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#my lord these two really are my TOP OTP how has I written so little for them????
slippinmickeys · 5 months
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Twenty questions for fanfic writers
I was tagged by @agent-troi and @randomfoggytiger Thanks for the tag, guys!
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
53
2. What's your total AO3 word count?
712,000 exactly, which is sort of creepy?
3. What fandoms do you write for?
The X-Files mainly, though a million years ago I wrote two fics for JAG, and technically, I have a His Dark Materials fic (but it's an XF crossover)
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
The Mesas of Deuteronilus Mensae
Prompt Drabble Collection
The Annapolis Grant
Three Part Harmony
A Companion Unobtrusive
5. Do you respond to comments?
I try to! Comments are the only payment fanfic writers get, and it's an incredibly valuable and underrated currency. Fanfiction as a community is one of the most generous you'll find, and I'm incredibly proud to be a part of this particular one.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Oh man, probably La Comtesse de Saint-Germain.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
In this day and age I feel like we deal with enough shit, so I try to end most of my fics happily. I think A Gem-Like Flame probably has the most uplifting happy ending, but then, I'm a sports nerd.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
I haven't yet.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
Um, probably pretty vanilla het MSR. No shame.
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?
I've only written one, but it turned out really well, I thought. It's an X-Files/His Dark Materials novella-length crossover that takes place in Lyra's world, pre-Lyra, called Out of the Little Grove.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Anyone who steals my fic is going to catch these hands.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Yes, a couple of years ago someone asked if they could translate one of my fics to Russian. It's out there somewhere.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
I jumped in and helped @monikafilefan get Five Years and a Lifetime over the line for a fic exchange a couple of years ago. A fun, collaborative experience, that was like 85% Monika. It's a great fic, check it out if you haven't!
14. What’s your all time favorite ship?
Mulder & Scully are my OTP. Always and forever.
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
I'd love to finish Madam Scully's Spiritual Services, Inc., it's an AU where Scully works for her sister's Psychic Boutique while prepping for med school. Scully ends up being actually psychic and she helps newly minted FBI agent Fox Mulder solve a series of murders. I have it almost completely plotted (except for the nitty-gritty hard stuff), but I don't think I'll ever get it done, sadly. It's just too big a story to tackle with where I am in my life. Though I never say never.
16. What are your writing strengths?
I'm decent at dialogue, have a pretty firm grasp on plotting, and, I hope characterization.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
My character work is probably my weak spot, which is why I have so much fun writing fanfic--the character work is already done, I just get to play around a world where everybody already knows the characters.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
When I do it, I hope like hell that I'm doing it right. I think it's necessary for some stories and you just hope you're properly respecting a language you don't speak.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
The X-Files, in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and ninety eight.
20. Favorite fic you’ve written?
It's a toss up between Proof of Life, an AU where CNN conflict reporter Dana Scully is kidnapped and imprisoned with fellow kidnap victim and photojournalist Fox Mulder, and they, you know, fall in love. And North of Zero, a post-col novel where Mulder and Scully get William back and have to save the world. The one I totally pantsed (made up as I went along), and it came together like alchemy. I love that story. If you don't like AU, you'd like Proof of Life. If you don't like post-colonization stories, you'd like North of Zero. I don't always like everything I've written after I'm done writing it (a writer's life), but I'm incredibly proud of both of those fics.
Tagging @monikafilefan because she's already tagged, and anyone else who wants to do this!
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strangefellows · 2 years
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Gilgamesh, Cu, Emiya, Robin Hood, Merlin, and Roman
Answered for Gil, Cu, and Roman so!
favorite thing about them
Emiya: EVERYTHING? He's so intrinsically My Type that it's painful. But if I had to pick something it's how he still manages to hold onto a tiny spark of who he used to be, the smallest flicker of his old ideals and hope and joy, amid the crushing weight of existential despair and apathy his life has ended up.
Robin: His EXISTENCE; but no, really, the way they've written who and what he is kills me, I love how he's handled and I love this idea of this forgotten boy who took the name Robin Hood, one of many faceless outlaws, becoming the face of that existence rather than any real "named singular person" Robin Hood like Loxley or Huntingdon or anyone we know.
Merlin: I love how he's handled as well, he's so inhumanly human and I love how he loves Artoria and feels so guilty but tricks himself into thinking he doesn't feel at all, but it's so obviously a lie, I love how he loves watching us, he's such an interesting take on the character.
least favorite thing about them
Emiya: I'm going to fucking KILL this stupid idiot sometimes for how absolutely ridiculously unhealthy his self-loathing got in UBW, like, you dumb moron.
Robin: How little screentime he gets and how he ended up a butt monkey for most of CCC, really.
Merlin: I'm going to beat him with a stick for his weird pervy antics sometimes, I really am.
favorite line
Emiya:
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Robin: His little conversation with Dan after you beat him in Extra slays me, but I also love his "Tree of mourning, bare thy fangs!" bit.
Merlin: His speech in Babylonia about loving to watch humans and the bit at the end where he talks about how much he loves watching us.
brOTP
Emiya: Gil and Cu for absolute sure, but he and Rin are awful besties I love them. He and my Master OC too.
Robin: He and my Master OC, but I love him and Sanson's dynamic in Salem and I think him and Billy's friendship is so cute too.
Merlin: He and Every Single Knight, okay.
OTP
Emiya: ....I don't know if I ship him romantically with anyone? MAYBE Artoria? Let this man be ace and have a nap, preferably on top of his two idiot best friends.
Robin: Robin and Cu absolutely.
Merlin: Merlin/Romani all the way.
nOTP
Emiya: As I've mentioned before, I'm not the biggest fan of him and Cu, but generally I really don't ship him romantically with anyone at all, so.
Robin: .....god do I want to know what horrors lie out there?
Merlin: While it's not a NOTP, I don't really ship him and Oberon.
random headcanon
Emiya: Part of him really, really regrets not getting to go to normal person college, he would have majored in mechanical engineering. This is also the part of him that is a closet shonen manga nerd.
Robin: Don't let him lie to you, he died at 19. He's a bit self-conscious of this fact sometimes because he doesn't want people to pity him or give him shit.
Merlin: He constantly lowkey smells like flowers, though specifically what kind varies person to person because of his Charm Person abilities. To people unaffected by that part of his magic, he smells of a field of wildflowers.
unpopular opinion
Emiya: I love seeing him being happy and dorky and he should get to have that more often.
Robin: Uh....I'm not sure of too many opinions on him, actually?
Merlin: Genuinely I like him a lot, he's not as annoying or obnoxious as some people think he is.
song i associate with them
Emiya: Listen, I have it on a lot of mixes, but this one is still such a good song for him.
Robin: Don't fucking @ me, this song plays in my head on loop half the time because of Robin.
Merlin: This one is a big Merlin song for me, honestly.
favorite picture of them
Emiya: No matter what happens this bit from UBW is my favorite image of him of all time.
Robin: Lord, this one is so, so pretty...
Merlin: There's a few lovely pieces of art by Taiki but this one's by far my favorite.
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rotzaprachim · 7 years
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Kanej Modern Occult Detective AU
For the amazing Isabelle @pivoinesaturnienne who requested ‘Inej and Kaz in a modern au pls 👏🏼☺️’ 
Based roughly on the episode and a half I have seen of Lucifer 
1. Kazuya Brekker was born in the 1600′s, the son of a Japanese woman and a Dutch merchant. His mother saw something chaotic in his dark eyes and named him for the peace she hoped he’d acquire instead. Both of his parents died when he was young, and he was primarily raised by his half brother Jordie. They’re living in Amsterdam and hustling at the trade exchange (though Kaz has figured out how to route large chunks of VOC guilden into his personal accounts, but damn those bastards deserve it) when the city is smashed with an epidemic. He dies, and then comes back to life as . ..  something a little more than human. 
2. Kaz basically spends the next 400 years as a literal demon- flitting between parallel realms (he’s always felt like a member of two worlds anyway), accumulating ridiculous amounts of cash, and holding a hell of a lot of grudges. For some theological mumbo-jumbo reasons I don’t feel like figuring out, Kaz ends up stranded in modern day New York City, without the benefit of his usual demonic powers. 
3. Inej Ghafa runs a private investigation firm in Queens. She takes almost any clients who need her, and resultantly barely makes enough to keep the lights on. (There’s one person who drags her home from the office and makes sure she eats a meal that’s not ramen, stale bagels, or instant coffee, and that’s her room mate Nina.) 
She’s Tamil Catholic and actively practicing. 
She’s also still super close to her family, and treks out to New Jersey on Sundays to go to Mass and lunch with them. 
On the whole she really likes her job. It can be difficult and tiring, and it’s impossible to be an investigator and not constantly, furiously angry with the institutionalised inequalities of the Justice System, but usually she feels like she’s doing something that helps others. Usually. 
It’s on a grey Thursday morning she meets Kaz. She doesn’t really know what the GQ model, or whatever the hell he is, is doing in her office, but she’s not exactly going to complain, if only for the pure aesthetic appreciation. Still, she feels acutely aware of the knife she has hidden in her desk drawer.
He stands sort of awkwardly at the door until she gestures for him to sit down.
“I can’t pay a temp right now,” she says evenly, even though this guy looks more one of the Wall Street up-and-comings whose corporation deals her eviction notice than the kind of people who usually visit her office, with the Tamil-language signs out front and cigarrettes-and-old-coffee smell that’s been stuck to the place since before she got here. 
He leans across the table. He has very dark eyes and God probably drew the lines of his face with a ruler. Inej doesn’t know much about men’s fashion but the textured, grey wool coat he’s wearing looks like it cost more than several months rent for her. He has a raspy-but-smooth voice (like, a whiskey commercial level raspy-but-smooth voice) in an accent she can’t quite place.
“Luckily for you, my services are free.” 
(Later, watching the glittering, flickering gold map of New York- “New Amsterdam,” as it always will be to him, although maybe he just likes having “dam” in the name- he can’t stop thinking about her. Why did he choose her struggling PI office as the base of his mandatory redemption? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he feels like he’s been pulled underwater without knowing it and he can no longer see the surface.) 
4. He may have lost most of his powers but he does manage to tap into his accounts, which are demonstrative of four hundred years of investing, schmoozing, and outright stealing. He’s always been better at aquiring money than spending it- that always felt like some unbreachable loss of control- so he decides to finally dish some out. Her rent is paid off for the next six months and replaces the tea kettle that barely works with a fancy Italian model. one day when they need to go on a bit of a road trip upstate to find a cheating husband, he greets her outside the office with a to go cup of that really fancy hot chocolate (house made marshmallows and all) and a ‘60′s Chevrolet Corvette. 
(He keeps the car. it’s a nice car, timeless and simultaneously restrained and vulgar. His style.) 
Inej, for the most part, is super worried that he’s connected to some kind of organised crime. It’s Nina who chills her out a bit, using the talent she’s always had for knowing when people are telling the truth or not. (It’s in their heartbeats.) And she knows that Kaz in general is shady AF, but she also knows he won’t bring any harm to Inej. 
5. TOGETHER!!! THEY! SOLVE! CRIMES!!! AND BRING JUSTICE TO NEW YORK! Like honestly Dream Team material right here. They solve a mixture of regular and occult cases. Inej is sharp, focused, and hyperaware of details, not to mention extremely driven in her mission. Kaz is in general utterly ruthless, but at least now it’s directed to a good cause. 
