#famous line before a longfic is

[everlastingdreams]

[maliciouslycreative]

How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived. 

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun. 

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for. 

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later. 

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao. 

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was. 

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics. 

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread. 

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing. 

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned. 

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves. 

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too. 

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at. 

[quinnmorgendorffer]

3, 18, & 30 for the fic questions!

Aww yay thank you!! <3

3. Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around?

Mostly start to finish, but sometimes I’ll jump around. I find it’s helpful at times to write out what I know will happen and figure out from there the best way to connect the two points. And if I get a clear idea in my head of a certain scene that I know will happen, I’ll write it while I can. I literally wrote out the piano man proposal scene like half a year before that chapter was published haha

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

This is hard because I am full of myself when it comes to certain fics of mine ;alsdfj. And often times my favorite lines are the dumb one liners. But speaking of writing ahead…

One chapter I wrote a great deal of ahead of time was chapter 8 of the first piano fic. Back when I thought this thing was gonna be some little one shot and not the defining moment of my fanfic ~*~career~*~. This is when Gob accidentally outs himself to Michael, after Michael catches him kissing a guy early in the morning. After a day of hiding and considering even running away, Gob goes to their shared house and they have a talk/confrontation.

I'm just really proud of how his whole talk with Michael turned out. Gob’s around 21 and Michael’s 18/19. Gob’s been hiding his sexuality from his family since he was 17/18 and he’s just sure that Michael’s going to hate him. And this is late 1990/early 1991, so there’s plenty of reason for him to fear that. I think I captured his fear well. 

But I’m particularly proud of how I wrote Michael. Due to the year and who Michael is, I couldn’t see him just, like, leading a Pride Parade or something, but I couldn’t see him saying Gob was disgusting or anything. Michael deals with facts first and foremost, so he’s more confused than anything to see what he thought was this objective fact - Gob is straight - isn’t true. And his first questions are all things he can be objective about - how long have you known, have all these dates you’ve told me about been guys, are you safe/clean? 

And, though I didn’t use this wording, it turns out it’s also an objective fact that he loves his brother! And I love that look for them! And I love that they hug it out and Gob cries because this secret has been weighing down on him for years and finally his favorite and closest family member knows and doesn’t hate him and it’s just this huge RELIEF. I just think the scene has a lot of reasonable, IC reactions, including Gob sobbing, Michael asking these questions to try to understand, and even Michael being a bit hurt that Gob kept this a secret from him but trying to remind himself this isn’t about him. I just thought this was a nice way to balance Michael and not make him over-the-top accepting but also not a homophobic asshole.

30. Tell us an idea for a longfic you want to write in the future.

What fic of mine isn’t long ;alskjfsad but for real, my white whale, my everest: 

BLULANDER.

Okay, so, I am a huge fucking fan of Zoolander. The movie came out when I was 9, though I don’t know if i saw it in theaters, so I might’ve been around 10? I think I have the DVD I grew up with me in my collection. Regardless, this movie has shaped way too much of my personality since I saw it when I was so young and watched it a LOT. I watched the special features - I QUOTE the special features. Despite my love of Blunder/Tony Wonder, Ben Stiller is still Zoolander to me first and foremost.

…But as the dumbest character in the movie, obviously Gob is Zoolander in this AU. 

So, Gob is a world famous model and he gets interviewed by Sally Sitwell (because I have to use her obviously, I can’t just NOT cast her as her counterpart, it’s weird enough not using Tony as Zoolander). She gets the article because she knows his family, since the two of them were born into rival real estate empires. And after years of success, his career is being threatened by newbie, edgy, openly gay (or IS he?) model, Tony Wonder. And when Gob makes a fool of himself on TV, Argyle Austero talks Gob’s manager/mom Lucille into using Gob to help his cement company in an evil plot. Sally starts to uncover this and is dragged into saving Gob. Eventually Tony is dragged into this, too, and Tony and Gob realize they have a lot in common and maybe Gob is realizing why he chose to room with three other guys and hasn’t settled down with a woman and, wow, Tony lieks magic, too…

Other castings include Lindsay as a Katinka equivalent (there might be some enemies to lovers with her and Sally) and Buster as David Duchavny’s character (the hand model). Oh, and obviously the song that hypnotizes him is “The Final Countdown”.

I made an outline for this, came up with some chapter titles, I’ve written part of the first chapter, and I just......I want to write it and have it be the fic that breaks my tie for amount of fics I’ve written for one fandom, but I seriously need people to agree and promise me they’ll read it, I can’t just write this with no response a;lsdkjf

Wow, this is very long but thank you again for asking!! <3

30 QUESTIONS FOR FIC AUTHORS

[redheadgleek]

3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

So. Nearly 20 years ago, I started this fic called Like Never Before. Gilmore Girls, Rory and Jess with a side of Paris Gellar because I love her and her friendship with Rory. And it took me a really long time to write it, but I kept plugging along. I went to Kenya in 2004 and wrote there with my free evenings and finished the second to last chapter - and my laptop died. The hard drive got corrupted and I lost that chapter. And I’ve never been able to complete it since then. I’ve got the first of the chapter and I managed to rewrite the last part and all it would take is writing two to three scenes for fillers and then just one last chapter. And now, of course, it’s been ages since I’ve watched the show and I can’t get into the characters, but the unfinished story haunts me. 

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Blaine. Blaine’s emotions tend to be a little closer to the surface, so he’s a little easier to express, while Kurt’s are more hidden so trying to keep them hidden but also a little exposed is a little more challenging.

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

Oh gosh. I love the drabble format. 100 words of carefully selected words is my favorite type of writing. But I’ve definitely been having fun with longer stories, although I’ll probably never been able to write a truly novel long story. I’m a “rough outline and then fill it in” kind of writer. Which can get me into trouble and terrible writer’s block with I can’t see the fill in. I do admire those who can write out complete outlines and then just fill in the details. 

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

I mean, it would be nice for them to have some kind of notoriety in fandom, but I started writing for Glee and Klaine after the show ended, so I’m pleased as punch when I get any readers. 

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries. Titles I usually use a line from poetry or a song lyric. But the summary? Ugh. (Although, with this current fic I’m struggling with both). 

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

My first story, A Wedding: Production Draft, was not a screenplay when I first started writing it. It was just a regular story, but I didn’t get more than a few paragraphs of it written. But then somebody famous in fandom at that time (and no, I’m not going to say who), sketched out a fic with a very similar premise and it dampened my muse for a while, until I envisioned the screenplay idea. 

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

I would love to see Love Me at Once in a film. It’s one of those fic that I could really picture the setting and the way that the story moved forward. Part of the inspiration for the story came from a podcast called The Two Princes (highly recommended) which may be why I can see it so clearly in my mind. 

And of course, my version of A Wedding should have been filmed instead. 

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Definitely, but it’d be hard to quantify how. I’m definitely one of those writers that absorbs what I’m reading in fandom and fandom’s likes and dislikes can influence my stories. So the flow and feel of my Gilmore Girls or Doctor Who stories are very different than my Glee stories. 

I’m still a bloody slow writer though. That hasn’t changed. 

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[tallmatcha]

Fic Title Meme!

Tagged by the unbelievably talented @hereswhatsarasaid​. Check her Tumblr out and prepare to be utterly floored by incredible prose.

9 Most Recent Works: I have published - drumroll - ONE thing! WOW! Prolific! Outstanding! Everything else is sitting in my Google Docs, mired in WIP Hell. I’ll just pretend those count.

Equanimity - Resident Evil 3 (My one and only published fic. Glaciers melt faster than I write.)

The Book of Ysmir - TES V: Skyrim (My longfic. My baby. 35 chapters and counting. I’ve been chipping away at it for 2 years. Send help.)

Like Vines - Resident Evil 3

Midnight Somewhere - Resident Evil 3

Divining the Waters - Skyrim

Sworn - Skyrim

Krosis - Skyrim

The North Country - Original

Caveat Emptor - Final Fantasy 7

1. How many are you happy with?

All of them!

2. How many are…not great?

I’m going to be honest - the title Divining the Waters became less and less relevant as the plot of that story developed, but I’ve grown so attached to it that I can’t imagine changing it now.

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute?

None. For some reason, titles always come to me before anything else.

Speaking of last-minute things, though, Equanimity was published half-baked because I was thirsty for feedback. I’m not unhappy with it, but it’s definitely not my best work. I respect my writing, and I know when it’s good. But, in this case, I acknowledged that the story needed more editing, I admitted that it wasn’t ready, and I posted it anyway because the fandom was hot and I wanted in on the action before it died down. My readers were happy, but my inner editor was like…really? 

I knew I could do better, but my need for instant gratification won. All my TES fics are long, plot-heavy works, and I was dying to put something out there.

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning?

All of them. See above :) Title, Ending, Beginning - that’s my ridiculous writing sequence.

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems?

Just one! The North Country is taken from Bob Dylan’s Girl From the North Country. That work is autobiographical, but the subject matter is so deeply personal that I don’t intend to ever publish it. It’s more of a passion project.

Like Vines is the name of a song by the Hush Sound, but the fic has nothing to do with it.

6. How many are other quotes?

Caveat Emptor, although that’s not really a quote so much as a phrase. It’s about spoiled, overconfident Rufus Shinra inheriting Shinra Electric and contemplating whether he might be in over his head.

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork?

The Book of Ysmir is a particularly fitting title. It’s not really apparent why until the very end, so I won’t get into that here :)

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story?

Sworn. The main character is detrimentally honor-bound to keep her word, and all it ever does is land her in hot water. It’s also a callback to her most famous NPC line: “I’m sworn to carry your burdens.”

The fandom is pretty evenly divided when it comes to Lydia, but she was my very first Follower, and I adore her. And now that she has inspired me to write a comedic piece, I love her even more!

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/pov of the fanwork?

In Skyrim’s dragon language, Krosis means sorrow. That fic is 10 chapters of bleak, allegorical, angsty horror set in the misty hellscape of the Reach, and I love writing it.

10. Which is your favourite title?

Probably Midnight Somewhere. The words are taken directly from a line that I knew I wanted to include from the start. I couldn’t resist writing some self-indulgent Jill/Carlos New Year’s Eve fluff...in the middle of summer.

Also, as a native New Yorker, I should know better than to romanticize our most irritating holiday.

[augustheart]

1, 9, 15, 20 for the writing ask meme!

This time around all of these are for fics by the way.

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Like I said in the last ask at any given time I have a stupidly high number of projects I’m working on but I will take this time to talk about the ridiculously long one I’m putting most of my energy toward now! (The tab is open right now and it is taunting me with that “last updated yesterday at [...]” notification and its 32,427 word wordcount.)

