#i needed ro rewrite this like 3 times lol

[sweetieviktor]

young! silco x reader that has cryokinesis (headcanons + tiny scenarios)

summary: living in zaun isn't easy, but with someone and a little magic everything seems easier.

content warning: i think there's nothing to be warned about lol, maybe a bit of ooc silco?? overall it's just fluff :))

author notes: i loved to write this request!! even if i don't think it is this good bcs i feel like silco is soooo ooc but it's fine it's fine, we barely have a glimpse of his youth so yep. hope you guys like it!

» it didn't matter if you knew each other because of vander, sevika or babette, or if it was just a natural meeting. the moment silco laid his eyes upon you, he was mesmerized.

» he knew he wanted you, and he was determined to get what he wanted. always.

» but, as you've gotten to know each other, you ignited something on him that wasn't just desire. so he talked about it to his most trusted friend, vander.

“you're in love, brother” vander was smiling from ear to ear. it was so uncommon to see silco admit he was liking someone, even if it was so unlike him, it was also really cute. “i still can't believe you haven't called them on a date yet. well, if i was you, i would” silco was red, both flustered and angry, and, just like old friends do, vander really liked to annoy him. “have you ever thought about someone getting them first than you?” he lowered his head, gesturing with his hand to make his statement clearer.

“please, shut up, vander.”

» some days after this, he asked you out. silco had a few partners before but he was afraid you wouldn't go on a date with him. he was not conventionally attractive nor did he have anything special, but his words were sincere and you could see it.

» it wasn't rare to have magic in zaun, but it still was something uncommon and it could easily cost you your own life. so, after a lot of dates, after a long time building up trust on one another, you asked silco to go to the bridge that connects piltover to zaun.

» it surely was a pretty sight but you would like to go there because below the bridge, there was water.

» you wanted to show silco a part of you that you kept pushing away and hiding for so long. a part of you that almost no one had seen.

» when your hands met the clear water, it felt like life was finally running through your veins again.

“what are you doing?” he came closer to you, inspecting how the water danced around your fingers, how it changed its shape until it turned into ice in your hands.

“well, i can do... magic.” you looked in his eyes expecting to see fear, disgust or hate, like everyone did, but he looked at you like the only thing that mattered in this moment was you.

“it's beautiful. could you, maybe, show me more?”

[wikiangela]

Weekend WIP Game

tagged by @jesuisici33 <3

Rules: List your WIPs below (if you only write one fic at a time, feel free to include future WIPs/ideas!) then answer the following questions. Then, tag as many people as you have WIPs (or more)

1. WIP List:

alive shannon

sick eddie

buddie coffee shop

new buddie chris' school

roommates

bi eddie

buddie death cast fic

cheating fic

untitled natalia fic

buddie 2x01

5+1 nicknames

coffee buddie

2. Which of your WIPs is currently the longest?

alive shannon with 20k words so far

3. Which WIP do you expect will end up the longest?

alive shannon, since it's kinda a canon rewrite and I still haven't decided to which point it's gonna go, we'll see when it'll feel right to end it haha

4. Which WIP is your favourite to write/the most enjoyable to write? Why?

once again, alive shannon haha - it's just so fun to explore what all those dynamics could've been, and giving Eddie and Shannon some closure, and I love exploring Shannon's character, too, speculating on her thoughts and motivations, and diving into everyone's heads, and I'm so excited to see it all develop!!

5. Which WIP do you find the most intimidating to write? Why?

I think it's either alive shannon or the cheating fic alive shannon bc I've never written s2/s3 buddie and I wanna get their characters semi-right, and I don't remember a lot of details so I need to get on with my rewatch lol - and also writing Shannon's and Eddie's feelings on their relationship and how it all ended is not easy haha and the cheating fic bc it's so not my thing but a song inspired it and it got stuck in my head and it's happening haha and I hope I'll make it make sense haha

6. Which WIP do you experience the most self-doubt about. Why?

tbh all of them - some more, some less, but there are moments, especially lately, when veeeery often I'm just like: everything I write sucks wtf

7. Which of your WIPs will you seek out a beta/sensitivity reader for? Why?

@giddyupbuck agreed to beta the alive shannon fic, and I spam them with snippets if I'm in doubt and it's sooo helpful fr ily <3 and I'll need alive shannon beta-read bc it's gonna be so long, and I keep changing my mind about things bc of how many ideas I have, so I just need someone else to look at it and tell me if everything makes sense haha - and Ro's helped me so much with some previous fics so they have my full trust with my baby that is the alive shannon fic haha

8. Have any of your WIPs been struck by the curse of writer's block?

all of them at some point lol - a few of these are actually on hold bc of that - I will get back to them tho!