There’s an incident where they have to infiltrate a shady party to find evidence against Jan Van Eyck, a particularly corrupt developer. This of course involves wearing formalwear and going undercover as Dr. and Mr. Selvaraj (Of course!). And it involves Inej wearing a silver-white gown with embroidered flowers and a pearl headband with her long, straight hair down around her bare shoulders. 
(Needless to say, she turns a lot of heads.)
Afterwards, with the ballroom up in flames and Van Eyck in handcuffs, Kaz and Inej stand outside the convention centre. Inej is swapping into a pair of flats, heels dangling from one hand.
“So.” She says.
“So.” He repeats. 
“My room mate and I are working our way through trying every takeout option with a delivery charge of less than a dollar in the vicinity of our apartment.” 
“Umm hmmm.” 
Kaz tried to focus on the holding laundromat sign across the street instead of Inej, how luminous she was in the reflections of the flashing red-and-blue squad car lights. 
“And we’re halfway through the new season of Peaky Blinders. And we won’t rewind to the beginning.” 
“Uh huh.” It took a lot of mental concentration for him to read out “M-O-E’S P-A-Y A-N-D W-A-S-H” instead of focusing on her, the flutter of her eyelashes and the way she was biting her lip right now, like she usually did when considering a decision. 
“So, you could, you know, join us.” 
“Join you?” 
“Me and Nina. Watching Peaky Blinders. Probably going to order in adobo and lechon, because Nina’s finishing a double shift and she says she needs deep fried pork to recuperate.” It was going out on a limb, and Inej felt winded after putting the option in the open, like she’d run a race in her ballgown. 
“Me? Go with . .. you? To your apartment?” 
Goddamn it. Kaz knew from the way his face was burning up and the way she was smiling that his face blushing something mighty. 
“Yeah, genius. Come back with me.” 
He offered his arm like a true gentleman as they exited the scene of (not really their) crime.
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dangermousie · 3 years
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Mousie’s absolutely subjective, very biased Top 10 web novels list
Please note that this is hardly aiming to be objective, if one can even be properly objective about a work of fiction. It is 110% based on my preferences, which means this list is heavy on the angst and has nothing set in the modern day. It is also heavily danmei-centric, even though I read way more het romance than danmei, because for whatever reason, most of the danmei I’ve read has been insanely good.
10. Return of the Swallow - one of the two non-danmeis on this list. Smart and nuanced and with a large cast of characters. Our heroine is a long-lost daughter of the family that is brought back in and has to cope with familial struggles, crazy royals, court intrigue, invasion et al. It’s SO GOOD! There is romance with the sexy smart enemy general but honestly, it’s the heroine that is the main selling point for me.
9. Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - the only other non-danmei novel on this list, this was my very first web novel and what drew me into this insanity. This is just a ton of fun, probably the lightest novel on this list, not an ounce of angst to be found. But it’s hilarious and features competent heroine and tsundere hero and I will always love it for opening a new world to me. Anyway, our heroine transmigrates into the novel as the female lead. Unlike the original lead though she doesn’t want to seek adventures and angst - she just wants to comfortably live with the wealthy, nice husband heroine has. Alas, said husband is no longer nice since he has previously lived this story where he was betrayed by FL and then transmigrated/reincarnated into the past. Oh well, the heroine opens up businesses and makes friends. And eventually, her husband realizes his wife is way different this time around. This actually doesn’t have much romance, not until close to the end, but this is so fun I don’t care.
8. Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)
7. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) - oh come on, how are you even on this tumblr if you don’t know MDZS/The Untamed? This was my very first danmei and it’s so much fun! I love everything about it - the unreliable narrator, the looping structure, the main OTP, Wei Wuxian’s laidback, traumatized insouciance, everything. Anyway, the plot in the event you somehow transported here from 2005 is that the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Wei Wuxian, was defeated by the righteous sects over a decade ago and fell of a cliff to his death. Only now that same Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in another body and everything that was supposed to stay in the past starts again.
6. Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF) - people either love its meandering narrative, picaresque structure and cast of thousands, or find it a detriment compared to much more compact MDZS. I love it even more than MDZS for those very qualities. It does have a rock-solid, darling OTP, but what really elevates it to me are the MXTX trademark combo of snarky/light tone hiding a ton of trauma underneath, the insanely intricate world-building, and what it has to say about the nature of grace and goodness. Xie Lian is one of my top 5 web novel characters and probably in top 10 from anywhere. Oh, and while MXTX’s stuff is not as angsty for me as Meatbun’s or even Priest’s, there are always exceptions, and there is one chapter in this novel that pretty much broke me and sometimes I still flashback to it and feel unwell.
Anyway, what is it about? There is a commotion in the heavenly realm - Xie Lian, the Crown Prince of a long-destroyed kingdom, has ascended to Godhood. That in itself is not so exciting. However for Xie Lian this is the third time (!!!!) as he’s ascended and lost his godhood twice prior. And now, the biggest joke of the divine realm is back, throwing the heavenly realm into chaos. And elsewhere, Hua Cheng, one of the four most powerful demons of that Universe, sits up and takes notice.
5. Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”
4. Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.
3. To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.
2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.
1. The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.
Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!
The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.
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teaveetamer · 2 years
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Since you've written a lot of Dimidue, I wanted to ask about why it appeals to you. As a fellow Dimidue shipper, I'm always intrigued about why other fans gravitated towards it. Personally, I multi ship Dimidue, Dimilix, Sylvix so I'm not a "die for one ship" type of fan lol. But the 8 Blue Lions are so ship able together that they're all so easy to poly ship as well. There's very little I won't ship in the Blue Lions because they're all so interesting and well written and great dynamic together
Idk to be honest because it definitely wasn't my main when I started with the fandom. I think it was a couple of factors:
#1 I honestly just didn't expect to like it as much as I did.
I don't hate the lord/retainer dynamic in FE, it's just that usually the execution leaves a bit to be desired. Like Leo/Niles. I don't hate it, but it was always missing something to really sucker punch me and get me on board. Never really knew what it was though, until Dimidue came on the scene.
I think what really took them over the line was just like? How much of a unit they already seemed to be? I mean you literally cannot escape them talking about each other. Even Dimitri has dialogue in 3H where he explicitly talks about Dedue. It's very clear that whatever feelings they have toward each other, they're mutual, and it turns out that was what I was missing from the previous lord/retainer dynamics. All of those tended to be more one-sided on the part of the retainer, so a ship with the lord/retainer dynamic where they're equally invested (and if they aren't you could definitely make the case that it's the lord who is more invested?) Sign me up.
2) There's just so much to work with
I mean you have their supports, which are super gay don't get me wrong, but like? You also have Dedue's return at Myrrdin in AM, or their death scene in CF, or Dedue's revenge quest in VW, and all of their explore sections and dialogue where the two of them stand together quite often, and their whole untapped pre-academy history. AND THEN on top of THAT we got Three Hopes with even more Dimidue
3) It's kind of different from what I'd been doing?
I love Sylvix too, don't get me wrong, but I think part of the reason I gravitated less toward reading and writing it is because... I mean people made the joke that Sylvix was just nu!Leokumi and they aren't... entirely wrong... I mean they aren't identical or anything but the Takumi-to-Felix pipeline is pretty apparent and Leo and Sylvain are both sad boys with daddy issues.
So yeah I spent like five years writing a ton of Leokumi stuff and then Sylvix was feeling a little too similar to me. Dimidue was a completely different dynamic with completely different character archetypes and I found that really appealing, so I think I gravitated toward that a lot
4) This might be shallow but I'm over giving a fuck lmao. I like bottom!Dimitri pretty much exclusively and Dimidue was the only ship that would consistently feed me.
5) Dimidue being a smaller ship I also felt kind of protective over it? Not like I own it or anything but like. This is a precious seed that needs to be nurtured and babied into fruition. So a lot of my Dimidue stuff just comes from me wanting to fill out the archive with more quantity and variety of stuff for them, because it's kind of a bummer when you go to a ship's tag and there's only like ten fics and they're all G rated fluff (or if you wanna get spicy, E rated fluff with lots of hand holding and eye contact. I love that for Dimidue, but I also want Dimitri to choke on a cock and call someone daddy sometimes, y'know???)
I wouldn't say I set out to be a mono-shipper btw. I don't mind shipping characters with others, but I think I just naturally gravitate toward having an OTP.
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signofwolf · 3 years
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Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – book review
Series: Throne of Glass #7 Genre: YA, Fantasy Theme: Fae, magic users, war Warnings: mentions of torture, imprisonment Star rating: 0,5/10
Why did I pick this up?: I wanted to end this horrible series once and for all.
[Heavy spoilers ahead]
To make myself clear, before this book I quite liked this series. It wouldn’t place in my top 100 books, not even close, but it was a pleasant pageturner to listen to in audiobooks when working.
Language
Let’s start slow. I lack the words to express how much I hate the words ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘mate’ after this series. Not even gonna try to express my trauma. But these 3 gems aside, Sarah J. Maas needs a dictionary. Or compress her work to a manageable size. Everything sang, Everyone melted, Every man roared, Every woman trembled, Everyone was unleashing themselves at least once a chapter (number of chapters: 122) ). And now I know definitely too much about Yrene’s ‘womb’. I know so much…
Dynamism
I thought that was a book about a war with heavy action content. Oh boy, I was wrong. This 984-pages monstrosity has maybe 5 pages of action. If you squint.
Every sequence, where by design action should take place was followed by one of two scripts:
Few sentences of action and then a few pages long internal monologue. Often repeated with the same character after the next few sentences of action, or with the next character and then the next (sometimes the first character made a second appearance and then everything would go all over again). And the word ‘character’ used in these sentences is not because I’m rambling. This book is written that way!
Few sentences of action and then action stops, and we are graced by a few pages long conversation. In the middle of a battle. Or spying. Or in Erawan’s chambers, when his castle is going down, and he is running up the stairs...
Time
Leaving alone the fact that apparently all series took less than a year (till this book I estimated the plot for about 3 years, Wiki told me it was 2, but Maas knows best), because that is a can of worms in itself. Time in this one? I honestly have no idea. There were many ‘few weeks of travel’ parts with two main groups of POVs. Personally my only time indicator was ‘Orynth won’t fall till Aelin gets here’. But nothing just fit. And I saw Lost Song when in the last episode we as the audience realized that our two POVs parallel storylines are in reality millennia apart. Lost Song made sense.
Emotional loading
… there wasn’t any. Really, it was like reading a milk label. Every time the scene was potentially emotionally impactful, Maas went ahead to overexplaining EVERY. GOD. DAMMED. THING. And it was abso-fucking-lutely everything. ‘Emotional dilemma? Let’s current POV explain it! 2 pages should be enough… Damn maybe it wasn’t enough. I know! I’ll switch POVs and explain it through the other character!’ <= My impression of Maas’ thought process. I’m fairly sure that the record was 7 POVs explaining the same thing in the row, but I was blacking out a little, so I cannot be sure.
And if that wasn’t enough, this book had a second way to defuse tension: random-plastic-repetitive-badly_written-smut. Really badly written and really repetitive. How could you not feel the spicy bits, when Manon (cruel, self assured 100+years old witch-queen) reacts the same in bed as Elide (20years old, virgin, ex-slave). And the rest of them were the same, there weren’t ANY distinctions.Just copy-paste.