I won’t say exactly what it’s about even though it’s not that hard to figure out and several people already know exact details but progress is generally pretty good! Not the fastest I’ve ever written because I write in fits and starts but it’s going pretty good! (Just jinxed it though for sure.) I’m working on chapter five of a planned ten, and I really hope I don’t overshoot that by accident. It’s fun! It’s definitely more like the things I used to write when it comes to like... the actual angst/“whump” part because there’s a lot of that here, and I’m very really mean to readers with a couple of these cliffhangers. Chapter two and chapter four are especially rude, sorry.

I love all of it. I love that I get to write about people overcoming hardship and coming together and also beating the shit out of people who hurt their loved ones. I genuinely love what I’m writing now and I think it’s probably one of my best works and I’m glad that I decided to write it all out in advance before posting it because I feel like that gives me time to really perfect it. It also makes it easier to go back and seed plot elements through the prewritten chapters, which is helpful because I keep forgetting about a character and going back to make sure that they get to be there because they’re, y’know, the main protagonist of the show. (Don’t worry there is still a character arc and a story she has, it just gets lost in the shuffle a little because there are like... six storylines going on at once that need to intersect. I think six, anyway. There are a lot. Jeez, I think it may be closer to seven, counting the villains...)

Anyway please [Eric Andre “let me in” voice] show me support when I finally post it because I imagine the fandom will be relatively in brumation when I finally do all things considered. 

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

I refuse to write really short things, it has to be at least 1,000 words for some reason, but I do both! I prefer my longfics, I think they give me more time to write plot and flesh out characters, but I’ve found that a good median wordcount for me is...like...6,000 words? That’s usually what I fall on when I limit myself to something under 10,000 that has the potential for more than just 1-2,000 words. But I do like to read and write both! As evidenced by some of my current projects shaping up to be over 50,000 words at least if they haven’t already left that count in the dust by now (hi, Half Light, you stupidly long son of a bitch). 

And I am the hellish combination of both! I usually know at least how I want it to end, but the entire journey from A to B is a complete mystery to me. Sometimes I’ll have elements I want to incorporate or characters I want to include and I’ll plan for them but I will never, ever write down my outline. The only time I write down outlines it’s when I need to know the concrete timeline for something that’s set in the past or is taking major divergent choices or both (i.e., I made a timeline outline for Heartless leading up to when Eric approaches Dorothy, a timeline outline for Two of Spades when I eventually actually work on that, a timeline outline for what I nicknamed the “I’m no longer baby I want power AU,” etc). Literally every other time I am absolutely flying by the seat of my pants. I don’t know what I’d do without Hedgi who helps me plot at least half the things I write (at least for the fandoms she’s also in), usually after I try to write them and immediately get stuck like a puppy who tried to jump into a lake and found out the shoreline was actually just a bog.

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Oh, it really depends. I’m alright at nailing tags down, unless there are categories I want to use that don’t already have a set tag, but sometimes when I think of the concept for a fic it comes ready-made with a summary and I don’t have to think about that at all, or I’m directly inspired by a phrase/lyric/etc and I can just use that for the title and spend hours deliberating on a summary. Luckily for the project I’m working on now the conceit can just be the summary, and the title took a tiny bit of research but I knew what I wanted the bare bones to be and I just needed the actual names/terms. I do think in general, though, summaries are a smidge harder than titles for me. 

12. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

I really, really want to answer this one to talk about the different hidden references, relationship development, and foreshadowing that I baked into damn near every level of the big project I’ve been talking about because it’s in literally everything right down to the chapter titles (and there’s a hint to pay attention to them when you read, especially once we get to chapters 6-10, which I am extremely pumped to write), but I also really don’t want to spoil anything, so... time to be as numbingly vague as possible, I guess.

I’m foreshadowing that a character will develop powers by the final act, of course, but I’m also foreshadowing that a different character will not only develop them but use them to basically save the life of another character--and related to that, there is intense foreshadowing of a character using certain things to save someone else’s life at around the same time, which is not subtle at all if you know what you’re looking for (mainly because I slipped it into plain sight) but is part of some nice red herrings if I do say so myself. It also really makes me laugh that I decided to do some, um, “homophobia-shadowing,” where I just... imply that a character is homophobic. I dunno why I just think that’s a funny thing to do even if it has real repercussions for certain characters later. 

There’s some character development mixed that I’m really excited for because it allows a character to go in a completely different direction than they do in canon but in a way that I think still feels really right for them. This happens a couple times, actually, but this one in particular is something I knew had to happen the second I realized how to tie this plot thread back into everything else. I think it’s exactly what the character could’ve needed if this had gone down and I’m really excited to write it. The other character should’ve just been allowed to do this in canon because I think it would’ve fucking ruled.

Also, in everything I write that’s comics-based, whether it’s fic for the comic directly or for a show/movie using comics as source material, everything is a reference. That number code? That could be anything from the first time someone appeared in a comic mixed with the publishing date of the comic itself (i.e. if someone appeared for the first time in 1964 but the comic began publishing in 1959 I’ll use 6459 or 5964) to the creator’s date of birth. I think that I use famous writers of the character/potential creators of the character as street names or last names or aliases whenever I need to bring them up is a lot more obvious. Same with how I use writer/artist initials as “random letters” if I think a code would realistically have one mixed in--I just checked a document for an example of this and found “ADBP5519MWGK6419.”

I also reuse direct lines of dialogue if I think they fit the situation--for example, in Butterfly Effect I lifted the “World War I chic” line directly from Giffen’s Doom Patrol run, which I mentioned in the author’s note, and there’s dialogue in my current big project that’s a direct reference to/play on the “I wish you’d died instead of Mom” line in the JSA Infinite Crisis tie-in (Johns is a fuckin’ hack for that one though and it made no sense for what he used it for, a better line would’ve been “I bet you wish I’d died instead of Mom,” but we don’t have time for that), and I’ll probably directly reference dialogue from JSA/JSA at some point in chapter nine or chapter ten. (Think really hard about how that arc opens if it’s one you’re familiar with, lmao, and remember--there’s no time travel to undo things here!) 

[beatrice-otter]

Longfic Recs

So, over in fictional_fans, melannen is doing a collaborative set of longfic recs for while we're all staying inside and physically isolated from one another.  Here's my first set of contributions.  Almost all of these are over 50k, and many of the ones who say they're shorter are just the first stories in their series.  But there are a few shorter ones that I couldn't not rec.

DC:

Nature and Nurture (109065 words) by lurkinglurkerwholurks Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Batman & Red Hood, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Bruce Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon & Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon & Dick Grayson Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Red Hood (DCU), Nightwing, Oracle (DCU), Alfred Pennyworth, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain, Selina Kyle, Harvey Dent Additional Tags: Distressing screams, Jason Todd is Red Hood, In which Red Hood panics mildly, Age Regression/De-Aging, But not cutesy de-aging, There are hugs and kisses though, Rated for Profanity, It was Jason of course, Mention of loss of parents, Angst, Angst and Feels, Mention of canon drug use, Mild Blood, Surprise the profanity is also Bruce, Angst and Hurt/Comfort Summary: It was a no good, very bad night all around, and it kept getting worse. In which the writer explores some classic tropes, indulges in some BatFam feels, and explores the effects of nature and nurture on the psyche of one Bruce Thomas Wayne. I Wanna Kiss You Like They Do In The Movies (4745 words) by Cy_kun Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Underage Relationships: Damian Wayne/Colin Wilkes Characters: Colin Wilkes, Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne Additional Tags: Fluff, Humor, tiny boyfriends, with tiny crushes, Bruce really doesn't understand his son's smol future husband, they're both ten, so obviously no sex, I mention Christmas once so this will probably count as my Christmas story Series: Part 1 of Son of Batman Summary:  "Mr Batman, can I marry Damian?" Or, the one where Colin can't stop thinking about kissing Damian, and for some reason thinks Bruce can handle that. Countless Roads (231868 words) by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Characters: Leonard Snart, Mick Rory, Leonard Snart's Mother, Lisa Snart, Lewis Snart, Barry Allen, Wally West, Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Iris West, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Nora Allen, Zoom, Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells, Ronnie Raymond, Martin Stein, Earth-2 Ronnie Raymond, Earth-2 Caitlin Snow, Earth-3 Jay Garrick, Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, Rip Hunter, Kendra Saunders, Carter Hall, Time Masters (DC's Legends of Tomorrow), Time Wraiths (The Flash), George "Digger" Harkness Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, DEADFIC, Very Long Fic, Canonical Child Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, not a slow burn Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

Sometimes I wish I could fly, Like a bird up in the sky (8815 words) by fresne Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kal-el/Lois Lane Characters: Kal-el, Lois Lane Additional Tags: Character of Color, Biracial Character, Chromatic!Superman, Chromatic Character, Dark Agenda, Racebending Revenge Challenge, Podfic Available Summary: Written for the Racebending Challenge. For the challenge to depict a white character as a chromatic character, Kryptonians are black and Kal-El landed in Kansas in the Action Comic timeline.

This one's a WIP, but it is such an interesting idea, skillfully written, that I couldn't resist reccing it.

Robins and Other Flightless Birds (84920 words) by Ionaperidot Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent Characters: Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne, Kate Kane, Talia al Ghul, Athanasia al Ghul Additional Tags: Dad Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson is a Talon, catatonic jason, tim drake was joker junior, bruce wayne's messiah complex, in which bruce runs around the multiverse collecting orphans, Kon and Selina and Oliver Queen are around, and various assorted Justice League members Series: Part 1 of Flightless Birds Summary: It begins with another Bruce, looking around his cave and asking, “So where are the kids?”

Bruce has never thought about having a family before. But once the idea occurs to him, it's hard to think about anything else.

Latchkey (54546 words) by goldkirk Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth, more to be added as the story progresses, Ace the Bat-Hound Additional Tags: Tim Drake-centric, Kid Tim Drake, Listen I play fast and loose with canon, Bruce is charmed by Tim’s genius and stupid brain, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Child Neglect, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Warnings will be posted as necessary with each chapter, Batfamily (DCU), none character deaths with left found family, in this house we love and appreciate therapy lessons and trauma recovery, and also proper care and keeping of children, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Sibling Bonding, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Stalker Tim Drake, You think DICK is a mama hen? get ready for not-dead Jason Todd!!!!!, Jewish Bruce Wayne, Jewish Tim Drake, lots and lots of comfort Summary: Or, How Tim Drake Found A Family, Became A Photojournalist, Learned To Love Coffee, and Grew Up, not necessarily in that order.

