#at least i got started on two whole longfics lol

[incorrectcoldflashblog]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

Thank you so much to @kitkatt0430 for tagging me <3

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

Well, I got back into Coldflash in a big way a couple years ago, and kind of got frustrated not really seeing anything new in the tag, lol. Desperation is usually my biggest motivator to do anything. If I had unlimited new Coldflash fics coming out, I probably would never have written my own tbh.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

Just the one. I used to do translations for a different fandom, though, so maybe two depending on if translating counts.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

My own? Only a year and a half. Translating, maybe roughly ten years.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

I probably write more now, but you wouldn’t know it because I’m such a slow writer!

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

Oh, I feel like my English has definitely gotten better since I started writing regularly. I always felt obligated to put a little disclaimer at the bottom, like please be nice to me, this isn’t my first language, lol. I feel a little bit more confident about it now (although I still obsessively google every sentence and word).

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I mean, thanks to Chapter 4 of What Happens in Vegas I know now way more than I ever needed to know about tornado sirens, considering we don’t have them in my country, lol. I also ended up doing extensive (and totally pointless) research about the ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur (located in the South of what is now modern-day Iraq), which is where Len/Cold was supposed to be from in my AU where he was a genie. For those who are unaware, Ur fell in about 2000 BC and had a very famous poem written about it. Here is the cheery opening of 11 stanzas of misery:

For the gods have abandoned us

like migrating birds they have gone

Ur is destroyed, bitter is its lament

The country's blood now fills its holes like hot bronze in a mould

Bodies dissolve like fat in the sun. Our temple is destroyed

Smoke lies on our city like a shroud.

blood flows as the river does

the lamenting of men and women

sadness abounds

Ur is no more

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

I always appreciate when people point out the parts they liked. But honestly I’m happy for people to comment at all, especially on older fics :)

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

I don’t know that anything I’ve written can be considered fringe, lol. I do have a Lisa/Iris WIP, which I assume would be more of a rarepair, but I only have one scene written for it so who knows if I’ll ever finish it. I guess the Genie AU was kind of strange.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Longfics ;-; God, I’ve gained so much respect for people who can do that consistently for 60+ chapters, or over multiple fics in a series. My longfic isn’t even that long, comparatively, and I still feel like I will never get it done.

10. What is the easiest type?

One-shots, my beloved.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

On my laptop. I just use Word and I prefer to write in the morning, which isn’t super ideal because it only leaves me the weekend to really get into it.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

I’m too nervous to start more longfics at the moment because I feel like two is my absolute limit but I’d love to be able to write both the TATBILB-inspired fic I had in mind and the Future Fic that I sometimes play around with. I’d have to finish at least one of my longer projects first, or maybe try to get the whole thing written before posting it but I’m usually too impatient to do that!

13. What made you choose your username?

My username is captainicecube and I picked it because it’s roughly how Captain Cold was translated in the French dub. They translated it as Captain Glaçons (Captain Icecubes), which always makes me laugh whenever I think about it because it’s so stupid XD

Tagging @crestfallercanyon @joanthangroff @tiger-in-the-flightdeck @softboydepot and @moriavis

[batteryrose]

ULTIMATE ADAM LORE DOCUMENT

This ones gonna be a doozy (I AM NOT KIDDING. THIS IS A LONG LONG POST), and you may call me insane afterwards, but anyway,

This one's for the Adam likers out there that may want to know more about him. I have a longfic in the works, but well, let's be honest, that thing's not gonna get finished any time soon :) so, if you'd like to know the Deep Lore this is the post where I summarizes everything that's living inside my head.

Hopefully you've heard of Adam before or this post might not make a whole lot of sense, but I try my best........

the Yashpari

Referring to an ethnic group of people living around the Obsidian grasslands.

Yashpar is their land's name in their own language. Other countries call the area ‘Jasper.’

The land is very important to Obsidian for having very rich and fertile 'black earth' (coloured deep green here. I’d imagine Jade has most of it). The Yashpari tribespeople farm and raise livestock instead of living nomadically.

The ethnic group might have originated from somewhere distant south.

They're known for their art, including textiles art, music, and many kinds of dances and performances. 

The tribe survives because they were willing to submit to Obsidian instead of engaging in a losing war against them.

Leading up to the war with Rhodolite, they’ve been depleted of resources and morale, among other things, and were starting to rebel harder against their occupiers. 

Obsidian had turned one of their older settlements into a small town and military fortress near Rhodolite.

Mochammad Adam Kain: Background

He is the son of a Rhodolitian noble and a widowed Yashpari elder.

His father was very sympathetic to the tribe’s fight against Obsidian and was directly supporting it.

To weaken the family’s power, the local Obsidian nobles and military needed to create a rift between the family members.

Marquis Kain’s family

(old art, sorry lol)

The marquis married the widow out of genuine love. She has had two daughters with her previous husband (who was the village chief/elder/whatever.)

They live separately, with the marquis travelling back and forth constantly between Rhodolite and Yashpar. The two places are at least a day apart. 

Together they had four more children: three sons and a daughter. Adam is the eldest son, followed by his younger-by-a-year brother, Ajisaka (can also be spelled as ‘Adjisaka’.) I’ll be focusing on them two for now.

Adam and Adji

They're opposites personality-wise. Adam is the quieter kid, less out-spoken, and he was able to learn to read, write, and understand different languages faster. He quickly became his father’s favourite. 

Ajisaka is the louder one of the bunch, and he grew up to be quite charismatic. He is well respected amongst the Yashpari youth. Adam didn't have the same popularity!

The Obsidian military were recruiting young Yashpari boys. They saw potential in these siblings. Potentially also turning them against their own father.

Adam received a military education, and when he got older, a position as a low-ranking officer.

They could groom Adam into their side much more easily than they could Ajisaka. Adji joined the revolutionary fervour. His gang of violent youths harassed Obsidian forces often, which eventually became a big nuisance. He came to be known as a notorious brute.

The brothers don't really get along. They think the other one is stupider. The family was torn, and while they were originally well respected by the Yashpari people, the sons' actions polarised them. 

During and after the war with Rhodolite, Marquis Kain couldn't travel across the border and into the village anymore. 

Adam: Upbringing 

As a kid he was seen as sort of meek and 'feminine.' He didn't have many great friends. Otherwise, he was very smart.

He was always in charge of taking care and watching over his younger siblings.

Knowing different languages got him able to speak and negotiate out of trouble. Specifically troubles with the Obsidian people. 

He was a bit of a pushover. When hanging out with Adji's friends they liked to embarrass him. 

He often watches over his little sister playing with her friends instead…

He only started gaining friends, respect, and confidence in the military environment. He mingled well with fellow Yashpari soldiers there.

Yashpari people that served in Obsidian Military

Older Yashpari people are usually here because they were paying a debt to the (Obsidian) government, paying a fine, or were otherwise poor and in desperate conditions. Leading up to the war, many younger boys were conscripted.

Adam met Suraya here, an old private. 

Adam also was able to hang out with the Obsidianite soldiers. 

Boys will be boys…he might’ve even fallen in love with one of the younger officers.

He actually liked it here. At this point, he's a bit alienated from his family. Though his father still writes to him. 

Additional character: Suraya

(She shows up in the On Violence longfic)

She and many others like her were a demographic of, what you could probably call 'drag performers.' They perform Yashpari dances and theatrical plays as women.

These sort of traditional performances were popular amongst the Obsidianite elite, but at some point in the past they were banned from being performed openly. 

Some of them got convinced to serve in the military and make a decent living after their livelihood was taken away. 

Suraya served since way before the war with Rhodolite. She was proficient in the bow and arrow, and eventually the arquebus, and the musket rifle. 

Many of her friends had died, but she stuck around in the military. 

Adam is technically above her in rank but she's a mentor to him.

The reason she stuck around is… she has a 'hobby' for injuring many of Obsidian's own officers and soldiers without getting caught. Mainly by aiming from a great distance. 

She will get caught eventually, though she's able to run away.

If asked about her gender she would say "I live in the woods, I don't know." Adam would say "well, she mostly lives as the 'old woman living in the woods', so."

In writing I would refer to her with she/they pronouns. Adam exclusively refers to her with she.

The battle with Rhodolite, or the 'Bloodstained Rose Day':

At that point Adam would be around 17 years old, and he was placed in the position of a second lieutenant (lowest ranking officer.) 

Adam had to lead his Yashpari comrades into the frontlines. He even personally witnessed Chevalier and Co. doing their thing. 

He had noticed that the Yashpari troops were constantly getting pushed into the very front of the line with little to no backup, and they were getting killed off very quickly.

He caused confusion in the army because he wouldn't let more people go forward. They had to be forced to go with it by the higher ups. 

Obsidian lost, and Yashpari had great losses and casualties. Adam was quite lucky to survive. 

Him and the survivors were disillusioned with the military after the battle. Morale was on an all time low. They staged a mutiny. Just wanted to raid the military supplies for all the food and booze and whatever. Stick it up to the big guys. 

The higher ups found out what the sentiments amongst the troops were. They singled Adam out as the cause of these ideas, due to his actions in the battlefield.

To further humiliate him they dragged out his relationship with the young Obsidianite officer into light.

His was accused of ‘acting indecent’ towards the officer. He was publicly punished to both discourage the rebels from acting out and to likely ruin his reputation amongst them. 

They also wipe out his records from the books, pretending he never existed, to protect the officer's reputation.

'Death'

Just for a clue, the punishment was what gave him those scars on his back.

The military didn’t take care of him after and left him gravely injured. Pretty much leaving him to die. 

There was a lot of uncertainty and rumours. People, including his family, thought Adam was dead. 

Despite their relationship and the shame, Ajisaka wanted to look for him anyway, or at the very least get to the bottom of it all. 

He and his gang made a lot of ruckus. Harassing the fortress, taking in mutinied soldiers, etc.

(Suraya (still acting like a loyal soldier) got caught shooting into her own army in this event. From here on out she's a fugitive living in the woods.) 

In the end, Obsidian baited Adji inside with a fake rumour regarding Adam's whereabouts. Of course, he just got captured as a result.

They exiled him somewhere instead of killing him to still keep a semblance of good relations with the Kains.

Although, most people just assumed that he's also dead. 

(Adam was only saved by Suraya. She brought him to hide with her somewhere within the woods bordering Jade.)

The rest of the Kains

After the events of the battle, Adam's mother, sisters and youngest brother were still living within the fortressed town. Obsidian were willing to pretend that they have some sort of authority, but in all honestly, they're just being held hostage.

Obsidian was still recovering from the war, they don't want the Marquis attempting anything.

Mission?

Adam can't live easy until he could get the rest of his family out of there. His life purpose is pretty simple from here on out.

Adam and Adji: working together

Adam found out what happened to Adji. He contacted his father, because there's nothing else he can do.

His father sent a lot of people to look for Adji and any information about him. This caught Rhodolite's attention a little. (What's he doing sending out people to Obsidian…) 

Months and months of searching and they found him in the northern mountains. The brothers reunite. Adji thought it's all basically Adam's fault, but, well, they're too tired to fight it out. And the cold kinda mellowed him out anyway.

Fortunately, some of his old gang members were still alive and kicking, spread apart in hiding. They managed to rebuild, and they operate outside of the fortress, keeping their bases near Jade's border. 

Adam, meanwhile, was still presumed dead by most of the public and he wants to keep it that way. 

(this is why in On Violence the Rhodolite princes couldn't find any information about him.)

Adam knows that there's no chance he and Ajisaka's people alone could attack Obsidian successfully with what they currently have, so they needed… something.

Getting weapons

At this point, it had been years since the war with Rhodolite. In a brief moment of weakness, Adam reconnected with his old friend from the army.

(the boyfriend that got him in trouble.)

The young man had long gone home and retired from the army. They never heard from each other until now. Adam sent him a letter.

He was quite happy seeing Adam basically risen from the dead. Or terrified. One of the two.

Adam comes to find out that his friend's family had ties to Obsidian's weapon manufacturing companies, particularly, their distribution company. 

