#Writing meta

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

It's actually funny, in a meta way, how people are salty about Miquella being a villain. Because, like, that's how it is in-game too.

The people of the Lands Between wanted Miquella to be the solution to their problems. To be the promised savior. The God who would get it all right and do what Marika tried to do and failed so resoundingly, bring an age of infinite prosperity.

But, no, it doesn't work like that. Gods can't solve their problems. The Gods want their own ends and then convince people that what they want is what's best for them. The fans are the same as the poor bastards in the Haligtree, waiting for their savior, only for it to turn out he's just another spoiled kid.

It's brilliant, from a writing perspective. They kept Miquella vague, letting the Soulsborne fandom do what it always does, theorize, investigate, and build up ideas. We built up an image of Miquella as a savior, a hero, one of the only truly heroic characters to understand and get it right.

But in the end, Miquella fooled us as well as he fooled his own people.

[coyote-nebula]

To everyone who has lush fields ripe with story ideas but is struggling to go out and actually harvest them with your writer’s scythe: that’s alright. There’s a reason.

I see writers despairing or making self-deprecating jokes about how many wips they have, as if the ability to come up with the idea is equal to the ability to finish it out into an end product.

It isn’t.

A lot of our ideas come about, not because we were determined to be productive writers, but because daydreaming is an internal escape from life’s demands.

Writing is a demand, too.

Resting and relaxing are basic needs, unlike the high level, abstract satisfaction of being creatively productive. That’s why you might daydream (which is a mild and normal form of dissociation) ideas that you feel good about, and then struggle to research, write the words, fill plotholes, check grammar, revise— all the critical thinking and executive function things involved in creation. Your basic needs must be satisfied before your higher needs can be met effectively.

So, if you’re daydreaming about your stories extensively to mitigate stress, it’s expecting a lot of your stressed self to return from fantasy land, sit down in the cold hard real world and do the hard work to write masterpieces of literature. Those operations are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Writing is hard. Making yourself feel guilty is only going to make it harder. You don’t have to atone for entertaining or distracting your mind by making that available to other people. Daydreaming is a valid end in itself.

Don’t feel bad about having ideas but not being able to write them. Scribble some notes if you can, if you want, but above all enjoy the escapism and take care of yourself first. The words will come after.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

been really into betrayal lately

[alpaca-clouds]

On Writing Disabilities

When it comes to writing minorities we usually talk a lot about LGBTQ* and BI_PoC, but the topic that usually gets overlooked are disabilities. While at this point we might see some version of characters with autism, and ADHD. Usually in a way that the characters are a bit "oddballs", though, not in the way of characters being non-verbal and rarely only involving symptoms like meltdowns and such.

And in general... It annoys me. Especially in western media.

During the last two or three years Japanese media has incresingly started to include a lot more disability representation, even among main characters. This mostly happens in slice of life anime and manga, but it generally is a nice change of pace. But there is also stuff like Witch Hat Atelier, that goes stronger into disabilities in a fantasy world.

Now, there is some representation in western media. I mean, Dragon Prince comes to mind with aunt Amaya, and some of the background characters in Miraculous Ladybug have some disabilities. However, I cannot think of a single piece of visual media at the very least with a disabled main character. At least not within all the scifi/fantasy stuff I am consuming.

And even when it comes to side characters, it is not very common. Same with books. And maybe there is a good reason for this, because it really turns out that a lot of abled people suck at imagining disabilities, because when they think about a disability, they will usually think about what they would do if they became suddenly disabled in a very specific way.

The issues with that are somewhat multifold.

One part s, that a lot of abled people misunderstand disabilities in general. This basically boils down to binary thinking. Either something works 100% or it does not work at all. This is why abled people will act as if they have found you cheating when you stand up from your wheelchair. They do not realize that most people who sit in a wheelchair are not in fact paraplegic, but sit in the wheelchair for other reasons. When I need the wheelchair, I need it, because my blood oxygen levels are too low, and I am very, very dizzy on that day, so without the wheelchair I would not be able to move around without falling over. I can however stand up for a moment to fetch something, or I can get up and easily transfer into my bed or a toilet. Other people sit in a wheelchair because of chronic pain, or fits of weakness, or cramps or... the reasons are endless, really. Many people who sit in a wheelchair do not use the wheelchair every day. I am by now down to 2-3 days a month. But on those days I either stay in bed or need to use the wheelchair.

