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shallanigans · 6 months ago

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So, you want to write fanfiction? Here's some advice from someone who spends too much time on ao3, Part 1:

Hey everyone! This is a bit of a deviation from my usual shitposts. I was looking at the "#writers on tumblr" tag today, and I got inspired to post this after some interesting discussions. I'm someone who has read a lot (and I mean A LOT) of fanfic, as well as written some myself... so I thought I'd make this little (no, I lied, it's Very Long) post with some writing tips that I find personally meaningful for those of you who may be getting started or want to try something new.

My qualifications? Honestly, because I said so. This is just my opinion. Feel free to ignore, disagree, hate, ask questions, whatever. I'll be discussing some common fanfic writing advice and what I think about it, as well as giving some general pointers.

Disclaimer: What is "good writing?"

Good writing is effective writing. There is no one way in which everyone should write. Effective writing compels the reader; it makes them interested in your story, keeps them turning the pages, makes them click that "next chapter" button and stay up all night to finish your 500k epic. Some people achieve this through flowery, descriptive prose. Others do so with their quick wit and snappy dialogue. Others write all their fanfictions in second person epistolary format only and make you cry harder than you ever have. The first thing to know is that 1) tastes vary and 2) confidence matters. Find your voice, and be proud of it. If you feel that what you are doing is working for you, and you love it, then keep at it. Someone has already made every "writing mistake" and made it well. Don't fall into the trap of getting bogged down with 674835 contradictory tips and being too terrified to write at all. The only real writing sin is being boring.

Furthermore, this post is for fanfiction specifically. A lot of this advice might be useful for traditional fiction, but it's not a 1:1 carryover. A lot of fanfic advice will be irrelevant for traditional fiction, and vice versa.

That's all fine and dandy, but what do I do?

Good question. First, let's break down what makes a fanfiction effective. Most people searching ao3 for a story probably want:

A compelling premise

With in-character characters

Good spelling, formatting, grammar, and syntax

Stylistically strong writing

A coherent plot

With a certain degree of wish-fulfillment sprinkled in (this is fanfic, after all)

In this series, I will be mostly discussing elements 2-6. Number 1, unfortunately, comes down to "don't be boring," and I can't tell you how to come up with an idea that's going to hook your reader. However, assuming that you already have The Coolest Idea Ever, and you only need the reader to see that, then here's what you can do:

Effective Summaries

No, seriously. Tell people what your fucking story is about. One of my favorite stories on ao3 has the worst, vaguest one-liner of a summary I've ever seen. It is a gem, and if it hadn't been for a friend's recommendation, I would have never read it. You may think that your epic out of context quote from the paragraph you spent hours perfecting will make people care, but it will probably just confuse them. This is likely to be the most controversial thing I say today, so I'm starting off strong.

When I say effective summary, I mean a summary that will tell people the basic premise of the plot while also making them want to learn more. I don't mean something fancy. I mean something like:

When Blorbo started his new tech development job at Tumblr, he never expected to have Blorbette for a boss. She is smart, cold, calculating - and, to his horror, totally irresistible. In order to win her heart, he decides to make her jealous by fake-dating his colleague and frenemy, Blorbinson. But he soon finds that there is more to his mysterious friend than meets the eye. Could it be that the real Tumblr sexyman has been next to him all along?

That's a pretty standard summary for a relatively long fic. It's nothing fancy, but it tells the reader what the story's about. Now this same summary, in the hands of someone who refuses to inform the reader about the premise of the story, would probably say something like:

His eyes are the color of spring.

You can get away with that kind of stuff more often in a one-shot, but best practice is always to tell your reader what the story is about. Say to your reader:

Blorbinson's eyes are too easy to get lost in. Blorbo cannot find his way out.

If you MUST include a quote from your story, then do it alongside your informative summary, in the much-loved format below:

"What do you mean Welcome to Nightvale is winning the contest?" --- In which things get heated at Tumblr dot com, and Blorbinson's the one making Blorbo get all sweaty.

I can already hear you arguing. You say to me, "But there are people who choose quotes that are both pretty AND informative! But writing anything is better than writing nothing in the summary!"

True. My response to the first point is this: if you had mastered that skill, you wouldn't be here. A simple, to-the-point-summary is almost never going to make the interested reader scroll past your story. You know what will? An out-of-context block of text about how much Sans Undertale loves the player from chapter 3, paragraph six.

To the second point, I say: obviously. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't seek to improve. No one is perfect. I'm certainly not. But you're doing yourself a disservice by spending so much time and effort on the content of your story and then fumbling it on the home stretch. If you take pride in your work (and I'm assuming you do, because you posted this story for a reason), then make like a chef at a five-star restaurant and start caring about presentation. It goes without saying that there shouldn't be any typos in the summary.

A note on tagging: I will make a separate post on tagging your stories appropriately. This is a writing-related rant.

Now, onto characterization:

If you're one of those people who thinks that there's no such thing as "too OOC," congratulations. May you enjoy fanfiction free from the shackles of the narrative. Tag appropriately and have fun. If you're like the rest of us haters, you probably want to keep your characters as faithful to canon as possible. Yes, even in an AU.

I've included this wonderful addition because entryn17 said it better than I ever could have. There's difference of interpretation, and then there's Severus Snape deciding that James Potter was actually just misunderstood.

Being "in-character" is an elusive ideal that we all strive for, but no one can quite tell you what it means except for "the vibes." The way I like to define it is this: If you asked yourself the question "Would He Fucking Say That/Do That/Feel That?" and the answer is "yes, absolutely," then it's in-character. If the answer is "absolutely not," then it's out of character. If the answer is "maybe?" then your goal is to move that needle firmly into the Yes camp.

To do this, you must first determine what is making you unsure. Is it the dialogue? Is your stuffy Edwardian speaking like a Gen Alpha well-versed in Cocomelonese? Is your overconfident flirt stammering and stuttering through a conversation? Often, the content of what a character is saying agrees perfectly with the source material, but the how doesn't match it. Beta readers can help with this, as can going back to the source material to study a character's speech patterns in canon. You don't have to get it perfect. Just make sure it doesn't stand out. Would Snape perhaps say "Come over here!" in a much wordier, snarkier manner? Maybe. Maybe not. But he sure as hell wouldn't say, "Yo! bring your ass over and check this out!"

Actions and feelings are a bit trickier. There's always some leeway in personal interpretation here, and most of the time your reader won't question this very much so long as the rest of the story keeps them engaged. One OOC action or thought is easy to brush off. Ten, not so much. Read up on the wiki pages for whatever you're writing, go back to the source material, and maybe get the opinion of a willing beta reader. Ultimately, if your characters start feeling like featureless puppets subject to your whims rather than people with established personalities, you might want to go back and revisit what made them stand out to you in the first place.

Keep things consistent within your story. Especially in AUs and canon divergence fics, there are certain character traits that are malleable. Maybe Draco Malfoy wouldn't have been such a dickhead if he'd had caring adult mentors in his life. So, justify that within your story. You don't necessarily need to keep the characterization faithful to the canon, but you do need to convince the reader that their beloved character has a reason for their behavior. Keep things consistent. Whenever a character deviates from their canon behavior, make sure there's a valid explanation for it in your narrative.

Don't fall for the trap of confusing canon and fanon. Fandom is like a game of telephone. Someone writes one story of Blorbo adopting a cat, and suddenly he's the biggest cat person in the universe. The poor author who posts about Blorbo's canonical love of dogs gets trashed for writing OOC. You can't prevent people getting mad at you, but you can always grin smugly and go to bed happy with the knowledge that you were right. Someone will love you for it.

SPAG

Ew! It sounds like something your dog spit up. Spelling and Grammar might be boring, but they're necessary. You shouldn't break the rules until you know the rules. One day, you will write a run-on postmodern epic to rival the worst of Wallace's page-long sentences. Today is not that day. No one wants to open a story only to be greeted by a massive block of text, a lack of punctuation, and a heretofore undiscovered form of there/they're/their.

In the modern age, we have many tools at our disposal to clarify our SPAG doubts. Dictionaries! Spellcheck! The weirdos on those Substack forums! Oh, my. If you wrote your story at 3AM directly onto the ao3 editor, perhaps take a moment to run it through some kind of spellchecker before posting. Microsoft Word has a pretty good one, but Grammarly and other such software can help you if that's not available. There's also nothing quite like a beta reader. There are people in this world who love picking apart every comma, period, and quotation mark, and they'll be happy to do it for you. I am one of them, and I volunteer. There are many of us.

Here are some SPAG mistakes common in fanfiction.

1.Your/you're, they're/their/there, "could of," and "lie" vs "lay."

"YOUR" means that something is yours. You possess that thing. YOUR story is going to be great if you fix the grammar. "YOU'RE" is a contracted form of "YOU ARE." If you fix your grammar, YOU'RE going to be a great writer.

They're: Shortened form of "they are." They're going to the beach. They're very nice people.

Their: They possess a thing. A thing belongs to them. They're going to the beach in THEIR car.

There: Related to a place. You are going to be THERE. THERE are many pretty horses in the field.

"Could of" does not exist. It is an incorrect way of writing "could've," the shortened form of "could have."

The verbs lie and lay are tricky ones. You (a person) LIE down on your bed. You LAY an object down on a surface. However, the past tense of LIE is LAY. I know! Who invented English, am I right? Blorbo LIES on his bed in the present tense. He LAY on his bed in the past.

The past tense of "lay" is "laid." Blorbo LAID down his water bottle.

2. Run-on sentences.

Sometimes, when we're writing, we get a little excited. We have so many thoughts and we never know how to end them. You might think the solution here is to just keep throwing down commas, but you'd be wrong.

Run-on sentences can be effective if used intentionally, but a lot of the time, they're not. The period isn't your enemy. In general, you want to make sure your sentences have a subject, a verb, and an object, and that they end when you've finished your thought.

Blorbo was the most beautiful of all the tumblr sexymen. He really liked to show off his sick gains at the gym. He had a hot wife and an even hotter side piece.

This writing isn't very exciting, but it's correct. Contrast that with:

Blorbo was the most beautiful of all the tumblr sexymen, he really liked to show off his sick gains at the gym, he had a hot wife and an even hotter side piece.

Finish your thoughts. There are ways to connect independent clauses (a group of words that can work on its own as a sentence) correctly, like the semicolon; the semicolon is a great piece of punctuation. There is also the em-dash. Sometimes, you really need to add clarification to a thought — you really want to emphasize the second part of what you're saying. Em-dashes also work like a cooler version of parentheses — because who uses those, am I right? — and can help you seem like a chic and seasoned writer. Don't overuse them, though. I know you want to. And no, I don't heed my own advice here.

Look, these rules aren't intuitive. I can't possibly go through all of them in a way that's easy and digestible. There are smarter people than me who have written all about it, and I use incorrect punctuation all the time. Misplacing a comma isn't going to be the end of the world for your story, but at least give it a once-over with a beta or spellchecker to fix the worst of it. At the very least, make the reader think that run-on sentence was totally on purpose.

3. Paragraphs

Make sure your paragraphs stick to a single theme or thought. Fanfiction writers love to have one-sentence paragraphs for the impact, but you don't need to do that. Just keep them coherent. For example, if you're writing about Blorbo's weekend, you might say,

Blorbo loved Saturdays. On Saturdays, the world seemed to sparkle and sing with the whole of the city's shared happiness over not having to work. He would wake up on those mornings and leap out of bed while singing a jaunty little tune. Then, he'd text Blorbinson a string of heart emojis and plan to meet up for their weekly ice cream date. But Sundays — oh, how he hated Sundays! Sundays were the day before Monday, and he'd always spend so long worrying about going back to the office that, by the time he decided to do something, it would be dark outside already.

Each of the paragraphs above, clumsy as they are, have a clear idea that starts and ends within the same paragraph. If you talk about Blorbo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday all within one paragraph, your reader will be confused!

On the other hand, if you make every single paragraph one line, your reader is going to resent you. You have unwittingly made them take part in a bad action thriller. One-line paragraphs are supposed to be impactful and create suspense. When writing, a good tip is to consider the word "impactful" a synonym of "sparing." See below:

Doesn't it suck? Not to mention all that scrolling!

3. Dialogue

Right off the bat, I'll say that the best way to learn how to format dialogue is by reading books. Not fanfiction. BOOKS. They have been checked by an editor, so you know you're getting the real deal. Generally, well-formatted dialogue achieves an engaging and seamless conversation between your characters. Poorly-formatted dialogue forces your reader into a game of Who's Who?

