#i'm not going to cut bc tumblr is doing automatic trimming anyway but

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@youandthemountains tagged me in a “talk about five favorite fics you've written” meme, so here we go, in descending order for the ~suspense of it all. also i’m tagging @aimmyarrowshigh , @jessicamiriamdrew, @lotus0kid, @whatever-you-can-give-me and anyone else who wants to do this meme, it’s fun, if more time consuming than expected.

also this is just going to be AO3 era stuff -- some of my peter/claude from heroes fic remains very close to my heart but i cannot and will not go and find it to link to ATM. i’m perfectly happy to see it disappear w/ the rest of LJ fandom. 

5. Proprioception

this is the most popular fic i’ve ever written (2375 kudos and counting) so i feel like it HAS to be on this list by default, but i’m not really that fond of it. the gimmick was, clint and phil’s relationship through the years and through various people’s eyes (until the end, where it’s through phil and then clint’s eyes). as a writer i’m proud of my attempt to write the POV of characters i never would’ve written otherwise, and people seemed to like how i portrayed them, so that was good to know. i think the best chapter by far is the natasha one -- the others are a little bit hokey w not my fav dialogue (but like, given mcu dialogue in canon....). but even though it’s not my favorite or my best writing i do appreciate that the fandom enjoyed something i actually did something new and (to me) interesting with -- the POV switching and like, dramatic irony of who knows what about whom (esp in pepper’s chapter). plus look i eventually came to really hate tony stark as a character but both* times i’ve written him (see #4 as well) i think i was very fair and i think no one would’ve guessed i kind of found him very annoying in all the avengers movies (i liked him better in his own movies/thought he was better balanced w pepper and rhodey around). 

representative passage:

Her nose has stopped bleeding. She removes the handkerchief that's been keeping her from...she's not sure what, really, it's not like her clothes aren't bloodstained and ruined already. She hands it over. Is she supposed to be expressing gratitude? Blue eyes are watching her warily, but she's past worrying about making an effort.

"It looks okay now," he says, and he's a terrible, terrible liar, but at least he didn't say it wasn't broken, and at least he hasn't apologized for it. He fiddles with the ruined white cloth for a while, twisting it between his fingers, and glances, just once, toward the man it belongs to. The man in the suit, whose pacing is probably wearing very neat tracks into the filthy hotel room carpet while he makes clipped, deliberate statements into his cell phone.

He is a much better liar.

*just remembered i’ve actually written him three times but the other was a v short rhodey/tony thing that’s not really worth talking about.

4. The Ice Is Getting Thinner

honestly i’m going to say this is the best clintcoulson fic i ever wrote. there’s a lot of moral ambiguity to it and (not to toot my own horn lmfao) a lot of just plain ambiguity to parts of the plot (i take a twisted amount of pleasure in my refusal to stating things directly sometimes), to the point that a few of the bookmark notes/comments mentioned that they had to read it twice to figure out exactly what was going on. 

there are parts i still cringe at -- i was again very complementary to tony stark in his portrayal here but i think the dialogue i wrote for him was. not great. but overall i think it’s a fic that portrays a complicated long term relationship w ups and downs and breakups and makeups and secrets and lies and love and just -- the DRAMA of it all. also i think the structure of the thing -- parts of it are moving backwards and parts of it are moving forwards chronologically -- was to me very clever. like you’re getting the backstory of the thing and how it relates to the current narrative, until they meet up. very the last five years, though i’m not sure if i’d seen that before i wrote it. 

and phil is a little darker/more morally grey than i usually wrote him/he was usually written by the fandom, which was also fun for me. it’s also a fic that’s about redemption and forgiveness and like...self forgiveness and making up for bad things you’ve done and also how SHIELD was/is pretty sketch at its core so even the well-meaning people within it are a little more complicated than all that. and there’s some good natasha stuff i think -- and some great like friendship stuff between clint, phil, and natasha that i wish i had explored more when i wrote this ship. i always found the ‘natasha just stands around shaking her head at the stupid boys who can’t get it together’ portrayal that showed up in fic a lot really annoying but i was so afraid of falling into that myself that i didn’t really write her a lot. but that’s a shame bc the potential for her to have a friendship with both phil AND clint was really great, even though we didn’t get much of it in canon. 

representative passage:

Phil thought about it. Thought, later, that it might have been the closest he ever got to telling him.

