#also idk it’s less pressure as well since it’s shorter chapters

[resident-rats]

Hoping to post chapter two of my fic at the start of next week?? Currently I’m like half way through writing chapter three

[amyscascadingtabs]

2020 in writing

tagged by the wonderful @feeisamarshmallow and @b99peraltiago! thank you, this took me seriously three hours but it was fun. 

tagging whoever has three hours to spare!! but i’d love to see @amydancepants-peralta, @letsperaltiago, @johnny-and-dora, and @fezzle do this, although no pressure because this took me the entire evening. 

1. List of works published this year

oh god this is going to take forever...

i’ll walk through hell with you, chapter 5, 6 & 7

all the kingdom lights shined just for me and you

a single kiss and i’m under your spell

paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans

dust off your highest hopes

i can’t see the future, but i know that it’s there

look now, the sky is gold

look at where we are, look at where we started

bracing for the winds i always summon

just know that i’m already home

there’s magic everywhere you go

we’ve found a love to cross the ages

all my days, i’ll know your face

hell was the journey but it brought me heaven

(three times ‘cause) i’ve waited my whole life

if devotion is a river, then i’m floating away

when all your heroes get tired (i’ll be something better yet)

evermore

i am not a stranger to the dark

in the cracks of light, i dreamed of you

rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky

21 works!! 

2. Work you are most proud of (and why)

I am really really proud of finishing i’ll walk through hell with you, that’s still one of the highlights in my writing “career”. bracing for the winds i always summon and (three times ‘cause) i’ve waited my whole life, because they were both longer works with a lot of introspection that focused a lot on jake and amy’s feelings about upcoming parenthood. especially the last one I still love dearly. i’m also really proud of the fics i wrote all from rosa’s perspective (paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans and when all your heroes get tired (i’ll be something better yet)).

3. Work you are least proud of (and why)

none! I guess a few of them are shorter and written way quicker than some others, but I always take that into consideration when “evaluating” how proud I am of them so no. personally, I’m proud of everything in different ways. 

4. A favourite except of your writing

referring to the creator tag meme for this where I posted excerpts from the five works I’m most proud of!

5. Share or describe a favourite review you received

questions like these remind me that I need to start saving my favorite reviews somewhere! that’s a goal for 2021, haha. but every comment that have listed their favorite moments in the fic I reread like five times over and smile every time, and all the comments people left me on the last chapter of i’ll walk through hell with you were so wonderful. and the rosa fic. and the -

you know what, I just started reading through old comments and I can’t pick one, it feels too unfair to all the other incredible ones I ’ve gotten. so. all of them!!!! I love you guys!!

I will mention this one that someone sent me in the middle of summer, during a period when I wasn’t writing or publishing so it ended up meaning that much more for that reason as well. comment on look at where we are, look at where we started (in the brief period of time when we thought peraltiago baby would be named Leo)

“Idk why, but the way Jake was talking to Leo made me wonder if my parents ever talked to me like that right after I was born. I've been told the story of my birth every birthday since I was born, so I know it by heart, but despite the countless Peraltiago baby fics and other fandom baby fics I've read, this is the one that made me wonder what my parents were thinking when I was born. And then it made me wonder what I'm gonna think when I give birth to a kid, or if I adopt a kid.” like, I was just so floored that something I wrote made someone reflect so deeply on their own life. and I want to underline that I have so so many favourite reviews but yes, this one stuck with me!

6. A time when writing was really, really hard

this summer was the hardest it’s ever been. first the (rightful) hesitance and reflection that followed the BLM protests and then some trauma and deep depression added onto that for me was… yeah. it took a really long time to find real joy in it again. 

7. A scene of characters you wrote that surprised you

Jake and Rosa’s friendship in i am not a stranger to the dark! I’ve written a bit of Rosa and Amy and feel quite comfortable with their friendship and dynamic but far less of Jake and Rosa! 

“At least this is still way better than... that.” “Literally everything is better than prison.” “True that.” Rosa looks up at the tv, realizing she’s missed at least ten minutes of the movie already. “I’m glad we got out.” “Sometimes it still feels like a part of me didn't,” Jake says, quietly. “You ever feel that way?” “Sometimes,” she admits. “We did, though. That's what's important.”

Rosa can hear someone talking in the background on the other end, and Jake mumbling something back in reply. “I have to go,” he tells her, and it makes her a little sad, because he's good company. “I can't miss dinner. Wouldn't want to piss off the entirety of my fiancées family before I’ve even married her, right?”

