#me: takes a month or more writing a chapter of my multichapter fic

[sabine-smitten-obviously]

Good Omens - January reads part #1- fanfics recs 🤓🩷

Follow along for short summaries each month about the books i read🩷

I only read finished stories and rarely one-shots. You will find no WIPs in here. Also you will only find happy or at least hopeful endings here - i couldn´t handle anything else.

Also i try to find every author here on tumblr to link-to, but sadly some times i am out of luck. If you happen to know them, please tell them, write to me in the comments or DM me and i will update the post!

Ratings in ()

Multichapter Fanfics

1] Sky Clear Blue (E) by @klikandtuna

Human Au. It is the year 1804 and Azekiel is running a bookshop, but this folly is about to end, as he is obliged to marry the daughter of a pastor. Meanwhile in the year 2024 Crowley lives in a flat above a deserted shop. He can still read "A.Z. Fell, purveyor of the books" and is fascinated by it. And so sometimes he sneaks down in the empty place, until one day he finds a small handmade angel under the floorboards. And isnt it just a coincidence that Crowley likes to fiddle with a machine for timetravelling? 😉

It doesn't say in the tags but it feels a bit like a Dr. Who Crossover in the first chapters. This is a longfic of 749 pages that will decorate your mind. Brace yourself for some big emotions and quite a stretch of at least umcomfortable feelings and questions. Be brave, you will be rewarded. 🩷 Do make sure you read to the end!

One of the many most touching sentences: " He lives in the lilac wood of his own imagination, and he lives there all alone." 🦄

And incredibly there is also a song to one of the chapters, its a lullaby Azekiel sings for Crowley.

2] The two that got away (T) by @caedmonfaith

Aziraphale is alone at the pub, when a tall lanky ginger walks in - also alone. They start talking and decide to meet again there. But then the world goes crazy and lockdown starts. Years later, Crowley still thinks of the "angel", neither knowing his name, phone number or any further details. When Nina tries to set him up for a blind date, he stubbornly refuses. Good thing, that Nina and Maggie don´t let him get away with it. 😉

A sweet little christmas-story you can read every time of the year. I just love @caedmonfaith, you can seriously read everything from them and will always be in safe hands! 🩷

3] What are you doing on New Years Eve (T) by @thebookshoparoundthecorner

It is 1806, when Crowley and Aziraphale happen to be meet by chance on New Years Eve. The fic takes us through the years and tells about other New Years, including the ones after the end of S2. 🍀

4] Against all expectations (E) by @sixbynine

A/B/O & regency aera: Aziraphale/she/her is an Omega to be presented for marriage, but she has the least interest in finding a husband. So she sneaks away from the ball, but while trying to climb off the balcony, a strange Gentleman and Alpha even helps her to gather her dress and braid her hair.

A tale of unconventional thoughts and gender questioning, that had me googling for victorian paperweights and you"ll never guess why. 🤭

5] The trouble with beeing a demon (E) by @verdantvulpus

This fic is basically the answer to the question: if there are 2 Crowleys and 2 Aziraphales - how many different possibilities are there for them to enjoy themselves in bed (and also other places)? 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Felt Plot : Smut - Ratio = 1 : 9

Lovely quote: " There isn't a me that doesn't love Aziraphale."

6] The Grindr Logo Doesn´t Even have a 'G' in it (E) by @indieninja92

Set after S1, Aziraphale and Crowley are free to explore their friendship - or is it more? In the meantime Aziraphale is stumbling upon a fascinating but anonymous creature on Grindr for having online fun. 🌶️🌶️

I read this fic a while ago and while i was sick now, i listened to it in a great audiobook-adaption from @podfixx! Superhot no matter if you listen or read it, the shower-scene will live in my head rent-free forever.

Oneshots

7] Trust me (T) by @beet-feet

Set after S2, Crowley cant handle his broken heart and seeks a final solution... 😔

Mind the tags, but as always - a hopefull ending.

8] Keepsake (E) by @naromoreau

AU, Crowley is a fairy that likes to tease Aziraphale, who is a centaur. Well, that can't go without punishment any longer ... 🌶🌶🌶

Art by @golswia !

9] Christmas Traditions and all that (T) by @captainblou

Crowley wakes on christmas morning - alone. But only, because Aziraphale has a surprise for him. 🎅😉

Lovely quote: "If Aziraphale wasn't the first thing he'd see, and touch, and smell in the morning, then it wasn't worth waking up at all."

10] Animal Instinct (G) by @captainblou

Crowley returns to the bookshop after a day in hell and desperately needs to unwind. Though this time must have been especially awful, because when the angel returns with tea, Crowley is - gone?

Yes, i have subscribed to this author and so this is why you sometimes get more than 1 rec for her 😁

11] A little help from a fiend (E) by @mimsynims

Human AU - although not really. Aziraphale sumons a demon because he is in need of ... assistance. I can´t tell you more without spoiling it. You´ll never guess what kind of "payment" the demon is willing to accept. 😉 Had me downloading the follow-up multichapter-fic!

12] Submitted for your consideration (E) by @zehwulf

Crowley hires a professional dom - but when he opens the door and takes the other man in, he doubts this will ever work. Well - it will. Better than expected. 😁🌶️

Go ahead - spoil yourself, love yourself - and don´t forget your love for the authors, too! 🤗

[zenkindoflove]

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary returning to writing fanfic. This is going to be a bit of a sappy post reflecting on the last year and celebrating some of my wins/new things I've challenged myself to do.

October 17, 2023 is when I started to write the very first chapter of Burn Forever with Me. I had finished the ACOTAR series about two weeks before and had spent those two weeks reading all the Elucien fic I could. I could feel I had a story in me, so I set out to write it in a month thinking that would be it and I would get it out of my system.

It had been a while since I had written. From 2006-2012 I wrote fanfic very regularly across a few different fandoms. Most of those stories can't be found online anymore. I took a three year hiatus from my Big Bang Theory multichapter fic at the end of 2012, and didn't finish it until 2015 when I had a burst of motivation. I didn't write again until another burst of motivation hit me (Game of Thrones ending) and wrote another one-shot in 2019.

By this point in 2023, I kind of thought my fanfic writing days were behind me. I didn't expect this new resurgence in my life that came about because of this series/this ship. I've tried so many new things writing for this fandom and pushed my writing in directions I never anticipated.

Since last year I have... -published 441,592 words. -published 20 fics (a mix of multichapter and one-shots) -completed four multichapter long fics (huge for me because I used to abandon multichapter fics all the time in my first era) -Written for several ships, including rare pairs, not just my OTP which is all I did in the past -Created many OCs, including my focal OC Alexius. Up until now I thought I was kind of hopeless when it came to writing original characters. -Wrote fanfic for three appreciation weeks -Wrote MM smut for the first time, and lots of it. I have been reading MM smut for two decades, but did not have a calling to write for a specific ship until Eris x Alexius -Co-written two fics with @crazy-ache -pushed myself in what styles of writing I tackle, including writing epistolary for the first time as well as challenging myself to write action/fight scenes which always scared me in the past -world building in general also used to scare me and now I think it feels so much more approachable as I've been filling in SJM's holes. -I think my smut writing has evolved a lot too. While I wrote smut in the past and I think I established what my writing voice/style was for smut, I have really had the opportunity to solidify it and try it in different scenes and contexts. I feel a lot more confident than I did back then.

I wanted to highlight these because I think as writers, we are often too hard on ourselves, and it helps to put into context all of the ways we've improved if we are mindful of our progress. I definitely encourage you to sit down one day and remind yourself of all the new things you've done from your starting place. Making this list really put into context all the ways I've changed as a writer in just a year.

I still have a lot more I want to do and new challenges to face in the next year. I hope if you read this, it does help to show you that you can take long breaks and even if you take a step back from writing, you will always be a writer and it'll always be a hobby you can return to and improve your skills, no matter how long its been.

[hollow-lime-green]

my 2sorcs gushy post

2sorcs is done at last, and i feel like i've run a marathon (albeit very slowly). now that people have had a chance to read the final chapter, i want to be squishy about it for a minute. so without further ado, I yap under the cut.

it's no secret (because I can't shut the fuck up about it) that i have had a pretty rough past year of grad school. things have often not gone as planned. i'm not where i wanted or expected to be when i started this program. and yet, i think i am happier than i would have been had everything gone to plan. all of the delays and difficulty of my master's degree have forced me to sit down and actually learn how to cope with this shit instead of forcing my way through. apparently (this will shock you), i cope pretty well by writing fanfiction.

i'll be honest, when i started domains, the scope was 40k of PWP under a thin veneer of H/C and comedy. I still wanted to do a little character work, and I couldn't help but do a bit of jujutsu theorycrafting. but i very much expected it to be a one and done thing that i was writing as an easy way to get back into writing fic after a long hiatus.

while writing 2sorcs, i started doing a lot of work unpacking my own anxiety and depression, and it's been quite a journey. but it has been a much more pleasant journey than it might have been, because i can project it onto some gay boys and make them kiss. and (eventually) be happy (maybe).

many of my readers have said very kind things about my characterization in FIYM, and that makes me so happy. 2sorcs, and FIYM in general, is extremely unserious. but underneath the comedy, there's a lot of real sht. i wanted the characters and their ridiculous hangups to feel real, and i wanted their extremely illogical decisions to still make sense. because real people are like that. i'm like that, and so - as most authors do - i put a lot of myself into these characters while i write, and we can feel and grow together. (i can't say that i'm a gay special-grade jujutsu sorcerer in the 2010s, but i think we'd have a few things in common.)

