#accidentally became a ficlet whoops

[optiwashere]

What type of nerdy is Asheera when it comes to the Grymforge?

Is it like How can I make this better? Or

Gushing about what is already there?

I feel like it would be like a jock at a gym sizing up other people their and anime smirking to themselves hypothosizing how they can do better than them. But like in a more reverent way rather than like a smug wizard way. Like after Shadowheart waxes poetical about her Sharty cult, it's Asheera's turn to talk her ear off about what she would have done to keep the forge running to this day, preserving minthral veins for future use, having a Grym off switch so it doesn't have to be rebuilt each time. All the while her ruddy marbles sparkle for the first time in a while not just from the insane magma luminescence but from being able to be unabashedly passionate about something that is so definitively her.

She's too busy wildly gesticulating and pointing at fadded parchment and scribbled schematics to notice how Shadowheart's gaze never leaves her. How she thumbs the idol in her pack looking at the pure genuineness gushing from the half orc and wondering to herself. Why can't she have both?

Or maybe Asheera just likes the forge idk nvm

First of all, the vibes of this ask are immaculate.

It's a mixture of awe and mild disappointment because it's all been left to sit there. She'd never seen anything like it before, not even in the High House of Wonders back in Baldur's Gate.

To add onto that prior ask response here, this is something that would live well in fics as a brief moment. Something kinda like this?

She was a vision in battle and she spoke kindly of others, but Shadowheart couldn't recall a time when Asheera was this interested in something. She'd only known the paladin a short while, but the change was charming in its own way. Usually focused otherwise on the tadpoles and guiding the party through dangers untold, Asheera's eyes darted every which way in the sweltering heat of the colossal forge. Sweat flecked her brow, but she didn't seem to care. It was all second nature to her, Shadowheart realized. It was likely why she didn't mind being near Karlach when they all ate together. "The High Artificer back in Baldur's Gate will never believe it," Asheera muttered. She tapped her tusks against her lips in concentration. "Adamantine... there's mithral veins here as well?" As Asheera rooted around the long worktable, opening scroll tubes and sighing when dust was all they contained, Shadowheart watched while, beside her, Gale continued to cool himself with breaths of frost. Watched as Asheera unfolded schematics of some sort, a smile on her face as her eyes roamed every inch of parchment. The heat from the magma swirling around them in rivers warmed Shadowheart's face. Surely it was that. She thought of the stone idol Asheera had given her as they took a brief rest on the cliffs overlooking what appeared to be a massive temple to the Nightsinger herself. Where should I put it in camp? There's room for it... if I just move... Remembering the gift, her face burned again. All from the forge, naturally. The sound of a throat clearing next to her startled Shadowheart from her thoughts. Astarion examined her with focused eyes, not a drop of sweat on his face that wore a knowing look. "Why do you stare at me? Some of us actually still sweat, you know," Shadowheart said instinctively. "Oh, we're trying deflection are we?" A laugh tittered from his parted lips. He tapped his tongue on one of his fangs before continuing. "For your information, I'm not staring at you. I'm looking in your direction. You wear projection as well as you do all this dreary black." He walked away with a flash of a smile, giving Shadowheart time to curse him and his vampiric paranoia for seeing things that weren't there. It gave her plenty of time to watch Asheera scribble down notes, copying details from the schematics she pored over like a giddy adventurer who found a hoard of magical artifacts. Plenty of time to consider where the idol would go so that Asheera could see it in camp. That was a worthwhile gift in return, wasn't it?

An aside: there's also a Gondian temple in Waterdeep called the House of Inspired Hands (had to look at my old Waterdeep sourcebooks to remember that lol) and I like to imagine Shadowheart has to endure going there every time they visit Gale.

[gohandinhand]

Top 5 fave fanfics you've ever read

"pls nothing that requires research" -> this lmao. could i help myself anyway? no. i went and retrieved my laptop from the dining room and brought it to bed to start digging into this. me at 10:15pm:

but here’s the deal: there’s no way in hell i can give you my fave fics of ALL time. i’ve been reading fic for many years, some of them on sites that no longer exist. there are several “sorry, this fic has been deleted!” entries in my ao3 bookmarks. a lot of those years were also in the hp fandom, which is not a topic i’m willing to revisit given the situation now, despite the fact that i read many incredible hp fics & crossovers. 

also, my memory is swiss cheese! but i can give you 5 fics that come to mind as ones i’ve revisited time and time again over the years. for many of these, i feel an enduring gratitude for it as a work that introduced me to the author(s) as someone whose writing i want to follow. & some of them became buddies which is! cool! for me. it’s an hour past my bedtime now so here’s what springs to mind:

you’re magic & you’re real by @unicyclehippo and @possibilistfanfiction (who also has a bunch of tumblr ficlets for this au under #gaf au) [the 100, clexa] it’s been 7 years and i still reread it at least annually. the universe, this version of these characters - it is precious to me. tender. 