He also comes to find out that love is… very easy to take advantage of and manipulate.

(Gilbert somewhere in the distance, saying again ‘we’re not so different after all’ :') )

Adam slowly convinced his friend to pull some strings, and now, more weapons were going to be sent to the Rhodolite-Obsidian border, especially the fortresses.

Ajisaka dealt with the extraction. This is a shockingly successful arrangement, and eventually, they ended up with a big surplus of weapons and ammunition on their hands. Unfortunately with increasingly less space to hide them. They also can't use them themselves all willy nilly. 

Adam hatched a plan. 

Working with Rhodolite (the beginning of 'On Violence')

Marquis Kain soon died of natural causes. This forced Adam's plan to run earlier than intended. 

They deliberately buried his father deep into Yashpar lands, gaining the attention of his father's Rhodolitian family, who wanted him resting close to home. 

Conflict between the marquis' soldiers (now controlled by Adam's uncle) and Ajisaka's men sparked. It was a minor battle, happened way out of Obsidian’s watchful gaze. 

Ajisaka got away without much casualties, however, Adam gave himself over to Rhodolite. 

The events of 'On Violence' began.

His plan:

Rhodolite managed to defeat Obsidian in the past, but now they’re still gearing up in case there will be another attempt of invasion. Adam wants to take advantage of this. He is willing to arm Rhodolite with his stolen weapons, and in exchange, Rhodolite will use their army to take over Obsidian’s fortress. Technically a win-win for both sides.

Getting his family out is the priority. Unfortunately, he does not think of anything else.

Ideally every Yashpari folk should gain freedom and asylum in Rhodolite until everything is settled.

Adam and Nokto :

Nokto wants to dig up most of this information about Adam to make sure he's not an Obsidian psy-op or something. Adam wants Nokto and ultimately Rhodolite to obey him as much as possible. Of course, only with subtle ways and manipulation, otherwise it wouldn't work. 

Somewhere along the way they sympathise with each other more than they expected. 

I'd like to think Adam's objectives are successful eventually, and in all the one-shot fic I make they're both just goofing around after everything is over :} Everything is nice and cozy, and nothing went wrong at all! I swear to God

PHEW. THAT'S IT. I left things out on purpose. You’re welcome to assume your own interpretations. Or, if you want, you can also wait as I Begrudgingly finish my long-fic that will Definitely take Forever (or at least read the available chapters first). You can also ask about more things in the comments bellow or through my ask box! (I turned off anon for personal reasons though, sorry about that)

[nulfaga]

got tagged for a 20 questions for writers meme by @jiubilant! tagging @bloodofthepen who i suspect would very much enjoy this meme

How many works do you have on AO3?

17 according to my dashboard. 28 to the connoisseur (various orphaned nonsenses over the years). 29 if you're nasty

What's your total AO3 word count?

second verse, same as the first: dashboard says 227k. the real figure is ~450k. gog save me

What fandoms do you write for?

by volume (apparently), mostly tes: oblivion and mass effect. highlights from the full list include dragon's dogma, pillars of eternity and pentiment

What are your top five fics by kudos?

this, this, this, this; and in tragic 5th place true gold. my oopy schmoopy apple of my eye

Do you respond to comments?

[almost] always, even if it's just "thank you" or a heart! makes me happy that people took the time out to drop me a line so i always feel like it's the least i can do

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

eeeeehhhh i think i almost always go with an open ending. and happy and sad are subjective. lol. probably this one; dead brothers go back, after a brief reprieve, to being dead

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

THIS ONE. teeth rot out of your damn head. i wouldn't make it quite so cloying if i wrote it today

Do you get hate on fics?

not to my knowledge <3

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

often and w/ gusto i'm afraid. i need it to be character-focused ie if it doesn't further the characters' relationship in the eyes of the reader then it's basically dead weight. i have stretched this rule exactly once (for "once", read: with exactly one work. of a modest 170k. i get one bodice-ripper as a treat.)

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

n/a baby. unless you count my dragonfable fic vampirizing the narrative structure of season 2 of russian doll but that's not strictly a crossover is it

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge. i have had people gank certain bits of worldbuilding or plot beats, but not maliciously (i think). so i just look on with. how you say. benevolent mirth

Have you ever had a fic translated?

not to my knowledge!

Have you ever co-written a fic?

as a tween. about anime. but i will part with that story only after being bought dinner

What's your all-time favorite ship?

aww man. ask me tomorrow and get a different answer but i really like andreas and werner in the pentiment longfic i'm plugging away at. what if it was that deep yknow.

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

not touching this one with a 39-and-a-half foot pole. the evil eye is out there. (real answer: writing is a long con. i have to start every project believing i'm going to finish it to the last dotted i and crossed t)

What are your writing strengths?

no one can be objective abt their own shit but what i enjoy reading back in my writing (in the brief beautiful period before the Cringe encroaches) is the subtext in character interactions. no one EVER says wtf they mean due to shame or pride or the demands of diplomacy or emotional stuntedness or what have you. that old saw about your readers see the tip of the iceberg but you've got to have the whole ehm.. glacier... fjord.. stalagmite... in your head

What are your writing weaknesses?

pacing!! at least in my own view. esp with the [REDACTED] i'm working on now it's like...fuck me i'm trying to cover a long time period without embroidering every single day that passes, but when and where and how often do i switch from brisk narration to blow-by-blow dialogue. only when i want to? only when it's necessary in order for the plot to make sense? are those two criteria different in practice? aughghgh

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

absolutely fucking love it. it has to be a language i feel reasonably confident about (unless it's a fictional conlang, but even then i have a constant fear of getting strung up by lorebeards for conjugating a dunmeris verb the wrong way lol)... that being the case i love love love it. because you get to do subtext 2: electric boogaloo. and what languages do the characters share? and what languages can they use to dissimulate or to speak freely w/o the risk of being heard and understood??? and what does each character's command of a given language say about their social status????? and do they think differently from one language to the other??????? LOVE it. love it to pieces.

First fandom you wrote for?

minecraft i think. i am a child of my era

Favorite fic you've written?

to date... posted it up a day or 2 ago. the canny observer will be able to sniff it out. but i'm not prepared to own it just yet god bless <3

runner-up goes to this one, 'the bridge of details'. i think it strikes the right balance of "warm & hopeful w/o being cloying"

[practically-an-x-man]

2,3,7,8,15,16,17 for the OC WIP ask game :)

Thank you!!! Ahh this made my day, I can't wait to dive into this!

Answers are under the cut to spare all the poor scrollers-by XD

2. What part of your OCs creation and writing, are you most proud of?

In general, I'm proud of the narrative arcs that I put my characters through, and how they grow and change over time. Dynamic characters who change in response to what they go through always strikes me as one of the most important parts of writing (if a character isn't influenced by what they go through, then why is what they go through worth writing about to begin with? there's a reason we don't write full stories about characters going to the grocery store, unless something interesting happens) so I've worked very hard to implement this into my works.

3. Who is the hardest OC to write

At the moment, I'd say Quinn. She herself is a very complex character, which is tricky enough, but she's also dealing with a "requited love but time has passed so they're still figuring things out" sort of thing with her love interest, so it's hard to rein myself in from them immediately falling in love lol

7. Were any of your OCs names inspired by another piece of media, if so, what media?

I have a character named Ophelia after Hamlet, and another who in-universe named herself Quinn after Harley Quinn (see above). Aside from that, I mainly connect to a lot of historical and mythological figures, more than I do other media characters.

8. Which of your ocs is the most fun to write?

I mean... they're all fun, in their own ways. I do my best to try something new with each of them, so there's always something I look forward to when I write. But that being said, I really like writing for Jasper, they're such a fun character and their empathic abilities are really fun to explore.

15. Who is your oldest OC in terms of when you created them?

So... I've got to dip into something that I haven't actually posted, but it's an OC named Persephone (Percy) Michaels that I wrote to go along with MCU Loki. I actually wrote the first couple chapters of a fic for her, but never posted it (and it needs a rewrite anyway). She's gone through a lot of changes since her creation (2018?), but she's still the same OC at heart. I'm sure I'll post her story eventually.

16. Do you have a favourite OC?

Kinda goes back to what I said about which one's the most fun to write, I love them all in their own ways. At the moment I'm pretty partial to Madison, Indigo, or Jasper, though. It's a very tight race, I truly do love them all. I'm also DYING to share my OC Lydia with you all, but I need to close out a fic or two before I can start something new. The joys of writing longfic...

Even looking through my Google Doc that outlines all my OCs (even the ones that still only exist in my mind), it's hard to pick a favorite. I want to tell their stories so badly! I'm literally looking through this going "Ooh, I do love Sable... and Iris... and Cleo... and I'm dying to share Atlanta's story but nobody's gonna read that bc of the pairing... I could probably write Winter's story a little faster than the rest but it would still take me a while... Citron's too..."

I... have a lot of OCs. And whole stories for every single one. Remember what I said about my obsession with a good narrative arc? Yeah...

17. Do you have a least favourite OC?

I actually answered this one here, thanks to my absolutely wonderful friend @can-of-pringles (love you bestie!!)

[wander-wren]

ao3 wrapped: 2023

it’s january 5th but it’s still the first week of the new year so it counts! [it is now january 16th because i got distracted and forgot, oops]. some of you might remember when i did this last year; for some reason i didn’t just screenshot the “all years” tab, even though i should have because ao3’s year stats are wonky (if you update a fic, regardless of how much of it was posted in previous years, all the stats get dumped in the most recent year).

regardless, adding these together gets our starting stats for 2023!!

142 user subscriptions

6,213 kudos

439 comment threads

1,505 bookmarks

514 subscriptions

464,453 words

60,289 hits

so the stats breakdown for this year, across 36 completed works and…like 3 wips that were being updated in other years as well.

131 user subscriptions

16,490 kudos (excuse???)

810 comment threads

4,480 bookmarks

1,156 subscriptions (that’s a lot of emails)

438,885 words

200,866 hits

and i forgot to order those fics by kudos, so it’s kind of biased toward my longfics in that chart there. my top kudos’d fics are:

wrong place, right time- quirkless!izuku, all might bashy au where aizawa finds him on the roof in episode 2

what’s a god to a non-believer?- direct continuation of the first, lol

hear my name in your silence- fic in the same series except it’s examining hitoshi’s (adopted by erasermic) backstory. of note, these were all posted within a week, so the series spent a lot of time on front pages, filtering wise, and a lot of people were reading the whole series at once, hence similar stats

all systems red- todoroki & dadzawa sickfic and adoption combo meal. this was my first fic to really shoot up there in numbers, really interesting time for me

for you i would cross the line (i would lose my mind)- long bkdk bdsm au, they’re pro heroes dealing with trauma and a scandal. part of my larger FLFverse series

i dont think you can extrapolate much from such a small selection of stats except that getting into a big, active fandom did very big things to my numbers even if most individual fics didn’t get super popular. i think part if it is also just me being more prolific (doubled my works count from the previous two [three] years) and, potentially, Better At Writing.

also the top three are part of the same series and the 5th is a longfic, so they wouldve had more chances to come up on the front page. also, they’re all popular tropes/characters/relationships. go figure!

so what are MY favorite fics from this year, or the ones i think deserve more recognition? well! in no particular order:

march (little!hawks)- is it cheating to list a whole series? a late entry, but i’m having a lot of fun with it. hawks + dabi + age regression, starting out with a secret relationship and quickly taking a hard right into angst through the war arc. i also am just a big fan of all my agere fics but i cant say only those ones! so i’ll leave it at this

and we’ll be alright (revolution lover)- first in a series about trans!izuku and katsuki helping him heal from a shitty ex. one of my first real attempts at smut but also just a really fun cool fic to write.

taxidermy fingerprints, taxonomize your differences- T4T bodyswap ronan/adam fic, like the only non-BNHA this i wrote this year. one track mind, hello. but it’s kind if experimental and very, very weird and i love it a lot. definitely an ode to being trans.

burning through the sky- it’s come to my attention that i write a lot of series, and i’m trying not to just rec my same series over and over. i also do like this one! shinbaku a/b/o au, torturing them by playing with heats and consent. maybe i should write more omegaverse sometime 😳

take off your fragile armor- little 5+1 vashwood thing about vash being clingy and self-sacrificial. i had fun with it and i totally need to write more trigun stuff.

so hopefully at least some people find those stats interesting! feel free to shoot me questions about fics or stats, as per always!

