#anyways my tags are basically etc to what i wrote for the transcript

[skitskatdacat63]

I know someone else has already posted a longer version of this, but this is very important to me as I feel exceedingly normal about it...the transcript was flirty but still did not live up to the actual footage 😵‍💫

[memento-morri-writes]

yo for the wip title tag, i'd love to know about 'We Only Know Their Name For Certain', it's a great title and i have so much curiosity!! whatever you'd like to share about it

also 'COW writing'? is it truly about bovines or does COW stand for something? [@rodentwrites]

Ahh, thank you so much for asking!!! (and for giving me the change to ramble about We Only Know Thier Name For Certain!)

We Only Know Their Name For Certain is, actually, a terrible title, given that it's the first line of the story, and also that I didn't write it. That single line was a writing prompt that I found I don't even know where, but it stuck in my head. Around the time I found it (holy shit, that was 4-ish years ago???) I was assigned to write a short story for a state-wide short story contest as a class assingment.

My original idea was a short story told only in transcripts of messages left on an answering machine, and I'd like to revist that someday as well! But I hated it every time I tried to write it. And that writing prompt, those few magic words, was stuck in my head.

So, I opened my "fragments" document (aka, the google doc where I write down all the tiny little snippets that pop into my head and that never become more) and I started writing. I though I'd be lucky to get a paragraph. But, nope, I ended up with just over a thousand words. Just pumped them out in one sitting.

I showed it to my teacher, who is a harsh critic, and she loved it. I submitted it. It didn't even get close to winning, which was sad.

But I haven't even told you what it's about!! It's a weird little speculative story about humanity. Aliens have found Earth, some time in the future. But there is no life here. No people, no animals. Only plants, and some very strange graffitti. Here's the opening lines:

We only know their name for certain.  It was found, carved into every cliff face, written on every wall, visible everywhere we turned.  “We are Human”. We can only take it to mean that was their name.

Spooky shit, right? I haven't even figured out myself what happened to "us", but it can't be good....

Anyways, the rest of the story is basically this essay written by an alien, trying to explain, to understand humanity. They talk about the things they've found (airports, the University of Michigan's Big House, the Titanic, the Great Pyramids, Mt. Rushmore, etc.) and they make assumptions about us. Not really assumptions, but thoughts about who we were as a species.

It's obviously not my best writing, given that I wrote it at the age of 14 or 15, but I love it dearly, and now I really, really want to go back and revisit the idea!! So, thank you for the inspiration!!!

I'll talk about COW under the cut because this is already really long. (TW for injury and death (also child death) under the cut!!)

So, COW sadly has nothing to do with bovines. I love them, but that is not what this was. COW stands for "Creative Original Writing", and was a requirement for my, you guessed it, creative writing class.

At the end of the class (~12 weeks because my school was weird), we had to turn in 20 pages of our own writing, all of which was supposed to have been written during those 12 weeks. We had all of class every Friday to work on it, though.

My COW Writing is actually several things, the vast majority of which involve superheroes, because I loved (and still do) superhero fiction!! (Hence why I can't stop recommending the Villains series to anyone I meet, lmao.)

The first few pages (7 of them, to be precise) deal with Adrian St. Clair, a character that I made up for that very class. Most of my writing with him was really bad, and the only part that really matters is the first 235 words.

They're a re-written version of something I wrote 5-6 years ago, and that I don't have the original version anymore. But it's this little thing that talks about "the hero" and "the villain". They're taunting eachother, chasing. And the Hero jumps up on the railing of this pedestrian bridge, and is running along it, and somehow, he falls.

Well, then you find out that "the hero" and "the villain" are two children (brothers to be precise) who were playing in the park near their home. Yes, the one fell. Yes, he died. That was real. The last line is "How was I supposed to tell mom?" Because that poor kid (Adrian) is in shock. And of course, as a child, you screw something up and you think "shit, I need to either come clean or come up with a lie." And so that's where he's going. (Side note: what was up with my 7th grade brain when I first came up with that scene??? This version is from 11th grade, but it's almost verbatim from the original.)

The next part of the COW document was also something that started out on my "fragments" doc. I had written the original years previously, so I decided to rewrite it for this project.

This one has to do with a teenage vigilante named Ash, who has at some point prior to this scene been cut with a poisoned blade. She's trying to get to "safety", but very much out of it. (Side Note: how the hell did I write a better Poisoned Blade Disorientation Scene over a year ago (and also like, 6 years ago) than the 3 times I've tried to write a similar scene for ATQH??? HOW IS THAT FAIR???)

She imagines the headlines surrounding her death, and also the reaction of her younger sister, who she has apparently been caring for.

