#need them to canonically get over themselves so I can write 1400 scenes like this

[powderblueblood]

eddie: would you peel an orange for me

lacy, grabbing the stupid fruit: shame about your nerve damage

eddie: my what

lacy: your nerve damage. from jerking off all the time. cant even peel a clementine, you pitiful bastard

eddie: that’s a tangerine, you uncultured swine

lacy: who died and made you the orange king

eddie: my brush with scurvy

lacy: figures. thought I tasted blood earlier

[awesomenell65]

Tag Games: Top 3/Bottom 3

Thanks for the tag, @tracylorde​!

This was fun to do. 

rules: tag the person who tagged you, always post the rules, answer the questions, and add the date!

I’m not new to the whole fic writing thing, but I don’t have a huge output - and much of it is in long dead/nearly dead fandoms(😢). So however close to my heart they are, I’m also going to do a modified version of this tag game focusing only on my fic for The 100. Which is also where I’m getting the most readers these days. I’m also going to stick with @tracylorde’s 3 (instead of 5) because 17 of my little fics turned out to really all be one big fic, which means I really only have about 10 fic total for this fandom.  Here it goes!

What are your five three most popular works? (in descending order)

1. My most popular stand alone fic, hits-to-kudos, is definitely Finding Orion. (Clarke/Roan, ~10,000 words of nothing but porn, 2/3/2016, 382 kudos).

Tag for 3.2. Seriously, nothing but porn. Just because. Oh, and his abs. He works so hard on them. I appreciate that. And Clarke has a devious mind. I appreciate that, too.

I’m still surprised (and yet not!) that this is my most popular fic. I was inspired by 3.02 and our introduction to then banished Prince Roan and his amazing abs, as he dragged a bound and gagged and yet still struggling Clarke about the wilderness. It turned into four delightfully breezy, fun-to-write chapters of bondage and power play, gleefully engaged in out of spite, showing off and taunting a possibly listening/watching Lexa. Truth? I still get a kick out of it, when I re-read it. 

2. My next most popular fic is Autum Dreaming. (Bellamy/Echo, Bellamy&Clarke, lots of other people, ~133,000 words, 1/16/2016, 277 kudos.)

Taking refuge in the fortress of the Mountain Men, won by at the last desperate moment by Monty, Clarke and Bellamy, gives the people of the Ark the secure base they need to make a place for themselves on the new Earth. It won't be easy. Clarke is gone, winter is upon them and war between the clans is looming. And somewhere to the northeast, Thelonius Jaha and John Murphy are finding clues that could help unravel the mystery of Armageddon, or unravel the present.

Yep. Becho, baby. Also Becho + baby. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) This fic, Autumn Dreaming, looks like the last in a series, because that’s how it started. But it’s really only one long story, and this final installment is actually the whole thing in one place. If you take the figures for the whole series, then this is really by far the most popular thing I’ve ever written. Over 22,000 hits, and 544 kudos. (Including the lovely reader who just last week left a kudo on every single fic in the series! I see you and you make my heart sing!). 

This was my S2/S3 hiatus fic, imagining a world after the fall of MW, and how I wished for the story to unfold (but already knew it wouldn’t). I was a spolier junkie that summer, and so I tossed in everything we’d heard - including the casting notices for Nia and Roan. They were being coy about Roan’s backstory, so I took a flyer and made him the missing prince of.... the Trikru. Lexa’s older, estranged half-brother. (I am still really fond of this idea....)

It’s half-world building, half-political thriller, half-rescue adventure --- which is too many halves, but it’s that kind of a sprawling story.

That it still collects readers and kudos, after all this time, and given how very AU it has become, pleases me no end. 