See for, instance, the following abomination:

"I can't believe you cheated on me with Blorbette!" Blorbo had been crying about it for a week. His tears would soon erode a riverbank down his cheeks. Blorbinson sneered at him, "I can't believe you ever thought this was real." "I was only with you for the tax benefits." No! How could you? Blorbo said. Blorbinson laughed a wicked laugh and looked at him. "My heart is shattered into a million tiny pieces. Love isn't real!"

Did you follow that? Because I sure didn't. Generally, here are the rules of dialogue:

Start a new line for each character that speaks, and keep a single character's dialogue within the same paragraph.*

Use dialogue tags to CLARIFY who is speaking. Note: I said clarify. If it's redundant take it out. I will write more about good (not merely correct) dialogue in a follow-up post.

Put a period after or before an ACTION tag in dialogue, but a comma before a SPEECH tag. The reason you do this is that ["Here is an example line of dialogue," he said] is a complete sentence, but ["Here is an example line of dialogue." He looked at his watch.] is TWO sentences. The quotation marks are merely to indicate speech. Whether or not something is a sentence is determined by the content of what the writing actually says, not by any punctuation it may have.

Use quotation marks to indicate speech. If you want to quote something within quotation marks (in American English), you put it in single quotes, like so: "And then he called me 'a lost cause who's doomed to be single forever.' Can you believe that?"

By following these rules, we get the much nicer:

"I can't believe you cheated on me with Blorbette!" Blorbo had been crying about it for a week. His tears would soon erode a riverbank down his cheeks. Blorbinson sneered at him. "I can't believe you ever thought this was real. I was only with you for the tax benefits." "No! How could you?" Blorbinson only laughed a wicked laugh. "My heart is shattered into a million tiny pieces. Love isn't real!" Blorbo said.

Obviously that's still pretty bad, but now it's readable. Formatting your dialogue properly will fix a lot of problems with your story, make it clear who is talking, and make the reading experience much nicer for everyone.

* An Important addendum: sometimes, characters will speak for a long time, and you'll want to split up their dialogue into paragraphs. To do that, you start the dialogue in quotation marks, but you leave them open until the character is done speaking, like so:

"My favorite thing about Blorbinson was that he always knew just what to say. He had this magical ability to always tell when I was sad, and he showed up with ice cream every single time. It always made me feel better," Blorbo said. "I can't believe our relationship is over now. I should probably tell you all about how that happened. "I walked into my house one day to find another pair of shoes by the door, where Blorbinson's usually are. I knew Blorbinson would never wear those shoes, because his style is more boho-inspired. Anyway, my worst fear was confirmed when I walked into the bedroom and found him there with Blorbette! My two loves, betraying me so callously!"

This is common in fantasy stories where you need to impart some deep lore knowledge on the reader, or for characters who like to talk a lot.

4. Verb tenses (edited after posting, in true fanfic writer fashion)

Us writers tend to have very strong opinions about verbs. You could even say things get a little bit... tense sometimes. Ok, but seriously; whether you write in past or present doesn't matter. What matters is that you keep things consistent.

Nothing takes the reader out of a fanfic faster than abrupt tense switches in the middle of the narrative. If you are writing in a specific verb tense, stick with it.

Don't say:

Blorbo is never sure what Blorbinson is thinking. He watched him chew his pencil from across the office, that beautiful face scrunched in concentration as he stares at his computer. Blorbo knows he's in love the minute Blorbinson looks back.

DO say:

Blorbo was never sure what Blorbinson was thinking. He watched him chew his pencil from across the office, that beautiful face scrunched in concentration as he stared at his computer. Blorbo knew he was in love the minute Blorbinson looked back. or Blorbo is never sure what Blorbinson is thinking. He watches him chew his pencil from across the office, that beautiful face scrunched in concentration as he stares at his computer. Blorbo knows he's in love the minute Blorbinson looks back.

When we write in past tense and we want to talk about events that happened prior to the narrative, we use the past perfect. When we write in present, we can use either simple past or past perfect. This one's kind of iffy. As you write more, you'll get a sense of what "sounds correct."

Ultimately, your choice of verb tense is personal opinion and what you feel best fits your story. Just make sure that you keep whatever you choose consistent. A beta reader can help you with this.

And that's it for Part 1!

This post dealt with some technical, basic things about fanfic that will mostly be useful to new writers. I will be going more in depth about making your prose stronger at the sentence level in Part 2, where #4 is getting an entire post. It'll probably be even longer than this one. I hope it was able to help someone!

#fanfiction #writers on tumblr #writing tips #writeblr #writing #creative writing #I make long posts about things that no one cares about series

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luvwich · 11 months ago

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2023 in review

(for real this time)

the short version: i started writing fanfic this year. it's been lovely. i've written two longfics with some spinoffs, all collected into two series, plus a one-shot. i wrote 242,000 words.

91.9 Royal Blue is Valerie and River being angsty idiots

Hypercritical is Vania and Tiny Mike being angsty idiots

and Red-black is an ultra-short oneshot about Songbird; no idiots, just angst

this is also my first time even engaging in a fandom in this way, and i've been delighted to become acquainted with you tumblr folks. i'll echo the sentiment i see a lot: that even if all we've done is reblog each other a few times with blathering tags, i see you as a friend, and you have done me an enrichment.

much longer version under the cut:

before this year, my only experience writing any kind of fiction was roleplaying - ages and ages ago, but something of an illustrious career, looking back. it was actually not bad practice when it came to flowery description, dialogue, and characterization. it was horrible preparation on the matter of actually constructing a plot.

then i saw River Ward's arms and realized i needed to figure out how to do plot, and quick!

Arpeggio

so like many of us, i thought river was dreamy and his quests totally unsatisfying. i also saw someone shit-talking River somewhere complain that their corpo V would never want to hang out with river because he’s an unemployed cop living with his sister, blah blah blah classist tripe, don’t get me started, but it did get me started thinking about what it would look like for a bitchy corpo V and river to fall in love. Valerie sprang from that; Arpeggio sprang from Valerie.

hi, Valerie.

so, i thought i just wanted to write a steamy river ward romance that was more satisfying than the meatless canon plot. it turns out i wanted to write an ode to everything wrong about myself, and to every shitty relationship i've had, and to death and loss. it happens. here's how it starts:

Thwap-bap! Synleather on synleather: two strong, clean hits to the punching bag. Thwapbapbap. A sandstorming morning, or afternoon — hard to keep track of time with the sun hidden and the world bathed in rust. Days like this you couldn’t even see the skyline out there; all you had was a twenty-foot radius, and within that you could imagine yourself just about anywhere. River had always kind of enjoyed the storms for that reason.

i pumped out the first eleven chapters in like a month (?!), posting as i went, from late march through april. i was shocked to get even one reader, and didn't get a lot more than that for a long while. then i fell off for a little while due to work. but then i received a single, innocent comment asking when the next chapter would be posted, and that was apparently enough to make another thirteen chapters fly out of me just in june and july.

around then i hit what i think of as the third and final "act" of Arpeggio, and the wind fell out of my sails again. i'd hit the 100k mark, had no idea if anyone was even reading it, and convinced myself the last ten chapters i'd posted were garbage and everyone had fallen off. i still loved my story & my characters, i was bursting with ideas, but felt the sudden pressure of needing to wrap everything up in a way that did justice to my vision and didn't waste anyone's time who'd bothered to read that far.

as with everything in my life, i had only the vaguest idea of how i was going to get to where i was going. i decided to batten down the hatches and actually try to plan how to get there, which slowed my pace some.

i also decided to start something new, with the express purpose of giving myself something light-hearted, sexy, and most importantly way the fuck shorter than Arpeggio to work on while i was finishing up the latter. i'd limit myself to ten chapters. i'd keep the plot tight and focused. there'd be a lot of fucking. yay! and a big part of the intent was to "prove to myself" that i could finish something. and so i started on:

Jaded

Arpeggio featured Tiny Mike as a fling, and it was played for awkwardness and absurdity, but i found him really fun to write. i had also just started a new playthrough with a new V (still a corpo — i'm really just a particular kind of bitch, truth be told), so i thought i'd throw her into some mischief.

hi Vania.

if Valerie is the parts of me that suck and are chaotic, Vania is all the scared and cute parts.

man, look at them!! *throws them both in the bug zapper*

i managed to finish Jaded in the space of about a month, from july-august. i thought it turned out wicked fun, and clicking "post" on that final chapter gave me a taste of satisfaction and accomplishment that was enough to see me through to the end of Arpeggio.

here's an excerpt from the first chapter.

Sundays always mean something. They mean something even to a dropout merc who hasn't seen the inside of a house of God in years. The last time Mike had been to church, the price of a can of ChroManticore was in the single-digit eurodollars. Even so, Sunday's no day to spend propped against a bathtub that's coated with a half inch of unidentified bio-pudding, no day to spend wheezing at death's doorstep, no day to be wondering where the smell of yourself ends and the smell of the squalid safehouse begins. Sundays are for family, beers, cleaning your guns. Not this shit.

then PL came out and i wrote a quick oneshot about Songbird.

Red-black

i could easily write more about Red-black than there are actual words in the thing, but i won't. it's a bittersweet 69 sesh with a cyborg. it's about betrayal and bodies. i'm pleased with it. i might expand on it one day, but to be frank, i don't think i can write extensively about Songbird in a way the character deserves without my life being in a way darker place than it is right now. so if you see me add a second chapter to this fic, maybe check in on me.

i finished Arpeggio in october, seven months after i started posting it. 154,347 words. i like how it turned out. i've finally stopped going back to make tweaks (although just the other day i was re-reading a chapter and was like what the fuck is this word choice? what did i even mean here? and i changed it, so i guess that was a lie. Valerie is based on me, folks!).

i'm proud of it and everything else i've written, even in moments when all i can see is flaws upon re-reading. some people read it all the way through, which is wild to me! some of them even say they liked it! world's a crazy place.

here's an excerpt from toward the end.

Wind gathered over the churning Pacific to chap her lips and ruin her hair, snarling it like the waves which crashed the battered wood. Soft gusts billowed through her jacket, touched the base of her spine, and reminded her that everything was so very enormous, and that she was yet alive, and that a great spirit ruled this ocean and always had. This is lovely, Johnny said, resting an unreal hand on her shoulder. But we gotta get back to work, princess. “Yeah. Well, let’s go check out some shops, first.”

in 2024 i probably won't write as many words, but i have a few things planned:

more Vania: Crescent & Redwood is an ongoing sequel to Jaded and a fix-it for one of the PL endings

weatherman says there's an 85% chance of more Tiny Mike porn appearing under Fixer-uppers (and obviously a 100% chance of it in Crescent)

more Valerie: i have some more Val and Riv plotted out — mostly casefics and slices of life — but i need to be in a real fucking mood to write her these days

a really quite raunchy romp with President Myers is almost done baking

i have a Solomon Reed ditty on the backburner

who the fuck knows

anyway, even if all you've read of my writing was a snippet or two i've shared on tumblr, thanks so much for reading. seeya in '24.

#rambling #personal #lw

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kinocomix · 11 months ago

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untitled project devlog 8: themes, and pain

At first, when I said I wanted to discuss the themes of my project, I thought that maybe there would be some convenient article, book or philosophy deep dive I could reference, which does not seem to be much the case, seeing as how my approach to themes is very personal. so… here’s some thoughts.

In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, the story features a band and music quite prominently. One of my original elevator pitches for the comic was “think metalocalypse meets bandslam, but with the scope of Ernest et Celestine and the presentation of a black and white Wes Anderson film” which is the vaguest shit ever and I’ll eventually get my head out of my ass long enough to stop worrying about spoiling the story. My point is: the act of being creative is at the forefront of the story. What drives it forward is something I won’t mention in this series, but a lot of ideas emerge when you decide to write something as personal as making art. Things like purpose, belonging, self worth, expression, communication, validation are things that every artist or musician deals with quite regularly and no story about creativity would be complete without them.

The first post ever made to this blog was a webcomic name fancomic that, looking back, isn’t bad but remembering the reason why I made it is what makes me cringe. I wanted attention. When I started making art I expected to be famous in 100 days. literally, I wish I was exaggerating.

In every artist’s journey with art, they reach the point where they realize that the only things really worth pursuing are the things they’re passionate about. Sometimes this is drawing commissions, other times people do commissions to keep themselves alive. A lot of times, the art people are passionate about barely gets any attention at all. It's a fact that a lot of creatives secretly know that people who get successful doing something they love are very lucky.

