#is it going to be 50k? absolutely not I know my limits

[daisywords]

in the spirit of "you're more likely to follow through on your goal if you tell someone about it" um. For the month of October I am going to try to spend 15 minutes a day (no distractions) in my outline/zero-draft document for Fear Me. The hope is that by the end of the month I will have a fully detailed outline/ramble draft to help me with real drafting come November

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you heard about this new scam the banks have going? No, I don’t mean all of global capitalism, because that will just take too long to write about in this word hole. What I’m talking about is the purchase of distressed debt.

When someone can’t pay their student debt, or health debt, or student lunch debt, the faceless institution who gave them the money will eventually give up on getting them to pay it. They turn around and sell the rights to that debt to some other faceless institution, one that can afford to put a little more effort into it. Eventually, they give up too, and turn around and sell the bad debt in a big soup of other bad debt to some other, even more vicious asshole, who will turn a profit if they can collect, like, seventeen bucks of it, because that’s what they paid.

On the face of it, this is kind of insulting. How can someone who paid seventeen bucks for your debt turn around and demand that you give them fifty grand for that university degree that taught you several French words for “butthole” but couldn’t help you find a job or even a grad student position? If you think about it a little more, however, this is a grand opportunity. A lot of well-meaning individuals are buying up this debt... and then forgiving it. If you can buy $50k worth of student debt for $17, ripping that shit up will give you a lot more than $17 worth of good karma. Which will maybe convince the universe to give you that small little bit of an edge the next time you need it – negotiating for a good deal on a shitbox, blowing past a state trooper doing a large integer multiple of the speed limit, or getting into some dicey times with a malevolent operator of a logging truck while you’re working on your first screenplay.

Correcting the impulses of usurious monsters sounded like a good idea to get into, in order to benefit the human race. Unfortunately, yours truly is not exactly a fiscal mastermind, and the Banking Types can see him coming from a mile away. Even if I were to hose off the old man stench and hair from a Brooks Brothers suit I found at Goodwill, they’d know instantly that it’s not this year’s style and clam up. This is, of course, where the ominously-named proxy corporation comes in. My shark of an attorney, Max, set one up for me just for the purpose of buying debt, and then doing the corporate equivalent of shitting itself to death. For just a few bucks that I would otherwise have spent on old Plymouths, I helped a couple people out with their struggles.

Did I do it for a good reason? No. Am I telling you this to brag about it? Absolutely not. Is this a big, complicated story, intended to distract you from writing that ticket just long enough for my accomplice to finish cutting the transmission out of your patrol cruiser? You’ll have a lot of time on the walk home to think about it, officer.

[mpregeminem]

I READ THE ANGEL KAMES FIC …. ough 😭 such a shame it’s unfinished. the fact that all of that went on in the span of 5 days kinda blew my mind like you’re telling me 100k+ words and it hasn’t even been a week? this is the slowest burn to ever burn. anyways do you have anymore fic recs 🫶

HI HIIII im so glad you like it yessssss!!!!!! and literally the way they make you wait saur long for them to even like eachother in any capacity had me climbing the walls that night...... and the WINGS bro......bro what if i wanted you to keep me safe and warm in a cocoon of your own flesh forever.. haha i mean-

and i doooo :) i've been saving this ask because i wanted to do a thorough list from my laptop, but i'll rec some of my favorites so far right now, and maybe some i've been meaning to read, but haven't yet

i have read and rec:

We could take it to the highway by skyline

kendall has to go back to minnesota and james offers to travel with him through the states. REALLY nice i loved skyline's writing and depiction of the boys' inner struggles. very grounded to the show's pillars and their dynamic really hit with me. i rec this to everyone who will listen because i liked it a lot lol <3

How to stop a haunting also by skyline

supernatural universe kames baybayyy. honestly all of skyline's works are so worth it, i still have a few of theirs to read but i strongly recommend the author in general (i rec more fics of their below but there's way more, i don't want to make the list too long hehe)

Lost without you by mintrosy

ANOTHER instant fav author. the guys suffer a shipwreck and kendall gets badly hurt. and they have to cauterize the wound and so on. very nice and sweet despite that description i just gave skdjsh

mintrosy also has a kames omegaverse series, lost bets (porn lol, kendall in lacy and james going apeshit), Sharing is caring, Dude (short and sweet fic about the four of them sharing outfits <3). honestly they have a tonn of fics so you can go to their profile and go bananas

Never did run smooth by ItsyRoyal

the first btr fic i read this year i think? so it has a special place in my heart <3 pinning kendall and oblivious james, very in-canon

Patrón on ice by skyline

james/camille/kendall because jamille is my guilty pleasure lol. very funny, james has a date with two beauts and doesn't know what to do with himself.

now for fics i haven't read yet but intend to:

Sweet people by xAnimaniac (50k words)

Kendall is a lawyer, always determined to stick to business. And even after losing his husband three years ago, he's not looking for any kind of relationship. Then he meets his new client James, who is a druggie accused of murder, rude and flirty and absolutely everything Kendall never thought he'd be into. So why does he like him so much?

I tell you I'm lost here (awaiting reply) by jaded_jane (30k words)

Gustavo allows James a second attempt at an audition and offers to make him a star when he likes what he hears. James jumps at the chance, and once he's gone to L.A., Kendall's left to hold everything and everyone together. As days go by, Kendall forces James a little further back in his mind, especially as contact goes from limited to non-existent and promises aren't kept. It's only then that Kendall realizes that the people he loves, leave him and never look back.

It's so hard to breathe by skyline (11k words)

“So you let Dak Zevon fuck you,” James says, and this time he doesn’t bother amending his word choice. “Interesting decision.”

right now im rummaging through EpicallyObsessed's ffn page but haven't read anything yet. they have a looot of long kames fics, mostly AUs.

Same with RainbowDiamonds, the author of the angel kames fic in question <3

hope this helps!! if you want let me know if you end up reading any of these ♥️

[luckylolabug]

God I have like almost 50k words of this massive Post-Canon character driven YOI fic that I just keep tapping away at and I swear it's going to be the death of me if I ever decide to actually post it. Small piece of it under the cut!

“You know,” he mused, tapping a finger against his lips thoughtfully, “it occurs to me that this collection of yours is rather one-sided. Posters and magazines are all well and good, but where’s the Katsuki Yuuri merchandise, hmm? The limited edition action figures, the collectible trading cards?”

Yuuri snorted, shaking his head in amused exasperation. “Vitya, don’t be ridiculous. Who would want a Katsuki Yuuri action figure? I’m hardly the merchandising juggernaut that you are.”

But Viktor was undeterred, his expression turning speculative. “Nonsense,” he declared, waving a dismissive hand. “You’re Japan’s Ace, Yuuri. A Grand Prix silver medalist and living legend in the making. Mark my words, Yuuri, it’s only a matter of time before your brand takes the world by storm.”

He struck a dramatic pose, as if envisioning the glittering heights of Yuuri’s future fame. “I can see it now,” he intoned, his voice deepening with theatrical fervor. “Katsuki Yuuri posters in every locker from Hasetsu to Helsinki. Katsuki Yuuri dolls flying off the shelves in toy stores around the globe. Katsuki Yuuri t-shirts and hats and limited edition commemorative tea sets, oh my!”

Yuuri buried his face in his hands, torn between laughter and mortification at the very thought. “Oh my god, stop,” he groaned, his voice muffled by his palms. “You’re going to give me a complex. Or worse, you’re going to give the triplets ideas. Can you imagine what they’d do?”

Viktor grinned, looking entirely too delighted by the prospect. "I'm sure they'd be your biggest promoters," he said, eyes dancing. "Imagine the social media campaigns! The viral marketing potential! Those girls are PR geniuses in the making, I'm telling you."

Yuuri shuddered, already picturing the chaos that would ensue if the triplets got it into their heads to make him into some kind of merchandising sensation. "Don't even joke about that," he warned, pointing a stern finger at Viktor. "I want to actually be able to show my face in public once we move to St. Petersburg, thank you very much."

