#my art program open with a vague wip but this is what i do in it instead adgsjkal

[ridl]

does anyone remember this iconic cutscene from moonchase

[dragonofthedepths]

29/100 (29th of June 2021)

(29/100) Written/posted for the #100daysofwriting challenge by @the-wip-project

I spent several hours today filling out a survey on my fanfiction reading habits! This was not supposed to take several hours, but my inability to answer any free form question without writing multiple paragraphs dragged it out much longer than it was supposed to be! Considering that this was done around baking, having a friend over, and finishing a drawing that according to the timer on my art program took me a cumulative 22.5 hours to complete, I figured I would just copy and paste some of my more interesting answers here for today!

Here’s the link to the survey if you want to take it yourself, apparently it’s part of some kind of collage study: 

https://robertgordonuniversity.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfiction-questionnaire

Question:

What type(s) of library/libraries do you use? What activities or purposes do you use them for?

Answer:

The local library. I go there every now and then when I’m looking for an actual book to read, I usually have what I want already in mind, but might end up picking up something new from the same section if anything particularly catches my interest. Very occasionally I grab a few reference books, usually on things like religions that are harder to find a comprehensive reference for online beneath all the sensationalism and opinions.

I almost always spend at last a couple hours there, looking through my selection and reading a chapter or two. the only reason I’ll leave without sitting down and beginning at least one book is if I’m already late for something somewhere else.

Tldr: I use my local library, I do not go very often but I take my time when I do.

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Question (fanfiction.net):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

Whenever  I get interested in a new show I’ll latch on to a concept or particular character interaction eg. Villain!hero, ensemble finds out secret, character A needs a hug, character A adopted by character B, character C & character D friendship & hurt/comfort. Sometimes (especially if it’s a lesser known thing/has a small fandom) I’ll be as vague as favorite character, timetravel, wingfic, or soulmate AU. Whatever it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* over any king of collection, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On ff.net I’ll follow the link back to the page for whatever franchise this is, then open the filter menu, select "all ratings" and begin using the filters to look for whatever character or pair of characters (seeing as looking for idea is not really possible on ff.net) interests me most in either the family, hurt/comfort, or angst genre depending on which has the most stories, unless one of them has stories in excess of 3 or 4 hundred, in which case I’ll pick whichever has the least stories. I’ll then go through the offerings, opening any story that look is interesting in a new tab. If I make it through all of that and somehow haven’t found something better to do on Ao3, then when I’m done I’ll go back to the genre filter and pick whichever had the middling number of stories, then after that the one on the opposite end of the spectrum from most to least. If at any point I’m offered more than 1,000 stories I’ll add additional filters until the results drop below 1,000, because I am not dealing with slogging through that much ff.net at once. If there is that much written for whatever I’m looking for, then either there’s some on Ao3 and I can leave, or I’m actually looking for something more specific and was just over-estimating how vague I’d need to be to get results at all. This is very methodical probably because I do not like this site and am putting up with it only to find what I’m currently looking for, I never get new ideas prompted to me or am enticed to wander off the beaten track. I don’t use ff.net very often, though still more often then I go to the library.

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Question:

Are there any search features or filters you wish fanfiction.net had for readers and searchers?

Answer:

Fanfiction.net is not a functional website, it’s a particularly shitty ghost town that is actively crumbling to pieces around its few remaining inhabitants. I it’s a hassle to read on and I only do so because I’m a fan of rare pairs, and have to take anything I can get, and because I’m a fan of a particular kind of low-brow overpowered-hero fanfiction that tends to be more common there then on Ao3 or Tumblr.

I wish it didn’t have adds in the middle of a page, every time I hit next chapter, ect.

I wish it didn’t have pointless captchas every time I  start a new session.

I wish it had a visually pleasant format for presenting the stories for you to select from. Whether they’re search bar results, the results of a filter search, stories in a collection, or stories on an author’s page. It’s the same aggressively bad format and makes it hard to tell them apart from eachother and hard to pick which one(s) I want.

I wish stories could have longer summaries. They are so short that it forces everyone to sound same-y and rushed, and if an author want to include trigger warnings they have to be even shorter.

I wish there was a way to exclude/search/mark trigger warnings.

I wish you could select more than four characters in the filters, I wish authors could TAG more than four characters.

I wish there was a way to search/mark platonic relationships instead of only romantic.

I wish there was a way to search/mark a single character in multiple separate relationships eg. [A/B] and [A/C]

I wish there was a way to search for certain tropes or cliches without relying on pure hope that either the author used part of their limited summary space to mention it, or that someone else already made a collection for that trope and managed to find at least a few (they never have all) of the fics containing it.

I wish you could copy and paste the text without having to switch to the mobile version of the website. I don’t personally know why you can’t do this on desktop but I’ve heard other people say it’s because it’s actually generated as a pdf instead of genuine text.

I wish there was a way to open the whole story in one tab instead of being forced to go through it other by chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to include author’s notes without it being part of the chapter.

I wish there was a way for authors to respond to comments without doing so in the author’s notes.

