#can't i just write SHORT things XDDD

[ivorydice]

for your WIP ask game, I am most intrigued by "arthur's got no sense what a prat" because that is a most excellent document title and also sums up arthur in a nutshell 🤣

I honestly cackle every time I see the wip title lmaooooo. Its tentative title is "What The Shadows Hide", but I'm still very unsure about that one.

This fic is my very first venture into writing for Merlin! Despite the fact that I've been in love with this show for more than 10 years lol! And I've always read hurt!Merlin fics for this fandom, but apparently my brain wanted hurt!Arthur for my first fic OH WELL XDD So it's over 30k of angsty hurty Arthur, and some slight hurt!Merlin because WHY NOT.

An assassin is loose in Camelot, and Arthur has been suddenly cursed into losing one of his senses every day. Naturally, he's super angsty about this because he hates being vulnerable and it gets worse with every sense he loses, with his father growing increasingly distant, with Gaius not able to find a solution or a way to help even though time is fast running out, but of course Merlin is on the case to find a way to stop the curse no matter how hopeless it seems.

Merlin is a bit of an awesome servant in this fic to be honest, he keeps trying to lift Arthur's spirits and not let him drown in his own head, and there are some nice friendship moments between them. Honestly it's been really fun exploring ways to write their friendship, even if it might be a little awkward because I'm not used to writing for them AT ALL lol. The weird thing is, I'm awkward writing everyone…except Uther and Gaius??? Their voices just come out so naturally?? Should I be writing about them instead lol???

The fic is in the final stages so it should be posted soon enough, even if I have been hesitant about sharing it lol. But I'm kinda proud of myself for finally writing a Merlin fic after all this time, posting it up on my AO3 page will be like sticking a picture I'm proud of up onto the fridge XDDD

And here is a snippetttttt from the intro scene:

The feast picked up in pace and noise again, music and chatter filling the room and echoing off of the stone walls. Servants bustled back and forth with their trays of food and drink, soldiers and knights laughed and slapped each other on the back, noble men and women preened and gossiped with each other. It was a banquet like any other, happy and free and celebratory, with laughter and cheer.

It felt in terribly bad taste.

Arthur wasn’t one to shoot down a successful mission. The encampment of sorcerers had been taken out, after all. Cleanly and swiftly and with no casualties on their side. It was everything Camelot could hope for.

But to celebrate killing other people seemed distasteful, whether they were practitioners of magic or not. He wasn't new to bloodshed by any means, sometimes killing was unavoidable; but to have music and laughter and entertainment afterwards sent something uncomfortable shivering down his spine.

Arthur picked up his goblet and held it out to the side, wiggling it pointedly.

Merlin, hovering close behind and to his right, responded immediately, a pitcher of wine in his hands and a raised eyebrow on his face. He looked an awful lot like Gaius when he did that. “Perhaps you should take it easy on the wine, my lord,” he murmured as he poured, voice barely audible under the music.

Arthur sent him a sardonic look. “And perhaps you should shut up.”

Merlin rolled his eyes and moved away, and Arthur drank from his goblet again, revelling in the way the wine warmed its way through his body and in his veins and up into his head until things became a little more fuzzy.

They had been sorcerers. So he shouldn’t feel so strange about it. Sorcerers were the enemy, they were dangerous, and they had to be stopped. A single magic user alone could cause untold damage; five of them banded together on the borders of Camelot had been far too great of a risk to simply let go.

Arthur eyed the crowded hall, the smiling faces and the easy going attitudes. His father beside him, laughing with Morgana.

He drank again.

[navigatorsghost]

Frooooots, froooooots, get yer froooots here! :D 🍉🥭🍈

Thank you! I'm sorry it took me a bit to answer this, I got brainjammed on the final question trying to decide what to ramble about. >_>

🍉 Do you prefer to write short fics or long fics? Multichaptered works or single ones? Why?

Uh, this is a bit of a trick question, because honestly, what I have is a lot of ideas for longfics but all I ever manage to get finished are the short ones. XDDD I would prefer, strictly speaking, to be able to write long/multichapter fics because I always have so many ideas and so much worldbuilding I want to do, but sadly my brains just won't buckle down so I have to settle for the mostly short fics they give me...