The next point in current case: Someone died, it was impactful, I really liked the character, so I got sad. But then 2 of our characters came out of the room with a body, and after a paragraph of grieving they started making out, and then I was regaled with 2-pages-long description of melting cores. That was the place then this book stopped being badly written, and started being distasteful.
Characters
Remember when I was writing about switching POVs (which is 15(!!!) In the whole book. Oh and an omniscient narrator in places when our current POV was grieving too much to overthink something, but Maas still wanted to inform us about something)? They were all savagely murdered in the worst way: character mutilation. Somewhere between books our maybe-not-that-original but colorful and interesting characters became carbon copies of each other. I have no idea how many times I didn’t realise there was a POV switch. The only indicator was a change of pronoun, or when Maas was telling us the name of a current narrator. These were the only ways. And if you can't distinguish if you are in Dorian’s head or in Manon’s, that is the sign of a really BAD writing.
Romance
…there wasn't any. In all this book there wasn't any naturally progressing romantic scene. There were Maas’ endgame pairings which were sexing or pinning. As the author Maas loves to write about soulmates. And it’s not a bad thing itself. When I want some fluffy story I often tag ‘soulmates’ in AO3 and voila, +10 to good mood. But God above, it is not cute when every pair you write about are ‘true mates’ just BECAUSE. It is the only way Maas sees a relationship, as a fated pairing, written in the wake of the universe by the God himself. There is no choice, nor the work to put in it. They are the author's OTP and that means that they are perfect and they should have children right now. Point in case:
Guy was treating a girl like a shit on his sole, including throwing her naked out of tent, on a snow, with their friends present, all the while abusing her verbally in a worst way. But it’s okay, because when she almost died he realised his mistakes and apologised. Two scenes later, he was forgiven, because... fated mates?
The pathos
I know that many people don't like this type of scenes, but it's not my case. I’m reading by picturing images and not repeating words. I like sequences that I can imagine to be grand and glorious, even if they are a little corny. That said, the pathos scenes were the most disappointing ones for me. Maas likes to write parts that are more picturesquely exalted than logically possible [point in case: meeting of 5 armies/forces in the random patch of sand in Empire of Storms, and it being painted as ‘an Aelin’s great plan’. I laughed myself silly at that. But not taking logic and all the plot holes into consideration that was a nicely looking scene. In Kingdom of Ash that wasn’t the case. I would say that the author wanted to paint us a renaissance painting every 20 pages or so. In my opinion, every time she failed miserably. Each and every of those scenes was or to farfetched to be even remotely realistic, and evidently written only for a sake of the picture, or just plainly stupid.
Example, and it’s so priceless a scene, that I just need to share it: Battle of Orynth, 25th day or so (time in this book doesn’t exist), the 13. sacrificed themselves (like thousands before them but hush). And then, time stops: grieving Manon is going through the city, they open the gates for her (yes, the siege is still on), she goes to the place where they died, after her come out all of our main heroes, and half the city itself with ‘flowers, rocks and precious possessions’ and they lay it there in a tribute to these brave (evil till 2 months ago) witches. I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw such an abstract scene. It’s a material for an essay in itself. No, I could not take it seriously.
Additionally, it's hard to make an impact as every damn sentence is grand and lofty. In the end it became truly pathetic, Aelin vs Maeve was unreadable.
Character deaths:
Let's make a quick count: main characters in a series at the start of KoA: 12 secondary characters in a series at the start of KoA: 20ish minor and total background: a lot more
Death count: main: 0 secondary: 3 minor: 2 (11 if we try very hard)
Resurrections: 1 (possibly 3, but not gonna analyze it)
Did you feel emotions of this impossible war against this all-encompassing, all-powerful, invincible, immortal, cunning Evil with armies from 3 continents and 2 worlds? No? Me neither.
Oh well, but there were a lot of deaths of ordinary soldiers. I’m quite certain that all of Terrasen’s army was at least twice brought back to life for them to die in these numbers.
Logic or lack thereof
Oh, and let’s not forget about the Deus ex machina army of unbeatable, magical elves on wolves, from legends, living for the past thousands of years in the unreachable lands of the north, because they managed to run from the surprise attack 10 years earlier. Did I mention that they came from portals, which the whole book was telling us were impossible to make in this scenario? After the previous saviour army was already fighting there for a day? And that Aelin didn’t know they would come for sure (how did she contact them again?)? Even though they were waiting in the full armours for these portals? Ah, and also: that army didn’t do anything. They just came and fought for maybe 4 minutes. And there were just so many things like that!
And if we’re on the topic of armies I present you: ‘My favourite absurd-list in the series: allied armies’.
(As a comparison, in A Song of Ice and Fire by J.R.R Martin, in 7 kingdoms of Westeros, at the peak of war there were 7 forces present, but not all were even engaged in a war.)
First the ones that made sense:
Armies of Terrasen’s Lords (counted as one, not gonna nitpick)
The Khaganate army (also counted as one)
Galan Ashryver’s armada
Whitethorn fraction
Rebel Ironteeth witches
…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’?
And there were some that did not:
Ansel of Briarcliff’s army
The Silent Assassins
Mycenians
Wild Men of the Fangs
Army of magical elves on wolves
And the ‘I don’t even know’ category:
Crochan witches
Overpowering and overreaching
Section title tells it all. The stakes were too high. I was honestly waiting for Aelin to become Super Saiyan and start to throw planets at Maeve and Erawan. I won’t spoil if this happened.
In my opinion it could be a really great series, if our list of villains ended with Arobynn and King of Adarlan, and the list of Aelin titles with an assassin and a princess. We could have had two main fight plots: one emotional with Arobynn, when Aelin would have to face a damage he had done to her, and overcome it. And the second one, with freeing Terrasen from Adarlan’s rule. That’s it. There was an asshole, power hungry king, who feared magic and wanted to rule the East part of a continent. A lot of plot, but not so much that we stopped to care, or didn’t have time to cover everything. We could really get to know what Terrasen and his people were like and not JUST GET TOLD that it was ‘the greatest place in the world’ every damn 20 pages.
Plus…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’? It's a REALLY valid question.
Climaxes
IIf I have to write a list of things that disappointed me in this book, this review would be thrice its current size, but one of the worst grievances I have is the complete lack of acknowledging the plotlines that had been started. This book series has overall 4 372 pages (not counting novellas) and 12 main characters (still not gonna address this). All of them had their storylines and arcs but if they weren't tied up in the previous instalments they wouldn’t be in this one. I get it, Maeve and Erawan got beaten (in an extremely unsatisfactory way) but they were only a background in this series' plots.
Aelin Well, Aelin was one of 3 people (+2 paragraf-long insertion from Nesryn and Chaol) who got their own POV’s after the battle (second was technically Rowan, who was ‘Aelin’s POV outside of Aelin’.The third Dorian, who got almost a full two pages). And from this we got that: she got crowned, Aedion got his bond and that Maas have no idea how the city looks after weeks of siege. In her case what angered me the most was ‘Terrasen is my home’ subplot. Only in this tome we read at least 3 times that Aelin will be okay with dying, if only she gets to see Terrasen one last time, or if she get to die on Terrassen soil. But you know what? Maas forgot to write the scene where Aelin actually ‘comes in’.
Mannon Didn't get her own POV after the battle, but here’s what we’ve got: She is going to the Wastes with Croachans and Ironteeth. Whait. What? Yes, that was the ending of this 500+ years of feud. They fought together and they decided to unite their two species, completely forgetting more than half a millenia of slaughter. I can only hope that there were at least some talks behind the scenes… NO! F*** NO! This isn’t how it works!
Rowan, Dorian, Chaol, Yrene, Lysandra, Aedion, Lorcan, Elide, Nesryn, Sartaq Lived happily ever after
Secondary minor and total background characters Survived (I acknowledge that they would be ignored in most books’ epilogues, but this abomination is almost 1000 pages of nothing!!).
Good Scenes
That saying, this book actually had 4 good scenes:
Crochan witches go to war - gathering-forces-to-fight trope, which is my *love-always trope* so I’m not even sure if it was relatively good, or if I’m just a slut for this trope. It was still only a paragraph long though.
[recurring] The children’s tale Aelin repeated to herself to remember who she is.
‘Lorcan Lochan’ - the only marginally funny scene in the whole book
I actually found Darrel making Evangeline his heir charming. Even if circumstances were far-fetched at least.
But the words crime of this book? It was agonisingly, mind-numbingly boring. If the overexplaining and repetitions were to be taken out I highly doubt that there would be 300 pages left.
For these 33 hours of audiobook I suffered through I give it half a star. Because Abraxos exist.
Please see my garishly accurate cover on my instagram! You can also like it there :D
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thetvmoviefan · 5 years
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Nabrina FanFics Part 8
Sabrina Spellman & Nicholas Scratch (Nick Scratch) FanFics MASTERLIST
Updated: March 5, 2020 (3/05/2020)
AND so guys we’re back to another hiatus this time we’re waiting for the last part of the season Part 4. How did everyone feel about Part 3, it was definitely A LOT. But every OTP there’s bound to be angst and journey, it only makes them stronger in the end. Anyways, while the show just officially finished Part 4 Filming (2/22/20) we’re all anxiously waiting for renewal and the announcement of when Part 4 will air. Here’s a newly updated list of Current and NEW Nabrina FanFics for anyone waiting for our POWER couple to comeback.
As Always have a Wicked or Hell-ish time with these fics and ENJOY!!!!