I wish the formatting wasn’t so aggressively bad as to be actively harming the quality of the story. I have found stories that were posted on both Ao3 and ff.net and read them on both websites, no differences in text, in punctuation, in anything at all, but on Ao3 it flowed much better, was much easier to read, and I’d have given a higher estimation of the author’s skill level if asked. All because it wasn’t actively being dragged down by ff.net’s formatting.

There are probably a fair few more things that I’m just not managing to think of at the moment, but considering there’s no way ff.net will ever be fixed and is in fact very likely to completely implode and die in the near future, I think this is good enough.

Sorry for the essays every time I’m allowed to write an answer but you’re asking loaded questions.

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Question (Ao3):

If possible, please explain your typical process for finding fanfiction to read.

Answer:

Whenever  I get interested in a new show I’ll latch on to a concept or particular character interaction eg. Villain!hero, ensemble finds out secret, character A needs a hug, character A adopted by character B, character C & character D friendship & hurt/comfort. Sometimes (especially if it’s a lesser known thing/has a small fandom) I’ll be as vague as favorite character, timetravel, wingfic, or soulmate AU. Whatever it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* over any king of collection, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

From there I work my way through everything that was offered, and as I do so I eventually come across new things that capture my interest, and —in general terms— follow them.

On Ao3 I’ll head back up to the top of a fic I really enjoyed and click on the tag for whatever little bit of it I enjoyed the most, and begin browsing again from there, refining with filters and following links and tags from new stories.

I will filter out reader inserts, original characters, y/n, or notps if I keep seeing too many of them in my results, but otherwise I’ll just scroll past them. Sometimes if I’ve been reading for a specific idea for a while I’ll sort by word count and begin going through it from least to most to see if there’s anything I’ve been missing because it’s not been updated recently. And sometimes if I feel like reading fanfiction but don’t have anything particular in mind I’ll just head to the Ao3 page for the main character (more reliable then a fandom tag, if a franchise exists in multiple forms of media they’ll usually each have their own tag the fanfiction will be scattered accordingly) of one of the bigger fandoms I’m in and start trawling the page for anything that looks interesting.

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Question:

Please use the box below to write any thoughts or opinions on this questionnaire or the subjects within it that you did not get the chance to share.

Answer:

On how I find fanfiction to read on websites that are not ff.net or Ao3, copy-pasted from the original all-encompassing answer I wrote before I realized you were looking for answers only about the website you’d just been talking about:

Wattpad (which I did not select when asked what websites I search for fanfiction on because I never willingly go looking there I just end up on it sometimes to my great frustration.):

Whatever idea it is that I’ve latched onto, I’ll enter it into the search bar on whatever browser I’m using, and open whatever links look most appealing in a new tab, giving preference to stories from any website except Wattpad* preference over tags or other collections, and links to Ao3 preference over links to anything else.

(*If links to Wattpad make it onto the first page of results, I’ll take whatever meager scrapings I was offer from other websites, then give up the search as a lost cause and pick a new idea as a I mourn the lack of the content I want to read. Only if I am already very attached to an idea and very desperate will I follow a link to wattpad. That website is the only one I have ever encountered worse then ff.net and it is an absolute unnavigable MESS.)

Tumblr:

If I’m on tumblr (mobile, I’ve never used tumblr on the computer but I don’t think it works the same) then once I find one thing to read that I like, I’ll begin tapping my way through the suggested posts on the bottom based on whatever looks the most interesting from what little I get to see of it. Sometimes I’ll end up on a specific blog or a specific tag, and I’ll just scroll through reading anything that looks even mildly cool regardless of whether it has anything to do with what I was originally searching for or not, until I click on a specific post for some reason (usually a “read more“), and then I’m back to navigating by suggested posts again. I tend to wander through fandoms and subfandoms a lot faster here, trading one interesting idea for the next as they’re presented to me. It’s a lot of fun and I sometimes discover completely new stuff! I’ll often end up following Authors I really like so that their stuff will end up in my feed, and this is really the only site on which I do that.

Just another couple comments on my general media consumption habits that I didn’t really see anywhere else to put:

Everything I stated about my fanfiction habits when getting into a new show applied if it’s a movie or book or game too, it’s just that 90% of the time it’s a show. My favorite movies are documentaries so I’m not sure what fanfiction for them would even look like, I prefer video essays and theories for games, and I just don’t read as many books as I used to. About half of the remaining 10% of the time is actually probably musicals.

It’s not unusual for me to have seen only three or so episodes of a show, but to have read insane amounts of fanfiction for it. I have difficulty sitting down to actually watch a show, and I usually only expend the effort for my absolute favorite series, so most of my interaction with most shows ends up being fanfiction. Getting into a new show because I came across some really good fanfiction for it is not uncommon either.

[gumnut-logic]

Understanding (pt2)

From here. Vague spoilers for 3.14. Many thanks to @vegetacide and @i-am-chidorixblossom for fielding my uncertainty and hysteria regarding this fic 😁 It is still a WIP, but it is getting there.

-o-o-o-

Knocking.

“Virgil?”

Somebody gave him a shove from behind and he groaned. God, leave me alone.

“Virgil! Are you okay?”

Now somebody was touching him. He groaned again. “G’way!”

“You’re on the floor. Did you fall? Are you hurt?”

What the hell?

