#actually totally open to updating anyone on the rest of my WIPs I just can't remember what any of them are

[zorilleerrant]

Heads Up, Seven Up

Tagged by @clockwayswrites: post the last 7 lines of your current WIP - of which I also currently have too many, so let's have some:

Back Compatible, my current Camp NaNo project

(Legal or not, that’s a career killer, and we literally all know that, I do not need your advice on any of it.) Whatever, the café the company liked was straight out of the box anyway, they didn’t even update the color scheme. I would’ve updated the color scheme. I love updating the color scheme. I change my whole house like every other day, just for fun, you can’t even customize a font for the signage? (The neon wasn’t even well shaded. At least our bar looks like actual neon.)

I think Bruce Wayne is a Dracula, my Dracula rewrite

Seeing bits of buildings, enormous skyscrapers blown apart, orbiting some other planet’s moon – there’s an ache to it, knowing something so awful happened here, but it’s not personal. It’s just a piece of a palace or an office building or a theme park, and you know real people were there, but you don’t – but I saw someone’s home. A child’s bed, I think, floating all alone, just the corner of a room with drawings on the wall and bright colors and a doll on the bed. I saw what I think was a calendar. I saw a piece of wood half-carved and intact, just floating along. Abstract figures starting to take form. And I keep seeing these escape pods, all working, all empty.

and but my dreams they aren't as empty, The Jason Fic, which I'm just about to actually write the chapter for so I can't give you the actual lines, but here's the end of my notes for this section:

Babs: You've got more people over there than we do. I bet you could take a vacation. Jason: Kind of what I'm doing Here. Babs: Hmm. Maybe you should stay home, then. Jason: And, what, watch Miriam plagiarize things? Babs: You take that back! That was an accident and she apologized and Vienna is actually completely in love with her about it if you were wondering. Okay. We're watching this. And you better not get a crush on the Smutty Professor, even once he takes his shirt off, you basic bitch. Jason: No promises. I am pretty basic. Babs: Ugh. Men.

in case any of you like tag games and have something you want to share: @wolfsbanesparks @theshaddowedsnow @zettelkaestchen @glassandmetalwings @teashoesandhair @rowandriftwood @ihavethreetimdrakeblogs

(also if I didn't tag you but you want to be tagged in these things let me know because I like tagging people but I just have to guess who's interested at any given time)

[hollow-dweller]

20 Questions (for fanfic writers)

tagged by @abcd-em, thank you beloved <3

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

26!

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

134,413

3. what fandoms do you write for?

mostly spidey and pilgrimage, but i dabble in other fandoms--mostly voltron, which i had thought i had escaped the sucking quicksand of but alas seems not to be the case

4. top five fics by kudos?

all the wonders i have seen (i will see a second time)

leave the rest to the gods

Unconscionable

when darkness comes upon you

sew your fortunes on a string

5. do you respond to comments?

i try to! transparently, i sometimes get overwhelmed and while i love receiving comments and re-read every single one a million times, i do sometimes have a hard time actually responding. i cherish every single one but also my brain was cursed by the gods.

6. what is the fic your wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably my pilgrimage fic, everything's growing in our garden. it's very rare that i write for vibes but phoebe bridgers' Punisher had me in a chokehold and that is definitely reflected in that fic, short as it is. it's my most "closure denied" ending, that i've posted anyway, and i think that ups the angst factor.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

pilgrimage fandom gets the top spot here too, with love sent to me. it's probably the most straightforward romance/get-together fic i've written, and AU to boot, which are both anomalies for me. but i have a great deal of affection for that fic, and i love the tenderness of it.

8. do you get hate on fics?

the closest i get in spidey is generally people being demanding about updates, which i usually just delete. there is one particular troll in pilgrimage who crops up every once in awhile to leave "hate" comments on various peoples' fics, and i've been hit with that a couple times, but that's just a pathetic person wanting attention so it doesn't really count.

other than that, i really have the best commentariat anyone could ask for.

