#might as well finish that wip set i'd abandoned

[wikiangela]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

tagged by @dangerpronebuddie @diazsdimples @aroeddiediaz @underwaterninja13 @nmcggg @ladydorian05 thank you <33

How many works do you have on ao3?

right now it's 90! (57 of these are 911 lol)

What's your total ao3 word count?

535,450

What fandoms do you write for?

currently just 911, but I have some destiel and sambucky fics and who knows, I might get back to them at some point haha

Top 5 fics by kudos:

For a holiday (and forevermore)

I can't love you any more (than I do now)

I'd marry you with paper rings

the next best thing

There’s no way that it’s not going there (with the way that we’re looking at each other)

(they're all buddie and I just noticed that the top 4 are all over 1k kudos?? when did that happen lmao)

Do you respond to comments?

I do! sometimes it takes me a while bc i get lowkey overwhelmed lol but I always do!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

there's not a lot bc I prefer happy or hopeful endings, but I guess by post 6x10 fics? Fine and don't know what I'd do if your tomorrow never came idk lol

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

most of my fics have happy endings, but I guess I'd say For a holiday (and forevermore) 

Do you get hate on fics?

not really? got like one or two not very nice comments but generally no haha

Do you write smut?

yes I do 😁 not often and it always takes me forever but I do have two smut fics in the works (one buddie, one bucktommy lol)

Craziest crossover?

don't have any

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

no, as far as I know

Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope

Have you co-written a fic before?

no

All time favorite ship?

buddie

(ngl, bucktommy is a veeeeery close second rn🙈)

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

there's two that have been fighting me for so long they're lowkey abandoned now and tbh I don't know if I still want to finish them? one is a 5+1 nicknames, and the other just a silly idea about eddie flirting with buck since they met but buck being veeeery oblivious lol

What are your writing strengths?

I think (usually) I'm pretty good at staying true to the characters and not making them too ooc (and I know when it's ooc, okay, I have one wip rn where I just don't give a fuck, I'm writing it anyway lol), and I can get into their heads pretty well. Also I think I'm good at the cute fluffy stuff lol idk

What are your writing weaknesses?

there's probably a lot lol - rn the one that comes to mind is descriptions probably, which is why writing fanfic where we have established characters and settings is so much easier than og stuff haha

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I don't mind it but I don't do it a lot aside from a pet name here and there bc I just don't wanna get anything wrong lol

First fandom you wrote in?

for tv shows supernatural, but before that I did write rpf which i just wanna forget about lol

Favorite fic you've written?

rn it's three:

we don't know where this is going now (don't be afraid of heights, let me open your heart wide) - my tommy pov fic <3

I'm comin' back, don't let me go - buck driving/breakdown fic

baby, you drive me wild - car smut - might not be my best but it's my fave smut lol

tags: @elvensorceress @eddiebabygirldiaz @watchyourbuck @loserdiaz @evanbegins

@wildlife4life @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @weewootruck @loveyouanyway

@spagheddiediaz @rainbow-nerdss @epicbuddieficrecs @pirrusstuff @spotsandsocks

@rogerzsteven @hippolotamus @sunshinediaz @honestlydarkprincess @exhuastedpigeon

@jesuisici33 @steadfastsaturnsrings @buddieswhvre @theotherbuckley @daffi-990

@hoodie-buck @tizniz @bidisasterevankinard

[leiawritesstories]

20 Questions for Writers!

Thanks for the tag @writtenonreceipts!! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

21 and counting 👀

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

226,575

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily for Throne of Glass, but I'm always open to writing for more fandoms :)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Chef Rowan

Fly The Black Flag

Until Proven Guilty

Wild Proposal Stories

Quarter After One

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes!! Comments are one of the best parts of being a writer/creator and it makes me happy to both receive and give them.

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

Probably Late-Night Dances, which involves MCD🫣🫣 or really any of the handful of fics I've written where a character doesn't make it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oooh maybe Fly The Black Flag? I kind of borrowed the ending from POTC but changed some things, and a little while later, I was able to write a sort of epilogue/outtake where Rowaelin have a child, and it was super fluffy and cute and heartwarming.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No? I don't think so, this community is genuinely wonderful and so supportive :))

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes I do, hehe. I've only ever written F/M explicit content

10. Do you write crossovers?

Well......sort of. I like to sneak in characters from the other SJM books if it's possible and if it works, and once upon a time I tried to write a crossover fic that has since been abandoned 😂. But if it's ever in the cards, I'd love to properly write one!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Also nope, but that would be so cool

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

Possibly 👀👀👀 @mariaofdoranelle

14. What is your all-time favorite ship?

Rowan x Aelin. They will never not be an OTP.

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

Probably The Only Option, which has a whole plan/outline and some notes for the plot but will probably never be anything more than what it is. This also happens to be the fic that sparked my main idea for an original novel, so it might never be more of a fanfic, idk.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I honestly don't know lol. I think I can write family dynamics/kids pretty well, but I grew up with a bunch of siblings so it's kind of easier for me to write sibling and family dynamics. I'm also the proud (?) owner of an inner angst monster that I call Frederick, and he's very very good at having ideas for making situations painful 🤭

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Definitely consistency. Even in oneshots, I'm prone to forgetting what I wrote earlier or if they're linked oneshots/in the same setting or world, I tend to forget or change details about the setting, which just bothers me SO much. And don't even get started on how horribly inconsistent I am in long fics 😭😭 like, I'm a hella planner, but somehow I'll be rereading old parts of a draft (hello, Until Proven Guilty) and realize that there are big glaring gaps from the earlier parts to the later parts and just cry over the plot holes.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Love it! If the language is significant to a certain character, particularly to their background/development, I love to see dialogue in another language. Wish I spoke better in the other languages that I sort of know (Spanish/tiny bit of Italian) so I could incorporate it into writing. I think it's also super super amazing how some writers can create original languages.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Bloody Jack Throne of Glass! Started writing and never stopped lol ;)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

i had a whole lot of fun writing DILF Rowan, which came from a prompt. also really really enjoyed The Assassin and the Princess, which is a sort of alternate canon reimagining.

some tags if you want: @mariaofdoranelle @elentiyawhitethorn @tomtenadia @house-of-galathynius @rowanaelinn and anyone else who wants to!!!