And the same goes with other disabilities. People hear "deaf" and think the people hear nothing. Most people who are labled deaf are in fact hard of hearing. They hear something, just not enough to function like a normal hearing person. Most legally blind people are able to see something. Some see in little flecks, some see just very blurry, some see on one eye and not the other... It goes on like this. But most times when abled people write about this, they do not depict it this way. Because they do not understand disability.

And again, they usually will look at it often from the perspective of suddenly loosing something that they have.

And mind you: Yes, most disabilities are not a thing you have at birth. You will gain this disability somehow during the course of your life. But here is the thing: No matter when you acquire your disability, you will get used to it. Sure, it might be a shock at first, and a lot of the depictions by abled people writing disabled people, might work if the character has recently acquired that disability. But it does usually not work for a character who has been disabled for 10+ years, or who has actually been disabled from birth.

Abled people can often not imagine that there are in fact disabled people - especially among those who have been disabled from birth - who do not want to be "healed". And cannot imagine that to some people "healing" is actually horrifying. We often hear tearjerker stories about blind and deaf people being cured and first seeing/hearing their loved ones. The stories we do not hear are the stories of those being "healed" and then finding, that actually they just mentally cannot properly deal with the visual or audio information and find it horrifying and/or painful.

And that is the other issue with writing disabled people: Often disabled people are written just to be healed. And that is just... not optimal.

So, what am I even trying to say?

Honestly, I don't know. Probably: Read actually stuff from the perspective of disabled people. And keep in mind that disabled people will always exist. Like, if you do not have disabled people existing in your fantasy/scifi works, I will always assume you are eugenicist.

[deliciouskeys]

"Write for yourself, you can't depend on getting comments on your fics to feel good, don't look for validation from oth-..."

[1425fivefive]

✨ kink prompt fic retrospective ✨

over the past eight-ish days, i've been cranking out kink prompt fics. i've finally reached a point where i feel ready to take a break and wanted to post a little retrospective about what i wrote to help me reflect!

total kink prompt fics completed: 26 | word count: 36,569

pairings i wrote for the first time: oscarmark, norstappen, dando, nortrell

favorite fic: norstappen + virginity

i honestly adore this one. i tried to lean hard into the quintessential sex-experienced king/virginal new spouse, while subverting some of the tropes i don't love and still making it hot. i tried to make max give lando some agency despite the constrains of the genre and i genuinely think the fic is hotter because of that. when i wrote the line about lando "taking his own virginity" i think i might've briefly blacked out. i also just threw in every single thing i find hot: piercings, small dicks, virginity kinks, multiple orgasms. like it was just my most self-indulgent delightful fic

(honorable mentions for favorite fic: carcar + piercings, oscarmark + chastity, and nortrell + cockwarming)

hardest fic to write: charlando + chastity/forced orgasm

as a general rule, i don't really like pain. like i'm much more into the dominance/submission aspect of bdsm, rather than the sadism/masochism aspect. i also love when both partners are very enthusiastically into the sex they're having, and this fic has a decent amount of visceral pain and ambiguous consent. i wrote this because i really wanted to write something that made me uncomfortable but it also made me so stressed out that i had to decompress immediately after by taking a shower. i think it works as the type of fic i set out to write, but it's not one that i think i'll return to a lot just because of how visceral it feels

favorite pairing to write: oscarmark

this one shocked me but i loved writing oscar and mark's whole weird thing. i loved mark's pervy old man vibe where he's mean but not cruel with oscar. i loved oscar getting off on the power dynamics of it all. i really like mark's vague thing with seb haunting the backgrounds of these fics, and mark seeing oscar as this blushy young thing reminiscent of seb but also not. i feel like i've become an oscarmark convert in the span of four kink fics

