#and that's the story of how i exposed myself as an mcu fic writer-

[tenderhooked]

CHAOS SIBLINGS ROAD TRIP FT. THE UGLIEST VAN IN EXISTENCE Please tell me more I need to know everything about this ugly van

[vibrates] well this is excellent news because i want to talk forever about this ugly van and these chaos siblings and this unhinged road trip fic. (also. CONSOLIDATION. @readwing.)

i'm not sure how many people who follow me here will like. Actually Care about this fic sjdklfjd bc i am a ted lasso writer and this is. an mcu fic. but i still want to yell about it so here we go!

so this fic is a modern-day au because apparently i'm incapable of writing modern-day aus where our beloved blorbos are kiddos. loki is 15/16, thor is 18/19. one day, loki Just Happens to discover that they have an estranged older sister, hela, who their parents have never mentioned and who, according to a very intensive google search, lives somewhere on the most remote island in norway.

of course loki immediately has to drag thor out on a quest to find her. 1) if they have one sister their dad doesn't want to talk about, who's to say what else he's lying about? and 2) he's got an upcoming project for his psychology class that he absolutely Does Not want to think about currently. not that that's got any bearing on the situation whatsoever.

which means, at the very earliest beginnings of summer, the two of them pile into thor's friend steve's Ugliest Van In Existence with a stack of old cds, the mountain goat named korg they haven't managed to chase off, five more knives than have ever been necessary in any situation, and a massive map of norway, and then they drive. and drive. and drive.

(success of the adventure varies, depending on what you're looking for.)

i just. miss these bros and their horrifying murder sister and sometimes you gotta write 15k of unhinged chaos nonsense about it, y'know?

ALSO. see below the cut for Thee ugliest hippie van in existence. i want it more than anything in the world.

[scandalsavagefanfic]

For the ask game: 6, 7 and 46 :)

6. What is a fandom you will never write for?

Oh man. Probably... all of them? DC is really the only thing I'm interested in enough to write fic for. I may dabble in some Star Wars at some point but it would be super-niche pre-Disney, olden days Expanded Universe because that's where my heart lies.

I guess, if I have to pick one or two that I'm very confident I'll never write for... MCU and DCEU. I can't really wrap my head around actors looking like my favorite characters when it comes to fic, so I don't really like writing for live action versions. That's the main reason. There are a couple other factors, especially with the DCEU, that keep me from going for it. That said, I do have a BoP inspired fic that's been in the works for a very long time but for some reason that live action influence doesn't bother me as much

7. What is a ship you will never write for?

Honestly can't think of one that I can say I will for certain never write. Not for DC anyway.

I almost said Padme/Anakin just because while they're fine as a canon couple I'm just not interested in any exploration of their relationship outside of tcw but... I could see myself rewriting Padme's shitty death one day so... even that's on the table.

46. Few long essay reviews or many short reviews?

This is about comments I'm assuming? I guess it depends on how we're defining short and long.

I'm gonna cheat and say an average number of comments of average length.

All comments are very much loved and appreciated, from every emoji to every essay. But those long ones just... they make you feel so warm and fuzzy inside. Writing is so... exposing, you know? Like, when I write something, I'm willingly opening myself to some kind of exposure and public critique and it's a very vulnerable place. Taking the extra effort to just, click the comment button and drop a couple emoji's or a "I really liked this!" is already so supportive and amazing and you feel some amount of validation for the effort you put into creating this thing. So when there's a bunch of those, that means that a bunch of people thought your story was worth that extra effort.

But those longer comments are like next level of effort for readers. It can take a bit of time to come up with a long, detailed comment and, when you're a writer, and you know how long it took you to write the fic, and you see someone write a massive comment (sometimes they don't even realize they've written 500 words of loving support and that that's 1/4 the length of the fic) you know this thing you made meant something to them. It's just... so special. So uplifting as a writer. But people are different and what means something to someone is very personal. It's not going to happen for every person on every fic.

So basically, I'm not really willing to give up either type of comment completely. Ideally, I want a fic to be enjoyed by everyone who likes the tags and I hope that it hits a handful of people very very deeply.