[jadeile-writes]

Fanfic Progress Update 158

Hello, peeps! The last Saturday of the year 2023 and thus my last post of the year. Wild. So let's see what I've got here, and then I'll see you again on 2024! Stay tuned for a sneak-peek for A Sign that you're important at the bottom of this post!

Current WIPs:

A Sign that you're important

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog, movieverse

Summary: One month upon his assigment as Doctor Robotnik's assitant, Agent Stone is told to learn sign language. He doesn't know why, and isn't suicidal enough to ask, so he simply rolls with it. Turns out, it's not just a whimsy of the eccentric doctor, even though that doesn't stop the doctor from utilizing it like one.

Progress: The latest chapter aka chapter 2 was posted on 28th of December. The third chapter will be posted on 4th of January aka the next Thursday. Chapter 4 is almost finished. This fic will most likely have five chapters, maybe six if I get epilogue-happy or smth.

The Christmas hassle really cut into my writing time, ngl. Let's hope chapter 5 practically writes itself when I get to it so that I can keep up with the schedule nicely and perhaps get new things cooking. Or maybe just focus on Lab Life, I'm starting to feel self-conscious about writing everything but my "main project", even tho that's by design.

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Life at the laboratory

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog, movieverse

Summary:

"Wanted: a yesman who is capable of operating an espresso machine, has at least a higher IQ than your average amoeba, and is willing to put work before having a personal life, or indeed a life, period. The extra in your pathetic paycheck is good, but the strain in your psyche will make up for the positives. Forfeit your basic human rights and apply today if this sounds like you." 

Maybe it said something about Agent Stone - and probably not good things - that the poster in the cafeteria's pin board piqued his interest more than any of his official assignments had for a good long while. 

Dr. Robotnik, huh?

Progress: This one will be part one of a two-parter longfic, the first part probably... 10-ish chapters? It's a bit hard to estimate at this point, so the number is subject to change - will probably end up being increased tbh. My weekly writing hour (as in, a specific hour when I sit down and write, no excuses [other than not being home]) is devoted to this fic.

I have the first four chapters completely written now. Chapter 5 is 3/4ths done. Let it be known that this chapter is difficult to write, because it involves so much research for things that nobody else will even care about and are basically just background details (actually, that applies to this whole fic tbh). It would be so much easier if I was less of a stickler for details, lol XD As a sidenote that's actually not relevant to this particular chapter, I'm failing miserably at learning to do latte art. The milk foam just turns into milk with hard whip on top. I need to invest in better equipment and fattier milk and give it another shot. The magic tricks I learned in my Hazbin fic research were so much easier >.>

I also have two halfway written chapters that don't yet know their exact placement within the fic (they're scenes that will be slotted in to wherever they feel natural, once we get Stone settled in.)

-----  

Other WIPs I’m not currently working on but intend to get back to Someday™:

PoE Drabbles (Pillars of Eternity)

DC Drabbles (Justice League)

Diaphanous Relations (Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore’s books)

Rolling with it (Zelda: BotW)

Hah, our afterlife is the most hilarious bushwa, dearest! (Hazbin Hotel)

-----

That’s it for the WIPs! Here’s the promised sneak-peek into A Sign that you're important (Note: the text may end up slightly different in the fic itself due to more editing happening before publishing). Enjoy!

Robotnik let out a deep, exhausted sigh of relief upon the hotel room door closing behind him. Finally, finally the mission was as good as over, with only the paperwork and hopefully avoidable in-person debriefings left, and those were tomorrow's problems. Tonight, all that was expected of him was sleeping, and after days of planning, organizing, and finally the careful execution of the plan he was ready to give his brilliant mind a much deserved break.

"Stone, unpack the bags, order something edible and light from the room service, and ignore any and all messages and calls from the government", he said, taking off his outdoor clothes while his assistant worked in the background. He wanted a shower to wash out the sweat, grime, and the faint smell of a musty warehouse.

As soon as Stone had his pajamas laid out on his bed, he snatched them up and claimed their en-suite bathroom for himself. He couldn't get out of his nasty day clothes fast enough, and after taking out and carefully laying his hearing aids on the edge of the sink – as far away from the danger of falling in as he could manage with the limited options at hand – he hopped in the shower and let the warm water wash out the grime and stress in the blissful silence.

-----

That’s it this time. See you next Saturday!

Links:

My AO3   My FFnet   My Ko-fi    Radiohusk Discord Server

[kaerran]

#30 Sojurn

[lol the first thing i thought of was the rover :V it's mostly unrelated smh. again, another somewhat continuation of 29 but without a transition]

G'raha drums his fingers on the maps. "We should determine what our goals are," he finally says.

"What, we can't just say 'fix everything'," Alisaie says sarcastically.

"What that 'everything' is varies quite a lot," Alphinaud says. "What events do we know of?"

G'raha frowns. "I did not search back this far in my studies," he says, "but we all know about several things relatively close to this date." He starts counting on his fingers. "The exodus, the Battle of Silvertear Skies, the Bozja incident..."

"Why are you worrying about the exodus?" Y'shtola asks, frowning.

G'raha actually lowers his hand and answers, "I only mentioned it as a reference guide. It is something we all know the timing of."

"Bozja," Qahs's says.

The other three look at him.

"Are you... going to try to prevent it?" Alphinaud says carefully.

"Won't that ruin Cid's defection?" Alisaie asks.

Qahs'a cringes, and see-saws his hand. "He and another scientist both left immediately before, so if I time it right, it should be possible. We'll need a porxie though."

"I've still got Angelo, but why?"

Qahs'a shrugs one shoulder yet again. "Well, I was thinking that the easiest way to ensure Garlemald doesn't repeat it until Nael shows up is to explode the labs and steal Midas to bring back."

"...that's certainly ambitious of you," Alphinaud manages.

"How are you planning on getting there?" G'raha says with a frown.

"Head to Tamamizu or Yedlihmad, look for a boat going the right direction, swim the rest of the way. I've been there before, you know."

"Your plan is terrible," Thancred says flatly.

"At least there is a plan," G'raha mutters. "Fine. Don't get caught, we have no way to rescue you."

Qahs'a nods and stands while the other three fold up the maps.

"We'll be in Dravania, probably," Alisaie tells Qahs'a.

"I... may follow you all to Sharlayan." Alphinaud says to the Circle of Knowing Archons. "Getting into the city might be a little... complicated, but undoubtedly Grandfather will want to see direct evidence of the outlandish time travel tale."

"And you can do research," Alisaie says.

"...well, yes," Alphinaud admits.

Papalymo just looks to have a migraine imagining the mess that bringing Alphinaud with them will create.

[ok so i've meddled with the timeline a little bit. encyclopedia eorzea lists events in this order (and is at least partially grouped by associated city): battle for silvertear skies, the sharlayan exodus happens, louisoix forms the circle of knowing and the archons travel to eorzea, bunch of primals are summoned, garlemald starts to build baelsar's wall because of the primals, bozja explodes, ferndale is destroyed, THEN the goobbue. and then it's 1563. none of these things have exact dates, and if we take the order to be in order of occurrence, then the twins were born in like november are like two months old when the exodus happens since they're the last thing listed in 1561. instead i am assuming that the goobbue thing didn't happen in like DECEMBER and after absolutely everything else that year because time travel is so much more fun when you can meddle more. so i've moved the goobbue to after the exodus and before just about everything else. i'll decide about silvertear later on that note: since the battle of silvertear skies JUST happened i uh need to edit the previous one. maybe. there's only so much extra that qahs'a can provide to allow middy to pretend to be somewhat awake. either that or qahs'a's about to take on an entire airship on his own lol :V]

[rockingrobin69]

Your Flufftober posts make me feel like I should participate in cuffing season lol

I won't because that's the total opposite of what makes these stories so fluffy and perfect. But every now and then I think hmmm... Maybe I'll also end up in my own random romcom ending.

Nonny I'm not gonna lie 'cuffing season' had me go: kinky? wait, culling? tiny baby cow? went to partner and he said, cuffling? (he meant cufflink) anyway hilarious

I met partner on a bus from nowhere to nowhere, the most insignificant by-chance thing in about 33-34 degrees heat (celsius) (I actually wrote about that here). A bit of an accident. But after the whole 'accident' part, it was also a lot of work, a lot of meaning it and fucking up and trying. I think that's what makes my stories so fluffy? The wanting it. The trying. (and the bone-deep affection) (anyway anyway) seeking it, putting yourself out there, it's tough. You have to want it. But if you do, darling nonny, you have all my fluff in support. To me love is real, and it's everywhere. I wish for you all the love you want.

I'd really like to gift you something, but all my short-fic brain space is spent on flufftober, so all I have is this little sneak-peak of the longfic I've been working on. It's - soft. I'm putting it under the cut:

~

He saw him in the frozen food aisle. Felt meaningful, in an entirely deranged way. Malfoy had two bags of frozen cauliflower in his hands, and he seemed to be deciding between them. Then he looked up, rolled his eyes, but didn’t walk away.

Harry approached gingerly. He heard Malfoy sigh at least three times before either of them spoke.

“You know you don’t have to stalk me now,” he said, and it came out far gentler than Harry expected, than he deserved. “We can arrange to meet.”

“Does it still have to be in a supermarket, or…?”

Malfoy laughed, and half the weight in Harry’s belly disappeared, or started dancing, a very intricate manoeuvre.

“Places where they sell food are preferable, for obvious reasons. What are you doing here, Potter, really?”

“Erm.” He couldn’t really tell. Didn’t really know. Harry picked up a bag and handed it to him.

“Frozen carrots as a peace offering?” Malfoy chuckled, but he took it.

“Yeah. Would you… I can help, if you want. With the shopping I mean. And carrying it back home.”

“Oh, I was just going to Apparate,” Malfoy blushed, pretty-fucking-cute, “no, no, that would be. Great. If you wanted. You absolutely don’t have to.”

He was so bloody tall. Still managed to look up at Harry from underneath the longest lashes in the world. He swallowed, twice, and his throat went bob-bob-bob, mesmerising. Harry blinked himself into speech.

“I want to.”

“Really?” with this tinge to his voice, not exactly uncertainty.

Harry laughed, slightly less manic. “Yeah. Really.”

And so they walked around the shop, barely looking at each other. Malfoy was pink all over, and Harry was probably red as a beat. Still, it was… nice. It was nice. Being there with him. Calm. Like a truce, like resolution, like the opposite of being a fuckup.

“Beans,” Malfoy stopped in the next aisle, crossing an item off his list. It was long, neat, evenly written. “Ah, perfect, they have the mustard I—they have it.”

Harry didn’t have a list. He barely had a functioning head. He watched Malfoy hold the jar, almost like it was a secret, like he wasn’t allowed.

“Good mustard?”

“What? Oh. Yes. My favourite, actually. They don’t always have it here.”

“Hmm.” It was just like him, to have a favourite mustard. “Better get two, then.”

Malfoy shook his head, already rolling to the next aisle. “I’m going to get cream. Be a dear and grab a dozen eggs for me? Free range, please.”

Harry got him the eggs. He also sneaked a jar of the fancy mustard to his own trolley. Who knows, maybe he’ll like it.

[facewithoutheart]

2021 Fics in Review

Stole this from @captain-aralias and it nearly killed me...