9. Which WIP has your favourite OC? Tell us about them?

as of now there's no ocs in any of these, but we'll see haha

10. Which WIP is the sexiest?

cheating fic and maaaaybe coffee buddie (if I'll ever get back to this one) - no actual smut in my wips yet atm

11. Which WIP is the angstiest?

buddie death cast fic - if you've read 'they both die at the end' you know why lol this is not gonna have a happy ending

12. Which WIP has the best characterisation (in your humble opinion)?

so far I'm loving everyone in alive shannon so I guess let's go with that haha

13. Which WIP has the best scene setting (in your humble opinion)?

oh I am so bad this - but maybe let's say buddie coffee shop au bc i think it's the only one where I put even a little bit of focus on the setting lmao

14. Which WIP have you worked the hardest on?

alive shannon, been thinking about it and making notes for months before I started writing, and I don't think i've ever been this invested in a fic

15. Which WIP do you have the highest expectations for? Why?

alive shannon - - like I said, it's my most precious baby, and I'm so excited to not only write it but read it, and I hope it's gonna be as good as it is in my head, and I hope I'll make the story make sense with Shannon there, but also keeping some important buddie moments from canon hah

16. Do you dream about any of your WIPs?

not sure if i've ever dreamt about a wip, but i do get new ideas in my sleep sometimes lol

17. Do any of your WIPs have particular complexities that your other fics don't?

alive shannon will have switching povs which i rarely do, so it's gonna be a challenge to write three distinct voices - and diving into Shannon's head and feelings and motivations will also definitely be hard

18. Which WIP is the funniest or has the most humour?

I think sick eddie - he's so ridiculously stubborn and difficult istg haha or buddie coffee shop with how fucking awkward buck's being

19. Do any of your WIPs contain outside POVs or a deep dive on a character other than the main ship? How are you finding that process?

yep, once again, alive shannon - it's as much a buddie fic as it is a shannon fic, so it's not exactly outside pov, bc I'm just excited to focus on her equally as much, on how she's settling into their lives, becoming a better mom, being involved in Chris' life - she's gonna have as much focus as buddie sns it's not easy, bc it's alternating povs and once I get stuck in Eddie's head it's hard to leave, but so far it's been fun

20. Tell us one thing we don't know about one or more of your WIPs

uhhh, I think I share like everything lol okay, so maybe: alive shannon will definitely go at least up until s4 and will include Eddie dating Ana 👀 purely bc I want a buddie-shipping Shannon to be like wtf eddie??? also, there will be more than one mcd in the death cast fic and coffee buddie was loosely inspired by a small thing from luke cage lol

no pressure tags: @daffi-990 @fortheloveofbuddie @elvensorceress @gaydiaz @diazass @thebravebitch @silentxxsoul @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @arthursdent @diazblunt @911onabc @eddiediaztho @housewifebuck @lover-of-mine @gayhoediaz @rogerzsteven @watchyourbuck @hoodie-buck @monsterrae1 @ladydorian05 @forthewolves @honestlydarkprincess @wildlife4life @theotherbuckley @weewootruck @thewolvesof1998 @disasterbuckdiaz @loserdiaz @underwater-ninja-13 @giddyupbuck @hippolotamus @eowon @callaplums @spotsandsocks

[missbrunettebarbie]

Top 5 barbie movies + Top 5 barbie heroines

Movies

1. Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus - It is one of the few completely original Barbie movies (at least when I was a kid) and probably the best one. I loved everything about this movie: the setting, the protagonist, the villain, the love interest, the magic, the secondary characters. I think the only aspect where it failed me was the fashion, as Anika's dress was rather...forgetable. But her earlier skating suit was great, so there is that.

2. Barbie as Mariposa - Visually, I like this one better. And I also love the characters here just as much as in Magic of Pegasus, but I feel like it didn't live up to its full potential. I am mostly thinking here of the relationship between Mariposa and the antagonist, but there is also the fact that she and the love interest spent almost her entire movie apart, so....yeah, it could have been better. Still love the worldbuilding and the atmosphere.