You Still Make Sense to Me (Your Mess is Mine) by @emilyjunk [pitch perfect, bechloe] angie is going to kill me for this in the morning because she wants it to be forgotten she ever wrote bechloe lmao but! despite that! i still reread this regularly. they’re so dumb and i love them so much. i can’t keep saying ‘tender’ yet that’s how i feel about this one too! 

Something Suspiciously Close to Hope by @hedaswolf [the 100/Stranger Things crossover, clexa] ok, i did watch most of the first season of stranger things before it got too scary for me and never picked it up again. however, the wholesome ache this induces is the right palate cleanser for certain kinds of despair. 

The Key to Byzantium by MarcusRowland [buffy/stargate sg1 crossover] wildcard, stargate was my parents’ fandom when i was a kid lmao. a decade and a half and it’s just a casual thing i want to have fun bopping to every so often! 

the wn fandom has so so so many incredible fics & writers, but the fandom is too new to have any idea yet of what fics will endure for me. but so far show me something of a reckoning by @lucytara [warrior nun, avatrice] is something i have already reread… a ridiculous number of times. some phrases in this are so delicious & sticky for my brain that when i was writing pnw au i actually had to go check to make sure i wasn’t accidentally plagiarizing (and caught it a few times, whoops!)... it's absolutely incredible. have a good feeling about the staying power on this one.

[elveny]

Creator Wrap / Writing Roundup 2021

Time for a little self-love! ❤

2021 was super detrimental to my mental health and it shows in my writing habits. Where I was basically writing daily in 2020, the second half of 2021 was dragging along with a horrible inability to find any kind of focus and creativity - which, considering that writing was my coping mechanism, did not help. It was basically a spiral that made itself worse. Yay! \o/ /sarcasm

HOWEVER. Despite not quite hitting my writing goal of 200k words, I came close! According to the writing bot I used, I wrote a bit more than 180k words this year, which is still close to 500 words per day on average.

I wrote in four different fandoms this year which is a first - and funnily enough, one of them is a fandom where I haven’t even read the source material (yet).

Final Fantasy XIV

My main fandom this year, and the stories I am most proud of. With Memories of Unwritten Futures, I wrote the story of M’ajah and Eremia, and I loved every second of it. It’s an OC x OC story and really dear to my heart.

In Death, Hope is the one Emet-focussed ficlet I wrote, and The Knight And His Lady was a birthday gift for Kunstpause.

The Tales Behind The Legend was my FFXIV Write project that accidentally became a coherent story and I am really, really proud of it. It’s a Lahabrea x WoL x Thancred story and I am so deeply invested in that pairing, it’s not even funny, haha.

And then, of course, there is the story of Adriene and Estinien. Beneath Stars of Fire and Darkness is the main story, but I have written quite some additional prompts and ficlets that I gave them their own series: A Song of Crystals and Dragons. (Let’s ignore that not all of them are still (my) canon, shall we?) I just love them so much, and I am so happy with how their story turned out.

The Song of Achilles

@johaeryslavellan’s fanfic High-Flying Birds and The Ways You Said ‘I Love You’ which I can both recommend so wholeheartedly because they are written so incredibly beautifully, inspired respectively When Gods Meddle, a Deidameia-centered one-shot, and Elysium, a little Patroclus-centered one-shot.

Dragon Age

With Into the Abyss, @kunstpause and I finished and published our DA2 long fic this year - a story I’m still very proud of and that, in my eyes, got progressively better. Especially considering The Mess of last year which nearly had both of us quitting altogether, I am extremely happy that we managed to finish it in the way we wanted. After that, I thought I’d put DA aside for a while, and still there were a few smaller things I wrote:

The Way You Say My Name (Desire Demons x Lavellan) and The Sentinel and the Wolf (Abelas x Solas x Lavellan) were both written as treats for Smutquisition, and From Afar was written for Cullen Week.

Forget-Me-Nots (ZevWarden) was something I really loved writing, a prompt fill for “Zevran’s favorite flower are Forget-Me-Nots”.