But when Clint got off the plane, he draped one arm around Phil's shoulders, and the other around Natasha's. He was sunburned, smelled of salt and the sea and things Phil would never have associated with Clint, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was a reminder that everything he'd once known about Clint wasn't everything he'd ever be.

"My two favorite people in the world," Clint mumbled, voice weak from disuse. He kissed Phil's cheek, then ducked to kiss Natasha's, putting him slightly off balance. Phil wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him and Clint beamed, his side warm and jostling against Phil's. "Man, am I glad to be home."

Phil didn't tell him.

He began to understand that he never would.

3. a strong enough foundation

[obviously the title of this fic is inspired by the hamilton song “Dear Theodosia” (the Hamilton Mixtape version is the one i see as THEE shara bey dameron song) but i also pulled from the ~feels that come from ben folds’ “still fighting it”]

okay WELL this is purely a sentimental favorite. the travelogue fic. it’s one of the few gen fics i’ve ever written. and it’s a story that is incredibly personal to me, which requires a bit of backstory to explain:

basically up until she passed way, one of my aunts in Mexico was really devoted to taking me to like, important cultural places in Mexico whenever i went to visit her. so amongst other things, back when i was in middle school (so early 2000s i think?) we took a trip to Chiapas, which is the southernmost state in the Mexican republic that borders on Guatemala; it’s very rainforest/jungle heavy, lots of mayan pyramids just like. plopped down in the middle of a bunch of trees and vines and monkeys etc. it’s also very humid and green and there’s beautiful rivers and we slept in a little wooden hut with no electricity or a/c or anything, just a roof and a floor mosquito netting penning the space in/keeping us from getting malaria or w/e. 

it was an amazing experience that really affected me and that i still think about a lot -- sadly, i went there before i had a good digital camera, so while i took a lot of pictures they were all on film and were not as good at capturing just how beautiful everything was. a part of me wants to go back someday, but i haven’t yet, so it still very much exists in my memory alone right now.

anyway! this fic is about Yavin IV and Poe returning to it to basically spend some time with his father and it’s about that family connection, too, but mostly for me it was about -- coming up with Yavin IV headcanons, which was a delight. there’s a lot about the mayan ruins (again, i’ve never been to Guatemala but i was in the jungles of Chiapas, which are very close, and the mayan empire in mexico vs the mayan empire in guatemala are not that different) which comes from my experience in the mayan ruins, and a lot about the town i kind of imagined as existing ties into my experiences in small mexican towns. there’s a lot about the market culture there, which was based on primarily the market in my mom’s hometown. one of the funniest/most personal bits for me was where poe and his dad go to a stand that sells fruit juices:

He makes it to Val’s before his father does and settles onto one of the red plasto stools in front of the counter. Makes idle conversation with New Val, who was a year ahead of him in school and was well known, even then, as the artistic sort. This seems to have born out: her stall is adorned with meticulously realized depictions of Massassi warriors and anthropomorphized trees sharing plasto-bubble drinks with a variety of alien races and such distinguished company as a young Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker in a well-intentioned approximation of Jedi robes.

this is a reference to a lot of food stalls in mexican markets, which often have drawings of all sorts of IP they definitely don’t have the rights to, like a lot of disney characters and so on. it’s also referencing the tradition of serving aguas frescas in plastic bags w a straw poking out, which is just a nice bit of nostalgia for me.

i did feel a little -- something -- about this fic being based so much on my experience as a mexican and thus very little on like, actual guatemala, which i could not really speak to, though i did include some references to actual guatemalan alcoholic drinks at least? 

this isn’t a perfect fic -- every time i have to write OCs i feel like i’m floundering a bit, and this fic didn’t really have a plot so when it came time to end it i just --didn’t really know how to wrap it up. but in general it’s such a personal fic to me that i will always have a great deal of love for it.

representative passage:

“You’re so much like your mom.” That’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but his dad keeps going. “I mean, you look like her, fly like her. When you’re pissed, you do this thing, with your jaw…” he reaches over to tap lightly at Poe’s chin; Poe ducks his head, a little embarrassed that his father’s noticed it. “Pure Shara Bey. And you’re smart, so damn smart, always were, and that’s all her. Sure as hell didn’t get it from me.” Kes father chuckles, shaking his head.

