second I got it down I was reading constantly. We got an assignment I think in like the third grade or something to write out our version of a fairy tale. I did Rumpelstiltskin (I don't remember if I chose it or it was assigned; if I chose I chose poorly because that's one of my least favorite fairy tales) and I wrote so much that the teacher cut me off halfway so someone else could present. Realizing that I could change stories to be whatever I wanted, that was a game changer.

I was writing essentially fanfiction for children's stories in the margins of my notebook from then on. I probably even did some TMNT stuff when I became obsessed with the 2003 show. God, and I'm back at it again, twenty years later.

[shark-myths]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you so much for the tag ((and drag)) @carbonbased000! this was very fun and thoughtful to do.

who is writing things right now? i never remember. i will tag a wide and perhaps not terribly relevant range of: @toorational @just-about-nothing @27-royal-teas @leyley09 @alienfuckeronmain @stereostatic @setting-in-a-honeymoon and anyone else so inclined!

++

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

65

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

968,103, but as i’ve said before, i have orphaned a lotta fic as well

3. What fandoms do you write for?

pretty much just Fall Out Boy, but i will occasionally dabble in something random! this includes tony stark femslash (not sorry, will not apologize), cobra kai, and anything about girls or characters who could compellingly be made into girls.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Difference Between Real Love and the Love on TV

Stranger Danger

Boys Next Door / Assholes

From Russia With Love (this is one of those random sidesteps, a MCU femslash epistolary)

Jet Black Crow

(As an aside, it is so wild to me that older fics have so many more kudos than newer ones—you can really tell that fob went 5 years between albums! imo this is NOT a list of my best fic.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

for years, I responded to every single one! then at some point i fell behind because of my high standards for trying to put the same thought and effort into my responses as all you lovely people put into the comments, then i became overwhelmed, then i stopped. I AM SO SORRY IF I OWE YOU RETURN COMMENTS, i read them and i treasured them and you are a huge part of the reason i keep writing. love u all!!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I only write happy endings, man! I stopped writing tragedies a long time ago. My angstiest fics are red and unafraid of living and In Every Universe. the end of Made One Way (Cobra Kai) is ambiguous and potentially brutal, depending on how you take it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

um, every single other one! I’m a big fan of the gory fairy tale ending of The Boys Time Can’t Capture, and transmuting the hiatus into an act of mutual care and love in Sell Out Girl meant so much to me.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not since my first fandom and god, don’t

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes, a bit, could probably write a little less about feelings and a little more about feelings if u know what i mean. I’m super into sex as a person so i almost never write about intense romantic connections without bringing smut into it somehow; they feel really tightly linked for me, and i think i also crave media with HOT and INTIMATE connections between queer people. In terms of kind, i guess i’d have to say it’s largely rushed vanilla emotion-and-orgasm driven scenes. not a very flattering oeuvre i've created here.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

mash-ups are my favorite thing to do! I especially like ripping off movie and fairy tale plots and making them stranger, or else taking a really specific constrained timeline from someone’s life or a piece of media and transforming it somehow. best sandbox ever. my craziest one is probably the coyote ugly / beauty in the beast peterick fic, Wolves Dressed As Wolves. and i love this type of transformation in everything, whether it's the weirdo gender shit i just learned duchamp was doing or katherine addison's destructively beautiful 'sherlock holmes except there're ANGELS' novel or the buenos aires re-imagining version of vivaldi's four seasons by piazzolla, my life and taste keeps taking me into the various ways we fold and refract and remake the same experiences over and over again through different lenses or angles or selves. to quote some author whose identity i forgot years ago, though the quote remains: "there are no new stories." all art is iterative, and the most interesting thing we can do as creators is deviate in new, unexpected ways.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yeah, a million years ago on deviantart

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! I have had a few translations and a podfic. I love it when people want to interact with my stories in their own way, all interpretations are welcome.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

one day i hope to be domesticated enough that @carbonbased000 can write with me. I used to co-write by passing the laptop back and forth with my bestie in high school; we wrote self-insert x-men fanfiction based on the comic books in like 2004 and it was an absolute blast; but generally i am considered impossible to work with, by both myself and others.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

i feel completely unqualified to answer this question. i have been driven insane by any number of pairings in my life. when i was younger, i was more interested in internalized homophobia themes in ships, because that's where WE were culturally in the early 2000s and where i was in relationship to myself, and i think each change and growth and greater empowerment and self-possession in my own life is mirrored in what i am interested in. i feel the most drawn in by dynamics between people that are creative and give me a new way to access and explore interesting ideas and themes; i’m a real sucker for shared art products and touring bands as unique and agonizing ways to connect people. there are so many different ways to express that someone is your soulmate and you'll never convince me throwing away all trappings of a traditional life in order to rove the earth and make art with your friends isn't one of them.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