She makes it to "safety", but collapses on the steps, unable to reach the doorknocker. She thinks it's laughing at her.

(In the original version, in my "fragments" she is only rescued because her rival (the person she went to get help from but also the son of the city's most infamous villain), Nik's cat is meowing and trying to get his attention. He's like "what?" and then he sees A Leg out his window. Thank the cat, not him.)

The rest of the 20 pages is Adrian's real supervillain origin story. His mother works in a not-great part of town, and he visits her after school, even though she told him not to. He overhears these guys planning a robbery of some kind, and on the way home, he debates wether or not to report it. In the end, his goody-two-shoes side (or maybe his naivity) wins out, and he calls a tip line.

The woman on the other end is clearly apathetic, and seems to think it's a prank, but she assures him that the tip will be passed on to the proper authorities.

Later, his mom never comes home from work. Turns out that the robbery was planned on her work place, and she was killed in the crossfire. (It's mentioned earlier that her boss is a real shady guy, and probably some kind of drug dealer.)

Adrian is furious with the authorities (aka, the superheroes) for not doing anything, and thus begins his path to villain-hood. (Although I never got to write that far.)

Also, he spends some time after his mom's death with his elderly lesbian neighbor. Idk why, that's just what happens.

I'm SO sorry for the monster that this ask became. But I hope you find some part of it interesting?? Maybe??? If anyone read all the way to the bottom, you deserve a cookie and a hug, and please tell me what you think of my (kind of cringey) superhero shit. (Be nice about WOKTNFC, because I like that story, and I'm going to rewrite it.)

[fourteenacross]

2016 in writing

2016 in fic! This looks SO empty compared to past years, even if it's roughly the same amount of words! Hamilton: i saw the whole story unwind (132,888) Opening Break (3,531) Remote Capture (3,483) Not Your Average Bear! (1,835) Ghost Included (we hope) (2,941) but i won't go far away (12,577) the constellations aligned (10,004) the air grows cold around me and you (27,268) a way to hang the sun up in the sky (9,510) we'll have to muddle through somehow (8,513) Ficlets: Lazy Day (924) Cryptids (1,904) John's Instagram (1,443) Skeptic Refuted Fan Speculation (???)* Apocrypha (aka shit I wrote that takes place after the stuff in the main stories that may be disregarded/discarded as the next three stories develop): For Hire: Ghost Hunter (551) Three Wishes (2,446) Ouija Boards are NOT ALLOWED (1,139) Reality Show (1,538) Star Wars (2,441) X-Men Alternate Timeline Movies: Who Needs Sleep? (2,535) Fifty Dollars and First Impressions (3,574) Ficlets: Alex/Darwin Bookstore AU (343) Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: Phryne/Jack Fake Married (588) Grand Total Fandoms: 3 Grand Total Stories: 23 Grand Total Word Count: 231,976* * I haven't written the transcription of this ficlet yet and I'm too lazy to do it right now, so it's not included in the total. Overall Thoughts: Well, this is a very different list than it's been for the past five years or so. The fandom switch aside, I didn't post any full stories until September, just a handful of tumblr ficlets. I also posted two things chapter-by-chapter, one as a WiP, which--wow, reminder that I NEVER WANT TO DO THAT AGAIN, it's far too stressful! The bulk of the words are all in the same verse, and I'm not even counting the words that I wrote and haven't posted yet, jeez. This stupid universe. I simultaneously hate and love it. Writing an epic WiP in a new fandom was really rough. I'm ultimately thrilled with the finished product--waiting until it was all finished made me redraft over and over again until things fit together the way I wanted. It left me space to go back and seed things that I wanted to develop as I went...I really think the finished product is way better than it would have been if I'd rushed and posted it before it was done. That all being said, gosh, it was lonely. It was so, so lonely, when writing epics usually involves a lot of bouncing ideas off of people and letting them read and suggest as I draft and really digging into the process, etc. There were a couple of people who popped in and out, but life and other interests got in the way (which makes sense considering this went on for NINE MONTHS), and, man, I missed being able to text and IM people will story ideas at all hours and feel confident that they'd be interested in what I had to say. (For all the texting I do, I am actually super shy about it? I'm super nervous about initiating unless I'm 100% positive I won't be bothering the other person, which limits my texting confidence to like, my back-up bunnies and Erica.) Anyway, that's all to say that this year was a very different experience, fandom writing-wise, but I think I learned a lot in the process so...hooray?