Fics in order by Last Update: 3/05/2020
[Key: AU=Alternate Reality - AH=All Human/All Mortal - * = New Fics to List]
1. “If You Let Me”*
Author: bunivy aka @bunivys​
Summary: After pouring all of her time and effort into obtaining a law degree in the city, Sabrina Spellman moves back to Greendale for one last summer before she departs for good. She's fully intent on enjoying her stay in her hometown, even deciding to pick up a part-time job at her Aunt Hilda's cafe to save up some money. The only problem is that the boy in the bookstore across the way is one she's had some not-so-good history with and it's becoming increasingly harder to ignore him. Before long, she finds herself exploring the complexities of old high-school grudges and what-ifs, all while trying to sort out her present-day relationship with the boy she has long since deemed as non-existent.Meanwhile, Nicholas Scratch wonders if it would just be easier to remain non-existent. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 7/? - Last Update 3/04/2020
2. “When the Bones Are Good”*
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: Sabrina Spellman is enjoying her life as a normal teenager. Sabrina Morningstar is reigning Hell with an iron fist. Ambrose Spellman is searching for a solution to bring them back together and close the time loop, Sabrina's wishes be damned. And Nicholas Scratch? He's faced down his own demons and he's desperate for redemption.Except the clock is ticking.On time and Terrors. (Part 4 Fic) - Rated General - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 3/02/2020
3. “I knew you were trouble”
Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90​
Summary: Sabrina didn’t know that being away from home for the first time could be so hard.Away from her aunts, friends and her-lifelong-boyfriend, Sabrina have to deal with the nostalgia but also with the new challenges College's life mean: get used to share a room with a not-so-nice roommate, put up with long hours of study and very few of sleep, learn to live from pre-cooked meals instead of her aunt Hilda’s homemade ones, find balance between her studies and her new social life… And resist the temptation a certain Nicholas Scratch mean for her. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 14/? - Last Update 2/22/2020
4. “I Need to Know”*
Author: raeinthedark
Summary: Love isn't that easy to erase... and that song is on again. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 2/29/2020
5. “Cruel Summer”*
Author: thoughtsaboutshows @thoughtsaboutshows​
Summary: A mix between AU and Cannon, where the young members of the Church of Night also attend Baxter High. The young witches and warlocks then go to the Unseen Arts Summer Camp to bolster their gifts. However Sabrina, being half mortal, only began attending after her Dark Baptism. To the mortals of Greendale, Unseen Arts Camp was for the wealthy. An elite sector of the Baxter High youth that attended a camp deep in the Greendale Wood far upstream of Sweetwater River. Many had tried to find and break in, but none have succeeded. To the mortals, the divide between the camp attendees and the not was of money and status. When in fact, the difference lay with light vs. night.Set between two timelines- the present and the summer, Sabrina attends camp for the first time and grows closer to Nick only for them to be torn apart as school starts. Rated Mature - Chapters 4/? - Last Update 2/27/2020
6. “The Institute for Divine Craft”
Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch​
Summary: After a humiliating spat with Father Blackwood pushes Sabrina away from her witching life and the Academy, Madam Satan crafts an alternative solution to move Sabrina Spellman further down the path of night. Ultimately leading her to the Institute for the Divine Craft. A handsome Headmaster with mysterious ties to her father, convinces Sabrina to abandon her mortal life, and cultivate her abilities as a child of the Church of Lucifer. AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 18/? - Last Update 2/27/2020
7. “My Lover of Blood and Milk”*
Author: Unseemingowl aka @unseemingowl​
Summary: It didn’t feel as though it had only been a few hours since she had made her way to the Greendale woods for Lupercalia. As she sat there, shivering in her muddied and bloodied silk slip, it felt as if a completely different person had made her way back out of the forest...... Or how Sabrina struggles with lust and trust after her disastrous Lupercalian night with Nick. Rated Mature - Chapters 2/4 - Last Update 2/26/2020
8. “Off The Record - One Shots”
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: Missing scenes from completed piece, 'Off The Record.'AU/AH - Not Rated - Chapters 4/? - Last Update 2/23/2020
9. “I hurt myself today” 
Author: ssteelatoms
Summary: After everything he's endured, Nick Scratch decides he can't hold on any longer. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 2/23/2020
10. “Be True To Your School”
Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch​
Summary: Nicholas Scratch is the Golden Boy™ of Baxter High; star athlete, top of his class academically, and devastatingly handsome. Sabrina Spellman sees Sophomore year as an opportunity to expand her horizons; joining the cheerleading squad, running for student council, and making new friends along the way while working to maintain her relationships with her old friends. What Sabrina Spellman doesn't know: sophomore year is about to turn her world upside-down. Rated T - Chapters 6/? - Last Update 2/23/2020
11. “Ocean”
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: AU, M-Rated. Nicholas Scratch has everything working in his favor. He's got a decent job as a history teacher, his roommate Melvin is always up for video games and getting high, and Sabrina Spellman lets him mess up her sheets frequently. Sabrina knows Nick isn't good for her, but she can't stay away, no matter how hard it is to pretend she's completely okay with their casual arrangement. But when life takes an unexpected curve, Nick is forced to face a new normal he doesn't know how to navigate. And Sabrina may or may not be there to help him through it. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 27/27 - COMPLETED 2/10/2020
12. “I’ll be there”*
Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90​
Summary: She couldn’t stop looking at him, since she had recovered him from the claws of the Dark Lord, she felt unable to be apart from him and had to admit that part of her was afraid he would disappear if she moved from his side. And Sabrina wouldn't let anyone or anything separate him from her again. Never. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 1/30/2020
13. “Walk away”*
Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90​
Summary: Pain. Could he someday escape the pain? He sometimes thought it impossible. It was strange, his relationship with the pain, it was an enemy and a friend. The pain numbed him. The pain didn’t let him sleep. The pain hurt him and soothed him. It was unhealthy, the way the pain helped him relieve the pain. But it was the only thing he had left. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 1/27/2020
14. “To Hell and Back”*
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: Sabrina was successful in her efforts to retrieve Nick from Hell, but the damage - physical and emotional - is deep. Sometimes, the only way to heal is to go your separate ways and trust things will work themselves out in the end. (Written before Part 3 - an alternate take on how Nick recovers from his time in Hell - with and without Sabrina). Rated Mature - Chapters 3/3 - Last Update 1/26/2020
15. “The Morning(star) After”*
Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch​
Summary: A Painful NickxSabrina Reunion Rated T - Chapters 1/3 - Last Update 1/24/2020
16. “My only love sprung from my only hate”
Author: filmharlot
Summary: High School AU where Nick is based on the version of him that Sabrina creates in her dream during the Batibat episode. Harvey and Sabrina have broken up and don't want to work together on the Romeo and Juliet assignment in Drama class, so she ends up being partners with Nick AU - Not Rated - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 1/19/2020
17. ”Ground Beneath Her Feet”
Author: mindlesshappy aka @feministstree​
Summary: Sabrina is born out of a miracle - one that she wishes would repeat for her, but when she is destined for someone else, how much can she resist before her heart decides to give in. Alternatively, Nick is Sabrina's soulmate, but she really just wants Harvey to be it. Also, in the backseat are all the other possible ships, getting their own soulmate glories. Rated T - Chapters 17/? - Last Update 1/17/2020
18. “A very witchy Christmas”*
Author: Miss_Kath90 aka @misskath90​
Summary: Just a bit of silly Christmas fluff that I couldn’t help but write, placed in the series universe after a huge jump in time. Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 12/25/2019
19. “Mortal Little Christmas”*
Author: HeartsInJeopardy 
Summary: ‘Twas the night before Christmas – and the first for Nick Scratch - but Sabrina’s holiday movie was not a good match. Rated T - Chapters 2/2 - Last Update 12/21/2019
20. “Lessons in the Unseen”
Author: bunivy aka @bunivys​
Summary: Academy Teachers AU. Sabrina Spellman lives as simple a life as a half-mortal half-witch can. Despite her dislike for the headmaster, she enjoys spending her time teaching Ritual Magic at the Academy of Unseen Arts, hoping to positively shape the minds of young witches and warlocks. However, with the sudden dreadful announcement of her aunt Zelda's engagement and the appearance of one mysterious - and strikingly handsome - Nicholas Scratch, Sabrina finds that her life is not so simple anymore. Or all that safe. AU - Rated Mature - Chapters 32/32 - COMPLETED 12/17/2019
21. “Just a Little Obsessed”*
Author: eyerys
Summary: Nicholas has developed a tinie-tiny crush on Sabrina. Nothing like major or whatever. It's not like he thinks about her all the time or daydreams about what it would be like to be with her or how cool she is. No, not at all.Sabrina doesn't have a crush on Nick. No, not at all. Uh-uh. She has Harvey. Sweet and loving Harvey Kinkle. But for some reason, she can't help but find her mind wandering. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 12/13/2019
22. “As The Moon Rises”*
Author: venzaren
Summary: Sabrina Spellman is tired.Tired of living a double life. Tired of facing discrimination at the hands of her pack. Tired of dealing with her status as an Omega. And most of all, she's tired of people hounding her about finding her mate.Then Nick Scratch returns to Greendale. AU - Rated General - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 12/07/2019
23. “Thirteen Memories”
Author: tempestbreak
Summary: (Set at the end of Season 2) Sabrina and her friends go to Hell and rescue Nick -- but what happens when that's the easy part?It turns out, having the Dark Lord inside your mind for months can do some damage, and Nick comes back different. His memories of the events leading up to his sacrifice, including his relationship with Sabrina, are gone. How can Sabrina help him regain his memories of their time together when she's not even sure she trusts her own? Rated Mature - Chapters 6/? - Last Update 11/02/2019
24. “But The Greatest Is Love”
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: The acheron captured Lucifer Morningstar, but their problems are far from over. The coven is decimated, the Church of Night is no more, Father Blackwood is on the run, and Nick and Sabrina's relationship is in ruins. How do they pick up the pieces and move on? There are more questions than answers and the consequences could be of biblical proportions. Rated Mature - Chapters 25/25 - COMPLETED 10/28/2019
25. “Back to You”
Author: nadiaselite
Summary: Sabrina brings Nick back from hell. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 10/11/2019
26. “The Open Road”
Author: paradiamond
Summary: Nick wants her back, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes. In fact, he insists on it. Rated T - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/22/2019
27. “The words “I love you” aren’t enough”*
Author: Miss_Kath90
Summary: “Look at me, Nick” he was reluctant but when he finally looked up she took his face in her hands making him unable to look away “What you did that day… Nick, you sacrificed yourself for my sake, even when I mistreated you and told you all those horrible things. You did it for me, because you love me… Don’t you see? You’re incapable of being evil.”Or... Sabrina gets her boyfriend back but things don’t go as smoothly as she thinks they will. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/22/2019
28. “Mission: Let’s get my boyfriend back”
Author: My_Evak_Heart
Summary: Sabrina and the Fright Club ventures on their first mission: getting Nick back from Hell Not Rated - Chapters 1/1 - Last Update 9/7/2019
29. “Jealousy is a killer”
Author: Melissa1226
Summary: Will Sabrina and Nick Start something new? and who is watching them from the shadow full of jealousy? Rated Mature - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 8/28/2019
30. “The Jock”
Author: mikaila_ealum
Summary: An Alternate Universe where Nicholas Scratch is Baxter High’s quarterback along with one of the most popular boys at school. With few knowing the truth, Scratch is living a double life as a warlock at the Academy of Unseen Arts. Sabrina takes a hiatus from the Academy to get more in touch with her mortal side. When Sabrina gets back she becomes partners with Nicholas for a project in theatre class. AU - Chapters 8/? - Last Update 8/07/2019
31. “act 5, scene 2 (thou and i are too wise to woo peaceably)”
Author: ghostemo aka @wickedscratch​
Summary: When Sabrina Spellman rose to a challenge issued by Prudence Night, she never imagined she’d actually make the varsity cheer squad - or that doing so would upend life as she knew it. Now she has to navigate her new role within the social hierarchy of hell -er Baxter High as well as trying to get her boyfriend to actually communicate. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s been paired up with the annoyingly handsome Nicholas Scratch, captain of Greendale’s beloved football team, for a project in her theater class. It’s exactly as, if not more so, cliche as it sounds. AU/AH - Rated T - Chapters 3/? - 7/25/2019