Who? His brain sourced the necessary information. “Alan?” His voice croaked through an aching throat.

“Virgil, talk to me.”

He forced his eyes open and found his worried little brother surrounded by a familiar room from an unfamiliar angle.

Virgil was on the floor just inside the door of his room. He must have fallen asleep there. Augh. He didn’t have the energy for this.

“I’m okay, Allie. Must have fallen asleep.” A groan and he pushed himself upright. His whole body complained. Yeah, okay, it was the floor, it did that.

“On the floor? You sure you’re okay?”

He wasn’t. Memory flashed from the previous night and that early morning. It all sucked. “I’m good. Just tired.” He forced his brain into some kind of order and calm. “How about you? You okay?”

His little brother rolled back on his heels, his eyes on the floor. “Scott’s sick again.”

The briefest flash of concern before the dots connected. A glance at the watch he still had on revealed it was lunchtime. Scott with a hangover was not a fun experience. Grumpy and snappy.

“Keep away from him for a while. He’ll get over it.”

“Virg...it’s Daddy, isn’t it.”

A sigh that hurt. “Come here, squirt.” He held up a hand and his littlest brother darted under it and curled up beside him. Virgil buried his face in the mop of messy blond hair and squeezed. If he closed his eyes and sought his own comfort from the contact, he wasn’t going to admit it. “Everyone misses Dad, Allie. It hurts.”

��I know, it’s just Scott was yelling and John was yelling. Gordon told me to come find you.”

Oh, hell. Fantastic, just what they all needed.

A kiss to his brother’s head. “Wanna have a go on my new art program?”

Instant distraction. Bright blue eyes widened. “The one with the automatic animation?”

Virgil grinned. “Yup. Even has some stock art you can play with. I think...” He let his brother go and the boy bounced to his feet. Virgil followed a touch slower and a lot more creak. Reaching for his tablet, he grabbed his stylus and prodded it. “...yes, it has some cars you can manipulate.” A flick of the art pen and he pulled up a red racer. “Here you go.” The youngster grabbed it eagerly. “Remember, treat the equipment with respect and it will serve you well.”

Alan’s shoulders slumped and he rolled his eyes. “Yes, Virgil.” Very put-upon.

Virgil couldn’t help but grin just a little. “Sit on my bed and get a little sun. Make some vitamin D.”

“Yes, Virgil.” More sarcasm, but it was half hearted and distracted. By the sounds of it, Alan had already discovered the sound effects file and the tablet was growling.

The older brother smirked and slipped from the room. One brother amused. Three more to attend to. The smile fell from his lips.

-o-o-o-

Sure enough, as he neared the comms room, loud voices reached his ears.

“You need to give him some space.”

“I’m not the one not giving space, John. He harassed me!”

“It’s his way of coping-“

“By bugging everyone else!”

“And what, yours is better? How’s your head?”

“It’s fine.”

“Sure it is. You need to keep away from the alcohol. You’re going to give yourself a problem.”

Virgil stopped just out of sight of his brothers, getting a lay of the land before he entered the fray. He rolled his shoulders attempting to loosen up floor battered muscles.

“I’m fine.”

“You are not fine. No one in this house is fine.”

“Including you?”

“Including me.” John was standing with his back to the balcony, glaring at Scott who once again was beside their father’s desk. “I caught him with Grandma crying on his shoulder last week. They didn’t see me, and I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t let them. He is hurting as much as any of us. Have you looked at him? Really looked at him?”

Virgil winced. Grandma had had a moment. She had lost her son, after all. Scott was so busy, someone had to look after her.

“Of course, I have, but he says he is fine. He won’t let me in. He’s all about everyone else and are you okay? Can I help you? He won’t let me near him.”

“I wonder why.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re just as bad as he is! All macho, strong and resilient. Would it hurt you to get down and dirty with the rest of the family and shed a little tear?”

“How...I...Handle...My...Grief...Is...My...Business.” There was fury in every capital letter.

“It’s our business when it is not being handled at all!”

“What the hell would you know?! You hide up in that tin can as far away as possible from all of us!”

“I do my job.”

“You’re chicken ass scared!”

“THAT IS ENOUGH!” It exploded from him in a massive rush. To his absolute horror, Virgil found he was shaking. “What the hell do you think you are doing?!” His glare narrowed in on Scott. “You may be hurting, but that doesn’t give you the right to hurt others because of it!”

His eldest brother froze and paled. “Virgil, I-“

“No, you’ve said enough! Now you listen to me!” He advanced on his brother and Scott took a step back. Out the corner of his eye he registered a shocked Gordon sitting on the lounge and John even paler than Scott staring at him. “You are saying you want me to show you how I feel?” A hand, apparently his, was punctuating each word pointedly in Scott’s direction. “Dad is gone.” The simple statement hurt. “I...” A forced swallow. Get it out. “I have had to watch the man I most admire fall apart in front of me.” His voice broke on the last word. “I have seen my family collapse in grief and I...” Blood was rushing to his face. What was he doing? He couldn’t...he shouldn’t.

“Virgil?”

No!

He turned and Alan was standing at the edge of the room, tablet in hand, hair still mussed.

No, he couldn’t. Not in front of Alan. Hell, not in front of Gordon, either. What? What was he thinking?