Tim Drake is thirteen, runs the famous BatWatch blog that has spiraled hilariously out of control, has absentee parents that suit his purposes just fine, is training himself to run the streets at night, and is doing absolutely peachy, thank you. Alfred and Jason disagree, and get Dick and Bruce involved in figuring out their weird nextdoor neighbor kid’s life. Everything goes uphill from there.

If You Don't Grow (105707 words) by GeneratorCat Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, Clark Kent, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Bart Allen Additional Tags: good big brother Dick, Healing, Slow Burn, Tim and Jason are kids at the start of this but worry not- nothing happens for a while, tags to be added as the story develops, Past Abuse, Smoking, Dick is trying his best, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Someone gets punched, but they deserve it, Tim starts off a little brat, but then gets some sweet sweet character development, though don't be mistaken he's still a mischievous boy, Embarrassment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homeschooling, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dick has anger issues, talking! about feelings!, has been described as: Lots of broken birds being rehabilitated by each other, and i must agree, Batman!Dick, lots of hugs, awkward sex talks, Demisexual Tim Drake, Knitting, Found Family, Cuddles, we getting soft y'all, Pining, Bruce is trying, Perceived Homophobia, Abandonment Issues, even more awkward sex talks, graysexual Jason Todd, embarrassing dad Dick Grayson, god they're so in love, god jason is an idiot, Accidental Boner, someone gets punched again, Fix-it fic, First Kiss, Masturbation, Jason Todd's sweet sixteen Summary: “I need to take care of myself. I can take care of myself.” “You shouldn’t have to, you’re just a kid.” God, does Dick know that. He knows what it feels like to be doing things you shouldn’t have to do at such a young age. About feeling like you have to take care of yourself, be strong and useful.

He knows now it’s bullshit.

(Officer Dick Grayson meets Jason on the street.) ((Alternatively titled: In which Dick pulls a Bruce))

one day this will all be yours (32586 words) by suzukiblu Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Lex Luthor, Clark Kent & Kon-El | Conner Kent, Superboy & Team, Kon-El | Conner Kent/M'gann M'orzz Characters: Kon-El | Conner Kent, Lex Luthor, Clark Kent, M'gann M'orzz, Kaldur'ahm (DCU), Dick Grayson, Artemis Crock, Wally West, Mercy Graves Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Timeline, Family Drama, Family Feels, Found Family, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Protectiveness, Amnesia, Temporary Amnesia, Father-Son Relationship, Two Fathers, Parent-Child Relationship, Team as Family, Team Bonding, Kidnapping, Flashbacks Summary: “You know, I used to think if I had different parents my life would be different,” Artemis says neutrally as she lines up a shot, and Superboy looks away from the punching bag, a little surprised to hear her speak.

Marvel:

god loves everybody, don't remind me (70381 words) by napricot Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Erik Killmonger & T'Challa Characters: Erik Killmonger, T'Challa (Marvel), T'Chaka (Marvel), Ramonda (Marvel), Shuri (Marvel), Okoye (Marvel), Nakia (Black Panther), N'Jobu (Marvel), Erik Killmonger's Mother, Bast, Linda (Black Panther movies), W'Kabi (Marvel), Ulysses Klaue, Everett Ross, Zuri (Marvel) Additional Tags: Time Loop, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Wakanda (Marvel), Djalia | Ancestral Plane (Marvel), Erik Killmonger Lives, Family Summary:  N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance.

Erik gets a do-over. Erik gets a lot of do-overs. Or: Erik Killmonger's own personal version of Groundhog Day, only with a lot more murder, dying, trips to the ancestral plane, awkward family conversations, and divine intervention.

If They Haven't Learned Your Name (237623 words) by silentwalrus Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Nick Fury, Peggy Carter, Phil Coulson, Thor Additional Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella, POV Alternating, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Weirdness, Llamas, Bucky Barnes Has A Complicated Relationship With UFOs, Thirty Korean Grandmothers, Steve And Sam Vs. Canoe, Natasha Is Taking It Personally, Consent Issues, One (1) Orgasm, Podfic Available, Russian Translation Available, do not copy to another site Summary: Steve gets out of the hospital in two days, but just barely. “I’m fine,” he tells Sam, Nurse Eunjung and the phalanx of doctors assigned to make sure Captain America didn’t bleed out and die and get bad PR all over their nice clean hospital. “I have an advanced healing factor. It’s fine. See? I’m standing.”

“That is not standing,” Sam tells him.

“You’re bending the IV stand,” Nurse Eunjung adds pointedly. “Let go and sit down, they don’t grow on trees.”

aka Steve and Bucky's Global Honeymoon Revenge World Tour.

You Would Be In Clover (126894 words) by ChibiSquirt Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, Sharon Carter (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gay Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Marriage Proposal, Marriage of Convenience, Religion, Miscarriage, Smoking, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Closeted Character, Open Marriage, Crossdressing, Howard Stark/Steve Rogers (minor ship), Bucky Barnes/Others (offscreen), Polyamory, Vaginal Fingering, Penis In Vagina Sex, Oral Sex, Mutual Masturbation, Rimming, Consensual Sex, First Time, First Kiss, Period-Typical Racism, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Genderswap, Genderbending Summary:  Sarah “Gwen” Rogers was nineteen when she married Bucky Barnes, and she knew at the time just how stupid it was: it wasn’t exactly a brilliant move to marry a man who could never love her, even—or especially—when she knew that she was in love with him.

Neither of them could have predicted the war that came, and if they had, then they sure as hell couldn’t have predicted what would happen when Gwen volunteered for Project: Rebirth.

fight like girls for our place at the table (52110 words) by napricot Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sharon Carter Characters:Sharon Carter (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Peggy Carter, Antoine Triplett, James "Bucky" Barnes Additional Tags: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, POV Sharon Carter (Marvel), Slow Burn, Surveillance, Double Dating, Bucky Barnes' Attempts at Being a Wingman, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time Summary: “Am I on Cap watch because of who my aunt is?” Sharon asks Fury point-blank the second she sits in his office.

“That’s part of the reason, yeah,” Fury says. Sharon narrows her eyes at him, and opens her mouth to object. “But not all of the reason. This isn’t a demotion.”

“It sure feels like a demotion. You’re taking me out of the field and out of intel analysis to babysit Captain America.”

How Sharon Carter gets her groove back, fucks up some Nazis, and gets the girl, with unasked for assists from a super soldier couple.

Châtelaine et senêschale (21859 words) by Feather Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Pepper Potts & Original Female Character Characters: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, Original Female Character Additional Tags: Pepper Potts and her team of badass ladies, ladies in the Tower, hypercompetent women, people with absurdly high IQ, Pepper wants to save the world, Pepper runs a super-efficient company, acute traumatic stress disorder, Post-Battle of New York, Post-Iron Man 3, Pepper is kind of not okay, quietly retconning implausible/insulting canon moments, Tony's terrible people skills Series: Part 1 of Settle in and find your home Summary: A quintet of essential moments including the Stark Industries Chief Legal Officer.

This is the first in a series of stories about side characters in Your Blue Eyed Boys, a massive Stucky series dealing seriously with Bucky's trauma.  YBEB is awesome, but Settle in and find your home is even better.

Where the Need is Greatest (19717 words) by Niitza Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers Characters: Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Tony Stark, Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Steve Rogers vs. the American Military, paramedic steve rogers, Médicins Sans Frontières | Doctors Without Borders, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Hydra, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Alternating, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Somewhat dark humor, Nick Fury Doesn't Get Paid Enough For This Shit, Humanitarian Intervention, Implied/Referenced Violence, Timeline What Timeline, Podfic Available, do not copy to another site Summary: In which Steve Rogers takes one look at the history of American military interventions since the end of World War II and nopes straight out of it, follows in his Ma's footsteps to become a paramedic, joins Doctors Without Borders, gets sent on an unsanctioned humanitarian mission to Syria, and somehow still ends up being a determining factor in Hydra's downfall - all of this without throwing a single punch. Somehow, he's okay with it.

This one's short, but oh, so good

Scents and Sensibility: The Working Assassin's Guide to Supersoldier Seduction(93216 words) by skellerbvvt, silentwalrus, galwednesday Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Melinda May, Maria Hill, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers Additional Tags: Clownfish ABO, Everyone Has A Peen And A Vageen, Gender Spectrum Society, Scents & Smells, Courtship, Alternate Universe, One Thousand And One Blankets, Pod People But Not Like That, Precious Idiot Virgin Winter Soldier, Institutionalized Softism, Curtain Fic, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Bathing/Washing, Melon Tending, Transformative Works Welcome, do not copy to another site Summary: Captain America wakes up from the ice in 2013. The Winter Soldier wakes up in 2009, or rather defects from HYDRA, for a value of defect that’s closer to decimate. He ends up working for SHIELD. In April 2014, he’s assigned to Captain America’s mission as a sniper.

Steve’s just trying to get some kind of life together. Bucky is too, or at least he was until tall, blond and Captain shows up and starts just - being there, all the time. It’s terrible. It’s the worst. He has to do something about it.

the other side of infinity (84282 words) by tielan Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Nick Fury & Maria Hill, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson & Bucky Barnes & Wanda Maximoff, Maria Hill & Jane Foster, Peter Quill & Groot & Mantis & Drax, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Nick Fury & T'Challa, Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Maria Hill & Sam Wilson Characters: Maria Hill, Nick Fury, T'Challa, Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Jane Foster (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Hela (Marvel), Groot (Marvel), Mantis (Marvel), Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Carol Danvers, Hulk (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel), Ayo (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, Vision (Marvel), Chewie | Goose (Marvel) Additional Tags: Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), action-adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Infinity Gems, Infinity Gauntlet, Sacrifice, Fan theories, Avengers: Infinity War Fix-It, Eventual Happy Ending, infinity war fix-it, this really is my endgame, Trope: Against All Odds, Infinity (Marvel), Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Soul Gem (Marvel) Summary: On the other side of the moment, those turned to dust may no longer be 'alive', but they're damn well not helpless.  This is the story of how they saved themselves.

when i die i’ll sacrifice (more than enough for the afterlife) (41322 words) by notcaycepollard Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Maria Hill, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Endgame, Various Background Relationships - Freeform, Red Room (Marvel), discussion of Red Room reproductive violence, Pining, spot the Marvel cameos, Family, animal cruelty mention, animal death mention Series: Part 1 of a flame in two cupped hands Summary: The fall is longer than Natasha expects. It’s tears cold on her face, teeth bitten all the way through her lip and the taste of copper in her mouth; she’s falling and falling and then, bracing for impact—she wakes up.