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It takes maturity to be happy for people and proud of their hard work as opposed to being an envious child but that doesn’t mean we don’t secretly want success as well. If I could have enough dedicated readers to make my comics for a living but never be famous I’d do that in a heartbeat. Every big shiny thing is destined to accumulate dust, I don’t want to be a big shiny thing, I want to be a reliable hill you can trust to be there year after year. It took me a while to get to the mindset I work with today. 6 years might not feel like a lot when you consider the insane careers some artists had, but as far as people go 6 years is a lot. I graduated, finished a book, worked on 2 short film productions that have both won awards (one of which for my sound design!!), moved house, freelanced, started a stable job, been to therapy, gotten an operation, nearly lost people, been through an explosion, an economic collapse; and I think that’s just the stuff I’m remembering off the top of my head.

Finding documentation and sources about this kind of stuff is pretty difficult because this is not what gets publicized about media. However, if you pay enough attention some similarities start to appear.

The manga Berserk is pretty famous for its elaborate artwork and story. It doesn’t really need an intro and I’ve been told I need to read it which I plan on, but that’s not the point right now. As you may know, Kentaro Miura, the author and illustrator of the manga passed away in 2021. For fans of the series, while very tragic, this wasn’t all that surprising. The dude doesn’t fill in black. he crosshatches everything. An admirable feat, which makes you thankful that a friend of his, Kouji Mori, decided to finish making the manga after he passed away.

Many other manga share this. Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, has been known to frequently go on hiatus. So has Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi. A lot of times, an artist’s undying faith to their work is because of how passionate they are about it, the people involved in making it or even the audience. I forget the exact interview this is from, but Linkin park has gone on record for saying that sometimes they need to consider the audience. you see them always excited to talk about how experimental their music is, which is great, but when you know someone’s on the receiving end of what you’re making, it’s bound to make you think a bit differently.

This video of George RR Martin and Stephen King chatting kind of outlines the different approaches they have to writing. One of the most iconic quotes is “how do you write so fast?” Spoken by Martin. Now I’m not here to talk about Game of Thrones, trust me I couldn't care less but it does bring up one point worth talking about which is inspiration, discipline and what that has to do about your malleability as an artist.

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This is the trailer for H.E.R.A., one of the short movies I worked on as a sound designer and general handyman. It was written and animated by my friend Alaa Fleifel with the help of some wonderful fellow artists and animators for some of the scenes. Alaa and his studio Phat Chik are an example of what I’m talking about.

pictured: Alaa.

When I talk about being malleable, I don’t mean that in the X-men mystique “I chameleon my way around the world” school of art though that can work in some cases, sure. What I refer to is one’s ability to keep making their art. During the production of H.E.R.A., there were at many points obstacles that would have shot down most movie productions. The sound designer had to prioritize staying alive so he had to unfortunately quit the project midway. Alaa had to juggle a fulltime job, commissions and a rapidly decaying economic system that meant most clients didn’t want to pay well anymore so he had to outsource some of the background art and scenes to friends and animators that he paid out of pocket. The production timeline lasted a year and 8 months, most of that time was spent patching up the team in the background. Working on H.E.R.A. taught me that there is no project in existence that is the result of one human being. Everyone has at least one person to give them advice, someone who goes “hey, I know a guy” and very often that is not just one person. When band line ups change, it’s sometimes treated with an air of disregard.

“oh, it’s just the drummer”

“it’s the rhythm guitarist, their job is pretty easy anyway”

Had Alaa waited around for inspiration or permission to make his film, it would have never happened. Sure, a lot of why we get to watch the absurdist sci-fi acid trip that is H.E.R.A. is due to some luck and connections, but a lot of it is also due to a rejection of the notion that inspiration is what primarily fuels creativity.

So what does that say about the story? usually I find it helpful to present my themes in the form of questions, so here’s what i’ve been able to come up with:

Who does art/music belong to?

How much of the soul of art and music gets lost in translation?

How do you balance making stuff for yourself and an audience once you have one?

How much does inspiration really matter?

I need to be honest with you about something.

I’ve been kind of avoiding talking about the more… personal themes at play here.

it’s not because I don’t know what they are, really. They just come from a place of deep discomfort and humiliation for me. I’ve obviously become a much different human being over the course of my 27 years on the rapidly traveling rock in space but it’s never not weird for me remembering the dumb things I did or said growing up or while I was finding my footing as a writer. There are entire projects and dozens of pages of things that I threw out the window before I felt confident enough in something to be able to share it. there’s a lot of fucking up you do while growing up and not surprisingly, I feel more comfortable seeing my weird feelings in fiction than I do laid out in bullet points in a devlog. So I promise you this:

the people in the story are going to be human. Faults, warts and all. The only thing I ask of you is to know that while those warts are real, they are not mine anymore. Every day that passes, I grow a little bit more, and maybe at some point I’ll grow tall enough that the light trickling through the trees will feel safe enough to fly.

Merry Christmas, and may every year bring a little bit more sun.

Devlog updates on tuesdays.

#comic #webcomic #kinocomix #devlog #graphic novel #metal #youtube #writing #Youtube

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aralezinspace · 2 years ago

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Writeblr Positivity Tag

was tagged by both @chromehoplite and @hangfiretales and haven't really had Brain to write so fingers crossed this helps get the juices flowing again xD Under a cut cuz I kinda went off with the answers xD

1. What motivates you to write?

Rereading my favorite stories, certain movies- I forget what Tolkien called it, but just the urge to create after seeing something beautiful that someone else has created. Also telling stories as a sort of release for the feelings/vibes/sentiments that I just don't have space to experience in my every day life.

2. A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

From one of Megan’s stories I’m starting to rework so it’s one cohesive thing and not a tumblr RP thread xD

The truth… Megan laced her fingers and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. Her hazel eyes stared without focus into the distance. How much of the truth to tell him, at least at this moment.

3. Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

Guardian Megan Samuels. Both she and her order were created for/in the Doctor Who universe, but I'm tweaking some of the concepts for a potential OW. Writing her adventures got me through a really horrible period of my life.

Megan is the embodiment of one of my favorite tropes, "character is done with x but x isn't done with them (because they're good at it)." She was plucked from her life and remolded into a warrior, yet despite being hundreds of years old and seeing untold horros (time war) she hasn't succumbed to cynicism.

She's kind and self sacrificing almost to the point of martyrdom, very protective of the ones she cares about, "you said pick my battles, I'm picking all of them", the hardened exterior of a warrior hiding the fragile, broken, vulnerable, and somehow still kind and optimistic person underneath.

Fuck I miss writing her. Might be time to dust off her old stories...

4. What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

The semi stressful feeling when the ideas and plot are forming faster than your fingers can type- and when the flow stops, going back and tweaking the whole ass story or scene that just popped into existence like Athena did to Zeus xD just watching the story unfold before you, sometimes in ways you didn't think it would

5. What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

How I write action, specifically fights. Pacing it and varying the language so it's engaging but also realistic within the world of the story, and also the thoughts and feelings of the characters while they're fighting.

Also how I can almost always find the right/specific words to describe the vaguest of vibes and feelings, so that the ephemeral mess in my head is understandable (prob cuz I had to do that a lot to get people in my life to understand how I was experiencing the world)

6. What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

Both the commiseration about how writing is wonderful and awful at the same time, and seeing normally eloquent writers have incoherent unhinged conversations about their blorbos xD

7. A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

Sticky notes and a notebook. I have post-its in the back of my writing notebook with all my ideas/prompts so that if I want to write something but don't know what, I can pick one. also specifically those notebooks with folders in them, they're the unsung heros of writers who just accumulate scrap paper with notes and ideas and want to keep them with their writing notebook (aka me) xD

8. A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

In the Doctor Who universe that Megan was originally created for, the Order of Guardians is formed of soldiers of different species from all over the universe, kind of like the Green Lantern corps but for Time Lords. Each Guardian is assigned a Time Lord to protect, how they go about that is their business (Megan is basically glued to the Doctor's hip, she gotta be xD), but their first loyalty is to Gallifrey. They are all enhanced to live as long as Time Lords but don't regenerate, they go through extensive training and schooling, are the elite fighting force of Gallifrey. Megan was the first human Guardian. I'm working on tweaking this whole concept for a potential OW, we'll see how it goes xD

9. What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Write what you want to write, no matter what it is. Go to your sources of motivation, whatever makes you want to get lost in the magic of storytelling. and remember, it's okay to step away for a bit and come back to it in a few days or weeks or however long- give your brain the space to rest.

10. Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters.

Both Chrome and Ama who are already tagged (such amazing writers and so supportive of my multi chap that I've been working on for 3 ish years now) but also @griever-bit-my-finger @honeybeezgobzzzzz @7-wonders @just-french-me-up @just-some-random-blogger @roguelov @cuckoo-on-a-string @peachesofteal @undiscovered-horizon @just-some-random-blogger All of these folks have multiple works that I've read multiple times, and I enjoy them just as much every reread as I did the first time (No pressure to do the questions just my undying love)

#my stuff #writing things

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drivingsideways · 2 years ago

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For the usual suspects @rain-hat and @elderflowergin and a not-suspicious at all anon :D

From Behind the Scenes of Fic Writing: 30 Questions for Authors

1. What was the first fandom and/or pairing that you wrote fic for?

This was a Draco/Hermione fic that I only shared with few friends via email! :))

2. Do you participate in any writing events or challenges throughout the year? If so, what do you like about them?

Unfortunately, no! Mostly because I am absolutely terrible at working around deadlines when it comes to fic, and also I have a lot of anxiety around whether I’ll ever finish the fics I start writing.

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

Hmm, I usually don’t jump around between fics, but sometimes when I’m writing a long fic, I take a break and doodle something shorter. But this is quite rare, because it takes me a while to get into the “zone” when I’m writing a fic and I’m nervous to break that and try something else in case I never get my mojo back for the fic I started with.

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

I start outlining about a quarter way through the fic, usually! I only have the vaguest idea of plot when I start out, usually, and it takes me a chapter or three to get things clearer in my head. But once I am writing fairly steadily, then I find it useful to make an outline so that a) I don’t forget to put in things and b) I feel good about tracking progress.

My outline does keep changing- I’d say, I stray about 20-25% from it in terms of no of chapters planned vs what gets written; but not really much in terms of the main story/ events.

5. What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

This question made me miss my old life (when I was living alone): I miss the table I used to write at, and the window I would stare out of, the curtains fluttering in the almost constant breeze, and the quiet. But the truth is, I can write anywhere- a coffee shop, a train compartment, in my bed- what’s critical is that I need to be left completely alone for a few hours at a stretch.

6. If you’re really concentrating, how many words can you write in a day?

I haven’t really tracked this as such, but I know that I wrote about 3-4k almost every day when I was doing an episode coda format fic for Serenade of Peaceful Joy as it was airing. But that kind of writing is unusual for me; I’d say maybe 2-3k if I’m left completely alone and don’t distract myself. But it’s not really the word count that matters, is it? If I write a drabble (100 words!) that I’m happy with, after thinking about it for the whole day, I’m good with that too.

7. Which part of writing do you struggle with most?

I’m very bad at editing.

8. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, share a song that’s been inspiring you lately.

I don’t like to listen while I’m writing because it’s distracting, but in the last year or two, I’ve taken to making playlists to listen to while I think about fic. Of late, it’s been a bunch of David Bowie songs, especially Starman, for a fic I’m thinking about.

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

I think all fic is somewhat “AU” from the canon; but if you’re asking whether I would write a High School AU for hmm, Supernatural, for eg, then NO. That said, I have done precisely this in one fandom- not high school au, but “modern” au for a period drama- but it was because it was low energy and effort, and that was all I had the bandwidth for at the time. I usually like writing fic within the canon universe which attracted my attention in the first place. I often enjoy writing post canon fics, which would be like 95-100% canon compliant; and in some cases I like making a specific canon divergence, which then makes the whole thing “au”, I guess.

10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most?

I don’t really think of writing or the joy I derive from it in this way though- I mean in these buckets- so I’m not sure whether I can answer this question. I realize that my fics tend to be dialogue heavy because I have tv show brainrot. Do I enjoy writing dialogue? Sometimes! When it’s going smoothly! :)

11. If you could only write angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your life, which would it be?

I think my wheelhouse is “bittersweet”, so it’s always going to be an angst+ fluff combo, maybe? I LIVE for the day when I’ll be able to write a good PwP, which, I think, is much harder to do than most people guess.

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

I keep thinking of writing some kind of platonic soulmate-fic for various canons, but I haven’t got around to it.

13. Is there a trope you wouldn’t write if it was the last trope on earth?

Is Omegaverse a trope or a genre? I wouldn’t write it ever. Also, let’s face it, High school/ college/ coffee shop etc. (I hated college, what is WRONG with all of you!!!)