pairings i wish i'd written: galex, gax, alex/franco, lando/franco, max f/oscar, max f/lando/oscar, maxiel

i think in hindsight i was overly cautious about the pairings i said i'd write. i was so scarred from someone asking me for glance once that i stuck to pairings i knew i could do decently well. but then i kept wishing for new pairings! i think if i did this again i'd ask for people to send basically any pairing they want

kink i came around to: omorashi

i included a few kinks on the kink list just because i was curious to see whether i could write them well despite them not being kinks of mine (breeding, omorashi, sounding). but omorashi... i came around... i think what i really like about it is the desperation and shame surrounding it. like i could take or leave the piss aspect itself, but i like the emotions and dynamics it allows me to explore. it's sort of the same reason i like cock cages (another kink that's an avenue to explore desperation and shame)

hardest kink to write: breeding

i really, really thought breeding was synonymous with creampie. it is not! and i have a severe fear of pregnancy! so that was a harrowing discovery once i'd already gotten ten asks for breeding. but i forced myself to push through and wrote landoscar + breeding. i'm actually delighted with how the fic came out and i think it only worked because they're both cis men so any pregnancy was purely fantasy

thing that surprised me: giving everyone pussies

i literally don't know what came over me, but for like five fics in a row i was just giving everyone vaginas. like why did lando, oscar, and max all need vaginas? i think i was just so bored of writing the word cock over and over again and describing blowjobs that i just wanted to do something different. also... why did i write not one but two fics about people being fucked in the ass while begging to be fucked in their pussies? it genuinely doesn't even do all that much for me but i was really milking that concept for a bit there

kinks i wish i'd written: exhibitionism, sloppy seconds, cnc, public sex

generally, i think the kinks i wrote ended up being quite tender and... timid? i was one of the earlier writers doing kink prompts and i honestly just wasn't sure what the boundaries were for rancidness. i was sort of afraid people would be turned off if i went too hard. but now i wish i'd done some harder kinks (i ended up turning forced orgasm into sex slavery just because i was yearning for something more fucked-up). also i just really wanted to write a norstappen + exhibitionism sequel to my norstappen + virginity fic where max fucks lando on a throne... unfortunately it will only exist in my mind

favorite part of the process: i loved getting to write new pairings and kinks in a relatively low-stakes space! it was so amazing getting reblogs and asks saying that i'd maybe awoken a new kink in people. and i loved seeing so many other writers start doing kink prompts because of mine (even though other writers were also doing it before me!!) every time someone sends me an ask about my silly little kink prompts, i am the happiest girl in the world! the community of it all has really moved me

hardest part of the process: i got really burnt out near the end of writing orgasms. like there was just something so copy-paste about writing orgasms and i simply did. not. care. i also started getting bored with very traditional, more tender bdsm stuff (begging, multiple orgasms, handcuffs) and just, like, wanted something weird. which is why landoscar + selfcest and landoscar + sounding were so delightful to me!

concepts that are haunting me

older oscar domming younger oscar

chastity belt consort lando

bunny hybrid oscar pissing himself

evil prince!charles

how much i like writing pervy old man mark

the implication of seb orgasm denialing himself to win championships

oscar's pierced clit

max buying the latex sheet so he and oscar could engage in more piss play

the entire sounding fic

conclusion

i'm so glad i decided to do this. it was so much fun seeing people's reactions to fics and helping start a freaky moment on the dash! i received so many lovely messages from people about how they felt like my writing about sex was really free of shame and just about, like, the joys of experimenting and learning new things about yourself through sex and it honestly made me tear up. i adore all of you and i'm so glad you all have made posting these fics genuinely some of the most fun i've had all year. this fandom really is freak4freak and i'm so glad i took the plunge and started writing this year 🥰

[wetcatspellcaster]

Metapost: "The Ascendent"

**this is a meta for my fic, Pieces Still Stuck in Your Teeth, and NOT a discussion of the BG3 game canon in any way. If you try and make this into a disk-horse, I will BITE you**

(spoilers under the cut for Chapters 1-23 of Pieces Still Stuck in Your Teeth).