Downton Abbey:

Halo Effect (81331 words) by Alex51324 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Original Male Character(s), Thomas Barrow & Anna Bates Characters: Thomas Barrow, Anna Bates, John Bates Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, season one AU, Edwardian Gays, Historical Accuracy, Great War, Period-Typical Homophobia Series: Part 1 of Halo Effect Summary: The Halo Effect is the tendency for a positive impression in one area to produce a more generous or optimistic interpretation of ambiguous information in other areas.  When Thomas rescues Lady Mary from the nefarious attentions of Turkish houseguest Kemal Pamuk, his employers and coworkers begin to see him differently...and Things Get Better.

A Season One AU diverging from canon in Episode 3, The One Where The Turkish Gentleman Dies in Mary's Bed.

Star Wars:

Hindsight is Not Perfect (61864 words) by DAsObiQuiet Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Shmi Skywalker, Watto (Star Wars), Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala, Yoda, Siri Tachi, Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Finis Valorum, Panaka (Star Wars), Mace Windu Additional Tags: Time Travel, Fix-It of Sorts, Time Travel Fix-It, Redemption, Well he tries Series: Part 1 of Force of Many Sights Summary: Paved with good intentions or not, the road back from Hell is a difficult, slippery slope for those who choose to walk it as Anakin has. Now he has to face the consequences of his choices, avoid suspicion of everyone from the Jedi Council to Palpatine and try to prevent the future from turning out as badly Before all while somehow finding a way to balance the Force... again!

Shape-Changer (2330 words) by Fialleril Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader, Palpatine, Shmi Skywalker, Kitster Banai, a Tatooine wise woman Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Double Agent Vader, Storytelling, Tatooine Slave Culture, Small Acts of Resistance, Tricksters, Worldbuilding, Original Mythology Series: Part 1 of Double Agent Vader Summary: His Master liked to say that Vader was born in fire on Mustafar. But Ekkreth was born in the desert.

New Lands for the Living (50241 words) by SassySnowperson Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Poe Dameron/Luke Skywalker Characters: Poe Dameron, Luke Skywalker, Owen Lars, Beru Whitesun, Winter Celchu, Leia Organa, Bodhi Rook Additional Tags: Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, POV Poe Dameron, Marriage of Convenience, Slow Burn, (with a fast marriage), Pining for Spouse, Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Additional Warnings In Author's Note Summary: The war is over, and nobody won. With the galaxy on the verge of destruction, Poe Dameron hatches a desperate plan—go back in time. But Poe's plan quickly goes awry, and he finds himself on the run from local authorities. The only plan to keep him safe is…extreme, to say the least.

 "Can't get you citizenship documents," the man muttered, his voice clearer now that it wasn't muffled by the scarf. Poe took a deep breath and forced himself to think. He looked back at his would-be rescuer.

Who was shoving the scarf back from the top his head, revealing a face that Poe knew. That lots of people knew. Kriff, that everyone knew, trillions upon trillions of sapients in the galaxy would recognize that face.

Luke Skywalker—as fresh-faced and young as the day he became the successful destroyer of the Death Star—was standing in front of him.

Fuck.

"Need a land grant to get a moisture farmer licence, can't even get you a travel visa without citizenship documents…Hm," the legend said, sighing. "Yeah. I think we're going to have to get married."

 Things You Missed in History Class (3713 words) by Grey_Bard Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Finn (Star Wars), Rey (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It Summary: Having traveled back in time, Rey and Finn have decided to set right what once went wrong. Too bad they have no idea what actually once went wrong.

This one is short but it is SO GOOD, HOLY COW

Imperial Radch

Fragments (30130 words) by pipistrelle Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Awn Elming & Justice of Toren One Esk, Awn Elming/Justice of Toren One Esk Characters: Awn Elming, Justice of Toren (Imperial Radch), Justice of Toren One Esk Four Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Lives but not quite, Fix-It, imagine if the dumbest and most lovestruck segment of One Esk ran away with Awn and had a picnic, that's where this fic lives, Awn survives, lots of talking, and swearing, a little bit of plot but not much, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Pining, Worldbuilding, Fake Marriage, kind of, Queerplatonic Relationships Summary: “We're fleeing Radch space. Of course we’re fleeing Radch space, I refused an order and you...” She paused. Then, very clearly and feelingly, she said, “Fuck.”  Sometimes the path of justice and beneficence is clear. Sometimes you have to make your own.

Check, Please!

From the Ground Up (167381 words) by Rianne Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/Original Male Character(s) Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Original Male Character(s), Original Characters, Jeff "Swoops" Troy, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble), Original Male Character(s) of Color, Original Female Character(s) Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, Angst, Fluff, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Until it's resolved that is, Hockey, (Obviously), Eventual Smut, Slurs Series: Part 1 of Kent Parson deserves nice things Summary: Kent has a pretty good life. It’s been a couple years since the Aces last won a cup, but he’s still at the height of his career. He has an apartment with a stunning view over Vegas, a best friend who’s always dragging him to basketball games, a cat to cuddle with, and more money than he could ever spend.

Everything is fine.

So it won’t be a problem at all if he strikes up a friendship with that guy he meets at the All-Star party.

Tomas enjoyed the years he spent in Minnesota, but he’s ready for a new life in a different city. It means he’ll be even further from his friends and family in Quebec, and he’s not sure he’s going to adapt well to the desert. But he’ll have his new job to distract him, and he’s never minded the challenge of developing a new circle of friends and acquaintances.

He doesn’t expect Kent Parson to be part of that.

Like Real People Do (153388 words) by xiaq Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/omc, Kent Parson/OMC, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Swoops (Check Please!), Eric Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, OMC Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - College/University, figure skating, Sharing a Bed, Friends to Lovers, Coming Out, Hockey, NCAA hockey, Disabled Character, service dog, Happy Ending, Fluff, Banter, I just want Kent Parson to be happy ok, Living Together, Domestic Fluff, NHL, Closeted Character, Angst with a Happy Ending, but only like 2 chapters of REAL angst, TBI, Injury, Injury Recovery, parsepositive, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, idiots to lovers Summary: Parson gestures with his spoon toward Hawke. “So am I allowed to ask about the service dog or is that not PC?”

“My medical history is more of a 3rd date conversation," Eli says.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because. No one sticks around afterward and I like to live in glorious denial for a short period beforehand.”

It comes out more self-deprecating than he intended.

Parson looks…thoughtful. “Well, does this count as one or two?

“Pardon?”

“This. Ice cream. I mean, technically it’s a second location, but still the same night. So is this one date or two?”

“One,” Eli says firmly. “If it’s happening within the same three-hour period.”

“You’re the expert,” Parson says, which, he’s really, really, not, but ok.

“So still two dates to go then?” Parson continues.

“I—what?”

“We’ve got a roadie coming up but then we’re home for almost two weeks. When does your semester start?”

“You want to do this again?” Eli asks.

Parson stops idly twirling his spoon.

“You don’t?”

He does, Eli realizes. He really does. Because apparently he actually likes Kent fucking Parson.

Original Work

Superstition (16000 words) by Superstition_hockey Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: OC/OC Additional Tags: Hockey Gods, Bromance to Romance, Codependent Bros for Life, Accidental Marriage, Homophobia in sports, Homophobic Language, Sexist Language, Hockey typical violence, Unsafe Sex, Oral Sex, Frottage Series: Part 1 of Superstition Summary: He thinks about the times he’s heard his dad, his aunts and uncles, cousins, sports casters on the news joking about the hockey gods, wonders if they’re real. Maybe they are. Maybe if he works hard enough, gives them enough sweat and blood and time…

Mulan

primped and polished till you glow with pride (11363 words) by VagabondDawn Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fa Mulan/Li Shang Characters: Fa Mulan (Disney), Li Shang, Fa Zhou Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage Series: Part 1 of primped and polished Summary: Fa Zhou gets offered an advisory position in the Imperial City instead of riding to war and Fa Mulan finds her second attempt at Matchmaking goes better than the first.

Chronicles of Narnia

No Ordinary Letter (5680 words) by Transposable_Element Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Aravis, Kidrash Tarkaan, Peridan (Narnia), Shar (Narnia OMC), Shasta | Cor Additional Tags: Calormen, Family, Cultural Differences Series: Part 1 of Love and Honor Summary: Aravis begins the process of reconciling with her father.

Silmarillion/Lord of the Rings

And What Happened After (73740 words) by thearrogantemu Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Bilbo Baggins & Frodo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins & Manwë Súlimo, Frodo Baggins & Fëanor, Samwise Gamgee & Maglor, Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Gandalf, Elrond, Mandos | Námo, Manwë, Fëanor, Sam Gamgee, Sons of Fëanor, Maglor, Nerdanel, Celebrimbor Additional Tags: Valinor, Fourth Age, after the end, Gandalf and his strategic hobbit deployment, Third Theme, There and Back Again Again, Very Long Conversations, Backpacking in the Blessed Realm, Long-Overdue Punches, Westron as a Second Language, Sassing cosmic superbeings, Life-Changing Road Trip with Feanor, Kierkegaardian Existentialism, Reconciliation, Halls of Mandos, Potato Diplomacy, Everyone Telling Stories, Arda Remade Series: Part 5 of The Splintered Light Summary: “My dear Mr. Baggins, you cannot possibly imagine I have brought you across the boundaries of the sundered world, bending every law of gods and men, over land and over sea and through the fathomless heights, for your health? Well, I did, of course I did, and I’d do it again. But it was not for your own good only that I brought you here. I have been on this world a very long time, Mr. Baggins, and if there is one thing that I have learned about the Wise and the Great, it’s that they benefit from the company of hobbits, and it’s the wisest and greatest who have most need of them.”

Star Trek

A Better World (17671 words) by weakinteraction Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Benjamin Maxwell/Alynna Nechayev Characters: Alynna Nechayev, Benjamin Maxwell, Edward Jellico, Ro Laren, Odo (Star Trek) Additional Tags: guest appearances from various other 24th-century Trek characters, Time Travel Fix-It Summary: Alynna Nechayev does not give up easily, in any timeline.

Laid Bare (37013 words) by sixbeforelunch Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: William Riker & Deanna Troi, Taurik/Original Female Character(s) Characters: Deanna Troi, William Riker, Beverly Crusher, Taurik (Star Trek), Original *Characters Additional Tags: Psychology, Mental Health Issues, Eating Disorders, Domestic Violence, Anxiety Attacks, Aliens, First Contact, child endangerment, Pregnancy, Telepathy, Vulcan Culture Summary: Deanna Troi unravels a psychological mystery.