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

Nobody. I want that island and its solitude all to myself, thanks.

15. A Hollywood producer tells you that they want to film just one of your fics. Which fic would you want it to be?

It can’t be a Hollywood producer, because they would just ruin it, but if anyone wants to make Terms of Surrender, I think that’s the most movie-like. Artist Company, you can have this FOR FREE.

16. What is your most underrated fic?

Hmm, I’m not sure what this question really means- should I consider kudos/ comments as a measure? I end up writing niche pairings in small fandoms, so I think that’s a double whammy; but in a medium sized fandom like Beyond Evil, I sure wish more people read “Deer Heart” rather than “Cat Whisperer”. My best writing was for Serenade of Peaceful Joy, which nobody watched, and so maybe three people read the fic.

17. What fic are you most proud of?

I can’t really answer this, I think. All of my fic is very personal to me, and while I know the quality of the writing varies *wildly *, I’m proud that they exist. Ok, NOT Cat Whisperer or A Soul Divided, but even those I side-eye because I think kdrama fandom has bad taste, not because they’re inherently awful. :p

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

Again, there are lots of little bits scattered across all my fic that I love. I love the ending of Inventing Love which I typed directly into AO3 like a madwoman - while waiting for Rain to finish writing the sequel because we wanted to read each other’s fics together; I love Gon getting high on pot brownies and dancing to Black Pink in Destiny’s Child, and talking to his horse when he’s at his lowest; I love Miranda Barlow asking Thomas Hamilton whether he would have preferred if she had a cock for him to swallow in May it Happen to me (all) , a line I didn’t know I was going to write until I was typing it; I love all the letters between the halmeonis in Terms of Surrender, especially the last one from Geowi to Kkachi, and I wrote each one of them through a blur of tears where I could barely see the screen; in Moon River, I love Do-chul and Hong-gi sharing a cigarette and being so in love with each other, thinking about what the future holds for them, while the titular song plays faintly in the background; I love Park Pyung-ho wounded and exhausted, leaving the lights on so that Jeong-do wouldn’t hesitate to knock on his door; I love Koo Seo-Ryeong texting Hyeong-min “ I made a man of you, baby, never forget “ in TMTTAL; and I love the young Kang Sin-jae ruining a perfect tea-set by smashing one of the cups in Before You Came. I remember writing these things, and I remember the feeling when I wrote them, the best feeling, when the words on the page say exactly what you want them to, even if it might get lost in translation between you and the reader.

19. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

I don’t know if I have ever found *a * particular character hard or easy to write; my trouble doesn’t lie in characters, I have difficulty with the other things- plot and description and grammar, lol.

20. What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

I pepper in a lot of OCs because I can get away with it in post canon fics , and it’s a great way to introduce women into male-dominated canons. Off the top of my head, I love the female OCs I sneaked into This Suspect Edifice (Yejun’s colleague and friend Kim Sang-mi), Deer Heart (Sister Lee Sun-ja and Jeong-je’s therapist Dr. Kim Jung-hee) and recently Choe Yeo-reum from Terms of Surrender and “Hwasal” from Juche.

21. What is the one fic that got away?

2020′s Tell me the Truth About Love developed an entire universe of its own without so much as asking me; this year that happened with Terms of Surrender (still writing in that universe!). But I’m more prone to letting fics get away than not because I rather enjoy it when they do. *shrug hands emoji *

22. Have you cried while writing a fic?

Yes, absolutely, why wouldn’t I?

23. If you had to remix one of your own fics, which would it be and how would you remix it?

Oh. This is a tough one. I guess I always felt that I didn’t do justice to one of the first stories that I wrote in The Rise of Phoenixes fandom- A Place in the World- which was a Ning Yi/Feng Zhi wei fic. I think I would probably expand on the universe and write it from Zhi wei’s PoV.

24. How did you come up with title for [x fic]?

”Terms of Surrender” started out in a google doc titled The Unified Soy Sauce Company; I think I changed it about three chapters in. I love cheesy Harlequin romance titles and this was a burst of inspiration because I was writing about lives sundered by war and borders; and Spotify randomly played “Hallelujah” that morning. [ I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch/ love is not a victory march]

25. Which idea came to you first in [x fic]?

For Juche, it’s the reveal that happens half way through the story about how Park Pyung-ho became a spy. Well, that, and Pyung-ho buying a pair of soccer shoes for Jeong-do’s son. Don’t ask me why, I have NO idea.

26. Which part of [x fic] was the hardest to write?

I know Rain asked for recent fics, but Yeong leaving Corea in Inventing Love was so incredibly difficult to write, but I’m very proud of it.

27. If you were ever to do a sequel to [x fic], what do you think might happen in it?

If I ever write a sequel to Juche, the only thing I know for sure is that there’ll be at least one scene of them dancing in a small kitchen. [Alexa, play Unchained Melody]

28. In [x fic], what is a happy, post-fic headcanon you have about [pairing]?

In Rival, post fic verse, Min-chae adopts a dog who only loves her mean mom Na Hee-do. *shrug hands emoji *

29. Send me a word. If it’s in your WIPs, include the sentence and a short summary of the fic.

Lol, I think you’ll find an abundance of the word “huffed” in any fic of mine.

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

I only write longfic! *sob *

My scatter-brain is hopping between several different nebulous ideas and I’m not able to settle down with any one, so I’m going to pass on this. The only thing I can say for certain is that it’ll feature people grossly in love with each other, and being completely stupid about it. * shrug hands emoji *

#writing things #thank you besties #i did work hard today #*kisses *

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 3 years ago

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So...Misery style, how would you make Tomione work? (Or how would you do a Tomione story?)

Thanks, Anon, this might be harder than the Dramione one.

Well, again, to please my deranged captor, I'd likely follow the plot of your standard Tomione fic and hope it passes muster. "Oh yeah, Hermione's back in time and she's doing back and forth mind games with Tom and it's really intellectual." With any luck, my feet aren't smashed into oblivion.

But I think you're trying to get at what I would really do if I really had to write Tom/Hermione and I had to make it something I would read. At least, that seems to be the spirit of this ask.

So, we're going the thriller route people. A lot like Misery, actually.

Instead of Ginny, twelve-year-old Hermione picks up the diary. Like Ginny, Hermione quickly becomes besotted with Tom Riddle trapped inside. However, unlike Ginny, Hermione goes straight to the library and starts asking pesky questions.

Hermione's never heard of memories stored in objects before, the theory behind portraits and pensieves are completely different, what spells did Tom use and where did he find them? Did Tom Riddle invent an entirely new branch of magic at the age of 16 without anyone noticing? What was Tom's special service to the school?

Tom starts sweating when it becomes clear that Hermione's stumbling a bit too close to the truth (that this is not ordinary magic and highly dangerous shit) and that she's clearly going to start asking around about Tom Riddle (to Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid, who were all near Hogwarts at the same time Tom was going to school).

Tom confesses that he may have created the diary using something very... illegal. Hermione is appalled and asks if it was gasp dark magic! He admits it is but points out it's a bit late now, like it or not, he's stuck in the diary and running to Dumbledore isn't going to make that go away any time soon. And it wasn't like Tom asked to be shoved in a diary either.

Hermione's very conflicted, on the one hand, Tom's the first real intellectual friend she's ever had. Harry and Ron are nice, but they're morons and they thinks he's a nerd. Tom encourages her intellectual pursuits and confirms her concern over various what not and what have you happening in Hogwarts.

Eventually, Hermione decides that Tom in the diary can't help being a diary (though the other Tom, the real Tom, she'd have words with), and decides that she'll try to help him get a body.

Great, that's great, Tom says.

But it keeps getting worse.

Tom tries to possess Hermione, but unlike Ginny, Hermione knows that Tom is a dangerous, dark, artifact. If she's suffering negative health effects, losing her memory and ending up in the girl's lavatory, she's going to research this and decide that either a) she's suffering ill effects of using dark magic b) she just got possessed by Tom.

Either way, she tells him she can't use the diary anymore, it's affecting her health and she must research. Well, Hermione researching does Tom no fucking good, but he can't stop her.

The Chamber of Secrets, as a result, is never opened.

Instead, Hermione continues researching, and Harry and Ron... begin to get on her nerves. It's not like last year, there's no Flamel to research, no over-arching mystery, and they seem to be growing tired of her. In turn, Hermione's getting a little tired of quidditch, getting detention, etc.

She's a little tired of Hogwarts, if she's being honest with herself.

Hermione's now had a taste of having a friend who isn't there to simply use her brains. And it's very addicting. She decides not to tell Ron and Harry about Tom, they'd just get needlessly concerned (the irony of this isn't lost on her but what can you do)

In the end, she opens back up the diary, and point blank asks what Tom needs to get a body. Before Tom can tell her, Hermione lists out her own theories. Life cannot be created from nothing, golems and puppets cannot last in the long term, to get a real body... human sacrifice is on the table, isn't it?

Well shit, Tom thinks to himself. He tries to assure Hermione it isn't but ends up confessing that, well, yes, it kind of is.

They have another huge row about it, Hermione slams the diary shut, but the wheels in her brain are spinning.

Does anyone deserve to die?

Hermione, at first, adamantly tells herself the answer is no. No one deserves to be sacrificed. Tom's fate is cruel, but the original Tom made his bed and should lie in it. It's unfortunate, but that's just life. Not the diary's fault, of course, but nothing that can be helped.

But then she keeps thinking about it.

Malfoy struts through the school like a peacock, sneering every time he sees her, laughing every time Snape deducts points from her in Potions for being a 'smarmy know-it-all'. Every time he can get away with it he's shoving her in hallways, calling her a mudblood, and assuring her that she's worth less than the dirt beneath her feet.

She watches as Malfoy torments and bullies Harry, she looks at Draco's father, and she asks herself if the world would really be so much worse off if Draco Malfoy were to disappear?

Draco Malfoy's being groomed to use dark magic, he practically brags about it at every opportunity, why is his life worth more than Tom Riddle's, someone who has paid the price for dark magic?

Isn't Hermione, in a roundabout way, only giving Draco what he deserves? The fate he'd meet at some point in the not so distant future?

Draco does something phenomenally cruel and stupid to the trio, likely to Harry, and that settles it. Hermione's going to murder that motherfucker and get Tom Riddle a body.

Hermione tells Tom the plan, she's passing off the diary to Draco, she has her full blessing, her permission, and whatever help he requires from her to eat Draco Malfoy alive.

Tom is unwillingly impressed, he was a vicious gremlin as a twelve-year-old, but even he wasn't committing murder in cold blood.

Tom's not sure how he feels about murdering a Malfoy, that's bound to get noticed, but Hermione's unyielding. Draco Malfoy, or Hermione goes to Dumbledore.

So, Draco Malfoy it is.

The rest of the year is spent with Tom Riddle murdering Draco Malfoy and coming up with some excuse for his disappearance. The chamber isn't opened as Hermione reminds Tom that this would make it entirely too obvious who is behind this. Instead, Tom likely has Draco partake in increasingly erratic schemes to humiliate Harry Potter that end up endangering himself.

Near the end of school, Draco disappears into the Forbidden Forest to find acromantulas to put in Potter's bed and... never comes back.

A huge search is put on, Draco Malfoy is never found, and the acromantula infestation in the forest is now actively battled by ministry employees. Dumbledore is sacked as headmaster, Hagrid fired for having been responsible for the acromantulas in the first place, and Hogwarts is closed the following year.

Hermione is... conflicted about all of this. She certainly didn't mean to fire Hagrid (had no idea he was even remotely involved with the acromantulas) and certainly not Dumbledore. It wasn't Dumbledore's fault at all.

Tom, who is now a free man but has no idea what to do with himself, meets up with Hermione and points out that Dumbledore should have been sacked ages ago: he let kids get away with this stupidly dangerous shit and the year before actively endangered his students and lured a dark wizard into the castle. As for Hagrid, he raised a dragon illegally on school grounds, did release his pet acromantula into the wild, and more. They were terrible at their jobs.

Hermione, ever so reluctantly, agrees.

It's too bad though, Hagrid was very nice and Dumbledore's a great wizard (don't even get Tom started).

As for Tom, well, he had such dreams. Of course he planned to either meet up with his glorious self or (upon learning that Voldemort was blown up by a toddler) take the mantle of Voldemort for himself. But now that he's out, he has no idea where to start. Murder Harry Potter, certainly, but after that?

Tom only has the vaguest idea of who the original Death Eaters were, and they seem to have effectively scattered. More, how does he go about this? Sure, Tom had ideas when he was in school, but they were just ideas. He's never led a revolution before, has no idea how to impersonate an older, more knowledgeable, version of himself. He barely understands the political climate in this new, post-Voldemort, Britain.

