#don't actually want to change anything about the canon. just wanna. imagine. the timeline where it was okay

[heliodorwrites]

An exhaustive fic progress report of all my current WIPs for those interested (edited because I forgot some):

Stranger Things fic:

nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone - I actually have most of chapter 5 written and know how the chapter will end. I'm just stuck on the scene where Max goes over to Dustin's house. I'm still not sure how close to canon I want to play it. One day I'll rewatch Stranger Things and get back to this, but I think I need to practice writing mystery and action some more so I can really do justice to bringing my plans for this fic to life

The Dragon's Bride - So in the covid brain fog I forgot where this fic was going last year. I wasn't keeping detailed notes about it so I'm just kind of trying to recreate what I want to do with this before I post anything. I have been working on the second chapter though. Overall I want it to have soft Ghibli film romance vibes

JJBA fic:

Houses of the Holy - The orphanage chapter is so hard to write. Why did I think writing out Caesar's whole life story was a good idea??? He doesn't even meet Lisa Lisa until chapter 3! Making up backstory from scratch is haaaaard. My hubris knows no bounds.

had to fall in love - ah band au my beloved. I fucked up the timeline and haven't felt like fixing it yet. I might just pretend I meant to do that all along and just keep writing. Then I could fix all the dates and ages at the end. This fic is a hot mess but It's fun.

Wonders Never Cease - this sci fi au is even more of a hot mess. God I'm a disaster. Don't look at me.

Unpublished WIPs/ideas (also JJBA):

Hotel CA - Caejose pwp set in a world where vampires have overrun the world. Caesar is the leader of a little group of humans taking shelter in an old hotel with a crumbling sign. Joseph sneaks in to Caesar's suite disguised as a woman in the hopes of seducing Caesar into a false sense of security before he reveals his identity. Of course Caesar knows it's him immediately and is curious to see how far Joseph is willing to take his ruse.

Bring 'Em Back Alive - a post-PHF five-years-later fix it endgame Fugiomis fic where Fugo and Mista team up on a murder mystery mission in a Passione-run nightclub where the ghosts of their shared past are disturbed and they fall in love with each other. I'm having trouble juggling the OCs for this one. I think I have to write a more immediate post-PHF fic to establish the villains' motivation better. The playlist is already up on my fandom Spotify though I may change some of the songs around.

i wanna be a slut - this one is named after a Pansy Divison song. It's basically just modern no stands au poly!mista fic where not all Bucci gang is dating each other but Mista ends up either dating or friends with benefits with all of them. Not much angst just Mista gets to be happy and carefree and have a lot of love in his life.

idk what to call it yet I've been calling it figure drawing au or michelangelo nudes - Modern au, no stands. After Mista gets fired from his latest job because his manager hates him, Fugo offers to pay him in cash if he agrees to model for a project Fugo is working on. It's all so Pretty Woman that Mista kinda can't help but fall for Fugo, who is gorgeous and sensitive and brilliant, but Fugo is such a sad lil rich boy he can't imagine Mista wants him for anything more than his money. Mista's just so handsome and so good at living in the moment defying expectations to do whatever the fuck he wants; he's everything Fugo wishes he could be. I just want to write the Fumis romcom of my dreams where Fugo is a PhD student and polymath good at different forms of art and science and Mista's a himbo. I deserve this.

another college au draft where Mista and Narancia are roommates who don't realize they're pretty much dating. Giorno invites all his friends to a house party at his mudad's house. Narancia gets drunk and finally makes a move on Fugo, who gets offended Nara seems to be trying to cheat on Mista with him. Idk this one might never see the light of day tbh but you know I love the Torture Dance Trio so maybe

I do not have time to write all this. Knowing me I'll just come up with more ideas tho lol.

Edit: WAIT I FORGOT TWO OF MY DRAFTS

Phantasmagoria - Fugio gothic horror au where Fugo's parents give him to Dio for mentorship and Fugo quickly learns Dio doesn't actually practice law all that much and his house is fucked up. He meets a cute boy he only ever sees wandering the halls at night

Uh the draft is called Gothic Horror Pillar Men in my drafts but it's more of a bodice ripper type story. It's about Joseph being locked in his grandma's estate awaiting his upcoming marriage and interacting with the strange men who prowl the courtyard looking for something at night. Not sure if I'll ever finish this one but idk. The wedding rings play into it a lot but they're not poison in this au or like inserted into Joseph's body.