do you not just block out your WIPs from your mind so that you can live in moment-to-moment freedom?? I am a finisher in general, i have a few peterick drafts lurking around in my gdocs but if they remain untouched, it’s generally because there are only a couple thousand words to them and i’m not very excited about the possibilities of the fic. there is a sequel to a meticulously historically accurate pirate fic i wrote long ago called Providence, i got to about 30k and then lost all of my extremely painstaking notes and research in a software update. I’m still very interested in and excited by the idea, but i lost the notes and felt too traumatized to continue with the project genuinely a decade ago, so the idea that i will return and finish the fic seems fairly unlikely. Providence is one of my greatest pieces of writing ever, though, so hope springs eternal, i guess!

16. What are your writing strengths?

lyrical prose and conveying humor via unusual sentence construction. i was recently told i write arguments well and feel tough as a result, like, watch out! you don’t want to fight me!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i am lazy and easily distractible, i don’t plot in advance, i barely edit because i get really rigid and have trouble seeing any other way to say something than how i’ve already said it, i have an unwillingness to delete and rewrite even when that’s the only way forward (see: my eternally 90% finished age swap peterick au), i use up all my emotional energy elsewhere and then neglect my craft for weeks at a time. 

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

sometimes i’ll use pet names in another language if it makes sense for the character, but i avoid this in general as i’m not fluent in anything other than english. I would, have, and do sound like a duolingo lesson.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

afi bandom, when we used to call it slash, when i thought i had invented it with my friend at summer camp, when i was 13 and sent her kidfic stories i wrote out by hand in pink envelopes.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

genuinely i almost always write things i personally want to read, so i love them all! except the fucking fixed stars of heaven, everyone knows that fic tortured me to within an inch of my sanity. My most personal and personally meaningful fic is Girl Out Boy. i have a tattoo of it on my arm.

[sadisthetic]

end of the year fic asks! give us a behind-the-scenes look at "for want (for nothing)"; why did you include a scene, when and where did you figure out that one tricky sentence, which part wrote itself, things like that!

thats a fucking thing? well lucky for YOU i LOVE talking about my own writing and that fic DEFINITELY has quite a few "bts" things i could talk about lmao

first thing to start off with is that i actually rewatched and studied that corruption scene in canon quite a bit while i wrote this. i needed the refresher and Man did i realize i forgotten a bunch of major plot points (most of which werent actually relevant to the fic) lol. but anyways the structure of my fic is pretty strongly based on its canon counterpart and theres a lot of little things i took inspiration from and just injected more flavor to it. like kai uses lightning a lot??? which make sense production wise bc thats like. probably easiest element to show off and make it look cool. so yay! excuse to use my jay bias and favor using his powers lol

in general that fic was a means for me to write a character study for kais character which i love a lot. he is my second fav blorbo. i have a huge weakness for older siblings in media. and kais shift in character is so interesting even if it was never done with conscious intention. ninjago Definitely uses every single one of their characters as pawns to advance the plot of whatever rather than you know. treating them like characters who are people. so theyre inconsistent with or contradicting themselves. characters are used however the writers seem fit with the situation at hand. i think the corruption scene is a fair example of it. kai was over it right? the whole green ninja thing? and yet. anyways my fic was an attempt at reframing and adding context and depth to kais character bc man did think about these fucking legos a lot for some goddamn reason when its a bad show!!! maybe some of yall will hate me for saying it. but man. ninjago sucks more often or not. not Entirely BUT A LOT OF IT IS NOT OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY.

and that sorta gives me an awkward segue into lloyd. haha. you know the line "A brat who had everything handed to him by destiny. It wasn’t because he deserved it. It was simply because he was born special."? well. it makes sense in the context of the fic that kai feels this way bc thats the natural conclusion the fic flowed into. But Also. i wont lie. that is my own genuine thoughts about lloyds development as a character. lloyds writing fucking BLOOOOOWSSS. and none of it is his fault. its the writers fault. but MAN its the LAZIEST DESTINED HERO/LEADERSHIP CHARACTER ARC I EVER SEEN. IT COULDVE BEEN INTERESTING. but no it was too simple too forced too Cheap. too shallow. its like they picked his little minifig and decided he Must be the prophesied hero no matter what :) and they forced his little lego feets into the studs of Destiny above everyone else and made it happen in the easiest way possible. by simply declaring it. forcing him into the role unnaturally. and because hes the Chosen One that means hes very very very important right? so NATURALLY hes the leader also! HELLO HES A FUCKING BABY??? NO SENIORITY?? any leadership skills he gained is because he was Forced to develop them, not because hes a natural leader. i could talk shit about his treatment all day but all in all i hate the flagrant favoritism the show gives lloyd when its meant to be a show with a team dynamic. i dont hate lloyd but i sure do hate the way his character "developed". this fucking baby was fed too many rare candies and some evolutionary stone on top of it. hes not the best he could be as a character because none of it naturally happened. no care put into developing his characters. i could accept lloyd being the green ninja or being a leader. if it were written well at least. ANYWAYS. kai is a subtle projection of me. or closer, a messenger. he was corrupted by me in way considering i was the writer lol. but it works because theres a bit of truth in there isnt there?