A touch on his arm and Virgil jumped. He turned to find Scott up close and personal. And then he was being held. Scott’s arms wrapped around him, one hand on his back, the other in his hair, his head gently held against his big brother’s shoulder.

“It is going to be alright, Virgil.” Scott’s voice was rough.

What? He made to straighten up, but his brother held on to him.

“It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” Scott’s hand was rubbing circles into his back. Virgil was trembling.

“I...” But the words caught in his throat and only a sob made it past his lips. No! He shouldn’t. He tried to pull away. Resurrect his shields.

Scott hung on.

The sound of running feet on the hardwood floor and Alan collided with him, his thin arms wrapping around both his brothers.

“Virgil, it’s okay.” His little brother’s voice was higher pitched than normal and it tipped the scales.

Virgil broke.

It came from deep inside. It tore down every wall and came out in great heaving sobs. No, no, he shouldn’t, he couldn’t...

But he did.

Scott caught him, strong arms lowering him to the floor. Amongst the tears he felt hands and heard voices. Scott was repeating his mantra and someone else was also crying, but Virgil had nothing left to offer. None of his controls were responding, his plane was going down and there was nothing he could do about it.

-o-o-o-

TBC

[forestwater87]

A big box o’Gwenvid AU ideas: A is for "Aww” and “Angst” and “AAAH”

This post is fucking rad as balls, and I started thinking of fun AU ideas . . . until I remembered that I already have approximately 2 billion WIPs already and don’t necessarily know if any of these have legs as actual fics. But it was fun to think about, so here we are! This is the first of . . . presumably 26 of these? Who knows, but this post we have:

Accidental Marriage AU

In which Campbell convinces incredibly wealthy investors known for their focus on “family values” that the Camp is a sweet family business run by a husband-and-wife team of counselors. The problem, of course, is that it isn’t sweet and its head counselors aren’t married. Campbell only has enough booze to fix one of those situations. 

He’ll figure the rest out in the morning. He thinks better with a hangover, anyway.

(Yes I think this one would be awesome in Campbell’s POV. You cannot change my mind on this.)

Actor AU

Okay, real talk this would just be @whiskyarts​‘s gameshow AU. Because I kinda love the idea of Jerk!David who just pretends to be a sweetheart for the cameras. Except I would cover it with my filthy Gwenvid hands and make it shippy in that antagonistic-hatemance-eventually-turns-into-something-resembling-feelings. There would be lots of angst and snark and sparkly clothes and I would love it and probably no one else would.

Alien AU

An Interplanetary Anthropologist, Gwen, manages to land a position on the Campbell after years of education and networking and plain old hard work. She is an employee of the most impressive warship in the galaxy -- sure, it’s gone to seed a little bit in the last few decades, but it still has its shine if you look at it sideways and squint a little -- and more importantly, it’s work experience! Paid work experience . . . as a janitor.

When the Campbell picks up a POW that the ship’s commander plans to (illegally) sell to the highest bidder, Gwen decides to treat it as an opportunity to build a real-life case study on one of the universe’s rarer life forms while it’s within arm’s reach. But the more she learns about the strange, sunny alien who was his platoon’s only survivor, the more uncomfortable she is with letting him disappear into her captain’s nefarious dealings and -- 

Oh fuck, this is The Shape of Water, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve never seen The Shape of Water but I’m pretty sure that’s what this is. Fuck. Goddamn it. Fuck.

Amnesia AU

David takes a rogue bus to the . . . well, everything -- something that’s more or less routine by now -- and hits his head hard enough to knock him out for almost a full day. When he wakes up, he’s the same cheerful David the camp is used to . . . except for three strange new things:

He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing -- doesn’t, in fact, remember anything after some vague memories of childhood.

He’s completely terrified of the forest, and especially of Spooky Island.

He has no idea who Cameron Campbell is, but he’s quite positive he hates him.

Android AU

Actually @ciphernetics​ and I put this idea together a little while ago! Basically Camp Campbell has a state-of-the-art off-brand helper android named David, who is a perfect camp counselor, childcare provider, and comes equipped with the finest Forest Survival software Cameron Campbell could find for free online in half an hour.

Gwen, the new (requisite human) hire, hasn’t ever really interacted with androids, and doesn’t especially want to now. David is used to the distrust, even outright hostility -- very few of the campers seem to like him, and he knows that his presence can be unsettling to humans, and look, it isn’t a D:BH AU okay? It just looks like one, and acts like one. And is one.

Angel/Demon AU

Um the perfect Angel/Demon AU literally already exists, but they only wrote one chapter back in 2017 and never updated, and that makes me absurdly sad. Regardless, David being very bad at being a demon and Gwen being very bad at being an angel is the ideal setup for this kind of AU, in my humble opinion. 

However, David being an angel trying to reform his fallen ABFEL (angel buddy for eternal life!), who probably became a demon over something stupid and probably horny, also sounds extremely cute. They’re still friends, even though that is against literally all of the rules, and they secretly meet and hang out. David is convinced he can bring her around, and Gwen insists that she hates having him hanging off her nonexistent wings all the time. 