"Ah, but think of how much easier it would be to decorate our new home," Viktor teased, undaunted by Yuuri's glower. "We could have Katsuki Yuuri curtains, Katsuki Yuuri bedsheets, Katsuki Yuuri toilet seat covers! It would be like living inside a shrine dedicated to my favorite person."

Yuuri made a strangled noise, somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "You're impossible," he huffed, shoving lightly at Viktor's chest. "Absolutely incorrigible. I don't know how I'm going to survive living with you 24/7."

“Somehow I think you’ll survive.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri agreed, picking back up the roll of tape to finish gathering the last of his things. “I think I will.”

[aupromptsforthesoul]

It should be noted that I have indeed written a lot of my own bullshit including and certainly not limited to:

Countless "was X supernatural creature all along" AUs

Multiple crossover AUs that made sense to absolutely no one else

A rather successful allerasermic AU where Yagi was a vigilante and erasermic were his very surprised neighbors

A semi-crack crossover where Sakura reincarnated into Yuuji Itadori with her DID involved. Surprisingly successful. I still have a few chapters written up. I should update that soon. Huh...

An erasermic AU where Aizawa is literally mothman. Wildly, insanely successful. There was a side blog for it. Still can't believe that went as hard as it did.

A mystery skulls animated and my hero academia reincarnation au. Surprisingly, picked up more than a little interest with my love for eldrich imagery.

The hilarity of the Trollhunters Kanjibara AU where Kanjigar turned into a human instead of dying. This literally began as a 3am shitpost and yet I am still pestered about it to this day

Brief TFP and Trollhunters crossover, surprisingly successful

Brief Trollhunters and Hotwheels: Battle Force 5 crossover. Still sad I've lost most of my memory and motivation about where that fic was going. The BF5 Fandom is so excited about content despite it being absolutely fucking miniscule

*thinking back to my Hamilton phase* you don't want to know the number of crack reincarnation AUs I had cooking back in 2016. My memory loss hit those years hard but I still recall so much.

Trollhunters and TMNT 2012. Changeling Karai. *siiiigh* fuck I love her

A TMNT 2012 reincarnation crossover with My Hero Academia. Raphugou forever holds my heart. I wish I didn't have memory loss and crippling imposters syndrome about anything written before the year of 2020.

My current big mania hyperfixation project is a crossover AU where Sukuna is yeeted into the world of Dragon Age: Inquisition with the Mark. Chaos ensues. It's ongoing. It's got like, 50k written??? It's a lot

An AU where motherfucking Henryk Bloodborne ends up in the world of Resident Evil. Mostly 7 and 8.

A crack au of Djura Bloodborne getting turned into a cat. Because I love that shit.

Oh shit I forgot about my Bioshock and Trollhunters crossover. Huh.

I FORGOT ABOUT THE TF2 AUS DIGWJFBSJFH

Lots of whump

So much spicy content

[deliberate-disguises]

WHEN Ao3 comes back up (by the higher power, I KNOW they'll survive this! For now I, and all of us, must hold back from opening it until the Ao3 people say they're in the clear), here are reasons why Ao3 is superior than Wattpad and ff.net (and maybe livejournal if anyone is still using it--dear Lord, I feel old):

TAGS. Ao3 has tags that allows us to have a clearer guess on what we're stepping into. Plus, people can go wild on tags and it's always amusing to see. Wattpad has tags, too, but it's not the same.

Filters. I dislike Wattpad's filter. It confuses me a lot. Ao3 has better and extensive filter. We can filter tags we want to see and tags we don't want to see. We can also use the "search words" bar (or something like that) and that has saved me when I can't remember the title and/or the author but I remember certain sentence(s) in the summary. Ff.net's filter is just ... too limited.

Let's admit it, Ao3 does not have ads. Ugh, ff.net sometimes has ads popping out in the middle of a fanfic (really, right in front of my salad?) and it's absolute hell. I don't know about Wattpad but last time I checked, you might have to deal with ads before going to the next chapter.

Ao3 allows us to see the whole fic if we want to, not just chapter by chapter. I set my own account to show entire work and it's a blessing when I find a multi-chaptered locked fics (aka fics that can only be read if you have an account). I don't have the patience to press "next chapter" button.

Lastly, IT'S DOWNLOADABLE. IN SEVERAL FORMATS. I personally like reading on my phone, so I usually download the .epub or .mobi format. If it's over 50k words and/or it's that good, I'd leave a kudos (usually as a guest because I'm too lazy to sign in), and then download it so I can read when I'm offline.

Okay, bonus, this one is for the writers: FORMATTING. You can have footnotes!! Actual working footnotes! And embedded links! I don't think ff.net and Wattpad have that. For example, JAFF (Jane Austen Fanfic, bc I'm on a P&P roll) writers who like to add footnotes are adorable! I love seeing how they took time researching it and I get to know interesting tidbits about that era without having to fall into a rabbit hole (I'm the type to hyperfixate.)

Those are my reasons. Praying for Ao3 admins and my fellow Ao3 writers and readers.

[amaiguri]

#CalmWriMo 2023 Introduction

I'm Amaiguri -- or just Amai or Belle, it's all cool -- and I'm writing a script for a fantasy RPGmaker game! (It's also a webnovel lol.) I'll be participating in #CalmWriMo this year -- started by the wonderful @winterandwords.

If you're not aware, #CalmWriMo is for: "If you want to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but a 50k word goal doesn't work for you, you're invited to join me in CalmWriMo 2023 on Tumblr for a chilled-out creative experience this November."

If this sounds fun for you, you should join us too! (VERY no-pressure tagging @maiemorrae and @dragonprincedawn to join me so we can all do writing and self-care stuff together!)

🎮 Amai's Story Pitch

"All promised heroes burn. Who are they now?"

In a world of fated heroes and abyssal machines -- born both of Kings and Philosophy --, a burned assassin girl must find new purpose when the War ends.

Untitled Yssaia Game is a narrative-focused, hand-drawn adventure. Navigate an assassin through her delicate, brutal world after the War annexed her homeland. Delve deep into political dealings, your past trauma, and the Abyss beneath the world!

📇 Amai's Writing Goal

I don't need to write a lot, but I do want to write every day. Even just one sentence! I wanna keep up my momentum!

I'm estimating the end of my story to be at around 300-350k words and I think I'm at around ~270k words? I literally don't know, everything is in different places... 😅So anyway, I just want to ensure I'm always making progress.

Plus, I tend to write more when I'm writing more! So I think this will be healthy for me, as long as I pace myself!

🛁 Amai's Self-Care Goal

I need start (again) setting Quarterly Goals and I need to start journaling every day again. I don't have to write a ton, I have to write 5 bullet points:

What's up with my at-work job?

What's up with my social life?

What media am I consuming lately?

What's up with my personal projects?

What's going on in my personal/internal world?

My sense of time has been absolutely shot since the start of the Pandemic and graduating college hasn't helped. See, what ends up happening is I get to the end of any chunk of time -- a week, a month, a season -- and I PANIC that I haven't accomplished anything.

But having a literal checklist of Quarterly Goals helps proves otherwise -- I can cross off a bunch of stuff, add new things that I accomplished not-on-the-list, and I can tell my anxiety to shut up. (And yes, I don't measure my self-worth by my productivity but I AM aware that my time is limited on this earth and I want to make sure I'm doing the things that are important to me during it!)

And journalling every day is another good way to ensure my sense of time stays in-tact! And having an in-tact sense of time ensures I talk to my friends enough and give myself enough free time and etc. etc.

And that's all!

What are your writerly goals for this November?

[mariana-oconnor]

The Beryl Coronet pt 1

Another one where I remember the title and then literally nothing else. There are a lot like that. I swear I have read most of these before, and watched the entire Granada series, but apparently my memory is just appalling.

One assumes that there will be a beryl coronet involved. i think beryls might be emeralds? (The Internet says both aquamarine and emerald are examples of beryl, my fleeting interest two decades ago in precious and semiprecious stones finally pays off!)