9. do you write smut?

yes! i firmly believe erotica is an important tool for examining characters and their relationships

10. craziest crossover:

i don't write crossovers exactly, so i'll cop out and point to the spidey/twilight fusion au since it is crossover-adjacent

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge! and hopefully i never will

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

again not to my knowledge! there are few things i would find more flattering

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

alas, no. i love the prospect of it, and have gotten to the outlining/ideating stage with a few people in the past, but again i'll be fully transparent in that i'm not the most reliable person to attempt that kind of project with. maybe someday, and i'm definitely open to it!

but also: it's me, hi! i'm the problem, it's me.

14. all time favorite ship?

i'm a libra with adhd, asking me to choose a favourite is a hate crime.

from the lens of fannish engagement or creation, which to me is different but not unrelated to loving/shipping a couple as it is represented/written in the text, it's probably any combination of Ned/MJ/Peter, either platonic or romantic. i love an OT3, i love frenship, i LOVE where NWH left us and the possibilities we can explore with their relationships to one another.

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

if i truly doubt a wip will get finished, i don't post it. everything i've posted is something i fully intend to finish, i just can never say when that might happen. i can't predict the future obviously, so maybe that'll change, but i re-read my posted works relatively frequently and have a genuine desire to see them all complete at some point. even the ones that i reread and can see how my writing has since improved, or think i could have executed better, i still have love for and interest in. if i didn't, i'd delete.

16 & 17. what are your writing strengths and weaknesses?

combining these two because my writing strength is a reflection of my writing weakness: i'm very good at elaborating on ideas, not so much on coming up with them whole cloth. what i mean by that is i'm most comfortable, as a writer, coming up with creative and even novel divergences from canon, and making the corresponding changes in characters and plot that would result from those divergences. i'm good at the "what if" of fic.

the converse is that i'm not great at speculation, of figuring out "what happens next". so much of my post-NWH stuff, for example, is about exploring potential emotional and relationship-based realities, but doesn't have "plot" in the sense of being developments of the story of Peter Parker as i imagine it might happen in the MCU. even fics like we said our dreams will carry us, which i bill as a kind of post-beyond the spiderverse speculation fic, doesn't actually deal with the nitty-gritty of what i think might happen in the next movie. how things actually happen in this imagined version of beyond the spiderverse is secondary to the emotional fallout of those events, and that's what i'm writing about.

both these flow from my primary analytical strength/weakness: i am great at interpretive analysis, and fucking terrible at predictive analysis.

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

it is. incredibly difficult to get right. i studied languages and translation in university, and i still hesitate to write dialogue in other languages into my fics. it's not just a matter of getting the language itself right. that in and of itself is difficult, but anecdotally speaking i find that most native speakers of a language who read fic are incredibly kind and polite when making corrections to the language.

what takes me out of a fic is the manner in which other languages are integrated, and how very poorly that is usually done. "oh sorry it's hard to switch back" has become a meme, but a lot of the use of languages other than English, when written by non-native speakers of the languages in question, read as just that clunky and incredibly disconnected from how polyglots actually speak and switch between languages.

having said all that, language is an INCREDIBLY important part of culture, which makes it an equally important part of the characters who speak--or whose families speak--other languages. as someone in spider-man fandom, Miles' Puerto Rican heritage and both his and Rio's relationships to that heritage and the spanish language are important elements of his character. when i write Miles, and especially Miles & Rio, it's important to me that that is incorporated. like anything, it takes research, and thoughtfulness, and humility--try your best, and be ready to be corrected if you get it wrong.

19. first fandom you wrote in?

harry potter (derogatory), back when i was a wee skelly

20. favorite fic you've written?

i once again point to the libra with adhd of it all, and then direct you to my favourites series on ao3

Tagging: @weezly14 @mysterycyclone @saltwaterpanda @gooddaygalaxy @ambivalentcats @shrinkthisviolet @anarchyduck and anyone else who wants to!