“Dad—"

“Thing is, that makes me forget, sometimes, how much you’re like me, too."

Poe turns to look at him — Kes is watching him, and his expression is worried, but more sad than anything.

“That’s not a bad thing,” he says, too quickly, but he means it.

(oh also lest i forget: the running thing about poe looking so much like his mom is there because a) it’s true, canonically but also b) when i was little but also now, whenever i’d visit mexico i’d hear over and over how much i look like my dad/my dad’s side of the family. so again this was a very self inserty fic in a way i’m usually embarrassed to admit and i guess am still kind of embarrassed to admit, but w/e, i’m doing this meme, might as well talk about it.)

2. Washington Square

WELL what can i SAY about this and its 50352 words? it’s the first NaNoWriMo thing i ever completed, and the only one i’ve ever actually posted. it genuinely did have a plot (which obviously i took from the movie it’s based on, so yknow). it’s an AU premise i love (i’m a sucker for Famous Person/Normie things), it’s explicitly queer in a way that actually affects the plot. i think a lot of fusion AUs like this one can be a bit find and replace character names w the same dialogue and exact same plot, so i took care not to do that. first of all the shifting of the setting -- from England to the US -- shifted the dynamic a lot, and at least partly exploring the issue of Finn’s sexuality and him being outed also felt like a much more modern and to me interesting take. (in fact if/when notting hill gets its eventual reboot/remake, it would make so much more sense for it to be a queer story). 

i also feel like i did some subtle character stuff that maybe didn’t always pay off but that i was proud of: both poe and finn are kind of a mess in it, poe bc he’s been through a bunch of failed relationships (partly bc he puts his partners on a pedestal but is also a deeply moral person so if they show a moment of moral greyness he doesn’t react well) and finn bc well he’s bi and black and young and only just starting to make it in ~hollywood~ and he’s got a lot of pressure on him to be perfect on every level. and i thought that was a fitting adaptation of his FO backstory (i mention it in one of the last author’s notes, but the sunglasses he pointedly takes on and off are meant to call back to Finn’s stormtrooper helmet, while also being based on how julia roberts’ character wears sunglasses in the first scene w hugh grant in that movie).

i was also thrilled to be able to write so much of Black Squadron in as poe’s awesome/amazing/fun friends, using them to recreate on of the best parts of notting hill to me, ie, the fact that hugh grant has a wide circle of friends that chime in about his life and relationships etc. i’m not the biggest fan of rey but i also felt like i had to include her (and made her much nicer than her notting hill counterpart, obviously). and this was like, right amidst the small poe/c’ai era, so of course i had to include c’ai in there as the also-ran that would’ve been great for poe if he wasn’t so hung up on finn. 

also, again, look: i wrote kyle ron in this and yes he WAS a bad roommate but i didn’t write him as mustache twirling evil/stupid AF, which is more than most reylo authors who write poe into their fics ever give me. so i deserve extra points for that.

there’s really only two points i’m kind of eh about for this fic: first, bc i didn’t think nude photos/video alone would be enough of a career jeopardizing event as it is in notting hill, i added a plot point where it was an m/m encounter, AND an element of dubious consent. this is the kind of thing that i think writers in general should tread lightly on/really be sure is necessary when they’re including it as a plot point. i’m not sure i would include it if i were writing it today, but when i was writing the fic we were in the midst of one of the earliest #MeToo pushes, PLUS i didn’t want to minimize the potential vulnerability Finn would have, as an actor and a black man and someone who came out of the foster system and wouldn’t’ve had that many people in his corner. so i tried to take it seriously and not be flippant about it, BUT i am still uncertain if i did a good enough job dealing w whether or not (or how much) finn saw it all as a traumatic experience. 