“Holmes,” said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down the street, “here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone.”

So we're starting out strong here. In one paragraph we have established that Watson is living with Holmes ('our bow-window') (where is his wife?) and with some period-typical judgement of mental health. I'm guessing the man in question is probably agitated from whatever incident has sent him to request Holmes' assistance, and not suffering from a mental illness, but the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Or it could be the onset of brain fever...

For a while he could not get his words out, but swayed his body and plucked at his hair like one who has been driven to the extreme limits of his reason. Then, suddenly springing to his feet, he beat his head against the wall with such force that we both rushed upon him and tore him away to the centre of the room.

Well that definitely sounds like he does have some condition. And if he didn't before, beating your head against a wall that hard is liable to give you some brain damage if you're not lucky. Glad that Watson and Holmes stopped him.

"Public disgrace I might have faced, although I am a man whose character has never yet borne a stain. Private affliction also is the lot of every man; but the two coming together, and in so frightful a form, have been enough to shake my very soul. Besides, it is not I alone. The very noblest in the land may suffer unless some way be found out of this horrible affair.”

Oh, no, I was right the first time. He's just agitated by his misfortune. Wow... this guy lacks coping mechanisms. He's really hyping this up, though, Public disgrace, private affliction, shaking his soul, the very noblest in the land (not that I particularly care about them, but the stakes they are high). I assume from the title that it's a beryl coronet that has been misplaced in some publicly noticeable way. If it turns out that he just misplaced the meat for his dinner, I will be judging him hard for all this melodrama.

“I feel that time is of value,” said he; “that is why I hastened here when the police inspector suggested that I should secure your co-operation. I came to Baker Street by the Underground and hurried from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this snow. That is why I was so out of breath, for I am a man who takes very little exercise."

Mr Holder: Time is of the essence.

Also Mr Holder:

We don't need to know how you got to Baker Street, we already know you arrived. Maybe if things are so urgent you should... start with the urgent thing and then talk about how unfit you are and how you need to do more exercise.

“‘It is absolutely essential to me,’ said he, ‘that I should have £50,000 at once. I could, of course, borrow so trifling a sum ten times over from my friends, but I much prefer to make it a matter of business and to carry out that business myself. In my position you can readily understand that it is unwise to place one's self under obligations.’"

First off, hello BofE inflation calculator: 50k in modern money is approximately £5.2 million today.

Second, 'I could just ask my friends. I totally could ask them and they could all give me this money easily. I'm only here because I want this to be business. I don't want to be obliged to them.' Why does this very famous person (Prince of Wales?) feel so defensive about this? He doesn't need to explain why he's asking a bank not his friends. That's literally what the bank is there for. This feels like what someone would say if they didn't have any friends. Or if they'd already borrowed millions from their friends and never paid them back.

“‘Next Monday I have a large sum due to me, and I shall then most certainly repay what you advance, with whatever interest you think it right to charge. But it is very essential to me that the money should be paid at once.’"

I know this guy is famous and (probably) royal and therefore by the rules of these stories therefore probably above reproach, but I would not want to give him a 5 million pound loan. The 'I could totally ask my friends' and this 'I'm totally going to pay you back on Monday. I've got loads of money coming on Monday' are warning signs for me.

"‘You have doubtless heard of the Beryl Coronet?’ “‘One of the most precious public possessions of the empire,’ said I."

Yep, my money is on this being Albert, Prince of Wales, him what would become Edward VII. Iirc he had a bit of a reputation for being a party boy prince, so if he really can't get any money from his friends (even if asking for 5 million were a reasonably thing to do) I wouldn't be surprised if it was because he wasn't good at paying people back.

This mfer just casually totes around some of the crown jewels, though. Just got 10 million in a case that he's carrying around. No one will miss it for a little while. I guess at this time they weren't on display at the Tower of London. I really want this coronet to be stolen so bad, and I have a feeling it's going to be.

"...imbedded in soft, flesh-coloured velvet..."

Whytf did you call it 'flesh-coloured'? Is the colour that important that you needed to specify it, and even if you needed to specify it, why choose those words? Why? Couldn't it have been red, or blue, or green? Why 'flesh-coloured'? ACD, I just want to talk.

"'Is the security sufficient?’ “‘Ample.’"

Well, if this guy says there's ample security, I guess there must be. Clearly that's enough reassurance for me to leave my ten million pound shiny hat here with no problems at all. Details? Who needs details? Pah. It's just a priceless object that technically belongs to the state rather than me.

I don't want this coronet to be recovered. I want it to be lost forever. Whoever stole it should get a gold star.

But it's okay because he makes it very clear that it shouldn't be lost or damaged.

"When I was alone once more, however, with the precious case lying upon the table in front of me..."

And then walks out leaving it just on the desk of this random guy he's never met before.

"I already regretted having ever consented to take charge of it."

Should have thought about that earlier, my dude. Also, if you know it's a national possession, is it even legal for the Prince of Wales to use it as collateral for a loan? Surely it would have to actually be one of his possessions to be valid. Or at least having the signature of the actual owner (Queen Victoria in this case, although possibly parliament?) to be used as such. Nothing about this loan is a good idea.

If he doesn't repay it are you just going to... keep national property?

"However, it was too late to alter the matter now, so I locked it up in my private safe and turned once more to my work."

You just... put it in your own private safe?

WTF even is this buffoonery? How is this... What is this... I can't even. Does the bank not have a secure vault? With guards etc.? But no, any safe will do.

"I determined, therefore, that for the next few days I would always carry the case backward and forward with me, so that it might never be really out of my reach."

I guess the bank does not have a vault. Or a night watchman, or literally ANY KIND OF WAY OF DEALING WITH ITEMS LIKE THIS. When it seems that this is something that they are in the habit of doing, although maybe not on this level. And they clearly have £1000 notes hanging around. Do they just all have them in their individual safes as well?

"I did not breathe freely until I had taken it upstairs and locked it in the bureau of my dressing-room."

Super secure. A+ job.

I've seen those old bureaus, the locks are so simple I could pick one with one of my hair pins!

I am fully on the side of any and all thieves in this escapade (unless it turns out the Prince of Wales has hired them himself for nefarious purposes) but at this point in time I have lost most of the sympathy I have for these people.

The only reason I don't think it should be stolen right now is that, honestly, it presents so little challenge to any potential thieves it's actually insulting.

"She came with an excellent character, however, and has always given me satisfaction."

Language evolves, meaning changes, this does not mean what it looks like it means. But still, it gives me the ick. Nope. No thank you. Especially when followed by the description of how pretty she is.

"My family itself is so small that it will not take me long to describe it. I am a widower and have an only son, Arthur. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. Holmes—a grievous disappointment."

Oh boy. So you took a ten million pound coronet and locked it in a desk in the same house as a son who is perpetually in debt and cannot be trusted with money. Even if he didn't take it, which seems likely as he's clearly being marked as the most obvious suspect. I stg you should not be this foolish.

“And, indeed, I could not wonder that such a man as Sir George Burnwell should gain an influence over him, for [...] I have found myself that I could hardly resist the fascination of his manner. He is older than Arthur, a man of the world to his finger-tips, one who had been everywhere, seen everything, a brilliant talker, and a man of great personal beauty. Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that he is one who should be deeply distrusted. So I think, and so, too, thinks my little Mary, who has a woman's quick insight into character."

Add a fae to the tally of Sherlock Holmes supernatural encounters. Also, I'm going to call it now, Arthur is blameless and Mary is in love with Sir George Burnwell and they're going to run away together, or that's what he told her when he convinced her to steal the coronet. That's my theory. We shall see...

"She is a sunbeam in my house—sweet, loving, beautiful, a wonderful manager and housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and gentle as a woman could be."

A thief? Honestly I want her to be even more after this description. The Victorian ideals of femininity were so trite. I hope she stole that coronet.