FIYM is also my first time writing comedy! there's something fun about writing serious, artistic fanfic, but there is something freeing about putting the dumbest 2010s shit i can think of onto a page and seeing how much psychic damage i can inflict on my audience (and Nanami). i love that you guys are here for it. it really makes the whole writing process so much more fun.

your comments and your asks have gotten me through some of the roughest months of my life to date, and i am just so grateful to have such a rewarding hobby and community to retreat to when the real world gets dark and cold and shitty. i would not have been able to write this fic, or honestly my thesis, if i didn't have you all cheering me on in the background and reminding me that things i do make people happy. <3

so what's next?

well, 3sorcs, obviously! FIYM is far from over. i feel a liiiiittle guilty leaving you all on such a cliffhanger, but with any luck, you won't have to wait too long. i've had the outline for part 3 in the works for a long time now, although it's nice to sit and take some time to re-work it and make sure it fits the writer i am now, who has grown so much over the past two years. part 3 will be (primarily) from satoru's pov, and it may get more serious, but also more unhinged. i can't wait. i also have plans for a few more interlude pieces, including a longer multichapter focused on shokohime in this verse.

for now, though, i'll take a short break and take some time to read some of the lovely fic in this fandom and some of the books on my tbr to recharge creatively for the next and final leg of this race. and defend my masters if these motherfuckers will get off their asses and send me my test samples. i know that we might be looking at a dip in the jjk fandom, at least until new animation comes out. but i hope that by the time i am back, you guys will be here and ready for some more tomfoolery :)

if you have stuck around through my yapping, here is your reward: a 0-context snippet from part 3, 'fellas is it gay to be his one and only'.

[solifloris]

2024 fics in review ; aka, a chronological breakdown -> overall thoughts -> summary -> highlights, of all the writing i've done in 2024 !! <3 thank you for the tag @starmocha! <3 (you can view her post here! :D)

this was vvvv cool and fun to do hehe so im also tagging @reilemon @rafayelsheart @always-just-red + any other writers who may want to join in, just in case you guys might want to do it too !!! (no pressure though <3333)

Total number of fics: 47

Total word count: 142,420 (a rough estimate!)

Chronological Breakdown:

including fics, chapters, and formally-formatted hc posts. not including unformatted hc posts, rps, nor character analyses.

January

"awaken (hold my hand)" | ffxvi | 4k words (i did still want to include jan here because i did write one fic, but it's part of a paid project and unfortunately i won't be able to share the piece anywhere until feb ><)

February

your eyes | lnds | rafayel | 659 words have we met before? | lnds | xavier | 4.2k words in the bedroom | lnds | hcs - rafayel xavier zayne caleb | 484 words got me thinkin' nonsense | lnds | caleb | 868 words treacherous | lnds | caleb | 4.1k words pretty little mess | lnds | xavier | 3k words teasing | lnds | hcs - rafayel xavier zayne caleb | 777 words so it goes... | lnds | jeremiah | 4.5k words i'll do anything you say, if you say it with your hands | lnds | rafayel | 2.7k pick me up, no headlights | lnds | mini drabbles - rafayel xavier zayne caleb | 1k words

March

youtiful | lnds | zayne | 5.4k words youtiful | lnds | rafayel | 7.9k words awkward moments | lnds | hcs - rafayel xavier zayne caleb | 1k words somnophilia | lnds | hcs - rafayel xavier zayne caleb | 1.5k words candy | lnds | xavier | 4.5k words youtiful | lnds | xavier | 6.1k words

April

eating you out | lnds | hcs - rafayel xavier zayne caleb jeremiah | 754 words muse | lnds | rafayel | 3.2k words

June

begin again | lnds | jeremiah | 5.1k words once upon a december | lnds | sylus | 1k words - suggestive

July

every word feels like a shooting star | lnds | xavier | 13.4k don't let me love you | lnds | kieran | 7.7k words

August

red lights | lnds | xavier | 4.1k words you look wonderful tonight | lnds | zayne | 3.1k words

October

pretty girl | lnds | luke & kieran | 4.9k words ignite | ffxvi | joshua | 1.8k words pulse | lnds | zayne | 1.3k words my pace | skz | seungmin | 1.5k words allow me | lnds | greyson | 1.3k words my reward | haikyuu | shirabu | 1k words listless | bllk | nagi seishiro | 842 words this love is ours | lnds | caleb | 5.4k words to love you more | lnds | xavier (lumiere) | 3.7k words your highness, believe me. | lnds | prince xavier | 9.7k words limbo | skz | lee know | 1.6k words sit still | lnds | rafayel | 1.2k words

November

the stars are jealous knowing you're by my side | lnds | xavier | 1.8k words kiss me or leave me | lnds | kieran | 1.5k words if i can have you | lnds | dawnbreaker | 1.8k words lock me in this dream | lnds | luke | 1.5k words praise | lnds | hcs - rafayel sylus xavier zayne caleb jeremiah luke kieran | 3.2k words to you who shines the brightest (i'll give you everything) - prelude | lnds | kieran | 200 words

December

sunday morning | lnds | caleb | 3.8k words to be loved is to be seen | lnds | caleb | 871 words - fluff warm you up | bllk | yoichi isagi | 1.6k words types of kisses | lnds | caleb | 875 words - suggestive

Overall Thoughts:

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY MORE oh my gosh. i knew i had a hyperfixation on lnds, but this is sincerely the most i've ever written for a fandom ??!! for comparison i wrote maybe like 10-ish in 2023 for various fandoms, and maybe like.... 25-or-so (give or take) for haikyuu once upon a time (though one of them was a multichaptered fic)... THIS, though?! absolute insanity omfg i never thought i could write this much in a year, and holy cannoli i really almost made it to at least one fic a month ?!

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? 

you'd never believe me but. UHH.. SMUT, I GUESS? i mean, i've written like 1-2 smut fics before this year, but i didn't think i'd be writing this much of it LMFAO HGKJDFGKJ AND,,, HONESTLY yeah the love and deepspace fandom in general WHKJDF i did NOT expect to get this attached to the game, usually i don't tend to write for otome games? but this one had me in a CHOKEHOLD and i cant escape omg

What’s your own favorite story of the year? 

oh geez just ONE....!!! nooo it's too hard !!!!!!!! i'll go with my top three instead, in order, but they're actually all quite close together and i'm really proud of them :> (1) your highness, believe me. ; (2) don't let me love you ; (3) every word feels like a shooting star

Did you take any writing risks this year?

a LOT. like i mentioned, it's not like i was,,, super super experienced in writing smut before this, or anything? and i thought it'd be like a one-off fic once in a blue moon, because i definitely didn't start out all super comfy with writing it LMAO so i'd consider starting an nsfw-fic blog a risk? (i just wanted an occasional outlet, you know?) but WELL. LOOK WHERE WE ARE NOW (if you look through my writing chronologically... honestly... looking back im not super proud of my older fics LMAO you can def see the improvement there i think)

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? 

PHEW I HAVE. THE UNHEALTHY HABIT OF TAKING ON SEVERALLLLLLLLLLLL NEW IDEAS ALL AT ONCE. I HAVE LIKE. DOZENS OF WIPS AND TO-WRITE-FICS (ok maybe not dozens, i CHECKED and it's about... nine) and the thing is i also love getting ideas??? so i HOPE to balance this moving forward omg and,,, that i can actually (1) get through all pending requests and (2) write that kieran series to my heart's content

From my past year of writing, what was…

My best story of this year:

honestly? i'd tie between "your highness, believe me." (xavier) and "don't let me love you" (kieran), because i'm super extremely happy with how those came out !!! like they're those kind of fics that just,,, i look at them and sometimes i can't believe i wrote them WHNJVFDKJ

My most popular story of this year: 

so including headcanons, then most definitely my "somnophilia" post WHKGSJDG it was at like 9k-ish notes the last time i checked (last month)???? absolutely INSANE to me because i didn't think it was my best writing (plus it's SO short?!), but it makes me happy to see it so well-received !!!!!!!!! if it's just actual fics though, there's "youtiful" (rafayel) at 1.4k notes !!!!! <3

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

oh geez i think i'll actually say "begin again", but also at the same time i'd understand why that is, considering jeremiah is a side character and not one of the LI's? i do think i wrote it pretty well though and regardless i do wish it reached a wider audience ngl HWFKSJNG if i had to choose from the fics i have of the LI's though, i think i'd go for "every word feels like a shooting star" !!! purely because it is a 13k words+ fic, and it did take me quite a lot of time to write, that i wish it got a little more engagement hehe (the same for "your highness, believe me." at 9.7k) but THAT'S TO SAY, I'M STILL SUPER GRATEFUL FOR ALL AND ANY OF THE SUPPORT I'VE GOTTEN NONETHELESS !!!! <333

Most fun story to write:

"don't let me love you" IMMEDIATE ANSWER because THAT. was the most fun i had writing FOR THE WHOLE ENTIRE YEAR oh god whgddnkf i wrote that during entrance exam season?! my exam kept getting postponed due to typhoons, and i was like fuck that and wrote this in probably like.... two days or so HGSKNDV i had SO much fun with it, like a piece of comfort for me <3

Story with the single sexiest moment:

personal opinion i'm torn between "i'll do anything you say, if you say it with your hands" and "muse" which............. coincidentally are both rafayel fics whoopsie HGSNKDVMDHG i'm actually not very sure what others would choose though, but i did see "pulse" (zayne) and "pretty girl" (l&k) quite well-received !! (the tags were fun to read hehe)

Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story:

HM,,,,,, I DON'T PARTICULARLY THINK I'VE WRITTEN ANYTHING REALLY INTENSE SO FAR................... but i do know that "candy" was a stretch that some people weren't happy with (because. you know. candy.), "red lights" was definitely on the more intense side at least out of the fics that i do have, and "muse" (the paintbrush scene.......) had some people pretty shocked lmfaooooo BUT UH,,, CAN'T HELP MUCH i tend to write on the fluffier vanilla side of things GHKSDJG

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

"youtiful" (rafayel), "youtiful" (xavier)! really had to do some digging for rafayel's so i could get his personality right for it, and i do have to say that writing it made me appreciate his character more! xavier's had me focusing more on the shining traces card which i'm not super fond of because i get sensitive to anger and there was quite a bit of it in that card, but i did get to appreciate the exploration of the whys and hows of his anger, which in turn made me appreciate him even more, too! (funny... after misty silhouette...)

Hardest story to write:

ANY of zayne's fics that i've written, but ESPECIALLY "if i can have you" (dawnbreaker) ... because oh geez. i say this ALL the time but i get SUCH perfectionist tendencies whenever i write him, like i never feel satisfied with how i portray him and sometimes i'd just rather not write rather than write something i feel is a lackluster portrayal of his character, you know? i love him to death, all of you know this, but writing for him does take a toll out of me x_x

Biggest disappointment:

nothing really comes to mind immediately i think...? i'm pretty happy with the things i've written and all the support i've been getting! if i'm disappointed, it's mostly because . i do owe . quite a number of requests HWFJVNSKDJGNKSVJ I'M SOSOSOSOSOSOSO SORRY I DIDN'T THINK I'D BE BAD AT GETTING THROUGH REQS BUT WE'RE GOING TO GRIND ON THEM THIS MONTHHHHHHHHH

Biggest surprise:

everyone's support honestly omfgggggggggg i feel like a broken record but really truly i never thought i'd be receiving so much love from everyone. i started this blog very much on a whim, didn't even expect to be active on it????? but waaaaah it makes me incredibly happy sharing little pieces of myself with you all, and hearing it offer comfort, or joy, and all the little things!!

Most unintentionally telling story:

HMMMMMMMMMMM. either "begin again" (jeremiah), "youtiful" (zayne), or "youtiful" (xavier)! those three are very personal to me and also my own personal comfort fics!!! though... they were written intentionally to be personal fics? i'm not sure if i've found which fics of mine are unintentionally telling.... but lemme know which ones you think so, i guess!! :>

Highlights + Wrap-up:

5 Favourite Opening Lines:

1. "You knew well what it was like to drown. The tilt of his head, the subtle tug of the corner of his lips—his eyes were half-lidded, eyebrows raised as he looked at you. But whether from amusement or sheer exasperation at your lack of response, you couldn’t quite tell anymore. You’d been trapped in his allure from the start—there was no more escaping. You knew well what it was like to drown." - once upon a december

2. "This was how it was to be in love with you. The sweet smell of roses, a walk under the cherry tree…. The calm breeze of morning and soft, fresh linen sheets. Sunlight peeking in through the window, pages of a book. Of words that could mean more to him than he could ever think to describe." - to love you more

3. "It was like stardust. Speckles of light gathered around his figure, illuminated in such a glow that wouldn’t dare allow you to look away. If a few moments ago he’d brought you out for a walk under the stars, that view of the sky was nothing compared to the view in front of you now." - the stars are jealous knowing you're by my side

4. "You don't fall in love with someone in the span of a few days. It didn’t work that way—love was a fickle emotion; complicated, unpredictable… terrifying. To approach it meant silent steps. It meant biding your time, holding out your hand, moving forward little by little…" - if i can have you

5. "You’d made many mistakes over the course of your life—some, then, including the ones you’d made tonight." - kiss me or leave me

[honorable mention]: "The fact of the matter was this: Blankets were comfortable." - sunday morning

5 Favourite Closing Lines:

1. "The moonlight illuminated many things. Now, it cast both your bodies in an ethereal glow, settled together in an intimate, loving embrace." - pulse

2. "The warmth of his words, blending in with his familiar, most precious nickname for you, had you easily forgetting whatever trepidations you had in your heart. Maybe, you thought, whatever came with this new door in your relationship was worth it—especially if you could be in his arms the way you were now, listening closely to the lull of his heartbeat." - treacherous

3. "To be loved is to be seen. And he sees you, and you see him. To you, there's no greater love than that." - to be loved is to be seen

4. "His eyes fell closed. This time, he felt—this was a promise he could make for you. This time, knowing he had you, he thought… Perhaps, he could. "…Mhm. Rest now,” he whispered. “And I’ll be by your side. Always."" - every word feels like a shooting star

5. "“I believe you. I do, and I will, and you—you will be my Queen. I will make sure of it. Beside me, with me.” A slow, shaky breath— “Your Highness, believe me.” - your highness believe me.

5 Favorite Lines from Anywhere:

1. "And I love you became goodnight; I love you became stay; I love you became come back; I love you became come with me. It became a glance. It became a touch, it became the tug of your hand. It became gentle ruffles of your hair, it became smiles, it became laughs, it became—you. Love became you." - every word feels like a shooting star

2. "“If your vow is to protect me,” he murmured, “then mine is to protect you. If your vow is to love me… then, so, too, will my vow be to love you. You are not behind me. You’re with me.”" - your highness, believe me.

3. "The music had since been long forgotten. Familiar, yet faded within distant memory, as the world, once more, became filled with you." - every word feels like a shooting star

4. "All fragrant perfumes as petals unfurl one by one, a sea of beautiful pinks and reds enough to blind you into their allure and have you bleed—you had always felt this way. Every rose had their thorns; and you’d just never learned to love… without them." - begin again

5. ""Don't let me love you." You could hear it in the way he kissed you, the way he moved against you, the way he almost seemed to have lost any control he had in his body and his only thought was to consume you. "Don't let me love you." But it was too late." - don't let me love you

Fic-writing goals for 2025: 

i should organize my wips and actually finish them </3 IM ALSO GOING TO WHFKSJDNGK GET THROUGH REQUESTS I PROMISE OMG. IVE TAKEN FOREVER FOR SOME OF THEM IM SO SORRY

[openphrase123]

What's your workflow for planning and then executing a long-term project, like the massive fics you write?

this is how i do fanfics And also original stuff and it's how i've been writing for like ten years (your mileage may vary though i think long project planning is a different kind of beast depending on the person.

also this is the same process as i have for making other media too but obviously with the language tweaked to fit the media (like this is how i plan and execute my game, too!)

have a scene or concept haunt me so thoroughly that i write a short speculative piece about it. if you get here and it's good but can't get past the next step, that's a sign it's meant to be a cool oneshot instead of something multichaptered

decide why i'm making it. what question am i trying to answer, what themes am i trying to explore?

write 2-3 chapters of it freeform style, not caring about where these scenes are going or how they flow into each other (for things that aren't fics, this can just be like. a small section of what it Is). if you're not feeling it here this is a sign to make the scope smaller and make the piece as short as you can tolerate it for. if you are feeling it, this is where you're figuring out the overall tone and style of how the wider work is going to go

figure out the ending. write the ending scene now if you have to. you can change it later but you need to know generally where you want to go

make an outline. how many sections do i need to get from the opening scene to the ending scene? what happens in each chapter?

for ME and how i post, if this is a fanfiction, write at least 25% of it before posting a single thing. or if nothing else write 3 weeks of updates.

start posting

vibe and write at least 3 weeks in advance. if you need a break you need a break. it's free fanfiction, people get it.

now, some creators will be like "whatever you write, take out 10% of it to be economical" this is the modern writer's equivalent of the devil talking. you need the fluff. you need the downtime. you need the epilogue. slow your fucking stories down. let people marinate in them. yeah if you're writing something short form or in a specific format you might need to take stuff out but if you're writing fanfiction or a novel or a game and there's no limit on how long it is. don't worry about spending a couple pages dicking around. every piece of human media from the dawn of time has had interludes, B plots, long meandering pieces of fluff... it makes the parts where the story Hits really stand out. inutile's tragic moments wouldn't be as effective if there weren't fun jokes or levity interspersed in between

that said you need to know when to stop adding shit. only put things in that you think you have a reasonable time to address fully and completely. you will learn this the hard way one day and i cannot teach this or stop you from making this mistake. i learned this mistake writing homestuck fanfiction when i was 13. but in my defense it's really easy to go overboard with homestuck fanfiction

panic because i'm like 90% of the way through and tired of it and start doubting whether the story was ever good at all and if this was wasted time

finish it. celebrate. wait like two months

reread my own work and say "this is sick as hell"

(if this is original work, this is where you start editing it. this is a different beast. i will not elaborate here. fanfiction is for fun and is at the same level as my original fiction drafts. on a rewrite everything will be more polished and purposeful)

repeat forever and ever as long as there are stories to tell

also. this one is just me because it's how my brain works. but ideally i work on two/three longform projects at once, so that when i get tired of working on one my brain will go "ooh shiny" and latch onto one of the other ones effortlessly. if you have adhd this will either work for you perfectly or it will ruin your life

[johanna-swann]

Now that I finally finished that multichapter fic I think it's time to self-promote my Bucktommy collection on ao3 once more. They all take place in the same continuity and are sorted chronologically, but each story can be read independently.