Also feel free to take the questions and answer them yourself. Tag me if you do <3

my fics from 2021

A Christmas Pitch, SnowBaz, Mature, 66k

5 Times Baz Avoids Conflict (& The 1 Time Simon Catches On), SnowBaz, Mature, 5k

A Crack In The Wall, Drarry/Jily/Wolfstar, Teen, 39k

Left Hands and Lotion, SnowBaz, Mature, 5k

What Am I Now?, Drarry, Teen, 600

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, SnowBaz, Teen, 3.3k

Here Comes The Boy, SnowBaz, Mature, 3k

Two Weddings, No Vows, Drarry, Mature, 3k

Not The Droids You're Looking For, SnowBaz, Teen, 9k

The Wrong Sider, Drarry, Mature, 65k

5 Times Simon Tried To Use Baz's Fangs Like A Swiss Army Knife + 1 Time He Didn't, SnowBaz, Teen, 4.5k

When I Feel Alive, SnowBaz, Explicit, 3k

Fucking Ruthless, SnowBaz, Explicit, 2.6k

vroom vroom, SnowBaz, Explicit, 900

The Mirror Pair, SnowBaz/Drarry, Mature, 38k

Based On A Fake Story, SnowBaz, Teen, 2.5k

How Baz Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rick Roll, SnowBaz, Teen, 2.6k

vroom vroom 2: Watford Drift, SnowBaz, Explicit, 1.3k

2 fast 2 vroom: the vroomening, SnowBaz, Explicit, 4k

Forever Isn't Long Enough, SnowBaz, Teen, 1.2k

We Used To Be Friends (AKA Mean-O-Ween), SnowBaz, Teen, 7k

The Chain (Tell Me What You Want), MalMage, Mature, 2.3k

Power In Hope // Drain Me, SnowBaz, Mature, 700

The Last Time, MalMage, Mature, 2.6k

Green Is The Color, SnowBaz, Explicit, 2.7k

The Real Tragedy (Is How Many Years I've Lived Without You In Them), SnowBaz, Explicit, 53k

Eight Months (forever), SnowBaz, Explicit, 11.6k

The Last Leaf, SnowBaz, General, 650

What I Leave Behind (Icarus Remix), SnowBaz, Teen, 155

A Body., SnowBaz, Mature, 1.2k

Care For Me, SnowBaz, Teen, 2.2k

Thirst Trapped, SnowBaz, Explicit, 14k

Make It Real, SnowBaz, Teen, 1.2k

Sleeping // Not Sleeping, MalMage, Teen, 871

Hate is a Poison, SnowBaz, Explicit, 611

Any Way The Wind Blows, SnowBaz, General, 333

A Little More Hope, SnowBaz, Teen, 898

Any Way The Tissue Blows, SnowBaz, Teen, 1148

All You Need Are Scones, SnowBaz, Teen, 1079

In Whose Body I Inhabit, SnowBaz, Teen, 1435

Trick of the Lens, SnowBaz, Teen, 1694

Who Holds The Power, SnowBaz, Explicit, 2.7k

Some Tears We Keep, SnowBaz, Teen, 680

The Brownie Paradox, SnowBaz, General, 260

Turn Around (Don't), Lamb/Gerald, Teen, 450

An Unscheduled Stop, SnowBaz, Teen, 1.7k

Think Happy Thoughts, SnowBaz, Teen, 3.4k

White Christmas, SnowBaz, Explicit, 1.2k

Trouble Comes, SnowBaz, Teen, 900

A New Song, SnowBaz, General, Teen, 400

Promises, Promises, SnowBaz, Explicit, 3.5k

Santa Baby, SnowBaz, Teen, 5.7k (unfinished)

Trouble Goes, SnowBaz, Teen, 1.8k

Disturbed, Depraved (Delightful), SnowBaz, Explicit, 2.2k

the side bar, Brobelove, Teen, 750

A Pedicure For Loneliness, SnowBaz, Teen, 2.2k

Always is a Promise, SnowBaz, General, 960

A Whole Goddamn Buffet, Shittle, Explicit, 34k

Who Holds My Grief?, SnowBaz, Teen, 280

Rats Away!, SnowBaz, Teen, 930

Love is a Balm, SnowBaz, Explicit, 380

The Chosen One Bakery, SnowBaz, Teen, 2.4k

Out Of The Cold, SnowBaz, Teen, 1.8k

Trouble Always Finds Me, SnowBaz, Explicit, 2.5k

On a Scale of One to Ten, How Much Do You Want to Date Me Right Now?, SnowBaz, Teen, 10.5k

65 fics, 418k in total (though I'm sort of cheating, since I started at least three of my longfics in 2020)

Jesus Christ it hurt to make that list. Did I really write all of that??

more questions and answers below the cut 👇

Best/worst title?

For best, I really love Thirst Trapped; it just so perfectly embodies the fic, and helped set the plot when I got lost halfway through writing. (Although, for humor, does it get better than 5 Times Simon Tried To Use Baz's Fangs Like A Swiss Army Knife + 1 Time He Didn't?) I'm also pretty partial to The Real Tragedy (Is How Many Years I've Lived Without You In Them) even though I think it's a bit pretentious.

For worst, probably When I Feel Alive (I just have a love/hate relationship with this fic lol) because I always forget what it's about. The title just really doesn't do it for me.

Best/worst summary?

I'm pretty blah about summaries; I don't have the patience for them, generally like to leave bits of my story to be discovered rather than forewarned. So mine tend to be fairly short, except for longfics.

For best, I just really love the description for 5 Times Simon Tried To Use Baz's Fangs Like A Swiss Army Knife + 1 Time He Didn't which is simply: "Does what it says on the tin." Classic Christina-sarcasm. If I'm not going with a joke answer, I do also love my summary for The Real Tragedy even though I changed it about a million times while posting:

What if the Watford Tragedy never happened? The arrival of Davy Cadwalladar’s body on Pitch Manor’s doorstep sets in motion a chain of events that leave Basilton Grimm-Pitch wondering just how far he’ll go to prove, once and for all, that Simon Snow is real. All Simon Snow wants to do is tend bar and forget he was ever part of a vigilante group of Mages called ‘Davy’s Men.’ That his childhood love is gone forever, and everything he knew about himself is a lie. Until a mysterious vampire walks into his bar, his life. And his heart.

(Although part of me wishes I could have stopped with just that first line.)

For worst, probably my Love is a Balm fic because it's just "The companion piece to 'Hate is a Poison'" but how else do you describe a 380 word piece?

Best/worst first line?

I pride myself on good first lines...

But if I had to pick worst, it's actually probably from my piece A Christmas Pitch, because I copied The Christmas Prince:

“Chris. Chris!” I shout, chasing Watford Magazine’s head writer down the hallway.

It doesn't really set the tone of how this piece turned out, and does nothing to introduce the central drama.

As for BEST first line, I do have two that immediately come to mind, both from COC because I did work really hard on those opening lines (with a short piece, every sentence needs to punch):

From Out Of The Cold: "Winter adorns his curly hair with perfect snowflakes and I’m so in love it hurts."

From Love is a Balm: "I shatter myself into pieces on the stained mattress of my unfurnished flat."

Although, for humor, I really love “I can’t believe you bought us a race car bed, Snow.” from vroom vroom 2: Watford Drift.

Best/worst last line?

Oh man. A couple of candidates for best:

From vroom vroom 2: Watford Drift: "But we don’t invite Shepard in (not yet.) Instead, I pull Simon tight against me, snug in our bed (2017, ruby red. Perfect.)"

From The Real Tragedy: "Because now I know Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch is the love of my life.

And I’m going to find him.

Or my name isn’t Simon Snow." (I still get chills every time.)

But most of my best last lines are only good when paired with my first lines (I try to make them match whenever possible).

For my worst end line, ok and it's maybe not "the worst" worst but I really wish Turn Around (Don't) had a better ending: "I smile at the promise. And wait." It's no where near as punchy as I wanted it to be, but eh.

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Um obviously more hahaha. I wrote 4 fics in 2020 and... 65 fics in 2021.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I mean, obviously my Shitty/Bittle story for the Check Please fandom, because a) I hadn't even read Check Please last year and b) it's a total rare pair. But I'm really please with how it turned out, even though it's never going to get the readership it deserves.

And smut as the genre because I thought I'd never do it, and here we are with 12 Explicit fics!

What’s your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

The Wrong Sider is always my answer to this, because it honestly reads like an actual novel to me, and I love all of the elements I wove into it. I think I could read it over, and over, and over again.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

Hard to say? If we're going hits it's obviously The Wrong Sider but that's because the HP fandom is larger. In the SnowBaz world, it's obviously Thirst Trapped. I was overwhelmed with the response to that fic - like, I've never seen my inbox blow up like that before (and probably won't).

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

If we're going anticipated vs real, it's The Real Tragedy, even though it's honestly doing fine and people have been really receptive of it. I think I just expected more because of the amount of world-building I did for it.

If we're going straight up views/kudos, it's obviously my works that don't include big ship followings, like my MalMage fics, the OC/Lamb story I wrote, and my Agatha/Niamh piece. None of that really bothers me though.

There were a few COC pieces that I loved and felt sad when people weren't as interested in them, like Care For Me, Think Happy Thoughts and my Trouble series, but I really can't complain because I was churning out a lot of content at that time and it's understandable if pieces got lost.

Story that could have been better?

So many of my earlier smut works, Here Comes The Boy is one I think about a lot (I do love the premise, but I still feel like the beginning doesn't match the end and that bugs me).

Sexiest story?

Probably Disturbed, Depraved (Delightful) (which I wrote in one day because I couldn't find the energy to finish Santa Baby lol). I wanted it to reflect real sex, and not the storybook romance sex my fics normally portray.

Saddest story?

I've gotta go with Always is a Promise because it broke my heart to put Simon and Baz on opposite sides of the afterlife, yearning for one another. But also the Simon chapter in The Real Tragedy because him pretending to be tough and becoming increasingly disillusioned just really hurts.

Most fun?

Come on. It's my vroom vroom series obviously. Tell me they aren't a romp and a half. Like Baz, you hate that you like it.

Story with single sweetest moment?

I'm not sure? But I do love Simon taking care of Baz when Baz's mom doesn't Visit in Some Tears We Keep. Oh, and probably Harry using the Resurrection Stone so Baz and Simon can meet their moms in The Mirror Pair.

Hardest story to write?

Every story has its moments for the most part... but I did take a three month hiatus with A Christmas Pitch because I got so bored with it. Plus, it was my first longfic so there were definitely some painful moments.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Hands down A Crack In The Wall. I think I wrote that fic over the course of a week because it possessed me and wouldn't let me stop. I spent half of Easter weekend at the beach writing it because the words wouldn't stop coming.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I mean, every story shifts my perceptions of the characters lol because in every story I bend them a bit to my own viewpoint. I will say in Fucking Ruthless the characters shifted MY perceptions because it refused to be written as I'd planned. I had to soften Baz to finish it.

Most overdue story?

Not sure what this means... I mean, I'm overdue for Santa Baby (but I think I left it at an OK stopping point, and I don't think it's a SUPER holiday fic despite the theme, so I'm ok finishing it in the new year.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I mean, writing 31 fics for COC, writing smut for the first time, writing my first textfic, writing for different fandoms and ships… I had a lot of writing firsts this year. I think one thing I’ve learned the most is how to start in the middle (honestly a problem because now I don’t want to write longfics anymore). I’ve also learned how to tell a story in a brief amount of time. And I’ve learned that while I’m never going to be a prolific smut writer I can pull it off when I want to (lol).

This year’s theme and the story that demonstrates it most:

You want me to analyze 65 fics and come up with a theme?!?! I mean, come on. The theme is always love, the different ways we find it, the different ways we express it, the different ways we deny it... in that case I think there are two stories that showcase my overall theme, the pairing of The Chain (Tell Me What You Want) and Who Holds The Power, which are meant to be parallel fics that show MalMage vs SnowBaz.

What are your fic writing goals for next year this year?

Is it weird that I don’t really have any? I did so much this past year I just want to… enjoy it. I know I’m getting closer to wanting to write my original fiction. I’d like to finish my Phantom piece, and maybe write another SnowBaz longfic, but other than that I'm kind of "whatever happens, happens" about the new year.