[chelzone]

My WIP Games Ahead: An Assortment

feeling like rambling a bit to get myself motivated to work on stuff right now, as well give a fresh update on what projects ive been tending to this year. just gonna focus on three that have had a lotta work put into em already

not gonna tag this one since its a mixture of SFW and NSFW and hidden under a read more. dont open if u dont wanna read about the latter (more specifically expansion kink stuff)

Hallowed Discharge

this one i've been putting my heart and soul into for a long while now, as it's a mountain of coding and writing despite only being maybe 25-30% finished argubly. made within the Quest text adventure engine, much like my released SFW game Kindred Spirit. Hallowed Discharge revolves around a pooltoy priest named Reverend Artemis, and his task in trying to nonlethally expel a hell of a lot of spirits from an abandoned mall named Delícias do Vale. features a hell of a lot of NPCs to chat with, tons of tasks to do for the most important of spirits, a mixture of percentage-based stats to be mindful of (weight, faith, and energy), and a fuckton of early game overs if u aint careful along the way. so far currently i'd say half of the first floor's tended to, same for the basement, and nothing for the second floor or general outside yet.

last time i tinkered with this, i was tending to a mission where the player has to attempt to fix fuses around the mall to restore partial power to the basement generators (mechanically it works code-wise, still need to move them to proper areas before the task can be completed properly). as for the justification of kinky stuff, our beloved goddess of expansion herself Her Divine is puppeting the show from above

Enchanted Bliss

another game with a lotta heart put into it, this one's a SFW visual novel made within Ren'Py (my first proper one at that in said engine!). Enchanted Bliss revolves around a newbie and mid-to-late 20 something wizard Dylan Rhodes, being strung along on a mission with a bunch of professional wizards / coworkers (a field exercise for Rhodes, a bigger deal of trouble for the rest). within the ruined city of Filia Lunae, Dylan will have to tag up with one of their coworkers to investigate a part of said city and hopefully score a friendship / a romantic relationship along the way (or even beef it completely).

last time i worked on this, ive been in the process of redoing the art style completely to be a more neon and line-focused one (as seen in the image above). fuck ton of emotion sprites are done for the protagonist Dylan, supporting character / mission boss Carmichael, and one of said coworkers - Brava Denvers. still have to draw the rest of the emotions for the other 5 coworkers. past that ive made 16 short music loops (1 min or so each) that might wind up in the game or its soundtrack slated for post-game release in the years ahead. still a lot of drawing, writing, and music-making ahead along with sourcing any royalty free / public domain sounds with credits of course. current playable section is just the tutorial / introduction camp before starting any of the six routes

The Ballad of Hush and Clover

another kinky game, though this one made in the flicksy 2 engine much like me released SFW game For Your Eyes. this one revolves around wizard couple and toony folks Evelyn Hush an Patsy Clover, heading off to the Nilbrook Mountain Chain to investigate a strange cave stumbled upon by a coworker. from there, they stumble upon a small fragment of what used to be temple to the (shocker) goddess Her Divine. there, a mystical figure emerges as a proxy of said goddess an offers a challenge for one (whichever the player chooses) of the toony spouses / wizards present.

with enough vague story rambling outta the way, it's basically gonna be a point and click sort of storybook thang. you'll either be playing as Evelyn OR Patsy - not both. each spouse has their own setting and associated adventure in a simulated dimension tied to their challenge (the other stays behind in the real world with the mentioned figure / proxy). so far a fuckton of scenes are drawn for it already, fulfilling the entirety of gameplay in the introduction and tutorial. gameplay elements besides traveling From Here to There will also be opportunities to use your powers, think about the situation ahead, chat with the folks within the challenge, and utilize a map to figure out where the hell ur at.

last time i worked on it i started making the early parts of both playable stories for each respective protagonist. Evelyn gets to deal with potential inflation mischief on an airship resort of sorts, while Patsy deals with potential fattening mischief on a cross-country luxury train of sorts. this one has been fun as fuck to draw and write for, and is chock full of visuals oh my lord

anyway if uve read this or even a chunk of this write-up, thanks! feel its important to remind folks that im still working on things and offer any progress updates when i can lol. at the moment of writing (08-29-2024) im prob gonna try hopping back into game dev for one or all of these come early September this year. id say realistically it'll be a hot minute until i release any of these three (most work needed for Hallowed Discarge, least needed for The Ballad of Hush and Clover, yadda yadda)

[chthonic-cassandra]

I am not writing this weekend, but I am thinking about writing.

I set myself a goal of finishing the final part of Compromise by the end of the summer, which logistically feels doable, even though the rate at which I've been able to work on this series has been so variable. This final story should be a lot simpler than "Intransigence" (the penultimate one). And part of me is really ready for it to be completed.

Part of me is also anxious about finishing it. It will feel like a very particular kind of ending; 14 years is a long time to stay with a project like this, even with all my lengthy hiatuses, and I and my life have changed so tremendously much in that time. And while I certainly don't think it's end of me writing Dracula fic (and I have the possibility even of writing more in this particular AU universe, which I may very well do), I feel much less certain about what I write next after this. I haven't written any non-Compromise Dracula fic in nearly 10 years.

And it matters to me a lot. It's a silly fan fic series that maybe a dozen people are reading, but I care about it and I've been crafting it and I've been using it to explore some specific and complex questions, particularly around co-victimhood dynamics, that it's been difficult to explore in other ways. It's been very moving and exciting to see even a small number of people respond to it.

It's very special for me to stay with a project this long, particularly as a fic author almost exclusively of one shots and a couple of long-abandoned WIPs from many years ago. And it's special that the multi-part project that I am finally (fingers crossed) finishing is something with this particular content, that is vulnerable in this particular way. The feeling of wanting people to read it has a different charge from other things I've written and posted over the years.

I think I want to celebrate, in some way, when I finish. That might not make me feel less adrift, but I think it will feel right. I don't know what that should look like. (If anyone has ideas from ways they've celebrated the completion of a project, especially a fanfic one, I'd be interested to hear them.) I'll keep thinking about it.

[calliopechild]

none of the emojis from the wip ask game fit exactly with what i want to ask, which is that if you have even the tiniest crumb of anything to say about the more things change i will feast until the end of my days >.>

Apologies for how long it took to answer this, but the levels of Catholic guilt this ask triggered (I say as someone who is not remotely Catholic) were so substantial that I dug out my old jump drive with all the TMTC files on it so that I could find a snippet for you.