🥭 Rank from most enjoyable/fun to write to least: Fluff, Smut, Angst, Crack.

I actually have written and enjoyed writing all of these so this is really difficult to answer! All of them are my favourite in different moods. I write fluff when I'm feeling emotionally battered and want comfort, I write smut mostly when I want to pamper my muses, angst just happens when someone in headspace drops random tragic backstory on me, and usually I do crackfic when someone says something silly in Discord and then a whole plot falls out. XD So I really can't rank in order, I love them all!

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

I have an ever expanding lifetime list of blorbos so here's a couple of my current active ones from Naruto:

- Sasori is autistic as. fuck. Uncomfortable inhabiting a living organic body to the point where he turned himself into an imperishable corpse puppet, detests and fears change, gets anxiety when he thinks things aren't being planned thoroughly enough, hates scheduling disruptions and/or having to wait, cares intensely about inanimate objects but struggles to relate to living people, likes to hide in very small enclosed spaces, noticeably flattened affect despite clearly having actual emotions underneath, cannot contain the need to infodump about his special interest even in a literal life-or-death battle... one of us, and I love him for it. I feel sure he would've been so very much more Okay if someone had been willing to keep him safe in a nice quiet predictable place and give him lots of supportive attention on a consistent schedule.

- Hidan, slaughter-happy devotee of a dark god of suffering, secretly has a villain origin story that's basically "was born and raised in customer service". In a world where ninja are generally hardbitten career soldiers, he grew up in the one village that's renounced war in favour of catering to tourists. Consequently he has witnessed and endured horrors of a kind most ninja couldn't even imagine (can you imagine dealing with a stereotype Karen who's also heavily armed and can throw magic at you?) which finally drove him to go on a chaotic killing spree just to get out of there. He's secretly an expert in a dozen different embarrassing "soft" skills - he can write haiku, play the shamisen, run a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and more - but had to teach himself how to, like, throw a kunai. (And he can't even talk to anyone about his trauma because they'll just think it's funny.)

Thank you for asking! ❤️

[skepsiss]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I was tagged by @strangersteddierthings, I've never even thought about half of these questions, so.... we're gunna go on a journey together. I MISSED SEVERAL QUESTIONS LMAO. LEMME UPDATE.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

18 (I only post like 1/3 of my fics on AO3)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

66,922. I pay such little attention to this kinda stuff xD

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A lot... and a lot more than what is listed on my AO3. If we're friends I'll literally just message you a 2k+ fic in a DM for funsies.

Stranger Things (TV 2016) (8)

Overwatch (Video Game) (5)

Teen Wolf (TV) (1)

Castlevania (Cartoon 2017-2021) (1)

Critical Role (Web Series) (1)

Promare (2019) (1)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) (1)

DC Comics / Batman (Tim Drake / Kon-El)

Orphan Black

Marvel (Steve/Tony)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Basket Ball Shorts

Roadrat: The Fire that Covered the World

The Comfort of Warmth (Lio/Galo)

Fifty-fifty (Roadhog / Junkrat)

Perspective (Caleb / Essek)

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

Yes. As soon as I see them I will reply with a thank you or to engage with someone's question/musings/etc.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably a Roadrat one. It's been a while since I've read my work, but The Things They Lost is a Roadrat fic where I explored a bunch of like... when Junkrat lost his arm and stuff like that. Brutal, tbh. Next closest is my Alucard (OT3) Castlevania fic where he is BIG SAD about Trevor and Sypha not being there. Nights Spent Alone.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

UUuhhhuhuhuh..... I mostly write sad shit LOL. Milkshakes has a happy ending. It's a 2 part modern-day Steddie fic about the boys asking each other out on a date over Instagram.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've never seen any hate on my fics before.