[ellstersmash]

fic writer ao3 questionnaire thingy

tagged by @bearlytolerant and @ejunkiet for this 💙 thx buddies

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

37

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

79,572

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

these are all solavellan which I guess is not surprising... but to be fair, my mass effect fics just missed the cut

three (modern!au WIP that could technically be finished where I left it but needs a rewrite bc i started it before i learned how to make more thoughtful choices)

nothing on my tongue (collection of playlist-inspired <500 word vignettes that sort of work as a whole story)

awake, alive (two-shot ? about not-kissing in the rain. *smacks the roof* this bad boy can fit so much romantic and sexual tension in it)

the naughty list (a very smutty christmas fic, and another two-shot)

waking up (post-trespasser prompt fill about kissin your not-ex-boyfriend to help him see how dumb he's being)

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

yes, I do. commenting can be intimidating when you don't know the writer, so in that case it feels disrespectful not to even acknowledge the effort. same with extensive comments. and oftentimes the commenter brings up questions or points out interesting moments that you can then have mo re of a conversation about.

honestly comments aren't about the compliments (though those are always nice to hear), they're about the connection. I wrote this, you read it. we both want to feel seen. consider my response an acknowledgement of our connection.

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

principles, which is just a one-shot so the whole thing is angsty, but it definitely ends even less happily than nomt...

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

probably three, but since the last chapter is technically not the ending... I think to the water (smutty dragon age OCxOC indulgence) takes it! it is also, coincidentally, some of my tightest writing.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've written?

i do not. i don't generally love reading or writing them tbh

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

nope, but there's always tomorrow!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i sure do, but uh what kind? the um... the quick and snappy kind where you hope to squeeze at least a little heat out of those 600 words? idfk

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i am aware of

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

not that i am aware of

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not that i am awa- wait, yes! i collaborated with my past self on not to keep, a shenko fake-dating one-shot that I wrote most of in 2017!! lol ok but like with other people, no.

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

well that's not a fair question to ask. how about top three: mayo, solathi, and bethistair

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish, but don't think you ever will?

i mean there's always some hope, but.. arlathan!au. 🥀rip

15. What are your writing strengths?

being concise: i try to be efficient with my word choice, and cram a lot of characterization/meaning into a handful of words

i think i hit a decent balance of description, action, dialogue, and interiority?

giving certain sentences that satisfying cadence

im good at beginnings. fuck endings tho

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue. im a lot better than i used to be, but still struggle with it

i don't understand smut and it doesn't understand me

my stamina is shit!!! which is why i write small things and that works fine but when i occasionally want to write something long (beach fic my love) i get overwhelmed and discouraged.

im just.. not that creative lmao this head is empty

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i do not do it, but all the best to ppl who do ig. hopefully someone knows how to do it well... once i read a longfic that did this sort of a lot and the translations were all in the chapter end notes on ao3 and it was such a PAIN to scroll down then find my place again

but i just don't do it bc im lazy :}

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

newsies lmao (which came out when i was 3! never been on time to a fandom in my life ✌🏻😌)

19. What's your favorite fic you've ever written?

uhhhhh well right now i am most satisfied with anybody's hands (pre-relationship mayo), but like the writing of be gentle with me (also mayo), but am most proud of nothing on my tongue. idk which would be considered my favorite.

-

idk who hasn't been tagged yet but @thevikingwoman, @boshtet-juggler, @kittlesandbugs, @ladymdc, and @writer-ish, if you've done this will you pls tag me in it so i can see?? and the rest of yall if you got this far and have stuff on ao3 i am BEGGING you to say i tagged you pls i do not even care if we're mutuals or not

[morethanonepage]

1, 4, 9, 19!

1. what's the fic youre most proud of?

i've talked about it a little bit ago when i was doing the "talk about your five favorite fics" meme but i think i'm torn between adrift (genuinely what i think of as my best writing); Washington Square (one of the VERY FEW longfics i've written, and i grown prouder of it w every awful fusion au i read); and The Ice Is Getting Thinner (bc pre-adrift it's what i would've called my best writing).

4. what fic of your own do you read for comfort?

i don't usually re-read my fic for comfort bc it usually makes me feel guilty and/or annoyed that i once wrote something but am not in the place to write anything else, but sometimes i am in the mood for something VERY specific i.e. that i wrote.

shhhh the second chapter of adrift and bits of the fire and the flood, both bc of the sex scenes shhhhh

9. what's your writing process like?

LOL, WELL.

usually what happens is, after many conversations w mutuals about potential fic ideas, most of which are disregarded after i write a paragraph or so, SOMETHING will randomly decide to stick. it's entirely unpredictable and no amount of trying makes it happen.

once i have like, an idea that's got a basic plot, a ~theme i can at least somewhat have in the back of my head, a ~vibe i can match w a sad song and/or sad quote, AND is precisely aligned w the amount of effort i am currently able to expend (i.e., when i have a GREAT IDEA [like the thrift store items john/chas thing] where i even know the basic structure of how the thing would go, it's utterly USELESS to me at the moment bc it would take more time and energy to develop than i currently have.)

but yeah once i have an idea + a structure + energy, i usually start banging things out in evernote (slowly. it's always very slowly). sometimes i start writing at 10:30pm, setting a timer for myself to at least write for 30 minutes, and then i always end up taking longer than 30 minutes.

(lately -- well not lately, i've stopped trying lately -- but previously when i was IN THE MOOD TO WRITE w/o any real direction toward any one thing, i would set the 30 minutes and then jump around between WIP files, writing a sentence here and a paragraph there, etc, etc. this is generally not a very productive technique but sometimes what'll happen is i'll skip to another fic and then suddenly feel like 'oh man i wanted to keep working on the one before' and then i'll know that's one i DO actually have enough inspiration to finish)

sometimes i just have LINES or MOMENTS that i'm really proud of but that are still stuck in WIP files and then i just get sad that no one else will get to read them (LOLLLLL) so sometimes that's inspiring to me too, but i guess not. lately.

19. If you could write an ideal fic, what would it include?

words would be nice.

lmfaoooo no but seriously at the moment i just wish i had the energy to write ANY fic much less an ideal fic. but i guess what i always want is to write fic that people READ and are genuinely interested in. i've read more novels lately than i have in a while so i've also had the pull of like -- wanting a real longfic w like plot and shit. which i'm so bad at!!! but i kind of just want a full, developed thing with a whole portrait of a relationship through the lense of not just the RELATIONSHIP but like. what's going on otherwise. how the plot AFFECTS the relationship and how the relationship AFFECTS the plot.

also w a good sex scene or two bc like. i know some discourse these days finds them gratuitous but i genuinely do enjoy writing them most of the time -- there's usually less dialogue and more emotions, and it's fun to try and show them w/o telling them bc i only write about emotionally repressed men, for the most part.

i also just want my fics to be the kind of fics people talk about on tumblr sometimes, with like, those really raw lines that get them and that they randomly think of. i don't think a lot of my writing is like that -- i'm very prosaic (some would say ~hemingwayesque~) and i guess what i really want to be good at is simple sentences that pack a punch.

which is hard!!!! which is maybe why i'm not writing right now, i want everything to be PERFECT and ART and you can't GO IN with that mindset, it has to happen naturally/through editing. but alas

[shyneanon]

Just wanted to write a x reader about HT Sans out of curiosity, so I did. Kinda long though. But I hope you guys like it. Have an x reader of mine where Axe doesn’t do anything incredibly stupid, lol.

(I promise the longfics are gonna be updated I just wanted to write this >~<)

---

It had been a long time since you had first fallen into the Underground. Long enough that you’d lost track of time. Though that wasn’t hard to do when there was no sky to watch.

To be honest, you were lucky to not be dead. You had the feeling every other human to fall down here had died at the hands of monsters.

For some reason the two skeletons… hadn’t killed you. Which was odd, considering that when you’d first met them you’d had to navigate some deadly traps while they’d watched. When you’d made it past everything, the taller one had seemed impressed with you, and proud.

The shorter one hadn’t seemed so pleased.

Their names were Papyrus and Sans, apparently, and upon Papyrus’ insistence they’d snuck you through town and to their house, where you resided to this day. You wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that you had survived their traps, which Papyrus insisted on calling “puzzles,” despite the fact that they had obviously been designed to kill anyone who failed them. But at least Papyrus was kind to you. He was happy to talk, though he was very hesitant to answer a lot of your questions. Often he responded by telling you that he couldn’t answer your question at all. But he liked sharing his hobbies and favorite media with you, so even though he was holding you captive, he’d become like a friend.

Although you had the feeling that holding you captive was more for your benefit than theirs. When they fed you, it was always the same food. Some kind of meat.

You had the feeling you knew what kind.

But you wouldn’t ask. To spare your sanity.

Sans wasn’t hostile. But he made it a point to ignore you. Even if you needed help with something and you asked, he would simply act as if you weren’t there, as if he couldn’t see or hear you. If you annoyed him enough he would shoot you an unsettling look with his one red eye and you would back down. You quickly learned not to bother. You decided he didn’t like you, and that you were lucky he hadn’t killed you by this point. Especially considering that he hauled a giant axe everywhere. So you left him alone and spoke to Papyrus instead.

Over time, though, Sans started to change.

One day you were asked to throw out the old food, and as you were attempting to figure out which of the meat was older and therefore likely to go rotten soon, Sans intervened.

And he helped.

The whole time he barely said a word to you, and he didn’t look at you for even a second, but he helped. Though you tried not to get too optimistic. Perhaps he had simply been annoyed by how long you’d been taking.

A few days later, when you and Papyrus were playing a board game to pass the time, Sans sat next to his brother to watch. This was also new-- he usually did his best to stay as far away from you as possible at all times, dinner being the only exception.

He joined the two of you to watch several times, and then one day Papyrus asked him if he wanted to play a game for more people. And Sans said yes.

That day you saw a different side of him.

Rather than brood silently with an unsettling grin on his face, Sans started to crack jokes. Bad ones. At first you were too confused and almost bothered by the sudden change to laugh, but eventually he made a particularly fucked up joke and you laughed from the shock of it, despite Papyrus scolding him.

The next time you and Papyrus played a 1v1 game, Sans sat next to you.

Several sessions of this happened, Sans sitting and watching. You couldn’t tell if he was rooting for either of you, though he occasionally made jokes mocking you specifically. You’d noticed he never liked to say anything mean to his brother, however, so maybe that explained the lack of jabs at Papyrus.

Then one game, as you were contemplating your next move, Sans leaned in next to your ear. You leaned away, expecting him to say something threatening or cruel.

Instead, he gave you a hint.

As it turned out, Sans was really smart. He understood strategy, though he rarely employed it much when he played with you two. You had the feeling he liked letting Papyrus beat him.

He wasn’t such a bad guy, it seemed.

Then he asked to play a game of chess with you one day. You had the feeling he’d beat you, but you said yes.

You were right. He beat you quickly and easily. But he seemed to enjoy himself, particularly with some jabs at you that were accompanied by winks. So you didn’t mind.

Though you did feel something kind of odd whenever he winked at you. And it didn’t stop even when winking became a regular thing. In the following weeks he started pulling pranks on you, something he apparently enjoyed a lot. Papyrus seemed annoyed about it at first, but then confessed to you that it had been a long time since Sans had regularly cracked jokes and pulled pranks on others, and he was happy to have glimmers of the old Sans back. You’d had no idea this was what he had been like before… whatever had happened in the Underground had happened. Neither of them would talk about it. Regardless, seeing Sans smile and laugh so sincerely felt really good.

...

And then he cornered you with his axe.

Or, at least, that’s what it felt like at first. One day, weeks after he had begun to lighten up, Sans approached you when you were in the kitchen, dragging his axe behind him. Papyrus was out of the house, though you didn’t know where, or doing what. They never told you that either.

He’s going to kill me.

“Heya,” he said.

You tried not to stare at the blade. But it was hard. “Hi,” you said.

He took a few steps closer to you. There was nowhere you could go. You were against the extremely tall sink. If he decided he wanted to chop you up into little pieces, there was nothing you could do about it.

“Think we can talk?” he said.

You nodded, but once you did you weren’t sure if that was the right decision.