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? This year I think my main goal was "FINISH PART ONE OF THE GHOSTHUNTERS" without a specific word count attached, so I succeeded in that part? Knowing me, I probably wanted to crack 300k at least, and while I'm sure I WROTE over 300k this year, what I actually published is about on par with the last couple years, so. NUMBER wise, I think I imagined I'd have a greater output vis-a-vis completed stories, but a lot of the shit I wrote was on the longer side, so. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Hm. Well, there's a lot more porn in the ghosthunters than is in most of the fic I've written, traditionally, but nothing really shocking. Most of it was ghosthunters words, so...yeah. I guess the Angel/Raven was sliiiightly a surprise because I figured if I had to step in and write some SM pinch-hits it would be all Charles/Erik stuff, but I really liked that story and I have shipped that pairing for many years so....not super a surprise. What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? I loved a lot of the stories I wrote this year, because I'm super obsessed with myself. [[< -- I think I've kept that sentence in for the past few years because it remains true]] I really love most of the ghosthunters shit, but if I had to pick a favorite....idk, I'm torn between i saw the whole story unwind because it's so epic and took so long and I put so much into it and the constellations aligned, because it came so easily and I'm a total sap and it's a totally sappy story. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Sitting on the ghosthunters until the first part was complete was new. Like I said above, that kind of patience and planning was difficult, but I think the end product was much better for it. So what I learned is probably "sit on a story for a couple days after you finish." I've always tried to employ at least cursory beta readers and done read-throughs after finishing, but the slower approach does actually lead to a better product. IMAGINE THAT. My best story of this year: Best? Hm. It's hard to compare i saw the whole story unwind to anything else, given it's length and the breadth of subjects it covers, so I'd say probably that or but i won't go far away, which deals with a lot of intricate emotions and explanations. My most popular story of this year: Okay, see, I wrote two chaptered stories this year and chaptered stories totally throw off your stats. Hit counts, kudos count, comment count...all of that is inflated by repeatedly pushing those fics to the top of the tags and having people come back for each chapter and all of that. Still, I'm p sure that i saw the whole story unwind was the most popular story? And I think a lot of that can be attributed to the above facts and also to the fact that it's the oldest and the longest and the first in the series, but...I'm gonna go with it anyway. Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I don't know that any of them are! Again, probably because most of them are in the same series, but...yeah, I'm pretty happy with the response to everything. I remember thinking at the time that there was something weird going on with the hit count for but i won't go far away because the hits-to-kudos ratio was WAY off. There were way too many hits accumulating in the first couple days it was up, like, way more than usual, even though kudos were accumulating at the correct rate? It was strange. And I did feel like that one got slightly less attention than some of the others, but that might be a mind trick based on that weirdly inflated hit count. Most fun story to write: Hm, I got a kick out of doing the twitter ficlet, and I wrote the constellations aligned in basically one sitting, so. Story with the single sexiest moment: This is one of the few years I have a lot to choose from. I think John's slow, intoxicated seduction in the constellations aligned probably wins that award. Definitely sexier than the sweet and kind of goofy sex scene in i saw the whole story unwind or the contemplative one in but i won't go far away. Story with the single sweetest moment: Hmmmmmmmm. "Sweet" is kind of my whole deal, and I like to think there's a lot of sweetness in my stories overall. I'm going to choose i saw the whole story unwind for this one and pin the sweetest moment in question as either Alex and John driving up to Peekskill or the two of them talking after Alex's nightmare. Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: Nothing really. Nothing cracky for me this year. Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: I mean, this whole series has been a lesson in picking apart these characters and seeing how they tick. So. Hardest story to write: i saw the whole story unwind, for sure. Jesus, it took me forever to finish and I was entirely despairing during parts of it. Biggest Disappointment: Just that I didn't finish more, I think. Biggest Surprise: People actually getting so into the ghosthunters. I honestly didn't expect anyone to read any of these stories and to have a tiny group of people who seem to eagerly await each new part...it really warms my heart and makes me so happy. I can't overstate who wonderfully surprising that has been. Most Unintentionally Telling Story: I think there are a lot of places where I project pretty hard on John, or maybe it's that I use a lot of my own experiences to color some of his? We don't actually have much in common besides being gay and being depressed, and I'm older and (I hope) wiser, but, you know, mental illness is a deep well to mine for content. I'd also say I mine a lot of my Jersey shit for Herc and that Molly is the closest thing this series has to a Mary Sue. I'm not into science or math, but I am a cheerfully sarcastic fat brunette lesbian who spends a lot of time whining "why don't girls like me?" and as Opinions about pizza. Plans for the next year: I'm gonna say 300k published words next year. I'd like to post at least the next three ghosthunters anchor stories, maybe venture outside ghosthunters for Hamilton related shit? Pick up my MG novel again. Set a writing schedule and try to stick to it. Leave more comments. Try to put some more good in the world, because it's gonna be a shitty, shitty year.