3. Barbie in the Island Princess - Nostalgia is strong here! One of the few films I owned on DVD. I also found the visuals gr8: Ro's outfits were Iconic and the kingdom and the island were stunning. I also really loved the villain and her daughter, and Antonio was a decent love interest. And that final scene with Ro and her mom...my heart! But again, it could have been so much more than it was. One day, I might write the canon rewrite this movie needs, but it's not today.

4. Barbie in Princess Charm School - Mostly for Blair LOL She's the most Snake primary Barbie to ever exist and I loooove her for it. The movie is rather dumb but in a rather charming way. Again, love the fashion here.

5. Barbie in a Mermaid Tale - Merliah my beloved! You and your mom carry this entire movie series. Again, a bit of a dumb movie, but in a charming way. Really love the secondary characters.

Heroines

1. Eden Starling - The only reason her movie isn't in the above category is bc the others have more ~rewatch value, but she is by faaar the bestest Barbie to ever Barbie. No explanation needed

2. Blair Willows - Probably the most girl-next-door Barbie we ever had, but idc, I luff her. Part of it is -as mentioned above- bc she is the most unapologeatic Snake primary we've seen in the Barbieverse (sidenote: I am really curious about Margot's Barbie's sorting). Really wish we could have seen more of her story.

3. Princess Anika - If I ever had to apply the world girlboss to a Barbie (although I would try to avoid it most of the time) it would be her. She's just perfect. (Eden doesn't get the title bc instead of getting good old revenge on her aunt she bought into her BS and was even happy to see her in the afterlife)

4. Ro(sella) - Again, nostalgia, but damn, I love this girl. She inspires me to write fic! That's incredible.

5. Merliah Summers - Probably the Barbie with the most badass name. I love this competitive, stubborn girl with mommy issues.

[asteristories]

1 Year Anniversary!

Checks calendar. What do you mean it’s been a year already since I posted the first update for Nevermoore?!

Ok but seriously guys, it has been such an incredible journey for me to have reached this far. Even with all the writer’s blocks, my initial doubts and insecurities on the project (oof those were some bad thoughts I don’t want to remember 😅), and uh...2020 in general, I honestly don’t regret a thing with what I started.

I genuinely do enjoy working on this little project of mine, and I loved meeting all of you guys through this! Your constant support and interest in this is what has been keeping me going! There’s honestly so much more I want to say but I’ll just be repeating myself on how awesome you guys are haha.

Heads up this post is going to be long because I have a bunch of announcements and other messages I need to share with you, so I’ll be putting them under a ‘read more’!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1) So first thing, the special anniversary art. I had already contacted and commissioned Red last week, but he’s still working on it. I don’t want to rush him so I don’t mind waiting a few extra days because I know it’s going to be great in the end.

I had a quick sneak peek of what it looked like so far, and I think you guys are going to enjoy it a lot! It has a very slice of life feel so look please forward to it soon! And of course, the RO versions that’ll be starring in the piece are the ones who won the poll.

2) The rewritten update is not going to be up today, I’m really sorry guys! There’s just a lot I need to fix up and need to go through several rounds of editing until I think it’s good enough to share. I am so so close however, and I decided to make the end of January my new goal!

3) Because the rewritten update is going to give Nevermoore a fresh new coat of paint, I’m going to update my policy in answering/receiving asks for 2021. Like whether or not I’ll be willing to answer NSFW questions, for example. I will post a more in-depth ‘ask rules’ when I actually update the game!

4) And speaking of asks, because of how much the story/setting/characters have been changed over the course of the year, a lot of the previous asks I’ve answered are now outdated (Ex: ROs reacting to-, Lore asks, etc). 

I’ll still keep those asks up for old times sake but yeah haha. After I post the rewrite, all future asks will be tagged with something new that’s not #nevermoore asks so you guys can differentiate asks between pre and post rewrite. You’re still more than welcome to send in a question that was asked before to see how much or how little the answers have changed! 

5) Keeping in line with ‘Nevermoore’s new start’, I am also aiming to edit and clean up the blog’s theme so it’s more presentable, adding character pages, and even create a proper intro masterpost that I’ve seen other IF authors do! 

And also, I really need to fix and update my tagging system whoops.