32. “Off the Record”
Author: sarahkwut
Summary: AU. Detective Nicholas Scratch left New York for Greendale in desperate need of a change of scenery. The small town takes some getting used to, but local reporter Sabrina Spellman quickly grabs his attention. It's the fresh start he needed until Greendale's residents start turning up dead. With a murderer on the loose, no one is innocent - and anyone might be next. AU/AH - Rated Mature - Chapters 29/29 - COMPLETED 7/22/2019
33. “Bring You Close To Me”
Author: BridgetMcKennitt
Summary: Sabrina and her friends managed to bring Nicholas back from Hell. There was a lot the two of them needed to discuss, but tonight, they had this. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 7/13/2019
34. “A Brief Moment”
Author: bunivy aka @bunivys​
Summary: Ever since he's returned from Hell, Nicholas Scratch has been having nightmares. With help from Aunt Hilda, Sabrina unknowingly shows him a light and for a moment, Nicholas knows everything will be okay. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 6/24/2019
35. “To Hell and Back”
Author: swtnerdgirl
Summary: A year has passed since Sabrina and her friends rescued Nick from Hell. No one came back the same. They all had their scars. Some emotionally. Some physically. In the days leading to Hilda's wedding, they all prepare for their lives to change and heal their wounds. Rated Mature - Chapters 16/? - Last Update 6/06/2019
36. “Dead Witch Walking”
Author: rayo aka @its-nabrina-bitch​
Summary: Faced with the possibility of being harrowed to death by her classmates, Sabrina finds an escape. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/26/2019
37. “Moonlight Beneath Rough Lips”
Author: ivylikeveins
Summary: After the encounter with the thirteen witches of Greendale, Sabrina enters the dining hall with moonlight locks bathed in soft blue hues, and Nick does not know what to do. He ends up with a soft and small Sabrina pressed into his chest, sleeping, and wrapped around his very much over-sized jacket with Nick's lips pressed into the soft, pearly strands he wants his soul to get entangled within. Rated Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/19/2019
38. “The Hunt”
Author: OnlyInAutumn
Summary: Nick howled into the night, up at the stars to signify that he was ready on the eve of Lupercalia, the darkness of midnight around them. The first sound of the horn sent them into the forest. The hunt had begun. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 5/11/2019
39. “Secrets, Secrets are no Fun”
Author: filmharlot
Summary: Sabrina is the new kid for the first time in her life. Choosing to go to the Academy full-time seems to be a hard transition than she was expecting. With the Weird Sisters harassment at an all-time high, dealing with leaving her mortal friend's and condescending teachers, Sabrina is suffering. She's not even allowed to have Salem for comfort. It's not all bad though. She is finally free to do magic whenever she wants, and there's a charming warlock who is being particularly nice to her. Plus, someone is leaving kind gifts on her bed at the end of the night. She just wishes she knew who it was. Not Rated - Chapters 1/? - Last Update 5/06/2019
40. “Unsettled Nighttime Creatures”
Author: mindlesshappy
Summary: We all know Sabrina is going to save Nick. This is how Nick reacts to being saved - which, spoilers alert - is like a very stupid warlock. Rated T - Chapters 5/5 - Completed 4/25/2019
41. “Selfless”
Author: sarahwut
Summary: Sabrina Spellman dragged Nicholas Scratch back from Hell. But Hell might be better than a world in which they aren't together. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Completed 4/23/2019
42. “Homecoming”
Author: cherrystems
Summary: After several months Sabrina is able to get Nick back from Hell with the help of her family and friends. However, Nick has to adjust to Earth again while dealing with PTSD and anxiety. This tells the story of the growth of Sabrina and Nick's relationship over the recovery time. Not Rated - Chapters 3/? - Last Update 4/20/2019
43. “Under Your Spell”
Author: londonmarie
Summary: Sabrina doesn't hesitate to have her Dark Baptism and things go differently. Rated T - Chapters 10/? - Last Update 4/18/2019
44. “Photographs”
Author: Greyowl9831
Summary: It's been at least 150 years since Sabrina signed her name in the Book of the Beast. One day she finds an old photo album. Will the memories it contains be a great walk down memory lane or will it be more than she can bare? Not Rated - Chapters 4/? - Last Update 4/14/2019
45. “An itch That Needed Scratching”
Author: umbrellacorp
Summary: What if Nick slayed his familiar and Sabrina and Nick got to experience the last night of the Lupercalia festival alone. Tonight, Sabrina would be transformed. Nick was going to show her power that she never knew she had, an innate carnal power. They were about to become the most powerful union of the Church of Night. Rated E Mature - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 4/13/2019
46. “and I keep waiting (but I won’t say I’m waiting)”
Author: lost_n_stereo @lost-n-stereo​
Summary: You would think that it would hurt less as the days go by, since it’s been nearly two years since Nick sacrificed himself for the greater good and Lilith took him to hell. Except, he didn’t sacrifice himself for the greater good, he sacrificed himself for her. And that makes it a hell of a lot tougher to let go. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 4/10/2019
47. “The Four Pictures”
Author: Copper_16
Summary: It’s been 10 years. Nick and Sabrina are teachers at the Academy along with some familiar faces. It’s been a decade there can’t be that much chaos anymore, right? Wrong. Rated T - Chapters 3/? - Last Update 4/09/2019
48. “Fire”
Author: OnlyInAutumn
Summary: Their power—together—was overwhelming. It was something that she had not felt either, the consuming feeling of expanding power. It was entirely addicting. Rated Mature - Chapters 2/2 - Completed 3/24/2019
49. “something I can believe”
Author: Anry
Summary: Missing scene after Sabrina's baptism. I wouldn't say that it's really a relationship here, just conversation. Rated General - Chapters 1/1 - One Shot - Last Update 1/25/2019
AND THERE YOU GO AGAIN!!!
Everyone again please make sure to leave love through the comments and giving kudos to all these amazing writers who have worked so hard on delivering these stories. Some who have newly popped up with amazing fics during the Part 4 Hiatus. Because of course without them this wait for Part 4 would be so much harder....now especially since the cast has officially wrapped Part 4 Filming.
But seriously these writers work hard on these stories and truly deserve the encouragement and love for their hard work with these amazing stories. Giving a simple “Love the chapter, can’t wait for more” will keep them going. So make sure to show your love by leaving comments our sharing their stories with other Nabrina Shippers or just CAOS fans.
If anyone has any other suggestions for the list feel free to message me :).
ANYWAYS ENJOY!!!! LET THE PART 4 WAIT BEGIN
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mia-cooper · 5 years
Text
Fanfiction Questions
from here
Fandom Questions
1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?
Involved as in ‘frantically read every book I could get my hands on, daydreamed about being part of that universe and wrote stories/made art inspired by the books, if not actual fanfiction’? Mm, probably The Chronicles of Narnia when I was six or seven. The next great obsession was The Silver Brumby when I went through my horse stage around age 12, and then Sweet Valley High when I was 15. Hahaha.
2. What is your latest fandom?
Marvel! I’m not into comics and I’m definitely not interested in consuming every last bit of canon material or memorising the variations of every universe, but I love (most of) the movies and Agents of SHIELD is pretty cool.
3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?
Star Trek Voyager. No contest. I venture to suggest that the older fandoms, the ones that are all about defunct shows, are a hell of a lot more chilled. Maybe because we’ve come to terms with our shitty canon endings and learned that liking the ship you hate doesn’t make someone problematic, unlike some newer fandoms I could name (Yes I’m talking about you, Game of Thrones fans. What the fuck.)
4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?
I’ve dipped a toe into one or two fandoms for shows or books I’ve really enjoyed and backed the fuck out when the vibe gets weird (oh hey, it’s GoT again), but nope. No regrets.
5. Which fandoms have you written fanfiction for?
All the Star Treks except TOS, and a Trek/MCU crossover. I’d like to write more for MCU someday. Plus I’ve written longhand entire notebooks full of teen romance shit that bore an uncanny similarity to SVH, and my first short story was a fantasy fic that featured a girl whose guardian was a wise talking lion who led her into mystical secret worlds, which is kind of familiar.
6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.
Wow. I’m going to define ‘involved in’ as ‘cared enough about to have an OTP’, but I’m guaranteed to forget a ton. In no particular order:
Voyager: Janeway x anyone who can get her off
Discovery: Lorca x Cornwell or Pike x Tyler x Burnham (or any combination of)
DS9: Kira x Jadzia Dax
TNG: Picard x Vash, I guess? I don’t really have any TNG ships
ENT: T’Pol x Trip x Hoshi (or any variation therein)
MCU: Cap x Widow
AoS: Coulson x Skye... no May... no Skye... I don’t know
CAOS: Madam Satan x Zelda
Timeless: Garcy
The Good Place: Eleanor x Tahani
The 100 (shut up): toss up between Clarke x Bellamy and Kane x Abby
Veronica Mars: Veronica x Leo (first run), Veronica x Logan (s4)
Orphan Black: Cosima x Delphine
BSG: Apollo x Starbuck
SG1: Sam x Jack
Arrow: Olicity (so over the show now though)
This Life: Milly x Egg
Yeah you know what... I’m drawing a blank. I can’t think of any other shows where I’ve been invested in The Romance that much.
7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.
I’m too tired to do every fandom, and besides, I can come around to almost any ship if the headcanons (or fics) are convincing enough. I do have a few hard no-gos, but they might be someone else’s OTP so I’ll shut up about them.
8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?
Reluctantly. The MCU movies are not something I ever thought I’d enjoy beyond a dull evening’s entertainment. I never expected to get attached to the characters. And yet.
9. What are the best things about your current fandom?
Voyager is my forever fandom and the only one where I’ve really interacted with other fans. The best things about it? In general, everyone is just cool, accepting, open and basically awesome. And talented. I love my Party Bus people.
10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?
Sure. The 100, Veronica Mars and Agents of SHIELD are the ones I’d dip into more frequently. I really enjoy crossovers between Trek and BSG or the Stargate variants, too.
Ship Questions for your Current Fandom
11. Who is your current OTP?
Janeway x Chakotay.
12. Who is your current OT3?
Janeway x Chakotay x Paris.
13. Any NoTPs?
A few.
14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?
Janeway & Tuvok! Also Torres & Chakotay, and I’d have killed for more Janeway & Torres in canon. (If they kissed sometimes that would be okay too)
15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?
Yeah. Paris x Seven. There are like two fics in existence, and yet ... the potential! (Sorry, B’Elanna)
16. Are there any popular ships in your fandom which you dislike?
Nope.
17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?
Janeway x Paris. And they’re still way up there, but not quite at the top.
18. What ship have you written the most about?
84% of my fics feature Janeway x Chakotay as either the primary or secondary pairing... holy shit.
19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?
Paris x Torres. I mean, I feel them. I just don’t generally feel the need to write about them.
20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking?
Chakotay x Seven. In another universe, it could’ve been beautiful.
Author Questions
21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?
Actual story that was clearly fanfic? A farcical drunken romp told in the 24th century equivalent of email format called PADDemonium (see what I did there?)
22. Is there anything you regret writing?
Lol, a few things that should probably have never seen the light of day for various reasons, some of them leola related. But I’ve only deleted two fics that I can recall.
23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.
Relieved. It’s a 30k AU Chakotay moral dilemma backstory that brings in DS9 characters, Section 31 and his longstanding history with AU Janeway. I did so much research for it (way back in the days before memory alpha and chakoteya.net) and I’m really proud of how I wound in canon stuff across series but changed a few key bits and pieces. Only problem is, it’s a sequel to ...
24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?
... Pressure, which I can’t even read without cringing. My characterisation of Janeway, even Angry Maquis AU Janeway, is way over the top and there are moments that verge on Mills and Boon and give me first, second and third hand embarrassment. God, I’d love to rewrite it. Actually, that’s a lie. I want someone else to rewrite it so I can read it without covering my eyes and moaning.
25. What’s your most popular fanfic?
Desperate Measures, by about 70,000 light years, lol. Although Fragile Things beats it on bookmarks.
26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?
You know what? A fair percentage of the time, I think of the title first and come up with a plot second. Aside from that, I prefer shorter, punchier titles that clearly tie into the story (Flight Risk, Speechless), though sometimes it’s song lyrics (Burn Our Horizons, your body like a searchlight) or a literary quote (Required to Bear, All the Devils are Here) or a turn of phrase from the story itself (The Prisons You Inhabit). Hey that was fun. Thanks for letting me pimp the shit out of my stories.
27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?