"I think that if anyone could have drawn him into the right path it would have been she, and that his marriage might have changed his whole life; but now, alas! it is too late—forever too late!"

... it is not a woman's job to fix a man, Mr Holder. If this story ends with her marrying Arthur I will be very sad. Although from the 'too late' is one of them dead?

“When we were taking coffee in the drawing-room that night after dinner, I told Arthur and Mary my experience, and of the precious treasure which we had under our roof, suppressing only the name of my client."

You just... told them about it. Just... He says be discreet. It's 10 million pounds (£100k at the time). Your son has money problems. And you're just out here chatting about how you have essentially part of the crown jewels of the British Empire in a drawer upstairs.

My dude...

My actual dude...

You should have just taken the coronet out and used it as a centrepiece. it would have been less obvious.

Also, it's part of the crown jewels, how much use do you think 'suppressing the name of your client' is going to bloody be. There aren't a lot of people who can just help themselves to national bloody treasures.

“‘Where have you put it?’ asked Arthur. “‘In my own bureau.’ “‘Well, I hope to goodness the house won't be burgled during the night.’ said he. “‘It is locked up,’ I answered. “‘Oh, any old key will fit that bureau. When I was a youngster I have opened it myself with the key of the box-room cupboard.’"

That's what I said! Also... this is evidence in Arthur's favour because only the stupidest person in the world would say 'I could steal that' and then steal it. Although... given the levels of intelligence his father is showing, we can't hold out much hope for him. Perhaps his mother was the brains of this operation. I hope for Arthur's sake he takes more after her than his father.

"I started to go round the house to see that all was secure—a duty which I usually leave to Mary but which I thought it well to perform myself that night. As I came down the stairs I saw Mary herself at the side window of the hall, which she closed and fastened as I approached. “‘Tell me, dad,’ said she, looking, I thought, a little disturbed, ‘did you give Lucy, the maid, leave to go out to-night?’"

I'm going to try not to make this a Naval Treaty situation again. Data, data, data, etc. So instead of making an accusation here, I'm merely going to ask what Mary was doing at the window before she closed it, and point out that she is drawing attention to another possible suspect and also has good knowledge of all ways to access the house and ample opportunity to leave something open or unlocked.

These may all be coincidences. There are potential valid explanations for all of these things.

Or she might have just sent a message to Sir George Burnwell and planning to steal a coronet this evening.

“‘She came in just now by the back door. I have no doubt that she has only been to the side gate to see someone, but I think that it is hardly safe and should be stopped.’"

Though the narrative now wants us to think that Lucy is meeting with Sir George Burnwell... but my money is still on Mary. We already know Lucy has lots of suitors who hang around the grounds, she might well have been meeting with one of them.

"Are you sure that everything is fastened?’ “‘Quite sure, dad.’"

Only her word for that.

Not that I'm accusing her of anything. I'm merely... pointing things out. Factual things.

“‘Arthur!’ I screamed [...] "He appeared to be wrenching at it, or bending it with all his strength. At my cry he dropped it from his grasp and turned as pale as death. I snatched it up and examined it. One of the gold corners, with three of the beryls in it, was missing. “‘You blackguard!’ I shouted, beside myself with rage. ‘You have destroyed it! You have dishonoured me forever! Where are the jewels which you have stolen?’"

Some other facts that have been established. Arthur loves Mary and has asked her to marry him on multiple occasions. Just throwing that one out there. If he is trying to cover up a crime/take the blame for someone... perhaps...

Also, Mr Holder 'You have dishonoured me forever!'? Sure, but you dishonoured yourself first by being so very, very bad at your job. You had one job.

“‘You have called me names enough,’ said he, ‘I will not stand it any longer. I shall not say another word about this business, since you have chosen to insult me. I will leave your house in the morning and make my own way in the world.’"

Arthur making some interesting choices here. Like 'I know I was just found with my hands on a broken national treasure, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to walk out of this one a free man.'

When you said he was spoiled, Mr Holder, I didn't think you meant that he really didn't understand the meaning of the word 'consequences' at all.

Although maybe you should have listened to him before biting his head off. I know things look pretty damning, but maybe talking would have been a better approach. "Hey, son. What you got there?" But I get that it's a little difficult to remain calm when you're looking at the twisted remains of both a ten million dollar mistake and your entire career/life.

"Mary was the first to rush into my room, and, at the sight of the coronet and of Arthur's face, she read the whole story and, with a scream, fell down senseless on the ground."

Convenient. First, that she was so close to the room that she would be the first to rush in, and second, that she's now unavailable for questioning.

But seriously, Mary, I am behind you all the way on this. Keep at it! I am cheering you on. I hope your performance was Oscar worthy.

I don't know what Arthur expects his father to do here. Lie, maybe, and say 'I don't know what happened to it, Your Royal Highness. Must have been a random thief and absolutely not the son who I told the location to and who I found red-handed with it.' I firmly believe he's innocent and his father walked in on him trying to fix the thing, but even so he's coming across as kind of naive here. I get maybe hoping that Daddy wouldn't turn him in, but he must have thought it was a possibility.

“‘At least,’ said he, ‘you will not have me arrested at once. It would be to your advantage as well as mine if I might leave the house for five minutes.’"

Before Sir George can get away with the missing gems.

Mary, keep playing dead, if you faint for long enough you'll miss all of it. Although your... maybe potential boyfriend... might ditch you. Probably will ditch you. If that's what's happening. I really hope he's not just playing you and the two of you are going to take those gems, get them recut and sold, and sail off into the sunset (hopefully not interrupted by a random shipwrecking incident), but something tells me Sir George Burnwell is playing you.

"...I implored him to remember that not only my honour but that of one who was far greater than I was at stake; and that he threatened to raise a scandal which would convulse the nation."

This is not a convincing argument. Honestly, if I was told that what I was doing might cause a scandal for the royal family, I would absolutely have the impulse to do it harder. I get that I am not the Victorian son of a gentleman, but still. 'You have to save the royal family from scandal' would just make me laugh. They wouldn't be in a scandal if they hadn't done something scandalous.

"A search was made at once not only of his person but of his room and of every portion of the house where he could possibly have concealed the gems; but no trace of them could be found, nor would the wretched boy open his mouth for all our persuasions and our threats."

When would he have had time to hide them that well, considering he was still holding the coronet when you found him? Also, if he is, as I suspect, covering for Mary, then he's probably sure he's doing the noble and honourable thing by protecting her reputation or whatever.

"My God, what shall I do! I have lost my honour, my gems, and my son in one night. Oh, what shall I do!”

Well, maybe you start by inventing time travel to go back and tell your past self to do better.

Tbf, regarding his mental state, if I had, through my own fault, lost/damaged an object someone had entrusted to me that was worth ten million pounds, particularly someone with as much power as the Prince of Wales, I would be in a catatonic state. So yeah. But also, any sympathy I have had for Mr Holder has been lost at every single step of this process. Why does the bank not have a vault for this purpose? Why did he take it home when he didn't have anywhere safe to put it? Why did he tell anyone he had it? Why did he not move it after being told by his son how insecure the bureau was?

And, to back up my theory with text. Reasons I suspect Mary:

She was present during the conversation when Mr Holding told them about the coronet and where he put it.

She also heard Arthur saying how easy that bureau was to break into.

She was at the window that night for an unknown reason.

We only have her word as to the house being locked up that night.

Arthur is unwilling to say anything in his own defence, which makes me think he is covering for someone. The only person we have been given reason to believe he would protect in the text (other than maybe his father) is Mary. He could be secretly in love with Lucy, but given we already have evidence of his affection for Mary, that would be an abrupt turn.

So that's my theory: Sir George Burnwell and Mary are secret lovers and Mary, hearing about the golden opportunity her foolish uncle has presented her with, tells her lover, then either Mary or both of them, go to steal it. Arthur, who honestly might have been in there trying to get £200 for his own debts, witnesses this, attempts to stop it. The coronet is broken. Either Burnwell gets away with the jewels, or Mary does and gives them to him (through the window we saw her at earlier perhaps?) and then hears the yelling and runs upstairs just in time to give the theatrical performance of her life.