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

Uhh, yeah. I do. PWP or With Plot. I like full stories that have smut that BELONGS there, but then we've got just straight-up PWP. That is what Basketball short is tbh.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

No, never written a crossover. I've written lots of AUs though.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. Dunno how I'd figure that out.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

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

Nope. Dunno what that would look like tbh.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Steddie; for right now. My other top 3 are Harley/Ivy, Tim/Kon-El, and Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

NO IDEA. Lol, all my unfinished WIPs are either ones I have no interest in finishing (Roadrat), or ones I can complete faith in being able to finish (Steddie)

16. What are your writing strengths?

Speed. I can compose a story very quickly and put it together.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I never promote myself/share. I'm really bad at sharing my works. Additionally, I'm bad at finishing things before I lose interest.... eep.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Uuhh maybe. I def have some Ancient Greek and Latin in my up-coming Robin (Stobin platonic) fic.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'm not sure... maybe Batman (Tim/Jason or Tim/Kon). I RP'd A LOT from ages 13-18 and had like 5-8 rps going at once for a whole bunch of fandoms. (Naruto, OCs in the Star Wars universe, Tim/Kon, and more I can't remember atm).

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Ooohhh, I dunno. I'm bad at picking favourites. Right now I'm pretty proud of my Because I Want You Steddie fic. It's Steve and Eddie as 30-year-olds with kids. They broke up in their 20s and are trying to get back together in their 30s. Eddie has a complete breakdown in it, but Steve is there to tell him that he loves him.

I don't think about this stuff at all xDDD Fic writing is just a pass time for me. This will be the first time EVER in over 18 years of writing fic that I've EVER participated in an exchange/Big Bang. I'll tag @medusapelagia @oh-stars @br0ck-eddie @kallisto-k

[nani-nonny]

" Anyways, isn’t it funny how this chapter is titled after the “false blue” and talks about LCD? " Nani... Please.. Stop hurting me and torturing LCD 🥺😭

Also when LCD stood next to reunion but didn't look at any of them i felt that its like how a troublemaker child stand next to his mom but does look at her xD

When reunion looked at LCD i wonder if LCD felt hus eyes on him...

When Donnie said that journey is far i kid you not i thought it was 2 blocks away from HQ 🤣🤣 (sorry my mind is simple) and am sure the 2 ( LCD and Donnie) knew reunion is sending him off to speak with LCD.

"We will find out at some point, it’d be best if we find out on your terms.” he said that and my heart ALMOST stopped from fear as my mind remembered that meme of Android became human " 27 STAB WOUND! " and am saying " don't... Don't... LCD PLEASE DON'T!! "

Donnie found out you can’t use portals. Who's to say we won’t find out more?” Me: STOP DIGGING!! THINGS BETTER BE LEFT UNKNOWN!!!

“We’re only a thin piece of fabric apart.” Me: OOOHH!! DAMN THAT'S DEEP REUNION!!

“Are you afraid of what we might say when we find out?” Me: buddy am more afraid and am not the culprit!

" Achilles attempts to lie. " When you try NOT to fall for your mom's trick knowing she'll whop your ass hard!!

“What if I force the answer out of you? What if I threaten your life for an answer?” bruh he act like Batman

“What if I threaten Donnie’s life to find your secret?” OH MY LORD I THOUGHT IT WAS LCD WHO SAID IT BUT DAMN REUNION DIDN'T BUDGE NOR FLINCHED!! WHAT A MAN!!!🤩

" Achilles’s eyes widen at the sudden realization of what just occurred. " reunion: congratulations, you just played yourself.

" Achilles looks over his shoulder to see the other counterparts running over to himself and Old Timer " YIKES now DMD and WDS will be less trusting of LCD, not good...

" Barbarian steps to the side as if circling his prey " cue the jojo meme

“‘Achilles’, huh? Was ‘Hercules’ taken?” LMFAO GOD DAMN IT BLUE XDDD

When old timer said said " Patroclus " i was about to laugh and say " Fuck you old timer " XDDD

" Old Timer smiles and crouches to Big Blue’s level to pat the slider on the head " LMFAO COME ON, BLUE CAN'T BE THAT SHORT! I KNOW REUNION IS THE OLDER BUT NOT THAT OLD XD

And the end just made me even sad, LCD knows thhat reunion is on to him and his little bloody secret!!

