#fanfic related musings

[bylightofdawn]

I am dealing with some interesting cognitive dissonance in this chapter and the struggle is REAL. Regarding how Rufus exhibits in canon itself some pretty big red flags for possessiveness and unhealthy attachments.

Not to go all armchair psychologists but from what we know of his childhood, it was awful. His father constantly berated him and put him down. We know he had a mother who died at some point but not real information into their relationship. So I think it's safe to assume he faced a lot of isolation, a lack of a caring support system and the only example of adult behavior he had to model after was his father who is a fucking monster.

So yeah, when he gloms onto someone they are his and you are not allowed to take what is his away from him and god help you if you get between him and what he views as his. Note how visibly peeved he was at Hojo getting his claws into Tseng post Tseng getting impaled by Sephiroth in Rebirth.

There's also an argument to be made about how Rufus prolly has some issues with potentially viewing people as individual people.

He straight up tells Cloud he is HIS/Shinra property on like...two occasions I think? I need to replay Remake to be honest. (also bless you delightful Rufus/Cloud shippers taking that and running with it, I <3 you)

So yeah, Rufus Shinra is a whole ass buttload of red flags and an sane person would run screaming into the night.

Which brings me to my dilemma of writing and acknowledging he's a garbage fire of a person and still trying to write a fucking romance pairing.

Example, he just found out Reeve and Tseng used to be closer when they were younger being of relatively the same age, came up in Shinra together and Tseng used to be bb!Reeve's bodyguard back in the day.

And here's Rufus being possessive and jealous of BOTH OF THEM at the same time. Because he views both of them as his in a way and he's being torn in two different directions because they have this hereunto unknown relationship.

Which again, huge red flag territory. And somehow I gotta be true to the character and find a way of pulling this bullshit out of a magic hat and not making myself and the reader want to crawl out of their skin and run away from said garbage fire of a man.

But not everyone has the same viewpoints and experience as myself. I grew up watching my mother go through a series of steadily more terrible boyfriends who were abusive to her and to us in a lesser extent so this sort of thing definitely makes my skin crawl while a different reader might find that jealousy akin to ardent passion and awww he really loves xyz. Because it's fanfiction and it's a safe space where you can indulge yourself without any real-life repercussions.

SO YEAH, suffice it to say I am all over the place emotionally in this chapter.

I'm going to step off my soapbox now, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Pfffft.

[melanthaeunomia]

Do y’all ever reread an old unpublished fanfic you wrote and then get invested on the storyline but get sad because you never wrote the next part of it, just me?

[sun-spark]

Writer mood - reading your own fics and thinking "Damn. I wish this author would update and post the next part already." Cause, ya know, you wanna know what happens next too.

[aparticularbandit]

Toko: I HAVE A BESTIE RIGHT NOW WHAT IF THAT MAKES ALL MY BOOKS SUCK

me: Having a bestie usually makes your writing better. Especially if your bestie is also a writer. Not that you'll get that with Komaru, but—

Komaru: Hey!

me: You should have made besties with Hifumi instead of being on your high horse about how fanfic can never compare to actual literature.

[darkmatters-ghost]

I've run into a problem...

06 sucks!

Like we knew that, but writing wise, 06 is such a mess, and I don't- I don't know what to do about it, I have fanfic ideas that take place in 06! And it's such a mess that I feel like it'll tank the quality of my fanfic just from its garbage-ness!

And you might be thinking, oh, but 06 isn't that bad, you said yourself, it's one of your favorite games of all time, and other people deal with it just fine so–

No, you don't get it, it is that bad. And you can tell because almost nothing from that game made it out alive. Like, conceptually, there's some really cool stuff in 06. Crisis City's unique environment, Mephiles as a villain, double chaos control time powers (well...), Iblis, Soleanna. All that stuff is good, but because it was in 06. 06's garbage kinda rubbed off on it, and when everyone realized the game was horrible (including SEGA) all that stuff was never attempted again. No one decided to try and make Mephiles work in new games, no mention of Crisis City, or Solanna, or anything. It all just died with the game. Which makes it all the more impressive that Silver made it out alive.

But that's not the point. We all know it's bad.

The point is that idk where to go from here? Do I keep it the way it is? Do I change it? I'm leaning towards change but what should I change? Would people like those changes?