6) Lastly, remember that ‘good news’ I sort of teased a while back but didn’t say much because I needed a confirmation first? Well, that good news came through!

I won’t go into too much detail but basically now I’ll working on Nevermoore as a full-time project instead of just a side hobby that happens after classes! As of now, I only have this time until the end of April but hey, more writing for me! 😎

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

...Aaannnd I think that’s all what I need to say so far! I swear there’s something else I’m forgetting but that’s a problem for future me lol. 

Again, thank you all so much for you amazing support and interest in this little story of mine. Let’s see what new milestones we’ll reach for next year!

I hope to see you guys soon when the rewrite update rolls in! It’s going to be pretty awesome if I do say so myself 🥰.

[reallystellacadente]

Fic Writer Tag Meme

I was tagged by @riajade01 and @semper-draca -- thanks for the asks! 

I’m tagging @pineaberry and @therron-shan and @tracinyad -- I’m going to try to start tagging people I don’t normally tag, not because I’m stalky but because I know you write and I read your writing and I should just make that more obvious in appreciation. :-)

What is your total word count on AO3?

270932, with 80 percent of that being The Spaces In Between, my mega Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn romance. And more than 200K of those words were apparently posted in 2018, although a chunk of that was written in 2017. 

How often do you write? 

I should say every day. If I did, I would be lying, at least right now. I’ve slacked off since finishing Spaces because my brain was out of words and I’m a bit unfocused about what to sit down and work on next. So probably 3 times a week right now. 

Does not include times when I wake up at 6 am and have to grab a notebook and a pen and my dollar store cheaters and turn on the fishtank light to write because I woke up with an idea. 

What’s next? The Wicked Game is an original spy story where the Sith Warrior crew are all spies and canon elements are tossed about like baseballs. Theron gets hit in the head a lot. 😉 

And I’m working on a full rewrite of KOTFE-ET, plus my non-canon AU where all the companions EVEN ZENITH YOU TURDS come back before KOTET (except Jaesa, Kira and Scourge because I’m totally fixing that where it should have been fixed). 

And there are other things but I’m trying to at least keep my scurrying about to the above two.

Do you have a routine for writing? 

No, that’s kind of a problem, too. Open up a word doc, start typing, have at least 4 Wookieepedia tabs up at any given time is about it, plus music, anything from Hamilton to Jesus Christ Superstar to Nine Inch Nails to Sigur Ros to my 10 hour rando favorites YT playlist.  

Much of Spaces was written in the hour after work when the office is empty, the phone is quiet and I am waiting for the traffic to die down bec. I have a long commute home. 

What are your favourite kinks/tropes/pairing? 

Kinks – I’m just not kink-oriented. I mean, they’re amusing but not really my style, with one exception: The uniform kink is real and severe. 

Tropes – I love any romantic trope involving awkwardness before/early into  relationships. Obviously, that’s a gold mine when you’re talking about Quinn, lol. Expect a flashback where pre-relationship SW Xhareen and Quinn are forced to be Pretend Married and There’s Only One Bed. It’s been written in my head for months, and foreshadows something I need for the KOTFE rewrite. 

Pairing – Obvious af, but SW/Quinn. I love my agent Zavaa and Vector; and, tiny spoiler, but while I have Jaesa paired with someone different in my mainverse, in the spyverse it’s Jaesa/Vette. 

Do you have a favourite fic of yours? 

The Spaces in Between, all 217684 words of it. It was the first big work I’ve ever completed and that’s quite an accomplishment, she says, staring at the WIP files. It takes the Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn story from Corellia to Ziost, with a lot of non-canon plots, and looks at the question: If the Quinncident didn’t break them up, what would? And how would they get back together? 

Second, less obvious fave: The rarepair Felix Iresso/Elara Dorne story I wrote for Catpella for Yuletide 2016: All I Want for Life Day is You. It’s basically “It’s a Wonderful Life” for Felix, whom I adore. But he does not get with my consular, and has to learn to find and accept love that’s real. 

Your fic with the most kudos?

The Spaces in Between. 

Anything you don’t like about your writing? 

Plotting is hard. And I have to watch writing too-complex sentences. I usually do a lot of simplifying on my last pass before posting. I have even done it on the posting screen on AO3 if a sentence sticks out. But I still leave some in. My inner editor mocks them a lot. 

Now something you do like? 