The Telltale Heart moment aside, it is...bewildering in a lovely way that people still remember TMTC. Even though it's been *checks ff.net* oh Lord, almost 11 years since I touched it? I genuinely can't tell you how flattering that is, because this fic is still very dear to me, which I know is probably counterintuitive given all the dust and cobwebs that have gathered on it.

The radio silence is a combination of life stuff and the fact that I had the story plotted out when I started, and even had a decent portion of the ending written--and the fic as it exists now at chapter 24 went off the rails from that plan at least two chapters back, lol. A lot of what ended up happening in the fic means that what I had planned couldn't happen now, either because it'd be OOC or the circumstances just aren't possible. A lot of the relationships have changed too, and it kind of got to the point where I got so annoyed with having to basically scrap the whole final slice of the fic and start over that I put it on hold for a bit...and then here we are. ^_^;;

I don't want to get anyone's hopes up and promise that it'll be finished soon, but I also don't want to leave it unfinished forever. I can say that I'm pleasantly surprised to find that I have a lot more written of the new ending than I thought I did, so finishing it might not be impossible.

In the meantime, though, as thanks for still remembering my abandoned child fic, have a blurb of Naomi trying to restrain herself from beating Leo to death in the hospital for being a stubborn idiot:

“Why did you jump between us, then? When tou-chan drew that sword?”

“I told you, it was instinct.”

“And you knew you could protect me.”

Leo nodded again, and I fought down a grin; he’d set me up just like I’d wanted him to. “Well, then maybe you can understand why I’m confused. I’m having a little trouble reconciling the fact that you knew you could protect me with your idea that leaving is supposedly the best way you can keep us safe.”

“Just because I can protect you doesn't mean I want to make it necessary; if I stay away, the trouble does too.”

It was not appropriate to throttle a hospital patient, I reminded myself, but I was going to win this argument one way or another. “People get hurt; that’s life. If your benchmark for successfully protecting someone is that they never get hurt, you're always going to fall short because no one can guarantee that. I know it’s what we’d all prefer, but we can’t keep the people we love from ever getting hurt. Things are always going to happen that we can’t prevent. You’re setting a standard for yourself that no one could reach, Leo, and I don’t know why you’d want to do that to yourself. I'm fine, my father's fine, and if we're ever not fine, it won't be because of something you did or didn't do. I don't want to be kicked out of your life just because you've suddenly decided you're too dangerous to be around.”

Leo closed his eyes for a second, then looked up at me, mouth hard. “Maybe I don’t want another person to protect.”

For a few seconds I just sat there, listening to the squeak of shoes in the hallway and someone's voice buzzing on the overhead speaker, waiting for—something. For Leo to say he didn't mean it, for my stomach to stop dropping, for it to somehow make sense how Leo had gone from telling me we'd been a safe place to saying we were a burden he didn't want.

He didn't say anything. He just sat there, eyes on mine and not giving an inch.

I'd have believed he really meant it if it wasn't for the way his hands were fisted in his blanket, the knuckles standing out sharp and white. Something April had said in our conversation the other day floated into my mind.

“I'm…look, I don't want to sound insulting by saying this, but I'm glad you care enough to ignore Leo when he told you he was too dangerous to be around. I don't know how much he's told you, but he did the same thing to me once, except it was in the middle of us running after being attacked. It was in my home, and my friends who were being attacked, and Leo still told me it was their fight, not mine. That's just Leo—he accepts danger to himself but doesn't realize that in his efforts to protect others, he's being insulting by implying no one else might accept that danger too. But he never tried that with me again, so he really can learn; just hang in there.”

From the sound of things, Leo had just tried to get her to leave, rather than making it sound like he wanted her out of his life. I knew this was probably some idiotic belief that it'd keep me safe, as if doing so would somehow make Karai forget about me and tou-chan. And maybe it should have warned me about how serious Leo thought the danger was. Maybe it should have made me listen, especially since I had evidence of how willingly Karai would resort to violence right in front of me.

What it actually did was piss me off.

If that was how he wanted it, fine. I shoved my chair back as I stood up, reaching for my purse and my temper. “Good.”

Leo's eyelids flickered. “Good?”

“Yes, good.” I leaned into his space, bracing my hand on the bed beside his shoulder, because if he was going to hear me about anything, it was going to be this. “You know why? Because I don’t remember ever asking you to protect me. That's not what I'm here for. The sentiment—that you don’t want to see me get hurt—that’s nice, really, but the way you go about it…” I shook my head, ignoring the fact that when I was this close, I could see flecks of blue in his eyes; this was not the time, dammit. “I'm going assume it's the drugs making you forget that you don't get to decide for me what risks I'll take. And since you apparently haven't figured it out yet, you're about a week too late to try and cut us off, because Karai already knows about us. You leaving isn't going to magically make her forget where she found us.”

I bit my tongue before I went any further. There was a line between making my point and trying to hurt Leo back, and implying that we were in danger from the minute Karai realized we might be important to Leo was charging right over that line. “You can’t fight life, Leo. You can’t stop every bad thing from happening to the people around you. I guess the real question is whether or not you can accept that, or if you'd rather not let anyone in ever because they might get hurt.”

I walked out, trying to ignore the way the nurse at the desk dropped her eyes to her computer and pretended to look busy. That was fine. I didn't want anyone looking at me right now anyway.

"Maybe I don’t want another person to protect."

In Leo's head, that was probably some sort of sign that he really did care, to the point that he was willing to burn all his bridges and make me mad enough to write him off for good so long as it kept us out of the line of fire.

But maybe part of him had meant it. I could tell Leo had meant it when he'd admitted how important the dojo was, how important it was to him to have somewhere where he didn't have any obligations. Maybe he'd wanted it to stay that way, for us to not turn into more people he had to keep safe, for us to just keep being a slice of normal for him to visit once in a while. He'd said it before, when he told us about Karai, that he couldn't be responsible for anyone else.

Except of all the things I'd learned about Leo, it was that protecting was what he did when he cared. So what did it say that he didn't want to add us to the list?

