#all my titles are from song lyrics 🙃😂

[darethshirl]

Writing Pattern Tag Game

super late with this but better late than never! thank you for the tags @fadedsweater, @anneapocalypse, and @dragon--sage 🥰🥰 tagging back @roguelioness, @sarsaparillia, @korcariiwitch, @queenaeducan, @rosella-writes, @dreadfutures, @melisusthewee, @mel-0n-earth and anyone who sees this and wants to do it tbh!

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 fics and see if there's a pattern!

Goblins were disgusting, wretched little creatures, but even Astarion had to admit they knew how to throw a party.

from i'm not beaten by this yet (you can't tell me to regret) (bloodweave, explicit, 3k words)

It was only after Astarion had finished the kill—after the gut-deep slash, the satisfying spurt of blood—that he realized he was being watched.

from tear it through my heart (again, again, again) (tavstarion, mature, 4k words)

The cemetery was a quiet, unassuming little place, hidden between a shabby building and a formerly-tall church wall that was swiftly falling into ruin.

from cradle me with grace (tavstarion, explicit, 3k words)

Baldur’s Gate buzzed with all the activity of a healthy city, lively and unchanging throughout the ages.

from so long to this wretched form (tavstarion, teen, 4k words)

The tower at Moonrise was both more imposing and more cramped than Astarion had imagined.

from take me under, take me home (tavstarion, teen, 6k words)

The moon shone high overhead, and Ketheric Thorm’s world was crumbling all around him.

from deus proditus (Ketheric study, general, 1k words)

The thing was, Astarion really had wanted her from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.

from let me wrap my teeth around the world (tavstarion, explicit, 5k words)

In retrospect, John should have waited before bringing his friends back to life.

from like prometheus we are bound, our godforsaken lot (John/Mercy/Augustine, The Locked Tomb, general, 2k words)

It starts so abruptly that Cliff doesn’t even realize what’s happening.

from you know how to make me crawl (Cliff/David, Black Mirror, explicit, 1k words)

Despite everything, and despite what her future memories will tell her, Erica grew up relatively happy in the House of Slaughter.

from ain’t it a gentle sound, the rolling in the graves (Erica study, Something Is Killing The Children, teen, 2k words)

so!! first of all I'm surprised I had to go deep enough that I ran out of bg3 fics lmao. I'd almost forgotten I'd written that black mirror fic!! and yet I didnt go far enough to reach a dragon age one 🥲 I really have left this fandom huh (for now! 😤🐺)

second of all, I'm surprised by how short some of these are! I definitely think of myself as more wordy, and I prefer my longer sentences when I look at this. I think the weakest are the bg3 ones in the middle where I have to establish which act we're in (and let me tell you I STRUGGLED with that Baldur's Gate city description, it was literally the last part I wrote in the fic and you can kinda tell i wanted to get things over with aksdh)

I do prefer the ones that are more character-centric (poor Ketheric, so dramatic lmao). I think if you're going in fandom-blind John's line is the most striking (he can bring people back from the dead???) even tho if you have the context it's not that impressive an opening 😂 And I super enjoyed writing astarion being a dick about goblins!

but I gotta say my favourite line is the "it was only after Astarion had finished the kill" etc etc from tear it through my heart 🥰🥰 in fact I liked that line so much I made it the summary! these are the kind of vibes I want to always achieve 👀 also, honestly, I should start in action/medias res more often! it seems like a fun style I've tragically underused so far

[striveattemptfail]

ao3 wrapped [writers edition]

stolen from here. answering everything myself bc i'm too impatient to wait for people to ask me things lol. all stats are as of publishing this post ✌️

(cw: gifs included for some answers)

——————————

1. How many words have you written this year?

20,488 according to my stats page

technically speaking though i've written way more bc i have a bunch of wips i haven't posted yet 😅

2. How many works did you publish this year?

nine (9)!!!

i wish i could round this out to 10 before the year ends but i'm 90% sure it's not gonna happen 😔😔

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

You'll be there to push me up the hill — poolverine — 154 kudos — 900+ hits

it's chockfull of my personal movie!deadpool headcanons and things i want for post-canon dp&w

i only wish i could've squeezed in even more scenes to include russell and x-force but i barely managed to finish it on time for poolvertober so alas

special shout out to: Feel your way — poolverine — 113 kudos — 1.1k hits

i haven't written smut in literal years so i'm both shocked and grateful that i 1) wrote it at all, and 2) finished + posted it lol

4. What work of yours has the most hits?

for 2024: knee deep in the couch seat and you're not eating me out — 1.5k hits

in general: Just take my hand, and let’s enjoy — miragen & kuroko — 8k hits

5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

knee deep in the couch seat and you're not eating me out — 8 comment threads + a lot of very sweet comments on tumblr and twitter (ಥ‿ಥ)❤️���

i rushed to post on time for that day's poolvertober prompt so i wasn't very proud of it

but i'm so glad that a ton of people liked it anyway!