"But in this life I met you" is about Tommy who, some months into his relationship with Buck, starts questioning his and Eddie's respective places in Buck's life. (3.6k, Bucktommy endgame, I repeat Bucktommy endgame. Yes, Buddie is mentioned and Tommy is a little insecure about it, but no romantic Buddie.)

"Tommy meets Evan" is a very short oneshot about the first couple of meetings between Tommy and Buck. (Tommy's pov, 1.3k. This is mostly me trying to get into LFJ's head and understand certain acting choices.)

"Most people call it falling in love" is yet another oneshot from Tommy's pov. He's being very normal (read, freaking out) about how much he likes Buck after only three months of dating and goes to Henren for advice about it. (feelings realisation, 3,7k.)

"Love and Lack thereof" is the multichapter fic I just finished this weekend. It's basically a "Tommy begins" type of story. Covers his childhood, his time in the army, his coming back to LA and finding a place for himself until he eventually meets Buck. (6 chapters, sort of angsty but in a very grounded / realistic way as I'm told. 28.5k.)

"I wouldn't know what to do with myself" is the odd one out, sort of, I wrote it before 7x10 aired. In the hospital Buck and Athena sit together for a while and wait for news on Bobby. They talk about all sorts of things while waiting, including Tommy. (ngl this one is more about Buck&Bobby than Buck/Tommy, but I included it anyway. 2.5k.)

I was also working on a story where Tommy and Karen bond and have a conversation about kids and the foster system, but I got sidetracked and wrote the Tommy origin story instead. (Both projects feature Tommy as a former foster kid.) Might still continue this though.

I have an almost finished proposal fic, but it's way too cheesy for my liking. I might need to edit that one a few times before I deem it worthy of publication. (I know the show itself is also very cheesy, at this point it's almost a soap and I do enjoy the drama. But I prefer a hint more realism in my own writing.)

Then there's this break up / make up story I've been thinking about non-stop, this is maybe my favourite wip right now. It needs a lot of work though, I would really put Buck through the wringer here.

That's it for now, if any of the wips pique your interest feel free to ask follow up questions, the links to the completed fics should all be working.

[sundrop-writes]

Okay, I knooow I said that I was gonna work on The Jaws of Life next, and it is still one of my utmost top priorities - but between holiday chronic illness burnout and my period causing a really bad flare up, I have been stuck laying in bed for like two weeks straight (and because I have a doctor's appointment coming up, I am still trying to 'take it easy') - but I am really, really starting to go stir crazy.

I need a little fictional character running around on the hamster wheel inside my brain or my brain goes to very anxious places. So when I return and get back to working on fanfiction, I want to work on something new. Because I need it for my mental health. (I literally cannot imagine sitting through 50 pages of editing right now, but I will do it later I promise.)

So these are the two ideas that I am bouncing back and forth between. These are both longer fics, but they won't be multi-chapter - they will be presented in a series of longer oneshots so that it doesn't matter if I go for months between 'updates'. (Basically, to me, a multichapter fic is a TV show with episodes and a oneshot is a film, and these fics are planned film series where each film is important and matters and can be watched on it's own.)

Working on The Jaws of Life has taught me that I can work on a oneshot with a sequel and a longer arc in mind, and still have it be a satisfying oneshot. I fucking suck at updating multichap fics, but I am very good at writing oneshots, even if they end up being 40k or 50k each, I am way better at completing them.

So please help me choose between these two ideas because I am really excited about them and I want to start ironing out and writing down the details so I can start writing out the first part when I get back to work.

Untitled aka The Longer Daryl Fic - Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader. Strangers to Lovers (to Marriage). Emotional Angst, Hurt and Comfort, Relationship Journey, Eventual Smut. Set during S1, S2, S4, S5, and S7. You and Daryl likely wouldn’t have met if not for the world crawling with dead-alive corpses, and even when you did meet - it wasn’t perfect. But somehow, the two of you became entwined, and now - you will always find your way back to him. Will be an arc in 3 Parts, will be posted in 3 long oneshots. 

Untitled aka ‘The One That Came To Me In A Dream’ - Surgical Intern Alex Karev x Surgical Intern Fem!Reader. Strangers to Friends With Benefits to Lovers. Smut, Emotional Angst. Set during Season 3. Partway through the MAGIC intern year, you are ‘transferred’ to Seattle Grace from another hospital in another state, and nobody seems to know anything about your background. Because Bailey is your resident, her other interns are incredibly curious about where you’re from and why you’re transferring so suddenly - Alex is the only one who doesn’t seem to care, especially when the two of you start having mindless crazy animal sex with absolutely no strings attached. However, he starts to care very much when a bomb is discovered in the hospital, and somehow - you know how to defuse it. (10,000 words est, or more. Will be a multi-part arc.)

[thedemonscrawler]

what does your writing process look like?

8D hello!

Okay so step 0: become haunted

Invariably, a scene manifests in my head, and the longer it sits there, the stronger the urge to write it becomes. Not all scenes make the cut-- there's a lot of ideas that don't meet my standards of IC, and others that would be good, but require more work to develop than I'm willing to invest. I'm avoiding working on any intentional multichaptered fics until Permission Slip is finished, so those ideas stay on the shelf.

Usually the tipping point is when I realize I've worked out the specific wording to start writing it down, and then it's all ogre.

Step 1: write

I go to the appropriate file (all of my SAMS fics start on one of three documents: Eclipse-focused, Ruin-focused, and NSFW. Permission Slip is all in its own file as well), pick a spot between the existing WIPS, and write down the scene that's in my head. Usually there's multiple by this point, and I often end up with about 1200 words of 3 or 4 scenes as a starting place. About half the time I'll go back and add a brief summary, just to keep track of what it is I wanted to do, but I've found that extensive outlines actually discourage me from writing, cos my brain is like "oh you already did it"

Step 2: write some more

The 3 or 4 scenes I've written have gaps between them, often pretty big ones, so I just fill in those gaps with more scenes. Over and over, until there are no more gaps. This can take anywhere between a couple of sessions to several months.

8'D and yeah that's it. Give it a good readthrough for errors and publish to AO3.

I don't write sequentially. Instead, i move from most to least interesting, writing whatever scene happens to be in my head and filling in the gaps later. I've found that the tough bits will always be tough, and I don't want to fight through them to get to what I really want to write, only to no longer be interested by the time I get to that part. This doesn't work for everyone, and some folks do better when motivated by the reward of writing the good bit.

Google Docs has an Outline feature, so each WIP gets at least a temporary title so i can navigate to it easily. For Permission Slip, I also use the outline to move through the chapters without a lot of scrolling, giving the active sections little names to keep up with them.

Permission Slip also DOES have an actual outline... kinda. Actually, it has two. One is a general outline of events over the course of the whole story, kept in the 'notes' section of the document. The other is the short, scene-specific outlines that get jotted down for each section. A multi-chaptered fic is really just a bunch of oneshots, if you think about it.

General advice:

Keep a 'Graveyard' document of all the scenes you've cut. It's so much easier to admit to yourself that something isn't working when you know it won't be completely deleted, and you can go back later and maybe yoink some stuff off the cutting room floor.

Share tidbits with your friends on Discord. Write a little section you think is particularly good? Copy+paste it and share it with someone you know will cheer you on!