For example, Blaze is a mess. She's "got amnesia" or whatever, and she's here, but she doesn't talk to anyone but Silver (she almost does when she says "blue hedgehog" but that barely makes any sense and it wouldn't surprise me if it was secretly a pun lost in translation), she always seems to know what Silver was up to even if she wasn't there, she doesn't affect the plot other than making Silver doubt his judgement and then leaving, it's-, it's just a mess.

So, what if we cut Blaze out, altogether? Like, she left before Silver runs into Memphis so Silver's on his own. And since silver can't rely on her to tell him whether or not to trust Mephiles, it makes it so Silver believing him shows it off as a character trait of Silver's desperate naivety instead of it feeling like Blaze sitting there watching him get tricked cuz "it'd be funny". That whole scene really feels like Silver and Blaze get tricked by Mephiles because the plot demanded it of them more than anything else.

Plus, if you don't have Blaze here, Silver's heroes journey can be, in part, trying to figure out what to do when no one's around. Lean on other people less, make his own choices. You wouldn't even really need to cut Blaze's dialogue because Silver would be thinking "what would Blaze do/say?"

And I think it'd add to their friendship, the idea that when he comes back to the future and says he knows how to defeat Iblis, she just goes along with it, and is willing to do anything for Silver because they have such a strong relationship, because she trusts him.

But would people like that retcon? What if people hate it cuz there's less Blaze content?

Idk. It's just something I've been thinking about, there's more things I'd like to change, but luckily, a lot of 06 can be improved by adding extra context, or slightly different introductions that barely change the story.

I'd love to hear what other ppl have to say about dealing with 06's writing, tho

[i-read-too-much-fanfic]

voltron fans stop naming soulmate au fics with variations of strong but then have nothing to do woth the red strong of fate challenge impossible

[billowingangel]

🖍♻️🤔?

🖍Post Any sentence from your wip

Matthew yelled which was really just slightly louder than his normal speaking voice but that was very unusual so his brother scampared and as did the priest. 

This is the current fic I'm working on and planning to finish tonight! Got so hyped up writing it that now I can't sleep!

♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP

Well I'm currently working on some oneshots with Canada for rarepair week. For day 5 I was going to do Ukraine and Canada but I've switched her out. And I switched the ship for day 4 was going to be Germany and Canada but decided someone else.

A while ago I started a couple fics but I may abandon them 🤔 One is an omegaverse and I've never written omegaverse before so i feel a bit silly and out of my depth.

🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

I have a couple other rarepair ideas floating around my noggin. I want to soon write a GerCan and NedCan. But I think I also want to write some with the Nordics and maybe write SuFin.

I also have this one idea about Matthew going missing (kidnapped) and how people would react. It's similar to another story I've started (Off The Grid) but in that story it's nationverse and he purposefully disappears. I really need to update that!

Also been thinking about maybe doing a fan fiction relating to the Olympics 🤔 Or hockey and Matthew is captain and center of his team and his team is doing absolutely fantastic! They are rocking it! But then because of how awesome Matthew's team is doing the government realizes "oh hey our personification is on a national hockey team 😡 not allowed! what if normal people find out about personifications?!" And so Matthew must choose hockey or being ' ' good ' '

Also been thinking about writing a RoChu fan fiction! A mutual of mine really likes that and I'd like to write it for her. But I haven't written RoChu in years so I'm a bit hesitant, I should probably read some more RoChu fics before I begin that.

Also...i want to write an X Reader....but not for Hetalia! 😯 This character I love literally has ZERO fan fiction ships or x readers with him!! 😳 But I haven't watched the movie he's been in, in a while. So I want to rewatch that and write that then! And maybe I'd also write some Hetalia x readers. That is how I got into Hetalia in the first place 😂

Ok time to stop yapping! Here's the WIP ask game

[sorrygotthesesacks]

Thinking of this Gundam Wing AU I had in mind, once upon a time, where Heero learned to drive a stick and there was always the same CD in the car, so he started to associate shifting with a specific song from the CD.

Fast forward to when he meets Duo. After a while, Duo realizes that every time Heero drives, this one particular song is playing on the stereo, almost like Heero can't drive without it.

It's not that he can't drive without it; it just seems that way because it's too ingrained now.

I am sure that at the time I thought of this, I probably had a song in mind, too. Maybe something that I heard a lot right after I learned to drive a five-speed. It's gone now, alas.