[blocksruinedme]

….. team rancher perhaps? For the “brutally honest opinion on a ship” question

Okay so yes I got this in march. I've been thinking.

the ship? on double life? delightful. I fell for it so hard in the silliest way - i was writing a flower husbands fic and i wanted jimmy to talk to scott about tango, and thus i had to figure it out and woosh. There I was writing SO MUCH. (and then a spin off of that one got me into smalletho, i'm a hilarious creature.) Obviously I'm obsessed with Jimmy, and they were so cute together, they worked together well, good wholesome vibes. Sometimes it's nice to have a comedic duo as a ship. I got fanart printed, it was the first thing I published, I sat around and daydreamed about my many many wips.

However. Tragically. I've given it months and I just think I'm done for the foreseeable future. I am BUMMED about this. I wish I could separate c and cc on this one, and not care about the crossover and just write DL. Nothing about DL or LimLife or whatever interferes with my SmallEtho or Flower Husbands feels, each series is something i can choose to bring into what i'm feeling/writing. But, ugh. It's not working here. Especially with actual crossover-setting ranchers as opposed to DL etc.

To jump ahead - my remaining ranchers wip WILL be finished, because I'm so lucky to be able to bring in the amazing passionate clever supportive thoughtful kind and considerate @that-tall-queer-bassist as a co-author. They saw what I was afraid to ask and offered. (I might have asked eventually.) The most important parts are there, imo. My first fic was "my ex stole my soulmate", (fwhip/jimmy/tango) which i wrote in a possessed fervor the day the crossover started. this is the sequel, "my soulmate made a date for me and my ex". It's all outlined and the beginning is written, and most crucially the final conversation is written, where i got Jimmy and Tango's voices to my satisfaction and did how I wanted things to wrap up. I just... the thought of doing it makes me so anxious (especially after i got a "why haven't you updated" comment and had a VERY bad day from it) but I swore I'd never abandon a wip. It keeps getting kudos - the first one had 3x as many kudos as any other fic until the month, and then it's just one fic, it's still so popular - and i don't even want to reread it. It's a very strange feeling to have you biggest hit be something that makes you sad!

the rest of the unpublished wips - man idk how many partially written ranchers fics i have. so many. a lot are in what would have been a flower husbands/ranchers multiverse series that might have hit 100k, which i'm never doing. i'm planning to publish a couple short stand-alones. Some of the ranchers shit is good! My current thought is to go back to them a few months after "my soulmate made a date" is finished and skim and see if any are in a shape where i might want to share some on request, because right now i have so much anxiety about it all to even make decisions. i especially love the sequel to "love respect joy and ranchin'" cause that was 17k of sexual tension and a lot of sexy things happened after.

Maybe time will pass and I'll get what I want! Maybe I'll be able to look at DL ranchers and just enjoy what is there, what I loved before, and not be disappointed about what never happened after animated heart reunions etc. My hopes were SO high and I'm going to try and never get my hopes that high again for something dependent on so many factors.

It is funny that I wrote fics that people are probably using for some fix-it feelings, while I myself can't fix it for me! I'm supremely lucky that I have so many other ships.

[ohnomybreadsticks]

Ao3 WIP Tag Game!

I was tagged by @itshype - thank you for including me in your tag list <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 160! Which is an absolutely wild number to think about, tbqh

2. What's your AO3 word count? 917,682, although some of those aren't mine due to some of my longest works being shared RPs I posted

3. What fandoms do you write for? I have works mostly posted for Detroit: Become Human and the Witcher Netflix, but I've written a few for others, like Transistor and LotR. And now I have 2 that are original works!

4. What are your Top 5 Fics by Kudos?

Starting with most kudos:

1) More Than Enough (Witcher, E)

2) Alike in Both the Heart and Mind (DBH, E)

3) What's It Going to Take for You to Feel Good? (DBH, E)

4) Too Tired to Ask, but Not to Receive (Witcher)

5) In Which Gavin Learns to Love an Elder God (DBH)

shocker lmao, almost all of these prominently feature smutty sections!

5. Do you respond to comments? Always! If a reader has made a comment, I'll make sure to reply, even if it's just to say 'thank you' :) It just might take me a while to get to it sometimes

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? There Are No Atheists in Foxholes (DBH, E)! Can't get much more angsty than MCD lmao (altho does it count if he comes back in like 300 years?)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I am a fluffy gal usually lmao, almost all of my fics have happy sappy endings!

8. Do you get hate on fics? Thankfully no, I've never gotten any hate on my fics. Very grateful for that, but I'm very much not afraid of the block button.

9. Do you write smut? LOL I've written my fair share. I've got 41 E rated fics on AO3, and 17 M rated fics, so that's a decent amount of the spice. Lately though I haven't been feeling that vibe as much, so much so that the last bit of smut I wrote was quite difficult!

10. Do you write cross-overs? Mmmmmm not sure if I've written a traditional crossover, where characters from both franchises interacted... But I popped some Witcher characters into a LotR setting, and some DBH characters into a Witcher setting at some point!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope, but I've had podfic made of my fic, which was incredibly flattering <3

12. Have you ever cowritten a fic before? Yep, several times.

13. What is a WIP you would like to finish but doubt you ever will? Mmmm...I don't tend to abandon WIPs, even if it takes me a long time to return. The few chaptered fics that are 'unfinished' on AO3 are the only ones I'll never return to

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship? I could never pick while I was in the trenches lmao, and now that I've been kind of out of my fandoms for a while I don't have an opinion either XD

15. What are you writing strengths? Folks always tell me my descriptions are engaging, which makes me happy because that's something I work very hard on. I hope my characters and their relationships are a strength as well

16. What are your writing weaknesses? Probably niche-ness lmao. I love to create a hyper-specific scenario that only I enjoy, so it doesn't reach any kind of audience. I also know I'm very bad at writing action sequences, which is why I never write them lmao

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I'm not a fan, tbh. Unless it's a language you're really familiar with, the chances of getting it wrong are too high. And the clunkiness of putting it in the fic makes it...oof.