[pricemarshfield]

2024 fic wrapped

i was tagged by @wetcatspellcaster to do this tag game, and i will take any excuse to talk about myself and my writing so hell yeah. let's do it to it. y'all know the drill, below the cut because i'm a yapper. like genuinely good God this is too long

if you got tagged in this but don't have time to read the full post, i shared a fic of yours that i loved this year :) but also i'm tagging you in the game if you want to participate! and if i didn't tag you but you want to do it, consider yourself tagged :)

What's been your biggest learning point this past year?

i feel like i somehow discover this every year but writing's way more fun when you write what you want to read. like whoaaa stepping away from taking requests i don't care about and writing the characters i'm obsessed with is...easier AND more enjoyable? that's crazy. who ever could have guessed this

but also on a more serious answer, i think i've learned that treating my writing as an internal deadline is just not sustainable and doesn't even work. (it works on collaborative projects with ACTUAL deadlines, to be clear to my lovely fellow zine and other project contributors fjdlkf, just not My Personal Fics For Fun.) sure it'd be nice to update every week, or every month, but viewing my hobby like that just stresses me out and then i put off thinking about it and writing at all. writing because i want to and because i enjoy it means i write more and, more importantly, that i enjoy the process of doing it. it also helps that my commenters who were nasty about updates all basically fell off lmao. bye babes, hope you've learned etiquette in whatever fandom you're on now

How has your writing developed this past year?

i think i've gotten MUCH better at hitting character voices this year, which is one benefit of latching onto the nastiest man in the world (raphael) and the weirdest woman to ever exist (my own oc, tav, light of my life and my soul and all that fun stuff). they're so strange and unusual, and i Have to get them right, and because of that when i go back to write...idk, poppy or someone, it's so easy. SO easy. oh, a rich bitch lesbian with an inferiority complex? easy work. tav's experiencing divine madness while fighting a devil to the death but like in a way where they're both horny about it. after writing that (and doing so the way i wanted to!), i find my voice for EVERYBODY is a lot easier to sink into.

i also think i got better at the flow of my sentences and i could not tell you why. i just feel it in my heart. this might just be because of the projects i'm working on Right Now but whatever, if it fits, it fits

Good writing habits?

no longer writing to beat a self-imposed deadline but writing because i want to. not forcing myself to work on a wip if the muse isn't there and instead working on something i AM inspired for or just doing something else. being more intentional with my word choice in ways that will not make sense until chapter 20 of these longfics but I'M kicking my feet and giggling so who care. making sure not All of my wips are for one fandom (or even for fandom at all) so that way if i'm burned out on bg3 or something, i can still write because i want to.

Bad writing habits?

starting so many new wips rather than finishing a fic, oh my god, we're at so many, i think we're at 45 (FORTY-FIVE. NOT A TYPO, NO HYPHEN MISSING) bg3 wips and easily more than half are raphtav alone and it's gonna be at 50 by the end of the month because i have so many ideas and so little time. (more than half of those are multichapter wips. help.) refreshing for comments even when it's been like two minutes rather than not being externally motivated (i. am trying). outlines being a fic in their own right (which is fun but not the purpose of an outline and a habit i am trying! to break).

Favorite thing you wrote?

i am picking like 6 things and no one can stop me #selflove

talk was supposed to be a 3k MAX pwp oneshot to break writer's block, and by god did all 18k words of it accomplish that goal. incredibly nsfw, raphael/tav/haarlep and tav is a freak about it and also not a good person, and i had So Much Fun writing it. it was posted on my birthday as a present to Myself and i might do the same this year with one of the other wips. EXPLICIT before anyone clicks on it, it's not that kinky compared to some other fic out there but it is Very explicit

The Complicated Woman Podcast: Tracker O'Shaughnessey was an exercise in form as much as it was a fic. i used to be a transcriptionist, and i'd been wanting to write a transcript-format fic for Ages, and so when i joined a zine literally named the complicated woman podcast i just had to. that wasn't even the point of the zine but i Did have to. and it slaps! it's been my sample for every (read: one) d20 project i've applied to since and also i love tracker and fig so very much.

eat your young, aka my tav's bad end, has haunted me for more than a year, and FINALLY. i began posting it. updates are going to be slow because every time i sit down to write, tav psychically attacks me with new ideas to make everything worse, and it's great but it takes a minute. both chapters are more than 7k. Help Me (but don't actually because i love it). a lot of people have written "astarion ascends so tav goes to raphael"--which, given fandom, not necessarily a surprise--but i am SO fond of my take on it because tav is so unwell. allying with the devil as "pragmatism". but watch out! you might start to like the guy! (and then. other things). cw canon-typical raphael (but no major archive warnings other than violence)

the ghost of her is a weird little second-person durgezel piece and i'm kind of obsessed with it. it's my durge arcaena's bad end, which is if she Doesn't give into bhaal and lae'zel chooses to go back to vlaakith. i don't know that it's the Best thing i've written but it is one of my Favorites, and that's what matters.

welcome! everything is fine. is my the good place au, and it was supposed to be a oneshot. yes i know that it says 27 chapters. yes i know that just the first two chapters are almost 16k. but it was SUPPOSED to be a oneshot. however the idea of this fic is what launched raphael from "hell yeah, devil with a villain song" to living rent-free in my mind so not really a surprise that it. escalated. (thank you @wretcheddthing, you horrid enabler who Chose to send me "raphael in the good place" when i had just finished house of hope and was unwell about it, and know that this continues to be your fault). making astarion/minsc "soulmates" in this is the funniest decision i've ever made, and i cannot WAIT to get to more of the raphael/tav dynamic in this (she knows, he doesn't know she knows) and also the astarion/tav dynamic but that i can't elaborate on because spoilers. not that a lot of people are reading this one fjdklfjd but that's okay, i'm writing it for me.

this one piece i've shared with maybe 4 people about my oc and her backstory before the world ended slapped severely and i should write more of it.

and then my last answer is one i can't share yet because it's unposted. but it's gonna be sooo fun

Favorite reads?

this one's going to be even longer. i have so much love in my heart, and also i read a lot more than i wrote this year, and i wrote [checks numbers] yikes! i'm not admitting that number!

fic

any and all of these fics are ones i enthusiastically recommend, if i were to gush about why i love all these fics i would hit tumblr's character limit (which. presumably exists) so i've just marked fandom, pairing, and if it's explicit. tags can tell you more <3 so many of these are from my friend molly fjfkd hiiiii molly sorry for tagging you a million times

Against the Tide by domestic_ice - fantasy high, adaine-centric genfic.

and i, reaching by @prettyaveragewhiteshark - arcane, caitlyn/vi, explicit.

Blood in the Wine by @atrueneutral - baldur's gate, raphael/tav, explicit (or will be! it's a slow burn and a VERY good one at that)

break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored by @danielmolloystits - interview with the vampire, armand/daniel & daniel/lestat, explicit.

call me any, anytime by nevermore_evermore - fantasy high, fig & sandra lynn & fabian.

cat scratch fever strut by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, gale/tav(/haarlep), explicit.

Cooler Than Me by @wetcatspellcaster (hi yes i know you tagged me but i did love this fic dearly this past year, so!) - baldur's gate, astarion/tav.

Dying in slow motion by @librivore42 - dragon age, choose your own adventure.

esmeltar red supernova by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, karlach/lae'zel/shadowheart, explicit.

give the devil his due by thatsparrow - the devil went down to georgia (yes the song).

i wanna tear you apart by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, lae'zel/shadowheart, explicit.

let me be your friend(ly) fire by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, astarion/shadowheart(/tav but mostly shadowstarion), explicit.

lie down & get fleas by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, raphael/tav, explicit.

make a mess, lioness by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, raphael/tav, explicit.

of street names & subway wall prophecies by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, astarion/shadowheart, explicit.

Part of the Hoard by tangerine_blast - fantasy high, adaine-centric genfic.

Pieces Still Stuck In Your Teeth by @wetcatspellcaster - baldur's gate, astarion/tav.

rewind & play it back by @danielmolloystits, interview with the vampire, armand/daniel.

Sansûkh by determamfidd - lord of the rings, Many pairings.

teeter by @pouralaura - baldur's gate, raphael/tav, explicit.

to forgive is human and failure is divine by @dalgursbate - baldur's gate, lae'zel/shadowheart, explicit.

the war you've come to wage against my sins by @prettyaveragewhiteshark - baldur's gate, mizora/tav.

Warding Bond by @bravestworriers - fantasy high, fig/gorgug, explicit but like Barely. it's mostly about the Dynamics and the Messiness of it all (compliment)

when you move (how the whole world moves) by @goldfyshie927 - arcane, caitlyn/vi, explicit.

who will burn who by @pouralaura - baldur's gate, raphael/tav, explicit.

"Good Boy" by AkbaalKiin - baldur's gate, raphael/haarlep, explicit.

truly everything from the fantastic @reallyhatethiswebsite - can find their stuff collated on ao3 here! a lot of it's explicit (and Good at that)

books/comics/graphic novels/you get the gist

i did NOT read enough this year, and that's one of my resolutions for the next year. i physically felt the lack this last year, i Need to read more. what happened to being the girl who got only books for hanukkah for 8 years huh...gonna return to my roots. half of these are rereads too :( i need to dive into a novel again, it'll fix me

Hellblazer's first/original run by a variety of authors (i am not recommending it. but i enjoyed reading it)

Here by Richard McGuire

Last Flight by Liane Merciel

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy

Tevinter Nights by a variety of authors

Biggest win?

finding joy in writing fic again! wahoo, thanks baldur’s gate and d20 ficoff and also d20 zine jam and also all the zines and things i signed up for last year! 🤸

Goals for the new year?

finish personal problem because i need it done please god. it’s been too long. i also want to run a fic-focused fanevent of some kind that doesn’t require discord (i’ll join discords, and i get why events require it, but i want to run something for the discord-avoidant among us. maybe a bg3 exchange <- i am not committing to this yet no one @ me). also i’m gonna finish this lucanis/veryl (my rook)/spite wip if it kills me because i need to exorcise that energy before it makes me fixate on a game that, much as i am enjoying it, is easily my least favorite in the franchise lol. though maybe i'll finish it and it'll change my mind