the second thing i’m pretty uncertain about is the ending. i love the movie but even i find the ending a little unearned -- hugh grant’s character ends up being the one to apologize and basically beg for julie roberts’ to give the relationship another try, and her apology earlier on doesn’t feel like quite enough, to me. and so in my version i tried to...idk, given that the fight they have is a lot more tied to the sexuality issues, and finn is very early in his career and thus way more vulnerable, ultimately, than anna scott in the original, sets up a weird dynamic that a lot of commenters got caught up on: it’s funny though bc the two most upset comments i got about it were on opposite sides. One thought that Poe had been too much of a jerk in their fight and didn’t do a good enough job of apologizing at the end, while the other thought that Finn was too much of a jerk and Poe deserved better. so idk, maybe it did hit the happy medium after all. 

(another thought poe saying “i love you” at the end was not built up to enough in the fic itself -- i disagree, imo poe was very obviously falling in love w finn from very early on, but since it was his POV he was trying to keep himself from admitting it until the very end). 

representative passage:

Finn reaches out, cradles the back of Poe’s head with his free hand. Leans in, slow but inevitable. His fingers card through the Poe’s hair as they kiss, soft and sweet, almost chaste.

After a moment, Finn pulls back. Rubs his thumb at the side of Poe’s head. “You’ve got a — you’ve got this curl that sticks out the wrong way, here."*

“Yeah,” says Poe, still stunned — at this point he doesn’t know why, it’s not like Finn hasn’t done this before — and swallows. “Yeah, it does that."

Finn leans in and kisses him again. Longer this time, with a hint of tongue. Poe sighs, drops his hand to Finn’s chest, needing something to anchor him as the world starts spinning.

(also, i had originally planned to write a sequel from finn’s POV, which ideally would’ve allowed me to explore his character/backstory/trauma more, but some of the comments to the fic kind of dissuaded me from it and now i’m just -- so far removed from it i think it would be hard).

*this part is really reminiscent of a bit from song of achilles, which i still have not even read -- just saw that passage quoted somewhere -- and anyway that also struck me. i wonder if people noticed it/thought it was deliberate reference -- it was not! but i wish i could’ve said it was.

1. Adrift 

OKAY so on some level i think of this as the best fic i’ve ever written. maybe it’s not even that good but it’s just -- genuinely, sometimes, i’m amazed i wrote it. i finished it surprisingly fast, for me, and it came much easier than almost anything ever has (writing is like pulling teeth for me most of the time). but basically it was just, as i said in the tags, a fix-it where what i was fixing was the cancellation of constantine (2014). 

It’s what i would’ve wanted the show to end on, in an ideal world where i had like. control of the whole thing. both bc it’s based around the most famous hellblazer/John Constantine arc -- dangerous habits -- but it deals exclusively with the fallout and not the actual events around john’s having and “curing” lung cancer. mostly bc i didn’t want to figure out how to re-write that, tbh -- i feel like i would’ve had to do something to update it but i’m so bad at plot. 

anyway it’s also a bit of a mystery story -- starting in media res does set up that question of, why is chas living alone in the middle of nowhere? why is he so mad at john? where has JOHN been? where’s zed? and it all just kind of...unfolds from there. 

it’s got the domesticity, it’s got the two of them sort of finding each other again, it’s got the start of a relationship they both know is probably a bad idea but that eventually turns out to be more functional than either of them expected (no matter how much john keeps panicking about it eventually falling apart). i think i hit a good balance of john being snarky but self loathing but an unreliable narrator but also really observant at times. 

in general i also feel like the sex scenes are earned and work very well with the actual plot/narrative arc -- like they start off very awks and distant and not mutually satisfying; and then they’re in a honeymoon place of, both finally having regular sex with someone and it being good but also still a little distant; and then finally just much more open and with a real connection (demonstrated through eye contact bc i’m basic and weak). and after that point all of the sex scenes are more vague/fade to black bc the explicit content isn’t the ~point anymore. for me it’s very well balanced. 

and i like where they end up. both in terms of their relationship -- it feeling pretty well established and healthy as it could be, for both of them -- and in terms of their place in the world (about to get back into the ~solving spooky shit~ business, and also on better terms with zed to the point that she might also come back and join the ~team). 

again not to toot my own horn but to me, this is how the characters eventually ended up, after the show ended, and that’s really just how i chose to see them. 