“Stop torturing LCD” he’s like that one balloon game where you try to push in as many pins(?) without popping the balloon, I want to see his limits /j /j /j

And LCD really is my troublemaker, going off killing people and hurting children (once) tsk tsk

And the journey to Leo is about… 6-7 chapters long (give or take) because I don’t like to wait hahah! And Donnie and LCD definitely knew Reunion wanted to talk alone with LCD, Donnie hesitated for a reason mwahaha

Your reactions are priceless I’m loving reading it all <33333 you look like you’re having so much fun :))))

And the end where Reunion crouches, I think I forgot to write it but DMD and WDS are still on the ground kind of wrestling lol I’ll fix it later

But yessss, who will figure out LCD’s (Achilles’s) secret first? Place your bets: WDS (Big Blue)? DMD (Barbarian)? Reunion (Old Timer)? Or Donnie? Or will LCD surprise us all and own up to it? /j

[bnbc]

thank you so much @miss--river for tagging me 💙💙💙

Name Meaning Game

RULES: Search and post the meaning of your OCs’ names (if you made their name up or they go by a nickname, post an explanation of how it came to you)! Bonus if you can find something for their last name too.

Kou Lin Mendez (also known as Kou Okada)

so, if you search Kou's name you can see something like this

what a variaty, huh? I even dedicated a fic to it xD

well, in this house we stuck with a meaning 'happiness' cuz when I gave her this name I genuenely had no idea of other options.

actually the way I named her was quite a disaster 'cuz I never planned to create any headcanons for V, even despite the fact I started to write a big fic, she was supposed to stay just a default street kid with some ties to valentino (she had their tattoo after all!) but i found out pretty soon that you can't go far with default V

so I was in desperate need of some of her backstory, and ofc in name, cuz the only thing I knew I WAS NOT 'VALERIE' just nope it was bouncing of her half latina half asian ass xD

ah yes, for those who never meet Kou in the body she was born, here is the maximum meat version of her:

so, I was struggling untill the day 'koulin" popped up in my head, and in first i was FFS BRAIN WHAT KIND OF NAME IS IT YOU MADE IT UP WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH IT but later i separated it to "Kou" (of japanese origin) and "Lin" (of chinese origin, could mean 'forest' or 'gem' according to the interent) and came up with a story that her mom didnt really knew herself who of her lovers was her baby's dad

and I was really exited about "Kou" 'cuz I have a thing for naming characters who go through a lot of the shit after happiness xDDD and this name is kinda special to me 'cuz it's double stolen (long story short, I borrowed it from another character, and the guy who created this charatecter named him after a guy from one of Persona games)

surname has no special meaning but it has a lil story behind too!

first I wanted to give her some really generic surname to underline that she is nothig special, just another kid born to die on NC's streets but this generic surname followed "Valerie" lmao xD

so I opened a list of hispanic surnames (cuz she took it from her latina mom) but nothing spoken to me. then I recalled my very first OC in the cyberpunk 2020 universe, ex-cartel soldier, Tesa Mendez and was like AFTER ALL WHY NOT WHY SHOULDNT I MAKE MY OCS RELATED so they are distant cousings now xD

she goes with Okada in her post-canon life 'cuz... well... she isnt related to Wako by blood, and it'll take another long post to explain why Wako allowed her to use this surname (or you can read how it happend here)

tagging @vvizjer @wanderingaldecaldo @cybervesna @fereldanwench @dreamskug @nananarc no pressure and sorry if you were tagged already!

[sammyspreadyourwings]

Hope you're still gonna keep the current version of the Witch!AU though there's something intriguing about Brian not knowing his heritage, I can't describe but I think its because I really love the first introductions of things. Not that the alternative of Brian knowing he's a witch is less entertaining but before seeing that I still wanna have the current one first. :) (in short words yes after this one pls consider writing the alternative one XDDD) *hides*

No, yeah. I’m going to keep the current one, that has too much work to throw away. This “Brian knows” one is just fun speculation rather than anything Official (tm) 

[bitegore]

For me, writing out of order is less scary and more just... outright difficult. Some of that is being a pantser rather than a plotter- most of my characters' arcs are planned very vaguely in advance and then just kind of grow organically, so trying to write too far ahead might make them revert to an older character type, or be missing vital information I only realized I could add later. I can edit out of order, I can't draft out of order.

