#fanfic authors please read the lyrics of a song before associating it with your fic I'm begging

[sonderlivra]

March and August

Anon, I LOVE these asks! Thank you!!

march: do you listen to music whilst writing?

and

august: are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs/etc?

Since both of these questions are somewhat similar, I’ll answer them both together. I DO listen to music when I write, quite frequently, actually. I love doing tasks to music, even reading, because it serves as a sort of buffer between my concentration and any other ambient noises that could distract me. And, of course, it helps me get into the mood.

I don’t often mention the music I listen to with the fic I post, because I prefer it if every reader got their own impressions of my fic without my influence. :) That said, I HAVE mentioned certain songs to go with some of my fics before. Here they are:

All is Violent All is Bright - God is an Astronaut for the fic All is Violent, All is Bright (a glorious post-rock instrumental piece that is perfect for the first Eruri fic I ever wrote)

Run The Jewels - Legend Has It (Instrumental) for the fic Power Play (badass instrumental hip-hop for my badass Gang AU MikaAnnie one-shot)

The Chairman’s Waltz - Memoirs of a Geisha Soundtrack for the fic An Act of Grace (the perfect song for the perfect Eruri waltz)

These are the songs I have actually mentioned in the Author’s Notes in these fics. Other than these songs, I actually have a few more I would LOVE to share with you guys, since they do get me into the mood to write! (also PLEASE GOOGLE THE LYRICS AND SUFFER WITH ME)

The End of the Dream (Synthesis) - Evanescence for the fic Stranger and all canon Eremika scenes in the manga right now. :( The lyrics are a punch in the gut, and I am convinced Amy Lee cannot be human with that glorious voice of hers.

Unintended - Muse for the Eruri fic Brink. I literally copy-pasted the lyrics of this song into my doc, so I could scroll back to read it and immerse myself in how perfectly they describe the tenderness of the Eruri dynamic from Erwin’s POV. It also sounds like a lullaby which is the exact Mood��� I was hoping to achieve with the fic goddamn.

Thanks again for this very fun ask, anon! Music is one of my biggest loves!

fanfic questions themed around time

[fheythfully]

fanfic author meme

my friend tagged me to answer all the questions in a fanfic author meme, and it is primarily for the Final Fantasy XIII fandom, so it’s located under a read more. :)

Fanfic Ask Meme

A: How did you come up with the title to [fic of your choice]?

Most of my fic names come from lyrics in songs that have to do with the story content, no matter how vague. Poetry also makes its way in there, and on the very rare occasion, something I come up with that sounds pleasantly appropriate.

A Series of Firsts was the only one in the past five or so years to get a title that accurately and simply described the story, something which I typically never do.

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

No, actually. I write primarily angst and I have a very satisfying and healthy life, so… it all just comes out from somewhere? I am not entirely sure where.

C: What character do you identify with most?

Most recently, maybe Makoto from Persona 5? Growing up I felt that I had all these expectations on me from my family and the adults in my education (which I totally dug myself into by being smart and eager to please) and I always wanted to just say “fuck it” and stop caring about pleasing others and being the perfect student. Which took me until my third year in university to actually achieve but hey, better late than never.

D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with cause I’m a vampire smile (you’ll meet a sticky end)?

The title comes directly from the song ‘Vampire Smile’ by Kyla La Grange and it entirely fits so well for that fic. I definitely had it on replay the entire time I was writing.

E: If you wrote a sequel to Serendipity, what would it be about?

EDITED because I wrote for A Series of Firsts instead oops.

Serendipity would have a much shorter sequel - just lots of the gang being happy, of Fang and Vanille traipsing around the world, Yeul living in a big city and being amazed by all of it, Serah and Snow in a small French village with rose bushes and a kid or two and Light living in the same village with Hope being the Cool Aunt. Snow would have a motorcycle (and try to modify it to have a baby seat). Sazh would have a farm with chickens and livestock and live with his son and finally get the life he deserves. Maybe he runs into the reborn version of his wife and she remembers him. And live happily ever after. 

F: Care to share a favorite hurt/comfort fic?

I don’t have one :( I even went through my favorites on both FFnet and AO3. I just like anything that makes me cry, and I cry easily, and sad fics make me happy.

G: Care to share a favorite crack fic?

I rarely read crack but an amazing one I’ve been reading is Sincerely, Me by Ignis_Sassentia and SharkbaitHooHaHa on AO3. It is a FF15 texting fic and just phenomenal.

H: How would you describe your style?

Lots of run on sentences and disjointed narration. I prefer writing drabbles because I feel like that format lets me get away with using the style better. I like using metaphors and a good balance between simple and more flowery language.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

Angst. All the angst. Also, if a fandom has some sort of divine figure in it, then you can bet it’s gonna be worked into my fics – usually as either a passive or active antagonist. This is a big reason why I still love writing for FF13 so much, because thank you, Bhunivelze. And Etro. Mwyn too. I need to write more Mwyn.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to any Bhunivelze!Hope and Etro!Light fic.