18. First fandom you wrote for? For my own sanity I'll pass on this one lmao. My first AO3 fic was most certainly DBH

19. Favourite fic you’ve ever written? Also hard to choose...Privately I'm very fond of Let Me In (i'll be good to you, i swear) - any of my prairie-based fics hold a special place in my heart

20. What fic would you want to rewrite one day? Hard question - right now I'd have to say none! I'm very much a 'when it's done it's done' girlie

Tagging: @catoeirienind @sinclairsolutions but no pressure <3

[hourly-dreaming]

we going✈️ boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

[almaasi]

Glad you're feeling better! I love your fics! Have you got any supernatural fics coming up in your list? 😁

i have a huge pile of unfinished destiel fic drafts i'm never going to finish (so i might someday make a "abandoned wip" fic post), but i do also have a complete destiel fic ("Last Voyage of the Carnaval Celeste") that i really like and intend to post!

a couple of weeks ago i went through it, hoping to polish it up to post, but something about it drained all the energy out of me. i think it's just the overwhelm of knowing i kept it back for seven years in order for someone to illustrate it, and now i can draw well enough that i could illustrate it myself, but that requires... you know, actually drawing for three or four days straight. true, i could just post it, but posting it without illustrating would feel like i waited seven years for nothing.

right now i'd rather use my energy to write, edit, and illustrate the stuff that better represents where i am now rather than where i was in 2015.

but it'll happen. it will. probably not this year, but someday.

as for new destiel and supernatural fics - i apologise, but the answer is no. my brain hyperfixates on one set of characters at a time, and i'm now three years and three OTPs away from it. i've found a lot more freedom to expand the kinds of characters and worlds i write outside of that fandom, and i think going back (even if my brain would let me) would be regressive for me, personally.

ultimately, i don't think i had anything left to say about those characters. i had exhausted the ways in which i could talk about them - which is not surprising after... what was it, 119 destiel fics? several million words? i needed something else, and i'm glad i moved on. it was the best possible thing i could've done.

i'm pleased you enjoyed the destiel fics! i hope there's enough of my old writing in the backlog that re-reading them won't get too maddening. <3 and i can promise you, there's a lot more to enjoy in the other stuff i've written, too. maybe you'll find another fandom you like along the way c:

--

link to ALL MY DESTIEL FICS (2012-2020)

[fallintosanity]

I, N, and V for the writer ask meme…! >_>

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

eheheh gonna have to go with that particular flavor of h/c where the normally powerful and unflappable character is hurt, and is comforted/tended to by the normally vulnerable and emotional one. There's a lot of tenderness in this trope, and a lot of room to explore the unseen sides of each character. Major bonus points for platonic physical touching/closeness, because there isn't nearly enough of that in media generally or fanfic specifically. This trope is PERFECT for it, though, and my little aroace heart eats it up every time.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

There's these two old Supernatural fics I have sitting around in my WIPs folder that I wish someone else would write, because aside from me having fallen out of SPN fandom post-S10, I just can't figure out what to do with them. But I love the premises of both, and they still knock around in my brain occasionally. One of them is a time-travel AU (did you expect anything different XD ) involving Sam from right before the end of S1E1, and Season... I don't remember, early 10 or so? Whenever Lucifer shows back up - Sam swapping temporal places. Past!Sam has to deal with the monster that Dean has become post-S8, while Future!Sam has to face John Winchester while Lucifer is hunting them all. The other one is an AU where Sam is separated from John and Dean as a baby by an accident that results in them believing he was killed by the yellow-eyed demon. Dean grows up alone, while baby Sam is adopted by a family of powerful witches and raised as both a witch and a psychic (since they recognize his psychic powers early on) by loving parents and siblings. They meet for the first time during a modified S1E1 set up by the YED, who is trying to get the Winchester family back together for the whole Apocalypse thing. While they don't realize they're brothers, they do end up working together to solve the first several cases of S1 before retreating to Sam's family's home to escape Meg and the YED. There, they put the pieces together and figure out Sam is the little brother Dean thought died as a baby, and that Sam's adopted parents believed John Winchester was a mundane criminal who abandoned his son to CPS.

I actually have about 9k words written for the first one, and about 10k for the second, but yeah, no idea where to go with them and no motivation to finish. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ If anyone wants to run with either of these, go for it!

I also have a Promare fic that I've more or less completely written out in my head, but don't have the time or spoons to put on paper, and I'd love it if someone wrote that one for me. XD

Oddly enough, I can't think of any in either the FFVII or FFXV fandoms, probably because I have so many writing projects in both of those right now that I've got all my bases covered. XD

V: A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?

I'm gonna go with, first, Ravus Nox Fleuret, because GOD I wish we could have seen so much more about him in canon, and fandom is very well placed to fill those gaps. (I think he might show up in a decent number of fics, actually, just not as a primary character in gen fics that I'm aware of.) And second, best boy Kunsel <3

Ask me stuff!

[sparrow-orion-writes]

Hey! Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! :D

Are there any political structures in place in your world? Royalty? Nobility? Government? Do they affect the narrative? Do they have their own political conflict in the foreground or background of your WIP? o:

If not, tell us something new about your worldbuilding you've figured out and would like to ramble about :D

From @bloodlessheirbyjacques ✨

Oh my God, I forgot this was here, I'm SO sorry.

YES there is, buckle in, it's a bumpy ride.

Spoilers for anyone actually reading Neon Glow, like major spoilers, though since I haven't finished drafting all three books yet, it could be subject to change.

To explain the political structure of Arcadia, I have to first explain the history. (tl;dr at the end)

Before the war, Arcadia was a huge research facility, the most ambitious yet, built somewhere in Europe (they still use Euros after the war). The research facility was funded largely by people who were not scientists because the research itself was on prolonging human life, the boundaries of the human body and the human psyche.

As you can expect from billionaires, a few of the experiments were profoundly fucked up.

It was assumed that after the war, the facility was abandoned, people gathered the resources they had and bunkered down for the rest of eternity stuck in a radioactive wasteland. They built cities into the "chambers", towns, villages, depending on the size, they traded the specific resources each area had with other areas and effectively became their own small country.

Big spoilers from here:

Except the experiments are still ongoing, and ran by the descendants of 12 of the 13 benefactors that Arcadia had pre-war. See these people didn't live in Arcadia, they knew the bombs were coming they didn't want to be living in that wasteland with The Poors, especially when they can use them for free labour, taking their crops and their water and their animals and their livelihoods. They live above it. Think Bioshock Infinite sort of life.

These descendants run Arcadia, they make up the council. There is a president of the council, the president in which people of Arcadia are most familiar with.

(At this point you might be thinking, hey what...what happened to the 13th descendant? Ash? ASH??? In which case I'd say :) :) )

The president addresses the people, he declares laws, writes verdicts, but honestly the council just do the bare minimum to keep the people alive enough to provide for them. They disguise that bare minimum as "well, it's the end of the world, what more can we do?" and the people are mostly non-the-wiser.