[efflorexcence]

I think people new to tumblr don’t realize how much of a shell of its former self this website is. Not to be a downer and I know this is nothing new but like it used to be totally average for posts to have 100k notes and I only considered something really popular once it hit like 500k-1 mil notes. Now?? It’s a miracle if a post gets anywhere near even 50k.

One of the best examples of the absolute death of tumblr is Alexis Ren’s blog (which she still updates occasionally). She used to be one of the most popular blogs on this app- used to pull in notes by the millions. And today she’s a seriously popular commercial model and still widely known “internet celebrity”. One of her most recent pictures on here she also posted to IG. On IG it had over 100k likes. On tumblr???? It had 60 something notes and only like 37 reblogs. For Alexis?? Not saying that kind of content was or is the pinnacle of tumblr culture but still. That kind of failure on behalf of this website to maintain any semblance of relevance is hard to comprehend.

I go through my following/followers and the vast majority of them haven’t updated in 5-10 years. So many are just dead and abandoned (to be fair mine was too until recently, which is probably why this is the case for most of my internet friends).

Anyway,, my teenage tumblr heart that used to hit post limit every. single. night. (and would then stay up till 12 until it reset) breaks. Why have we destroyed all that we loved? :(

[charlesdesvoeux]

7, 11, 18, 65, 74!

(This got a little long so let me put it under a cut)

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

My default is 3rd person limited. I've only recently tried 1st person-- it can be downright addictive, because it puts you so close to the character. Thing is, I always feel like I need a *reason* to write 1st person, otherwise it can be a little strange to me??? Like why are we hearing them talk directly. Do they know they're writing a book*. So I usually stick with 3rd person limited. The only fics I'm working on right now that are 1st person are a Billy afterlife au-- I felt I needed his direct voice, also his "justification" is that he's dead. he's screaming into the void and trying to see if someone will listen-- and another one that's essentially "what if the ministry of time but with John Irving and also his bridge is a bisexual man of pakistani descent"-- the book was in 1st person so it made sense that a fic based on it would also be 1st person.

11. Link your three favorite fics right now.

Wait, of mine or of others? I'm gonna say of others. I've recently read If on an Arctic night an author which I think is one of my all-time favorite terror fics (as the author said in the tags: porn and post-modernism. it's amazing). Another all-time favorite terror fic is húshuō bādào which is essentially the other side of Fitzjames' Chinese sniper story and I cannot praise it enough. Lastly I'm still obsessed with I dreamed of the fine, deep harbour I'd find (50k word Hartving modern au my beloved)

If it's mine. Hands down best thing I wrote in terms of fanfic was Three Scenes from an Afterlife, I think. Unnatural and Detestable still works, I think, because of its smaller scale-- I tried to chronicle only a moment and not the whole history of something, so I think I managed to do ok. And if nothing else at least Jacko, the Ripper is funny.

18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Sometimes a title inspires a fic, other times I'm tearing my hair out trying to think of a title. I was listening to a Nicole Dollanganger song and it reminded me of hickeygibson, so I thought "hey, what if I wrote a Billy afterlife au with this line from the song as the title?" (still working on it). But with my Bryant/Chambers fic I had absolutely no idea what to call it, and then I thought "well I think I've used the idea of warmth as like a recurring thing here so. ok let's call it Warmth". Jacko, the Ripper was too good a pun to pass up. Unnatural and Detestable is from how the Articles of War in the navy described the crime of sodomy, and it plays well with Irving's self-loathing in that one.

65. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

My only ongoing fic is The War Between Us and Our Ghosts. I'm planning for next chapter to have Tommy and Pilk go on a "night on the town" before Pilk leaves for a while to go see his family in Bristol and then oops some gay stuff happens. I'm looking forward to that; only reason I haven't written it is bc I'd need to do some research on "things working class people in London would do for entertainment in the mid 19th century" like. Would they go to the theater? If so, which type of theater, with which type of plays? What might they have eaten? And I don't feel like looking it up *right now* so I haven't written it yet, lol.

For future projects, I think the "tmot but with jirv" thing will be quite fun if I do manage to continue it (i'm only posting after i finish writing it). can't wait to see how john irving deals with the modern world and how the narrator deals with falling in love with a "glorified zombie" as he's called him so far.

74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

I've never posted anonymously. I have no idea how one might guess I wrote it lol sorry.

*weirdly enough I only get this hang-up about fics. i've written original works before that do 1st person without feeling this kind of "offness".

[sugareey-makes-stuff]

For the end of year asks I have. So many:

2, 3, 10, 25, and 30!!! 💛💛💛💛💛

Hiya friend! Hell yeah, gimme all the q's! Here's what I've got after putting some thought into it for 2023:

2. How many fics did you work on this year? (They don’t have to be finished or published!) Oh my God. I don't even know?!! I'm an artist at heart, but 2023 became a BIG writing year for me vs. art or craft making. Not by choice, since Adulting was really hard and everything was basically on fire, so I think I took up writing as a way to journal and cope tbh. My guesstimate between finished works AND WIPs together: I must have been working on at least 20 writing works. Which is kinda crazy...especially trying to do that for 2 fandoms. 😁

3. What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer? I'm actually good at writing and extract Feelings when I'm given a limited word count. Like, I can somehow make the story work if I carefully choose my words and/or sentences since that word count makes sure I get to the point and I don't ramble on for too long. I've definitely been more aware of how I write depending on what it's for. Also, those short word counts have taught me to be cleaner or punchier. Which is always a good thing! I started writing microfics in 2022, and in 2023, I started writing more drabbles. When I signed up for a couple of fic exchanges, I graduated to writing short fics that were 2k or less. So, I think if I generally set some kind of word count for myself, that gives me a framework to determine how big the thing will end up being.

10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on? OOO, that is a tough one! Okay, I honestly love Pink Lemonade (Sterek, T, 600 words with art) because it's a ficlet with art, and the whole creative process just flowed when I made this whole thing! I wanted to play more with silhouettes for art (which I think we'll see more of for 2024). And then I already had this little story planned out in my head, so I threw those words down. I think this was probably one of the easier works I've put together because everything cooperated. Also, soft boys! ♥️

25. What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.) Scrivener! That program has changed the way I write, and I swear by it every day! The features are awesome (hello to color coding and snapshots), but I absolutely love that I have the ability to link to internal and external links. Lifesaver for a geeky researcher. I feel like I can actually organize my drafts AND my notes without being a trash goblin, so I've definitely been willing to write more because of that. When I had a recent power outage though, I did actually do some paper and pen writing, which was pretty neat. It makes the idea more concrete, and you bet that's going to become a fic soon. It's about...well, being stuck in a power outage...surprise! 😂

30. What’s something that you want to write in 2024? I technically want to write sooo many things but I will narrow it down to a couple. The first one would be another installment out for Where do we go from here? I miss making things for Perciver, but 2023 really didn't let me give them the TLC they deserve. I looked back at my fic doc the other day, and I'm glad past!Krissy wrote drafts for 2 possible installments. They've got legs, so it would be amazing to get both of them out! I also want to see if I can get at least one of my longer Sterek fics posted up as well. Maybe it comes down to taking the baby steps to see which one I can finish first...the 50k 10-11 chaptered Beast that I started a year ago, or the 10-15k 5 + 1 Things fic that I started a month ago. We'll find out, I'm sure!

Thanks so much for the asks!

__ Previously asked: 15 and 17 Want to ask me more writer q's? Let me know via the 2023 in review fic writer asks!

[dreamkitsworld]

How old are apprentices? 

Very light spoilers with warrior name and protagonist reveals.

How old are apprentices? 

What I mean here, is how old are the characters in relation to human ages. Because there are several ways you can go about figuring this out. 