Honestly, probably neither of those things are true. Gwen wasn’t cut out for heaven -- and probably, neither is David.

Apocalypse AU

Cameron Campbell was probably doing something dangerously stupid in the hopes it could make him money. That, or the Quartermaster was doing something dangerous for reasons only he could ever understand. Hell, maybe that’s what that weird Daniel guy’s cult was trying to do. Whoever was doing what, they ripped a hole in their dimension at the bottom of Lake Lilac, and all sorts of awful things start creeping through.

There were signs, of course -- that weird fish-monster certainly didn’t come in through customs -- but an inopportune explosion, or wayward firework, or the rumblings of Sleepy Peak Peak, or something ripped a hole in the fabric of reality big enough for Lovecraftian monsters to start crawling through. There’s no stopping it. Really, there’s no chance of even fighting it. 

The second the rift opens, the story becomes one of just trying to stay out from under the Elder Gods’ feet.

Arranged Marriage AU

I think the easiest way to make this one work is by making either David or Gwen Campbell’s actual biological child -- maybe an heir, albeit to a highly illegal fortune and a mountain of credit card debt. But Campbell gets in trouble, the kind of trouble where he’s gambled everything and the only collateral he has left is a kid he got saddled with because their mother had better lawyers. A kid he’s been more than happy to put to work for the last 20-something years, who happens to have caught the eye of a ludicrously wealthy magnate -- not for her own sake (though Campbell would’ve been open to that too) -- but for her child, one she loves more than anything and keeps carefully shut away until the Right Person comes along.

His kid isn’t necessarily the right person, but for the first time in his life Cameron Campbell has a genuine treasure on his hands.

And, like all the fake treasures he’s passed off over the years, he just has to find a way to shine them up and make him a fortune.

Artist AU

Gwen is a starving artist living in a rat-infested hovel in the city, scraping by on a series of uninspired landscapes she paints on postcards and the goodwill of friends, family, and significant others. One day, a bright young man bounces up to her “studio” (it’s a cardboard box outside the park) and tells her excitedly that he’s been looking for her for weeks; he thinks her postcards are the most beautiful things he’s ever seen, and he would like to know if she’d be interested in moving down to a cabin by the lake. He runs a summer camp, he explains, and he knows they’d all be honored if she would teach them art lessons -- and of course paint in her spare time! The views are indescribable, and he’s sure she’ll have no shortage of inspiration.

She weighs the cost of what little artistic dignity she has remaining against room, board, and a steady paycheck for three months, and takes the job immediately.

Art Student AU

Put them in an art college -- maybe condense the ages so that the campers are like, younger students? -- and have Gwen as the Serious Art Student who cares a lot about theory and form and doing things right, and she’s constantly irritated by her classmate David, who sits at the same table as her and has declared them art buddies, and is convinced that the point of art is just to have fun and do your best! Maybe force them to do a group project together and really see them clash.

(Alternatively, there is the infinitely more shameless route of one being an art student and the other being a newd model for figure drawing. I am obviously much too classy to ever insinuate such a thing, but if someone was really looking for a way to write smuht . . . it’s sitting right there. On a table. nekkid. I HAVE TO CHANGE THE SPELLING TO MAKE THIS GO IN THE TAGS ARE YOU KIDDING ME)

Athlete AU

There are 4 major ways this one can go, I feel like:

Basically HSM: Gwen is a small part in her school’s musical (techie, maybe, or the orchestra) and lanky jock David -- which is the most hilarious phrase ever but he’s probably a runner or tennis player, something light on muscles and heavy on speed and springiness -- who’s well-mannered and cheerful but not the brightest, is put into the show as an extra-credit way to bump up his GPA so he can keep sporting his sports, and it turns out he’s both very good at and super enthusiastic about it.

A little like HSM, but as grown-ups: Gwen is the head of the drama/art department, which has just faced heavy cuts to support the superstar sports program, and she furiously storms over to the head coach’s office to let him know exactly what she thinks about him and his stupid meathead jocks. Of course, when the man who opens the door is a sweetheart beanpole with big eyes who already knows her name, she finds it hard to keep up her righteous indignation. And when it turns out that he was completely ignorant of the hit her department took from the budget cuts (or maybe not ignorant, just terminally oblivious) and is almost as upset as she is to hear about it, she’s forced to reconsider everything she’d assumed about Coach Greenwood; maybe he’s not the enemy after all, but someone with whom she can formulate a new battle plan.

Reporter/Famous Athlete AU: Either Gwen is a professional sportsball person and David is the shy, bumbling photographer eager to prove himself, or she’s the plucky, intrepid reporter and David is a good-natured professional athlete who she’s determined to interview.

Teammates AU: Professional or amateur sports team, and they’re just trying to scrape their way out of the bottom of the league without killing each other. 

Author AU

There are a lot of potential interpretations of this AU, but my personal favorite is Gwen as a novelist with two distinctly differing careers: as G. E. Santos, the high-concept writer whose books are critical darlings in the maybe 3 publications that care about such things but whose sales can’t quite crack the triple digits; and as Annabelle Elizabeth, whose steamy erotica regularly tops the bestseller lists and is reviled by all of G. E.’s colleagues as “populist genre trash.” 