Tom keeps hanging around Hermione because, well, inertia. He has no idea what else to do. (Hermione, while still torn over the consequences of her actions as well as the distant thought that she enabled murder, is quite delighted to have him around).

Tom tries to wheedle Harry's address out of Hermione and gets a lot more information than he bargained for. Harry lives with abusive muggle relatives, Dumbledore is apparently keeping him there, all of this sounds bizarre. Tom is officially weirded out.

Still wants to murder Harry, of course, but also wants to dig into this a little further...

And before this becomes a full on fic outline, eventually this will lead to the murder of Dumbledore, probably the murder of Ron when Ron inadvertently discovers 'the truth', Hermione telling Tom they're now an item, Tom trying to escape the relationship, only to learn there's no escaping Hermione.

Hermione becomes the next dark lord. Tom has no idea how this even happened.

#harry potter #harry potter meta #harry potter headcanon #harry potter shipping #hermione granger #anti hermione granger #tom riddle #hermione/tom #anti hermione/tom #meta #headcanon #opinion #shipping

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fandomficticn · 3 years ago

Text

The Last Hope - Prologue

THE LAST HOPE Masterlist

Word Count: 2004 words

Summary: She was never supposed to be needed. The Celestials created Naluma as a last resort; if all else failed, she would be the one to save mankind. Hoping that such a time would never occur, Naluma remained dormient and Lily Shorne was born, living a normal life on Earth with no knowledge of who she actually is or the power she has. When the world is put in jeopardy once more, the Eternals must find Naluma before it’s too late and all of humanity is lost.

Warnings: eternals spoilers

A/N: thank you to everyone excited about this story so far! i watched eternals on saturday and literally a day later came up with this story. like i put in the notes of the masterlist post, this story has the same start to it like the movie, the eternals coming to earth and their mission leading up to them going their separate ways in 1521 with some slight differences with my original content to fit my story. hope you guys enjoy!

2024 - Peru

“Druig?"

"Yes, my love?"

"Do you think we have time to do everything we’ve ever dreamed?"

"We have till the end of time.”

Druig woke with a start like a strike of electricity struck him and ran straight to his heart. It was quite warm in his quarters and he often woke with sweat beading on his forehead but this was different. This dream caused the same reaction every time he woke up. The dreams were never the same, different locations and different times, but the voice was always the same. The girl was always the same.

Druig had no idea who this girl was or why he kept seeing her when he closed his eyes. He felt in his gut that she was important somehow, definitely felt like she was important to him, and he needed to figure out why but he didn’t know where to start. This was the process his thoughts went through after every dream; rapid curiosity before the defeated feeling took over and he resolved to drawing her once again. He could cover the walls of his room with the pictures he’s drawn of this mystery girl.

The dreams started when they arrived in Mesopotamia; just quick glimpses of her features here and there for a while until the pieces to the puzzle started to be put together and he could see her face. He’d started drawing her when the dreams became a reoccurring thing. Babylon is where he started getting big pictures, sometimes like he was on the outside of his own body and watching everything unfold before his eyes. He was actually smiling with her, not just smirks and eyes full of condescension.

During these moments he’d just be watching, he could tell the two of them were moving through a different time which made him doubt any of these dreams were more than just his figments of imagination. How could he have been with this girl, have “memories” with her, when nothing around them had happened yet? Maybe he was seeing his future. That idea had crossed his mind but even with everything he knows is possible, he still thought that was far-fetched.

He recalls the moments throughout his times with the Eternals, helping the humans and protecting them from Deviants, when his mind would just go blank. It was almost as if certain parts of his existence were just gone, like blips in his memory and no way to recall them. There were times when he’d look back on what fond memories he did have with the others and the scene would just cut short, like the footage was lost and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t fill in the blanks. With his gift being what it is, it baffled Druig that he couldn’t conjure up even the vaguest of scenes from these missing memories. Parts of his entire existence were just gone and he couldn’t help but think it had something to do with this mystery girl.

400 CE - India

Before Ikaris and Sersi’s wedding, the girl had still been on Druig’s mind and the others could tell his mind was far away just from the look in his eyes. No one had the sense to approach Druig about what was on his mind except for one person.

Druig was off in his mind once more, sitting off to the side as he gaze out at the Babylonian sky when a gust of wind breezed past him. A smirk was on his face as he knew exactly who had joined him. He turned to face the new company, “The beautiful Makkari,” He signed to her, “To what do I owe this pleasure?"

The usual bright smile the speedster possessed had softened to a gentle smile, one that was easily recognized as trying to mask the obvious look of concern. Before he could say anything, Makkari was already one step ahead of him, "Something’s on your mind.” She signed, “We all see it.”

Druig took a glance around and could see the truth in her words. His fellow Eternals were trying not to look but they were all clearly concerned about him and he could also tell they were trying not to look like they were watching to see how the conversation was going. He rolled his eyes as he turned back to his friend, “You’re all very nosy."

She playfully glared at him and shook her head, "Not nosy, worried.” She signed before placing her hand over his.

He knew she didn’t have to tell him how concerned they all were, he could see it clearly in their minds. How was he supposed to tell them what he’d been seeing in his dreams? Would they even believe them? What if they thought he was experiencing Mahd Wy'ry? Druig pushed the idea of telling them out of his mind; if things got worse, if he couldn’t move forward with the mission because of these dreams, then he would say something. Nothing sooner, nothing later.

Druig smiled softly at Makkari and shook his head at her, “Don’t worry, everything is fine."

The genuine look in his eyes seemed to satisfy Makkari’s worries for the time being and with her appearing at ease, the rest of the Eternals also felt at ease. She got up from her seat before informing him that the ceremony would start soon.

Druig watched her go and started to feel a block form inside him from keeping the truth from her. He wanted to say something, maybe someone would have some insight into but the fear of what he’d uncover outweighed his want to spill the beans. For now, he’d keep things to himself, and one of these days, he’d bring his secret dreams to light.

A few moments later, Druig found himself alongside the others as they looked on to the sight of Ikaris and Sersi cementing their love for one another. At that moment, he felt a twinge in his heart; part of him, deep down, wanted to have something like what they had but that was just a small part of him. The bigger part of him felt a hint of familiarity with the ceremony like he’d seen something like this before or even more so, been in the ceremony.

These fleeting moments were new and starting to happen here and there, where he would have feelings of having done something before but never able to recall the actual memory itself. Whatever all of these things were supposed to mean, the dreams and the feelings, the need to figure things out was starting to grow.

2024 - Peru

The compound was one of Druig’s proudest creations and he took great lengths in ensuring everything around it and in it ran smoothly. He was no Phastos but his people had certainly overcome quite a bit and thrived for years and years. He’d been circling around the compound, checking in here and there, before heading to his quarters. After India, Druig would force himself to stay awake, to distract himself when he was awake to keep from having the dreams and feelings and so far he hasn’t had a dream or felt anything familiar since leaving the Eternals and starting his compound.

He’d been working himself to the bone and would try to squeeze in the moments of peace and rest where he could. After finishing his rounds, he entered his quarters and let out a breath, finally feeling relaxed after another hard day’s work. Druig all but collapsed on his bed, throwing his arm over his eyes as he started to melt all the stress away.

All of a sudden he heard the faint shout of his name, his eyes shot open and he quickly realized while he was still in his bed, he was surely not in Peru. He shot up out of his bed and quickly tried to assess the situation but he was completely lost, thrown for a loop. Druig rose from his bed and scanned his surroundings; there wasn’t a building as far as he could see, nothing but an open field of lavender. The smell was familiar but besides that, he still had no clue where he was or how he got there. Was he even still sleeping?

"Druig!"

There is was again. His head quickly turned as he tried to pinpoint where the voice was coming from when he spotted a figure some feet away from him. He cautiously started to walk closer to the figure, fully prepared to defend himself, but as he got closer, that familiar feeling was back.

"Druig, help me!"

That voice. Her voice. It was her. He could pick her voice out of a lineup in a heartbeat. Druig was less hesitant to go to her now than before. "Help you? How?"

As he drew near, he could see the distraught look on her face and the feeling to spring into action appeared out of nowhere. Druig wanted nothing more than to help her, he didn’t even have to know what it was he was helping her with or from, he felt like he would do anything she asked him to and he could not fathom why.

They were now mere steps away from each other, within arm’s reach, and now Druig could see the tears falling down her face. He wanted to reach out, to dry her tears, and before he even realized it, his hand was already reaching out to her. Part of him wanted to finally feel her under his touch after all the dreams he’s had of her but the more rational part of him convinced him that this was nothing but a dream and he wouldn’t actually be able to feel her. His eyes widen as he made contact, feeling the heat from her cheeks and the dampness from her tears, "H-how…?"

The girl wrapped her hand around his wrist, making him focus on her, "I need you to save me, Druig. You have to help me."

Druig shook his head, "I don’t know how. I don’t even know who you are or where."

"You know me. You know you do.” The girl kept pressing on, “You have to find me and you have to save me.” Fresh tears began to fall down her face, “I don’t have much time."

A roar behind him broke the two out of their bubble and Druig knew that sound all too well. A Deviant. Druig went to look back at her but she was no longer in front of him. He turned back as the roar ripped through the air, heavy footsteps following shortly after it, and spotted her yards ahead of him. The Deviant was now visible, pounding down the field and destroying the lavender under it.

Druig took off in a sprint to get her, with no thoughts but to save her. The Deviant was moving impossibly fast, faster than he could get to her but it didn’t stop him from trying. What struck him as odd was the fact that she wasn’t running away from the deviant, she didn’t even look back at it, just stood there with tears in her eyes.

"Find me, Druig, before it’s too late.”

Druig screamed out as he tried to reach her but right as the Deviant snapped her up, he woke up. This was the same feeling he had after the very first dream he ever had of this girl but it was ten times more intense. His heart was racing and the feeling of fear and loss was high inside him. Druig clutched at his heart and felt something in his hand. He looked down and saw lavender in the palm of his hand and right then he knew he was right about these dreams from the beginning.

Druig needed to find answers and he knew where he needed to start. He sighed, groaning at what he knew he had to do, “Time to head to jolly ol’ London.”

🏷️ tag list;;

@carlsonione32, @juliette151, @deaderra, @kit-aislinn, @ebonyrabbit, @torioshorio, @wanderingxmuses, @dragonqueen4205, @awmileven, @avengerquake123, @zaddyraeken, @unabashedly-bi, @insert-username-right-here, @bumblebeesbestknees, @0--smolbean--0, @febecmanns, @deepcollectionmagazine, @attackonjacksons, @jujugatinha, @jovialkryptonitewolf, @carriedbrass36, @ceccille, @ocfairygodmother, @hellzbellzz18, @omgnctchina, @beelee9109

if you want to be added to the tag list of this story, like this post

if you notice your blog is struck through, please refer to this post here

#series #series: the last hope #marvel comics #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #eternals #eternals fanfiction #eternals fanfic #druig #druig fanfiction #druig fanfic #fanfic: the last hope

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thunderheadfred · 3 years ago

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🤚Shigaraki HC's🤚

Part 1 of my Shigaraki Thesis HCs. The Second Worst: 1 - 2

This was rough because even though Shigaraki is one of my favorite characters of all time, I have nothing sexy to say about him canonically.

that's a lie, i'm lying. i had to break this post into parts, that's how much of a liar liar pants on fire i am

Warnings for quite possibly everything. Minors do not interact.

- - - - -

Okay first of all:

You know it. I know it. We all know it. This man is not boyfriend material. He disintegrates boyfriend material for fun.

You don’t want to date this man.

Frankly, you can’t date this man.

Seriously. Run.

If you’re a villain, you’re his underling. Maybe, if you squint, you’re kind of like his... um... least-hated workplace associate. What do you want, a trophy?

If you’re a hero, good luck not dying horribly. Maybe you’d make a cute hostage. Hope you can escape cuz he is NOT letting you out alive.

If you’re a civilian, perhaps that’s the best case scenario. He stalks you a little before he becomes infamous. You go on the worst date of your life but luckily you don't tell him where you live. Later you see him on the news standing in a pile of rubble and you just think, “ohhhhhhh.”

If he somehow, impossibly, against all odds, manages to develop a single affectionate feeling toward you, AFO is going to hunt you down for sport. You are NOT getting in the way of world domination. Again, good luck with that.

If somehow you managed to clear all those hurdles and kiss Shigaraki Tomura square on the lips, I can see one of two things happening.