Ugh, it depends on the day. Summaries are harder, I think. I never want to give away too much of the plot, but there has to be enough there for people to know whether they’ll bother clicking. Funny story: I actually ran the stats on this a few months back. Here they are for your edification:
Fics with a one line plot summary = 54%
With two or three line plot summary = 18%
With a short snippet directly from the fic = 16%
With a snippet + a one line explanation = 3%
With a one line plot summary plus a line to date the fic (eg "set in season 3", “episode tag to Worst Case Scenario") or the fic prompt = 7%
And finally, a quote from something other than the fic = 2% (that's only 3 fics).
28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?
Ooh. I’ll say the final scene in Explosive.
29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not?
I used to regularly ask @jhelenoftrek​ and @littleobsessions90 to beta for me, and both of them are brilliant at it. Lately I’ve been posting without sending my stuff off for editing. This is partly because I’m impatient to get stuff out there, partly because I don’t have as much time to write/edit, and partly because I’m a little less focused on improving my writing and more on enjoying it for its own sake.
30. What inspires you to write?
Little bits of episode dialogue I haven’t noticed before, other people’s fanfiction, stray conversations, fic prompts, song lyrics, random headcanons, fever dreams, dares ...
31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?
I’ve been really lucky with comments on my fic. The least helpful comment I’ve ever received was on one of my early 30k fics and all it said was “Did you have to take the name of the lord in vain?” Which is kind of funny. The nicest thing anyone’s ever said? I’m very partial to the feedback that starts “I don’t even like this pairing/genre/trope/show but you made me love it”, and particularly “I’ll read anything you write, I don’t care what it’s about.” But all comments are gold. The little heart button is cool too.
32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you?
I’m not someone who can tune out music I love, or leave it in the background to inspire me. If it’s on, I’m fully invested in it. I’m that annoying person in the car who flips radio stations every three seconds until I find something I like and then it’s on 11 and I’m singing along to it. I’m also really picky but extremely eclectic, although there are genres I can’t stand (anything with autotune makes me stabby). That said, sometimes I find a song that I can’t stop listening to for weeks and often that perfect combination of music and lyrics will inspire me to write a fic. For example, I just plotted out an entire J/C story because of this song.
33. Do you write oneshots, multi-chapter fics or huuuuuge epics?
All of the above. Although I’m not sure if my longest epic is huuuuuge or just huuuge.
34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?
101,467.
35. Do you write drabbles? If so, what do you normally write them about?
I have two drabble collections. One is all J/C, full of responses to random prompts and I add to it sporadically. The other is episode additions set on Kathryn Janeway’s birthday (May 20) and added to annually.
36. What’s your favourite genre to write?
Angst, definitely. Sometimes it’s smutty angst or fluffy angst or hurt/comfort angst, but often it’s just fucking unrelenting angst. And I’m okay with that.
37. First person or third person - what do you write in and why?
I did the stats on this once, too, haha. Pretty sure I came out fairly even on first and third person with a smattering of second person in there. I’m probably even-ish on present vs past tense, too. I make it a point to mix it up to avoid my writing getting stale or same-y. And sometimes a fic doesn’t really click for me until I try it in a different POV or tense or from a different character’s perspective.
38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?
I mostly write for canon characters - the fun is in all the different ways you can interpret and imagine them - but I’ve been known to throw in the odd OC, or focus on a character who only got a brief cameo appearance, or write about someone who only appears in beta canon, or who only rates a mention on screen.
39. What is your greatest strength as a writer?
Oh, wow. I’m not sure. I guess the thing I value most about my own writing is my willingness to try different styles, characters, pairings and so on. The thing I strive for most is characterisation that feels true, and I really love it when I get comments on that. Exploring a character in a way that rings true with a reader is the best thing ever.
40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?
Overly long sentences and adverb abuse, haha. No, truthfully, there comes a point in most of my fics, particularly the longer ones, when I really just want to scrap it because in my heart I know it’s dreadful. Usually that passes once I slog through the ‘I don’t wanna’ stage because I’m a bloody-minded bitch, but sometimes fics do get left in the dust half-written. Honestly, though, they’re the ones that probably should stay there.
Fanfiction Questions
41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:
This is hilarious because I was just talking on discord about my problematic ‘to read’ pile. My unread AO3 subscription emails currently number 29 and my phone browser has 71 tabs open. So here are 5 random picks from that list of exactly 100 fics I should be reading:
Sex on the Beach (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by @traccigaryn​
The Ruby Ring (T, Janeway/Chakotay, Janeway/Tighe) by @trinfinity2001​
Earth is But an Idea (T, Janeway/Chakotay, Carter/O’Neill) by @caladeniablue​
Home (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by Cassatt
Wise Up (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by KimJ
42. List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:
Only five? Shit. Okay. In no particular order, these are five of the writers I keep coming back to:
quantumsilver (also here)
northernexposure
LittleObsessions
Helen8462
Cheshire
But there are so many others. My chosen fandom is chock full of amazing talent.
43. Is there anyone in your fandom who really inspires you?
All of the authors above for various reasons, but also august because her writing is so spare and delicate and devastating, and runawaymetaphor because she writes the most delicious Janeway/Paris, and @seperis​ because I read In the Space of Seven Days literally 20 years ago and I still haven’t recovered, and I could be here all night raving on this topic but there are still many questions to get through.
44. What ship do you feel needs more attention?
Janeway x Paris. I’m so happy there’s been a little bit of a resurgence in J/P fics lately. Thanks, @curator-on-ao3​, you’re doing the lord’s work.
I’ll also take Janeway x Johnson content any day of the week.
45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?
What the hell? I can’t pick just one! Ugh!
... but okay, here’s the first one that came to mind when I tried to think about this: if you came this way by tree. I’m not sure I’d call it my favourite, but it’s one I revisit often. Ugh, there are so many other fics I’m thinking of now that I really want to list.
46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?
Oh, that’s hard. I should probably pick an angsty smutty J/C because that’s a fair proportion of what I write and it’s good to let a new reader know what they can expect. But honestly, I think the best fic I’ve written is The Uncharted Sea. (It’s safe for work. Maybe not for makeup.)
47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr - where do you prefer to post and why?
The Archive, of course. Where else can I find ad-free hosting on a stunningly user-friendly interface with absolutely no moralising content restrictions and the world’s best tagging system? That Hugo award is well deserved.
Tumblr is good for headcanons and meta and gifsets and a few other formats that I’m less likely to post on AO3 because I’d feel like I was pissing off people who subscribe to me by giving them some random garbage.
I also have my own website, but I’m not really sure why. Sometimes I post fic there that doesn’t make it to tumblr or AO3.
48. Do you leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/Why not?
I try to. Honestly I do. I love it when I get reviews, so I figure paying it forward is the least I can do. I’m less scrupulous about leaving comments when I’m busy or reading on my phone.
49. Do you care if people comment/reblog your writing? Why/why not?
I mean, I love it when people reblog, but I certainly don’t expect it. @arcadia1995​ is amazing for reblogging stuff *blows kisses*
Nobody owes fanfic writers shit, but I feel like there’s a tacit agreement that if you like what you just read for free and you’re on a platform that makes it easy to do so, you leave a review or at least a kudos, because I’m not gonna lie, posting a fic you’ve worked super hard on and seeing it get very few kudos or comments is a bit deflating. I’m sure a lot of us have been there.
50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?
During Voyager’s original run I was trawling the internet for Endgame spoilers (I don’t know why; I usually love surprises) and I guess I googled (or whatever the 2001 equivalent of googling was) something like “how does voyager get home” and somehow I stumbled across Revisionist History. At first I had no idea what I was reading - was this a lost story pitch that somehow got leaked? A professional novella commissioned by the showrunners?
Then I started following links and discovered yahoo groups and webrings and Trekiverse and fanfiction.net and all sorts of incredible things I’d never guessed at, including the now defunct ‘archipelago of angst’, a collection of Voyager writers who focused mainly on a darker Janeway than most of the other fic writers I was encountering, and I was hooked. So I wrote a few of my own pieces, and then I lost interest for 15 years. I’m still not sure how I got dragged back in.
51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!
Honestly, in what other way can I indulge my obsessions, hone my skills and talk about it endlessly with like-minded people? Where else can I instantly find a plethora of fiction about the exact topic I feel like reading about on my mobile device and for free? Fanfiction is fucking amazing and I’m so glad it exists in my life.
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cluelessrebel1988 · 6 years
Text
Shipping questions
Saw that @hpfangirl13​ had done this and it looked like fun so I thought I’d give it a shot
Talk about the first ship you ever had.
One of the first pairs that I remember wanting to get together was Harry/Hermione as I was reading the Harry Potter series. I didn’t know what shipping was at the time (I’m not even sure there was a term for it yet), but I really thought they made a better couple than Ron/Hermione for the longest time. I eventually came around to Ron/Hermione (Book 7 was the game changer), but Harry/Hermione was the one I was rooting for for about half the series.
Talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life.
I mean, the first one is pretty important, right? The one that gets you started on wanting to see where a relationship or friendship goes. So yeah, Harry/Hermione would probably be an important one. Outside of that, the top three are Cartinelli (Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli) on the show Agent Carter was a big one for me because that kickstarted by deep and resounding love for f/f pairings;FitzSimmons from Agents of SHIELD. If for no other reason than that’s the one thing that kept me watching through some pretty dismal story arcs; And Riley Matthews/Maya Hart (Rilaya) from Girl Meets World, due to them being one of the few pairs I’ve shipped since day one.
What’s your current OTP?
Not gonna lie, I fell pretty hard for the budding romance between Jane Banks and Jack the lamplighter in Mary Poppins returns. It’s just so sweet and pure and just starting out and it’s damn near perfect.
What’s your current NOTP?
I don’t really have one at the moment. The most recent was probably Kara/Mon-El on Supergirl, but mostly because I thought the relationship was poorly written and that the arc that they gave Mon-El would have worked just fine if they weren’t in a relationship.
Do you have any poly ships?
No. I’ve never been able to get into that. No judgement against people that are, though!
How do you feel about love triangles?
I have yet to see one that didn’t get old fast and drag a story down hard. 
How do you feel about RPF?
Not really my thing. Feels too weird.
Have you ever shipped yourself with a character?
I actually have. Generally when I’m testing out OCs in my head or in the canon of the story, I don’t have them mess with canon pairings, but I’ve got a Lord of the Rings OC that I ship with Eowyn and yes, it’s pretty much a self-insert situation. 
Do you have many ships that never got together at all?
Well, Cartinelli never became an actual couple, but I was never expecting them to. That’s probably the only one.
Do you ship any characters that have never met?
No, there’s gotta be some kind of meeting
Talk about your favorite first kiss.
Gotta go with FitzSimmons on this one. After a little over two seasons of slow burn, and just about every bad thing you can think of getting thrown their way (including one of them getting sucked into a portal to an alien planet), they’re back together, dealing with the long months apart, the fact that one of them is convinced they’re cursed as a couple and conflicting emotions abound, and the confrontation scene they’re having reaches a tipping point and Fitz kisses Simmons as passionately as he can. She kisses him a moment later, but more gently and for just a moment, nothing else matters. No one else matters. It’s just them. Still love that scene.
Have you ever been disappointed when your ship finally got together?
Not really. Not that I can think of.
Has a ship ever broken your heart?
I had my heart broken about a dozen times over with FitzSimmons, largely due to a combination of amazing writing and an inexplicable desire by said writers to keep them from getting together.