The only person alive who knows about her Jekyll-and-Hyde author personas (besides her older sister Audree, who plays the part of charismatic and sensual Annabelle flawlessly) is her editor, David. He’s an odd choice, as her colleagues in both fields have pointed out -- reading her romance novels with his pen in one hand and the other covering his eyes, peeking through his fingers to write tremulous notes in the margins; stumbling through her ponderous literary works with a dictionary in his lap and his tongue between his teeth, poring through them like he’s learning a new language -- but he’s the only person Gwen will allow to touch her writing. 

Maybe it’s because he always seems like her biggest fan. Maybe it’s because she’s known him since they were at a summer camp together years ago. Maybe it’s because he believes in her in a way no one else does -- in a way she absolutely doesn’t believe in herself.

David is, for reasons she’s not entirely sure how to explain even to herself, the only person she trusts.

Avian (Bird People) AU

Centuries ago, it was said, avians were a rarity, an aberrant mutation to be locked up and intently studied but never trusted. Some people thought they were antichrists, a sign of the end times, when all normal humans would be destroyed and only the strange bird-people would remain.

In a way, maybe they were. Because when the earth’s crust ripped open and flooded the planet with magma and boiling water miles deep, avians were the only ones who could take to the sky.

Not all of them, certainly. In fact, most were locked up in detention centers and laboratories when the Swamp formed, and were unable to escape in time. Considering the people who could get to high enough elevations to escape the deluge, there were decades afterwards where the decimated human population outnumbered the avian one. Those were periods of tension, outright war and tentative alliances -- even romances, the kinds of great love stories that dragged both avian and human populations a few generations along when one or both of them should’ve died out.

That was over two hundred years ago, however. Now the Swamp is a murky expanse of scalding water and the boiled remains of civilization transformed into unrecognizable muck, with islands of “land” cobbled out of what remains. This is where the avians live, now. And humans don’t live anywhere, not anymore.

At least . . . that was what they thought.

[yaz-the-spaz]

WIP MEME

was tagged by the lovely @beautifulkingzayn -- can’t wait to read all the things you’re working on! (that stripper!zayn fic and the blue is warmest color au sound especially interesting!)

the rules are thus: list all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, whatever.

oh god.

so. i have a shit ton of things i’m working on simultaneously... 

(it’s a tiny part of the reason, among many others, that i take such long breaks from the twelve fic cause half the time i get caught up working on other shit and then i’m like wait no gotta get back to twelve it’s been way too long lol smh)

but anyway the main thing at the moment, as many of you all know and as i’ll probably ramble on about for way too long is the twelve fic, which is sort of a winter soldier au, or at least that’s what it was inspired by anyway but it’s kind of deviated so much from that and taken on such a life of its own at this point that idk if it can even really still be considered an au of that verse anymore but it features zayn as a brainwashed assassin who goes by the name twelve after being kidnapped and having all of his memories wiped when he was a kid. it’s super triggery and basically involves every bad or horrible thing you could imagine happening to a person happening to zayn at some point until (by chance) he encounters liam, his childhood best friend, who he doesn’t remember in the middle of a bank heist and then later gets assigned to monitor liam b/c the person behind the whole brainwashing child assassin program, aka the director, is a sick fuck. cue liam freaking out and trying to do everything he can to help zayn but having no clue what he’s doing and the other boys finding out and pitching in to help too, along with some interesting side characters both original and non-original. okay i’ve gone on about this fic long enough, onward to the mountain of other ficlets i’m working on smdh…

a sex pollen fic set in 2015 (shortly after zayn left the band) wherein liam gets drugged (sort of) by a fan while out and about in LA with zayn and thinks he’s just coming down with something/getting sick till they get back to zayn’s house and liam ends up begging zayn to fuck him while zayn tries to be the good guy and resist and not take advantage of a naked, drugged out liam

a peter pan ziam/ot5 au featuring zayn as peter, liam as wendy, harry, louis & niall as the lost boys, little mix as fairies, simon as captain hook, and dan wooton (ugh sorry i fucking hate his name so much) as smee (also a name i hate so it works lol), still debating on the mermaids…might make one of them t-swift and maybe throw kendall and gigi in too (and possibly throw in cheryl as part of hook/simon’s pirate crew idk?)…and i also haven’t settled on anyone for tiger lily yet either but i’m open to suggestions for that too if anyone wants to throw someone’s name in the hat. anyway it should be a wild ride if i ever finish it, but got writer’s block shortly after writing the first few scenes and tried to come back to it twice but just couldn’t figure out where to go from where i left off so we shall see…

what else? um…a super angsty bottom liam bdsm ziam fic set during the wwa tour

a drabble wherein liam has a secret voice kink and gets off to zayn’s m.o.m album when he’s home alone

a weird ass fairly oddparents inspired au where liam is basically timmy and zayn keeps coming home to find new stuff in their house and vague explanations as to where they came from (should be posted soon i think)

part three of my outlaws series, which is a ziam prohibition era au series with lots of friendly ot5 feels and some struggles with period-typical homophobia and racism, featuring zayn as a bad boy bootlegger, liam as a good church-going small town boy (at first anyway), louis as a pimp, and niall and harry as his rent boys; in the part i’m currently working, part three, zayn and liam end up going back to liam’s hometown and liam has to grapple with the demons he left behind, including facing his parents (mainly just his mom) who he hasn’t seen in over two years and some of the shitty townsfolk he used to be friends with