I said to the sun, tell me about the big bang is my favourite out of the few (two?) I’ve written where both take after the divinity. Alternate ending to that one would be, their friends catch on and end them before they can succeed in destroying and recreating the world.

For just Bhuni!Hope, of which I wrote more, eve as my latest one – I considered Light actually realizing what’s happening within the fic itself and being the one to kill him. She would realize this in the midst of a relationship Bhuni!Hope has succeeded in constructing with her, and there would be lots of tears, and horror, and the symbolic knife stuck in Hope’s torso.

Gosh, I just can’t give you guys happy things, can I?

K: What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?

The premise in A Series of Firsts, where Hope and Snow have to come to terms with failing the world, and Light dying and becoming the Goddess, and then having to witness Light and Serah as children and then take them in, and do all in their power to prevent Orphan, and having them be family and Hope has a child with Light and then… they fail. And have to start all over again.

I’ve always appreciated time loops.

L: What's the weirdest AU you've ever come up with?

I discussed an idea with RainbowSerenity about a texting crack fic in the new world about the gang placing bets on how long it will take for Light and Hope to get together, and just being little shits in general (with a very liberal use of emoticons) and then Light and Hope are just there, like… should we tell them? When do you think they’ll realize we’ve been together for months now?

Also, an appearance by Bhunivelze via repeated friend requests to Light’s Facebook through a multitude of accounts. The sentence “how the hell does he have service in the deep ass of space!?” is written down in my phone.

I have to be in a very specific mood to write something of this sort, haha.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

The AU fic above. Hope finding the temple with Light’s statue in 13-2, and ritually visiting it before it becomes inaccessible. Also, a fic I will shortly be releasing on – once again – Bhuni!Hope.

Outside of the 13 fandom, I have further ideas for my 14 OCs and how they meet, fall in love, and then go their own ways. An idea for an original fantasy story I’ve been sitting on (I have the entire plot written out, too…).

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

If someone could read my mind and finish that one FF8 fic I started in 2007 and never finished, despite rewriting like three times, it would be a miracle. The OC I created for it has grown alongside me all this time and I treasure her deeply, even though her story will never be properly finished.

O: How do you begin a story--with the plot, or the characters?

I usually start with a plot idea I want to write about and then the characters usually write themselves.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

The way I write my oneshots, the most planning I ever do is I have the final sentence in mind and then I have to write to get to that point. When I write (wrote) multi-chaptered stories, I typically had the plot mapped out and sometimes things would just write themselves in the process.

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

That FF8 fic. I don’t even want to talk about it, haha. Also a Narnia fic I was writing and had like, two sequels planned for. I am just horrible at finishing things.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

Not really? I always write however and whatever I want. I really admire attica on FFnet, though – their writing takes me breath away.

Also Sylvia Plath and E.E Cummings make my heart skip a beat.

S: Any fandom tropes you can't resist?

Bhuni!Hope, and Etro!Light. As has been made obvious.

T: Any fandom tropes you can't stand?

Whenever Snow is being written as useless or dumb. That’s my biggest one.

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven't tried yet.

…Light and Snow, very brief in the original 13. I actually had something written down when the game first came out, but never properly wrote it.

Don’t kill me. It would be very sad where they share their angst over Serah and then realize what they’re doing and part ways.

V: A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?

Yeul. YEEUUULLL. I love Yeul. So much.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?

Specific ones.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer.

All of them. Primarily, Light, Hope, and Yeul.

Y: A character you want to protect.

All of them. From me.

Z: Major character death--do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can't tolerate?

I love reading it if it’s written well, and I’ve never written specifics just background plot. There aren’t any deaths I can’t tolerate, because if done well, it can throw things into a nice twist.

[onlymorelove]

How do you get the inspiration to begin a story, and how do you get the motivation to complete it?

Um, apologies in advance, but this got long. Peer beneath the cut if you want.

Good morning, Nonny. :) Thank you for the ask.

How do I get the inspiration to begin a story?

My inspiration for starting any story is tangled up in the reasons why I write:

1. I write because it’s fun. I enjoy it. It rarely feels easy, but I love, love, love words, and playing with them is just plain pleasurable. The rhythms of certain sentences, a unique snippet of description, a snatch of dialogue that sounds just right… GAH. I love words and writing :)

One of the most recent fics I wrote, some words build houses in your throat, grew out of three things: 

a. A poem by Nayyirah Waheed. When I decide I’m going to write, I often read somebody else’s work before I try to put down some of my own words. Reminding myself how words can look helps me.

b. A Tony Stark Bingo square for “missing scene” that I wanted to fill. 

c. An anonymous prompt that requested SteveTony + confession. 