How do you feel about will they/won’t they?
Oh, if it’s done well, it’s about as perfect as it gets. But you gotta do it right. 
Have you ever “shipped at first sight”?
I think most, if not all, of my ships started at first sight
Talk about a ship you initially disliked.
I was never on the Reylo train, and I’m still not even after ‘The Last Jedi’ (though I get why a lot more people started shipping them after that movie). I’d be lying if I said I hated it, but it’s just one that I never got on board with.
Talk about a pairing you’ve stopped shipping romantically.
I really can’t think of any.
Talk about a moment which made you question an entire ship.
I really had a hard time understanding the SkyeWard (Agents of SHIELD) ship after it was revealed that Ward was Hydra. Pretty much everything about him after that was just...ugh. I’ve maintained for a while that his character deserved a redemption arc and that said arc would have been a more interesting story than just straight up making him the bad guy, but the two of them together never made sense to me after that reveal.
Have you ever shipped something despite yourself?
Not really. I know what I like and what I don’t and my ships tend to fall in line with that.
Talk about a ship you feel alone in shipping?
Probably just about any pairing from ‘The Great Escape’ but that’s largely because it’s a movie from 1963 and I’m not sure how many people in the shipping culture of today have even heard of it.
Is there a ship you just don’t get, but have nothing against?
Not really. Most of the ships I don’t get I have problems with, and the ones I don’t ship, but don’t have a problem with I at least understand 
Which of your ships have the best chemistry?
FitzSimmons has always had amazing chemistry and just continues to get better
Which of your ships deserve better writing?
FitzSimmons deserves writers that will just let them be happy for five fucking minutes, okay?
Do you mostly ship canon pairings?
There’s a bit of balance, I think, maybe leaning toward canon pairings.
Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of gifs and graphics or similar?
Not that I can think of.
Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to?
It’s what I (and a lot of Tumblr users) call the Slytherin/Hufflepuff dynamic. You’ve got the tough character who would set world on fire to protect their less world-weary counterpart, and the eternal optimist who will forever see the best in their significant other, perhaps most especially when they can't see it in themselves.
Is there a ship you’ve shipped for most of your life?
I guess my longest, most consistent ship has been FitzSimmons which I’ve been shipping since 2013. Cartinelli is a close second, that one’s since 2015
Does shipping come easily to you?
Oh yeah. It takes very little for me to start shipping something, even if its casually.
Do you need to ship something to really enjoy a movie/book/tv show/comic?
I don’t know if I NEED to ship something to enjoy the source material, but I’d be hard pressed to think of a situation where it doesn’t improve it at least a little.
Name a couple of fandoms in which you have no ships.
I’m not currently shipping anyone on the show Manifest, so there’s that.
Talk about one of your favorite headcanons for a ship you love.
It’s not one that I came up with, but I did see a FitzSimmons headcanon a few years back that he didn’t know how to tie a tie (despite wearing them all the time) and she tied them for him but no one knew about that. I really liked that and it’s kind of the epitome of their relationship in season 1
Name your favorite fan artist(s).
I don’t really have any favorites, not that I could list.
Share your favorite fanmix for your OTP.
I did come across a Cartinelli fanmix a while back that I liked. I don’t remember all the songs in it, but I do remember it included ‘La Vie En Rose’ and “Someone to Watch Over Me’ which are songs a lot of people associate with the ship
Do you create fanmixes/gif sets/fanart/fic/fanvids and so on for your ships?
I’ve made a few fanvids for a couple of my ships, and I’ve written a fair share of fics for others.
Do you have a favorite trope and/or AU for your OTP?
My favorite FitzSimmons AU is one where they get a happy ending (I’m a bit bitter about this, can you tell?)
Do you like and use ship names?
Dear God, yes. The more creative the better.
Is there a fictional relationship you’d really want for yourself?
I mean, apart from one where I’m a rider of Rohan and am able to romance Lady Eowyn, no
If you could change one thing about your OTP, what would that be?
Angie Martinelli plays a bigger role in season 2 of Agent Carter and there’s no forced love triangle BS with Peggy.in Los Angeles. Cartinelli happiness (romantic or otherwise) ensues
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khunvegas · 7 years
Text
Malec Goodies Part 1
This was supposed to be longer but anyway.
Here it is!
A collection of Malec Writing Goodies. My Malec fanfic rec. Well written fics with amazing writers.
As always, if you know the author and want to give me a hand, please tag them :)
A Fated Pair (Omegaverse) by @katychan666
Series about Alpha!Alec x Omega!Magnus.... 
A good kind of drug by  @imjustoutofideas
After getting a minor surgery, Alec is a little bit 'high' from the morphine he was given as pain relief. Fluff ensues.
A Pirate's Life For Me by @lecrit 
Note: All the love you need and want between your favorite OTP, where one is a prince and the other one is a pirate. There’s a lot of angst, maybe a few tears, you can be sure of that but it’s oh so worth it, fluff and shameless innuendos.
A World Uncertain by @broodingalec 
The overwhelming passage of time has been a topic of avoidance between Alec and Magnus ever since the two started dating. With their lives so fragile and unpredictable under the threat of Valentine, they have managed to leave the concept in the back of their minds for a later date, hopefully somewhere in the far future.
This method of coping is pushed even further in the wake of Sebastian, Valentine's son and Clary's brother, taking a new and increasingly cruel step into their lives. The threats that are piling up against them seem to be rising to nearly insurmountable heights, but under the pressure of it all, the idea of the future that would come in the aftermath of success is beginning to haunt Alec's dreams at night just as often.
Aftermath by @battlemagnus
It used to be that Alec always fit securely inside a neat little box inside Magnus’s head. He was a Shadowhunter, yes, but he was… he was Alec. He was a protector.
And my heart is set on you by  @lightwoodlesbians
Or the, 'we're putting on a fund-raising play to save our old drama department' au (ft. bonus: 'we had a thing in high school but i haven't seen you in years and oh god you're even more attractive than i remember')
Aren't You Cold? By lethargical
Alec dislikes the Winter. A lot. So when his apartment's heating stops working, he decides to ask his neighbour for help, little did he know his neighbour was glittery and oddly familiar...
August by @glambertal
"What was your first time like?"
Magnus looked up at him slowly, one eyebrow arched curiously. "Why?"
Alec shrugged as if he weren't mortified. "Just wondering. You don't have to answer."
Magnus just hummed and bookmarked his page, setting the book down. "It wasn't nearly as good as yours, if that's what you mean."
Bang Me Like Your Drum by hckycrzy07
Magnus Bane is a pre-med student at NYU just trying to graduate. He's stressed enough and could do without his friends pestering him about his boyfriend. It's not that he's embarrassed or closeted or something. He just wants to keep his boyfriend to himself, thank you very much. Now, if he could just get his friends to understand that, his life would be a whole lot easier.
or Magnus has a secret boyfriend that all of his friends have been dying to meet but Magnus just keeps refusing.
Big days and fragile nerves by @katwriting
It’s the day that Alec is supposed to become the official Head of the Institute and he is a tiny bit nervous.
“Nervous?”, Magnus said softly. Alec let out a shaky laugh and scratched the back of his neck in a nervous gesture. “You have no idea.” Magnus sighed. “Oh, Alexander. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.” “Yeah, sure”, Alec scoffed, running one of his arms up Magnus’s side and cupping his cheek with his hand, “only every single shadowhunter in New York waiting for me to screw up.”
But some of us are looking at the stars by @lecrit
There aren’t many things that Alec loves as much as he loves the stars. Most nights, he just likes to sit on his balcony and watch the eerie darkness drape over the sky and the silver glow of the moon, surrounded by the stars shaping constellations he knows by heart.
This is a special night for him and his son. The only night in the year Alec lets Max stay up after midnight, so they can watch Perseids meteor shower together on the rooftop of their building.
Alec doesn't expect to find out they weren't the only ones to get the idea.
Build your hopes up like a tower by alecsmagnus
They thought he never heard them.
But he always did.
Burnt by redappleblossom
The rest of the scene that Magnus deserved at the end of episode 12.
But In the Morning We Rise by @alittlebriton
"Mmmkay," Magnus sighs without opening his eyes and shifts to allow Alec more access. "You can wake up the rest of me if you want."
Alec knows he doesn't mean it quite the way his brain interprets it - he just means he can keep up the kissing - but his brain leaps ahead and makes him flush, his body getting warmer. But why shouldn't he? Magnus was his boyfriend; he was naked in bed with him. He could definitely wake up the whole of Magnus if he wanted. Just because he hasn't done it before didn't mean it wasn't a good idea. 
Set before Episode 9 Bound By Blood - Alec wakes Magnus up in new ways.
Closed Doors Don't Lie by @actuallyredorchid
When the summoning of the Memory Demon reveals that it's not only Clary's memories that have been meddled with, Alec finds himself being pushed off the path set out for him and onto a different one.
Communication by NotEvenThat
It didn't matter if Alec hadn't meant to upset him. Ragnor was dead. Valentine was back. The Clave wanted to document Downworlders, like they were cattle. Magnus was breaking down and he needed Alexander to leave before he really lost it.
Or how I think the Malec fight will go in 2B.
Communication Is Key by LS_5Ever
Everything was going great for Alec and Magnus. Alec no longer cares what Maryse thinks, and apart from Jace and Izzy's constant teasing, he couldn't be happier. Then, all goes downhill when, after a great day, Magnus starts ignoring him. What did he do wrong? If only Magnus would tell him, he could try to make it better.
Or the one where Magnus thinks Alec is cheating on him but in reality he's not, but Magnus doesn't know that because the two of them don't communicate enough.
This will only be about 5 chapters unless I feel like expanding the story a bit.
Count to Ten and Breathe by @baneismyexistence
This is just a little drabble that came to me after watching 2.12.
Dancing in the Devil's shoes by @marieruby 
His legs are not working. No matter how much he tries, the swirling mess in his head makes it impossible to walk anywhere, take any action. It’s the last couple of days all over again. He wants to cry but the tears are dry. He wants to scream but his voice is gone.
His voice is gone.
------- The aftermath of 2x11 and the consequences of the bodyswap for Magnus.
Everything's Embarrassing by @rosegoldhell
Magnus is a single father. Alec is a 4th grade teacher. Both men are scared of relationships, but secretly crave to have something more one day, life just keeps getting in the way. But their plans of living single lonely lives doesn't last for long, when Rafael and Madzie Bane decide to play Matchmaker.
Explosive, Corrosive (Self-Preservation) by  GideonGraystairs (TrxyesSivan)
This was how they worked; angry in different ways, but always at the same time.
Family by @beautifulmagick
Magnus comes home from a meeting to find Alec braiding little Madzie's hair.
Five drinks later by larana
“You know,” Alec was saying, one hundred percent drunk, “your house is cool.” Magnus smiled and gently took the glass from his hand - the last of many, Jace suspected - asking him how many of those drinks he had had. “Oh, I don’t know. Four, maybe? Or five? Whatever,” Alec answered and reached out to touch Magnus’ shirt, just where the fabric met his bare skin. “Okay, honey, no more alcohol for you. Possibly forever. Come on, just sit here and-” “Are you single?”
Where Alec gets drunk af, Magnus doesn't know whether to cry or laugh and Jace films all of this.
Holding the Stick by @baneismyexistence
Alec Lightwood has dreamed of hoisting Lord Stanley since he was eight. It's in his blood. He's spent the last five years trying to make that dream a reality, only managing to fall short each time.