there’s also a half-finished ziam five times plus one drabble that got shortened to a four times plus one (and honestly may end up getting shortened to three plus one just so I can get off my ass and finish it because it’s been half done for going on like eight months now and it’s honestly ridiculous smh) but anyway it was originally supposed be the five/four times zayn and liam woke up in bed together and it didn’t mean anything/was just friendly (supposedly) and the one time it meant more

and then there’s the main one that’s taking up my time lately (besides the twelve fic) and that i’m hoping to be ready to start posting soon as well, a slave!liam ot5 fic where the other four come home to their shared flat to find a box with a live boy inside (liam) sent to them by way of a secret organization that calls themselves modest and deals in underground human trafficking, training people to be servants and then shipping them off to groups of people/families whose needs they feel the slave’s skills would match best…it shares a lot of similarities with my twelve fic (in terms of the whole forced servitude thing, brainwashing, and a secret underground org that deals in kidnapping and human trafficking and monitoring people and all that) which was completely unintentional because i actually started writing it around like three years ago now and had completely forgotten about it up until a few months ago when i found it again at the bottom of one of my folders while in the middle of working on twelve and was like holy shit why do i keep writing things like this lmao but then decided to continue it anyway and i’ve been working on it piecemeal ever since and not sure when it’ll be ready to post cause the beginning still needs a lot of work, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer cause I’m really curious and excited to see what people think of it and am kind of anxious/antsy to post it lol

oh and i also have an original fic i’ve been working on kind of piecemeal too, a super angsty fic about an incubus who hates being an incubus and basically tortures himself with sleep deprivation to keep himself from using his powers while also trying to deal with the trials of high school, his abusive father, his asshole of a step-brother (who’s also a siren) and being gay, but ends up falling in love and being forced to kind of come to terms with himself…also kind of delves into what makes someone a monster and how we perceive and define ourselves, and the whole monsters vs. humans debate and which ones are the “real” monsters, etc.

so yeah that’s pretty much it for the most part but i do also have a whole doc full of plot bunnies for like a million other fics (mostly ziam and ot5, but also a few original ones) that may at some point in the future get fleshed out and posted…if i ever get around to finishing the ones i listed here first…le sigh i am a problem child...so sorry this dragged on as long as it did but hopefully out there finds these at least mildly interesting and isn’t completely put off by the fucking dissertation i just wrote about my stupid wip’s

anyway, thanks again @beautifulkingzayn for the tag! tagging @doveziam, @zipplekink, @wlwharrie, and @ohthathurt and i know there’s probably a bunch of other people i could tag but my brain is farting at the moment and i can’t think of anyone else, if anyone sees this though (if anyone even bothers to read it lol) and feels up to joining in even if you weren’t tagged, feel free to participate! i’d love to see what everyone else is working on! (and apologies if you’ve already been tagged or just don’t feel up to doing this)

[captusmomentum]

Works in Progress

Since @feynites posted a lil wip snippet of LG and opened it up to anyone I figure why not post a snippet from my own shitty fic that’s trapped in development hell.

So here’s some of AMD chap 3 for anyone who’s interested!

First things first on Inanallas' list of things to do was getting Solas settled in his new apartment and then getting him things he'd need, like toiletries, food, and more clothes. They left the office a few hours after they'd arrived to head over to the apartment building to sort things out there, get his key and give it a look over, seeing what they needed to buy. It was a pretty straight forward event since they'd worked out the bulk of it beforehand, he was in the same building as most of them, same floor as Dorian, Merrill and Professor Hightower.

The apartment itself was nothing to write home about, pre-furnished with the basics and small. Like the rest of the structure it had all the signs of a very old building that had been converted and modernized over the years. Visible pipes with decades of paint on them, a radiator that didn't do anything anymore, visible ductwork that did. A small kitchen inside a modest main living area, tolerably sized bathroom and a glorified alcove they were calling a bedroom.

He had no problem with any of it, it was functional and intended to be temporary and he'd certainly lived in worse places. He was somewhat looking forward to the opportunity to explore some of the newer elements in his own time. After the first look around the place he leaned idly on the wall. Inanallas pulled a small rectangular object from a hidden pocket in her skirt, touched some part of its black surface and an image of a wolf appeared-- only to be swiftly replaced by white, then something else.

His brow furrowed and he moved to lean over her shoulder to get a better look. "What is that?"

She looked up at him, then back down at the device, now white again.

"This? Oh it's um…." She bit her lip as she tried to suss out a description. "Well— how is your common? Should I talk in Elvhen?"

Solas shook his head. "In common first, please. I need to improve. You can use Elvhen if needed after."

She heaved a breath out and looked back down at the thing in her hand. He had noticed the tattoos before, but in the light of day and at this proximity without so much movement he could see them much better. Each hand appeared to have rings with smaller circles at their circle on back and palm while each finger had runes he recognized in the space above the knuckle. The runes were used for supplementing accuracy, aim and reach— not something he'd expected to see on a girl like her. Perhaps there were more conflicts than he anticipated at this time?