also that fic also happen bc i wanted to writer fun elemental power stuff along with fucked corruption. i love fantasy power things. and i LOVE rancid rotting feelings

[pastafossa]

as someone who has written over 130 chapters for TRT (big fan ofc omg i love you and your writing and your story so much) what's your advice for someone who's feeling burnt out after only the 3rd chapter. Like the plot is clear and I want to write it so bad but I just...don't write. And it's getting annoying

is this like a substance you're injected with? Is it the same as the determination in undertale? what keeps you going?

I am indeed an experimental subject, injected early on with a proprietary blend of ADHD Hyperfixation and Crow Brain Wanting To Show Readers The Shiny Thing conveyed into my brain by a base blend of high-caffeine coffee, you too can have this blend for the low low price of Procrastinating Household Tasks While Also Being Distracted By Shiny Things. Act now and we'll give you the free gift of Insomnia (tm)!

Ok but in reality - first, thank you so much anon! I'm so happy you enjoy the story!

First, I have good news - on TRT's full page index, you'll see: I burned out early on when things got busy in my life. I went almost two years after chapter four before I came back in Jan 2021 and began updating every week. So it happens to everyone sometimes, me included!

There are a couple of things I learned to help prevent burnout though, little things that have helped me keep going this long:

For me one of the blocks was perfectionism. I was editing as I wrote, essentially, judging the literally unfinished product before I was done, and that was stressful and exhausting. It's a bit like moping over a cake's appearance while all the ingredients are still in the bowl. 'This doesn't look like a cake, it's going to taste terrible, why do I bother' but I haven't even baked or frosted it yet! Once I learned, truly, that it's ok to have a messy rough draft, things got easier and less stressful, and it made burnout less likely.

I like to think happy thoughts about the chapter! I think about how exciting it will be for readers to read a romantic moment, or what they'll do with clues I leave, or how they'll react to a wicked cliffhanger. I basically pump myself up for chapters when needed the same way I would when I'm going to give someone a surprise gift or cook them something.

Include in the fic tropes you want to see! It's no secret with TRT that along with the more serious plotlines and romance, it's also me exploring some of my absolute favorite tropes - cuddle for warmth, slow burn, drunken almost-kiss, the Big Declaration Of Love While Unconscious, the mad scientist, etc. I get so excited about the chance to write those tropes, and because I've outlined the plot, I know how close they are, and I try to sprinkle them through at regular intervals as a treat for myself. These are carrots for you to help prevent burnout because holy shit you want to get to the treat, you want to chase it like a cat with a laser pointer, it's right there, all you need to do is go through a few more chapters, go get it! gogogogogogogogo

This is the hard one - there are some days I'm just like ggrrrr don't want to. And whenever possible, I force myself to do it anyway. It's miserable and it sucks, each word is like pulling teeth in the beginning. But the good thing I've found is that once I pushed through it early on, I was able to build momentum, and it got easier. It was like my brain figured out, 'well she's going to make me write anyway so I may as well just get it over with.' It's very important to remember point 1 when you do this - a chapter you're struggling on will most likely feel bad or terrible, you'll be convinced no one will read it. BUT everything can be fixed in editing, and most people will have no idea you struggled with it. I've got some chapters I wrote out like that in TRT and they fit in perfectly!

Outlineeee, outline outline outline. I hate outlining but it's important for a reason - because when I'm like 'I LITERALLY DO NOT HAVE THE BRAIN CAPACITY TO PLAN THIS' I don't actually have to. Because I have the outline, the roadmap, and I've already figured out what needs to happen. All I have to do is write down what happens, and then make it pretty, the same way going by a recipe is easier than trying to come up with a new dish yourself. <3

Honestly I don't judge anyone who struggles with chapter fics, and what I've done with TRT is very unusual. I won't lie though, it teaches you TONS about writing. This is most of the stuff I've learned and use to avoid burnout!