1) You’re his body pillow now. Goodbye sunlight. You live in his room. He doesn’t have to chain you to the bed, because you know escape is pointless. Congratulations, the end is nigh.

2) Total mind break. At the first sign of genuine human affection, his trauma vault is instantly unlocked. Memories come rushing in, his quirk goes nuts. There’s like a 99.9% chance he’ll accidentally kill you and it will destroy his soul forever. But let’s say you’re the lucky 0.01% - then it’s time to fuck off together to a foreign country. He’s terrified, traumatized, and possibly broken beyond repair, but I guess he’s not a villain anymore? Have fun nursing him back to... semi-sanity.

Moral of the story: you’re better off getting hit with a quirk that takes you to an alternate universe where the worst thing Shimura Tenko ever did was throw a Playstation controller at his sister’s head. He’s an aspiring video game journalist with zero charisma and severe self-image issues. He has no earthly idea how hot he is. Please, for the love of God, fall for that guy instead.

haha just kidding

join me in hell, fellow Shigaraki fuckers:

- - - - -

Scenario the first:

so apparently you enjoy living in a cage?

Listen. He does not smell right. He doesn’t need to bathe much because his skin is constantly annihilating itself. So he’s not exactly dirty, but every instinct in your body is screaming in confusion, unsure if he’s alive or dead.

Breath of the damned. Sweet as moldy lemons. Whatever he eats just... rots. He doesn't produce enough spit.

He will kiss you very deeply. Until you choke. Forget the cold, chapped lips because they're the least of your problems. He's got those skeleton hands caging your face and you're trapped against a wall and his gigantic biting teeth are prying you open. He licks inside your mouth like he's trying to steal your soul. He'll probably succeed.

His hair is exactly as soft as it looks. Too bad you'll never get to touch it.

He’s either got no sexual impulses at all and will laugh at you for trying, or he’s a full-on incel. I don’t know which one. I don’t want to find out. Apparently you do, and I salute your resolve.

You will be lucky if Shigaraki treats you like a pet. He loves his Nintendo DS more than you.

Consent is not applicable. You showed interest in him once, now you're his plaything forever. There's a power imbalance between you so wide you could chuck a planet in there.

Safewords? lol

Doesn't want to break you, because what would be the point? He's already broken enough things. He wants to keep you around for a good long while. He'll take good, good care of you.

Unless you disobey.

Obsessed with making you cum whether you want to or not. Yes, this IS a high score thing. It's just so flattering. Say hello, orgasm torture. Was that another one? Aww. You barely moved. Oh, what's that? You're begging him to stop? Haha. He won't.

Don't cry. He'll drink your tears.

He'll touch you everywhere with bare fingers. Slow, feather-light strokes, like some kind of demented ASMR artist. This is not a trust exercise. He knows exactly how much it terrifies you.

Oh yeah. You're getting finger FUCKED. Do you fantasize about having a loaded gun shoved inside you? Same difference.

Will eat you out like nothing else, but not in bed. That's the kind of shit he does on a boardroom table where anybody could walk in and see you writhing. Spreads you WIDE open and sucks on you. Makes out with your asshole. The whole nine yards. It's wet and loud and nasty.

Only time you're out of his sight (and not locked in your room) is when he shoves a remote control vibrator where the sun doesn't shine. Operates it through an app while he calls you and jerks off. Wants to make your knees fail on a crowded train.

Come here. You get to sit on his lap like a dog. Four fingers on your throat, dick hard under your ass. He'll dry hump you in front of God, the Devil, and everyone else.

If he's playing video games, you're cock-warming. He does not care which hole. He won't even look at you.

He might get hard but he does not get naked. You do not know Shigaraki Tomura on a personal level. You have only the vaguest idea what his dick looks like. It feels long and thin, almost sharp. Maybe he's actually been fucking you with an ice pick this whole time. His hip bones dig into you and bruise. He likes to kiss and bite the marks he leaves.

He mocks you for being so fucking pathetic. Have you always been a such a needy slut or is he really that special? What is wrong with you? Even he thinks you're crazy.

Shigaraki won't kill you, but All For One will.

- - - - -

The Second Worst Scenario:

The half-mad ghost of Shimura Tenko is in love with you, and your life is about to become a tragic wreck.

(this half of the post went completely off the rails and turned into like... a whole-ass Victorian Novel)

#Shigaraki #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x y/n #shigaraki x you #gender neutral reader #mha #bnha #shigaraki headcanons #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #smut #fred writes

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transienturl · 3 years ago

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Fiction setting idea where time anomalies occur fairly frequently, in which the people facing a cataclysmic struggle occasionally meet people from far afterwards, a future from which they can confirm that the world is not destroyed and—presumably—the heroes win. Trouble is, it's nearly always so long in the future that no one remembers precisely how they did it. They're more like biblical figures, whose stories have been co-opted to represent different contemporary messages or lessons, and/or historical figures for whom there is only fossil evidence or long-passed-down tale, vague and misleading. There's no rule against influencing the past; there is, as far as anyone can tell, no risk of paradox (and it never happens to come up, just by chance).

But, every so often, and more often than you might expect, one gets to tell a tall tale to the one who is about to experience it. Oftentimes a hero will attempt a strategy that is, quite obviously, doomed to fail in 99.9% of cases, and it is quietly assumed among their followers and peers and adversaries that they are doing so with inside information that whatever they are about to attempt is absolutely guaranteed to work out in their favor... or, at least, that what they have seen of the result is one they are satisfied with... or, perhaps, that they have received enough information from the future to know that it doesn't really matter what they choose to do. Perhaps they know they will fail, no matter what, and this is the way they choose to do so.

More often than not, though, it seems, it is those who are in most need of faith that receive these blessings from the future. On the other hand, those who receive visitors from the past seem to be chosen mostly at random. And so many a child grows up paying extra attention in history class, just in case one of those figures appears to them wondering about their future—and many a poor soul in a seemingly impossible situation finds themself holding out just a little bit of hope that they will be gifted a solution (or even the vaguest fragments of one) from someone who has been kind enough to remember them.

Once in a while, even, it is not the heroes whose struggles touch thousands that receive these gifts: it is just one life touching another life, like a young person rejected by their family meeting their future partner, years after they have passed away, and simply being told: you survive, and you thrive, and you are loved beyond your capacity to imagine it now. It does not happen often, most think... although no one has bothered to look into it for sure, to poll the masses and ask who has seen the future, or to collect quite enough data to really have a solid idea. Perhaps, in some small way, everyone in this world knows a bit of their story—not necessarily a true bit, of course, but a bit as remembered or told by somebody else. And what they do to fulfill that story or subvert that story in an interesting or ironic or defiant way is up to them.

(This post partially inspired by this post from @whiskeyworen. Just popped into my head and I thought it was kinda neat. I think it'd be a kind of interesting concept in the hands of someone who's really good at writing with a mythical/oral history tone like @dycefic, as you could write both the remembered and lived versions of the same tale, and play around a lot with fate and heroism and miracles. And, like, what happens in this universe when a person you look up to admits that they lied about knowing the future? What happens when you receive a vision of a truth about your friend or loved one that they won't want to know?)

#this post is not as well written as I was hoping it was going to be #but eh I thought of it in about 5 seconds so what did I expect

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anguisette90 · 3 years ago

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2021 AO3 Year In Writing

tagged by: @laurabeatrix

I definitely didn't start this weeks ago when I was tagged and then not get a chance to finish it and completely forget about it until I went to check my drafts for something else. *cough* I'm also incapable of giving short answers, so I decided to do a "read more" and save any mobile users from a ridiculous amount of scrolling to get past my nonsense.

1. Number of stories posted to AO3:

2. Word count posted for the year:

260,927 words (though really only around 190K of that was written in 2021, a lot of it was written in 2019 or 2020 and I only got the courage to share in 2021, haha.)

3. Fandoms I wrote for:

The Dresden Files

4. Pairings:

Harry/Murphy, Harry/Lara, & (sigh) Harry/Marcone

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: 80 Floors Up (122)

Bookmarks: 80 Floors Up (21)

Comments: All's Fair(59)

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why):

Mm. I’m really pleased with how All’s Fair turned out. It’s the first story I’ve ever fully planned out and written methodically, with the knowledge that I’d be sharing it with people and so it needed to do story-y things. This is the first thing I’ve ever written that felt like I really had to work at it, but the end result is something that I feel is actually pretty well polished.

Runner-up shout out to The Detective & Miss Murphy though. I went into it with only the vaguest idea of when the Regency era even was and having precisely zero experience with either consuming or creating Regency romance books/shows/movies. I expected it to be a total disaster, and while it definitely is not the best thing ever written or even the best thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s turned out pretty well so far. Jane Austen I am not, but since @LauraBeatrix’s original inspiration for the conversation was Bridgerton, and Julia Quinn is also definitely no Jane Austen (which I know now, because I’ve read like four or five of those books at least, so thanks for that LauraB :P) I’ll take it. I also genuinely put more time and effort into research for this fic than I did for all of my college classes combined last year (8 of them? 9? A bunch) and while I’m not exactly proud of that fact, I’m not not-proud either.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

I’m tempted to say 80 Floors Up because it is the fic I have put the absolute least amount of thought or effort into – it was a silly premise that I wrote in a single weekend including editing time. But it did turn out pretty good despite being somewhat ridiculous?

I guess I Caught Fire. Every time I look at it I feel like it’s missing something, like something’s off about it, but no matter how I poke at it I’m not satisfied.

8. Share or describe a favourite review you received:

It’s been a good year for reviews. Honestly, everybody is so sweet and supportive. I started 2021 kind of on the fence about whether to continue posting things and very insecure in my own writing but people have been so nice. I have genuinely cried from comments received several times this past year.

(Not that I have a folder on my phone with screenshots of comments that I flip through when imposter syndrome gets bad or anything. I’m not desperate for validation. It’s cool.)

But my absolute favorite review? Gotta be this lovely gem from @LauraBeatrix:

9. A time when writing was really, really hard:

I hit a snag in The Detective & Miss Murphy for a bit there where I had waaaaay too much planned content to fit into waaaay too few chapters, which was super difficult to work through.

I also have had a few instances (once for All’s Fair, twice for yet-unposted WIPs) where I’ve had to dwell on That Scene from midway through Battle Ground and that’s been a very different kind of difficult.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

Harry and Murphy are constantly surprising me in The Detective & Miss Murphy because they never do quite what I expect them to do. I have whole scenes planned out and then one of them just says something out of nowhere, or does something crazy. You know what I didn’t expect at the start of writing a regency romance? That my hero and heroine would have a woman tied up in the heroine’s bedroom to get information out of her. Didn’t expect that to happen. Absolutely insane. I have no control over them.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

This bit for All’s Fair keeps sticking with me and I’m fond of it: “I remembered when she’d been mine and I’d been hers. When we’d professed our love and when we'd acted on it. I remembered when I knew with all of my heart, mind, and soul that I belonged wholly and completely to her, that I would never love anyone the way I loved her. We were made for each other, in the sense that years of shared experiences and friendship had forged us into complementary shapes, worn and scarred but familiar and comfortable, fitting perfectly together.”

12. How did you grow as a writer this year:

I have definitely gained a lot more confidence in myself. Two years ago, getting an even vaguely critical comment on something would haunt me for weeks and make me question whether or not I should continue posting. Even at the beginning of last year, I frequently questioned whether or not I should bother sharing what I wrote, if I was just being stupid and arrogant to believe that other people would want to read it, etc. I'm not saying I've magically become immune to criticism or anything, but I'm at a place where I can get a negative comment, process the feedback (if there actually is any), and move on with my life without losing sleep over it. Which is progress.

13. How do you hope to grow next year:

I want to put more of a focus on original work in 2022 than I did last year. I still expect most of what I write to be fic, but I'm starting to entertain the idea that 15 year old me might have been right after all and I should try to become a published author.

I also want to invest more time in actually learning how to be a better writer. I've listened to TED talks and interviews and things like that here and there with authors I respect, and sometimes I pick up good advice, and sometimes I think the advice isn't for me, but I want to spend more time doing that this year. Writing, like any art imo, has a large instinctive component, but that doesn't mean you can't better hone your instincts with training.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

Last spring I stumbled across a post where some total strangers were discussing wanting to see fluff of Harry/Murphy. One person in particular had a specific request, I think she said she wanted to see Harry at another Murphy family reunion? I don't remember now. Whatever it was, I had this fic that had been sitting in my drafts since 2019ish and it sounded like just what she was looking for. So even though I thought it was kind of a poorly-written fic, I posted it on AO3 and shared it here, hoping maybe one or more of these people would see it. Even if it wasn't very good, I figured not-great content is still better than no content, right?