“Cool.”

Before you knew it he was standing over you and you were pressing yourself back against the sink. You felt so small.

This is it. He’s going to take his axe, and he’s going to cut me into little pieces. And then eat me.

“So…” he began.

Please just make it fast. Please just don’t make me suffer. Please just get it over with--

��I wanted to say thanks.”

“... Huh?” was your only reply. You realized you were shaking.

“Thanks,” he repeated. “For being nice to my brother. And… to me, even when I haven’t been so nice to you.”

Not sure what to say, you just stared.

“He’s… been through a lot. He’s really needed a friend. And I’m glad you’re being that friend to him.”

You weren’t sure if he was trying to put you at ease before murdering you, but you smiled a little. “It’s no problem. Papyrus is fun, I like spending time with him.”

“Yeah?” Sans smiled one of his more sincere smiles. “Yeah, my brother’s really cool.”

There was an awkward (and, at least for you, tense) silence as you both looked at each other.

“Sorry for scaring you.” His red eye looked away. “I know… I look scary.”

Hm?

“It’s not you,” you said. “You’ve just… been holding that huge axe… the whole time, and I didn’t… Y’know, I just thought, maybe…”

He looked at the blade as if he’d just realized it was there. “... Oh. Oh, that makes sense.”

He unceremoniously let go of it and it dropped to the ground.

“Still, I know I’m… intimidating.”

“The way you look doesn’t scare me,” you told him. “It hasn’t for a long time. Your appearance is just that, your appearance. No big deal.”

He watched you, as if he were looking for signs that you were lying.

Then he smiled, seeming almost… reassured.

“Cool,” he said.

He moved closer. His smile was different, though you couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. Though, that was often the case with him.

“Listen, I don’t hate you anymore. I haven’t for a long time. I’m sorry… for the way I treated you.”

“It’s OK,” you said. You weren’t sure why he’d treated you that way, but he was apologizing.

“Thanks.”

You realized the two of you were making eye contact, and then you noticed the pupil in the middle of his red eye. It was… getting bigger?

“I… like you a lot, actually.”

What do I say?

“I like you a lot too,” you returned. It wasn’t really a lie. He was fun. You just… weren’t ever sure what he was thinking, so you had always been slightly afraid that he wanted to kill you.

You saw his cheeks start to turn a blue color. You had never seen that before.

A… blush? Or am I insane?

Wait, when did our faces get so close?

Why is my heart beating so fast?

“Anyway,” he said, leaning away from you. When the gap between you widened you suddenly felt like you could breathe again. “I’ve got stuff to do, upstairs.” He winked. “Like nap.”

He picked up his weapon and turned away, though he looked back at you.

“See ya.”

All you did was raise a hand, and he left.

After that day, things were different.

Sans had been nicer to you for a while, but now he was really nice. He threw you compliments, and they didn’t seem sarcastic. He sat next to you on the couch regularly. He would breach your personal bubble-- albeit carefully. Sometimes he would brush hair out of your face, or put his hand on your shoulder when talking to you, or sling an arm around your shoulder. It… seemed friendly, but you weren’t sure if it was supposed to be more.

Either way, your heart would beat fast and your senses would heighten whenever the two of you made contact.

He spoke to you whenever Papyrus was out and he wasn’t. Sometimes he ended up telling you stuff that he and Papyrus had refused to address early on in your stay. He didn’t give details, but… it was sad.

A couple of times you gave him hugs to comfort him. They were returned, and the two of you would just… stay like that for a little while, holding onto each other. Even you started telling him about home. You were kind of like confidants now. It seemed that Sans didn’t tell Papyrus a lot, in an effort not to worry him. Papyrus worried already, it made sense that Sans wouldn’t want to make it any worse.

Then one day, while you were sitting together on the couch, he finally explained to you how he’d gotten the hole in his skull.

A former friend, the current queen… had stabbed him with a spear.

You held him, and he held onto you.

“Thanks,” he said, “for listening to me.”

“I’ll always listen to you,” you told him.

Like that day in the kitchen, you realized that your faces were close. This time it seemed very intentional, though. Sans was watching you carefully. Your own face got hot.

“Sans?” you said. It was almost a whisper.

He pressed his teeth to your lips and you froze up, shocked.

Almost immediately, he let out a soft moan, as if just the kiss were releasing tension. He pulled you closer. Your heart started to pound, and without thinking you threw your arms around his neck and kissed back. His arms wrapped around your waist, and you sank into him. His teeth then pressed against your neck and you shivered, sighing. It was followed by his teeth slamming into your lips, and you were swiftly pressed down onto the couch. It felt like his touch was a shockwave that moved through your whole body. You opened an eye and saw that he was flushed blue.

“I haven’t felt this good in so long,” he told you. “Everything sucks here. But you…”

More kisses. He sighed. Your eyes drifted shut again.

“... you make everything go away. You make me… feel things… I’ve never felt before.”

A hand worked its way down to your hip. He looked… high.

“... Y’know… Paps… isn’t gonna be back for a while.”

Your face got hotter than it already was. Was he insinuating what you thought he was insinuating?

“Geez,” you said with a shy smile, “we just kissed for the first time. At least… take me out to dinner first, right?”

He chuckled. “OK… yeah, maybe I’m moving a bit fast….”

Another kiss, this one more gentle. He cupped your cheek.

“I’m just… not used to feeling this good. It’s… kind of addictive.”

You fluttered your lashes playfully. “Ooh, I’m addictive?”

“Yes,” he responded. There was no irony in his voice. “Yes, you are.”

You were clutching his hoodie, and you realized that what you had thought was blood on his clothing was actually ketchup stains. You could smell it. It made you giggle.

“What?”

“I thought this was blood but it’s ketchup.”

A deep laugh. “You didn’t notice that all this time?” A wink. “Wow, you’re slow. Try to ketchup.”

You flicked his forehead playfully. “Get off the stage, nerd.”

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” you replied with a smile.

“Y’know, sex is great and all, but y’know what’s better?”

You raised a brow. “What?”

“A nap.”

You snorted.

“Don’t say it’s not true.”

“It’s true,” you told him, smiling.

“Here,” he said, pulling you up from your horizontal position and then flopping back, pulling you with him. “I make for a great cushion.”

“You do,” you observed. He was a skeleton but it actually didn’t feel weird to lie on top of him. So you got comfy.

“Nice. If Paps gets mad at me I can blame you.”

A wink, and you stuck your tongue out at him.

“Aw, c’mon now. That’s just childish.”

He wrapped his arms around you.

“You’re insane for liking me, by the way.”

You grinned. “Eh, I blame Stockholm Syndrome.”

He snickered.

[mira--mira]

Question from an aspiring writer:

How do you stay motivated on one project for such a long time?

I personally have the attention span of a goldfish, and whenever I have an idea I either have to write down everything my brain can spew immediately or have it be lost in the void for eternity.

Never mind going back and turning my outline into a fic or gasp editing.

Do you have any tips and/or tricks you use?

Ok, I got completely carried away with this just fyi, but hopefully I ended up answering your actual question 😂 tl;dr at the bottom.

To be honest, staying motivated is a tricky thing, one that I feel I'm still learning how to do even now and varies a bit between shortfics/oneshots and multi-chaptered fics/longfics. For a bit of background, I've been writing fanfic for about a year and a half, but I've been writing original fiction since I was seven, over a decade and a half, and I still wrestle with it. It's definitely a learning process.

One thing I wish someone would have told me when I was starting out was the power of ~scenes~ in either multi-chapters or one-shots. All writing is ultimately made up of scenes, but if you're struggling to put things together, focusing on an individual scene, or multiple short scenes, might help you focus on getting something completed, and it's something that eventually can be applied to longer works as well. Writing has been a snowball process for me and once I started getting anything completed, I felt more secure in knowing what I could write comfortably and what was out of my comfort zone, eventually getting to the point where I felt comfortable tackling bigger and longer projects and knowing I could stay with them.

OoT's interlude chapters and the snippet series are both good examples of scenes because I wrote them with that intention...even if most of them are actually two or three scenes combined. "Gai meets Hashirama and Madara", "Hashirama gets revenge on Kakashi", "Tatsuki and Hashirama pick flowers for Madara, then give them to him" etc. were all my starting points.

If you're first starting out and feel comfortable with outlines of some sort before you start writing I would encourage you to try and write down a bullet point list of your scene(s) and what you know you want to happen in it.

"Gai meets Hashirama and Madara"

* Hashirama meets Gai first, mistakes him for Lee.

* Madara is shopping for a gift for Hashirama

* Madara finds Gai and Hashirama, they spar, Gai kicks his ass, both of them love him.

This is how my initial outline looked for the first interlude chapter, technically each one of these "points" are their own scenes stuck together. Outlining is different for everyone, some people like super specific points, others even less detail than this. For me this is a nice middle that gives me a roadmap for the chapter, but allows plenty of room to naturally diverge and add detail. Play around with outlines and see what you're comfortable with/what gives you the best results.

I'm not sure of your individual situation, but if you're struggling to put together fics in general something like this might help. Doing this process again and again personally helps me stay on track and gives me a sense of progress.

This sense of progress is ultimately key and why I think motivation differs slightly between one-shots/short fics and longfics. If you confine the individual scene to a one-shot, that might give you the motivation to complete it. Even if you start writing and you get interrupted/can't finish having in one setting, bullet points sometimes help inspire me to finish because I'm not starting from scratch when I return to writing. The whole "eat an elephant one piece at a time" thing was difficult for me to learn, but ultimately proved true. Learning to chip away at something bit by bit is going to be the only (healthy) way to write longer projects you can't complete in one sitting.

For longer projects, it's a similar beast just on bigger levels and with an added dimension. I would actually suggest something similar to OoT for a starting project because it is ultimately broken up into arcs that you know and can reference, instead of making a lot of og content for a fan setting. Maybe not go into it thinking, 'I'll do a complete rewrite' but once you feel like you're ready for a longer project 30K+ or so, the rough outline method and the ability to follow arcs was what got me started when I eventually decided to make the fic multi-chaptered. Try writing one arc and keep yourself contained in that. Now the added dimension aspect in general for longfics is that you eventually want to plot individual chapters in a multi-chaptered longfic and individual arcs (character, plot, etc). This comes with practice. I honestly don't think there's a way to get around that. It's something that I'm still trying to work on and I can look back at my early work and see how I've improved, how I can recognize where things didn't go well in certain places, and how I would change them if I was writing today. That's a good thing to be able to do, it means you've grown! The other thing I find that helps with staying motivated week after week for longer projects is to roughly know where you're going and to try to be excited about a plot point/scene/chapter/etc that you're going to write. Really try to hype yourself up. For me, it's a moment that comes at the very end of the chunin arc and I start grinning even thinking about it because I know it's going to be awesome. It's always what gets me through the rough days, imagining the moment I'll get to actually write that scene in its entirety (it's definitely already outlined and I mentally play it out at least twice a week lol) and is a big motivating drive.

So far I think this is pretty standard stuff if you're an outliner and you've been writing for a few years, but the other thing motivational-wise for me is having a schedule. From reading this message alone, I would not suggest it for you right away. Get comfortable finishing small things and feeling confident that if you let an idea sit for a week or two, you can pick it back up and continue. But if you eventually dip your toes into longfics (and don't plan to pre-write everything before you publish) that routine and rhythm really helps keep me going. I've made a commitment, I've posted it online, I'm going to stick to it. No one is going to jump down my throat if I fail to keep it (this is still a hobby and having fun is the most important thing) but in my mind I should commit to it unless something irl prevents me from doing so. Don't put a tight deadline on yourself, I'd start with once a month or if you write shorter chapters every three weeks. This also would help you build up and get a readership, interaction being another big motivational key.