Fic Writer Ask Game

[tisfan]

Some of my Favorite Fics

In no particular order: Mostly Stucky or Stony, a few odds and ends

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11843493 Fourth Floor 

Steve has his life in order, okay. He goes to wizard college, even if he can't technically do magic. He has his own apartment, even though it's small and dinky and kind of gross, and forgets to exist sometimes, and might also be alive? Plus, he has a crush on the hot cyborg in unit 404 who cooks fiendishly good breakfast foods, and may or may not have some kind of weird connection to the sentient building they live in. He's not sure.

He's dealing, all right, his life is in tip-top condition, or it was until an eldritch monstrosity called the Hydra started posing as a real estate company to try and buy over his new home.

He's really pissed about that.

https://archiveofourown.org/series/362162 All these Burning Hearts in Hell (series)

Mind the tags, this one’s a bit adult. That being said, this is one of my all time favorite Comfort Fics. I read it when I’m super depressed and unhappy and while it doesn’t cheer me up, exactly, it helps me a lot.

This is the night Steve is stolen by Tony Stark, whose slaves disappear in industrial quantities. This is the night sex slave #32557038 is given to a new master and finds out what is expected of him. This is the night Tony saves two slaves and doesn't tell them any comforting lies like "You're free now."

https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097468/chapters/13976701 If Steve Rogers Were Your Boyfriend

When he's not editing a magazine he truly loathes or navigating a rocky relationship he truly doesn't deserve, Bucky Barnes writes a fantasy romance column with an unexpectedly loyal internet following about the barista at his favorite cafe. Barista Boyfriend makes these other worlds bearable, but the real world dreamboat isn’t remotely involved; Steve Rogers is just a muse. Everyone loves the column. And it definitely isn’t killing Bucky very gently in 500 word increments, not in the slightest. What kind of a writer can't keep fact and fiction straight?

James Fuckin' Barnes, that's who.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10759983 Some days i (wish that i wasn’t myself)

The problem, Seb never meant to say out loud, has always been that if he got Chris Evans’ dick in his mouth it would definitely end up making the story.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/5111324/chapters/11759420 Deep in the Heart of Me

There were days when the realization that he was someone’s father made Steve's head hurt, but mostly he was grateful that he could trust his instincts, because apparently Peter was what had been missing from his life. Yes, he still had lingering, unresolved issues from his time in the Army, and sure, he had what Bucky annoyingly referred to as a criminally untapped ass, and no life outside of work and Peter, but Steve was okay with how his life had turned out because of trusting his instincts.

Unfortunately, those same instincts had straight up betrayed him by going absolutely haywire upon being exposed to Tony Stark.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122672/chapters/6766994 Casual Encounters

“You have never once been careful in your entire life.” Bucky huffs out a laugh. He looks away. “Maybe I’m offended you didn’t think to ask me.” He says it like a joke, but he can’t bring himself to laugh again.

“Bucky,” Steve says, scandalized. “You’re my friend. I’m not gonna use you to experiment sexually.”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/319257/chapters/513333 At Your Service

(not the MCU for a change. ha ha)

Hogwarts students are in danger; Harry is determined to save them all. There's only one thing he knows for certain: Draco Malfoy is somehow involved.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1752638/chapters/3745571 This, You Protect

The mission resets abruptly, from objective: kill to objective: protect

https://archiveofourown.org/works/411599 The Twice-Told Tale

For someone he'd hero-worshipped for so long, Steve Rogers in the flesh is a pretty big disappointment. For one thing, he keeps looking at Tony as though he reminds him of someone else, and even if he never says anything, Tony's pretty sure it's his father. A lifetime of not measuring up to Howard's expectations is more than enough, thank you very much, and he's certainly not going to make an effort to live up to any of Steve's. Steve's pretty clearly failed to live up to his expectations, in any case, and that's not hypocritical at all.