I’m getting this out of the way now. There are a lot of charts comparing human ages to cats, like this one from Pumpkin Pet Insurance, that shows that at 6 months old, cats are roughly 10 and at 12 months they’re 15. In my experience with cats, this is fine. A one year old cat tends to go through a moody teen phase that they seem to age out of by the time they’re 2, and this goes along with the chart nicely.  

I’m setting aside the real cat ages charts, though. I think that that they’re really not helpful in figuring out ages of these characters. The cats in Warriors really don’t resemble their real-life counterparts at all, and I don’t think that Warriors is sending out child soldiers here. 

Instead we’re going to solve this puzzle by talking about a super exciting topic… Marketing in the book industry! 

If you're feeling impatient you can jump right to Tl;dr at the end.

Marketing and Children’s Literature

Warriors is marketed as a middle grade book series, but what does that mean? 

First, you need to understand that until very recently, children’s literature was all under one umbrella. Also, there were very few teen books running around. Teen Librarian Toolbox has a good info graphic about the history of YA literature, and how it became a branch of its own. This was a slow progression, but I feel pretty confident that YA didn’t come to full maturity until the early 2000s. For context, Into the Wild was released in September of 2003. This was right as Harry Potter was becoming seriously popular, and just before the really big boom series of the 2000s. As someone who was 13 in 2003, I’m telling you from experience the teen fantasy section was sparse at my local library. From 2003-2010 the section really exploded into a lot of different books, but in 2003 specifically there wasn’t a lot going on.

In publishing, and writing, marketing is absolutely everything. You need to identify a target audience, so that bookstores and libraries know where to put the book. Warriors came out kind of in the middle of the Redwallseries being published. In the 1980s, when it was first released, it was marketed as Children’s Literature. Warriors has a lot in common with Redwall, enough that the two series would be targeting the same audience. Redwall was Children’s Literature, which by the time Warriors was released in 2003 has split into Middle Grade and YA. 

So, if you’re a marketing director and you’re publishing books in the early 2000s, your options are publishing a book aimed at the same demographics as an already established series in a genre that was more established, or taking a risk on the new YA field. The obvious choice is to go with the first option. 

 So, how do you know if a book is middle grade? 

The Novelry has a great article that discusses how to tell if a book is for the YA or Middle Grade crowds. If you scroll down and take a look at the chart they made, Warriors is a very interesting series. Let’s take a look at some stats. 

Criteria 1: Word Count

Middle Grade books are 30k-50k words

YA: 50k-75k words

The Prophecies Begin: Average of 70,627 words across the whole arc

Point for YA. 

Criteria 2: Romance

Middle Grade: Romance is light and fluffy. Some crushes and first kisses. 

YA: Range of possible relationships, explicit sex is often off screen. Complex romance is possible, including cheating and forbidden love.

I think it’s obvious The Prophecies Begin have a lot of messy romantic things going on. It does still skirt around the issue of sex, but it was 2003. 

Another point for YA. 

Criteria 3: Violence

Middle Grade: Vague, limited violence that isn’t too graphic. 

YA: Well, yeah. YA can get dark. 

I think it’s obvious Warriors falls into the YA category here as well. 

In all 3 cases, Warriors is clearly a YA book. But, it’s not marketed that way. They can get away with this because… 

The Characters are Cats

I once had the opportunity of meeting Tui Sutherland at a literary convention I had attended, and during her panel and my conversation with her afterward, she talked about her Wings of Fire series. She commented that one reason Wings of Fire was able to do the things it did, was because the characters aren’t human. This is a really important detail, because of a 4th criterion I purposefully left out. 

Criteria 4: Age of Characters

The general rule of thumb is that kids read up. Meaning that they like to read books about characters that are slightly older than themselves. If your target audience is age 10, then you need characters who are 12. If you are aiming for 14, your characters need to be 16-18. 

Tui Sutherland’s point about Wings of Fire was that age didn’t matter because her characters were dragons, and so didn’t need to follow the normal rules of character ages. 

At a different convention, I had the opportunity to see Tamora Pierce in a panel discussion, and she made a really interesting comment about her own Tortall series. Back in the 80s, as I mentioned earlier, there was only children’s literature. You didn’t have the same marketing divides. Her character Alana, who at the start of The Song of the Lioness quartet was 10, was free to grow up through the series without having issues. She also could include some heavier themes, because there wasn’t a hard line between ages yet. Pierce during the panel mentioned that Song of the Lioness couldn’t have been written today as-is because of the new marketing landscape. Harry Potter kind of slipped into the same category, since the series started in the early 1990s. 

The point is, the other criteria don’t actually matter that much. At least, not when compared to age. The age of the characters drives the rest of the book, and forces it to fall in line with the other criteria I discussed above. 

But, like Wings of Fire, Warrior exists outside of the normal rules because the characters aren’t human. Warriors is basically a YA series that is masquerading as Middle Grade so they could snag the Redwallreaders and have a safe market to sell books. It’s a loophole in marketing.

Which brings us back to the original question…

How Old Are Apprentices? 

Tl;dr: I’m pretty confident that apprentices are about 13-14 years old in human terms.

In order to be convincing middle grade books, the characters need to start their journeys at the correct middle grade ages. The content of the books is clearly edging into territory that is not suitable for young readers (think age 8), so they’re really trying to target the 11-14 crowd. Since kids read up, the characters in the beginning need to match that expectation. 

Which is why every new arc has an apprentice floating around in the first books. It’s the character designed to draw in the middle grade readers. They’ve also, if you’ve noticed, had protagonist point of view characters shared with very young warriors. 

Hmmmm?!

Yeah, that’s to catch the YA crowd. I think that young warriors are something like 17-18 years old.  

To prove my point, here are the main point of view characters by arc: 

Arc Two (The New Prophecy)

Apprentices : Squirrelpaw, Leafpaw

Young Warriors: Brambleclaw, Stormfur

Arc Three (Power of Three)

Apprentices: Lionpaw, Jaypaw, Hollypaw

Arc Four (Omen of the Stars)

Apprentices: Dovepaw, Ivypaw

Young Warriors: Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Flametail

Arc Five (A Vision of Shadows)

Apprentices: Alderpaw*, Violetpaw, Twigpaw

Young Warriors: Alderheart

Arc Six (Broken Code)

Apprentices: Shadowpaw, Rootpaw

Young Warriors: Bristlefrost

There are only two notable exceptions of the series starting with both apprentices and older cats, and that’s Power of Three and A Vision of Shadows. Power of Three is a bit unique in that I think it was attempting to do a sort of soft reboot with a new cast of characters and get new readers. A Vision of Shadows is kind of interesting, because most of Alderheart’s characters arc is actually in book one of that arc. After that he serves as the young warrior. I actually think that this is a 5 book arc with a prequel. The arc really gets going in book 2 with Violetkit and Twigkit. 

In The Broken Code, Shadowpaw and Bristlefrost start the series as either nearly warrior age or already a warrior-age. Shadowpaw’s siblings are both warriors at the start of this arc. 

The fact that these are cats, allows them to age up into adults. With a normal human character, this just wouldn’t happen. And not just because of the time skip issues, because as we see with Song of the Lioness, a series can allow the characters to grow and even have children of their own. As Tamora Pierce and Tui Sutherland pointed out, today’s marketing landscape just doesn’t allow for human stories like this now. And that’s a shame, because I think we’re losing out on some great stories due to these arbitrary marketing rules. 

[thegeminisage]

76 for broken road please!!

76. Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of [Fanfic Name]? 

actually, most of what i wanted got into broken road! i'm really happy about that. there were only a few things i didn't quite have room for:

john & mary resolution. i left it pretty ambiguous so everyone could imagine their own ending, because i just couldn't decide what felt right. but it feels like a little bit of a cop-out, you know? ultimately though it was just out of the scope of this fic

and speaking of things out of the scope of this fic...since it's a fix-it fic, i was sad that i couldn't bring back eileen. they fridged her for absolutely NO reason whatsoever and i'm mad about it. like, yes, samwena is great and fun, but i like them equally as friends, and i LOVED sam and eileen...but it would have required SO much more work (and words!) to make it feel earned and this fic is already over the 100k limit

similarly, i would have liked to include pov from mary and sam, and go deeper into their issues with each other. it's a four-person family! john got time with sam, mary, and dean, and dean got time with sam, mary, and john, but by virtue of excluding these two povs they didn't get much meaningful stuff hashed out between themselves. again, this was due to size and scope. it would have been another 50k at least, maybe even another 100k. additionally, the bad guy of this story - michael - doesn't tie into their stories as well as he does with dean & john, so whatever work i did with them would not have had the climax that dean and john had. if anything, there needs to be some kind of roleswap broken road fic where we do the same thing with mary and sam but they're playing whack-a-mole with lucifer instead and eileen is the love interest that survives despite all odds. i'm never going to write it, so this is an open invitation, lol.

believe it or not, there was originally a scene where dean taught jack to play pool. in the original version of this fic, which was gen and not dean/cas (i thought i didn't have room, but after nov 5...), they left the bunker a lot more. (actually, by the end of writing it, i was a little frustrated with how little they seemed to need to leave it for all the melodrama to happen! i wish i could have varied my scenery more.) so, prior to the sex scene in ch3, when dean confides in cas about his complex feelings about john - this originally happened at a bar, or some other place with pool tables - maybe there was a pool table in the bunker, lol. dean would teach jack a few things about pool and talk to him about john. (this ultimately became the conversation they had during the hatchet man movies.) sam, mary, cas, and john would come in, and cas would jerk his head at dean so they could talk semi-privately at the bar or in the corner to tell dean how the mission went. john would move to teach jack how to hold a pool stick, cas would become alarmed, and dean would stop him from interfering. john would play Good Dad and teach jack a couple of tricks without doing anything horrible (i think at this point he either didn't know what jack was or was less bothered by it), and dean and cas would both relax. and then dean would go on to say the same things he said in ch3 about john being good to him, just...without the sex. that all got moved around - due to the urgency of dean's situation, which was necessary to build tension, we didn't have time for as many quiet moments like this. i replaced pool with hatchet man because it was necessary for dean to be restrained, and i love the hatchet man episode, and also because john going "we all do bad things sometimes" was in my opinion unequivocally hilarious. after i decided to do dean/cas after all, i instantly pictured this conversation moving to the car - you absolutely cannot have their first time be anywhere else - and that was that. history and memes were made.

thank you for asking actually!! that was so much more than i realized i still had in my brain, lol. i'm really happy that people still think about broken road so often after the fact, it makes me warm and fuzzy.

[ASK MEME]

[blocksruinedme]

Team Rancher (Solidaritek) for the ship ask meme, please?

Do I ship it? WHAT A COMPLICATED QUESTION.

I did, with all my heart and north of 50k words. In an ideal world, in my ideal world, I would still be shipping it. I can't explain how much I want to be okay with Ranchers. I feel like I got dumped by someone I was good friends with before we dated, who really wants to be friends again, but it hurts too much to think about them. (Has that happened recently in my life, yes, lol.) I hope someday we can be friends again, but I'm not good at getting over things.

I've been sitting on a "what's your brutally honest opinion of [ship]" ask since... the doc was last modified march 17. okay. It's a simple chronology

I watched Double Life, was not obsessed with mcyt, checked to see if people were writing it and was pleased. I wasn't even regularly watching their POVS.

I watched 3L and got sucked in hard by Flower Husbands. I started writing a bit multiverse series, and I needed Scott and Jimmy to talk about Jimmy/Tango having happened (they don't remember their pasts while in the life games), so I needed to play that out, and oops I was obsessed. (then smalletho happened in the same way with those people)

The crossover started, tango put those fucking hearts over the reunion scene (no one made him do that), I was possessed by tango/jimmy/fwhip and wrote and published my absolute most popular fic, it was real work to get through "oh i'll never get that many kudos again". (chart below to show you how damn popular it is compared to fic where i'm not actively sad about them). then i started publishing the sequel, and quickly went from "i'll never do a wip" to 'well just this once"

Jimmy built Tango the ranch and i got possessed again and wrote a long fic about it

i said "if that's all ever get, that's fine, this gave me so much to work with". and that would have been fine for a month long crossover, but i think it was 50 more days, every day wishing and hoping that today there would be something, that tango's ep would include the ranch, shit like that

And my heart turned bitter, guys.

This is my first unscripted/whatever fandom. The phrase "content creator" was not part of my life before. Maybe an actor sucked, but they didn't write the words they spoke, they were selling me a character completely distinct from them, it wasn't just that actor doing it all. Maybe a showrunner sucked, but so many people put their hearts and souls into their series.

But this? I don't know how to deal with this, I don't know how to separate annoyance with a creator from a character, not when they say all the same things and make the same weird noises and are, y'know, pretty much the same cause it's not like Tango's out there doing heavy roleplay. I just have no experience, and I can not express strongly enough how frustrated I am with myself that I'm so worked up over it. I was briefly annoyed with Scott about something around the same time (it's stupid, i'm not going to talk about it) and I worked SO HARD to not let it be a thing, i made myself watch scott content i knew made me happy, i was not going to let myself have an issue with scott, as we all know he's everywhere - and flower husbands will always be my first ship.

If I didn't have a god damned wip in tango pov I might be over this now. I would have been able to try and not think about it - I have ranchers pretty well filtered, but did you know filters don't catch text in an ask? They don't! But I thought about the wip every day, as it seemed harder and harder to imagine every writing tango pov, and it spiraled. It was very bad! I know I am allowed to drop a wip, but it doesn't line up with how I want to be conducting my affairs.

But then @that-tall-queer-bassist interrupted one of my wailing session to say they'd finish it. I have it all outlined, I had I think the first page written, and crucially i wrote the final conversation, the end of this damn series.

So now Limited Life is over, I don't watch much HC and it's sounds like Tango's just working on decked out all the time, so I can maybe get some space. I watched some 3rd Life last night and was doing find with Tango being around. Maybe I can CHILL OUT and someday I can go back to my Double Life wips, I know exactly what that Tango did and nothing can surprise me.

I would like to be chill again. I would like it so bad. I would like to un filter content on tumblr, and finish "Swinging Soulmates" which i think is actually fantastic, and put my ranchers fanart back in the frame. I'd like to do the main part of the larpers au and not just the side fics. (Though i wrote tango being around and being jimmy's bf in the smalletho morning after larper fic, i was very proud of myself.) Maybe after the wip is done, and I can exist neutrally. I don't know why the series is so popular, fwhip/tango had one more interaction ever (and fwhip wanting to trap him in a hole forever....) I guess it's fix it? I wish it felt like fix it for meeeeee

Ship It

What made you ship it? They were so dumb and sweet and they vibed together so well. So much chaos going on, but hey were 200% loyal and ready to do whatever the hell the other one wanted. I love that. Also, uh, Jimmy.

What are your favorite things about the ship? I want to explore most dynamics with Jimmy, right, I keep writing brand new ships and stuff? And Tango gave me opportunities other people don't, because, for better or worse, there's no one else like tango.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? idk i'm a mess

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it? Because it hurts my heart

What would have made you like it? No crossover, or different crossover, or... just different stuff on the cc level

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? Yeah man it's a beautiful ship. It's so fun, they're so fun, I was really pleased with what I could easily do with the sexual dynamics, i loved them so much

My kudos over time. (if anyone wants to make their own i can make a spreadsheet template and share my tricks and tips

Below the cut is what i had sitting in my drafts in march for brutally honest opinion.

My brutally honest opinion of Ranchers?

Double Life was great. I somehow didn’t get into them until I was writing a multiverse-whatever flower husbands fic and needed to fill in the blanks of “scott and jimmy are talking about DL and obviously they fucked” and i incepted myself into it. I loved it, I wrote a lot, loved art, commissioned art, etc.