Words. Words good. I good with words and the grammer.

[you-did-well-my-love]

Drama Review: Introverted Boss

I don’t think I have ever been so satisfied with the ending of the drama.

Rating: 4.5/5 I was going to rate it a four, but that last episode was absolutely amazing.

OST: Most of the ost is pretty typical but like I have had B1A4 Sandeul’s song on repeat since it ended like shit it’s so good. 

Genre: Romantic Comedy, Business

Synopsis: Eun Hwan-Ki is the CEO of a public relations company, but he is extremely shy. Due to his personality, even his employees do not know him well. Chae Ro-Woon begins work at Eun Hwan-Ki’s company. She is very energetic and receives recognition for her work, but her only interest is in CEO Eun Hwan-Ki. She plans to reveal who Eun Hwan-Ki really is. (source: asianwiki)

Trigger Warning: This drama deals heavily with mental health. The opening scene is a woman committing suicide. (I was honestly surprised at how graphic it was. Obviously it’s nowhere near 13 Reasons Why, but they showed more than I’ve ever seen in a drama outside of Let’s Fight Ghost which was about dead people.) The main lead has social anxiety. A character has depression. Visual self harm. etc.

Thoughts/Review: (no spoilers)

It’s been so long since this drama ended so this review is going to be scattered, but my GOD did I love this drama.

I wasn’t even going to watch this drama. I had it on my list, but the initial response to it was so negative, I took it off. But then I saw this one gifset of the male lead stroking the girl’s face while lying in a bed and I felt so much tension just from those gifs, I was immediately taken.

And honestly, Hwarang was so dry I was like dying of thirst and when I saw that gifset just drenched in chemistry I was sold.

I could see where the negative reviews came from. The editing was very jumpy - jumping back and forth to the various different things going on but, like, I couldn’t tell what was going on.

The transitions were really weird. The writers were awkward with introducing the characters. And then the drama started out with a woman jumping off of a building, and it takes you forever to find out who she was. JUST FYI that scene took place three years before the rest of the drama. They should have put “Three Years Later” at the bottom of the screen, no clue why they didn’t.

They could have used a bit more depth in setting up the characters. Whereas most dramas take two to three episodes to set up the plot, this drama just dived right in. Pretty much “everything” was set up in episode one. And I say that in quotation marks because of the episode 5 situation (explained below).

BUT once everything started to make sense, I was really intrigued. They had a really good story, it was just a rocky start. Get past the rocky start!

Much of the controversy was surrounding the female lead Park Hye Soo’s acting. I can’t argue with it. She wasn’t awful, but it seemed like it was her first lead role. She seemed like the type that can act well in minor roles, but something felt off with her line delivery... it felt almost forced. I think part of it was the weird script, because it got better after episode 4. Obviously it didn’t bother me enough to stop watching the drama, I stopped noticing it much the later I got into the drama. I guess the experience did well for her.

For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember when the news broke, the drama skipped a week to rewrite the script. This happened after episode 4. If you are watching and you’re not really feeling it, my advice is to wait and watch episodes 5 and 6 because that’s where a lot of things are fixed, everything gets explained, and the plot picks up.

NOTE: From what I gathered when watching, the writers changed the central conflict. There are a few continuity errors, but it’s understandable considering they film these dramas while they’re airing.

It was really quirky. The bright colors, the tone, the dialogue. It reminded me a bit of the extra-ness of jdramas. It had that lighthearted, fun feeling like Sassy Go Go, Surplus Princess, Marriage Not Dating (from what I’ve heard), Cinderella and Four Knights, Shopping King Louis, etc.

However, the deeper you get into the show, the more things appear to be not what they seem. So while “everything” is explained in episode 5, aside from the personal conflicts and episodic conflicts, there was this mystery brewing. A sort of underlying sketchyness that kept growing until the end.

I absolutely adored this drama. From the comedy (which was golden btw) to the use of irony to the characters to the romance. It is up on my list of top dramas for 2017.

The comedy: there was a lot of witty dialogue and utilization of each of the characters’ little quirks. The actors did amazing, a lot of it was expressions and motions tied in with dialogue that wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining if the actors delivered it badly.