Mass Effect

I had so much fun with the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect this year, and while the idea I had planned for Thane x Kaidan x fem!Shep didn’t go beyond the first draft, I had to put some feeling into words in From Beyond The Stars.

Most popular story

In terms of hits, The Tales Behind The Legend became my most successful solo story of this year - Lahabrea x Wol x Thancred, with 3064 hits and 90 kudos. Tales also is my most successful story of 2021 in general, going by numbers.

(All-time No. 1 in terms of kudos remains Flaming Up, second part of my Solavellan story.)

If you look at ratio, however, with a slamming 20% kudos-to hits ratio, Forget-Me-Nots is at the top of it all (Tales has less than 3%). Forget-me-nots only got 126 hits but whooping 26 kudos to those hits.)

It's closely followed by the single EmetWoL thing I wrote, In Death, Hope, with a 17% ration (280 hits and 48 kudos). Both are also the most successful stories across the years. So in everything but kudos numbers, I wrote my most successful stories this year.

New things I tried this year:

In Death, Hope and Against the Cold were written in present tense, something I haven’t really done before. It’s been a great exercise and I’ll try to do it more, but so far, I’m still more comfortable writing in past tense.

Oh, and When Gods Meddle was actually my first story written in First Person. I loved the immediacy of it.

Shoutout:

I have been blessed with a lot of comments this year, and trust me - if you commented more than once, I know your name! CrimsonZedd, Velveteen_Writes, ScreamingViking, Kixa, if you read this - I love you. My dearest Anon who brought me joy like no one else during FFXIV Write - you're amazing! And of course the ones who always blow me away with your support and awesomeness - @kunstpause, @thegolli, @fictionalgalaxy, @johaeryslavellan, @allycryz, @okami-zero - all my love to you!!

I'm not going to tag individual people to do a creator wrap, but go ahead and share your favourite stories this year - I'd love to see them! ❤

[wistfulcynic]

Self-promo Sunday: Ficlets

It's hard sometimes to remember the titles and authors of fics we've read, and even harder when those fics are part of a collection. So for Self-promo Sunday I've put together a table of contents for my Ficlets collection. All the ficlets have titles, but those don't always give much of a clue to what they're about. All of these are shortish, 700-1500 words, so if you're looking for something quick to read before bed or whilst waiting in a vaccine queue, say, there may be something here for you.

Chapter links are all to the Tumblr posts. AO3 link is here.

1: This time, pancakes

IN WHICH Snow interrupts the pancake scene a few minutes earlier than she did in canon, late enough for things to have got well underway. There is a hint of voyeurism here but nothing salacious, it's mostly Snow's internal monologue. Sweet and just faintly smutty. Rated M. 800 words.

2: Captain Duckling Abduction

IN WHICH Princess Emma is abducted by pirates. Or is she? This eventually became the (sadly still unfinished, yes I know) Drink the Wild Air, so you can see how that got started. 800+ words. Rated T.

3: She and Mr Jones

IN WHICH we have "whoops I accidentally slept with my son's teacher," a little-used trope that I actually really like. Smut with feelings, a dash of Captain Cobra. 1200+ words. Rated M.

4: RELEASE THE KRAKEN

IN WHICH Emma and Killian have a rescue dog with an interesting personality quirk. Based vaguely post-S6 in a world with no S7 (and no S6 either if we're honest, it is The Season That Shall Not Be Named). Pregnant Emma, sweet Killian, adorable dog. Rated G. 900+ words.

5: A Soulmate Thing

IN WHICH Emma attempts a bar hookup and meets her soulmate. Based on this prompt:

anonymous asked:

Smutty prompt! A friend of mine (not on Tumblr) had a Soulmate AU idea where your soulmate's "naughty bits" fit perfectly with yours, like puzzle pieces lmao. Not a smutty writer myself, so I'm not sure how to even begin, but I thought I'd see if any CS fans wanted to give it a go!

1k+ words, Rated M/E

6: Five Times

IN WHICH Emma sees Killian five times, and what happened next. Bailbonds Emma, bartender Killian (sort of). Neighbours. 1200+ words, rated T.

7: Coitus Interruptus, Part One

IN WHICH Emma just wants to have sex with her husband, but the fates have other plans. I really do intend for there to be a part two of this, if the muse would ever see fit to cooperate. Anyway, it's a smutty little 1k, rated E. Canon compliant, more or less. Married CS.