Your favorite words of the year, aka the words you check each chapter for, making sure you didn't repeat them 788 times?

adverbs, just generally. sorry that ostensibly is a fun word and it's funny to make my 8 intelligence tav use it incorrectly! sue me! i also loved what you added to it by sharing your favorite turns of phrase, dr. wetcat, so i’ll do the same 🤸

"Hubris and ambition both dog his steps even in the retelling, making him out to practically be Karsus reborn, in overreach and skill." from welcome! everything is fine. (sorry gale. for this and also for everything that's gonna happen in this fic...tav's not a fan of wizards and also not of gale specifically </3)

"The look has something wild to it, the whites of her eyes flashing like a cornered animal's, even as she visibly schools her expression into something less vulnerable." from in truth tempest can never be tamed (for real cw on graphic depictions of violence if you choose to read this one, that archive warning is Very Much Needed)

"You can have my simpering submission, my perfect, obsequious obedience, knowing you'll have earned none of it." from talk. this one is my favorite because i love writing characters who are so annoying that they're using the word "obsequious" in bed <3 AND the fic is still hot. go me

"The pawn shop, while also not hiring, let her loiter in the cool air for almost an hour before she had to make the trek back, and she could have cried from the mercy if she’d had any water left in her." from my aforementioned zombie oc piece wahoo. i miss this oc, i should write more of her

"Familiar, alive, and hot in her chest, heart beating and burning and beating ever forward." from what a horror i've become, which i know says it was posted in 2025 but it's from a zine that i worked on last year so! in this post it goes

What are you excited for in the new year?

i get to write more niche stuff for myself and my favorite people hooray. you love to see it. also i'm writing for a fangame which is just incredibly rad and that'll be coming out this year, so hell yeah. also d20 ficoff 2025!! i'm helping mod it! AND i get to write more of my beloved tav khoury, the world's worst woman! fuck yeah! honestly most of all i'm excited to have a year where i'm excited to write? had that stupid catfish situation + a few rude anons that kinda sucked the joy of writing fic from me for a minute and it's nice to have it back.

[kwills91]

Fanfic Writer Interview

Thanks to @mojowitchcraft for the tag

What fandoms do you write in?

- 9-1-1 - Stranger Things -Teen Wolf (although I have no idea when I will have the time to work on more fics for this) - Arcane (though not currently published but I'm hoping chapter 1 of my first fic will be up before the end of the month)

How many words did you publish in 2024?

Luckily, everything I published on AO3 in 2024 was started in 2024 so I know this is accurate: I published 627,647 words in 2024

What are your top three fics you wrote last year?

This is where the autism comes out and I immediately panic about the number of ways this question could be taken, but I'm just gonna pick one and going by the way it was answered when I was tagged I'm gonna say my favourites and there's one from each of the 3 fandoms I wrote for in 2024

This Town Has Changed (Don't You Find It Strange)  Steddie || 52k || One Shot || E Based on Orange Juice by Noah Kahan, this was a labor of love and Secret Santa gift for the lovely @whoreforhowl and it wasn't intended to be as long as it wound up but when I started writing the outline it poured out of me and that alone was 14k words. Writing this made me fall in love with these boys all over again and I made myself cry when I was reading it back, which always feels validating.

Defect Buddie || 146k || 13 Chapters || E Written for the 118 bang, a cyberpunk AU that nobody asked for, which is evidenced by the fact it does not have anywhere close to the stats of my other multichapter buddie fics. However, I received nothing but love from those who did read it and I'm I really pushed my limits of my writing skills with this and I'm insanely proud of how it turned out

I Guess It's Just As Well (But I Miss Your Face Like Hell) Sterek || 39k || One shot || E The 5+1 sequel to my only other TW/Sterek fic (A Few Stolen Days Worth All The Goodbyes) that' I'm also very proud of. This fic is a testament to how much teen wolf took over my life last summer because I only intended to write the first one because I was reading fic and couldn't find the story I was craving so wrote it myself but I feel in love with writing these characters so much I wanted to write a sequel the second I finished writing the first one.

What was your biggest pit of despair moment?

It was, yet again, burning myself doing a big bang but this time without the satisfaction of having a lot of people read my fic. There were a lot of points I felt like I was making the wrong choice and doubting myself and my ideas and it took a lot of the fun out of it for a while there.

What have you learned?

That stats are not as important to me as I thought they were. At first I was heartbroken that nobody was reading Defect, but the people who did read it loved it as much as I did and gave me a lot of lovely compliments which I continue to return to whenever I have a little wobble in my confidence. If a few people LOVE my fic, that is genuinely enough for me, not just a placating thing I tell people to sound like I'm more laid back than I am.

Did you beta any fics last year? Any faves you want to shout out?

Not really. Between the events I signed up to, the amount of pressure I put on myself to post and general stress, betaing for somebody may genuinely have taken me out lol

What three fics from last year did you love?

Coming Home (But Not To You) by @lesbianherald Jayvik || 119k || 14 chapter || E I mean, most Jayvik fans probably already know this fic but I will still take any opportunity to gush it because I know people say that fics change their brain chemistry all the time, but this one genuinely changed my brain chemistry and I've not known a day of peace since I finished it, I think about it all the time! It's beautifully written, the characterisation is actual perfection, and I am eternally changed.

The Wayward Son by @gayhoediaz Buddie || 57k || 5 chapters || E Heaps of angst, not talking about their feelings, power bottom Eddie using sex as punishment for his catholic guilt, and the two of them eye fucking each other whilst physically fucking other people??? This fic was TAILOR MADE FOR ME. I cannot tell you how many times I've read it, despite it coming out in the second half of the year and I think about it every.single.day. It hits just as hard every time I read it.

ice cream before dinner by cloudydaisies Buddie || 58k || one shot || T Not only is this fic a beautiful premise that is beautifully executed and resulted in me leaving the most embarrassingly mushy comment I have ever left on a fanfic, but it also achieved the impossible in that for one whole day there was peace on 911twt because everybody was too caught up in the fluffy wonderfulness of this fic and just wanted to gush about it. It was beautiful.

What ideas are percolating for this year?

I already have so many ideas for fic this year, some of which I'm already posting or have started writing in the confines of my google drive, but here is a list of the most likely to see the light of day

Buddie - Stick Season album fic where Eddie is in a car accident in the middle of nowhere and remembering his life, finally figuring out what he wants as he edges closer to death. Every chapter is inspired by a song from the Stick Season (Forever) album. - Where Rainbows End AU - epistolary childhood friends to lovers slow burn based on the Cecelia Ahern novel (which you might now as Love, Rosie - the book title adopted the movie adaptation title, which I HATE) Buddie omegaverse bitching fic - Eddie begging for Buck's help to become the Omega he always felt like he should be rather than the Alpha everybody was pleased he turned out to be. You know, platonically...

Steddie - One Foot In Your Bedroom, One Foot Out The Door - to add more to my passion project post s2 to post s4 rivals to friends to lovers to exes to friends to lovers slow burn, angst fic. My magnum opus. My everest. I will not abandon this fic.

Jayvik - College Rivals/You've Got Mail (kind of) AU where grad students Jayce and Viktor find peace lamenting to their online friends about their respective grad school rivals, who, it turns out, are the very people they're lamenting about. - Moddern, middle-aged, second chance romance inspired by the gorgeous artwork from @arctvros (which I shared a snippet of the other day on bsky) where Viktor's actions led to an accident in the lab and the board pressuring Jayce to oust him from Hextech and Viktor leaves it all behind. 15 years later he's back needing help from the council to fund his research. When the vote doesn't go his way, Jayce offers up Hextech as an alternative and the two have to find out if the past has destroyed what they had forever or if there is some way to get it back. And possibly something more on top.

🏁 🏆 Congrats you made it to the end! I'm impressed honestly cause I never think anyone is gonna read these hahaha.

Anybody already tagged should take this as a no-pressure invite to join as well as some more (also no-pressure) tags:

@cal-daisies-and-briars @rainbow-nerdss @transmascsteveharrington @nubianamy @prettysophist

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

4, 7, 13, and 19 for the fanfic writing asks

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

Oh man, you're making me CHOOSE??? This is fucked up and evil actually. Okay. Ugh, there are so many I love... buuut I can probably muster up three currently updating fics. If anyone wants my completed fic recommendations then ask away!

First of all, @angeart 's wonderful(ly evil) Help Me To Breathe, which I have been commenting essays on for a while now. I'm biased because we're friends but this fic does so many things right - it is long but for me it's definitely worth it. How she handles mental health struggles is really poetic whilst remaining grounded, which I appreciate a lot. If you're looking for... 242k words (so far) of scarian angst, this is the fic to check out. It's not finished yet but it is worth waiting for.

Next, @definitelynotshouting 's lost in the dark (he's got a heavy heart) is THE fic that started my obsession with watcher!Grian. It's the fic that inspired my own watcher/listener series (shameless self promo) and it is constantly taking up space in my brain. It is devastatingly sad, but it is about recovery, ultimately, and again I really love how it's being handled so far. Really worth the read.