Anyway, I looked at all that stuff. So when I started that story, I knew I wanted to write Avengers fanfic that related to those three things, but I had no specific plot or dialogue or destination in mind. Then I reread that poem, and because brains are funny and like to make all kinds of associations when given just a bit of input or stimulation, I started thinking about Avengers: Endgame and things Tony might have wanted or needed to confess but didn’t actually confess in the movie. I knew pretty quickly what I wanted Tony to confess to Steve, but I didn’t want to start off with that. Then Natasha popped into my head, and I started thinking about her and Tony’s relationship. I put down some words and then put down some more before I realized where it was I was trying to go. Very little of what is actually in that story was stuff I consciously thought about until I started typing. 

By the time I got to writing the part with Tony and Steve, I had decided that I wanted to address, in some tiny way, the fact that Steve’s Irish, and his parents emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. Also, my DH and I talk a fair amount about how blatantly racist the Trump administration’s policies are…Anyway, stories are like icebergs: you’ve got the actual text that you see on the surface, and you’ve got all the other research, subtext, and author-brain detritus that’s submerged in the (dark) water beneath. ;)

Brains like to make associations or react to things; give a brain some input in the form of a word prompt, dialogue prompt, a photograph, song lyrics, a melody, someone else’s fic or novel, a smell, or a random fact on the back of a cereal box, and that brain will travel somewhere. Not all those journeys will take you somewhere that ends up being a good story, of course. Not all my writing can be traced to a direct trigger, of course, but prompts and triggers definitely help my brain start going somewhere if I don’t already have a specific idea I’m working toward. If you want suggestions for prompt sites, books, and so on, just let me know. Happy to share. 

Asking “What if?” also helps. What if this character made one different choice? What if this character said this instead of that? What if this character lived instead of died?

2. From Maria Taylor’s “Time Lapse Lifeline,” which is a great song:

“Oh we dreamed a life

It was just like that, was just like that

And just like that, and just like that it’s done”

From the moment we take our first breaths, we are dying. None of us will make it out of this alive. I say this not to be morbid but because it’s true. In 2018, I lost my father and brother in a span of less than five months. For months afterward, I couldn’t write. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It was a terrible feeling. But I kept trying because I start to feel itchy and grouchy if I go too long without doing it. And yes, there have been huge chunks of time when I haven’t written much at all. But experience has taught me that writing helps keep me functional and mentally healthy. Different people process life in different ways. Some people talk a lot with friends or family. Some people draw. But we all do something with the things we see and experience. For me, some of that processing is done through writing. 

So I write as an act of living because I am dying, and I don’t know when my time will be up.

3. More song lyrics for you because I’m annoying like that. From The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”: 

“The world is a vampire, sent to drain

…

Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage”Life is beautiful, but let’s face it, it’s also fucking hard, and while the systems we are parts of may differ depending on the country, etc., to some extent we are all rats in a cage or cogs in someone else’s machine. Oh, there are so many things we HAVE to do. The system(s) want us to sit down, shut up, go to school, work, pay taxes, sometimes raise kids, and so on. 

Well, I do or have done many of those things, but I don’t want to shut up. The sheer act of writing, of creating anything, is both an act of hope and subversion. 

So I write to rebel, just a little. 

3. Western canon, at least, is filled with straight white men’s voices. My fic is just fic; it’s not Great Literature ™, but I’m not straight, I’m not white, and I’m not a man. Still, I want to take up space in the world, too, damn it. Writing is one way I do that. 

How do I get the motivation to complete a story?

Well, I have tons of unfinished stories. Many of them I will finish, but there are a bunch that have been sitting there for years, incomplete, and will remain that way. :) The ones I’ve finished thus far I’ve finished through sheer force of will. That’s it. I made it like work: I not only want to finish this story, I have to. Also, I want to get better at writing, and the main way to get better at something is to do it over and over again. By “better,” I mean that I want to improve at writing stories that entertain myself and anyone else who happens to read them, and that also illustrate SOMETHING about what it means to be human.

(I have read more “how to write” books and articles than any sane person should read, and the main thing I’ve learned is that they keep me from actually writing.) So I tell myself that with every piece of writing I complete, I’m learning something, however small, even though every time I finish something, I’m convinced that I’ll never be able to write anything else—or at least anything else that’s “good.” The longer I go without writing, though, the harder it feels to restart, so I do my best not to stray for too long, or else I pay for it. 

My personal solution? Less focus on writing “good” stories or poems and more focus on doing the work—just continuing to write—and trusting that in the process, the writing will improve, even if it’s not by much.

This video sums up what I mean, and it’s had a meaningful impact on my writing philosophy, hell on my life philosophy. Finished, not perfect. 

The act of creating something, whether it’s a story or a painting, can bring up all kinds of anxiety. What works for me may not work for you, but it helps me a lot to acknowledge that I’m anxious but I’m going to keep pushing anyway. What’s my other choice? Stop writing and then later ask myself why I stopped? The years will pass and eventually I’ll be dead; why not accept the doubts and anxiety and take some risks in the meantime?I hope I haven’t overwhelmed you; I’ve tried to be honest and specific. If you want to chat some more, please send me another ask or DM me. I wish you luck with all your creative endeavors. If you want to make something, just BEGIN somewhere. Getting started is often the hardest part.