8: A Midnight Clear

IN WHICH we revisit Emma and Killian from To Keep It All the Year, ten years later. It's not strictly necessary to read that first, just know this is modern AU E&K, married ten years, with a 12-year age gap between them. Christmas Eve smut in front of the fire. 1.3k, rated M.

9&10: Instagram Official, parts one and two

IN WHICH TV star Emma and musician Killian are quarantined together and trying to keep their fans from finding out about it. Based on this prompt:

celebrities who are quarantined together trying to maintain their online presence while not letting it slip that they’re together until one accidentally gets the other’s distinctive possession in the back of a photo and their cover is blown

~2k total. Rated G

11: melancholy

IN WHICH it's August and Killian is struggling with depression. Inspired by a post I saw somewhere in the depths of Tumblr, something to the effect of a person who had been suffering through a bout of depression one day started to sing while they were cooking. Their roommate immediately rushed in, overwhelmed with relief because they knew that singing meant the person was feeling better. 1.4k words, rated G. Content warning for depression.

12: biblio - philia

IN WHICH Killian is a reader and Emma isn't, but they share a love of stories nonetheless. Stories and each other. Inspired by this post. Also possibly my favourite fic title. Discussion of rough childhoods and sappy emotions. 1.5k rated G.

13: relationship goals

IN WHICH Emma and Killian battle at Granny's drive-thru, and Ruby gets caught in the crossfire. Based on this post. One of my favourites, honestly. Sweet and funny and told from Ruby's POV. 1.2k rated G.

14: The Christmas Card

IN WHICH a card she receives from an old friend on Christmas Eve changes Emma's life forever. Based on the holiday prompt "receiving a message from old friends." 700+ words, rated G

15: light on the darkest night

IN WHICH it's Midwinter's Eve and Killian is walking the streets of the city. Set in the Portable Magic 'verse. Absolutely no plot, just a little gentle midwinter magic. Witch!Emma and fae!Killian. 1.3k, rated G

16: bound by sand and salt and sea

IN WHICH Emma is a selkie and Killian returns her pelt. The only problem is she doesn't want to leave him. Turns out, that's not actually a problem. Based on this post. Creature AU, selkies, merpeople. 1.4k, rated T.

And that's all for now!

-

@thisonesatellite @kmomof4 @stahlop @mariakov81 @snowbellewells @courtorderedcake @optomisticgirl @ohmightydevviepuu @spartanguard @katie-dub @captain-emmajones @killianjones-twopointoh @shireness-says

[coelpts]

What fic have you been working on the longest? What scenes from a fic you’re working on now are you the most excited to write?

boy oh boy thats a HARD question to answer because technically ive got a handful of wip drafts that are nearly a full decade old at this point. also are we counting 'works sporadically whenever the brainrot hits' or like, continuous proper work? are we counting abandoned fics too? eh, ill go with all three

the longest fic ive been working on 'whenever brainrot hits' is more of a series of short ficlets. its an outline of every ending of Shadow the Hedgehog and how the choices made during every in game story branch changes the reflection of his personality seen at the end. Shadow the Hedgehog is a game ive always been fascinated with; even if it does at times attempt character assassination, i feel like the concept itself is interesting enough to explore in regards to the possibility space of who shadow could have been, and who he is. you know? i gotta get into his head, figure out why those choices were made. stuff like that! for this fic, im most excited to write ending 173, Steel Ruler, because i believe it is the most likely to be the canon ending leading into the Final Story and i wanna outline how that shit goes. also anything involving the chaotix, because they are. my boys.

uhh, the longest fic ive been working on continuously as of late is a miitopia fic that im using to justify how a self insert oc accidentally became his own person while i wasnt looking. its frustrating because i was workshopping him for a few years and then, i blinked and whoop! hes got character development! thats not a me anymore! you know? but its also been delightful to watch him grow, change, and get married to the most UNHINGED motherfucker this side of peculia, so im not mad about it. im most excited to write out a breakdown in the realm of the fey during the first arc, a final talk between two of the heroes in the second, and an additional third storyline arc to conclude the divergence in canon that ultimately happens.

the longest fic thats been sitting in my drafts ever that ive absolutely abandoned is CGMC. its a minecraft fanfic i wrote with my friends in it. this will never see the light of day, BUT i might rework it in the future to include elements of my minecraft ocs current canon, so watch out for that! originally i was most excited about writing the scene where one character revealed that she was evil all along before the heroes and her friends snap her out of it.