Lewis (TV)

A Place I May Go Both In and Out Of (49458 words) by kvikindi Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James Hathaway & Robert Lewis, James Hathaway & Nell Hathaway, Robert Lewis & Nell Hathaway, Laura Hobson/Robert Lewis Characters: James Hathaway, Robert Lewis, Laura Hobson, Nell Hathaway, Lizzie Maddox, Lyn Lewis, Lyn Lewis's Son, Hathaway's Band Additional Tags: Catholicism, Found Families, discussion of suicide, Allusions to abuse, Giftedness, Gun Violence, Physical Trauma, Recovery, Urban Foxes, Post-Canon, Dysfunctional Family, Happy Ending, Christmas Summary: Lewis thought it was amazing, in retrospect, that no one had ever shot Hathaway before.

Big Hero 6/The Martian

Big Hero Martian (42621 words) by althor42 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Hiro Hamada, Baymax (Marvel), Cass Hamada, Mark Watney, Annie Montrose, Gogo Tomago, Wasabi-No Ginger, Fred | Fredzilla, Melissa Lewis (The Martian), Alex Vogel, Chris Beck, Beth Johanssen, Rick Martinez (The Martian), Teddy Sanders Additional Tags: hiro goes on a rescue mission, so it's on mars, small details, just build a ship, nbd Summary: There would have been no rescue for Mark, if NASA had not noticed he was still alive. Unless of course, a certain Big Hero noticed instead.

Temeraire/Pride and Prejudice

A Monstrous Regiment (94904 words) by AMarguerite Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Colonel Fitzwilliam (Pride and Prejudice), Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington, Jane Roland, Jane Fairfax, Frederick Wentworth, Fitzwilliam Darcy, George Wickham, Georgiana Darcy, Charlotte Lucas, William Price, Excidium, Gherni, Arkady (Temeraire), Perscitia, Captain Harville (Persuasion) Additional Tags: badass Elizabeth Bennet, Napoleonic Wars, Dragon Riders, Regency, Battle, War, Feminist Themes, Colonel Fitzwilliam has some period-appropriate Opinions that get overturned, so be forewarned, he's a good dude though, he learns, Age of Sail, alternate title: Charlotte's Great Escape Series: Part 1 of A Monstrous Regiment Summary: General Wellington selects Colonel Fitzwilliam for a very singular honor during the Spanish Campaign: working with dragons-- and, in particular, with Captain Elizabeth Bennet, of His Majesty's Dragon, the Longwing Wollstonecraft.

Temeraire/ Pride and Prejudice crossover entirely to have Elizabeth Bennet as a dragon captain during the Peninsular War, with Charlotte Lucas as her uber-capable first lieutenant.

Pride and Prejudice

An Ever-Fixed Mark (190537 words) by AMarguerite Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley Characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam (Pride and Prejudice), Georgiana Darcy, Catherine de Bourgh, Anne de Bourgh, Charlotte Lucas, William Collins (Pride and Prejudice), Maria Lucas, Jane Bennet, Charles Bingley, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, Lydia Bennet, Kitty Bennet, George Wickham, Duke of Wellington, Mary Crawford, Mary Bennet, Caroline Bingley, William Elliot (Persuasion), Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility), Marianne Dashwood, Eliza (Sense and Sensibility), Henry Tilney, Catherine Morland, Frederick Wentworth, Anne Elliot, Elizabeth Elliot, Arthur Wellesley Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Comedy, Deconstruction, Napoleonic Wars, Regency, Regency Romance, Pining, badass Elizabeth Bennet, Miscarriage, 19th Century Medicine, Battle Of Waterloo, battlefield descriptions, Mention of Surgery, medicine sure was fun before germ theory, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Elizabeth Bennet/ Mud, is the true OTP, Feminist Themes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Grief/Mourning, Slow Burn, Reaaaally slow burn, Burn so slow it takes like six chapters to defrost first, Biphobia Series: Part 1 of An Ever-Fixed Mark Summary: One would think that having the name of one's soulmate appear on one's wrist on one's sixteenth birthday would make matrimony much less complicated. It mostly does not. And not at all for Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne.

(A deconstruction of the "soulmate identifying mark" trope, using "Pride and Prejudice." Trigger warnings in the tags.)

Teen Wolf

Wolf Moon (93757 words) by pocketmumbles Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Derek Hale/Scott McCall Characters: Scott McCall, Derek Hale Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Minor Character Death, Fix-It Series: Part 1 of Wolf Moon 'verse Summary: On the night of 2013’s Wolf Moon, eighteen-year-old Scott McCall travels back in time to change Derek’s past and, hopefully, their future.

The morning after 2003’s Wolf Moon, fifteen-year-old Derek Hale wakes up after meeting a teen wolf named Scott. And then the story really begins.

(Or, the time travel story that isn’t about the time travel at all, but rather a complete rewriting of canon spanning fifteen years and every character along the way. Canon divergent/AU after Season 3B.)

Harry Potter

Swung by Serafim (352345 words) by flamethrower Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Dobby, Kreacher (Harry Potter), Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Bill Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Percy Weasley, Viktor Krum, Luna Lovegood, Rubeus Hagrid, Pomona Sprout, Lily Evans Potter, James Potter, OFC, OMC Additional Tags: I am not listing the entire cast of the HP universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Chamber of Secrets, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, there is a tag for it yay!, also not listing relationships, Too confusing, Discussion of Past Child Abuse, The World Is Not Black And White, GFY, Don't copy to another site, seriously if those two actually were together at the end of this fic it would be in the tags okay?, and I don't tag the other relationships because they're spoilers, but before I get yelled at AGAIN, this isn't Snarry fic okay?, it has potential to become that if you squint, but I am not tagging for a romantic relationship that isn't there! Series: Part 1 of Swung by Serafim Summary: In 1993, Gilderoy Lockhart points a stolen wand at Harry Potter and Ron Weasley with the intent to Obliviate them.

The wand doesn't backfire. Gilderoy's "discovery" of the Chamber of Secrets is a short-term success.

Other consequences are not short-term at all.

Blood Magic (334522 words) by GatewayGirl Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley Additional Tags: Severitus, Dark Arts, Secrets Series: Part 1 of Blood Summary: Blood magic was supposed to keep Harry safe, but his relatives are expendable. Blood magic was supposed to keep Harry looking like his adoptive father, but it's wearing off. Blood is a bond, but so is the memory of hate -- or love.

pick it up, pick it all up and start again (69328 words) by Annerb Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley Characters: Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Bill Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Percy Weasley, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s), Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Charlie Weasley, George Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Hannah Abbott Additional Tags: mostly canon ships, Sequel, Angst, Recovery, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Drama, Slytherin Ginny Weasley, Post-War, Canon Era, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD Series: Part 1 of Armistice Series Summary: The thing about war is that it never ends. Not really. The battlefields just change locations. Harry and Ginny after the war. (Sequel to The Changeling)

Valdemar

Enemy, It's Cold Outside (5121 words) by MueraRashaye Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Male Herald, Original Male Sunpriest Additional Tags: Friendship across borders, Canon Compliant, War with Ancar, Tasteless jokes about Fires, Some timeline shifting Series: Part 1 of Friends Across Borders Summary: Inns in Hardorn border towns are neutral grounds, so long as the Sunsguard don't see the Herald and the Valdemarans don't see the priests. Usually this works fine, but one evening found Valdemarans with a Herald and Sunsguard with a priest at the same inn. Two groups of guards signal their outliers, and their outliers reluctantly retreat to the stables for a frigid night.

Turns out, it's too cold to kill ancient enemies. Much easier to swap drinks and tales under a night-long truce, figuring nothing will change in the morning.

And it doesn't. Not yet. But, it just might.

The Goblin Emperor

A Complete Education (57380 words) by bomberqueen17 Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Csethiro Ceredin/Maia Drazhar Characters: Csethiro Ceredin, Maia Drazhar, Cala Athmaza, Kiru Athmaza, Deret Beshelar, Telimezh (The Goblin Emperor) Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Sexual Education, Household Politics, The Emperor's Dav, Past Abuse, Misunderstandings, the fantasy of a world where everybody has good intentions Series: Part 1 of Continuing Education Summary: Preparing for the Emperor's wedding, everyone has some things they need to learn about.

[starship--phoenix]

HULLO STAR >:D For the ask game: 9, 14, 17, and 30!! 💜🌟

Hello Aphra!!! Thanks for the questions <3

9.  Do you prefer to write AUs, canon divergence, or canon-compliant fic? 

I’m not sure I have a preference between AU’s and canonverse, actually! I tend to publish slightly more canon-verse, but that’s more because with AUs a lot of my excitement comes from the world building and plotting, so by the time I finish doing that and sit down to write, I’ve used up most of my energy for that idea. When I look at my fic ideas spreadsheet, I have a TON of au ideas that I am really invested in, but they’re often a lot more work. Canon-verse one-shots are a little quicker and easier for me to write XD

In terms of canon-divergent vs canon-compliant, I tend to lean more towards canon-compliant because there’s always a part of me that’s afraid of the possibility that canon will completely screw up my plans and I’ll lose all motivation. If I write canon-divergent fics, it’s more likely to be from before canon starts (like as is the case of my cage-fighting fic) rather than at a specific canon moment so that way there’s less chances that canon will throw all my plans out the window (for example I have a fic idea that would diverge after wherever canon is now, but we’re in the middle of the arc so I don’t want to start writing it if the whole of hero society is going to collapse in the next chapter). 

14.  If you were stuck on a desert island with only two characters, which would you pick?

Hmmmmmm. Hawks is an obvious choice for me, since he’s likely to try and keep us both alive unlike some of my other favorite characters, and his quirk is really versatile. If he can’t fly me off the island he can at least catch fish, and he’s really smart, attractive, and also easy to talk to. If I’m going to be stuck with someone, it needs to be someone I won’t want to kill after a couple hours! For the other character... Momo would be useful to have around! It’ll be more of a vacation and less of a disaster after she’s done making all the tools we need to build shelters, start fires, etc. 

17.  What fic are you most proud of? 

We’re the Ones Who Live, without a doubt. I’ve poured so much love and thought and care into that fic and although there are some parts I wish I could have done a little better, and there’s still a long way to go until the finish line, what I’ve accomplished so far in terms of the storytelling and writing and the way I’m slowly dropping plot points and details that will become relevant later is something I’m really proud of! 