6. Favorite title you used

knee deep in the couch seat and you're not eating me out — insp. by chappel roan's casual

i saw the honda odyssey scene, then i heard the song, and I Immediately Knew i had to bastardize these lyrics for a fic lmfao

once again, apologies to ms roan /o\

i just!!!

does this not embody those lyrics?!?!?!?!?!!!

7. If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?

i haven't repeated an artist for titles this year!

in general though, i use red velvet english lyric translations the most LOL

8. Pairing you wrote the most for this year?

wade wilson/logan howlett aka poolverine

it's not even close

i'd be embarrassed but tbh i'm just shocked i even managed to finish one (1) fic at all

much less publish several of them!

i meant it when i said the poolverine brain rot might pull me out of my misery era (no jinx!)

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

poolverine

mustard and ketchup old man yaoi has me in a chokehold but i'm not particularly upset about it looool

10. What work was the quickest to write?

chaos, we so catostrophic — poolverine + blind al — 1.1k wc

i finished it in one frantic session filled with 10-min sprints 😅😂

my original idea for that day's poolvertober prompt was getting too long to finish on time, so i spent ~2 hrs in a haze laughing at myself while i thought about how funny it'd be for blind al to shoot a glock inside the apartment lmfaooo

11. What work took you the longest to write?

maybe it's a little too early (to know if this is gonna work) — poolverine — 5.2k wc

the dang &1 scene took me way too long to write bc i couldn't figure out a sideplot for it

did it need a sideplot? no.

would it have bothered me to no end if i didn't set the scene properly? yes.

and that's not even getting into the fact that logan and wade kept getting horny instead of keeping things cute and sweet like i originally planned!

i rewrote each scene multiple times bc they couldn't be serious smdh (=_=)

12. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

uhhhhhhh—

*checks phone*

*checks laptop*

—a lot.

at least 20.

definitely more.

i'm too lazy to count all of them between the fact that i have multiple draft files of the same fic + many of these are wips i've been sitting on for years

whoops soz

😁😁😅😅😅🥴🥴🥴🥴🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

13. What’s your longest work of the year?

You'll be there to push me up the hill — 5.4k wc

despite being the longest and hitting a wall with a few of the scenes, it was relatively easy to write

like i said, it's just filled with personal headcanons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

all i had to do was verbalize whatever the hell goes on in my head and put it on paper lmaaaooo

14. What’s your shortest work of the year?

Back Seat — poolverine — 380 wc

it was supposed to be 300 words flat so it could be a triple drabble but these two idiots don't know how to shut up lol

ngl i completely forgot about this fic so this is likely the correct answer for q.10..........

.....that said, i'm not rewriting my answers bc i'm lazy whoops /o\

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

.......wasn't this already asked in q.12? lmao

i guess i'll give a special shout out to the poolverine professor/student au from an outsider pov bc the premise is so funny and i have it all planned out already

will i actually finish it? who knows!

certainly not me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

actually informative tag: Canon Compliant — 8/9 works

fandom specific tag: Logan Is So Done (X-Men) — 4/9 works

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

i love writing wade wilson aka deadpool bc our inner monologues are very similar

babbling on and on and on happens effortlessly

(it's the rampant adhd lmao)

both of us also have a crude sense of humour so writing the stupid crap that comes out of wade's mouth is easier than with other comedic characters bc i have the sense of humour of a 12 y/o boy and luckily wade usually does too lol

the problem is i am not near as witty as him, nor do i have the wherewithal to actually write how brutal he truly is sometimes, nor am i acquainted with pop culture enough so he can break the fourth wall effectively

which now sounds like i shouldn't be writing him at all but WHATEVER! IDC!!!

i still love writing him as a ramble-y, annoying prick bc i am a ramble-y, annoying prick myself LOOOOOL

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

logan howlett aka wolverine

i know i wrote in his pov more than wade, but still

writing logan is hard for a simple reason: i'm not like him

my biggest self-critique is that it just seems like i gave logan adhd

his internal monologue is filled with run-on sentences when it really shouldn't be

and then his actual dialogue is just.

constant grunting.

lmfao.

i do understand and relate to him in some ways, but there's also a reason why i haven't really gotten into him as a character despite being adjacent to the x-men franchise for most of my life

he's a complex dude and i'm honestly just grateful i haven't received flames yet (omg i'm in old fart) for not writing him with the care he deserves

19. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

honestly i wouldn't mind staying on the poolverine train for another year

it'd be nice to branch out to other ships i enjoy (tbh i can't believe i haven't posted anything for jayroy, or more wlw)

but if poolverine wants to keep their hold on me for even longer, who am i to stop them?