[musecheerios]

May or may not have a kind of.

Fanfic thing. Spike and Cere don't fall in love but it ends with her thinking of him as a friend that she owes a lot to and he's like "...I mean. Nah- you don't have to do anything."

But I just need to write the whole thing, fix some things that don't sound right to me, and then mentally battle with myself whether I should really post it or not. 😂

[laibasreverie]

then why when i cry alone, do i wish for someone to find me?

[bylightofdawn]

So I updated the compiled masterpost for my JasPlo fic and it's a hair shy of 84,000 words. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

This might actually be the longest thing I have ever written in my entire like.

Yo, that's like an actual novel.

WHAT THE FUCK.

And I still have a lot planned.

I think.....I have enough pre-written I would be comfortable maybe committing to a bi-weekly posting schedule. Fucks sake I have 15K up over however many chapters posted so I have PLENTY of buffer space and I could always stop if say tomorrow my muses dry up and I can't write shit.

Of course, that requires me to be disciplined enough to actually proofread and edit. This focused writing thing is awesome but I don't have any of my proofreading plugins installed so my fic is even more mistake-riddled than normally because I just kinda edit as I go whenever Grammarly or prowritingaid point out something is off.

And boy howdy do I hate editing. LOL Professional proofreaders and editors might actually be touched in the head. Like, credit where it is due, they are fucking superheroes of the writing industry but whoever chooses that as their career path, I don't know how you enjoy much less don't suffer through proofreading someone else's semi-polished work.

Hmmm so I was debating maybe going to see the new Dungeons and Dragons movie tonight but I might put that off till Sunday and maybe NOT do the whole editing thing and instead start the next chapter.

I high-key want to involve Tyvokka somehow and drag hi into this mess so he can shamelessly tease poor Plo

[sohannabarberaesque]

We'd be curious to know ...

Exactly how old Ding-a-Ling (Hokey Wolf's boon companion), Bon-Bon (Loopy De Loop's nephew), Bubi Bear (the rather excitable one of the Hair Bear Bunch) and Boogie (the CB Bears' troubleshooter) are for the sake of canon and backstory ...

What exactly makes the Skatebirds especially proficient in inline skating and skateboarding ...

How exactly Yogi Bear and Square Bear can manage to eat so much in "tourist-type goodies" on a par with Shaggy and Scooby ...

Exactly what tricks and stunts the Cattanooga Cats manage to use to fend off Chessie the Autograph Hound and her overzealously obnoxious desires for their autographs, while being accepting of more legitimate and "responsible" such ...

How the sheer adaptability of Trolldom to the American South (while still keeping close to trollditional ways) can best be explained without giving stuff away ...

How exactly Captain Caveman and The Slag Brothers could be considered as cousins for reasons going beyond mere gentics, let alone be fond of rather playful displays of caveman-type masculinity ...

[sylviareviar]

She's looking at her Weather Painters deck. It took her a long time to build it, since it's hard to get specific cards aside from ordering them online, but she managed to gather the cards necessary for the build she made. It wasn't a perfect build, but it was pure Weather Painters, and she loved the cards' designs.

"...I wish I could duel someone..."

[futurefind]

//if i had a nickel for every time i had rea haunt a loved one’s narrative i would have. so many nickels dsghsdghhdsg (even wrt the specific subsection of ‘dies permanently/indefinitely but still gets better!’)

[aparticularbandit]

i feel like tsumugi is everything i wanted toko and hifumi to be.

the actual character that i probably relate to the most.

like none of the characters in danganronpa are me, but tsumugi probably gets the closest.

but like. mastermind writer tsumugi.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I must say: I’m genuinely impressed by how creative all your stories are. I have three questions related to your writing process, if you don’t mind.

1) How do you stay motivated to keep creating?

2) Where do you find inspiration?

3) have you ever had an idea for a scene that you struggled to execute? How did you work through that to write the scene?

I love your stories! I look forward to every chapter of Charlie McNamara.

1) Motivation to create has never been an issue for me -- there's always some new thing to write about! My issue, and the issue faced by a lot of other writers, is the motivation to stick with a project to completion. That's hard. Everyone's got a hundred "works in progress" they'll never touch again because they took a break and when they came back, their attention was on something new and shiny.

My solution to this? Money.