30. Tell us an idea for a longfic you want to write in the future.

Just one? XD Okay one idea I’ve had for a while is a western/cowboy au, where the UA kids (Deku, Bakugou, Todoroki, Kirishima, Iida, and Uraraka) are on a fossil hunting expedition for the great paleontologist All Might and the League are a rival bone hunter team (made up of criminals and outlaws) who are sabotaging them on another famous scientist, All for One’s, orders. Eventually the two expeditions would probably team up in order to take down a larger threat :D There would be trains and horses and shootouts and misuse of explosives and the highs and lows of scientific discovery, and of course, found family:’)

Questions from HERE if anyone else wants to ask me anything:)

[phoenix-downer]

7, 17, 27 and 49 for the fanfiction writer asks xx

7) When is your preferred time to write?

I am a night owl and always have been, so I do my best writing late at night. Not always great for my sleep schedule, haha, but for whatever reason some of my best ideas come to me then.

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on.

So this is an excerpt of a fic I started… a year ago now I believe? It’s a royalty/fairytale AU where all of the worlds are ruled by the royal family of Radiant Garden. There are ruling families for the other worlds as well. Kairi is the princess of Radiant Garden, Riku is the heir to the ruling family of Destiny Islands, and Sora is training to be a knight. Plot happens, Destiny Islands is lost to darkness, and everyone thinks Sora and Riku are dead. Kairi, mourning their loss, starts training with her family’s Keyblade to make sure no more worlds fall to darkness. Several years pass, and at a masquerade ball for her eighteenth birthday (where her parents want her to find a suitable husband, etc.), she runs into a masked stranger that seems to know her quite well…

Full disclosure: I want to return to this fic, but I’m also working on some other projects I haven’t publicly disclosed yet. So we’ll see if this ends up ever getting finished/posted, but for now, enjoy this snippet :)

“And who do you think I am?” she asked. A test, to see how he would answer, to see if he was just like all the others.

He was silent for a moment. “A fox,” he finally answered. “Though if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll call you Miss Fox.” He looked in the direction of the refreshments table. “Looks like Mr. Weasel will be making his grand return soon. If you’re still wanting to hide, now would be a good time to escape.”

“Well, Mr. Leopard, take me away,” she said, giggling as she offered her hand. He took it, and off they went, winding through the crowd with ease and getting lost amongst the throng of masks and colorful costumes. His grip was strong, the skin on his hands rough and calloused. Probably from holding a weapon – perhaps this mysterious stranger was a warrior of some kind.

He led them away from everyone else and into the garden outside. The evening breeze was a welcome relief from the stuffiness of her dress and mask, and she sat down on the smooth marble of the fountain. A sculpture of one of her ancestors held a koi that spat a steady stream of water into its basin, and Kairi dipped her hand into the cool liquid.

“Now that we’re away from prying eyes…. Who are you, really?” she asked, running her fingers through the water. “I feel like I’ve met you before.”

“Maybe you have, princess,” he said softly.

Drat. So he did know who she was. Still, it was hard to ignore the way her heart had sped up at the change in his voice.

“Are you a prince?” she asked.

“I’m a leopard,” he said as he examined the nearby rosebushes, searching for something.

Kairi chewed her lip. His tone made it clear he didn’t wish to discuss the matter any further, but she really did want to know who he was. It was only fair, since he knew her identity.

“How do you know who I am?” she asked as he turned his attention to the next flowerbed.

“The mask doesn’t hide your hair.”

Kairi sighed. She should have worn a veil or hood if she’d really wanted her identity to stay a secret. “What, is my hair color famous now?” she asked. Red hair wasn’t that unusual, even it was a trademark of the royal family.

He paused, bent over a group of snapdragons. “Your beauty is spoken of throughout the worlds, yes.”

“Is it really?” This was news to her. Maybe that explained the increase in suitors lately.

“Yes. And they say you grow prettier every day,” he said.

“What else do they say about me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual as she flicked water onto the koi statue.

He straightened and turned to her. “That you’re becoming a great warrior. That you’re shaping up to be a worthy successor of your father. And… that you refuse to marry despite your parents’ wishes.”

She thought she saw his lips twitch at that, but then he turned away and resumed his search.

“Well, the last one is certainly true,” she muttered, her hand going to her necklace and fiddling with it. “This whole ball is a ploy by my parents to find me a husband.”

“What, you don’t want to get married?” His tone was inquisitive, almost disbelieving.

She sighed. “Not to any of the princes they have in mind, no. None of them suit me, and I’m not right for them at all, either.”

She thought of the latest meeting with Prince Hans. Nope, not her type. Not her type at all.

“So you aren’t against marriage, just against marrying the wrong person,” he said, running his fingers across the velvety leaf of a Lamb’s Ear before turning his attention to the next group of flowers.

“Exactly,” Kairi said. Why could this stranger understand when her own parents couldn’t?

“Was there ever… was there ever a right person?” he asked.

She was taken aback by the boldness of his question. He had no right to know such things, and yet… she found herself compelled to open up to him.

“Yes. But he’s… he’s gone.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was far heavier than she was expecting it to be.

“It happened several years ago,” she said, as if that somehow lessened the pain. Everyone expected the wound to have healed, but no matter how much time had passed, she still couldn’t get over his loss.

“And yet your voice betrays you, princess,” he said, his voice low. “There were rumors, you know. Rumors about a prince—”

“He wasn’t a prince,” she said. Why did everyone always think it was Riku? It was true, Riku was her friend, but he was like a brother to her. And yet everyone always thought he was the one she—

“He wasn’t?” the stranger asked, his voice slow and deliberate with just a touch of surprise.

“No. His friend was. He was training to be a knight.”

“A knight?” he asked, his voice going up a few pitches.

“Do you have something against knights?” Kairi asked, raising her eyebrow. Too bad he couldn’t see it through her mask. It was true, the other royals tended to be snobby about class, but… for whatever reason, she’d hoped for better from him.

“No, it’s just that I—” He paused and cleared his throat. “I thought the royal family only allows its heirs to marry members of other ruling families.”

She shrugged. “It does, but I don’t care. As soon as I’m queen, I’m changing the rules.”

“You haven’t given up hope, then,” he said. “You think he’s still alive.”

Kairi’s hand went to her heart. “Yes. Because… because I can… oh, forget it,” she said, her cheeks flushing. She was grateful the mask was hiding her face right now.

He smiled sadly and held out a purple flower, plucked right from the garden around them. “You should listen to your heart, Kairi. It’s never lead you wrong before, and it sure hasn’t now.”

An aster. Her favorite flower. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. The deep voice, the slicked back hair, the disguise concealing his face—she hadn’t realized. She hadn’t known. But the moment he’d said her name—

Heart pounding, fingers trembling, she stood and reached for his mask. He lowered his head so she could more easily inch it off his face. First his nose was visible, then his cheeks. His features were more angular now, the plumpness of childhood almost completely gone, but as soon as she saw his eyes, she knew. They were as beautiful as ever, no, maybe even more beautiful – blue as the sky, but hinting at a depth of experience and wisdom that hadn’t been in them before.

He’d changed in their years apart. But his smile – well, that would always be the same. She smiled back and touched his face. His skin was dry and rough, like he’d spent hours and hours outside in the wind.

“You’re alive,” she said softly. “You’re really here. This isn’t a dream.”

He closed his eyes and melted into her touch. Her fingers traced a path across his cheek, and he took a deep breath and sighed. She found a small scar that hadn’t been there before, a little dent on his forehead. Frowning, she ran her thumb across it, wondering how it had happened.

“All this time, I believed you were alive,” she said. “And yet— I wouldn’t listen to my own heart. Everyone told me you were dead, and I—”

His eyes opened. “Who told you to doubt yourself?” he asked, catching her hand and putting his over it, the ridges of his fingertips brushing over her own. “Who told you to doubt me?”

“I… I was afraid—”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. I’ll always come back to you, Kairi. I promise.”

She fought back the tears. She’d dreamed of this moment, but she’d never thought it would actually come true.

He reached for her mask and gently tugged it off, a look of awe and then wonder filling his eyes. “The rumors were true,” he said, almost reverently. He ran his hand through her hair, brushing the parts that had gotten tousled out of her eyes.

The mask was no longer there to hide her face from him. What did he see in it? Were her feelings on full display?

She had the sudden urge to tousle his hair. It didn’t seem right for it to be slicked back like that. So she did, running her fingers through it in a way she only could have imagined before. His hair was softer than she thought it would be, its strands smooth and silky. As each spike returned to its rightful place, he looked less like a stranger and more like the Sora she knew.

“There’s a lot I have to tell you, but now’s not the time,” he said, grabbing her hand. “We need to find Riku first.”

Hope you enjoyed! A lot more than a line, but I’ve been itching to share this part for a while anyway. And yes the masks I chose were intentional ;)

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

Went into this in a little more depth for another ask, but for oneshots, I go with the flow, and for longfics, I always make an outline. I write out of order, so an outline helps me keep track of everything.

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

I believe it was Sholio’s fic set post Captain America: The Winter Soldier called The Care and Feeding of Traumatized Ex-Assassins over on AO3. I was so moved by Bucky’s story in the movie (even though I knew the plot twist going into the movie lol) that I was desperate for new material, and I knew the next movie wouldn’t be coming out for a couple of years. 

So I turned to fanfiction (which I had previously written off before because I thought it was all badly written because of the infamous ones like My Immortal - how wrong of me to assume so!) to see some sort of resolution for his story. And there are a ton of talented writers in the MCU fandom, they really spoiled me, haha. I found plenty of beautiful fics that scratched the itch that the movie left until Civil War came out.

It would still be a few more years from when I first regularly started reading fics till when I started writing fics, though.

Thanks for the ask! :)

[sqsupernova]

Author Interview – Shadowdianne!

We sat down with @shadowdianne​ to talk about Of deals, magic and secrets, their process, and their Supernova adventure!

What inspired your story?

The short answer is my love for victorian-esque novels. The story has a lot of nods to that aesthetic even if on the final version of it I took most of them out as they halted the pacing quite a lot. The long-ish answer involves a story I wrote about Emma and Regina some time ago with Emma being a thief and Regina asking for her help. It didn't have the same elements that later appear on ODMS but the "flavour" of the chracters remained on the back of my mind; Regina being a recent widowed woman, Emma being quite a famous thief... Last year I wrote a steampunk-influenced story and by the time I began to put words down and shape where the story wanted to go that mix between magic and reality assaulted me. I wanted to write a mystery once again but the plot of who had murdered Leopold didn't quite convince me, the lore or the show already answers that after all, so as I began to erase and write the detail of the ring, something I had added as a nod to that story I've written, came back to me. The moment I started fleshing out the whys and hows the story was more or less set on the final version I ended up posting. 

How do you form your stories? Do you outline beforehand or write by the seat of your pants? Do you write linearly or out of order?