Right now we’re on a little bit of a break. This ship, and specifically the crossover, is what got me publishing, not just writing, when I was possessed day one. “MY EX STOLE MY SOULMATE” is still my most popular fic by far, and the unfinished sequel is in second place. After jimmy’s second crossover ep, i got into a fic i loved very much, “love respect joy and ranchin’”. i put so much work and  love into it, i got a fwhimmy consult and a grian consult. I said after that ep that if that was all we got, i’d be okay, cause i’d gotten so much out of it via fic. But then the length of time of “not getting any more” was too long, I spent too long wishing and hoping, and my feelings went sour

[postapocalyptic-cryptic]

HI MIKEY busting in here to say 1, 3, 7, 37

CALLLLLL HI

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

I know I always mention Lighthopping, but I really do think it's very representative of me as a writer. It's also long enough to show my writing in a few different lights/scenarios. Coincidentally, it's got 50 kudos to go before it becomes my second fanfic to hit 1k kudos!

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

I said "mikey-brand cuddles" once and now it's a thing, so obviously the cuddles. I am incapable of writing fic without cuddles.

I've written like 50k words of cuddles.

Also whump. Big thing for me in whump is specifically emotional whump and emotional hurt/comfort. I write a lot about mental health, which is something that's been a theme since I started writing way back in like 2007. Obviously, 5 year old Mikey had a limited vocabulary to talk about it, but I wrote a LOT about anxiety and PTSD and now that I think about it, I was very fixated on this one OC and her coping with an event that was eerily like something that wouldn't happen to me until almost five years after I came up with her story.

I tend to focus on sleep a lot, too. I have absolutely no clue why, but this is also something I can trace back to my 2007-2012 era notebooks.

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

Funny you should ask this, because I consider worldbuilding to be a weak spot of mine, and one of my 2023 resolutions is to get better at it! I don’t have any great examples of worldbuilding up on ao3, but I’m actually pretty proud of the way my Transformers/Pacific Rim fusion is going right now. Lots of worldbuilding in that one when it comes to meshing the technologies and politics, and I’m having a lot of fun on the bus and between classes lol.

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

Okay I’m actually going to do two because I couldn’t choose. First one is my beloved 3x1 (Netflix Iron Fist), which is my lowest-kudos fic at 10. I understand that it’s only 200 words. It’s not the kudos that bother me. It��s the fact that there are only two works in the whole ship tag. Where are the Ward/Danny/Colleen fans!!!!! Did we not watch the same show???????

And now here’s my serious answer, the fic I’m actually proud of despite its unfinished state: In Case of Emergency. I’m gonna be honest with you guys I thought cyborg au would be more of a hit. This is the fandom that hyped me up for 40k words of hockey au and yet there were crickets for cyborgs. Horrible. I love it, though.

[dark-academia-quotes]

NaNoWriMo survival tips

NaNoWriMo has officially started! I am sooo excited to start writing, and as a special celebration post, I will be sharing my top 10 survival tips for participating writers! If you're scrolling through this on Instagram, this will be part 1/2, so stay tuned for the remaining tips that are to come!

1.F*ck the traditional word count (if you want)

Yeah, you heard me right. You should totally not strive for 50k if that doesn't serve you! Set your own word count goal according to what is realistic to YOU. That could be 15k, 30k, or 100k! An ideal word count should push you to your limits without completely overstraining you. Should it be a challenge? Absolutely! That much of a challenge that you have burnout and writer's block for the next 2 months? Probably not.

2. Don't edit during NaNo

Seriously, just don't. It will slow you down, you will get frustrated and it will take your focus off of what should matter most this month: writing! If you want to, you can look at it from a scientific angle: Writing is done by the right side of the brain, which is responsible for creative processes, whilst editing is done by the left side of the brain, which is responsible for rational thinking. You can't write well while in editing mode, which is why you should totally keep those two processes separate, and save the editing for the months to come.

3. Stock up on snacks

Don't walk, RUN to the nearest supermarket if you haven't stocked up on your favourite snacks yet. For me, that is chocolate, tea, bread, and whatever salty thing I can get my hands on. Because you know what is stressful? Writing 50k words in a month. But you know what is even more stressful (and honestly downright impossible)? Doing so without SNACKS!

4. Create a space that inspires you

Inspiration is always important, but even more during NaNoWriMo, because that is one of the times where writing can feel like actual hard work, and doing hard work without some sort of inspiration or motivation will most likely lead to failure. Some ways that you can create that space are:

digital:

build a pinterest board for your WIP or your characters

create a YouTube playlist with author's interviews or dark academia videos

find some good writing/dark academia atmosphere on Ambient Mixer

browse through Social Media to find posts related to writing (like this one) to inspire you. Just make sure that doesn't become your main activity.

watch NaNoWriMo content on YouTube

make a Spotify playlist for your WIP

analogue:

light some candles

put on fairy lights

go for a walk regularly

decorate your room in a way that reminds you of writing (I have a looot of sticky notes on my wall)

5. Tidy up your space

To be fair, this is more of a Preptober thing, but if you haven't already, you should totally tidy up and organise your writing space in a way that is efficient to you. This way you can avoid disrupting your flow while writing, as you won't need to search for your stuff. This may include sorting already existing documents, going through your notebook drawer to eliminate the chaos in there or just giving your desk a deep clean.

6. Get your family on board

This is a very important thing for me this year, as I am staying with my family in Argentina, which means working under unideal conditions. I live with two children (7 and 11 years old), fights between them as well as between my cousin and her husband are common, I don't really have my own room and having a quiet space is rare due to the presence of five pets (thank god for the invention of noise cancelling headphones. They are cute though).

One way to make things easier, especially if you live in a familiar situation that is similar (or worse), is to get people on board. Tell them what you are about to do, put a sign on your door when you work, bribe your little brother with snacks to leave you alone when you write. I promise you it makes a difference. I realise not everyone has the option to do this, and if you are a writer (or any kind of artist really) that lives among people who aren't supportive of your dreams, know that I am with you and that I wish you all the best.

7. Reward yourself

I personally like to reward myself every 10k words I write during NaNo, and I make a list of the rewards I want to give myself beforehand. That way, when you're writing that one slow, complicated or just emotionally draining scene that just doesn't seem to end, you have other things to look forward to besides just winning. You can also give yourself small rewards every day you hit your word count - or do both!

8. Take care of your health

That obviously includes physical health: make sure to move your body every once in a while, don't use writing positions that could injure your back and make sure to eat full meals even when you are busy. That being sad, I want to put a special emphasis on mental health here. Don't stress yourself too much with your project, you aren't here to get a burnout. Be mindful and realistic about the goals you set. And remember, your mental health comes first. If you have to choose between maintaining it and finishing NaNo, your word count should never be the priority.

9. Have a reason

Now, that sounds pretty plain, but it can actually be pretty helpful once you start! Ideally, you should have a note/paper/document somewhere that lists exactly that: why you are doing NaNo, and why you are writing in general. Maybe you really have this story that you just have to tell to find your inner peace, maybe you want to choose writing as a career path, or maybe it just gives you joy to create stories. Maybe it is a coping mechanism. Whatever it is - write it down. That way you can come back to it when you feel like quitting.

10. Be kind to yourself

I know this kind of falls under 8., but I wanted to give this a special mention. Don't be harsh on yourself when you feel like you aren't going to hit your word count on the 15th. Keep writing. 30k/50k are better than quitting after 7k, and you will be glad you continued. You can get the rest of the words in in December.

If you get writer's block at some point, punching the Laptop and drowning yourself in negative thoughts are probably not going to make it better. Take a deep breath, acknowledge that the frustration is there, watch your favourite Disney movie, dedicate yourself to finding inspiration and then get back to writing. It is very likely that you will at some point be frustrated with this process, so having a frustration escape plan can really do wonders.

Anyway, that is it! If you enjoyed reading through this, kindly consider supporting me by commenting, liking, saving or sharing this post! And if you are interested in more writing and dark academia content, a follow is of course appreciated. That being said, have fun writing and make the best out of this year's NaNo!!