The reason I started Curse Words as a web serial and opened a patreon for it wasn't because I ever expected to be able to make a living as a writer. I'm as surprised as anyone that so many kind people have put their support behind me and let me keep writing these fucked up stories instead of getting a real job. I did it because I wasn't getting my projects finished. I was doing what we all do; getting three quarters of the way through any given project and then finding something more fun to work on instead. And when you risk disappointing readers by doing that, well, that'll get you back in the seat over the little bumps, maybe pull you back to a project a few times. But when people are paying you actual cash in return for consistent output, on time, to story completion? That's a way bigger motivator. Even if it's just one guy. For a long time, I had one patron! It was enough! It worked! It's not about making a lot of money, which is borderline impossible as a writer (again, I still can't believe my supporters are so generous enough that i can make this my career). But it acts as some level of both proof that your work is valued, and an active obligation on your part to keep producing it on a consistent schedule. My readers are giving me something valuable for this. I can't let them down.

Sorry, I'm sure you wanted a more uplifting kind of answer. But that's just what works for me.

2) I've never really been sure how to take this question. This is basically the age-old 'where do you get your ideas?' and it... doesn't have an answer. You think of a thing and you write about it. As you resolve the problems and inconsistencies in the thing, that fills out more and more of the world of the story.

Angel is born of a mediocre Goosebumps book called Chicken, Chicken. There's a part in the book where the protagonist, slowly shapeshifting into a chicken, rips all his feathers out every morning in an attempt to slow the transformation. The book isn't really about that but it stuck with me for a good two decades until, stuck in the house for two months at the beginning of Covid, I wrote Angel.

Void Princess and The princess in the Tower are both me musing on the old 'princess kidnapped by a dragon' trope. I get really fixated on this trope for some reason; I have four or five others swimming about in my head that aren't full stories ready for the page yet. Wasting Time is just the song Pushin' the Speed of Light, World Builder was written in a fever right after watching Jacob Geller's The Shape of Infinity, Copykate was initially going to be a SAYER fanfic but required enough alterations to the setting that it worked better as a story of its own. The inspiration is out there, the ideas are out there. It's just a matter of practice to turn them into stories.

3) I try to avoid scenes that are hard for me to depict, but this isn't always possible. I'm aphantasiac and struggle a lot with scenes that have a lot of heavy visual elements. Scenes where there's a lot going on that needs to be fairly precisely depicted are tricky, too.

One particularly difficult scene for me was a fight scene in Time to Orbit: Unknown. There's about six people in a small room fighting over the fate of a bunch of other people who are not present, and the reader needs to be kept up to date on the physical positions/activity/intentions of all the combatants, the villain explaining what he's doing and why (lying), the protagonist figuring out that he's lying, the physical condition (injuries, being restrained, et cetera) of all of the combatants, and the fate of the half of the crew not in the room, all with enough detail that the reader can understand the stakes, consequences, and enough of the moment-to-moment logic of the fight that nobody's decisions are confusing. The whole thing is very fast paced and... it's a lot. It's always a difficult balance in these scenes because you want to be detailed enough to keep the reader following everything they want to follow, but you don't want to dramatically slow down the story by describing every detail. If you're using a limited viewpoint, it's a blessing and a curse; you can avoid narrating the stuff your character can't see or isn't paying attention to, but you also have to find a way to get across information that your character might not be able to see, either by forcing them to see it or by having it conveyed in some other way in the scene. With busy scenes like this, I like to work backwards -- decide what specifically the reader needs to know, decide what is needed to get the characters to the places I want them at the end of the scene, and write a scene with as little as possible in it except for those two things. Sometimes, communicating those two things requires a bit of setup.

In Curse Words, there's an ancient magic spell passed down a family line from parent to child. It's a communication spell that allows people to see through each others' eyes and hear through their ears. Before the existence of long-distance wireless communications, this sort of information transfer was enormously powerful; wars can be turned with that power, trade networks created or conquered. It made its family enormously powerful, to the point where they're the most powerful magical family in the world even in the time of the story, with the spell long buried and its advantage lost to an age of mobile phones and cameras. It's massively influential to the worldbuilding of the story.

I introduced it for one reason and one reason alone -- I knew that eventually, I would be writing a climax to the story where a lot of people were doing a lot of things in a lot of different locations, and the protagonist was only going to be in one of those places. And I knew that I was going to need some way to tell the audience what the fuck was happening while he was running around in caves and shit.