LOOOOOOL

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

everything bc only a third of them were beta'd lol

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year?

as of drafting this post: 1,099

hopefully by the time i publish this i'll break 1.1k! 😩🙏

ETA: I'VE BROKEN 1.1K KUDOS FOR THIS YEAR WOOHOO \o/

22. Which work has the most comments?

it's a tie!

You'll be there to push me up the hill — 18 comments total

Feel your way — poolverine — 18 comments total

23. Did you do any collaborative works this year?

unfortunately no 😔😔

i've had tremendous help from @broosepayne and @comatose--overdose with idea bouncing though!

24. Did you write any gifts this year?

again, unfortunately no

25. Did you receive any gifts this year?

nope!

which is just fine since i couldn't give any gifts 😅😅

26. What’s your most common category?

m/m

shocker, i know (<- sarcasm)

i actually have some m/f and f/f wips but none of them are anywhere near complete or polished enough to post 😩😔

27. What do you listen to while writing?

for the past few years, it's usually playlists from this channel!

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

You'll be there to push me up the hill

refer to q.3 for why lmao

(can you tell i'm running out of steam trying to finish this? /o\)

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

it's a tie between

“He believed that I, a hero, could still save someone after I refused to save him.” Piotr’s eyes wander back over to where Wade is, whose hands are in the air as he enthusiastically elaborates on something to a very patient Laura. The two siblings laugh at something he says. “Wade is not perfect,” Piotr finally rumbles, “but perhaps what he is doesn’t need to be.” (via You'll be there to push me up the hill)

and

And with a body aching from a day’s hard work, a full belly, a dog on his lap, and a man he realized was dangerously close to falling in love with sleeping peacefully by his side, he thought, I think I could live the rest of my life like this. (via tanoshii omoide — victuuri — 600+ wc)

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

it truly is the fact that i wrote AND published anything at all

i've been in a slump (creatively and otherwise) bc of my aforementioned mentioned misery era

jotting down ideas has been the extent of any creative endeavours for a very long time

finishing anything was a shock

actually posting them even more so

the fact that it happened more than once is nothing short of a miracle tbqh

mr reynolds and huge jacked man put crack something in this year's old man yaoi and i am very grateful for it!! 😂😂

WOOH i finally finished! if anyone actually reads this: you're a real one and i thank you<3

[lostinfantasyworlds]

Thank you so much for asking @heynikkiyousofine​​!!! ❤️ ❤️ I wrote about The First and Last in a separate post, but here’s some more info about the other two:

If It Kills Me

Back in April, I had a particularly rough depression week, and this story ended up being born out of the dark place I was in mentally. I wanted to write something extremely angsty and depressing, with my main thought being to explore the grief Kagome or Inuyasha would go through if one genuinely believed the other to be dead (while still eventually having a happy ending). I formed a loose plot around that idea that includes the childhood-best-friends-to-lovers trope because I can never get enough (and to add another layer of angst where Kagome had finally confessed her love for Inuyasha and he told her that he doesn’t feel the same...I SWEAR THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING, don’t take anything at face value 😅)

I'm really reallyyyy excited about this story, because it will be my first time writing something in the mystery genre with action/suspense/plot twists! Most of the work I’ve done on this has been plotting/outlining as opposed to actual writing, so I don’t really have a snippet (at least nothing without major spoilers), but here’s what I can share so far:

The title comes from the song If It Kills Me by Jason Mraz that has been a favorite of mine since high school. I had actually been wanting write a story based on this song for a while, and once I got this idea fleshed out, I excitedly realized that it would be a perfect title for this story! Some of the lyrics are:

Well all I really wanna do is love you A kind much closer than friends use But I still can't say it after all we've been through And all I really want from you is to feel me As the feeling inside keeps building And I will find a way to you if it kills me If it kills me It might kill me

Rating: M

Summary: A devastated Kagome returns to her home town to attend the funeral of her best friend (and unrequited love) Inuyasha, but soon discovers that nothing is as it seems. What has Inuyasha been hiding from her, and how will the past come back to haunt them?

Tags: Major character death (but not really), unrequited love (but not really), mystery, friends to lovers, childhood best friends, heavy angst, grief, angst with a happy ending, mutual pining, demon FBI, crime, yakuza-like organization

----------------------

Baby Talk

(Total 180 here lmao 😂) 

This is a fluffy-as-hell, post-canon InuKagMor oneshot that’s set a few weeks after Moroha’s birth. Kagome is completely worn out from being a new mom, and one night after an exhausting day just breaks down into tears because she’s just so tired. Finally, Moroha actually falls asleep, allowing Kagome to get a bit of rest as well. But she wakes up again shortly after and starts fussing, so in a desperate attempt to let his wife get just a little more sleep, Inuyasha takes Moroha into his arms and starts quietly pleading with her to let her mom sleep for a little while longer. 