[crimeronan]

yet another project that will probably never escape my brain (and if it DOES it’ll be months from now due to my fanfic pause) but GOD do i want/need a “fix-it” where rhiannon lives. rhiannon’s death is the hinge point for the entire novel it defines the whole second half of the book. if rhiannon had lived ronan and hennessy and probably even bryde would have had space to start healing & that act 2 and 3 plot wouldve been Very Different. and instead the moderators killed her. and in doing so Created A Chain Of Events To Apocalypse. because kiLLING EVERYONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DREAM IS NOT THE BEST WAY TO KEEP MORE INEXPERIENCED/UNSTABLE DREAMERS FROM ENDING THE FUCKING WORLD

[stiles-o-dylan24]

Hiii, sorry to bother you, I hope you doing well and are safe

, I wanna do a rewrite of an series, do you have any tips you can share, please?

If you don't wanna then it is fine.🤗

Hey friend💛 thank you, I’m doing well and doing my best to stay safe and I hope you are as well! You’re never a bother and I don’t mind at all to offer my writing tips! 

I wrote down things below the cut that helped me the most and I tried to be as organized with them as I could, so I hope these help and I’m always happy to answer any other questions or help in any way!

Character & Relationships

First thing I would say is to map out your character that you’re adding in to the show. 

Who they are, if you’re going with an OC or a reader insert, and if they’re going to be related to a canon character or if your character is going to have their own family that you’re also going to be creating

What kind of relationships, romantic or otherwise, they will have with canon characters.

Romantic relationships- map out how the ultimate endgame relationship will go: slow burn/enemies to lovers/friends to lovers. 

Have distinguished scenes that will set the pace for whichever of these tropes you go with to be believable. 

Figure out what you absolutely love when reading those tropes and how you can give that same pace to your characters, making sure to include the angst/longing/frustration/soft pure adorableness/body language light touches that makes those tropes so freaking amazing 

Knowing all of this beforehand will ideally help figure out how involved in the scenes you want your character to be. Which I personally think it’s important to brainstorm and actually put thought into reshaping the scenes with your character first, as it will really make it believable to imagine that your character was always in canon and not just put in a scene because you, as the author, say so.

I’ve read one rewrite in particular where the author obviously didn’t think about that with their reader insert character and it really showed. That caused it to feel annoyingly forced and after three seasons not enjoyable to read for me because it never felt like the reader was supposed to be there and I stopped reading it.

I know I view rewrites differently than most people but, to me, if you’re going to take on a rewrite that means you’re altering canon, at least a little bit, for the story to make sense for a new character to be added in like they were there all along. So why not change relationships and morph the story to include someone who in my opinion, and yours since you’re wanting to rewrite it, was definitely missing from the show?

Transcripts/Scene layout

So once you have a good idea of your character and the relationships you want them to have it’ll make how you alter the script easier.

Try to find transcripts of the episodes as this is incredibly easier than watching the episode with subtitles and pausing every few seconds to copy down how says what in a scene.

Every website with transcripts are usually fan made so as you copy them be warned and keep in mind that 

Sometimes who they have saying the line could not always be correct.

Sometimes the line itself is not quite correct to what was actually said

In my case, sometimes the website went away and there’s no data on the page

So for that last bullet point I do suggest, as soon as you find a website with the entire series of transcripts, copying every episode into a separate google doc(or your preferred writing doc). 

Yes it takes some time, depending on how many episodes your show has, however it’s so worth it to not have to go back and worry about the webpage being down when you’re starting season 4 (Yes that happened to me and when the page came back up I copied the rest of the series into docs)

Writing POV

More than likely the webpage you’re copying from will copy the entire episode script into one big paragraph. You will have to go through and space it out properly, however, I used that opportunity to watch the episode at the same time that I was spacing the dialogue. 

which helped in checking that what the transcripts had was correctly copied

the right person was saying what the transcripts had and if not I could quickly change the character

if you’re writing in 1st person you should also use this opportunity to take out scenes that obviously your character wouldn’t/couldn’t logically be in

though I also suggest trying to keep scenes that you feel are necessary to keep the overall story together to be read in a cohesive way. 