[lokilickedme]

Hello My Lady! Just because you asked, here are my faves of yours: #1 King (no surprise here), #2 Jack (too crazy not to love, and the stream crossing of pretty much all your stories is genius) #3 Chem/BD/TTW/TKH/TWK/can't remember them all. They're all special in their own way! Can't believe it'll be 3yrs soon since I started squatting your page!!! God time goes by fast! I'd like to add a special mention for the Muse Meetings, sooo funny, and a Golden Snowflake to Aleks. Cute little bumkin.

Thank you @fudgemuffinanon!  Dear god, has it been that long?  Seems like I joined up last year…*sits here blinking at my posts from 2015, wondering how that happened*

**LONG TEXT POST COMING UP**

You drew the lucky straw today my darling, I’m feeling wordy and in the mood to share.  A lot of people have asked me over the last couple of years how some of my stuff came about, and you mentioned one that gets a lot of asks.

Lemme tell you something about the Muse Meetings.  Way back in 1998 when I got my first computer, one of the very first things I ran across by way of internet fanfiction was a little something called The Very Secret Diaries penned by a writer named Cassandra Claire (who is now professionally published under the name Cassandra Clare).  The Very Secret Diaries (which are hilarious, btw) woke something up in me - mainly because, as a lifelong writer who had never allowed anyone to read 95% of my work, I finally realized that yeah, there were other people out there whose brains deviated from the standard in the same way mine did.  Her writing style back then (in the Diaries specifically, I’ve never actually read anything else she’s written) was very similar to the way I wrote, and those Diaries were exactly the sort of silly, ridiculous, irreverent thing I’d scribbled in my notebooks for most of my life.  And people liked it, she had a huge following based on just those out-of-context glimpses of her characters’ personal thoughts.  She was writing behind the scenes thoughts of characters, things that would never make it into books, and it was brilliant.  That was the kind of stuff I loved to write but had never given myself permission to show anyone.  She was showing hers to people, and they were loving it.

Which gave me the inspiration to not only put my work out there in the public eye for the first time ever, but to stick with my personal writing style (which I’d always assumed wasn’t what other people wanted to read, based on the books I’d been exposed to most of my life).  Not change anything.  Just do me.  And doing me meant writing silly nonsense if I wanted to.

So - The Very Secret Diaries are more or less the inspiration for the Muse Meetings, or at least the official written version of them.  I’d always imagined dialogues with my characters outside the confines of whatever story I was working on, but never thought anyone else would be interested in seeing me write it out.

The Diaries made me realize different.  Not only were her characters yammering and complaining and snarking at each other (both out of character and in), they were doing it in exactly the way I’d imagined my own characters interacting in the real world.  I loved it.  Seeing someone else do what I’d always done in my head - and do it in an official, out-there-in-the-public-eye capacity, was a revelation.  Finally I was able to give myself permission to write the way I wanted to, without restricting myself to the styles and methods in the books in the family library.  It had always been in my head, but now it didn’t have to stay there.  I could write proper stories, but I could also write what was going on in the other room, where the reader seldom gets to peek.  And other people besides myself might like it because hey, there’s precedent.

That was freeing, and I am grateful to Ms Claire for that.

So, a little history that leads up to how and why I finally started writing out the Muse Meetings:

My first fandoms that I wrote for online were Harry Potter and Star Wars (Kenobi specifically).  And yes, way back then (late 90′s - early 2000′s) there were already muse meetings among my characters.  I’ve been doing these for a long time, and I wish the out-of-character stuff I’d written back then still existed (my HP stuff bit the dust when The Restricted Section shut down, and my SW stuff was on FF.net for a little while but honestly I don’t remember my user ID there or the titles of the fics, though I have searched…so they’re most likely lost as well).  It’s sort of a shame because there were some old Anakin/Obi-Wan muse meetings that you guys would have loved…and the stuff between Remus and Sirius while we were hashing out what was going to be in their next chapter?  It still pains me that it’s all lost, but maybe it’s for the best.  That was nearly two decades ago, we move on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.

After my urge to write HP fic fizzled out I stopped writing for a while, but there were always muse meetings going on in my head for stories I scribbled mentally.  To me they’ve always been more fun than the actual stories, which explains my love for gag reels and behind-the-scenes featurettes for movies (I watch those first, always).