He quickly realizes that she is soothed by the sound of his voice, so he keeps talking for as long as he can. He ends up monologuing  about how he hopes he’ll be a good father since he never had a good example of one growing up, how he’ll always protect her, how he’s excited to see how strong she’ll be and what kinds of powers she’ll have, etc...literally just pure sap 🥰. But eventually, Moroha needs to be fed again, so Kagome is woken up and the three have a sweet moment as a family.

This is the one I had wanted to finish for InuKag Week this year, when one of the themes was Parenting. Sadly, work and lack of ability to form coherent sentences got in the way, so this is still unfinished. It’s currently a little over 1k words, and will probably end up being somewhere in the 2k - 5k range. It should be easy enough to write/finish, but my brain has been extremely uncooperative lately when it comes to writing 🙃.

Here’s a (rough) sampling of this total sapfest (of course I can never resist adding in a little splash of fluffy InuKag at the end of family fics):

“I bet…that when she gets a little older…you’re going to be her hero.” Kagome tilted her head further back on his shoulder, meeting his gaze with a warm smile that crinkled the corners of her bleary eyes. “She’s probably going to follow you around everywhere wanting to play, and begging you to teach her how to do all of the cool stuff you can do.” Her eyes shut as she turned away to yawn, but the corners of her mouth lifted again a moment later, this time as if she were trying to stifle a laugh. “That’s when I’ll catch up on sleep.”

“Feh. Yeah right.” 

Inuyasha’s dismissal was so quiet and halfhearted that he wasn’t sure if his wife even heard it at all. Truth be told, he couldn’t imagine anything else in the entire world that would make him feel more accomplished than if Moroha really did grow up to regard him as her hero. It was a beautiful dream, one he didn’t dare hope for too much just yet, but it stunned him to realize that it was an actual possibility.

Full list of WIPs here

[sapphicblight]

20 and 27 for ao3 wrapped! (and your tags? v relatable. something very lgbt also happened to me last summer 😂)

when i say none of me saw kp coming, nvm vegaspete in particular. part of me still thinks i hallucinated the whole thing 🙃

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

i don't really reread my own work once published because i'll just find things i want to change and then i'll never leave. but when it comes to the ones i reread the most while editing, i think that's gonna have to be either your body's a tether or intrinsically simply because they're the two i struggled with the most.

'your body is a tether’ was my very first attempt at writing smut at all, never mind actually publishing it. i ended up doing a billion editing passes to see if the smut was well paced, wasn't too cringy, was still emotional enough, did it have enough dialogue, not enough dialogue, etc. it was also my first time having to pick what word i wanted to use for genitals which i hadn't anticipated to be the biggest hurdle of them all 🥲 so i reread it a ridiculous amount during editing

with 'intrinsically' i specifically struggled with the chronology. it's a collection of different moments in pete's life, and i ended up putting them in a non-chronological order for the sake of pacing and tension, and it just worked better that way narratively; but as i edited i ended up going back and putting it in chronological order, then putting it back in non-chronological order, then in an entirely different non-chronological order, and back again, so on and so forth, resulting in me rereading every single part in every possible order 78398238 times. in the end, i trusted my beta reader on what order worked best since she was still able to take in the work, unlike me, who had read it so often i barely even registered the words on my screen. havent reread it since posting it because i think i'd get stuck back in the time-loop if i did. but im not a perfectionist at all why do you ask??

27. What do you listen to while writing?

usually i just put my liked songs on spotify on shuffle. which is a bit of a wildcard move because i have like 3000 songs on there with various vibes, and a chaotic mix of western music, kpop, and eurodance (mostly owed to eurovision tbh). only when i'm struggling, i'll really seek out a specific song or playlist. i do have a handful of writing playlists related to my original stories or just specific moods that fit what i tend to write.

for vegaspete my roommate and i actually made a playlist together that i'll turn to sometimes for the canon compliant / canon divergent fics, which is where i'll also scalp the lyric i use for my titles. fun fact; intrinsically was originally gonna have the title 'tell me lies when i'm all truth' from a song i heavily associate w vegaspete -- 'playmate' by olive.

oh right and for boy in blue i actually used a song called 'girl in blue' and used lyrics in the work itself as well that i rewrote for narrative purposes. this resulted in me listening to the song over and over and over again while writing boy in blue, to the point that it actually made my top 5 in spotify wrapped 🧍‍♂️