8. How did you grow as a writer this year?

I wrote more Rosa! that’s probably the single thing which helped me grow most, because she’s arguably a much harder character to write than Jake and Amy, since most of the time you really have no clue what she’s thinking. I have to think a lot harder about how Rosa thinks and feels and reacts to things and I feel like that makes me a better writer overall. 

9. How do you hope to grow next year?

I don’t have any big expectations tbh. I know next year is going to take so much of my energy “”professionally”” or well, study-wise, so I think it’s the wrong year to set ambitious creative writing goals for me. then there’s also the inevitable fact that I’ve written a whopping ninety-nine stories for this show now and I’m always asking myself for how long it will last. there was a point in april-may where I thought it was going to be the end and during the entire summer as well. so… we’ll see. I don’t have any WIP I’m aching to finish right now. 

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta of cheerleader or muse etc. etc.)?

@fezzle, @johnny-and-dora, @vernonfielding, @amydancepants-peralta, @feeisamarshmallow, @amazingsantiago and @letsperaltiago all deserve their own shoutouts here for various reasons!! (if you want to know more about why just message me!) 

11. Anything from real life show up in your writing this year?

always, in different ways in how I relate to the characters and different feelings and moments and experiences that would take way too long to explain. but if I could choose one fic it would be paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans. I worked through a lot of feelings about a breakup I went through in this one and they were ones I hadn’t really had the chance to let myself feel before writing this. It isn’t similar to how my breakup went, at least I didn’t mean for it to be and haven’t put any intentional similarities in there (although I guess there are a few if you look for them) but some of the things Rosa thinks, says and feels after being broken up with were quite personal. i am not a stranger to the dark and the way it focuses on healing after trauma was also partly personal although way much less obviously so because the experiences are quite different lol.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers?

make writer friends! talk to other writers! you’ll both learn so much and it makes writing and developing fics so much more fun!

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year

I currently have zero WIP and zero real plans so genuinely who knows. all depends on what my life will look like and what s8 will bring us! 

14. If you could recommend only one work from yourself published this year

all the favourite five, but maybe when all your heroes get tired (i’ll be something better yet). I think it’s a great complement to the Rosa and Amy action we saw in season 7 and it has a lot of peraltiago from someone else’s viewpoint as well. 

15. Year word count

are you kidding meeeee okay here we go.

okay, so adding everything I’ve published this year together… 111 283 words.

😳 😳 😳 

DEAR GOD.

additional trivia: the shortest fic was 651 words (evermore), the longest if you exclude the three chapters of i’ll walk through hell with you (they are 24.6k together though) (three times ‘cause) i’ve waited my whole life, and the average word count for a fic of mine this year was 5 299 or 4 838 words, depending on whether you count the chapters of i’ll walk through hell with you as one or three works. that makes sense because i feel like i’ve written a loot of fics around that length this year! 

[moony-jamie]

Okay long post that may or may not be shorter than expected but here we go. (I just wrote everything and it's pretty long, I think)

This will mostly be about things that happened in the past few weeks that made me emotional? Kinda? Stuff I want to talk about aka screaming it into the void that tumblr is. (Apparently it's mostly about football and my exams)

I'll put it under a keep reading thing, hopefully it works.

Okay where do I start?

I feel like I spend more time being emotional about football than worrying about my finals. Magdeburg was involved most of the time but also football that shares one braincell and the DFB hasn't seen it in a long time.

But let's start at the beginning.

On the 8th of May 46 years ago Magdeburg won the Cup Winners' Cup. Since it looked like the season will be cancelled and Magdeburg could go into a financial crisis, the fans organised a fundraising event in which they sold tickets for an imaginary trip to Rotterdam to win the cup a second time. This started around the 5th of April and went on for a month.

Obviously I got a ticket too and spend a whole week basically camping in front of my mailbox waiting for it. It took five days and I cried when it came.

It's beautiful, I love it a lot, one of my favourite players singed it, I'm in love.

They even managed to show the game in a re-live so that's the story how I screamed and cried after my English exam because we won the cup (again).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qBL15JPO4g

And well then this video made me cry again and I feel like I spend more time crying over Magdeburg than actually studying for the exams but it's time well spend I guess.

(And no we didn't actually went to Rotterdam it was all imagination but it was great anyway)

During all of this Magdeburg desperately tried to get Milan's attention (for a possible rematch in four years for the 50th anniversary) by tweeting at them in badly translated Italian. Honestly that club is as dumb as I am and I love them a lot.