You can alternate to 3rd person or you could have your character do a story time to the readers in an inner monologue type of way or have them/another character explain what happened in a little recap. 

I mean your audience, for the majority, has probably watched the whole series and knows what’s happening, but you’re writing a story– why not have it flow as smoothly as if someone was actually watching the series?

To me with writing my series, keeping the overall main story well described was really important. 

I made sure to include story times and little summaries of major events my main character wasn’t apart of whenever I could and it paid off because some people had either stopped watching the show or had forgotten what had happened in later seasons and really enjoyed the fact they could still follow along with the main story.

At the same time do not feel overwhelmed with making sure you include every single event or detail.

 do whatever you feel is necessary to tell your story with your character as you would like it to be read.

And if you’re writing from 2nd or 3rd person, well you’ll more than likely be rewriting everything anyways so my hat goes off to you my friend.

Dialogue

So once you have the layout of the original episode script go through it and write the scenes with your new character(s) as best as you can from memory, since you just watched the episode while you were spacing out the script lines. 

Make the scenes believable and truly feel like your character is supposed to be there by slowing down the need to just cram your character in and instead

Have your character(s) say some of their own lines in between when the canon dialogue lines are spoken

Morph the actual canon dialogue line by either cutting it halfway and having your character(s) finish the line 

or have your character(s) say the canon dialogue line and give one of the other characters a new line/a morphed line from another character’s canon line.

Final Writing of the Episode

Once you’ve altered the episode with your character(s) watch the episode again and read through what you have written.

adding in more actions from the characters/facial expressions that may be missing to really make the scene flow more realistically.

This is the process that really worked for me to edit the episodes one by one and I felt like was the most time efficient to getting through an episode.

I think that writing through the episode without watching it and only reading the script helps in not being distracted or feeling rushed to get through a scene.

Last Notes From Me

Personally I would suggest having the first one or two seasons(depending how long they are) already written out in the ways I mentioned above, if possible the final edits done as well, before you publish the first episode.

This will drastically help you as you continue to finish writing the rest of the episodes and keep to the schedule you wish to keep to. 

It could also help you in making sure that you have added in everything you possibly wanted to add in to later episodes. 

Also help you see that the timeline of a relationship is going exactly as you would like it to.

There’s nothing worse than getting overwhelmed with a posting schedule and it causing you to rush through an episode and you leave out a key plot point that needed to happen for something you wanted to happen later on be exactly as you originally envisioned it happening.

Remember to have fun with this whole process and don’t forget that you’re telling your story for you more than anyone. You feel like something is missing and this is your opportunity to write something you will want to read.

Yes the interaction is fun and helps you get through the moments of ‘is this worth it’, however you also need to write for you. Create something you will want to read to fill that space in your mind of what’s missing when you’re watching the show/reading other people’s rewrites.

Again this is all just my advice and is to be taken with a grain of salt. You need to do things in a way that works for you! What I did was really beneficial to me and my work schedule plus my mindset for what I wanted to bring to my rewrite. It may not work for you so if it doesn’t just be patient with yourself and you’ll find your way.

Hopefully through my long ramble of a message I answered your questions or gave you some form of insight. If I did not or you still have more questions please don’t hesitate to send me another message!

I am here if you need anything– to vent, run ideas by, a beta reader, literally anything- and I absolutely love rewrites, so please tag me in yours🤗 

Good luck and I hope you have so much fun taking on a series rewrite! 

[dcbicki]

The fandom's bland fave Williekins is a whiny self-absorbed jerk who's never been seen doing anything for others or caring about any of his friends' feelings. That's why I fucking loathe By/ler - it's not even a ship, it's just a bunch of shrill shallow women doting on a cheesy white boy with no personality, being like "awww baby don't cry, here, have a candy" where Mike is treated like garbage and exists solely to be thrown at Will as a pacifier at any moment.