Finally, @uhohbestie 's There Are Monsters Nearby .... when I say this fic has been living in my head rent free... I mean this fic has been LIVING. THRIVING. in my mind. This is truly classic zombie fiction, where the zombies are kind of second to the relationship drama. I love the explorations of disability in the apocalypse, something I myself have been advocating for in my original writing, and the depictions and emotional beats surrounding cheating, flawed perspectives and jealousy are heartbreaking and so realistic. Wonderful fic. I am in shambles. Please read it.

7. Do you prefer to read short fics or long fics?

My ideal fic seems to be anywhere between 5k and 200k, but then some of my favourites have also been oneshots. I tend to go for any multichapter with more than 1k words per chapter, and any oneshot that takes my interest (though a longer one (5k +) will catch my eye a bit more than a drabble). It's kind of hard for me to tell, because I read a lot of unfinished fics, but I do kind of prefer fics that take months to update but give a 5k + chapter every time... longer *tends* to mean slightly higher quality, but that is not always the case. Agh. I don't know. Every rule can be broken.

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

Yes and no. Multichapters tend to get their own little document for organisation with each chapter broken down into scenes. However, for Comms AU, I quite insanely went into it with no plan or outline. Yes, I am just now getting an outline together. Yes, it is a fic with 5 different timelines happening at once. Yes, I am regretting the lack of plan.

19. Do you edit your fics after you write them, or do you prefer to just hit post and run (because it’s someone else’s problem now)?

I write, then pass at least once (usually twice, sometimes even three times) to edit. My edits usually attempt to flesh out things that feel rushed or don't make sense. My writing is tricky sometimes, I hate writing plainly and that then becomes a weakness when I spend 5 paragraphs describing the texture of the air without actually explaining what's happening. So I try to clean that up. Comms AU gets one edit, usually, because it is just "audio", though with all my fics I sometimes edit as I write - especially if I've taken a break and decide to re-read what I've written.

Thanks for sending these asks! I have discovered that I need to make a longer fic rec post omg...

The ask game!

[sabine-smitten-obviously]

Good Omens - December reads part #2- fanfics recs 🤓🩷🎄

I ´ve decided to write a short summary each month about the books i read. I need this to let go of the stories, its a nice way of saying good-bye to them and to spread the love to the authors and to you. 🩷

I only read finished stories and rarely one-shots. You will find no WIPs in here, as i really like to dive deep into the plot and i keep losing track of WIPs. Also you will only find happy or at least hopeful endings here - i couldn´t handle anything else.

Also i try to find every author here on tumblr to link-to, but sadly some times i am out of luck. If you happen to know them, please tell them, write to me in the comments or DM me and i will update the post!

Ratings in ()

Multichapter Fanfics

Devour (E) by @tastymoves

Human AU. Ok, look here. I started with That´s what happens when you sign on the line - thinking it is a completed fic of 4 chapters. Turns out it actually stops kind of midst-story, because its a whole series. So i had to keep going through and read all the other (10!) fics to get the whole series, right? Crowley is in search of a professional dom and Aziraphale is not whom he would have chosen but very much who he needs. The stories are mostly about them having sessions in one or another way, their relational development is only a background-telling. Consists of 10 fics with timeline and another 10 oneshots with no clear timeline. Smut:Plot-Ratio = 90:10!

The Angel´s Gambit (T) by @dragonfire42

Crowley questions his angel, why he has a chessgame put up in his shop. So Aziraphale tells him, that he plays chess with Death. And why. A tale through their shared history. And an explanation, just to why Crowley slept as much as he did.

Artwork by @theeinkibus

Artist in residence (E) by @caedmonfaith

Human AU. Crowley is a famous glasblower and has a 1 year residency at the Ineffable Museum. Aziraphale is a shy preservationist with a secret crush on Crowley. They meet and the rest is ineffable. Besides the typical plot there is a great part dedicated to dealing with anxiety and neurodiversity. This was very informative for me and i will have to take a deeper dive on ND too.

Most funny quote: "Pardon me, sir, but I think you might have lost your halo." 😇😅

Seriously, @caedmonfaith is an incredible writer, everything they put out there is just a safe read. Go ahead and if you like her work just hit the subscribe-button to be on the safe side.

Beyond Understanding and Incapable of Being Put Into Words (E) by @beet-feet

After the end of S2, Crowley stays in the bookshop - more or less just to keep him occupied. When Aziraphale shows up months later, they talk - but not only. And it has consequences ... A little bit of angst, a little bit of smut and a little bit of plot - nicely put together. Mind the tags!

Most funny quote: "Someone help me, there are two of them, he thought to himself as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen shaking his head." 😅

Call me, my Dear (E) by @MimiRay

AU, though not only human. Aziraphale is a priest in a small town. One dark night on his way home he stumbles upon a starved and frozen creature and takes it in. Unbeknownst to him, Crowley is an incubus - a demon that feeds on sex. At least usually. But the priest has a secret on his own, too. As the walls are quite thin, it doesn´t take Crowley long to detect it.

A soft and hot and somehow still tender story.

Most touching quote: "Immortal or not, he was, after all, a human at heart." 🩷

Drive me to the moon (E) by @captainblou

Human AU, Crowley is a rally driver and Aziraphale is a professional dancer. For a charity event they get to drive a rally together. Wouldn´t be any problem, if they would like each other. Which they don´t. Enemies to friends to lovers-story you really can dive in to. 🤓 What i really liked about it: Crowley has a vulv🩷 but wears a binder and goes by he/him. Gave me a lot to think.

Caramel delight (E) by @ajconstantine

Human AU. Crowley is happy, when his shitty neighbours finally move. He is even more happy, when he sees his new neighbour moving in. It is only polite to welcome him with a glass of homemade caramel sauce, right? Or to show him the best restaurants nearby or how to cook the sauce himself. Lucky for him, Aziraphale has an other strength than cooking ... 😅

I just tumbled upon this author but will definitely read more of her/him/them!

Oneshots

All i need, darling, is a life in your shape (G) by @mortuarybees

Set after S1, the angel and the demon find themselves spending more an more time together. But what does it mean? Aziraphale wonders.

A nice and possibly acurate story about them getting together. Christmas and only-one-bed-trope included! 🎄😅

Remember us just like this forever (E) by @HazelSage

A while after they saved the world, the demon wants a baby. Aziraphale books a holiday at a beautiful resort for them. Sun, Sand and S🍆. More tender than expected!

So that´s the next 9 fanfics and makes 22 so far this month. I don´t like it when the list gets too long, therefore i will post a part #3.

My lovely co-readers, GO-lovers and ineffable loves - have a wonderfull christmas-time! Keep your hearts and minds safe🎄🩷🤗

[zenkindoflove]

I gots a very important queston; where do I start with erixious because I saw many fics and idk where to start 😅 please help 🙏🏻 I wish to start where it all began pls 🙏🏻

Hahahha great question!

You can start wherever you like, ultimately, but here is a quick guide.

Summer Heat - this is an Elucien fic where I first created Alexius and paired him with Eris. I would say their love story takes up about 30-40% of this fic. It's definitely a full romance but they are a B plot to Elucien's romance. If you start with this fic, it would be starting from their inception of when I made them haha.

Pull Me in Deeper - This is an independent story from Summer Heat. It solely focuses on Erixius and it is an in-depth exploration of their romance through a multichapter fic. This fic has been a lot of people's introduction to Erixius.

Carry You Home - This might be more manageable if you're just looking to give them a try but you don't want to commit to a big fic for them. It's a 15k one-shot and independent of the other two fics (I love writing them falling in love a lot). I personally think it's a really good way to start and get to know their dynamic and characters if you're looking for more of a one-shot experience.

Taste of You, The Jewel of the Forest House, Caress Me Down, and my drabble dumping fic Autumn Leaves and Day Dreams, are established Erixius. You don't need to know a specific lore from other fanfics to read them. But you are jumping into them already in an established relationship. I think likely they are more enjoyable if you already have read one of the above fics, but plenty of people do just pick one of these to start too because they are shorter.

My new fic, Let the Light Linger, is going to be a shorter (4 parts) fic where Eris and Alexius are meeting for the first time, so that is also a fine fic to start with if you'd like to read along with chapter updates for the next month!

I actually get this question A LOT from people because I think it might be overwhelming to start when you see there are so many fics of them and especially if you think there is some order to reading them. There really isn't! But hopefully this little guide I wrote up helps you with navigating based on your interests!

I'm so happy you want to read about my boys though. 🥺 Happy reading!!!

[rocksibblingsau]

when your writing out a chapter what's the hardest part for you? do you know what you're going to write about as you write it or before hand? what is your favorite part about writing? would you say writing a story is harder or writing a chapter for the story?

So making chapters flow without feeling stagnant or repetitive is hard for me. For each chapter I have a subject in mind, for example Branch's hang out day I went 'Okay so major scenes are makeup, diner, laser tag and wrestling'. Moving between those scenes was a struggle for me!

Also a little difficult is keeping my horses held. You have no idea how badly I want to get to certain milestones that are set for farther away.

Balancing characters is hard too! As much as I love my darling Billy, he can't be in every chapter. He's hogging the spotlight and so I've hired Barb to take him out back and shoot him.

My favorite part of writing is definitely the characters! Dialog, introspection, that sort of things! Barb's personality comes super easy to me, she was really well written in the movie- she has personality in spades!