Yeon Woo Jin did such an amazing job as Eun Hwan Gi. He made this character come to life in such a raw and realistic way, I am truly impressed. I’m looking forward to seeing him in his next drama. I, someone with a social anxiety disorder, relate to Eun Hwan Gi so much it’s frightening. But that’s what made me love the drama even more. It made me feel a deeper connection to any kdrama character I have ever felt, and his thought process was so much like mine (always overthinking things) it made me root for him that much more. 

I felt so much for him seeing him make the efforts because I know from personal experience how hard it was for him. He was unable to do the mean thing despite it being the right thing because it was mean. He was so not the typical male kdrama lead, and he broke a lot of gender stereotypes. Plus he was freaking adorable. He had all these charms; his drunk habit for one lol, + he was caring, he watched over everyone, and when he did succeed in conquering his fear step by step as a viewer it fills you with so much warmth.

He’s just such a wonderful person and it brings you unbelievable joy as a viewer to see the rest of the characters slowly realize this too.

ALSO HE WAS LIKE HEALER’S BONG SOO ALIAS EXCEPT IN REAL PERSON FORM AND I LOVED IT.

And then when we finally got to see his frustration. Social anxiety is not this cute introvert nerd, it’s a pain in the ass and I am so glad/proud/thankful that the writers showed this side of it.

I want to take a second to mention the symbolism. I adored the symbolism behind his hood and what it meant for him to take it off/put it on. It was just one more key to understanding the character + it made you feel all the things when he was comfortable enough to take it off.

Chae Ro Woon... It was hard to judge her change because it was so sudden, but I thought her change was for the better. Yet there were still some things that annoyed me. A lot of time the writers used her inappropriate(?) behavior to move the plot along, but there were still instances I thought she was way over the line. However in my opinion, a lot of the hate towards her was out of line because her main goal was revenge and it seemed like people kept forgetting that. Especially later on, I thought Chae Ro Woon was just absolutely amazing. She was so understanding of Hwan Gi, even though it took her some time (which is realistic), and she was accepting of him. She didn’t push him too hard to change, she gave him space, and did what she could to make him comfortable. I loved it.

I was also a little disappointed with what the writers did with Hyo Sung’s character, specifically the way she treated Hwan Gi, but I’m going to attribute that to the story change and that if the writers could they would go back and take out that one scene from episode 2(?) to make her character understandable.

I’m not going to mention how I feel about Kang Woo Il, or Eun Yi Soo for that matter, because everything surrounding them is a spoiler. They’re complicated, especially Yi Soo. While I may not have been fond of them, I understood them. Especially Yi Soo. Which is what I believe is the most important when it comes to a character.

I LOVED YOO HEE. I don’t know if either of you have seen the Taiwanese drama Refresh Man, but it was another office romance and there was this older woman who saw the main character’s feelings for the girl and tried to set them up. I loved it. And the same thing pretty much happened here. It was hilarious.

Yeon Jung, usually I hate characters like her, but she was so amazing. She was annoying as a love interest but necessary as a friend, and I am actually glad a character like her was in the drama.

The romance. The sexual tension between Eun Hwan Gi and Chae Ro Woon was tangible. I loved how he slowly opened up to her, and it was symbolic in his hood and the way his voice became louder the more comfortable he became. Spoiler: they kiss a shit ton of times. I loved every second. 

The drama did a lot of things I didn’t expect. There were really straightforward conversations (the how-far-have-you-gone one), admissions of wrongful actions, actual apologies from multiple characters (all the characters that needed to imo) that I didn’t expect to happen, girls telling people off and breaking every drama stereotype.

A little thing I really liked was how, you know when dramas are like “we’ve wrapped up the plot but still have two episodes” so they create a conflict which is usually super random and off topic? This one tied back to the original roots of the plot and it fit so well with the theme of the whole drama. There was a huge presence of family in the drama, both Ro Woon’s and Hwan Gi’s, and I was very appreciative of how they wrapped up.

And, hun, while I stumbled over the time jump in the last episode, that ending was FANTASTIC. I don’t need to say anything else. Just that it was so damn satisfying.

Someone get me an Eun Hwan Gi please and thank you.

~~~

Finished 3/14/17

[anghraine]

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

Oh, thank you!

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

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

1. Eureka!

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

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

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

2. Percolation

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

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

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

3. Brainstorming/Outline

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

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

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

4) Drafting (The Big One)

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

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

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

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

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

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

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

5) Revising!

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

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

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

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

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

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

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