#like the WIPs of one of my favorite illustrations and its neat to see the coloring process is close to my own

[nyarlylicious]

All my old followers should know about my horrid collecting habits, but to my new followers: Hello! I wanted to post my new and improved .hack collection once the 20th ani merch arrived—So, here it is!

My last update on this shelf was about 4 months ago, where it was still cramped in this tiny cubby I had. I got a lot more added to it, and a lot of that is thanks to @dorkova for gifting me some stuff, including those CC2 shop cards (Which I adore, thank you so much ;-;)

I have one other thing that's on its way here, but to not jinx it's arrival I'll just wait to post about it until it's safely in my possession. Edit: He's here.

ALSO, putting a slight pin on this for future dates: I did buy all the Set B standees and while I'm giving away a few to my friend as a thank you gift, I might end up selling the rest. I'm holding onto them for now, untouched, as I continue to consume the rest of this series. If I end up not liking these characters enough to keep, I'll probably sell them and make a post about it checking for interest.

[kcsplace]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks for the tag @sparrow-in-the-field and @strangethings-everywhere

I guess today is the day that you all get to learn about my other AO3 account since a lot of these Qs are about overall stuff lol.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

59

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

846,116 which is insane to me, esp as more than half that is one fic

3. What fandoms do you write for?

MCU - Phlint and Stucky Stranger Things - Steddie 9-1-1 - Buddie Criminal Minds - Reid/Hotchner Firefly - Jayne/Mal H50 - McDanno TBITB - Coxstroke Merlin - Merthur NCIS - Tony/Gibbs SG-1 - Jack/Daniel The Sentinel - Jim/Blair

4. Top five fics by kudos?

He Whom My Soul Loves (Stucky) - 988 A Diaz By Any Other Name (911) - 970 The Man On The Wall (Stucky) - 929 Magic Man (Merthur) - 781 The Royal Camelot (Merthur) - 650

5. Do you respond to comments?

I love answering comments. If someone can take the time to leave a comment, I always do my best to answer. Not always immediately, but I get there!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angriest ending?

I don't think I've ever written anything with an angry ending. Maybe not happy, per se, but not angry

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Uhhh probably The Man On The Wall because after a 475k slow burn, Bucky finally gets his kiss

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have done! Not in a while, but not because I'm any better, but because I'm such a teeny writer, nobody cares enough to be rude anymore!

9. Do you write smut?

Yup! Though by the time I'm done writing it it feels dry as the Sahara and textbook dull, I can only hope it reads better and that I'm just jaded after spending ages working on it

10. Craziest crossover?

I've done fusions, but not a crossover. Not yet!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yup! Why they'd choose mine, I don't know. Also had them added to goodreads against my wishes

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Never been asked! I've had art made for fic, and someone wanted to do a podfic version of one, but never translated.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Absolutely not!! I'm too much of a control freak and if my procrastination and oh-so-slow writing annoys me, it'd enrage even the calmest of co-writers! I wouldn't do that to an innocent person!

14. All time favorite ship

Honestly, I have favourite ships in a fandom, but narrowing down a favourite of all of them, I don't think I can!!! Cop out answer FTW!

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

While I never start a fic in the hope of maybe finishing it as I always start with the intention to finish, sometimes they end up so big, or are outside my sphere of limited talent that they peter out. I have 120k of a Night At The Museum type AU for Stucky that has sat on my hard-drive for nearly a decade, and I'm 65k into a OFMD fic that I'm determined to finish, but at the moment the OFMD is the far far more likely fic to see the light of day

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue for sure. I can write whole fic that are just nothing but dialogue, and then I go back in and fill it out. The dialogue is the skeleton I work the rest onto

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Everything not dialogue!! Everything

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

....I don't have any?!?

19. First fandom you wrote in?

Probably Harry Potter some 20 years ago

20. Favorite fic you've written?

The Man On The Wall is my baby. I wrote it twice so its my sweetheart. It was also a serious labour of love at 474,747 words (also I love how neat that word count is) very very close second is Life, Written and Illustrated By in the Merlin fandom. It was my first foray into Merthur and was part of a competitive pornathon and I won that weeks with it so huuuuge confidence boost for my writing

[eighthdoctor]

27, 39, 71

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

favorite by far is when i do something REALLY CLEVER, on accident or on purpose. sometimes this is in planning, sometimes it comes out of the writing, and then i'm smug about it for weeks. like coming up with a 6 month spell cool down has had all kinds of beneficial fallout for the plot, while requiring basically no effort from me to throw in. i'm STILL smug about that and that's been in place for MONTHS

least favorite: i have characters in scene A. i want to end scene A. i want to go to scene B. i don't know how to do this. jo frequently tells me to cut the last 100 words and just close the scene.

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

i know you're not reading it yet but it IS the current WIP so here's the opening of the next chapter of The Power to Manipulate Belief

Katherine starts all days the same way: A cup of tea, black, and any reports that had come in overnight or been judged low priority enough to wait for her attention. This hasn’t changed in twenty five years, and won’t change now, even if she’s in an archaic position, even if everything else about the world goes to hell, even if her daughter is back and then gone and upending everything in her wake, she is going to have her tea and read reports. For three weeks now, like clockwork, one of those reports has come from Jaina. They’re written in a hand so neat it must be magical, but aside from that, they are— She’d stopped getting letters, after Daelin. For all intents and purposes, Jaina had left home at ten—sure, she’d come home for the occasional holiday, something which had dramatically increased when she’d learned how to portal—and for ten years, accordingly, she’d sent letters to Katherine. Childish things at first, then filled with adolescent drama, and then the first thoughts of an adult confronted with an unimaginable crisis. Then they’d ended. Now she’s getting them again, and the contrast illustrates just how much her daughter has changed. The reports are methodically organized, with Jaina’s voice and opinions apparent throughout, but always noted as such, letting Katherine see unadorned facts as well. They are also wide ranging, covering everything from Alliance policy to spying reports—why?—to trade deficits in Stormwind. She’s lost over twenty years of her daughter’s life. In a way, these reports are how Jaina is trying to bridge that gap.

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

i write pretty rigorously in chronological order (i may skip the back half of a scene if i get stuck but even then i know more or less where it's going) so not worried about character development there.

for TPTMB, i've been working really hard on having an outline (currently not up to date) and using more of some of scrivener's features which are meant for this.

the outline is just a 1-2 phrase scene description, potentially a second bullet point of any Choice Dialogue that needs to be included, and then i bold it if i've written it. periodically i check back to see OH RIGHT, I NEEDED THAT: eg, sylvanas pointing out that jaina hasn't been reflexively shielding against sylvanas was actually not in the first draft! i wrote the scene, went "hmm it's Missing Something", checked my outline and said "oh fuck duh."

i can also add notes to the doc for later edits so that i can just write the scene--chs 1 and 2 had "add more spy v spy shit" until i decided we'd hit maximum nonsense.

meanwhile in scrivener: this is from chapter 2 so spoiler free

each scene gets its own document. if i decide after writing that actually one scene needs to come before/after something else, easy enough to move. in theory the status column is telling me what needs first edits, what isn't done yet, what needs jo's edits added, etc (i'm not good at keeping this up to date). pov IS helpful because i can filter the whole file by POV and so make sure that, eg, sylvanas's references to jaina are consistent, or jaina has the right throughline in terms of theramore mentions.

and then the date is the date, and i REALLY need to update the later chapters (this is also why i used ch2), but that's part of how i'm keeping track of the timeline in fic.

the REST of keeping track of the timeline is an excel spreadsheet :)