#faithfullyfalse

[crucifixinhell]

Can I just say, I love your writing style! (Also that so much of your fic is Jason whump 😊.) Your writing is...not sparse, but succinct? So every line packs a wallop. I discovered you through the first Between Bloody Teeth and have been hooked ever since. That and Emergency Line are two of my all-time favorite series. Thank you for so many great fics!

Thank you so much! <3

(And yeah, something about making Jason suffer is... very fun, lol.)

[911fox]

It's a relief to meet another 9-1-1er who doesn't think Buck was Completely and Unquestionably In The Right. Don't get me wrong, I love the boy, but I was facepalming every time he walked onscreen during the lawsuit arc.

I love him, but he was definitely in the wrong and didn’t think of anything but what he wanted. I would barely call it an arc tho. I honestly thought it would last at least a little bit longer. 

[veliseraptor]

Hey Lise! You talked recently about how Loki would react to Thor dying on Jotunheim. Which got me thinking about the AU in that fic where it was Loki who died instead. How would that affect Thor, do you think, both personally and in terms of his banishment? Also, I'm sorry you're having such a crappy time right now.

Oooh. [rubs hands together] This would be very fun and very painful and my brain is like “what if I wrote a oneshot about this” and no, Lise, let’s not do that. 

Anyway - this would hit Thor really, really hard. Because while Loki would blame himself if Thor died, because it was his orchestration - Thor might take that burden of responsibility even harder. 

After all, it is his role to be The Protector, to look after Loki and keep him safe (Thor’s kind of taken on that position and held it since they were kids, which is part of fixing Loki in the role of younger brother always, which is part of his occasional condescension). It’s his job and not only did he fail, he actively put Loki in danger by taking him to Jotunheim, by asking him to come, even, and then by not leaving when Loki told him to but instead losing his temper. So it is his fault, more than anyone’s, that Loki died.

And that kind of...wrecks a lot about Thor, because not only was he stupid and disobeyed Odin, he also got his brother killed. I think he’d feel very much in this situation like he deserved his banishment - though I wonder if Odin actually would do it in this AU, or if he’d feel like Thor had been punished enough (and also like he’d already lost one son and didn’t want to lose another one, even if it was only temporary). 

Though eventually Thor’s despair and guilt would turn outward, because as I’ve discussed before that’s kind of what both he and Loki (and Odin for that matter) do, which would mean that he’d double-down even harder on the “kill all the Frost Giants” line, because they were the ones who killed Loki, it isn’t just his fault (it isn’t, it can’t be because he can’t stand the feeling that it is). He’d agitate for war, push for striking back in revenge, try to argue with Odin that is he going to let Loki’s death go unavenged? Is he? 

And Odin is in...a difficult position, because on the one hand his son is dead, killed, but on the other hand if he strikes back then he risks a whole lot of other Asgardian lives, and Laufey is very much like “hey so I’ll accept your son’s life as weregild if you keep your other son on a leash and leave us alone” (guessing, a little, that sooner or later Thor is going to break the peace again). 

Thor getting progressively angrier and angrier, psyching himself up to do something drastic, because he has to, he can’t just be stuck in despair and grief, he has to do something. Thor can’t stand inaction. He can’t stand helplessness. There always has to be something more he can do to take action. 

I wonder if there would be someone on Asgard who would suggest to Thor taking the Bifrost to Jotunheim. It may not be honorable, but do they deserve an honorable death in battle? Do they deserve that, after murdering Loki? And this way, no Asgardian lives have to be wasted on exterminating some animals. 

Framed that way, with this Thor, he might do it. Or try.

And if this went really dark...it wouldn’t be Loki who ended up with Thanos.

[loxxxlay]

Your dark!Thor fic looks so good! Regarding what you said about the different dynamic, that's actually what draws me to it--I normally don't do dark!Thor fics, but this is such an in interesting psychological mess. I was wondering, too, is Thor coming back to himself and realizing what he's done going to be a part of it? Because there's so much angsty potential there.

(since this was a while ago, linking to post that I think sparked this ask)

Oh friend.. I have.. thoughts.. that.. I’m trying to decide whether to Spoil everyone on or not.. al;skdghl;skhgda… 

While I decide whether or not to undermine myself lmfao - 

I agree with what you say Like, something about dark!thor really makes you have to bend the character because.. While pre-thor!thor is completely Out of Control ™, I still just can’t see him raping anyone. Not even a Jotun*. Not even one he is arranged to be married to.