That very particular stranger was @laurabeatrix, who did see my fic, and had a ton of kind things to say about it, and has basically not stopped saying nice things about my fics since. She is my biggest cheerleader/muse/emotional support beta reader/tinfoil hat co-conspirator/3 AM rambling thought sounding board/all-around wonderful person. I can honestly say without exaggeration that at least half of what I've written this year wouldn't have happened without her, or at least wouldn't have been posted. Also, she made art for a fic that I wrote. Art. Like for real fanart. It's been months and I'm still kind of freaking out about that because seriously how cool is that?

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

No current events from my life, though I've definitely drawn from my life experiences. There's a scene in Paper & Jewelry where Harry's watching Murphy use a step ladder to try to put baubles on the Christmas tree, which was directly inspired by my wife watching me nearly break my neck several times trying to string the lights on our tree a few years back.

Also, not sure if it counts but most of the time when I choose to set a scene in a specific place in Chicago it's because it's a place I've been and often have pictures I can reference. Several of Lara and Harry's dates in All's Fair are locations the wife and I have also visited together. Really wish we weren't living in plague times, because it's been way too long since we had a chance to get out there and I'm itching for it.

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Share what you've written! I don't care what you've written. I don't care if its an obscure ship from an obscure fandom with a weirdly specific set of tags that you think only you could possibly care about. Someone wants to read it. You think it's bad? It's probably amazing, but even if it isn't, to be honest, who cares? If you liked the idea, or the dialogue, or the setting, or whatever enough to write it, someone else will like it too. It's easy to get caught up in the number of kudos, or the number of comments, but honestly, even if there's just one other person out there who reads it any enjoys it, you've still made an impact on the world, you've made that one person's day better for a few minutes (or hours, or if you write as much as I do maybe days) just by sharing your ideas, your art. Don't second-guess yourself.

And if you're writing for one of my fandoms, this goes doubly for you. Odds are if there's only one weirdo who is going to like your fic, I'm that weirdo, and I want to read it, lol (But seriously, you're better than you think. How do I know? Because I've never in my life met a writer who was as bad or worse than they thought. We all think that. It's okay. Just share anyway.)

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

Very close to finishing Detective and Miss Murphy which is both exciting and sad. I'll miss it but I'll be glad to have it wrapped up too.

After that, I've got a kind of dark post-BG longfic I'm working on, which will let me play with myths and deities, some of which we haven't had a chance to see yet in canon, and I'm both nervous and excited for that prospect. We'll see how it works out.

As always, I've got about two dozen other misc WIPs too, most of which aren't ready for me to talk about them yet, but I'm sure there' will be plenty of forthcoming fic for 2022.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read:

As usual I'm not directly tagging anyone because I don't do that, but if you're reading this and you would like to provide your answers, consider this me, tagging you. I'd love to read your thoughts!!

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maxwell-grant · 3 years ago

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Odd-ish question. Imagine, if you will, that a new The Shadow film or prestige TV Series is being made. In your head, what's the trailer?

I gotta say, it was rather disheartening to learn in film school that most directors/producers/showrunners don't actually get to have much say in how their work is promoted, because, at least as far as I know, that stuff is outsourced to a separate team. I mean, I get why this happens, it's ultimately for the best, but it's still kind of a bummer to me personally since I do like making trailers and teasers (I do make my living as an editor and all).

I'm not gonna get too into what I imagine said trailer to be like, because it's one of those things I'd rather keep to myself until I get to make something of it, but I will talk a bit about how I think a marketing strategy for a new Shadow film or series could be like.

First and foremost, I think anyone who wants to tackle The Shadow, even just to promote him, has gotta understand what about the character works, what influenced his creation, what's he got that can be promoted, what can grab audiences, what can get them to stay, and so on. "Fandoms" nowadays rule the way media is consumed and sustained, and you see it especially in modern cartoons that live or die on the audience's devotion. That is one of the reasons why I made this blog, because I want the character to thrive again and I want to provide people with a catalogue of information they can dig into.

The Shadow was, for a decade and then some, arguably the biggest crimefighter of American media, figurehead of not just one but TWO mediums, and the only reason he existed at all was because Street & Smith's marketing ploy for a faceless narrator turned out far more successfully than they could have anticipated. That he's survived the total downfall of American pulps and decades of mismanaged adaptations, as still one of the most famous of all pulp heroes, is testament to how strong the original concept still is, the appeal the character held. I made this post partially to highlight that.

And first and foremost, is to build up the character. Take advantage of the fact that the general audiences only have the vaguest idea of what this guy is like, and treat him not like an old character making a comeback, but like he's about to debut for the first time. As I mentioned prior, 1930s radio audiences were enthralled by The Shadow not just because he was the most interesting part of the stories he was promoting, but because he was completely unlike every other narrator in radio at the time, a hissing disembodied voice taunting and cackling malevolently, taunting and daring you.

Think of the marketing strategy for Godzilla 1998, and the waves it made as, instead of just plastering images of the monster front and center, they built up the idea of Godzilla through ads like these, instilling in your head the concept of an unfathomably large monster trodding it's way into the city and wreaking devastation with every footstep, even if you couldn't see what it actually was. It was a particularly genius move because even at this point, most Americans had at least a slight idea of what Godzilla was, or they were at least familiar with the concept through parody or pop culture osmosis. So what the marketing did was break down and fragment the Godzilla concept, and gradually put it back together under the heads of viewers. The movie sucked, mind you, and that reinforces my point: It didn't turn a profit based on it's stellar critical reputation or a prior American following for Godzilla, it turned a profit because the marketing was that good.

Joker is another example of a movie that managed to do well by essentially "re-selling" you it's titular character and through incredible marketing. IIf the idea seemed beyond stupid and unnecessary to most people at first, the Joker trailer did such a fantastic job at selling people on the concept that it immediately turned a lot of heads around. In fact, the trailer was so good, I suspect most people who went into the movie already had made up their minds on it's contents based entirely on the trailer, but I digress.

The film dissassembled the Joker bit by bit, both in marketing as well as it's story, and gave each of it's pieces it's own story. From the laughter as a replacement for tears, to the clown paint starting off as a form of confinement until it replaces the face of the broken man within, to even elements such as the green hair, gaunt physique and fondness for colored suits, all of these got a story, all of these had a "hook", all of these were given significance separate from the history of the character as a franchise supervillain, all of these were made interesting in ways people would be interested in learning more about. Why does The Joker laugh? Why is crying? What's "Arthur" like? What's he gonna do on the show? What the hell is this film going to have to do with Batman?

It got people talking and asking questions, and that's exactly what you want your audience to do. Even for a character as old and overexposed as the Joker, the movie still succeded, at least in marketing, in presenting as if we were going to see him for the first time, to the point all the film needed to secure it's Batman connection was just the name.

And Street & Smith was doing this even back then, when they were in the middle of transitioning The Shadow from radio narrator to pulp crimefighter. They started putting out shows where The Shadow would take a more active role, they started getting him to show up in other programs, they put out this contest where they gave out small lines where The Shadow told a detail about himself, and listeners had to piece it together. The radio show was told as if The Shadow was a real, active person, and this was something carried over to the pulps. This was, mind you, before Walter Gibson got to touch the character, but it shows that right upfront, Street & Smith knew how to market this character effectively, through mystery and build-up. I think there are ways to do that nowadays even besides the usual avenue of teasers and trailers.

And if I was going to make a trailer, if I was in charge of designing a marketing strategy or video and so on for The Shadow, this is what I think needs to be emphasized.

None of the promos show his costume in full. We get glimpses of it, like a slouch hat and red scarf abandoned in the middle of a square as a public ad, intense eyes leering over an urban landscape for a poster. A popular podcast gets hijacked in the middle of an ad break for The Shadow, and they act like nothing happened. An entire teaser goes by, and in it, all you see from him in costume is a hand with a Girasol Ring. We don't know who is the actor who's gonna be playing him, we hear laughs in the ads but never a speaking voice. A different rumor is confirmed every week.

The trailers show us scenes of agents interacting, policemen looking for him, criminals hurting others only to run terrified. All sorts of cryptic remarks, or terrified statements. We get an image of Harry Vincent standing on a bridge with gloved hands holding him, and to people unfamiliar, they think The Shadow's about to throw this guy off a bridge, and the fans know better.

Some people think this is all unnecessary, I mean, they know who The Shadow is, he's a 30s radio vigilante who inspired Batman and who Alec Baldwin played once. He's got a girlfriend named Margo, he shoots people. What's the point of all this?

And then The Shadow starts to show up a bit more, and he does the things that people seem to forget he's capable of, for good and bad. And gradually, the trailers and teasers and ads start to unveil just how little general audiences really know The Shadow. And, hopefully, they start wanting to learn more.

#replies tag #the shadow #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #joker #godzilla

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happybeeps-nat · 4 years ago

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Prompt idea: Post-war, Finn and Poe attend some sort of art therapy session together.

A/N: oooh thank you so much for this random, weirdly specific prompt, I was so delighted when I got it and writing something for it was fun! BUT I have not a single idea as to how art therapy works? And so I focused more on the art than on the therapy, I hope this is to your liking! Thank you so much for the prompt! 💕

Light angst, obviously, but the hopeful kind

Words: 1478

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Scars On Our Future Hearts

“Where exactly are we going again?” Poe asked as he was being dragged along by Finn who seemed to know where he was going at least.

“Art therapy,” Finn replied, way too chipper considering the circumstances. Therapy. Art therapy! Poe had as much to do with art as he had with wielding a lightsaber or lifting rocks. But sure. Let’s go do some art therapy, what a wonderful idea, Finn. He sighed and said nothing. That was how it went most days. He talked a lot but didn’t feel like he said anything.

Okay, so maybe this art therapy was actually a good idea…

“Doctor Kalonia recommended it,” Finn explained. “It’s unconventional but says it’s actually a good approach after a war. And it can’t really hurt.”

“Yeah, except in all the ways therapy usually hurts,” Poe muttered.

“Exactly!” Finn smiled, coming to a stop in front of a nondescript building. It looked like all the others, but Finn with his photographic memory would know exactly how to differentiate it from their surroundings even though he’s never been here. Finn was awesome like that.

“I promised her we’d try and if it’s not for us, we can just, you know. Not come back again.”

The casual we that Finn threw around casually still made Poe feel warm all over.

“Okay, okay, let’s try this thing. It it in there?” Poe inclined his head toward the building.

Beside him, Finn nodded and squeezed the hand he was still holding. “You ready?”

“Nope,” Poe sighed and let the p pop, but shrugged. “Let’s do this. Can’t be worse than crashing a TIE-fighter, right?”

Well, turned out it was actually pretty much like crashing a TIE-fighter. Or, like the moment right after the crash. The second of numbness where you didn’t know anything, not even if you were still alive. You didn’t know if anything hurt but you also didn’t know if everything was okay. You had a minute where your judgment was clouded and the only thought was “I need to get up and leave” until you realise that’s not possible because slowly, everything comes back to you. Why you’re there, what happened to get you there in the first place.

And now Poe was staring at a blank canvas and he had no idea what to do, what to feel, what to think, what to say. He had no idea what to draw.

Future, they had said. Future was the prompt for this session, and it was a stupid shitty prompt, like, who even asked veterans about their life plans? They had none! For years, Poe’s future had consistent of the present need to not fucking die, and now here he was, in a non-threatening room full of blank canvases and he was asked about his life and he had nothing to fucking draw. He had nothing to think, he had nothing to say. He barely even had a life.

So the canvas stayed blank while Poe stared at it, feeling as just as empty. Directionless. Not a single splash of colour on his mind, not a single line to give him the vaguest idea od a direction. He was just Poe Dameron, former pilot to the New Republic Navy, former commander of the Resistance who got promoted to the rank of General because he had just enough hope and idiocy left in him to actually go through with winning. That hope was now gone, because why hope to win when you’ve already won? Why create colours when that would just be a waste of resources an actual artist could need?

He had nothing but Finn. Finn who was painting his canvas in the brightest of colours, splashes and lines and everything all over the place, and the board looked ecstatic. It was colourful, it looked random but Poe could see an order there. A system. And of course it was there, Finn would never get rid of that part of him that needed order in everything. But now he had the chance to create the order by himself.

Poe smiled a little as he watched Finn paint, and picked up his pencil again. Yellow, blue, green, red, in all their shades. And in the middle, right in the centre, there was a splash of orange, looking out of place but also just right. It completed the painting, gave it a meaning, an order, a direction. A centre. And it was the same shade of orange as Poe’s old flight suits from the Resistance.