"Well, it's called a smartphone, you can use them to talk to people far away, you can also write to them. They have other things like notepads and games and math stuff and alarms and whatever." She shrugged, "They're pretty useful."

He watched her pull up examples as she talked, then hummed in understanding. "I should get one then…"

"Oh! Yeah! Right! Good catch, I'll add that to the list."

She opened up one of the functions and tapped out 'Phone' on the little alphabet that appeared.

"Okay so, phone. What else? Food, clothes, bathroom stuff, that's uh—"

Her slight fingers flew over the screen as the list grew, he was pleased to see he could read all of it, though the meanings of some of the words eluded him.

"Books," He offered "Histories, pens, notebooks, a clock? They have provided much of the base necessities it seems."

She looked up at him incredulously, mouthing 'base necessities'. "And you thought your common was bad?"

He shrugs. "I've had time to practice, but the language has changed over time and there are places I lack words completely. Generally in more recent or less common areas."

She eyes him in what he hopes is playful suspicion and not actual suspicion.  "Uh-huh. Sure. Well, we've got a lot of books and things at the office so unless you've got some specific things you'd like to pick up that we probably don't have to do that but I guess we can browse a bookstore—"   

She gasps suddenly and convulsively whips her hands together above her breast, knocking herself in the chin with her phone as she looks up at him wide eyed. Solas jerks a little, taken aback by the suddenness of her change of  tact.

"We should get you a computer!" she breathes.

His brow furrows. "A what?"

"A computer! Or—Well, a laptop really, a desktop wouldn't be practical at the moment. But, um, they're like phones but bigger? Better for writing, more space and easier to read on, they can also run things phones can't. A computer would make researching and all that a lot easier."

He takes a moment to make sure he's caught it all, he's not used to listening to people talk so fast and tries to imagine what on earth that would look like. "That certainly does sound useful, it's called a 'laptop'?"  

"Yeah, oh! I have mine on me, here—" She slips her phone back into the invisible pocket she'd pulled it from and opens up her bulging satchel, reaching in and pulling from it a thin, brightly colored something.

She shifts her grip on it with practiced ease and opens it up, revealing a screen and series of buttons with the common alphabet and numbers on them.  He immediately feels a rush of interest and vague recognition, certain he's seen devices that must be the predecessors to this, their basic arrangements are similar, though he notes this one seems to lack some of the other elements he'd seen with those other machines. Perhaps they were deemed no longer necessary? Or maybe consolidated into this considerably more compact form?

The colorful dalish design work on the exterior seems to be a clip-on carapace (an addition of her own then, he assumes) the spring green overlay on the buttons was modification as well. He glanced briefly at a note stuck to the small area in front of the alphabet and gave up on reading it the instant he saw the absolutely abysmal handwriting.

The hand that was not holding it up enters some sort of password and the screen shifts from diffused color to something that looks like a page from a book, large sections of text with the occasional image. This too is somewhat familiar he thinks, he's certain he's at least seen it once in the Fade.

Inanallas cursed softly, and quickly made the current page vanish, replacing it with another, more text heavy page. He raised a brow, looking at her briefly. Which she pointedly ignored and continued on.

"So this is a webpage, they're like little pockets of whatever people want to put there on the internet, which like a great big collection of whatever that anyone with a connection can get into. One of the things that's so great about it there are loads of databases—libraries— with lots of info on them. Some are like this one, totally free and open to everyone, and some aren't. This'll be super handy when you're looking into things, though it can also be kind of a nightmare. But internet safety can wait."

She uses the odd patch he'd been wondering the purpose of to move a small arrow across the screen and vanishes this page as well, revealing a large amount of mess over what looks like a very nice illustration of wolves or dogs, maybe both. She clicks on something else and something with incomplete writing pops up.

"You can write things like books and essays on it without mountains of paper, and some programs for it have lots of helpful features like easy citation or research organization. There are other things that are good for making or touching up art, you can listen to and organize music, store things you find and like. We have lots of programs for work that are science-y and archeology-y and yeah…"

She shrugs and it's that motion that makes them both realize how close he'd gotten in his quest to look more intently at the screen. They weren't touching, but he was leaning heavily over her shoulder, his head almost level with hers. He rose and took a step back, lacing his fingers in front of him.

"You're right. It certainly does seem like a prudent purchase."

"Great, I'll add it to the list. We can pick one up when we get you a phone…" She said distractedly, working at stuffing her laptop back into her heaving bag.

When she finally managed it she pulled her phone back out to do as she'd said and looked over what they'd come up with so far.

"Welp, I can't really think of anything else, this looks pretty good. We can always pick up more stuff later if we realize you need it." She looked at him. "Let's get going then."

Solas held the door for her and then exited himself, locking his new lodgings behind them. He was feeling more confident with where he stood now, he had a close ally and a foothold in this new world, not to mention his common was better than he'd originally guessed. Either the language had not changed much over the years or he'd observed more recent memories than he'd thought. Still, he was somewhat regretting have spent much of his time exploring less current events in the Fade because he really was quite certain once they hit the right vein of topics he'd be completely out of his depth with the language.