So... remember in the Chapter One endnote when I said I was a Spike/Buffy fan first, and a person second? x

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

In more seriousness, there was a number of fictional seasonings/ingredients that went into creating what I felt was the villain of a Gothic horror, and what I felt could turn the Ascendent into something that was both 'fixable', and something I enjoyed writing.

Those ingredients were:

Spike and the idea of 'soulless' vampires in the BtVS canon - do I like this conceit of BtVS worldbuilding and how it's used in the show? No. I think it often underlines how bad Whedon is at writing romance. BUT I do think it gives Buffy this free pass for which vampires she can/can't like or adopt, and I needed some of that for my protagonist. I need a 'I can fix him' moment - BtVS has those in fucking SPADES.

Howl's Moving Castle (this one was accidental, I'm still mad at myself but I can't deny it's there) - man conducts magic ritual for power, removing an essential part of himself in the process that needs to be returned

Picture of Dorian Gray (the idea of an exterior staying pristine while something hidden suffers and decays)

Curse of Strahd (the soulless in Barovia, which I mentioned in Chapter 23)

The idea of default moral alignments in D&D. I have a whole chapter arguing against this in my thesis (mostly bc it's often applied to entire races) but I was fascinated by creating a set of circumstances where I feel like a default moral alignment is valid, actually. 7,000 deaths seems like a good set up. I wanted to imagine a being that was trapped within a default moral alignment, and the laws of its very being prevent it from being good no matter what it tries, and it knows that (this kind of creates a feedback loop with the Spike/Buffy stuff)

The parts of the BG3 canon I took and REMADE (I'm stressing this throughout, I was making a horror story and a horror monster your honour):

Astarion conducts the Rite of Profane Ascension with scars on his back, but has to scar Cazador's back personally, suggesting that um... the Rite REALLY SHOULDN'T BE CONDUCTED BY SOMEONE WHO'S GOT THOSE SCARS. Cazador wasn't going to do it that way, is all I'm saying!!

The idea that Ascended!Ending Astarion is a concentrated version of certain traits that have persisted throughout his story - his flirtiness, his understanding of sex as a mechanism and expression of power, his use of a façade as a mask for trauma he refuses to acknowledge.

The lines alluding to dissociation in the brothel foursome, post-Ascension.

The idea that Astarion seduced Tav to survive or protect himself- in my case, because I made the Ascendent empty save for Astarion's survival instinct, the idea that he would gravitate towards Tav as one of his default modes to potentially survive made sense to me - this is why it becomes an obsession.

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

For me, when writing, the Ascendent is a few things:

An intensification of vampirism in a different, fucked-up direction. Yeah, A!Astarion, you can walk in sunlight and you can eat and drink and don't need blood. But you are still a hungering maw of emptiness that feels like it will never be whole or close and connected to the living - just now in a wildly different, metaphysical/existential direction! Welcome to depression, alienation, and otherness!

A soulless being, that knows it is soulless - that initially was very happy with its life but then as the years passed, increasingly spends its every waking moment knowing there is something innately wrong with it that it can't seem to shake, no matter how much it engages with life and all the pleasures of life. (see the 'every meal without savour' speech)

A magically literal metaphor for Astarion's dissociation in moments of extreme trauma, up to and including the fight with Cazador - essentially, the moments when there is nothing but a performance or an exterior, because the self/soul are suffering and they cant' come to phone right now

Astarion's survival instinct. As I say in Chapter 23 - Mephistopheles thinks it is an empty body, who's performance is trying to deny the reality of it's own existence. Rosalie, who has a bit more understanding of Astarion, sees that the performance is not just a coping mechanism but one of Astarion's main modes of survival. The Ascendent is Astarion's survival instinct/techniques for endurance, without any soul or person behind them to protect. This is how I tried to tie in the flirty, hypersexual persona and wrap it with a bow.

