#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

[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 🧍‍♂️

[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

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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