Hmmm writing a whole story is harder to me. One-shots excluded, it's very hard to keep up with everything. I will say seeing as I've never written an entire fic all the way to completion that's multichapter I worry I've bitten off more than I can chew, but so far it's not been too bad! As long as people don't mind me taking a month or so on a chapter, it's been easy to keep up. Well... not EASY, but managable.

[lookingfts]

Oh, please don't shorten A Moment Apart on our account! Only do it if *you* don't want it to be a multichapter! I don't want you to skip anything you had planned!

You're sweet, thank you. It's more like, I know I'M not interested in stories where there's angst for a million chapters without resolution. I find that tiring because I'm not much of a slow burn person (obviously, if you've read my fics). There are readers who absolutely LIVE for angst so I know they would be down for it. I could definitely put everything I've planned into a one-shot - it's more just how much detail and setup each section would require. You can move through things much more quickly in a one-shot.

My other issue (and this is a technical writing kind of thing) is the pacing. There are a lot of time jumps in this story because it takes place over three years. So some things might happen a few days in a row, and then there might be months in between. I had the thought of doing sort of snapshot chapters, where each chapter is just one important scene, and I have 20 of those. Time jumps are also not a big deal in one-shots. But if I'm combining those scenes into my normal-length chapters, it feels like the pacing will be strange.

I'm honestly just thinking aloud here lol, I haven't decided what I'm doing yet. At this point, I'll do whatever makes me most likely to actually write the damn thing.

[altraviolet]

Out of curiosity, do you have any tips for writing a long multichapter fic?? I have recently come up with a fic idea that I realize is going to take... multiple chapters. How do you stay motivated/what's your process for planning? Tysm for answering and if you've answered before sorry! Do you have a tag for your writing advice?

Hi!

I have a lot of tips :)

I do have a tag for writing advice. It's "writing advice." My writing advice is on my pinned post and I just double checked and made sure all the posts under "Writing Advice" are properly tagged. There's a post there that talks about my organization, which is something you've asked about, but you may find other helpful info there as well. If, after you read the answer to your ask and all the writing advice posts, you still have questions, feel free to hit up the ask box again :)

Cut for length!

>How do you stay motivated?

Sometimes I don't, honestly. People who read TEG while it was being updated know this xD There were a few times when 6 months passed between chapters, and then 3 chapters would be updated within a week. Since it's fanfic - it doesn't have due dates or deadlines and you're not getting paid - all that motivation really does need to come from inside. And if it's too draining? Then maybe fic doesn't get written that day.

I can honestly tell you that motivation on TEG waxed and waned quite a bit. It didn't help that right as I started posting it, the pandemic hit. Seeing as how we in the US are about to embark on a newly destructive four years, I say: if you don't have have the motivation, if you're really drained, don't push yourself. Fic is supposed to be fun. There were a lot of times TEG really wasn't fun, but I pushed through it because I felt a lot of pressure to do so.

That might not be helpful, lol. But I'm giving you permission to go easy on yourself.

But, let's say you don't want to go easy. Here are ways you can stay motivated:

the story won't get completed unless you complete it. so if you want to see it done, you HAVE to do it. logical and sound reasoning. there is no escape. get to work. call this the Shockwave Motivation Method, lol

excitement. oooh if you're excited about your fic, that will help a lot. getting to write out the scenes you're most looking forward to may help you get through the boring scenes [note: if you the writer find a scene boring, the reader probably will, too. consider changing or removing that scene]. this is probably the most healthy and enjoyable way to keep yourself motivated while writing fanfic

watch videos/read books about writing. or podcasts, or whatever kinda thing you like. absorbing information about writing will help you feel more knowledgeable and confident, even if just a teeny tiny bit

related to 3: go back and read/watch the canon that you adore. rekindle your love for it. remember why you want to write the fic that you're writing

spite? let's be brutally honest, here: if you read something popular that you think sucks, and you think you can do a way better job at it, prove it >D write that thing. show everyone that Premise X can actually be done well, and you're the one who's gonna do it well

schedules? some people do well with scheduling. actually this is what pro novelists do: they have word count goals they meet extremely regularly. if you write 500 words a day, you'll have ~2 novels a year done. make some goals and stick to them. self-imposed deadlines will stick as much as you can make them stick, which is why they don't work for everyone, but the people who can use this method WILL get results

There are tons of videos out there about any/all of these methods (especially scheduling/word goal/sprints related topics). I highly recommend you check some out. It comes down to this: you gotta write in order for the thing to be written. Anything you need to do to get that done is what needs to be done. Barring, like, you know. Illegal stuff. lol

Oftentimes for me, starting is the hardest part. If I can get my damn brain to start, then things will usually flow.

One thing I've found recently that helped jumpstart brainstorming (which isn't the exact same thing as Motivation To Do The Entire Writing Process, but bear with me) was changing the way I usually get my thoughts down. I always type at my desktop into a word processor. That way everything is digital: easy to move around, delete, duplicate, etc etc. For the new fic I'm working on, idk, I just felt like writing on paper with lots of different colored pens. It was soooo fun. I got these pens. Paper Mate Ink Joy Gel 0.7. I'm heckin' not sponsored but I LOVE these pens. They're super vibrant and actually dry pretty quick, and they're pretty. I love them so much I got another 10 pack of just the purple color xD [Note: the pens are thicker than normal gel/ballpoint pens. If you have arthritis or other hand issues, they might be too big to be comfy.] What I enjoyed was being able to write "Rodimus" in red pen and then writing a bunch of stuff about him, then drawing a line, writing "Soundwave" in blue pen and writing a bunch of stuff about him. Which sounds incredibly trite but the colors made me happy, and the full effect on the page lends itself to another layer of organization. I found I couldn't get myself to sit at the computer and write, so I wrote in a notebook. I'd show you some pics of how nice it all looks, but it's spoilers for the next fic.

tl;dr if the current literal method of writing isn't working, try another one. One of my good fic writing buddies goes for walks and takes her phone and records snippets and thoughts as they come to her. Maybe there's a method that will spark your motivation out there :)

Okay hopefully that helped with the motivation question. I didn't get super personal about it - I don't mind, and can, if asked - but let's keep moving.

>what's your process for planning?

Oh boy. Okay. My process will probably not work for you, because it is a MESS. I can describe it for you: maybe something in it will help.

First, please read this post: I've been curious what program(s) you write with and how you manage the organizational part of writing such long works.

That post explains how I organize medium and long length fics. It answers your question from the organizational aspect. There are screenshots xD Here's the tl;dr from the top of that post:

tl;dr I currently write in a free word processor called OpenOffice. I use Headings to generate an index and use that to navigate around a single document. I have multiple documents that each serve a different purpose- at the minimum, there's a doc for the story, Notes, and Graveyard.

And here is the broad summary from the bottom of that post:

To be really honest with you, I enjoy this system because it keeps things broadly organized, but within the docs there is a lot of messy stuff happening. I think of things, jot them down. Forget them. Rethink of them again later, jot them down. Now I have 2 scattered, slightly differently phrased similar ideas. If I think of things while at work, I scribble them madly onto scraps of paper and take them home, then try to fit them into the Notes somewhere. (Then I tape all the little papers into a notebook like a weirdo, lol, but I can't let them go!) I also have a ton of notes in my phone for when I think of stuff while in bed. I move it into Notes or write it into scenes as needed.

I write scenes out of order. I try to make timelines. I write more scenes: the timeline is no longer correct. I try to make a new timeline. I write more scenes. There are words everywhere and I just do my best :'D

The way I wrote TEG partially included keeping everything in it in my head. Obviously not every single sentence verbatim, but, when I was writing it, I knew exact phrases (the phrases are starting to fade, nearly a year later now). So if I was writing a future chapter and wanted to go back and double check what an earlier chapter said, I would do a search for the phrases I knew were in that scene. Towards the end of writing TEG my brain literally hurt. This isn't a method I advise, lol, but it works for me. I've tried to be more organized in the approach for my next fic, but it's already spiraling words over various docs and journals and I even have an ornate diagram going on in Photoshop right now.

You may already know the terms "planner vs pantser" or "gardener" or... whatever the other terms are. There's a spectrum of approaches to planning for writing, with "planner" on one end and "pantser" on the other. Planners do what you think they do: write intricate timelines, write chapters in the order they occur in, stick very strictly to the plan. Pantsers (from "fly by the seat of your pants") just start writing. Haphazardly. Pantsers tend to have to do a lot more editing at the end.

Most people fall within this spectrum somewhere, and many are towards one end for one story, then maybe flop on down to the other end for another story. There are a zillion videos about "planners vs pantsers," so that's another subject you could look into watching. If you know you're definitely on the planning side, you can search for videos by people who are also planners, and may have hints for you.

I'm definitely a pantser that tries really really hard to plan and stay organized. And, interestingly, as a fic goes on, it becomes way easier to plan for me. So maybe it would be more accurate to say: the brainstorming stage and writing the beginning and middle are more pantsy, and writing the end is more planny, for me. It could be any kinda thing for you :) once you know, you'll be able to work to your own strengths.

Hopefully you found something helpful in all the above. Check out the links, find some videos, relax, and dive in. If you have more specific questions, feel free to send 'em.

Happy writing! :)