Until a scandal leads to a multi-team trade that sends Magnus Bane his way. One of the top performing wingers in the league. An up and coming star.
And the most handsome man Alec has ever met.
He's doomed.
Home by @harlee-queen
A sudden feeling of loneliness overcame him. Pulling out his mobile phone, Magnus contemplated if it was too late to call Alec. A smile crept unto his face thinking about the tall Shadowhunter. Magnus knew that Alec was probably busy and would not be able to come over, but just listening to Alec's voice for awhile would be enough for the moment.
I'd like that by @fangtasticsaphael
“Are you spending the night?” He asked, pushing away these depressing thoughts of something that was hopefully a little farther away in their future than he feared. The fact that Alexander confirmed his question with a nod and an almost hopeful expression in his pretty hazel eyes caused Magnus’s heart to swell with affection and he would never get over the fact that this boy - this young man - was a worrier but still so adorably shy when it came to their relationship.
He watched the long line of Alexander’s neck when he took another sip of his beer while humming along to the classical tune softly playing in the background. When the music switched to a piece with a distinct rhythm, Magnus’s lips curled into an almost mischievous little smile and he placed his glass down, snapping his fingers to turn up the volume a little more.
I Surrender by NotAPrettyLady
An unexpected encounter blossomed into a lovely relationship for Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood but alas, Magnus would rather be ruled by lust than love.
If You Don't Find Him By 2 am (Give Up) by @doctorthetwitch 
“I couldn't care less if he’s in pain. I’m more concerned that he’s passed out in some stranger’s bathroom.”
“So? That doesn’t sound like your problem.” Magnus set his glass down and patted the bed next to him. Alec wanted nothing more than to join him. But-
“He has a shift tomorrow morning.”
“Shit.”
I'll Defend You (To The End Of My Days) by EliseLightwoodBane
"There was true emotion behind Alec’s eyes and every word that left his mouth—loyalty, protectiveness, love—and it transcended through the entire hall. Alec could care less who bared witness to his outburst, he could care less that the Head of the Institute is the one he is yelling at—the only person in the institute that could potentially ruin him for his outburst—and he could care less what anyone thought of him because of this afterwards. This is his boyfriend that they’re objectifying—degrading, judging, and shaming—for what he is. As if the arrogant and self-centered Shadowhunter's in this room had any right to talk."
(Or in other words; Aldertree is a dick, Alec is a good boyfriend, Magnus is all-around wonderful, and Malec are so in love it's embarrassing)
Looking for the Book of the What??!! By drjekyllandmrhyde10
Magnus finally had a chance to corner Alec. He had a lot of explaining to do
More than eyes can see by candidshot
Alec pressed his palms against the glass barrier – his fingers aligned with Magnus’s.
“You look like crap”.
There’s relief in Magnus’s smile. “Well I’ve had better days. This body is filthy. No glitter and with this big and unglamorous head”.
Malec Goodies Part 2
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depizan · 7 years
Note
SWTOR for the ask
Yep, that got long...
001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:
Favorite character: Not counting my own, I assume. Well...I really like most of the female companions, actually. Of those that I trust wouldn’t put interesting substances in my drink, Elara is probably the most well rounded. The male companions somehow don’t stand out as much (except when it’s in a bad way), but I do like Vector a lot. And Blizz. And there are some better done NPCs...oddly, most of them spies.
Least Favorite character: Hmm...Skadge or Space Voldemort? That’s a tough call. They both seem like escapees from particularly unpleasant tabletop roleplaying games. Just Skadge is a player’s terrible character and Space Voldemort is the GM’s terrible GMPC. Skadge is more pointless, but also more avoidable, while Space Voldemort at least has plot (even if it’s badly written), but is completely unavoidable unless you avoid the expansions entirely. Which might be a good plan, anyway.
5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): I haven’t played all of the romances (most of the romances?), but... Elara/Trooper is well done, and so, though I’m not quite sure I’d call it a romance, is Kaliyo/Agent (though, as Kaliyo is VERY CLEARLY BI, she should’ve been romanceable by f!Agents as well.) Uh... I’ve read some fanfic with other acceptable romances, even some I don’t like in game. (And haven’t played the other romances I’ve heard will not make me wonder if the galaxy has restraining orders.)
Character I find most attractive: Again, not counting my own, I assume. Hmm... I don’t know. Again, it’s a galaxy with a tendency toward aesthetically pleasing people. Maybe Kira? ???
Character I would marry: N/A
Character I would be best friends with: I don’t know. Most of the non-dangerous, non-let-me-get-my-mace companions seem like they’d be cool to hang out with. And I’d like to think I’d get on with at least some of my own characters.
a random thought: Please, Bioware, give us the option to turn off your horrible graphics update so I can actually play the game again. Please? The pre-KoFEET character models aren’t detailed enough for the wrinkle invasion not to be thoroughly uncanny valley. At least to me. It borders on that horrible old animation style with the live lips. Only with wrinkles. (And, yeah, with the right body types, species, or makeup, it works fine. Sadly, none of those are of help to me.)
An unpopular opinion: I can think of at least two popular male companions that strike me as less romantic and more “please get off my ship now.” I also dearly wish they hadn’t gone all anime ages on a lot of the companions. It makes their backstories hurt my brain. Then there’s that little problem of the Republic NPCs tending to be staggeringly incompetent and/or prone to random and inexplicable bouts of evil and somehow none of this has any of the fallout it seems like it really, really should. No, the Republic doesn’t need to be perfect shiny good, but half the time it’s such a mess that I can’t work out how anyone in universe could possibly not notice. Like, the people in the Empire notice the evil, they just don’t see it as evil, or think it’s necessary. Over in the Republic it’s like...has your drinking water all gone bad??? Though, actually, hell let’s go for the big unpopular opinion - I don’t actually like the Charcoal Gray/Black morality. I’d rather shift the entire morality up several notches and have neither the Republic nor the Empire be as terrible as they are in game. And then stick with the Cold War premise. That was interesting and different. And sustainable as a game setting.
my canon OTP: Uh... Mako/Torian? Trooper/Elara? Kaliyo/mayhem? Or does this mean my canon specifically? Because my canon and game canon are not entirely the same thing.
Non-canon OTP: Or does this mean my canon? Though the only romantic OTP in my own canon is Mako/Savler. (Yeah, if Havoc Squad ever makes an appearance, Tevin and Elara are a thing, but that’s even more background.)
most badass character: I think Jace Malcom might get the most epic non-Force User bit in the trailers. In game...I’m not sure. (And, of course, in the tie-ins there’s Theron I-Inexplicably-Take-Out-Sith-Lords Shan.)
pairing I am not a fan of: Oh dear. Well...some of the pairings I generally don’t like have been done well in people’s fanfic. I’m still not sure what the hell Bioware was thinking with some of them, but... That said, I have no idea if either DS!Jaesa/SW or Agent/Hunter can somehow be redeemed in fic because I am not touching either with a ten foot pole. Whatever floats other people’s boats and all, but they can have those boats aaaaall to themselves.
character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Everyone in KoFEET? Setting that aside... General Garza should not have been giving highly illegal and evil orders. WTF, writers? She can be a Did What I Had to Do sort without resorting to that. Take a look at the writing for Keeper, then keep in mind that Garza is in the Republic, and adjust accordingly. Governor Saresh. Have her be being a hardass about the reconstruction of her own planet, not a rakghoul infested cesspit that’s been abandoned for centuries. Boom. Reasonable character. Too many of the characters on Coruscant to go into here. Not so sure you should’ve gone for the whole Depraved Bisexual thing with Hunter, especially considering the reveal. For that matter did the unnecessary and illogical Imperial baddie in the Smuggler story need to be making rape threats? (Did he even need to exist? Signs point to no.) While on that topic, Rogun the Butcher’s Heel Face Turn makes slightly less than no sense and he would’ve been a perfectly acceptable actual bad guy. Again, the whole Dubrillion thing with Risha feels tacked on and wrong. Did anyone’s characterization make much sense past a certain point in the Bounty Hunter story? Please, someone instruct General Failfish, I mean Var Suthra in the fine art of how top secret things should work and also in the concept of background checks. The list goes on.
favourite friendship: Uh... setting aside my own characters... I really, really like Vector’s friendship with a male Agent. It is just wonderfully supportive and neat. (And rare in fiction.) Havoc Squad comes together rather well. If you excise a certain person, so does the Bounty Hunter’s crew. The Jedi Knight and Kira can also have a really good friendship. And, oddly enough, so can Vette and a f!Sith Warrior. (Possibly a m!Sith Warrior, but I don’t know how that is exactly in game, having not played one.)
character I want to adopt or be adopted by: I think I’ll second your idea that we save Vette from the Empire.
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dangermousie · 3 years
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Heelo mousie! Love your blog! Do you mind recommending some of your favourite Chinese BL novels or shows?
I've seen the untamed and read it. I'm currently reading heaven's official blessing and I saw the donghua. Anything other than these two?
Awww, thank you!
Novels: I am gonna be lazy and literally copy/paste the entire danmei section of my top 10 web novels post (except MXTX’s stuff since you are already reading it.) Let me know if you need help finding any of these.
Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)
Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor   antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both  as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men   always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be  friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest  parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is  also finding the middle path between their two very different  philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or  dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”
Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.
To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and  setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period  setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with  character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our   protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant,   sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s  servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as  we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and  occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named   Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers  and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both  out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely  likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two  take up farming, get involved in  the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.
Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.
The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.
Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!
The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.
The Wife is First - OK, this one did not make my top 10 web novels but it’s a sweet, fun gay cottagecore fest. Our ML, a royal prince, and his spouse, a smart if delicate aristocrat, keep house, eat noodles, play with their pet tiger, make out and spoil each other rotten, while occasionally fighting battles and outwitting their court enemies. It’s so very mellow. That couple redefines low drama - they are both nice and functional and use their brains. It’s as if a nice jock and a nice nerd got together and then proceeded to be wholesome all over the place.
I mean, the set up could be dramatic - our ML the prince, lost his fight for the throne and is about to be killed. The only person who stayed loyal to him is his arranged husband the aristocrat guy who ML never treated nicely since he resented marrying him (marrying a man in that world is done to remove someone from the ability to inherit the throne.) And yet the husband stood by him not out of love but beliefs in loyalty blah blah. Anyway, he transmigrates back into the past right after their wedding night and is all “I got a second chance OMG! I don’t want the throne what is even the point? I want to live a good long life and treat the only person who stood by me really well!” And he proceeds to do so to the shock of the aristocrat who had a very unpleasant wedding night and generally can tell the man he just married would rather eat nails than be married to him. But soon enough (no seriously, it’s not many chapters at all) he believes the prince is sincere blah blah and then  they get together and they pretty much become cottagecore goals.
In terms of dramas, I only do period dramas (or novels) so I am not the person to be able to recommend any modern BLs. There is a flood of upcoming (hopefully) period BL dramas but it’s relatively thin on the ground now. The two I will recommend is Word of Honor (which is AMAZING) and Winter Begonia (which I just started watching but which owns me already.) I have a tag for both - the one for the former is huge and I cannot recommend either strongly enough. I’ve heard good things about The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I am not big on mysteries so haven’t watched it for myself.
In terms of the upcoming BLs, the ones I am most looking forward to are Immortality and Winner Is King, but The Society of the Four Leaves also looks promising.
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