Bonus Runners Up:

A Battle, A War, A Growing Up - STILL the only alex/darwin (xmfc) fic i’ve written, which i HATE MYSELF for, but at least if this is going to be the only one i’ll ever write, i’m proud of it. 

inosculation, or, that time Javert panicked and stole a small child - really the summary alone makes this one worthwhile. the title is inspired by the POI fandom meme of “that time harold panicked and stole a small child”

 want who you want (boys and boys and girls and girls) - the jake peralta/john constantine fic LITERALLY NO ONE would’ve ever thought to ask for, and that i’m still amazed anyone has actually read

Equuleus - the best thing russell crowe brought to les mis was making javert a horsegirl. i will die on this hill.

the fire and the flood - quality wise, i think this is pretty even with adrift in terms of chastantine fic. it’s only not included in the favorites list because it TOOK SO FUCKING LONG TO WRITE and i really hated it by the end there. at least i did something interesting w the timelines and vignettes.  

[michaelwheelers]

how do u make your gifs so high quality??? i already use kmplayer + a sharpening action but yours are so sharp

kskdsks firstly, thank you for calling my gifs high quality! Secondly, uhhh I'm not really sure lol! I mean, I have three answers. First answer: I'm not saying this is something you don't do - i'm just including it bc some people don't do this - but firstly, make sure your gif's width sizes match tumblr's requirements so your upload has the same quality it had in photoshop. For one gif in a row, it's 540px wide, for 2 gifs in a row it's 268px, and for 3 gifs i think it's 177px, but the middle gif might have to be 178px?? Second answer: The main thing I would say is making sure you have a really hq download of your show/movie! I'm gonna assume you torrent or something along those lines while answering this lol. There are tons of versions of downloads for certain shows/movies, and each version will have a different size depending on the quality. Some are bluray copies, some are 2160p copies, some are webrip copies, some are netflixrip copies etc. I'm gonna add some pics and links to explain my answer so uhh i'll continue under the cut:

oh also, if you want my 3rd answer, go down past the image of the rabbits!

Anyways, this answer is talking about the quality of a download:

Ok so if you click that image, you can see that it's a stranger things s2 download, and it's a 1080p netflix (NF) copy, which means whoever uploaded that has ripped it, or copied that season to their hard drive DIRECTLY from netflix. On the far right, the size of that entire season is 12 gb.

Now if you look at this image up close, you will see it is also a s2 download, but it's a 1080p bluray copy instead of a netflix copy. And the size of this whole thing (on the far right) is 34gb, which means the quality is probably gonna be better than that Netflix rip/copy.

Then the quality even better than that would be from a 2160p rip/copy.

So anyways, my whole point is that a large factor for making hq gifs is the original quality of your footage that you're editing with. I personally like to get ones that are pretty big file sizes because I want to make sure that i'm getting the best quality i can find!

Oh btw, the site with those large downloads is "rarbg.to" incase you'd like to check it out. They have lotsss of high quality ones.

below is my third answer !!

ok so pls excuse the text about finn wolfhard, i just dont have any obvious borders for separating things lmao SORRY

here's my third answer:

ok i genuinely don't know if this affects the quality and makes me edits hq, but i use a program called vapoursynth to cut and resize my video clips before i import them into photoshop, color the frames, and save it as a gif.

With vapoursynth, it automatically trims the video clip or even episode i want to edit into a new video file, and it resizes my clips and even sharpens them and I feel like it keeps the original quality intact. Idk. I might just be superstitious or something but yeah....

i hope these answers helped!