This starts off in the background, because the first book is very character driven with Ari, April, and Ana's work (and the others too) very much in the background, it just sort of introduces the setting and what's going on in that world. In the second book, it becomes more apparent as we move from the almost utopia-like Sight into its complete opposite (Poison). There's a lot to question about the state of the place and why nobody has come to help the people there. Perhaps even wanting them to die.

The third book is very heavy with it. It's like the climax of all the loose threads in the first two books, the hints that are dropped, the outright tension building towards the political state of Arcadia.

Okay I'll stop rambling, woo boy. I love Arcadia, I've never built a sci-fi world before, so I've had SOOOO much fun with the world building, the test chambers especially. I have a list of all 100 sections (some are very tiny, some are fuckin H U G E) just for the fun of it, about ten of them will get mentioned really.

TL;DR: 13 rich people set up Arcadia, their descendants are running the show, they're not politicians or scientists and are haphazardly letting experiments run and are doing the bare minimum to stop people realizing they're just being used for the rich to steal their resources. it doesn't end up going well for them.

[alo-piss-trancy]

hi sorry to bother you but do you have any more akira omo fics planned? yours are honestly the best and i'd love to know what/if you're planning on writing with him in the future, or if you have any sneak peaks you'd be willing to share hehe. also have you ever thought about doing commissions because i'd happily pay for an akira omo fic since you write them so well!

Ahh no worries anon, it's never bothering me! I like getting asks! 💛 And oh my goodness that's really sweet of you to say!!! 😻

I've thought about taking commissions before actually, but 1. I'd have to make a whole separate paypal and email and junk which seems complicated for just that 1 purpose and 2. I write too slowly and jump between too many projects, and can only write what I'm vibing with at the time. My juggling system works fine for me writing for fun, but I think if I put the kind of deadline and pressure on myself that comes with paying customers and expectations I'd just end up in a loop of procrastination and writer's block, or half-assing things just to get them done. The extra cash would certainly be nice, but it's just not worth the stress and risk of backfiring haha (and also charging by word count wouldn't work well for me or customers since all my oneshots are long af)

I'm super flattered by the sentiment! 💛 It's just not something doable for me right now. If anyone really wants to pay for a fic, I'd be willing to accept fanart/fic of my faves in return 👀 that's a joke lmao no one feel obligated plz, I'm honestly happy putting out my stuff for free

And now to get back on topic: I'm afraid I don't have a ton planned for him at the moment or WIPs to show since 1. I dumped all those abandoned p/5 omo drafts onto my tumblr to clear my files and 2. 90% of my omovember stuff is D/R oops 😅

But I do really want to do a fic of himXT/ae as a sort of continuation of that old drabble I posted back in the day. (My idea was gonna be for the omovember diuretic prompt, but then I had the Kir/igiriXCel/este one drafted first instead so I'll be prioritizing that). I still wanna do it though, maybe even with them on a public date or smth bc Ak/ira is just enough of a cocky boi to risk it and T/ae would be interested in forcing him to put his money where his mouth is lol

There's also that elevator prompt with him and Ry/uji I'd really like to get around to. I've also always loved the idea of him getting desperate but too nervous to get up during the plane ride to Hawaii and how a few of them might deal with that, OR that one hc anon (you perhaps? Idk how many p/5 anons I have lol) sent me about him chugging soda/being desp suddenly and constantly and it hitting during a Palace.

So yeah I've got a few good ideas just... not the extra time/attention to devote to them right now RIP. Hopefully if my writing brain isn't dead after I finish my omovember fics and that one fe/mslash kin/kmeme fic I can start getting around to at least one 😿 Because I really do miss writing him and 'Cops and Robbers' didn't feel like it 'counted' since it was past canon and didn't have much real plot (like, I loved writing it, but it didn't give me that comfy feeling of my p/5 home since it was a future timeline and the cheesy roleplay interfered with characterization so it wasn't really writing A/kira)

Tbh I also had some ideas involving him that were based on PQ/2 actually, but unfortunately my 3ds finally kicked the bucket a while ago so I haven't gotten far enough into the game for the plots I wanted to base the fics on RIP. I'm hoping to save any Christmas money I get from relatives and my own savings I've set aside to get a replacement next year if all goes well though, so if I get sucked into that maybe I'll start writing a bunch of those haha

[sineala]

Hi Sine! I recently re-read your Star Trek AU--which is BRILLIANT--and I noticed that it's got a pretty complex plot. Then I thought about it, and a lot of your fics have multiple things going on in them at once. I think Living On Your Breath has something like four plots: Steve's personal, Tony's personal, the villains, and then Carol&Wanda's. Plot complexity is something I'm trying to get better at, so I thought I'd ask how you come up with and manage everything! Thanks for writing!

Thanks for asking! I had to think about this for a bit, but I came up with a few rough guidelines for how I handle plot. I’m putting this under a read more because (1) I am wordy, and (2) I don’t want to spoil either of those stories for anyone who hasn’t read them.

A disclaimer: I am entirely self-taught in that I have never had a writing class in my life and I don’t really do well with those writing help books. So basically what I have learned has been picked up by reading a lot of books, reading a lot of fanfic, and writing a lot.

This is not so much a plot tip as General Writing Advice, but there’s an Ira Glass quotation that circulates Tumblr every so often that I really like:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I’ve certainly had this problem; I’ve spent years not writing because I’ve come up with ideas I knew I couldn’t execute to my own standards. And then I did it anyway, and eventually I got better and now I’m at a point where if I have an idea for a story it is probably something that I feel like I would enjoy if I wrote it (as opposed to “God, I can’t pull that one off, I hope someone else writes it”). It does make leaving exchange prompts kind of tricky because I think one up and then NO I WANT TO WRITE IT MYSELF. (The Jar is a Cap-IM Holiday Exchange prompt I nearly left before deciding I wanted to write it myself.)

Anyway. Plotting long stories. The big difference between a long story and a shorter story  is that you need to be conscious of the overall structure and where you are going. You know all those rising action/climax/falling action plot outlines? Take a novel you like and think about it like that. Break it down. If you want a long story that feels cohesive, you’re probably going to want to adhere to that basic structure. You don’t necessarily need to make an outline of that form – I don’t bother – but you should have in your mind the idea that three-quarters of the way through (or so) is the Big Important Scene that your story has been building towards, and then the rest is cleanup.