*I realize it maybe unclear, so clarifying that I’m saying this from thor’s perspective lmfao… uh, Jotuns are clearly People and not lesser -_-

And don’t get me wrong. My id will devour all the nonconnish dark!thor arranged marriage to Jotun!Loki fics with a fucking vigor, but I do understand what you mean because I have a difficult time writing it that way. D: So having an in-universe reason for the bending of thor’s character is really exciting for me!

Also the power dynamic is so different, too! Because of the Grandmaster’s influence, neither thor nor loki are really in control. thor just thinks he is. for the time being.

which leads me to my terrifying decision to spoil part of it (regarding the answer to whether thor gains back his normal personality and realizes what he’s done).. but behind a Read More cut to give y’all some agency:

[spoilers beyond]

Does the Grandmaster undo the mind-bending-shenanigans? No. :’) He never does.

But does thor realize what he’s done? Leading to maximum angst? Yes :’) 

How can these two things be true, you might ask? MWAHAHAHAHAHA YOU WILL HAVE tO WAIt AND SEEE, but i will say that the day i decided the Grandmaster never undoes the spell is the day I became hyper-fucking-focused on this fic, so (I hope, anyway) that it will live up to your expectations nonetheless! *_*

Anyway thank you so much for this ask, you are the sweetest, and this made me smile so big. And maybe gave me some motivation to write some more tonight. EEEE, thanks!

[anghraine]

Having been wowed by your fanfic ("wandering inside this night" holds a special place in my RO heart), I'm curious: what is your writing/editing process like?

Oh, thank you!

My writing process really varies depending on what I’m doing, but I can explain it in terms of wandering inside this night.

It’s long and rambly, so you can scroll down for a very concise tl;dr version of The Process.

1. Eureka!

I pretty much always start out with 1) a vague sense of something I want to write about, and I sort of mentally fish around until I land on an idea, or 2) an idea pops into my head, or 3) some combination of both.

The last two are the most common for me—I have more ideas than I could ever write. With wandering, it was definitely that way. 

I was hollering into my tags about the Cassian-Leia parallels pretty early, which … Jyn-Han is obvious, but I felt like the Cassian-Leia ones went relatively unnoticed but were probably more profound. And as spies in the ragtag ANH-era Rebellion, it’s more than possible that they’d know each other; I’d made babbling posts, but I really wanted to do something with it. So I sketched out a backstory in until the last chance is spent, but I still wanted more, and also to get into Han-Jyn at the same time, and also just—have something fun! And suddenly (I was actually at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, lol) the idea popped into my head of jumping to the Han/Leia meltdown of 1980 with established relationship Jyn/Cassian.

2. Percolation

This is particularly important for longer fic (or any long-form writing, really), but it helps with shorter things, too. It’s where you’re not actively working to figure out details or more ideas, much less writing, just passively letting your mind wander. It’s best if you’re actually doing something else—something that doesn’t take much attention, but enough that you can’t completely focus on your thoughts, like showering or washing dishes or something.

When something does come to mind, I scribble it down (or stick it in a doc in some form that will hopefully make sense to me later). Sometimes it’ll be scraps of dialogue, or a phrase I want to make sure gets in somewhere, or a plot-point, just anything that pops up. Ideally, though, I don’t write anything beyond that—just note down anything I might forget and let my ideas develop freely. 

Normally, I’d only do so much of that with something like wandering (fairly short, fairly light). But I ended up snowed in with my extended family, where I was both bored and unable to sit down and write. So I’m sitting there entertaining myself by imagining Jyn and Han, drinking buddies, and how that’d work with the Cassian-Leia brotp of ruthless idealism (Han would be jealous!), and just having that percolating in my head while I read fic and let stray thoughts pass through my mind. (‘Okay but Cassian would fucking hate Han’ being uppermost among them, lol)

3. Brainstorming/Outline

At this point, I try to pin down the free-floating ideas and/or organize what scraps I have into something coherent. With something longer, like ad astra, I generally do a pretty traditional outline—decide what the story is specifically going to cover, and where the things I’ve actually written fit with that, and what’s going to go in the spaces between.