It warmed him to see that, to see the colours, to see that maybe this meant Finn saw a bright future, a colourful life, and Poe right there with him. Poe in his centre. Poe in his heart.

What a wonderful thought. He smiled to himself and stared at his own blank canvas. Then back at Finn’s concentrated form, and without really thinking about it, he mixed a few colours himself. It was the same deep, dark shade of brown as Finn’s skin, yet bright in a way it looked when the sun was dancing on it. Brown with a touch of gold.

Poe grabbed the biggest brush he could find and spread that colour on the whole canvas until there was no untouched space left. The whole thing was covered in golden brown, some places darker than others, and all of them reminding him of Finn.

On a whim, he used more of that golden colour and painted a few traditional Yavinic ornaments. Small, fragile little things, drawn with more care than he’d thought he could use, but the result was absolutely worth it.

It wasn’t perfect and real artists would probably roll their eyes at him for feeling pride as he looked at it, but to him it was perfect. It was his future. It was Finn. Because maybe it was okay that he had no direction, that he felt lost without a cause, even if that cause he used to have was tainted with death and killing and losing and pain. It had been a cause. And now he had none. But he had Finn, so maybe that could be his future.

Everything else, he thought, was a bonus. Direction, meaning, structure, he could find all of that, build all of that with Finn by his side. But without Finn, there was no future. Not for him.

He sighed. This absolute dependence was dangerous and he knew that, he’d have to do something about it, there was nothing romantic about it and it spoke more of his trauma than his lack of words ever could say, but he also knew that wasn’t the whole story. He was in love with Finn, absolutely enamored every day anew. Finn completed him in every aspect, he loved him back with his whole heart, Finn had a huge orange splash in his painting that maybe stood for Poe’s love in the centre of his world. This wasn’t just co-dependence. This was love, a love as deep and as old as time, and one he couldn’t deny.

Finn was his future. And not just because of his past. He would be in every kind of universe. No matter the story.

They got to keep the paintings, brought them home, talked about them. Not with the therapists but with each other. Finn explained every line, every splash, every dot and every brush, the order in it that still felt like chaos. Told him how he was feeling. About himself, about them, about the present and about the future.

And so did Poe. “I, uh, I think I did it wrong? But it doesn’t feel wrong, so… Yeah, anyway, I don’t know what to do. What the future holds or even what I will do tomorrow. I may not even know who I am when I’m not a hotshot pilot or Resistance General. I never had to be just Poe Dameron, and I don’t really know who that is. But I would like to find out? With you by my side? And build a life and all that stuff, but not without you. And I have no plans. I only have you, and that’s pathetic, I guess, but-”

Finn silenced him with a kiss. Then apologised, because Poe was finally talking and he had to ruin that, but Poe just laughed, relieved. He’d finally said it. He was Poe Dameron and he didn’t know what that meant but with Finn by his side, he was ready to find out.

Later, Finn grabbed his hand and took him to bed, giving him a detailed insight to who he thought Poe Dameron was. There were still traces of paint on their skin, but for some reason that made everything feel more real. Like they were okay, and like they had a future. Together.

#finnpoe #stormpilot #star wars fanfic #poe dameron #finn #prompt fill #light angst #canon verse #post-ROS #i loved writing this but idk if thats what you wanted #i hope you like it thank you so much for the prompt I love you! 💕#nat writes #also had two separate language breakdowns while writing so i hope its not too bad

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awanderingmuse-fandom · 4 years ago

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Weekly Writing Update

*taps tumblr mic* “Is this thing on?”

Hi guys! I saw another blogger/writer I follow doing these and thought, heck it’s as good a system as any to show what I’ve done and keep me accountable. I tried to do something similar before a long time ago but fell way off the wagon. Anyways, here we go, weekly updates on what I’ve been writing.

You’re going to notice I’m normally a lot further in on writing than I am on posting. That’s on purpose. It helps me edit. It also protects y’all from any whoops, so I haven’t written anything in six months events. Why would that happen. Well, besides life occurring, allow me to post the FULL LIST of WIP this time around my friends. Normally, I won’t lay out everything just what I’ve worked on. Maybe I’ll do everything once a month? What do y’all think?

As a note titles below the cut are links if the post has gone live.

Five Times Percy Destroys His Phone and The One Time It’s Not His Fault

This is a single chapter thing. It’s done and ready to post. I plan on making it go live on March 1. I’ve got a lot of WIP that I’ve been finishing up and I’m trying to post one a month so as to not over post and drive myself insane.

I Knew I Loved You When: 100 Ships Challenge

This is completely done. It’s posting daily and will continue to do so until we hit 100 chapters. Woot!

World Travelers: A World Away

I am on chapter 15 of part 4 of this seven part series (probably, hopefully). There will be 21 chapters for this part. The bad news is I am completely stuck right now. I think I’ve written like twenty words on it cause I just don’t know what I’m doing. Expect to see updates every Wednesdays, unless of course writers block persists for 6 weeks. Then expect to see me crying into my coffee.

Hybrid Theory

I haven written 25 chapters and am outlined to chapter 31 and do have a vague idea of where I am going all the way through. This story is maybe 1/3 of the way through? I mean we all know I can never drop a story line so that’s probably a lie. Still, it’s got plenty of buffer so expect to see updates on or around the 15th of each month.

When The Dark Comes Rising: Gathering

This story...exists? I am on Chapter 11 of Part 2. There should be three parts. I’ve outlined to chapter 14. For now plan to see it continue to update on solstices/equinoxes.

Untitled “Garment” Project

Shhhh this one’s a secret for the Percy Jackson fandom. (There’s definitely NOT a link in the title for the curious). This one is getting towards the middleish? Idk it’s a bit harder to gauge progress but it will happen!

These Temperamental Days: On Balmy Nights I Know that I Am Yours

This one isn’t dead, despite what I’m sure everyone believes. I am, like halfway through and need to re-watch Captain America Civil War, for research of course. I’m HOPING to post this in April. But we’ll have to see. Then there will be one more part and I’ll consider this story actually done.

Ways of Love: Part 3

Okay, so, this is like super super super tentative. I have written like eleven paragraphs on chapter 1 of Part 3 for this and only have the vaguest idea where we’re going. There’s also not a title yet. So please don’t get excited but I do intend to finish this. So yay!?

Demigods Are Weird

A Hades/Percy Jackson Crossover! The POV will be Zagreus’s and it will be Percico. It will be a long one shot/single chapter thing. I’m already at 2,500 words and am about 1/4 way through? Will post when it’s ready. I’m hoping May but no promises for sure.

Percy Jackson Spy AU

So this is a cannon AU where things in the world of demigods go really weird really fast due to the mist failing. That’s...all I’ll say right now. I’m nearing 2k on the first chapter but I don’t have a time line for when I’ll start posting at this point in time.

White Lotus Buds (Working Title)

Hi Avatar fandom, I’m new here! Anyways. This is a story where The White Lotus is more than Pai Sho friends and also a lot older. Also all the kids are involved. Woo. I have three chapters written out and am outlined through book one. I plan to post sometime...? I’m like really focused on this fic so it may be soonish, idk.

Anyways, this list of 11 stories? This is why I don’t star posting until I have LOTS of buffer. Because otherwise we all cry in our coffee. I won’t list everything weekly, but this is our starter post.

#percico #marvel #the dark is rising sequence #stucky #pjo #situation report #hades game

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gumnut-logic · 4 years ago

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Fanfic Asks 2

This one is for @hedwigstalons who asked for A F L Q along with @fictivekaleidoscope , @willow-salix , @coffee-and-lenna and @janetm74 who all asked for Q. You guys are so kind to me ::hugs you lots::

-o-o-o-

A. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Star Trek: TOS…I’m a Trekkie from way back. Discovered it in 1986 through books in my school library (it wasn’t on TV and hadn’t been since 1975 of which I had the vaguest of memories…and yes, I’m old :P ). I wrote my first fanfic as a teenager, by hand in a notebook. It was submitted to the local club printed fanzine (which I still have lying around here somewhere along with a stack of classic printed zines). Looking back, it had a strong concept behind it, but it was horribly written. I do not have an electronic copy, though sometime ago I thought to re-write it, but never got around to it. You can find my second ever fanfic, written when I was eighteen on FF.net – Goodbye, Spock – it was a movie tag, written in early 1991.

F. How long have you been writing fanfic?

Hmm, I think I’ve given that massive number away in the last question :D Yeah, since I was about eighteen, possibly a little earlier. ::does the math:: Okay, that number is scary. Next year it will be thirty years since my first fanfic ::headdesk:: but having said that, I didn’t really start writing until the internet arrived with my first computer and maturity gave me the ability to finish things (sometimes). I really jumped in with Stargate SG-1 fandom in 2003. From that point on I wrote continuously until I had children in 2008. Then I stopped and didn’t really start up again until July 2018 when TAG hit me like a ton of bricks. The last two years have been amazing and I have learnt so much.

Oh, and if anyone ever says writing fanfic is wasting time or will never get you anywhere, writing fanfic and participating in fandom has done wonders for introvert little me:

Led to me getting my job – writing is a skill that can get you many places

Taught me how to blog and how to manage a blog – valuable skills in or out of business

Teaches you multiple online tools – chat, publishing and other multimedia applications – you’d be surprised how many people are not comfortable using many online tools. I use my experience every day on the library floor.

Allowed an introvert to reach out and learn how to converse and gain confidence in conversation – online interactions has many advantages

Is excellent for mental health…and equally unhealthy if you’re not careful – which leads to learning about yourself and managing conflict (unfortunately…which is why I have zero tolerance for fandom wank and will not participate in or create nastiness – I’m here for fun and to hopefully make things more fun, not miserable)

I’ve learnt to type. My first novel length fic was 75,000 words long and hand written before being typed into the computer – let’s just say that that three months back in 2003 finally enabled me to break the touch type barrier :D Which is a skill that I use every day.

If some one does say you’re wasting your time, they obviously have no idea what they are talking about – ignore them. As long as you’re balancing your fic writing with life in general, things are okay (I got addicted at one point and things were not okay, so don’t do that).

In summary, apparently I’m old, been writing forever and have found it a very valuable exercise which will no doubt lead me even further into interesting places.

L. What is your favorite fic idea that you don’t think you’ll ever write?

I tend to write most things or forget them. There was that random fanfic idea I posted a few days back. It’s a cool idea, but I don’t have time at the moment. ::opens ups fic planning book::

Ideas sitting, not yet started, but might be:

Eos gets hacked by the Hood and injures two brothers before John realises it and saves her.

Episode tag to 3.21 that explores the Mechanic

Alan’s Vlog: I have a note for the next story that I haven’t yet written.

The Kermadec sequel

A fic idea I had the other day inspired by a news article – that one might actually get written at some point.

A sequel to V. T. Green (which apparently is my most popular fic) – which I had a concept for, but haven’t written down, by the looks of it. Oops.

A sequel to Bo where Virg gets buried in an avalanche – this one was started.

Eh, I have lots of ideas, most get lost in the mess that exists in my head. Sometimes I write a note down, but then I forget what the note means. I usually have to grab the inspiration when it strikes.

Q. If you could pick one fic of yours to rewrite, which would it be?

Love and Sacrifice – I wrote that fic out of order and smushed it together and it shows. It is also full of technical holes. The plotline sucks because I wanted a certain scene and forced it. But it is such an integral piece of the series that I can’t alter it much. The whole of Warm Rain was written in bits. I usually write in order and that experiment shows that I’m not great at writing out of sequence. Most of the fics work okay, but Love and Sacrifice, while having some good scenes in it, is poorly constructed.

A Little Distraction and a Little Too Much Attention suffers from self-indulgence. Virgil wasn’t supposed to get hurt – I should have stopped at A Little Distraction, but apparently, I can’t help myself and the results weren’t great.

Two fics instead of one…there are more, but I’m not supposed to publicly criticise my fics – I do enough of that in my own head :D

-o-o-o-

EDIT: @weirdburketeer reminded me of something I meant to list but forgot regarding the above reasons why writing fanfic is not a waste of time.

The friendships! My goodness, how did I miss that? I flew to Sydney to meet a good fanfic writing friend in both 2004 and 2005, another friend flew all the way from Chicago (as part of a business trip) to Australia and made a special trip to Adelaide, just to meet up with me. It was frickin’ amazing!

And this fandom....I have met some absolutely amazing people here. You guys have influenced me like you wouldn’t believe. As I have said on many occasions, this fandom is just amazing ::drags you all into a massive group hug:: And yes, I have some fantastic friendships forming here ::loves you guys to bits::

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #star trek #writing #fanfiction

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