I wanted a monster that was undeniably scary, and monstrous to me (oh? you can't fit in or be happy no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, and you think there's something intrinsically off? how's that autism diagnosis going Emma) but that I also felt sympathy and true sorrow for. I needed to have motivations for him chasing after Tav that I could write meaningfully from and sympathise with.

Not only has Astarion used Tav as a life-raft once before, they've also proven to be the most secure thing he's ever clung to. Of course a rabid survival instinct Astarion would become obsessed, and see them as a potential solution to the problem (this was then intensified by Rosalie also being a walking, overbearing moral compass, and having bound him in a contract in the first week of living, accidentally - a lawful good immoveable objects meets a default moral alignment unstoppable force.)

...Because I also wanted that moral alignment spice!! Wizards of the Coast, default moral alignment is fucked up actually!!! Imagine something trying so desperately to be good - literally being bound in a pact and having been told to be good - but the laws of the universe and its very essence are like "nah mate, we kind of want to destroy and annihilate everything, we're neutral evil personified". That's scary!! that's fucked up!! that's what a birth from 7000 deaths gets you!!!

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

So, now for the actual timeline, for people who aren't interested in my silly musings but mostly just want answers lmfao.

Rosalie makes the decision not to intervene in Cazador's mansion, making it seem like she'll support whatever decision Astarion will make there.

Rite of Profane Ascension happens. Astarion conducts the ritual, rips his own soul from his body, the Ascendent is born with literally zero context. Mephistopheles is fucked in Cania, because a bunch of stuff has just gone wrong.

(oh, by the way, the Ascendent knows Infernal as a default language. Bc it's born from an Infernal rite.)

The Ascendent is now default neutral evil, and feeling some kind of way. Rosalie and him break up. He's supposed to have everything, but the one thing he thought was a done deal - his most stalwart suppporter - just rejected him.

Netherbrain defeat (the Ascendent is not invited. Imagine being an all-powerful, hypersexual survival instinct vampire, and your ex-girlfriend neither wants you for sex, nor your power.)

Rosalie accidentally binds the Ascendent (a soulless devil) in a pact demanding that he never kill anyone, when that's literally what the Ascendent's new existence/new default moral alignment is driving him to do. Then, she fucks off and goes into hiding.

Well. The Ascendent can just get another wizard, to help him learn all of Cazador's secrets to cope [Hemlock is recruited].

The years go by! The Ascendent is doing sooooo well. Everything is great, guys! I'm rich, I'm beautiful, I have lavish parties and lots of sex - why do I feel nothing? I'm a vampire perfected - I have no hunger for blood, I can walk in the sun, I can enjoy all the freedoms of a living, breathing man - why do I feel like I'm starving? Why does everything turn to ashes in my mouth? I have friends - oops, I've sabotaged all those friendships with my innate neutral evil destruction. Why can't I feel anything? What's wrong with me? I'm doing everything right? Why doesn't it feel that way?

Also, I can't kill anything to feel better about it, because my hidden ex-girlfriend bound me in a pact.

In this time, to reflect the gradual degradation of the Ascendent's happiness and it's increasing awareness that it is something Other and innately wrong, the reflection starts going weird. Starts going strange. Starts getting a bit fucked up. Almost as if, when he looks in the mirror and sees a person, *nothing* should be what's there. Imagine being a spawn who couldn't see your reflection, and then a vampire who could see it's reflection, but knows that they're innately empty. Knows there's nothing there. I'd freak out a little bit about it as well tbh, I'd go a bit tooth and claw and elongated jaw about it.

The Ascendent finally admits that's there must be something kinda fucked about it. Life just ain't working out, lads. He starts looking for any and all impossible cures that will help with the malaise in his soul (and that innate essence problem, caused by default moral alignment). These include: more bad decisions, such as a house in Cania bc the Ascendent is hoping he'll feel more at home with devils than he does with mortals. All it does is make him feel more isolated and alone.

But eventually, he settles on two things! - Wish (Hemlock's idea), and Rosalie (the Ascendent's idea). Clearly, we just need Rosalie back! Her leaving is actually what fucked him up in the first place - none of this existential bullshit! She fixed us one, she can fix us again.