I have to disagree with the first part of what you’re saying. Will can be selfish, but I wouldn’t say he’s entirely self-absorbed.

He cares about his family and his friends’ safety, but the main argument that can be made against him — mine, at least. And it’s mostly just against the way he’s been written — is that he’s a bad friend. For two seasons, he needed people to believe in him: that he wasn’t dead, that he could break free of the Mindflayer’s control. He needed support; but when it came to Will actually being the one doing the supporting, he didn’t deliver. And it’s because his storyline in the third season was a mess, and the writers had no clue what to do with him since he was no longer contributing to the overarching plot – he wasn’t missing and he wasn’t the one getting possessed.

His insistence on playing D&D was borne out of him needing a simple storyline until shit inevitably hit the fan mid-season, and him not being developed enough as a character to do anything other than ‘long for the childhood he lost’. And that’s always been a bullshit excuse for this annoying arc — but I’ll use it in arguments, granted. Yes, he had a sucky couple of weeks. But El was raised in a lab and didn’t have a childhood, and nobody says she acts the way she does because of that. He lost out on a week, then one more. I’m not minimising his trauma or comparing it to hers, but he did still have twelve years of just being a kid before that. Or are we supposed to just forget about that because we didn’t see it?

Will is not inherently self-absorbed. But he’s a flawed character whose flaws are never seen — and therefore never accepted — because we the audience and the other characters alike have babied him for two years because the writers let us. It was intentional. How else were we supposed to root for him in the first couple of seasons if he wasn’t the *smol bean that everything bad happens to* of the group?

He’s now not allowed to have visible, surface-level flaws like everyone else — Mike is selfish, Hopper’s an ass, Max is too hotheaded, Billy is a bully, etc. — because he’s never been written strongly enough to have more than one or two character traits: caring (mostly about his family), and pragmatic (1.01)

But, to your other point, I get what you’re saying. The way the fandom treats Mike — and, yes, especially how the diehard Will/By*ler fans treat him — is gross. He’s not allowed to exist outside of Will’s orbit, he’s not allowed to have feelings about things that don’t concern Will. Hell, to some, he’s merely a bargaining chip thrown back and forth between Will and El stans who want to claim him as a ‘love interest’ for their fave. The problem with this is that – while Mike’s one of the few people on the show who has brain cells and puts them to good use, and can actually formulate a decent plan – Mike is also built as being El’s love interest. He’s the love interest to the hero while also not sitting back and playing victim. He’s more than just ‘the boyfriend’. He keeps everyone safe, repeatedly, but unless he’s directly protecting Will — and to an extent El, but her fandom is more accepting of Mike being his own character — then By*ler shippers don’t wanna hear about it.

And it’s especially weird because Will/Mike ship started off as a headcanon ship, much in the same way Dustin/Lucas, Steve/Jonathan, Mike/Max, Mike/Dustin, Nancy/Kali and many others all did… but somehow it’s turned into this cult-like belief system where people are actually believing there’s some grand conspiracy going on and that there’s hidden meaning or symbolism behind each and every damn frame of the show. That’s just not the case. You can ship something for fun — because you don’t like canon and you’d rather imagine an alternate timeline, an alternate dimension to the show — all you want, but you can’t call people homophobic for not seeing something that isn’t there. And you can’t cry “but Byeler is gay representation!” when it isn’t, because, in order for it to be rep, it would actually have to be represented. By*ler isn’t gay representation because – and I cannot stress this enough lately — it’s not canonically accepted.

A lot of the same people who call Mike & El’s relationship ‘toxic’ are, from what I’ve seen, also the ones who view Mike as being Will’s comfort blanket. They act like Mike’s character was ruined in the third season because he wasn’t being as supportive and warm and because he had an arc that didn’t revolve solely around Will and making Will feel better. It’s not for nothing that if you ask them, the vast majority of By*lers will say they prefer the second season. I get why. There was more positive content to headcanon over. But you can’t expect one character (Mike) to single-handedly be another’s (Will) support system. You can’t expect canon to change because you read too much into a m/m friendship. Mike literally jumped to his death for Dustin and yet I don’t see any of their shippers going off on tangents and becoming conspiracy theorists, claiming Mike was in love with him.