Also, it's important to accept that sometimes you bite off more than you can chew, and when you feel completely demotivated from a fanfic project...it's okay to drop it. It's okay to take a step back and work on something else. Maybe you'll come back to it, maybe you won't. If you can, try to pinpoint what it was about that project that made you demotivated, were you pushing yourself too much and you got burnt out, was it an ongoing series and your interest for canon lagged and so did the fic, was it just too stressful to keep juggling plotpoints, etc. and keep that in mind moving forward. Every experience can be a learning one and eventually make you a better writer that can eventually tackle those bigger projects. Don't be afraid to take on big aspirational projects, but don't walk into them blind either. Above all, and this is repeated a lot because it's true, enjoy what you write. Some days you might not. That's true with anything, but any project you take on the good should outweigh the bad.

This is my wrap up of the motivational section but I also wanted to throw my two-cents in about editing because "oh no editing" is a perspective I've seen from a lot of writers, and used to have myself, but I think is going to stifle your progress in the long run.

Here's the thing: you need to look forward to editing.

You don't have to be jumping for joy, but editing, imo, should be a positive thing. You have all these great ideas, you made it into a fic, something you wrote, and now you get to go back and make it even better! This is a tough attitude to adopt. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It took me a long time to unlearn the negative attitude and even then sometimes I still wish the editing was already done once I type in the last period. But I've learned to at least appreciate what editing does and I try to think to myself as I'm going through and making changes things like "wow, this suddenly became so much better. X plot point that I thought of ten pages from now is suddenly being hinted at and doesn't come out of left field. The transition points are a lot cleaner, it's not so jarring anymore. I bet the readers are going to love this little detail. Here's some foreshadowing that I hope someone picks up bc it's going to come back in like 5 chapters from now" it's hard, especially when you start, but this is something you made, and now are actively making better and that's something to celebrate.

I hope this helps anon! I know it's a lot and I'm by no means an expert but I've been doing this for more than a decade because I love it and I want to help others get into writing to! I have no problem answering any writing questions you may have if you find this helpful!

tl;dr

-motivation is slightly different between short/long fics.

-starting out, learn to outline by scenes and focus on finishing small projects and getting to a point where you feel like you can put something down and come back and pick it up again in a week. Completion is key and will help you feel satisfied/know your limits.

-long projects also can work on the scene-to-scene outline but now with individual chapters and individual arcs. It's tough to balance both but comes with practice. Bit-by-bit is key, as is having 'one moment you can't wait to write', possibly a schedule if it works for you, and reader feedback are all huge long-term motivational points.

-editing is tough but learn to look forward to it instead of dreading it.

edited: added a bit more/few typos fixed

[fondnesses]

roscoe’s notebook post

A while back I said I was going to write a post about the way I use notebooks for writing projects. This is the first of several posts about Writing Process I’ve been tossing around in my drafts for a little while as a result of conversations with friends, so bear with me.

I. Love. Notebooks. I genuinely would have to deeply overhaul my whole Process of writing anything on the longer side if I were to go paperless; I find physical paper pretty invaluable when I’m outlining, brainstorming, and researching, and I still probably write ¼-⅓ of all my actual content on paper first. (That proportion used to be a lot higher, but I’ve gotten better at being productive on a computer in recent years, which is great.) I’m a very visual person, so notebooks really help me visualize my ideas, story structure, etc. It’s very helpful to be able to use arrows and diagrams and physically strike things through, and the tactility is really soothing to me. If I show people my notebooks or talk about them, I often get a response like “this is so organized”, which is sort of true, but I have to stress that it’s “organization for a disorganized mind”; I can’t misplace ideas or notes if it all goes into the same physical object, vs. electronic notes, which are much more, like “Did I say that in a voice memo? PM it to myself on Discord? Leave it in a desktop sticky note? Write it directly into the Google Doc? Who knows! It’s lost to time!”. It’s very much an ADHD management strategy.

It helps that I’m a very neophyte stationery hobbyist and appreciate any excuse I have to use my pens, but I also will go off at any opportunity about how helpful I find them for writing projects, which is why I decided to just make a post about it. Right now I mostly use them for (fan and original) fiction projects, but I used a notebook for a very similar purpose when I was working on my undergrad thesis, and I have a slightly different but equally necessary-to-me approach to notebooks I use at work.

My typical structure for a notebook that’s devoted to one project only looks like this:

I always leave the first couple pages blank so I can go back and retroactively index bujo-style. I don’t always actually do the index, because sometimes I get too lazy, but I like having those blank pages there to give me the option. I also usually put epigraphs/inspo quotes on the first page.

After that, there’s often (but not always, I’ll talk about it) a couple pages at the start where I’m frantically jotting down loose brainstorming ideas before they've coagulated into a story structure. Just, like, vomiting into the void.

Stemming out of that, I usually write out about like 5-10 pages of outline-style notes in chronological order, laying out all the main story beats and charting out the story trajectory. This will inevitably get revised and rewritten many times, but I find the process of writing these wide-angle synopses really useful for dislodging ideas, making connections re: thematic threads, etc. from my brain.

I’ll devote a couple pages after that to specific things like "sex scene brainstorming", "random scene ideas/minor details that don't have a clear place in the outline right now but I'll turn to for inspo later" [this is what I refer to as “bits” in one of the later photos], "page where I just outline the Motifs And Themes", "research notes", "to-do list", "stuff to check on a second pass", "things to put in the a/n and AO3 tags", etc.--the specifics vary with the story.

Then, I skip ahead to approx. halfway through the notebook and cordon off the rest of the pages to be “free writing” space, AKA writing of actual content rather than planning, with the expectation there will be no internal organization and I’ll transcribe to laptop as I go. Writing on paper feels less binding than typing something on a computer; it’s like a little secret kept with myself, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere or be seen by anyone if I decide I don’t like it. Setting aside pages in the back half of the notebook means that, as more things come up re: planning, I can go back and add those in the rest of the pages that were intentionally left blank. This is how I avoid (for the most part) having the whole thing be a jumbled mess where there’s no separation between the notes and the actual story writing; I learned this the hard way via the first notebook I’ll show you in a second. I’ve recently gotten really into using Muji sticky note tabs to label any pages/sections of particular import that don't want to have to refer back to in the index and would rather just flip to instantly.

I do use notebooks that aren’t specific to any one project, but those are much less organized and less worth sharing.

Before I look at more recent stuff, here are some selections from my notebook for the project that got me into writing longfic, my Golden Kamuy canon divergence AU (with apologies for the bad photos, my phone’s camera is trash). I worked on this from Sept 2018-July 2019. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways, and notebook utilization was one of those. I’ve always used notebooks for keeping track of writing projects, as I said earlier, but before this it was largely without much organization or structure; just total chaos. Having a physical notebook became really important for this project because it was a sprawling multichapter story with rotating POVs and a lot of historical research. I also learned a lot about what not to do with a notebook, personally, or at least things that don’t work so well (for me). This was a college ruled spiral-bound Decomposition Book, for the record.

By the time I bought a notebook for it I already had a (very basic) plot outline in mind, so I wasn’t doing that very initial ground-zero brainstorming in here; I was copying out of my phone’s notes app, basically, and then going from there. 

This is one of the first pages in this notebook; I wanted to visualize the relationship web between the four central characters in the story in terms of how they feel about one another. The two colours correspond to the POV characters (Sugimoto in orange, Ogata in pink), and I used this colour-coding throughout the notebook with highlighters, etc. to keep track of information that was more relevant to one character than the other. Tsurumi and Yuusaku aren’t POV characters, but they’re prominent in the story and their presence impacts the central relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata, and it was helpful to me to map out the emotional ecosystem, as it were.

(There are coffee stains all over this, because I wrote the vast majority of the story in coffee shops because I didn’t want to be around my roommates, lol. This is part of why I never do fiction writing in notebooks that are too nice, I get neurotic about needing to keep them tidy. I can’t use ones that are too shit though, either, so it’s a bit of a narrow window. I’ll talk more about brands and paper quality etc. later.)

As you can see, this is the first page of many I set aside specifically for jotting down different pieces of historical information relevant to my story. It’s about fictional characters who are members of an army division that existed in real life, and both the canon and my fic involve a high level of attention to detail with regards to which divisions were present for which battles, etc., as well as general historical details specific to the Russo-Japanese War setting--what did people eat in the trenches? What did they do to fill time? How did they get through the winter? What did third party observers have to say about the conditions? What were the specs of their weaponry (particularly important because one of the POV characters is a sniper and gun nut)? I did a lot of reading (and watching of antique gun collector Youtube videos... the things I do for love, eh), and it came in handy so many times, because it turns out it’s much easier to write trench warfare slice of life if you have factual details to pull from when you don’t know what to do with a scene! Imagine that!

This is the first of three “grid outlines” I made; this is a way I sometimes like to visualize a story outline all on one page, with the columns representing chapters and the squares within the columns representing sections/scenes within the chapters. As you can see, early on I was hoping to get this done in five or even FOUR chapters (whatmakesyouhaha.mp3), with POV switches happening internally within the chapters. This proved to be unwieldy for many reasons, so I revised the outline:

Here I’d come to terms with the fact this story was going to have a lot more chapters than I’d planned, and I rearranged things so that it would happen in ten, with each chapter belonging to only one POV character. This also needed revising later, and in the end the story looked a bit more like this (though it did in fact end up being twelve chapters, but only because Chapter Ten was like, 12k, and needed to be split in two chunks):

I must have remembered to bring my fineliners to the coffee shop this time, lol, because as you can see it’s properly colour-coded this time. This outline was made when I was already four posted chapters into the fic, which hopefully gives you a sense of the way in which I am sort of a planner and a pantser; I can’t get into a longer project without an outline, but the outline inevitably changes many times throughout writing and I often end up with a finished product that looks pretty different from what I was intending. My creative M.O. as always is Do The Maximum! Amount! Of! Work! Possible!

This is what a “free writing” page looks like, for me. In this notebook I didn’t set aside any specific spaces for free writing so it’s strewn throughout the notebook in a really disorganized way and I was constantly flipping through looking for bits I’d written and forgotten to transcribe, and I decided to be more organized in future as a result of that. If something’s crossed through, that means I transcribed it. As you can see, they’re often small sections, sometimes just a coupled decontextualized sentences. About 3/4 of what I write in a notebook makes it into the story, I’d say; some of it never goes anywhere, and that’s OK. I have less of an issue killing my darlings if they never make it off the paper page.

A very brief, top-down chapter outline, where the goal was not to get too bogged down in details and just to visualize the beats and pin down what they’re trying to accomplish. Chapters for this fic typically ran about 6k, and five or six scenes per chapter was pretty common, so the average scene length was about 1-1.25k words/scene. IDK why I called it storyboarding when I didn’t make drawings. (Margin numbers are to keep track of word count, since I was using a daily word count tracker while writing this.)

This page was, as titled, for keeping track of the various balls in the air when I was about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the story and really feeling the pressure with regards to tying up the various loose ends. This was... a struggle. I hadn’t ever written anything longish (this fic ended up just under 70k) that had an action plot before, let alone a canon divergence scenario where I had to engage with and explain away various canon plot elements so I could maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I learned various “things not to do” with my notebooks while working on that project. One of those lessons I learned is to be more realistic when assessing how big a project is likely to get, not least because I RAN OUT OF PAGES around the chapter 9-10 mark. In my defense though, that’s because I’d never written anything even half this long! But I know better now, and try not to be in denial. Finishing the notebook early was a way bigger problem than I’d anticipated, and was part of the reason the last few chapters took several grueling months to finish. The issue was that I needed to be able to use a notebook to maintain my workflow--attempting to do it only on a computer was dismal--but it seemed silly to start a notebook of a similar size to the one I’d finished (80pg, approximately B5 dimensions) when there was no way it would need that much space, especially since the reference pages, like the historical notes, didn’t need to be transcribed over. I was also pretty broke at the time and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily, lol. I tried to get by using a Moleskine Cahier for a month or so because I had one lying around, but it was horrid; it was too small to be used comfortably, it wasn’t spiral-bound so it wouldn’t lay flat, the ghosting is terrible and I hate the way Moleskine paper feels, etc. Eventually I caved and went to Muji and bought a 30ish page A5 with closer to lay-flat binding, and I finished the story in there. I would take a comparative pic for you of the relative notebook sizes and include some of the scene staging diagrams, etc. I put in there, but I can’t find it :(

So I learned that specs really do matter, and it’s okay to be picky if the pickiness is going to make the difference between actually using a notebook or not. Things that are important to me in my notebooks:

Ruling (gotta have ruling, I can suffer through grid but blank or dot is a no-go)

Size (I can’t use anything smaller than at least a medium-large notebook, I find it claustrophobic and get miserly about page space)

Binding (twin ring is my preference because it looks and feels better than a classic spiral but has the same comfort of use with regards to bending the pages back to suit workspace size and laying flat with ease)

Paper quality and colour (I don’t like anything too slippery/smooth or with too much visible ghosting, and I strongly prefer an off-white paper to bleached paper--part of why I don’t use Decomposition Books anymore, the paper is scratchy and it’s too damn bleached!)