Apart from that football was all about pain the past weeks, starting with the fact that I can't scream my emotions out during football games? Like idk if it's a good coping mechanism or not but screaming for 90 minutes straight always helped me a lot.

Now I'm really mad that the DFB decided to start Bundesliga behind closed doors because first of all the Bundesliga is nothing without it's fans. Second, ending the season early would be the better option but well I told myself to calm so I will do calm.

BUT THEN they won't stop arguing about the 3. Liga and honestly I'm done with this shit. At least Magdeburg is the club with the braincells and said they want to end the season (I guess I chose the right club to stan).

The thing is Magdeburg isn't legally allowed to train or even play here in Saxony Anhalt but well apparently the DFB doesn't care and is now pressuring the politics into either allowing them to play or they will take away Magdeburg's (and Halle's) license and honestly that is so fucked up I can't believe it's actually happening.

Football, what a fun sport to stan :)

Enough about football tho, lets get into the important stuff. Or well the reason I actually took a break from tumblr.

My exams went surprisingly well despite the fact that I had to stop studying at some point because it just stressed me out.

It all started off with my Chemistry exam which was pretty easy. Besides my business administration exam it was the one that stressed me out a lot because I almost failed the mock exam and I just had a bad feeling overall.

But then I saw the tasks and everything was so easy?? Of course I started stressing again because I was finished with still an hour to go but then my classmate told me that she saw the teacher grading it and I had a lot of points already and?? I was so relieved?? Honestly I could've cried.

My English exam was the next one, two days after Chemistry.

There are two main parts in this one. The first one is the listening comprehension (nightmare of every German student) the second one is the written part.

In my school we have one room that has a very good acoustic in which the listening part wouldn't be a problem but due to Corona they talked about closing it because it might be unfair when it couldn't be used for everyone that wrote the more difficult exam (I not in the mood to explain the whole system right now but if you want to know more about it dm me).

Thursday I wrote my English teacher if she knows how it's planned right now and she confirmed that they will be using this room and that I will be in this room for the listening part. That was the first time I actually cried because of my exams.

Now English wasn't particularly bad but I have a weird feeling about it. We will see once I'll get the results.

My German exam was the next one and just like with the English exam I have a weird feeling but we'll have to see.

I got good results in both of my mocks so hopefully it will be fine.

The last one was my business administration exam and oh boy. I was stressing so much, I couldn't look at my notes without having a breakdown and it was bad, really bad.

I was praying for marketing to be a big part but of course my prayers weren't heard and there wasn't a single sign of it at all.

BUT luckily the main part of the exam was easy. Well not too easy but it was a topic where I didn't think they would make it the main part but they did. It was about loans.

Well we better don't talk about the rest of it but if my calculations are right I should get the required points.

I really don't want to get hopes up but I'm pretty sure I made it.

There is one exam left still but it will be some time around June and hopefully pretty easy so I'm not stressing too much right now.

Now that I finished the hardest part I hate how everyone was stressing me even more. People basically tell you that if you don't start studying months and months in advance you won't make it but?? No, it's not that.

I can't speak for other exams of course because well maybe we had a Corona bonus or whatever but I don't think so.

It really seems to be easy (at least for all the nightmare stories I always heard).

Also wtf F1? I walk out of my German exam and see that Vettel left Ferrari. Got my crying the whole day because well I don't mind him leaving Ferrari as much as I mind should he retire. I really don't want that.

And then I walk out of the business exam and they announce Carlos to Ferrari and Dan to McLaren. As if I wasn't emotional enough, F1 really decided to play with my feelings here huh.

But what else happened except for football and exams?

Well I walked my dog every day and saw all kind of animals during so. I don't know if it was because there were less people outside or just because we have a lot of fields and forests in general but it was pretty cool.

We saw rabbits, foxes, deers and even a snake (I only saw a wild snake once in my life so that's pretty cool)

Also managed to took a (bad) picture of a deer, isn't he cute?

Also a week ago my mom convinced me to buy a bunch of guppies for our tank and ever since we got them my betta got herself a goth girlfriend and I'm??? So soft??? For my gay fish??

They're very shy tho and I didn't manage to get a good picture of them yet but it's really cute. They're always hanging around each other.

Last week I was also able to go to the stable again since Jody isn't actually my horse and they only allowed owners on the property to stop the people from taking riding lessons.