I am generally writing romance stories, and the tropes of the genre are such that there are often a lot of shortcuts I can take when I am trying to work out what’s going to happen, especially if these are first-time stories – the big moment is the characters declaring their love, finally getting together, and so on and so forth. So you ask yourself, okay, what are the obstacles to their love? Why didn’t they get together before? Maybe they have to learn to love each other. Maybe Steve doesn’t know Tony is Iron Man. Throw the obstacles in their path! Make them get over them!

But the reason these stories get so long on me is that that’s not usually the only plot. The other plot can be personal to the characters (say, Tony’s drinking problem) or involving the personal lives of the other characters, or, heck, maybe they even have to save the world. Basically I just… intersperse the development of both plots, and I try to make sure that every scene is furthering something: either plot or characterization. (When I am outlining the story itself, I try to keep tabs on this.)

Because these are generally romance stories, the A-plot, the one I give the most weight to, is probably going to be the romance plot, and the B-plot is going to be whatever else happens in the story. The absolute best way to join these plots together is to make them both build together and then hit their respective plot climaxes at as close to the same time as you can manage. If the B-plot is saving the world, Tony is tragically injured in the fight with supervillains, and that’s when Steve tells him he loves him. If the B-plot is personal discovery, Tony gets sober and decides he can be with Steve. Something like that.

How do I keep track of this? I used to do it in my head. I don’t recommend that part. I know some people can handle writing novels by the seat of their pants, but I work a lot better with outlines; I have a lot of abandoned novels where I basically didn’t remember what was going to happen next, and… whoops. I actually do all my outlining and writing (of long stories, anyway) in Scrivener (which is the best program I have ever spent money on). I like Scrivener because it’s set up to handle stories with a lot of ancillary research material, and furthermore it’s organized by scene, which makes a lot of sense to me.

First is the brainstorming. I like to bounce my ideas off other people when I am still in the thinking stage (like “hey, would you read a story about X?”) and then I spend a while mulling over The Scenes That It Makes My Brain Really Happy To Think About, which are usually (for me) probably the climax of the story. (This might be Steve And Tony Finally Get Together or Steve Finds Out Tony Is Iron Man or Steve Cradles Tony’s Broken Body In His Arms.) In my current WIP, it’s probably Steve Realizes He Loves Tony After All.

And then eventually I make an outline. The outline is basically a complete synopsis, scene by scene, of everything I want to happen in the story, with as much detail as I need. Sometimes there will be bits of dialogue, sometimes it will be OH FUCK SOMETHING PLOTTY HAS TO HAPPEN HERE, FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS. Because generally I will know that the non-relationship plot must advance before I know exactly how. (I revise it as I go.) The outline for the Trek AU is about 1500 words. (The outline for its sequel is 3000 but it uses more complete sentences as it was intended for other people to read.) I stick this all in the Research pane of Scrivener along with my canon notes and whatever else I need to refer to while writing. This is a good time to stop and make sure that the outline feels like a story – all the emotional beats are in the right place, there’s a good mix of A-plot and B-plot. and so on and so forth. I just squint at it and wing it but I’m sure there are various exercises you can do if you like that sort of thing.

Then I do the actual scene breakdown. Because I’m using Scrivener, it has this very cool functionality whereby every scene has an associated “notecard.” You can give each card a title, organize them in folders by chapter, reorder them, and write up whatever you want on the notecard; I fill it with a description (expanded from the outline) of what’s going to be in each scene. Sometimes if I have multiple POVs I will color-code each scene.

As for specific complex plots, let me tell you about how I came with the stories you asked about.

Living On Your Breath was easier because it was for a RBB, and the artist (Phoenix) had a few suggestions about canon, and from there I let canon help guide me to filling out the plot. The art that went with it was Tony in leather and fishnets, choking Steve out. Which is, you know, evocative. Phoenix had suggested that the plot involve mind-control (which seemed reasonable as Tony looked pretty evil in the picture) and also she wanted to know if I could write a story set in Avengers v3, which I had never read, but I was game.

So, I thought, okay, this was going to be a story where a mind-controlled Tony had somehow captured Steve and decided to choke him. How could I get a plot out of that? Well, I thought, what if the drama of the story isn’t just about Tony being villainous? What if it’s a story about kink and consent? What if maybe Steve would have wanted Tony to choke him out when he wasn’t evil? What if Tony secretly wanted that too and Steve had no idea? Well, that seemed like a decent amount of angst to me.

And that right there suggested a basic plot structure. Steve and Tony would get together at the beginning, and we would establish that Steve had these unfulfilled kinky desires, and they would be happy together but not A+ perfect because they are not talking about all their unmet needs because, let’s face it, they have communications problems. Then Tony gets kidnapped and mind-controlled, and kidnaps and tortures Steve, and he does everything Steve wants except it’s fucking terrible because, well, Steve didn’t so much want Tony the supervillain to whip him. Just regular Tony. And so the rest of the story was going to be about them healing and putting themselves back together (although getting worse before they get better) and reclaiming everything they did and admitting their secret kinky desires and having Tony choke Steve out in a truly wholesome and loving way.

I knew that there was going to have to be some kind of plot involving villains – I mean, someone had to do the kidnapping and mind control – so I went looking for obscure villains (since I’d had enough of AIM and Hydra) with a grudge against Steve and ended up, unfortunately, with the Secret Empire. They were so obscure, I told myself! Surely Marvel wasn’t ever going to use the name for something big! Ahahaha. *sobs quietly to self*

I also decided that it might be nice to have the events of canon going on as a backdrop to the story, and as soon as I read v3 I knew exactly what I was going to do because, see, I fell in love with Carol’s drinking arc. Avengers v3 starts out so sweet and the team loves each other and then… it kind of starts to fall apart. Not that they don’t love each other, but it’s apparent that several of them have Problems, and Carol’s drinking is the definition of a Problem. So I wanted to have the team start to go along perfectly and then break apart as Carol does, with Steve and Tony’s post-mind-control relationship along for the ride at the same time. Suppose it all comes to a head with Steve and Tony on the same mission that gets Carol kicked off the team? And then, well, we know Tony goes up to Seattle in canon for recovery from a fight in canon – what if, in this version, he brings Steve with him? And later on, when Carol drop-kicks Tony through a jet and finally sobers up, what if Steve is there too? So that way both Tony and Carol get to get better at the same time. Recovery arc for EVERYBODY.