And then I found AO3 - funnily enough, I discovered it while searching the internet for one of my lost HP fics - and I decided to start writing in earnest again.  With all those thousands and thousands of fics and endless fandoms, it seemed like the perfect place to indulge my need to share what went on in my head.  And as I settled into the MCU and my stories started to grow to include multitudes of characters, those impromptu staff meetings with my muses kept being called to order.  Stuff that my characters would never say in the context of their stories got said.  Scenarios that were too ridiculous to waste time writing were played out.  Arguments and fights and bantering between characters who, in the restrictive confines of their own tales, would never in a million years interact…now they were throwing poptarts at each other (and occasionally knives) while the side characters wandered out of the room to watch TV or raid the fridge or sat in horror as someone’s until-now unassuming wife brandished a melon baller as a weapon.

It was messy and fun and was by far my favorite part of the writing process.

That’s what eventually became the Muse Meetings.  You want to know how they escaped my head and became an official thing?

Well I’m gonna tell ya lol

One of my very first friends in here, the fantastic @elvenfair1, was one of my first readers at AO3 and she told me I should post links to my fics at this site called tumblr to bring in a bigger audience.  So I opened an account here, followed her, posted some links as suggested, and she and I began messaging back and forth pretty much every night as we wrote our respective fics, bouncing ideas off each other and discussing plot points and brainstorming for character names.  And as my characters sassed me and refused to cooperate with what I wanted them to do, I would tell elvenfair what was going on in my head with my dumbass OCs and OFCs and we’d laugh and gripe about trying unsuccessfully to reel in our unruly muses.

And then one night back in 2015 she said “You should post this muse stuff, it’s hilarious.”

You know what the first thing I thought was?  Cassandra Claire did it 14 years ago and people loved it.  So yeah, I can sure as hell do it if I want.  If nobody is interested in it, at least it’ll amuse me and elvenfair and that’s cool enough.

And so I did.  I started posting them in here first, then as people started requesting them more I eventually moved them to AO3 in a more structured format.  And now you guys have multiple Lokis hurling curses at a bartender and viciously baiting a hapless movie star while teenage versions of two other attendees flirt with unsuspecting OFCs, with an occasional appearance by Thor dropping hints about future chapters and looking for fruit roll-ups.  It’s messy, but it’s fun and I’ve always enjoyed writing it as a way to let my brain decompress, especially when one of my “real” stories has hit a roadbump.

Since then I’ve seen countless other professional writers doing the exact same thing - J.R. Ward even posts her own version of muse meetings on her official website AND has a published book (her Insiders Guide) that is almost entirely nothing BUT muse meetings.   It’s surprising how many writers actually do this and I sometimes wonder if authors like Poe, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Tolkien, Gaiman, McMurtry didn’t do it themselves (I’d bet money on McMurtry).  Just goes to show there’s not an original idea anywhere in the universe…no matter how much you might believe you came up with it first, someone out there has been doing it for a long damn time before you - and a million more will do it after you :)

Anyway, I haven’t written any muse meetings in a while but they still go on constantly in my head.  I get asked about once a week to go back to doing them, and one day I will, when I have time for it.  My actual fics are struggling for writing time as it is and I made a conscious decision to weed out the unnecessary stuff in favor of “real work” (yeah right lol)…but yeah, the Meetings are still one of my favorite things and I won’t stop doing them permanently - they’ll be back.

So thank you Cassandra Claire for inspiring me to let them fly…if it weren’t for those whacked-out Diaries, the Muse Meetings would all still be in my head with only one person (me) laughing at them.

[aslightstep]

so this is not a drill, work on Irreparable’s new chapter really has commenced! But before I really get to work, I want to put something here that’s probably also going to be in the author’s note. Even if it doesn’t, I want to express something, at least just once.

Hello, all, sorry for the ridiculously long wait. I never planned for it to be this long, but I got intimidated by my own story, and I realized that I had gone wildly off script to a point where I didn't know if I could recover from it.