This picture is from today, I wanted to take pictures in this field ever since I missed it last year and most of the flowers stopped blooming back then.

But I was able to go back and can go there again now that I have some free time and I'm just so happy.

Unfortunately now they aren't in full bloom either because we missed it again (thanks Corona 🙃) but the picture is nice enough so I don't mind too much.

By now I can't really think of anything else that happened.

As I said I'm now working on my Fanfiction. In theory I wanted it to be done by the end of May but I don't think I will make it but I'm not stressing myself with it either. Every chapter is more or less plotted so I hope writing will go by a little easier.

I don't know how many people actually read it until this point but if you did, thanks 💙

I'm just happy that I got all of it of my chest now since I wanted to talk about all this but I was getting tired to annoy my mom with it.

[venus-says]

Aikatsu Stars! Episodes 33-38

Is that time of the year again (for the fourth time this month lol)

Yay, the weather was good today and I managed to do everything I had to do on time so the Aikatsu marathon continues! Another 6 episodes this night so let’s get going.

One thing I don’t like about these episodes is how rushed they felt. Like, last episode Rola was eager to get lessons from her mom which makes you believe the training hasn’t started yet. But then at the beginning of episode 33, the training was already over?

Talking more about episode 33 itself, I have a huge problem of how the show has been framing Rolas as wrong, that she has been so focused on beating Yume that she lost sight of her own path. And while this is a good message, this was never the reason why she has lost so many times?

Like, she has lost because Yume’s OP power would always come up and blast her away, she was never in fault of anything in this whole story so why does she have to go through the teaching of doing things her way for herself must come with a “you lost because you were trying to beat someone” note attached to it?

The next episode... boy I don’t even know what to say. Like, it was really necessary to put gyaru who were doing blackface to show Mahiru’s abilities with makeup and such? Like, even if they wanted to keep the girls as gyaru they could’ve done them without they using brown foundation, couldn’t they? I don’t know, this is such a sensitive subject, I feel like... I can’t really speak properly on the matter?... But it still bothers me quite a lot... and it kinda negates all the good things this episode was trying to do...?  Idk, i’m just gonna shut my mouth and move on.

Following the tragedy of that episode, we have a mini-arc focused on exploring Yume’s power. And you guessed, I could care less about this whole thing.

I’m sorry but the sadness, the sense of urgency, all the strong complications they’ve put in these episodes just don’t work for me. I know it probably has for most of the people, many people must think these episodes, 35 especially, are one of the bests in the entire franchise, but since I don’t like the concept of Yume’s power since day 1, I couldn’t care less about this whole thing.

In fact, it just makes me even angrier because apparently, Yume is only THE THIRD PERSON to have experienced this, like if the show didn’t have already gone out of its way to show enough times just to show how special Yume is.

And if thongs weren’t bad enough already the headmaster HAS TO put more pressure and once more plan to expel her, when it really wasn’t necessary no more.

Honestly, I can’t. I just can’t. I also don’t like how fast it was for Yume to raise from her lowest point, you know the journey of her slowly getting her confidence again would’ve been way much more interesting to see then what we got. Oh well, at least now I hope that with this chapter close this power will never appear again and we won’t have to deal with it anymore.

The next two episodes are the traditional Christmas and New Year episodes.

And as always, I don’t have much to say about them. 37 is the typical x-mas episode you can expect from Aikatsu. Sadly it got sprinkled with terrible romance bullshit on the top which turned this episode that could’ve been very cute and adorable, and a very nice change of pace after so many eventful episodes, into a despiteful thing because we have boys and girls and obviously they can’t be just friends, they must be love interests because what other purpose would they have, right?

Episode 38 is the New Year episode and I have nothing to add here that I haven’t said before in this post. There was a lot of foreshadowing and prediction of the future here but these were things that are pretty obvious to presume so it wasn’t even fun to see and create theories.

If I have to add something here is that Rola’s solo version of 1, 2, Sing! is the superior version and if you disagree you’re wrong.

And this was Aikatsu Stars for the day, this was actually a lot shorter than I was expecting, I hope I’m not forgetting anything. In any case, we’re 12 episodes away from the end of this season and I can’t believe we’ve made it so far, it feels like time is flying. I wish this experience was filled with less complaining and more joy, but oh well I’m getting ahead of myself, this is a speech I should've been making in two days, not now. ANYWAY, enough talking. Bye-bi~