It’s not classroom-style brainstorming; I usually brainstorm ideas by trying to put together an outline. I’ll be “okay, I want to start with something like that shot of Jyn on the platform with an Imperial ship at the end, but it’s Bodhi” and “they get sucked into the Death Star and Jyn exploits Cassian’s injuries to get in” and then I sit down and figure out how I’m going to get from one to the other. “Okay, so—there’s no way they can actually get Kaytoo, but maybe something—yeah, she just up and grabs his dismembered head l o l, okay, and there’s the jump into the ship which rattles Cassian further, and she’d try to treat him with whatever supplies are available, and we’d have Bodhi trying to get out without being shot down, and maybe I can work in the your father would have been proud of you line, and Jyn goes to check on Bodhi and they see the Death Star and…”

Also, it helps a ton to actually talk ideas over with someone else. With me, it’s generally @steinbecks​—not some strict ‘this, then this, then this, tell me what you think’, but ‘I had this idea’ and ‘OK BUT IMAGINE IF’ and ‘haha yeah exactly’ and ‘shit you’re right they do change outfits’ etc. 

4) Drafting (The Big One)

Ideally, I only get to this after nailing down an outline or at least getting a lot figured out in chats/notes to myself. That’s what I did for pretty much all my most successful longfics—First Impressions (f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth), Season of Courtship (Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement), we get dark, only to shine (AU of The Borgias that moves the canon pairing getting together from S3 to S1), and now ad astra. It helps a TON if you have trouble with discipline and direction, as I do, because you can always go back to it and figure out where you need to be headed when you’re muddled/uninspired, even if some details change along the way. (They always do, for me.)

I did some of that with wandering, but … I was snowed-in, lol, and finally everyone had gone to sleep and my head was full of ideas. So I laid down with my laptop and just dove right in with the only clear line I had in mind: 

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

That was where I planned it to begin! The actual beginning came later, because I very quickly ran into a problem—the sentence worked to jump into exposition, not an actual scene. And with the exposition, I needed to introduce 1) Cassian’s hatred of Han, 2) Han’s lesser but firm dislike, 3) Cassian and Leia’s history together as spies, 4) Han’s brief and half-hearted attempt to suck up, 5) Jyn and Cassian being married, 6) Han’s friendship with Jyn, 7) Han’s jealousy as contrasted to Cassian and Jyn’s mutual trust, etc. Yikes.

So I kept getting mired down in explanations and flashbacks (I actually wrote the scene where Jyn drunkenly complains about finding something for Cassian’s birthday, lol) that slowed it down. And I wasn’t really happy with anything—I constantly niggled at sentences and moved things around and rephrased and it just didn’t work right. I actually have the document I worked in (I didn’t have Internet at the time), so you can see this sort of intermediate stage:

I niggled with it for the rest of the vacation, then it hit me that the issue was that starting a fic with exposition was the real problem. Starting with ESB-era Han just being ESB-era Han could let me work the exposition section in, and without the pressure of it being the opening section I could keep it to a tangential aside and move the jealousy around and so forth. And from there I could just leap to the canon scene with bonus Cassian-Leia shared indignation, and impulsively I added Kaytoo at the end. 

Moral of the story: if you keep trying to make something work and it just won’t, there’s probably something deeper going on. Take a step back and figure out why it’s not working, and often you’ll be able to correct course. Once I tacked in that little ‘Han sulks’ section at the beginning, it all fell together easily. 

5) Revising!

You can probably guess from #4 that I do a lot of this as I write rather than after I write. That’s true, to an extent.

It can be a very … I wouldn’t say discouraging, but sluggish way to write, because you end up struggling over phrases you might not even keep in the end. I genuinely think it’s best to at least try to restrain the impulse to polish everything, but at the same time, there are some of us who genuinely can’t keep going if the current section isn’t working (again, see #4!). So I allow myself a certain amount of freedom in polishing-as-I-go, while restraining the impulse to do anything more substantial. The single best way of doing this is sprinting—writing in short, timed bursts with little to no editing, ideally with a partner that you check in with. (Again, I generally do this with @steinbecks​.)