For long stories I write an outline of, at least, where and how I want for the major plot points to be and go. I'm flexible, however, and if I see that a certain moment requires more scenes I will add more. Characters can be pesky things that make you re-think again entire scenes that you thought you already had finished. On shorter and more linear stories  I rarely bother with writing more than a few lines here and there of dialogue and setting. Very much like the notes on a play. For Deals I wrote an outline however as there were different things that needed to have a certain space within the plot.[The Lost Boys, Emma's second meeting with Regina, Regina's inner thoughts on the first part of the story as the police interrogates her about Leopold's death...] I also tend to write the scene I want to write the most at the beginning, let the chemistry between characters and stoy begin to work and then start from the top of my outline, going slowly down until I surpass the scene. In that way I feel like I spot the core of the story pretty early on so I can weave everything else around it without the climax getting on my way. Sometimes it works some other times there are several cores so I need to do this more than once. It also helps me with the description of a place as I quickly build that up around the dialogue, which is very important for me.

What in your fic are you most proud of?

Probably the details regarding the Lost Boys. That was a subplot that I dropped precisely on Metallic Ink [The fic I wrote for last year's edition] and I'm quite proud of it even if I needed to re-shape it into this fic's background and lore.Is there anything you'd change now?

I wouldn't rely so heavily on Leopold's death as an opening and would start with a 3rd person POV focused on Emma as she reads about the death before jumping back to Regina. That could have maybe given another perspective on where the story was going to go. At the same time I think Regina needed a very quick characterization and the "prologue" helps with that. Still, I would add some tweaks to that first part as well as adding more information once Emma discovers that Regina is hiding things from her. I had several more scenes planned out that in hindsight, should have been added at the end.How do you deal with writers' block?

I'm awful at dealing with it. I stop writing for a few days once I feel completely burned out and I focus myself on reading, playing some videogames, going out and running... even reading about historical details, artistic movements... I'm very visual on my writing and sometimes seeing a particular story develop on a game or a detail on a picture makes me begin to wonder how it could be described, how it could fit inside a story and then I'm back again.Was this Supernova experience different than your typical writing experience?

It's not my first supernova so I already knew what to expect. However, my internet being out for almost two and a half months made it quite... interesting to say the list.

Any advice to other writers who might want to write a longfic, or participate in Supernova next year?

You can read Of deals, magic and secrets on AO3, along with Shadowdianne’s other works! And don’t forget to feed the author!

Breathe. There are going to be moments that you are going to want to erase everything and start again with a total different story while fearing is too late. Or maybe even think about dropping out. And if you end up doing that there is no shame in that. When fear begins to settle I usually break down the amount of words I need to write until the numbers stop dancing inside my head. 10K can seem daunting but they are less than one might think once you start writing the story and, despite what may look like no one who is doing this for a second, third, fourth or fifth -BigBang anyone?- time is sane. We all are afraid of sucking and writing a story that is not compelling. Speaking to other writers can help. A lot. And if you are someone who doesn't feel intimidated I really rec going into the chat the mods provide during the months of the SuperNova and write and share your experience. Even if the only thing you have to say about that day's writing is how you ended up reading some inane thing about something related to what you wanted to write on reddit. That's completely fine.   I like to think that the SuperNova is very much like NaNoWriMo; it can be stressful but everyone has a different way of making it so go slow and steady and you will be able to make it .

[bumblerhizal-art]

throws upcoming fic plans at wall

1. The Novhen origin story (working title "Rites of Passage") is probably going to be at least 10k words, which is a lot for me. It takes place in spring of 9:29 Dragon, giving Novhen a year im service before the Blight begins. The Denerim portion will be more or less game accurate, but after he is conscripted, we deal with how the timeline readjusted so that Novhen and Alistair undergo their Joining together. Current main project.

2. When i finally have all Companion Novhen lines finished, I'll go through another round of editing, and upload the scripts to AO3. The changes will probably just be general quality edits, finalizing approval values, and consistency checks. Only working on incidentally.

3. There is one prompt for Zevwarden week i have an eye on. Well, more than one, but i can only feasibly work on one. The struggle is the only developed oc i have romanced him with is Novhen who broke up with him halfway through the game which really narrows down the range i can work with if i want to keep it compliant to my canon, and i get a lot of satisfaction out of adding to the official Novhen series.

4. I have two story prompts unrelated to the upcoming ship week that i still need to finish.

5. I've considered writing a longfic chronicling Novhen's playthrough of Origins, but that'll never come to fruition for a couple reasons that can mostly be summarized as either a matter of stamina or me hopping around the story too much. Either way, it can probably be blamed on the ADHD

What I'm thinking instead is, as I replay, I should be taking careful notes of all quests and relationships then record the story through Novhen's journal entries. Besides helping me figure out the dates, this allows for short entries largely made of sentence fragments (and sometimes deviating into lists and sketches!)

There are the issues that Novhen will exclude many things from the journal because it's either a Warden secret or sensitive information about someone else. For example, he's not going to give full details as to how his wedding went wrong. If he's keeping a journal, he knows there's a significant chance it will be preserved by his family after his death. Maybe even read. As he becomes more famous, that risk becomes greater. Of course, this could make for a fun dabble in unreliable narrator, but another partial solution is that once he becomes a Warden, Duncan starts training him on the ciphers

I-the-author could take the persona of a future/modern translator of the Hero of Ferelden's recently discovered personal journal. A wonderful excuse to add annotations within the text for a sense of comedy and another check against unreliable narrator. He writes something blatantly false and the translator attaches as a note a whole ass appendix proving him wrong

Before i can begin pumping that out, besides needing to already write it in full (+ the 60hr playthrough), i'll want to have written and uploaded Rites of Passage and how Novhen meets all the other origins. Also, this will be the playthrough that decides whether or not Loghain lives.

[pathsofoak]

4, 10, 11, and 12 for the meta ask game!! <3

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

Ask game link

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

Ooh, tough one. This is one I just wrote a little bit ago:

Teresa bit her lip. She wanted a cure. “I didn’t let them do anything to you…” She doubted, as she spoke, but said it anyway. “I didn’t do anything to you I wouldn’t have let them do to me.”

Teresa betrayed everyone to create a cure for the Flare, which got a lot of people tortured (but not her). She regrets betraying them, but she hasn't accepted yet that there isn't going to be a cure, and still believes she needs to play a part in it. She tells one of the people she betrayed she would let herself be experimented on the same way everyone else was, but in reality she is slowly starting to realize part of the reason she betrayed everyone was because she was scared of just that.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Usually I start with a character arc, then make a vague idea for a plot make sense with that. After that I outline the plot (usually seven point/three act structure, they're the same to me), and then each scene separately. After that I start writing, but I don't necessarily follow those scenes exactly, just the main plot. The scene outlines are more of a loose sketch (where the main outline is like... the lines on graph paper?)

11. What do you envy in other writers?

Visual descriptions. I can't do them. I'm a visual thinker, I see my whole story in front of me like a film, but I can't put it into words. I think the only one of my OCs I've physically described so far is Justin, because him being tall as fuck and just really big in general is surprisingly plot relevant (and also I just had a much clearer idea of him beforehand). Same for places. When it becomes time for my second draft I'll be constantly referencing my setting thesauruses.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

A little bit. I want it to reach the right people I guess. In the case of my current WIP, Maze Runner fans who don't mind a little angsty found-family fix-it. And by little I mean a five-part longfic with at least 32 chapters per part...

All jokes aside though, I do think it would be cool if people really loved it, but I mostly write it for myself. That's why I'm writing the entire thing first before I post, so I don't get discouraged if it doesn't get any attention (because the Maze Runner isn't a very active fandom anymore, and I don't write the most popular kind of fic, I think).

[syrupness]

Meta ask meme for writers

A bunch of questions I answer about being a writer!

Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? I have 2 current projects I am working on. One is my main series about Casey Cooke, her life before and after my AU divergence from canon. I still have a bit to write, but progress is on track. I love it because I got to put a lot of traumatic things down on paper in a purge, then polish them up to be entertaining fic. Writing for therapy works for me! The other project is my work taking up challenges, Chocolate Box and probably some Bingo, and I want to be a Febuwhump completionist! I’ve got outlines, and some canon dialogue already written out but I am just having fun jumping around the prompts and stepping into fandoms I always wanted to do. Getting a chance to get headfics into words is a super big bonus! 

Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project I am looking forward to getting back to my Taken longfic. I have so much love for those characters, but I’m really looking forward to the sections that will intersect with Taken 3 and I can give different perspectives on canon!

What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway) I don’t know... I guess I would like to see a scene from the 2006 Norwegian slasher movie Cold Prey/Fritt Vilt where Jannicke and the Mountain man just look at each other out in the snow and he lets her go. 

Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like) *She stepped closer to read: Get in if you want to be kidnapped.* That is a line from my smutty crack story Kiss C(h)asey. I have issues with canon Dennis in Split, but the Casey/Dennis pairing wasn’t leaving me alone, so that is what I wrote to make my brain calm down and get back on track. That line came to me in the middle of the night, and just works so well in the story.  

What character that you’re writing do you most identify with? Kim Mills from Taken.

What character do you have the most fun writing? Ansel (as I have created him) from Split/Glass. Any opportunity to have fun with maths!

What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree? I bounce around between ideas a lot, so one work will be very different to the next I post. I generally swing between fluff or crack and whump. I am incapable of writing a story as consecutive parts because of that. Also my sentences get shorter when characters are in distress. I have no idea if my readers agree with these characteristics, so tell me! 

Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read? Somewhat.... I’ll read almost anything in the fandom I am in so there is a lot of overlap there, but as for reading the tropes or themes I write? No. I read a lot of science and published crime books.

Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? I get to my longfics through drabbles! Most of my drabbles and one shots are linked to a greater structure. I always have a bit of a plan (or an overall arc I want to do) when I start something, but I work out most of the details as I go. I just wish I could write longfic in consecutive chapters, though attempting that is what has led to my writers block for Being Taken Changes You.

How would you describe your writing process? Scattershot with minimal editing.

What do you envy in other writers? The ability to write certain characters in character. They get the tricky characters voice’s so so right and I envy that. 

Do you want your writing to be famous? I want my fandoms to be bigger, I want more people to find them and love them. I care about the feelings people have, not about personal fame (unless it brings me money! 😂)

Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself? I have a bunch of headfics I have kept for myself, but most things I write now I post publicly. As this Tumblr account is for my fannish stuff, you’ll find my fannish stuff here on AO3 though I am also active writing other things for other subjects. 

At what point in writing do you come up with a title? At the very end. Generally after I’ve done an edit and it is ready to post.

Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? I generally start a fic by writing it’s summary, I end the fic with the title. It is definitely the tags I find hard!

Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?) You’ll find out in Chocolate Box/Febuwhump that I’m trying new fandoms.

Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations? Does having a chronic illness, where I basically have to poison myself with medication so that my disease doesn’t progress and cripple/kill me count as something that would surprise my readers? yes. Would knowing that really make a difference to how they perceive me? I hope not.  

Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. Nope. If I have an alternate idea I would still post it as a remix or other linked work.

Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?) I try to avoid repeating myself too much, but tropes, oh tropes! Grief sex, dangerous guys being tender and polite, older man/younger woman, and colour as symbolism for other things. 

Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Oh, there is so much. Colour symbolism is the obvious one for Split but I think my readers have well and truly picked up on that! I really like the complicated relationship I crafted between Kim and Sam in my Taken longfic. I don’t want it to be easy, they have complicated histories that are glossed over in the movies. Kim got kidnapped by sex traffickers for goodness sakes! There has to be fallout from that. And Sam is a family friend, and significantly older, so of course there is going to be weirdness but also familiarity and comfort. I’ve done a big clue for future scenes in one fic, but I can’t give the surprise away!

What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?) Film! just because I want to see my ships come to life and be new canon!

Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them? I reread everything occasionally, even if I do cringe hard at my Fantastic Beasts fanfic. Others, like I Had A Dream I Was Dying and To Be The Braver One, I still feel very proud that I wrote them.

What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest? The core of Being Taken Changes You has been a headfic for me since Taken 3 came out. I wrote the first part in 2017 when I had enough confidence to put my work out there, then last year it turned into a longfic, so going on 8 years now... 

Would you say your writing has changed over time? My writing has gotten better.

What part of writing is the most fun? Seeing the hit count rise and getting comments! Community validation is the sweetest feeling, and I also like just chatting with people who like the same things as me. Fandom Communities for the win!

[warp6]

If you're still doing the fic asks from yesterday, 2, 4 and 13 for with beautiful reluctance!

(put a fic title + questions from this list in my inbox!)

aaah thanks for the ask!

2: What scene did you first put down?

This is such an interesting question for a longfic that was over a year in the writing. I actually went back and looked at the version history to figure this out, and it’s a good thing that I did because it turns out I was totally wrong with all my best guesses as to what it was!

I jump around a lot (within scenes, between scenes) when I write; that’s always been my writing style, since as I’m writing one portion of the story, as soon as I have an idea for a later part, I just jump ahead and write out the part I’m thinking of. (Fucking hilariously, I had to come back and finish that sentence just now because I’d jumped somewhere else in this post after writing ‘portion of the story,’).

My memory before checking the version history was that the first scene I’d written had, in fact, just been the first scene of the first chapter. According to version history, though, I wrote down the first 1.5 sentences of the first scene:

The sky is overcast and the garden is overgrown. The woman walking up the path

(unchanged from the final version, except for the substitution of ‘person’ for ‘woman’), and then jumped to writing the scene where Janeway finds the stuffed animal and its tag at the end of Chapter 3.

More broadly, I have a pretty clear memory, considering it was well over a year ago, of the first night I started writing this fic–where I was, what I was feeling, etc. Pretty much from conception of the idea, I knew the premise of the fic, what it was about, and where it was going–though not all the major details, which I fleshed out over the next year as I outlined and wrote.

When I opened the new document, I believe I first hunted down the beginning quote–from which the fic gets its name–then came up with the setting of that very first scene, which snapped together in my mind from the quote in combination with a concept from the young adult novel that is credited on AO3 at the end of the fic. Then, evidently, I jumped ahead to the stuffed animal scene when I thought of it, to go ahead and get that down. I also wrote a rudimentary list of chapters that night, since the name/setting/[important spoiler characteristic] of each chapter were key to the premise of the fic.

About a month later, I started working on the fic again, and it looks like I then laid down sections of the first three chapters all at the same time.

-

Remaining questions under the cut for mild fic spoilers (I’m avoiding spoiling anything too major even under the cut, but there’s definitely some discussion of later-in-the-fic stuff) and length!

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Ohhh, you know exactly which one. (Despite being the cretin who wrote it, I still practically scream every time I read over the scene and reach that line. ;)

Second favorite… I think I’m going to go with this line from Chapter 15:

“But I think he’s ready to come home.”

I think I like this line so much in context because it connects to so many different threads of the story, and also because it (I think/hope) successfully feels like a resolution to them. (I literally only just now went and checked, and it turns out it’s essentially the last line of dialogue in the fic! There’s one more spoken line but it doesn’t really count–plus the epilogue–but basically, it’s the last line spoken by one person to another. I never actually realized that this line was the last real line of dialogue when I was writing or editing, maybe because there is a full scene after it and an epilogue after that. In other words, I wasn’t thinking of this line in that light when I wrote it–which makes it interesting to me that it was the first potential second-favorite line I thought of, several weeks later, even though I’d never noticed its significance as Last Line of Dialogue while I was writing).

Elements of the fic that this line connects to, off the top of my head, sans spoilers: It’s a line about him (and all the moments that connects to, throughout the fic and at the beginning especially). It echoes the most famous line from the show itself, “Set a course…for home;” this fic was definitely a love letter to Star Trek: Voyager (and said line even makes an appearance in Chapter 10.) It also echoes Janeway’s end-of-Chapter 13 realization about she would have wanted ***** to do (which, in that moment, both really is and really isn’t about *****). And finally, it concludes the conversation Janeway has just had with ***** in Chapter 15, metaphorically being a final affirmation (with “he” in this sense being a stand-in for *****) of *****’s right to feel safe, not worry about protecting *******, and know the whole ordeal was over.

But despite all this, the line itself is just a lowkey end to the conversation, not any kind of emotional bomb. At least to me, it (hopefully) feels sort of gently satisfying, the end of the emotional catharsis I was trying to bring about in the final chapters (and which I sure as heck went through at least as the writer, lololol). In addition to all those direct connections to story elements, I feel like the line just has a nice all-around vibe of “Hey, you know what? This whole angsty story? That you took the time to read, and the characters went through in-universe? It’s over. The End. :)” It just feels very softly, peacefully conclusion-y, somehow.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING THIS QUESTION SO I CAN TALK ABOUT MUSIC! Musical inspiration was so important to me when I was writing this fic. :D

First of all, I’m just gonna copy what I have in the fic endnotes:

* By the power vested in me, the official theme song of this fic is Dance to Another Tune by First Aid Kit.

* I also listened to this specific piano cover of the Lullaby from Pan’s Labyrinth when I was writing the garden scenes…which, as luck would have it, is only present on the Internet as the first song in this Ancillary Justice fanmix. (You don’t have to have an an account to listen, and it shouldn’t show you an ad when you listen for the first time). (This is a similar but slower version on Youtube.)

So those are the most important songs that helped me–I don’t always listen to music before I write, but for this fic I made a real point of listening to that Lullaby cover to help me capture the particular feel of the garden/observatory scene.

ALSO! :D I was considering making a playlist for the fic, which I didn’t really get around to doing since (judging by commenters/lack thereof) readership dropped off pretty sharply as the fic got longer, so I just didn’t think that many people would be into it, and I was also pretty tired from all the work I’d poured into the fic itself and ready to go focus on other things. But I would still enjoy doing it for myself–and I know that, of the people who did read the fic, there are a couple of major music lovers–so I might still get around to it some time!

Songs slated to be included are The Grey by Icon for Hire (ironically, the song is more relevant for the chapter called “The Theatre” than the chapter called “The Grey”–and furthermore, now that I think about it, Icon for Hire itself also has a song called Theatre that isn’t at all relevant to this fic, LOL), Navigate by Band of Skulls, maybe Never Let Me Go by Florence and the Machine, and maybe a few of my general Janeway/Voyager favorites that happen to be relevant to this fic: Falling by HAIM–relevant to the earlier chapters (“Never look back and never give up, and if it gets rough it’s time to get rough”)–and We Are All Made of Stars by Moby for the epilogue.

[helloamhere]

8, 21, 27 and 33 for the fic writer asks pls and thank youuuuuu!!! xox

Thank YOU love!! 8) Where do you take your inspiration from?

oh man allllll over. This is one of my favorite things about writing. When I’m blocked on a story I just look for other stories, usually in other media like movies (I’m a huge movie fan) or books (in different genres from the one I’m writing) or history or science or just out in the world. I think I mostly get inspiration from appreciating other people’s work especially in very different genres from my own (because I don’t have to compare myself with it, hah). Last night I was watching Mulan and dissecting all the amazing scene transitions and one liners in that movie (it’s such a tightly written Disney film…like the entire intro is amazing?! That “how many men does it take to deliver a message?” line in the middle is SO FLIPPING GOOD). Yesterday I was on this east coast beach people-watching with my girlfriend and just noticing interactions and had a scene idea. I read a machine learning paper the other day and stuck some of that shit into some of my original fiction. Stories are everywhere! 21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?Ok how random is this going to be, but. I love Dave Barry, the humor columnist? He’s such a brilliant satirist and he was also able to sustain such a high pitch of absurdity for so long, and so vividly. My favorite thing about warmhearted satire is the way it makes you feel seen as a human, like all the small details of your life matter?? He gives me that feeling always. I still remember this bit he wrote about going to Disneyworld and how the stamps they give you at the entrance turn you into like, some kind of cow and you move forward through the line with all the other cows–it’s insanity but it also was such a great reflection on the feeling of corporate large-scale urban spaces, which is something that I think about as a social scientist, too. These individual sentences of his stuck in my mind even though I probably read them fifteen years ago. I remember this absurd bit he wrote about fitness trends, and about throwing a harp in your living room for elegance when you realize you’re going to have guests over and your place is a mess….also, like everyone who writes a solid column for years, his pacing is on point. I highly encourage reading famous newspaper columnists to learn about tight pacing. 27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?I’ve gotten more outline-y as I’ve been working a little harder on my writing. I’ve said this a few times before, I always write the end of a story before I write the middle. I need to know where they get to, what the theme is about, even if it’s not the ‘full’ end. Beyond that lately I’ve been making outlines but then not sticking to them…it’s some kind of balancing act for me between discovering what I want to write versus planning it. For much more atmospheric shorter stories I kinda just write, but for long stuff, definitely outline. E.g. for my next longfic I have the entire end scene written already as well as the really big emotional narrative climax, and I also have a few pivotal emotional turning points. I’m actually having trouble writing the beginning! 33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?YOU have given me some that I treasure immensely!!