3. My third most popular fic is Avatar of Arcadia. (Raven Reyes/Roan, ~75,000 words, 218 kudos.)

Little did brilliant mechanic Raven Reyes know that when Roan, mysterious bounty hunter and her sometime lover, arrived at Mecha Station in desperate need of repairs to his ship, she was about to be swept right into the middle of the intergalatic conflicts raging between the powerful Azgeda and the fierce Trikru. Or that she was going to be drawn into the dangerous hunt for Clarke Griffin, the lost Avatar of Arcadia.

@hawthornewhisperer kicked off Ice Mechanic with her story Watch the Queen Conquer in the spring of 2016. I fell hard (very, very hard) for this pairing. Like OTP level hard. So I wrote a space opera for them! Yep. Space ships, warring galatic empires, lasers and pulsar pistols. I used everything from canon I could toss in to build the universe, and had a blast. I’m sure that’s why readers enjoy it, too!

What are your five three least popular works? (in ascending order)

1. My least popular fic...by hits (barely 100) is Children of Daedelus. (Crossover with Eureka, ALIE/BRAD, Jo Lupo/Zane Donovan, 6500 words, 119 hits, 11 kudos.)

Psychotic, Incestuous, Lovelorn AIs fight to save the girl, and incidentally the world. Monty helps, Murphy adds helpful commentary, Deputy Andy is a hero.

My last great OTP was (is, remains, forever) Jo Lupo/Zane Donovan from Eureka. Ju Lupo was portrated by the lovely Erica Cerra. You can see where this is going, yes? How did ALIE end up the spitting image of Jo Lupo, you might have wondered? Wonder no more!

Only, it turns, very very vanishingly few people wondered. LOL! Which is too bad. It’s a clever fun fic, assuming you’re at all familiar with Eurkea (and I think I’ve spotted the problem!) I played around with voice and narrative and Monty is the featured delinquent.

2. My least popular fic by kudos is His Mother’s Son, (Roan/Ontari, ~3300 words of kink meme porn. 9 kudos.)

Roan shares more with Nia than he wants to. The prompt was ‘the more fucked up the better.’ 

So, angry, violent, dub-con it is. Turns out porn isn’t ALWAYS the key to more readers.

3. My third least popular fic is Letting Go. (Roan & Lexa, 1400 words, 11 kudos.)

Missing Scene, episode 3.04, "Watch the Thrones." Lexa and Roan.

I wondered about so many things, but especially why his face was bloody before their duel began. And why he turned his back on her in the first moments of the fight.

Apparently I’m the only one who wondered.

 If you want to read any of my fic, here is the link to my ao3 page. This was a fun exercise, thanks for reading if you got through it! I’m going to tag @jeanie205.

[jefardi]

Not my story, just wrote a review that broke the character limit on Ao3 thrice over. So posting that here. @okapifeathers

Cool, awesome and Bravo!

This is going to be a long review, so strap yourself in!

Disclaimer: I thoroughly enjoyed this story and any critiques I make are with the best intentions of helping self-improvement. Also, I tend to jump around topics a lot, sorry (not sorry)

Let me take a bit of backstory before I begin the review proper;

I honestly was just browsing tumblr idly when I came into the NicoMaki tag out of pure boredom… I want to say either 3 or 4 days ago. Discovering that this was my jam happened fairly quickly and lo and behold I ended up searching invariably for fanfic on Ao3 (which, honestly was only because I was doing it mobile, else I would be using FF.net…). Love Novels (which a friend farrrr more into Love Live then I am, has pointed out is a song name, which I had not the faintest clue) was the first long formatted story I read in the Love Live Fandom. I’ve read a few Hogwarts AU for the same pair but that’s it. Nothing else.

To a certain degree, I think this is why I’m so enamored with this story; I have no pre-conceived notions or head canons that it could realistically conflict with… oddly enough, the reason I have trouble even reading RWBY fanfiction nowadays, is because I write my own, which then makes incompatible head canons with others’. To put it simply, I can hear Nico or Maki talking in your story exactly as they do in the dub (because I’m a scrub who can’t understand Japanese…).

Perhaps what draws me the most to this pairing is one of the things that stand out the most, that is to say, the way you do the chemistry between Maki and Nico.