But looking for Rosalie hasn't worked out. In order to get a shot at her, the Ascendent goes and bargains for his own soul from Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles, adding a new sheet in excel titled 'what the fuck happens when i give this soulless monster a soul to play with?', agrees and starts tracking his new data.

Obviously, just putting the soul back in yourself will fix you. But the Ascendent, the nothingness living inside Astarion's body, will die. Taking the soul back would erase itself. The Ascendent - who is survival instinct personified - would never do this.

So instead, it starts interviewing and cannibalising the soul. Bc a soul is what it needs, this is the closest it's ever felt to being alive. Bc it's made this all about Rosalie, he thinks he's found his solution. The chase is making him feel alive again. It's true love, lads! not the soul.

Wish auction happens - the Ascendent is beaten to the punch by some unknown (hot) wizard.

This avenue cut off, the Ascendent makes the decision to try and win Rosalie back.

Astarion advises that to make her come back to the Gate, he should murder a bunch of people. Because this comes from the soul, not the soulless devil nothingness, it circumvents the pact.

...The events of Pieces begin!

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

And finally - the Ascendent tries to destroy Jar!Starion for many reasons in Chapter 19:

The Ascendent knows that it dies, if the soul and the body get reunited (or is that constant high alert survival instinct just no longer needed, because the problem is fixed? you decide.)

The Ascendent values Tav above itself. Tav is going to fix them. Astarion believes he could never fix himself.

Dissociation - that soul isn't me. I'm here, looking at my soul. If I get too close, it'll kill me.

Self-hatred - that soul isn't me. That man made a mistake, and I've had to live with the consequences. He doesn't deserve to live, for what he's made me become.

The knowledge that Rosalie/Tav will only ever want that version of him, not the one that's living and breathing, that sees itself as the most wretched, fucked-up version of itself. So... give them no choice. They have to deal with me and love me at my worst.

And if the Rite didn't work - if the version of the Ascendent walking around isn't the best one, and the one people want... what was it all for? Why does the Ascendent feel like this? Why does it have to suffer?

･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ･ﾟ✧

....And, that's my little meta post! If anyone has any questions about the timeline or any motivations at any points in the fic, I'm obviously more than happy to explain things via ask/comment, as always!

TLDR: I just wanted to make a Gothic horror. I wanted a dark romance, fucked up obsession vampire/mortal dynamic, but I also wanted a situation that was scary for both Astarion and my Tav. I personally think an Astarion who is so dissociated and separate from reality that he feels that in his bones daily, is scary. It's the lingering impact of the traumas the Rite and those 7,000 souls embodied.

I was literally just trying to make it a horror, for everyone involved.

[heartoflesh]

Who knew, the key to writing was to just write 😀

[peasantgirl13]

Me, an adult woman born with the spirit of a prudish victorian woman who has never felt the touch of a man: Alright *cracks knuckles* time to write some Romance

[dragonnarrative-writes]

One of my kinktober stories that I'm struggling to write boils down to Simon from Transferrable Skills having a kink he's embarrassed to share with Bambi and her not being into it until she sees how into it he is. The problem is that 1) the kink can actually be an amalgamation of kinks and 2) I have to be in a very specific headspace to be into that kink, so I'm having a hard time getting past the talking stage of it all, and 3) ...how did that conversation even start???

[screamlet]

my secret favorite moment of writing an au is having a character reflect at some point 'wow, imagine if the circumstances of my life were different, that would really be terrible, wouldn't it'

oh buddy, fiction is so great!! you have no idea which horrors i saved you from and which other, different horrors i'll inflict on you

[cinnamontails-ff]

New Year Writing Tag

Happy New Year everyone!

I love this time of year for how it invites reflection and a general (re)assessment of where I am as a writer. I've seen a few "new year writing" tags floating around, but didn't love their focus on numbers, so I decided to make my own. Feel free to use the template if you're interested, leave stuff out, etc!

What's been your biggest learning point this past year?