I do want to go ahead and clarify a few things, here and now, so pardon me for the long author's note: This fic is Team Iron Man, has always been so, and will continue to be strongly supportive of Tony's side. I admit that in the beginning, my own bias leaked through the story. Writers make mistakes like that. People makes mistakes like that. And yet, I choose to keep it that way because I feel it fits in with the story, and with how CACW left us. Tony was still incredibly angry and betrayed, and Steve had gotten what he wanted and, as the film chose not to give him introspection or self-reflection (IMO), did not seem to fully grasp everything that had happened. But time exposes wounds just as well as it heals them, and Steve has always felt things very deeply, even if he represses them, while Tony's ire has died down and he's able to examine the situation more clearly.

Point of order: I prefer Tony over Steve, always. I will tell you that straight up. I admire Steve Rogers a lot. I do think, no matter what the audience may perceive in my story, that he is a good man with outstanding morals who has the heart of a hero. But I don't identify with him, and I don't always understand him. I think he's angry, and depressed, and really fucking judgmental. I think he's lost his way and is desperate to find it again, and I believe that with his strength of will, he will do so. I think that just like Tony, he is terrified of what happens if he ends up being wrong. But I did not set out to punish him in this story or make him suffer, but instead write him learning how to be better, just as I write Tony learning how to be better. I have a multitude of problems with CACW, and I am Team Iron Man, but I think the Russos successfully crafted a movie where neither side was ultimately wrong, and the over all problem was communication.

I wanted to write about a Tony obsessed with fixing his mistakes post-CW, a Tony that figures out that to place the blame and guilt all on his shoulders is to ask for the cycle to keep repeating, a Tony that grows. I didn't want to write a Tony who was alone without any friends or a Tony who was lost without Cap/the Avengers and can't go on. To me, that's not who Tony is. Tony is a TRAINWRECK, and I say that with the utmost fondness and respect: it's part of his character. What's also part of his character is that he has never let that stop him, for good or for ill. He will keep trying, he will keep going, he will fight for what he believes is best. Sure, that kind of drive contains more than a few drawbacks, which the MCU has shown before, but character growth is the greatest part of being a writer in my opinion. The fic has since grown, sometimes out of my control, but overall I remain proud of it. It’s direction won’t change. I welcome debate, I welcome criticism, and I hope to keep seeing it. 

And, the reason I’m writing all this? I few months ago I was reading a story that I disagreed with. I wrote a comment to that effect, and going back and reading it realized I was trying to correct this author’s point of view to match mine, not just offering my opinion. I mean, fanfiction is important, but that author didn’t write it for me and didn’t owe me anything. I was horrified and honestly ashamed of myself and apologized to the author. It’s just. It’s not cool. The thing is, over time I’ve gotten an increasing amount of messages, a relatively small number in comparison but still enough to make me balk, that have the same intent. I wanted to explain my point of view, mostly because I can, and to ask for that for anybody else who wants to do so, frame it please in a way that I can discuss it with you at the very least. It’s not like I can’t accept flames, but its hard to fix something or even grasp another POV when it railroads over your own. From my own experience I can tell you that people aren’t perfect and want their faves to be portrayed the way they see them, but it’s not on an author to do so. 

Thanks to everyone who has ever commented, every Team Cap person who has approached this story with an open mind and helped me see some of the weaker points in my own POV/story and shore them up, every MCU fan that has squeed or gasped in dismay, every lively debate shared in the comments. I look forward to even more, and I’m excited for what’s to come.

As for the messages I mention, I handle them. It’s criticism, and that’s fine. It’s always going to happen. But when it verges on beratement, or is just super passive-aggressive shading Tony or some other character, I mean what is that supposed to do but make me feel bad? This is me complaining: I didn’t write this to feel bad. This is the first and last time I will talk about this because the overwhelming response has been incredibly positive, but the longer Irreparable has been up, the worse the negatives have gotten. 

Thanks to krusca, nostalgicatsea, kiernaserea who have always had kind thoughtful comments, and even more who do the same but I’m not sure of who they are. Now the work begins!