However, even if you edit as you go and turn out pretty clean drafts, you should still revise at the end. What I generally do is, first of all, just quickly re-read. The writing process is a lot slower than the reading one, and it’s easy to get so focused on particular passages or sections that you lose sight of how it’s working as a whole. So that quick read-through is a way to back up and see how it’s holding together. It’s best if you give yourself a break before you do this—a day or two at least, to get your mind out of the writing mode and look at it with relatively fresh eyes. 

(I will say that I almost never wait. But I do pretty much always end up editing chapters yet again in the first couple of days after I’ve posted them. Sometimes it’s contuinity, sometimes a passage that isn’t working quite the way I thought, whatever. There’s always something. It’s why the chapters I post at Dreamwidth are generally cleaner than the ones at Tumblr, which are cleaner than the first versions posted at AO3.)

However you do that read-through, the most important for me is the next one. At this point, I read the whole fic/chapter/essay/whatever from start to finish—out loud. In fact, if it’s possible, I’ll do a full-on dramatic reading. By reading aloud, you can catch things like typos that your mind silently corrects for your eyes, but also it’s easier to notice sentence-level problems like repeated words/phrases and unvaried sentence structure. If something makes me cringe when I read it aloud, I cut it or rewrite. If saying it aloud makes it sound wrong for the character, it probably is wrong for the character. Sometimes I do the dramatic reading revision two or three times.

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

1) I get an idea, 2) I let the ideas develop without thinking too hard about them, 3) I nail down and think up specific ideas, mostly through chat and/or outlines, 4) I plow through a draft, rearranging/adding material if things just aren’t working, and 5) I revise, once with a quick re-read of the whole thing, and then again by slowly reading it aloud to myself to catch problems with (primarily) mechanics, voice, and word choice.

[melyzard]

Last Line Meme

Tagged by @cats-and-metersticks, thank you!

Rules: post the last line you have written and tag as many people as there are words in that line.

But maybe she could do something about the tense lines around Cassian’s eyes.

So that’s lucky 13 words. Tagging @scribomaniac @leiaorganas @ruby-red-inky-blue  @youareiron-andyouarestrong @moranice-solvej @mariganath @still--big--red @brynnmclean @faithfullyfalse @thereigning-lorelai @oh-nostalgiaa @atthelamppost @rain-sleet-snow . If you don’t write fic, I’d love at least a sentence from you regarding your favorite Trope. (This also applies to someone I didn’t tag who wants to talk Favorite Tropes, which is a really fun topic). Important note: I will in no way be disappointed or offended if you just don’t have the time, energy, or interest in playing this game right now. I’m just in quarantine, sore, bored, and cranky, and I’m looking for someone who might want to play.

[sandydragon1]

Pass the Happy!

I was tagged by @catwritesfiction

List 5 things that make you happy, then tag the last ten people in your notifications

1. Writing

2. Baking

3. Playing with my cat

4. Playing Animal Crossing

5. Watching cartoons

@finalfvii @pendragon44321 @fourtystories @polarbearediting @lunarcartoonist @mastery-in-procrastination @emilyelizabethfowl @faithfullyfalse @xandaoalahmar-blog @deviltito

[loxxxlay]

For voting for a fic: the Thor-is-date-raped fic, please! I should have commented before now to say: YOU ARE NOT ALONE, I LOVE READING YOUR THOR WHUMP. I WILL READ ANY AND ALL THOR WHUMP YOU WRITE. Plus, for this fic the way you work in Loki's insecurities and struggles at the same time, and your take on both their personalities when they're younger. Love it. It's all fantastic. But of course if you're in the mood to write one of the others I'll read those too. :-)

it looks like we are definitely writing the thor-is-date-raped fic final chapter on the stream then!! and I’m hoooping I’ll have time to stream that writing process tomorrow around this time actually. (so 5pm pacific time). (For the person who voted something else - I will spend at least some time writing the next scene of the sick fic lol because i do wanna get that done)

Anyway ahhhhhhhhhhh you are so sweet, thank you t_____t I really enjoy writing that fic because of the dynamic between thor and loki. Like it was just so fun to show thor as a flawed character, even though bad things were happening to him, and Loki, as someone who cared for his brother deeply despite the things that were said between them. So I’m glad you liked it too *_*