Then there's a second order element of like, motivation? I'm one of those writers who likes to ride a wave of motivation until it runs out and then just like stop writing for eight months straight XDDD and generally what keeps me going is one or two Major Scenes TM that I want to get to. Slowly building the way there will reveal other, equally exciting scenes along the way or further into the future, but I have to have already written some for that to happen. If I just jump to the scenes I want to write, I lose that push to keep going, and then I don't wind up with a novel; I wind up with two disconnected climax scenes and no context. That's fine in fanfic, imo, and I have published vignettes of short scenes about various robots or whatever that have a whole story behind them that I just never bothered to write. but with original concepts that's a hard sell, and I like getting my comments almost as much as i like writing fun scenes lol

Ultimately, I do write out of order sometimes; it just has to be on things that are a) without a sense of logical continuity or with little enough important continuity that i don't care about cleaning it up later and/or don't think it would be difficult to clean up, or b) for personal use only, or c) already have enough outside context that i can pretend i wrote the rest without actually bothering to do so. Any other time, I keep away from it as much as I possibly can for the reasons above. and i am very opposed to writing out of order in the event that the three situations in this paragraph are not the cases i'm working within

god that got wordy. sorry. tldr:

writing out of order is, for me:

- bad for keeping continuity

- bad for keeping consistent motivation

- ultimately bad for drafting a full story

i am okay with writing out of order solely if:

- i don't care about continuity

- i don't care about sharing

- or i don't care about context

it probably also doesn't help that i generally upload every chapter i write to a place like wattpad or ao3 every time i finish them, either. writing out of order doesn't. like. make that work very well unless your actual narrative is gonna jump around a whole bunch, and i rarely write record-scratch moments in my first draft.

edit: this was supposed to go to my writeblr @the-red-dragon-writes sorry for any confusion lmao

Okay wait but explain to me the fear of writers who are able to write out of order

Like I know it's an exaggeration but how do in order writers feel about writing out of order

Really

I'm curious now

[ivorydice]

15 Questions

I was tagged by @lunarlegend (thankies! 💜)

And I'll be giving no pressure tagging to: @oftincturedwords @alipeeps @promptos-barcode @amiyade @quartzguts @marmolita @kaelinaloveslomaris and anyone else who might want to do this *bonk* tagged.

1. Are you named after anyone? My middle name was my maternal grandmother's name. It's the only part of my name that I actually like lol. I also recently discovered one of its meanings is "sunflower" which makes me eternally happy for some reason XD

2. When was the last time you cried?

Literally today lmao ughhhhhhhh

3. Do you have kids?

Nope, and I highly doubt I ever will.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

I was gonna answer this with yes, but thinking about it now I don't think I use it quite that often. I prefer silly humour instead.

5. What sports do you/have you played?

None, I've never been a sporty person lol.

6. What's the first thing you notice about other people?

Their hair, I think. It's the easiest way for me to remember what someone looks like. I have a hard time with faces.

7. Eye colour?

Blue-greenish

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movies, I love horror so much (shocking, I know).

9. Any special talents?

Uhhhhhh? I can flare my nostrils, I'm just that amazing (😅).

10. Where were you born?

The north east of England.

11. What are your hobbies?

Writing, video games, reading, photography. I'm quite boring lmao.

12. Do you have any pets?

We have a cat (my sister's, technically), she's black and smaller than regular cats, and she likes to sprint around and act like a kitten even though she'll be, like, 8 this year or something. She was actually legit half feral when she came home as a kitten because she'd been left to live in the back of a barn by the family that had her, but now she's a massive baby that loves attention. We used to be frenemies, I'm the one she scratches up and chews on and kicks and pounces because I'm her play buddy or something, but recently she's decided she's also obsessed with me and comes shouting up the stairs for me if I'm in my room and likes to have naps on my lap while I'm on my computer.

I did have a dog, a black Labrador, though sadly she passed away back in March. But I still love her very much, that absolute GOOFBALL, she was a thief, she loved savoury foods so much, chicken was her favourite thing in the world, and she would rip the heads off dandelions and throw them away WHY I STILL DON'T GET IT WHY GIRL. I feel sorry for the other Rainbow Bridge pets because my girl will be storming around ripping all the flowers up XDDD

13. How tall are you?

5'6"

14. Favourite subject in school?

Uhhhh none lol. I can't remember, I think English and History. I think even religious studies in primary school, I was fascinated with learning about different religions.

15. Dream job? Working on video games maybe. Also film director. I would just love to make films, short ones, long ones, anything. I just want to be able to tell stories in so many different ways lol.