Honestly I added Wanda because I figured that Carol needed SOMEBODY to be there for her (it really irritated me that the team basically just kicked her out on her own, in canon) and she and Wanda clearly like each other a lot. Having said that, about 50% of Carol’s plot is straight out of canon, dialogue included, although I played with the timing, added Wanda, put Carol in the Blue Area mission, and gave Steve and Tony a massive breakup in the middle of the mission.

The structure of this one was pretty simple – before, during, and after Steve’s captivity. Every scene in the During section was one of Steve’s days. During the After scenes I was basically trading off Steve/Tony and Carol & Wanda plot development.

Straight on till Morning was trickier to plot. For most of its imaginary life, it didn’t have a plot; it was me sitting around and thinking, “Gosh, I like the Avengers and I like Star Trek and I want to imagine the Avengers in spaaaaace.” But that wasn’t a plot. That wasn’t even anything close to an idea for a story. So it just kind of sat there for a couple years rattling around my brain. And, really, the backstory all came first, and the plot kind of sprung out of everything there had to be in order to put the backstory in play.

One day I was sitting there thinking about what the Avengers would be in the Star Trek universe, and I thought, “Well, obviously Steve is a starship captain and OH MY GOD STEVE IS A GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED SUPERHUMAN FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.” I had been thinking of the story as a complete fusion, where no one existed with their regular Marvel identities, but suddenly it occurred to me that if Steve existed in the Star Trek universe and had still been Captain America in World War II, things could get really interesting – because the Federation, bastion of diversity and tolerance, is fully prepared to hate the fuck out of you if you are genetically-engineered. Especially, and I am just guessing here, especially if you are from the twentieth century. Steve would predate Khan and the other supermen, but, well… maybe Steve was the first Augment. So that’s an interesting idea! The one universe where being Captain America would actually be reviled!

So that’s not a plot, either, really, but that’s part of a plot: Steve has a Terrible Secret. He is an Augment. What’s going to happen when Tony learns his terrible secret? Well, he’s probably going to take it pretty badly.

Steve’s backstory was pretty much a direct port of the Cap stuff plus making him frozen twice so that (1) he could have prior starship command experience and (2) I would throw off everyone who assumed that him being frozen once was the way I was translating his comics backstory. At least until the scene where Tony gets out his Cap poster, anyway.

Tony’s backstory was a little more complicated. Because the thing about an AU is, you have to ask yourself which elements of a character and their backstory are 100% essential. And the weird thing about Tony is that a lot of the things that are key components of his superhero life don’t really translate to Star Trek. Like, take Tony’s famous MCU line, “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” Welcome to the post-scarcity economy, Tony; there’s NO MONEY. That knocks out “billionaire” and “philanthropist.” “Playboy” is, let’s face it, probably also linked to “billionaire,” and for 616 Tony it gets use as basically part of his intricate layers of personal masks where he doesn’t sleep with nearly as many people as he wants you to think he does. That leaves “genius.” And we’re gonna make him a Starfleet engineer! Everyone’s a genius there!

The Iron Man suit, likewise also out. Because, yes, it’s cool, but it’s not Star Trek cool. A flying suit? Try a starship. Maybe he designs starships, I said to myself.

So what are the key qualities of Tony? His genius, his engineering aptitude, his general personality, let’s throw in his former alcoholism, and of course his Vietghanistan trauma leading to heart injury. So something happened to him on Planet Vietghanistan, obviously, and whatever it was hurt him, but it didn’t lead him to make Iron Man. But he still needed to do something heroic, but it had to be Trek-style heroic. What if he saved a bunch of his shipmates? What if he saved a bunch of his shipmates and built a ship to rescue them and Captain Yinsen died tragically in his arms? And what if Tony was so fucked up by all of this that he decided to quit Starfleet? Until, of course, he meets Steve.

This suggests an arc for Tony’s character, the same way Steve’s backstory suggested an arc for him: Tony learns to love himself, Starfleet, and Steve. Maybe not in that exact order.

And remember, Steve has A Secret. Well, that’s going to interfere with Tony learning to love him. Obviously Tony will eventually come around. So from there you can see where the major obstacle to Steve and Tony’s happiness is going to be.

The first third-to-half of this story was therefore pretty easy to write, because it was just a matter of introductions and shoving in all the backstory. Meet Tony. Meet the ship. Meet Steve. Let’s go to Starfleet Academy and learn a bit about the Prime Directive and Tony’s tragic backstory. Meet the crew. Set off on a maiden voyage. Tell Steve about Augments, watch him freak out, and watch Tony have no clue why.

And then, of course, there had to be A Plot. Every scene basically advances the worldbuilding, Steve’s character, Tony’s character, or the plot. This was also pretty easy to come up with, because it’s Star Trek, and if you want to make your Star Trek story feel like Star Trek, steal a Trek plot. Of course they beam down to a planet and meet some aliens. Then something goes terribly wrong, something bad happens to the ship, but it is all fixed just in time and they sail on. You know how it goes. There is a pre-existing structure. I had actually been joking that if I couldn’t think of anything I’d just sex pollen Steve and Tony and well… I couldn’t think of anything else. Sex pollen it was!

I think sex pollen actually works well, because it is a very Star Trek trope (quick, count all the sex pollen episodes; you might need more than one hand) and also because the absolute worst time to find out that your captain is an Augment is after you’ve been forced to sleep with him to stay alive. I figured that scene was going to be one of the super important plot moments.

I debated using a Trek alien race or a made-up race but decided to go with Skrulls, on the grounds that evil shapeshifters are also very Star Trek and also I thought maybe I could fool people into thinking I made them up as long as I didn’t bring in Veranke until after the Skrull reveal.

And then, well, the ship is in danger, Tony nearly dies (you can tell that Star Trek II is one of my favorites) sacrificing himself to save the ship, gets his heart injured again, decides while he’s dying that he was being an idiot about Steve, and lets himself actually love Steve.

Basically, it is literally several actual Star Trek plots mashed together with Captain America’s backstory and a lot of infodumping. It is honestly way simpler than it looks; there were plenty of existing models for How To Tell A Star Trek Story and I pretty much just stole them.

I hope that helps.