Readers are fickle, and winning yourself an audience is not the same as maintaining it. Still, there will always be people who love your work, exactly the way it is.

How has your writing developed this past year?

I think my grasp on the English language has definitely improved! I find I'm more comfortable with varying my sentence structure, and the fact that I'm finally getting the hang of punctuation also definitely helps haha That said, I've been leaning into my overwriting tendencies. MA was supposed to be 150k words and now it's gonna clock in at nearly 200k. And that's ok because it was a difficult project and I'm proud of myself for pulling through, but I definitely need to rein myself in, moving forward.

Good writing habits?

Finally installing automatic backups through my writing software! Also, investing in a nice keyboard for the first time in my life. Life-changing.

Bad writing habits?

Pushing too hard rather than taking a break because my general modus operandi in life is "Work hard now, so you can relax later" - except, I never let myself get to the "later" part.

Favorite thing you wrote?

Chapter 20 of "Magistrate's Advocate". If you know, you know, but it was a very unusual, very challenging chapter for me, and I love how it came out.

Favorite reads?

"A Sorceress Comes to Call" by T. Kingfisher

"Yellowface" by R.F. Kuang

And my re-reads of "Guards, Guards" and "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett, but what else is new :D

Biggest win?

Making friends through writing. Connecting with people in a way that goes so much further than storytelling. Getting to go to the wedding of someone I met through fandom (and then try to explain to the other guests how you met :D). Sitting on a riverbank in a European city with a lovely reader for 4h straight, receiving the most beautiful fountain pen as a gift. Really, everyone who's made me feel like they care about me just as much as they care my stories ❤

Goals for the new year?

Finish the translation of my original novel.

Stop beating myself up over the things I have not achieved.

Forget AO3 statistics exist.

Shamelessly re-read my own fics over and over again.

Your favorite words of the year, aka the words you check each chapter for, making sure you didn't repeat them 788 times?

"little", "gaze", "look", "smile", "quite", "absolutely", anything to do with "shoulders", "hands" and "eyes".

Seriously, what is it with me and shoulders?

What are you excited for in the new year?

I've just recently started a writing group with a handful of lovely people I met through fandom, and I am extremely excited for it! It's hard to find a group of like-minded people, and while I love the focus on positivity in fandom, I really miss being told where my writing still needs work :D

No-pressure tags (and feel free to pick and choose your favorite questions!): @davenswitcher @obsessedwhyyes @larvasmoon @wobblyweasels @roguishcat @amoremagnificentbastard @lady-vincent @ladyduellist @canon-in-too-deep @khywren @karinamay @bananaiguana and everyone else who loves their new year's reflections!

[lily-alphonse]

Astounded at my ability to make myself SOB over fictional characters that I AM CHOOSING to put in awful scenarios.

Positively baffling

Im in my tragic ending era and its as much a horror for you all as it is for my sinuses lmao

[befuddled-calico-whump]

(this is not a callout or anything, I'm just curious)

(better explanation of why I made this that reads like I'm making excuses under the cut, lol)

I know the "I feel insecure when reading others' writing" button sounds passive aggressive but I swear that's not the intention. In fact, that's the button I'm clicking. To speak candidly, while time is a big factor for me, feeling intimidated by others' skill and creativity is bigger

so many of you are better at prose or character or worldbuilding than I can ever hope to be, and that's something I should enjoy, something I should be grateful for (and I am! It's amazing to be able to read amazing stories for free, written by people I sort of know), yet instead I turn it into a game of comparing myself. It's something I'm working on, but it takes a lot of energy to approach. Being tagged in stuff here on tumgle tends to help counter that, since it holds me accountable in a "you wanted to read this, stop being intimidated, it's not about you" kind of way. But even without that option, I'm working to appreciate everyone's work without getting needlessly self conscious about it :)

[bunsofhoney]

I think I'm going to make my own prompt list for Smutcember. Or maybe Smutuary.

Anyway send me an ask with your smut prompts because I don't have 30 yet. A word, phrase, or kink.

It's going to be another multi-shipping spectacular (with lots of short drabbles)