Pagecount relative to size of project

Portability (in non-COVID times; anything bigger than a B5 wouldn’t fit in the satchel I used to bring to work at my old job), etc.

But everyone’s taste is different in this respect, and the only way to figure out what works for you is through trial and error, I’m afraid. I also suspect I’m more neurotic and particular about the sensory experience of using a notebook than most people are, but I yam what I yam.

Now to talk about the notebooks for my current projects, where I’ve refined my approach somewhat. I’ve included less photos for these because they’re ongoing WIPs I don’t want to spoil completely, but I’ve tried to include some outline-type stuff to give you an idea.

My big bang fic is in the very ugly twin ring notebook on the right; I got it at a dollar store by my house because I needed something to work in and didn’t want to wait for an online order, but it’s been very serviceable for my needs. The paper isn’t even bad. The bigger notebook (B5) is my Sangcheng fic.

I wanted something with a lot of pages for this, because I knew it was going to be a long story, and for some reason the fact it’s smaller than my usual preference doesn’t bug me (I think it’s an A5?); it just fits this story, somehow. I’m not sure exactly how many sheets are in here but I’d guess about 150.

Because this notebook has upwards of 100 sheets, I made a lot of use of sticky-note tabs to label high-priority pages. The colour coding of these doesn’t mean anything, it was just whichever ones I had at hand at any given moment. These are those tabs from Muji I mentioned, I’m really obsessed with them--the shape makes them so much less obtrusive and more practical than conventional squares/rectangles OR flag shapes, IME.

My big bang story is nonlinear, so, similarly to what I did with colour coding for the two POVs for my GK fic, this story has two main colours corresponding to whether a given section takes place in the “before” or the “after” portions of the timeline, with blue as “after”, yellow as “before”. This is what the most current version of the outline looks like in there:

If you squint, you can see the alphanumeric notes in the top right of each section entry; I gave them each a code like “A3″ or “B5″ corresponding to their position in the story sequence (so, it goes A1, B1, A2, B2, etc., through to B9 and then the epilogue). [Unintentional that this schema overlaps with notebook size labeling and so is kind of confusing in the context of this post.] At first I was just keeping track of the sections via the highlighted titles, but it got confusing because I’d write down “Wedding” or “Yiling” in my notes and then refer to the notes later like “but there are multiple marriages?? and multiple scenes in Yiling??”. Stuff gets struck through with a straight line if it’s been written in a more-or-less complete form and crossed out with a squiggly line if it’s been cut from the outline or made redundant.

As I said earlier, I started out all the initial brainstorming for my Sangcheng fic in its notebook, instead of brainstorming it in someone’s DMs/my notes app/a voice memo/etc. and then transcribing it into the notebook in a somewhat more organized fashion, which is how my stories usually start out. Because of this, the first five-ish pages are basically just stream of consciousness rambling where I was trying to jot down every disconnected thought I had about the story concept. I don’t have photos for that because it’s too spoilerific for later developments in the fic, but I can show you some of the stages the outlines went through, once I was able to corral those initial notes into a story structure:

All the chapters in this fic have their own highlighter colour, so when I started trying to make sense of my initial brainstorm notes I just went through and highlighted stuff in the colour of the chapter it would make the most sense for, and then transcribed things more-or-less in chronological order into the relevant chapter outline. I later ended up rewriting all the chapter outlines AGAIN to refine them and divide them internally by the individual scenes, which makes them a lot more legible and less wall-of-text-y. They look like this now, with about four sheets per chapter:

Because this fic is on the longer side, I have some pages that are just for keeping track of other story elements, like this, where I refer back to whatever the fuck the “themes” are supposed to be whenever I forget what this fic is about:

It’s all about the visionboarding... Anyway, that’s most of what I have to offer, since most of these two notebooks is Forbidden Content.

With regards to brands/supplies, I really like this Kokuyo Campus Wide notebook that I’m writing Sangcheng in, it’s pretty perfect for me. I also like the B5 Muji twin rings, but those only come in 30 sheets, so I wouldn’t use it for anything above a ~20k project. The B5 Maruman Spiral Note 6.5mm ruled/80 sheet is another good one, though I wish it was twin ring instead of spiral. As you can tell, I like Japanese stationery brands because it’s easier to find decent paper quality and minimalist design without shelling out $$ than it is with American/European brands, at least IME. I like Rollbahns too. But honestly, I can usually find pretty serviceable random notebooks that aren’t brand-name from Asian dollar stores; it’s really not something where you need to shell out tons of money.

[illwynd]

writer tag game

Tagged by @philosopherking1887! TY!!! :D

Repost and tell me how you draft as you write. Do you write in order? Do you start with something particular? How fully formed does your writing come out the first try? How many drafts do you go through? Tell me about your process because I’m curious!

For me this really depends on the length of the thing. For a short one-shot I will tend to just write it all in one or two sittings, and in most cases it doesn’t need a full-on draft process; I’ll tend to let it rest for a bit after the first draft is down, then come back to it a few days or weeks later to see if it all still holds up and feels good, if there are any bits that need to be expanded or changed, any awkward phrasing, etc. My first go at these tends to be pretty solid and often doesn’t need more than a polishing. There are a few short things like that that I’ve come back to later and decided it didn’t hold up, and occasionally this resulted in me scrapping it and doing a complete rewrite of the idea from scratch, maybe keeping a few paragraphs that I particularly liked, then rinse and repeat. But that’s relatively rare for me.

Longer multi-chapter things... that’s where it gets more complicated. I still tend to write roughly in order (helps me keep things straight in my head lol, particularly in terms of emotional arcs), but I also don’t let gaps stop me. When I’m writing something long, I need to get enough down on the page right at the start to keep momentum going. So what often happens is I’ll do a complete draft of the first few chapters and then continue, jotting down as much as possible in semi-outline form to lay out not just the specific plot actions but also how the characters feel about it, segueing into prose or bits of dialogue whenever I have the words for it. When the flow trickles to a stop, I’ll then set it aside, and when I come back to it I’ll basically do the same thing again, going through from start to finish, filling in the gaps from the first time with more prose and dialogue, stitching scenes together and revising what’s there as I go. Depending how long and involved the story is, this can take only a couple passes or dozens. And then when I have a complete draft, I’ll set the whole thing aside to look at it with fresh eyes after a bit and make sure it doesn’t suck, rewrite any parts that do, tweak things for clarity, polish up phrasing, all that stuff. 

It also depends how plotty it is (the first few chapters of I remember a shadow had less of a process than the later chapters, since they were originally just an excuse for me to write a bunch of a particular pr0n dynamic that I was craving lol), how bolt-of-lightning it is (October is relatively short I guess but it was neat writing something that length in a few days, basically without stopping, and needing to make very few adjustments afterward), and also how... idk... challenging the concept is. The first half of Dead Wings got completely rewritten at least 4 or 5 times over several years, but when I finally got it right, the rest pretty much flowed and got finished in a matter of a couple months.

The only time I posted a longfic serially while writing it... I have no idea how I even managed that. It’s really not how my brain likes to do things. Too much pressure to have the whole thing figured out upfront and to never have to go back to an early chapter and change something. But it was an interesting experience anyway.

I guess another fun fact to mention is that in some cases I like to write the first draft in longhand. This is useful to me for two reasons: sometimes it just flows better like that, and also when I’m typing it up that can sort of be my first revision pass. But it means I have a ton of notebooks filled with very rough first drafts of my fics XD

OK so tagging... @rynfinity, @gorgeousgalatea, and uhhhh anyone else who wants to answer but hasn’t been tagged by anybody :D? :D?

[metalbvcky]

omg was it the last one??? D: 11, 20, 50!! <3

Oh, spn? Nah, tonight is the episode before the last. (one hour to go, I’m not ready) But Jensen has said it feels like the season final while the last feels like the series final. NOT.PREPARED.AT.ALL. 

11: What’s a stucky fic idea you’ve thought about writing, but haven’t yet?

OMG I’m so glad you asked this one! So I have three longfic ideas, two of which are 100% happening. (first time meeting bakery!au and an established relationship kid!fic) But the one I’ve thought about for quite some time, is a National Treasure (the nicolas cage movie) AU. I just cannot get the thought of Steve stealing the declaration of independence out of my head, and saying it. Bucky would take the ‘role’ of Abigale (the love interest in the movie) and they’d go on an adventure similar to the movie, while also slowly falling in love. The antagonist would work out perfectly too, that being Piece and Rumlow. 

But what’s stopping me is those other two fics and the fact that I’d need to do a lot of research throughout the movie lol. I’ve loved the movie for so long (since 4th grade) but I’d want to incorporate original scenes between inspired scene from the movie. Ahhh one day! 

20: How did you discover stucky?

I don’t know how many of you know, but I used to be a filthy casual (gaming/warcraft reference) when it came to Marvel. Like two months before this whole pandemic went down, I finally decided to start a rewatch since Disney+ was released. It seemed intimidating before, having to watch across multiple streaming services but if you put most of them on one platform, it doesn’t seem as bad. So I did that (I already saw Ironman 1 & 3, OG Avengers, AOU and Cap 3 in the past, CASUALLY. I saw them either in the theater or through family gatherings then went on with my life. That’s how little I knew about Marvel and since then, I had no motivation to catch up. I ignored, and somehow avoided all the endgame spoilers but I instead, spoiled myself by time I got to it. 

So at first I watched all 3 Ironman movies, got myself into some irondad fanfics then moved onto the Cap trilogy. (Though I watched by release order- Also TIH and Thor 2 are both boring as hell, I’d rather sit through endgame, I ain’t kidding you, Least I’d have something to rant/think about lol.) TFA I didn’t start shipping it. When Bucky fell off the train, my Supernatural brain though ‘ahh, he’ll be back!’ (even tho I knew he’s in cap 3, I know, out of order in the past pfft) Also, ghifmaking has made me warm up to that movie, by a lot. 

Cap 2? First off, that movie is near flawless. I think I could watch that and Ironman 3 for the rest of my life. Just gimme National Treasure, Cars 1, and Scooby Doo on Zombie island and I’m good. 

THE GODDAMN FLASHBACK SCENE IS WHAT GOT ME. Not the iconic ‘TTEOTL’ scene, no, no, no, no. Just the scene of Steve starting into the woods with his hands in his pockets, thinking back to Bucky in 1930′s brooklyn. *insert ‘that shit is breahtaking, bro’ gif here* 

So yeah, between TFA and CW (I do still love CW contrary to fandom opinion, but I do agree it feels more like an Avengers movie than anything) my heart was like: that’s you new OTP. 

I watched the rest of the MCU and did a head dive into fanfiction. And now here I am with this blog, making gifs, writing fanfic, and enjoying the fandom with the rest of you wonderful people :D Literally haven’t had this much fun in a fandom since I joined the spnfamily, and that’s saying a lot. So I think I’m shipping these two dorks for...life. Yup. ‘Don’t forget, you’re here forever.’ 

50: What do you love the most about stucky?

AAAAAAHHHHH, so many things!!! 1) The fandom, above all else I think. To hell with canon, we’ll make our own ship by hand. 2) Just how romantic they are, seriously. 3) How their love is stretched across a century and they both come back to life at the exact same time.  

Stucky askgame!!