That is the biggest selling point, one that all other stories I read after this for this fandom will have to hold themselves to; having dialogue that flows and ebbs like the way you write it. The back and forth that happens so naturally between two characters with misaligned world views or clashing personalities.

Very often in writing, especially in fanfiction, authors have a bad tendency to not understand or have trouble differentiating between saying something in-character or just having the character be a mouthpiece to what needs to be said. Which in turn breaks the suspension of disbelief that these are real, organic characters. Characters that exist just as well as any average person off the street. The manner in which you write them completely side jumps that.

With that out of the way, lets dive in, shall we?

You handled the slow burn extremely well, in fact it was rather incredible. I think the strongest point, though possibly the oddest to me, was how to handle Maki’s end of the romance. Throughout the first half (or was it 12 chapters? It blurs a bit to me), there was a lot of build up on Nico’s end, making the audience very firmly know her point of view of the dynamic. Yet Maki’s view…. Was, how to put this, rather vague?

Perhaps that was intentional, but it certainly seemed like that we weren’t given a clear understanding of what she thought of Nico until way, way later. At first this was a non-issue, seeing as it was thought/implied that she didn’t have feelings for her and it was a one-sided romance (poor Nico), except once Christmas hit, that all changed. It was weirdly jarring how Maki suddenly went from no clue to “yup, I’ve always had these feelings wheeeeeee”

On the one hand, it seems that Maki wasn’t thinking about it up until then because she was flying by the seat of her pants once school started, yet I can’t help but think back to when they are in Nico’s apartment, in the first chapter, eating cake. That is when Maki is not quite stressed, yet it’s not even something she brings up, when its later implied she thinks heavily on it.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, except your story relies heavily on introspection. In some ways, that might be an even bigger selling point then the interactions between the main characters; it is enlightening and amazing, and does exposition dumping far better and less jarring then any other way, especially since Maki is more of a introvert by her nature. Yet, by this very fact, the very fact that it isn’t brought up in introspection early one is a weird one, especially in hindsight.

This segue ways into the next thing I noticed; the way the introspection messes with the pacing.

Now that might be subjective on my end, but during the whole course of this, you’d have bits of dialogue with huge chunks of introspection. There was a tendency on my end to keep skipping the introspection to find the next dialogue, which resulted in a lot of rereading something.

The other issue I ran into during the pacing was how much it jumped around. One moment we’d be going through a very long scene and then line break, and it skims through the next several weeks. To a degree, I understand brevity is the soul of wit, but at the same time, it was beyond frustrating when this happened at several points of the story. If you want, I can go back and find though I think it’s a lost cause at this point, given that having already read it, my eagerness to jump ahead is sated haha.

Other pacing issues; this was a big one for me, but sometimes you’d have very important things happen… and then format in such a way that it didn’t pop out immediately. Again, possibly personal preference for me, but when Maki’s dad calls before the birthday, its like a sentence in the middle of the paragraph, and I swear I missed it twice before I could figure out why Maki was freaking out. This happened a few times, where a important thing that should, by all rights, have its own line, being jammed into the middle of a paragraph.

Another one of the strongest points of the story was honestly how you handled Maki and Nico’s ship sailing.

While I might have railed on it a bit, I certainly  enjoyed it when it wasn’t some awkward confession, or having to watch Maki’s feelings develop and effectively watching the story drag, but instead by revealing she has always had them… that made it good. Like really good. Like A+++++ give yourself a cookie, go to start and collection a thousand dollars kind of good.

Swinging back around to the interactions, between Maki and Nico, there are some of their exchanges which made me burst out with ugly laughter. Like holy shit dude, good shiiiit. Personal favourites are of course, the time when Maki attempts to make breakfast and drops it and Nico just deadpans “well, I’m sure the floor appreciates the meal.” Another, which while its not quite nicomaki, it is related, is Nico’s realization that she has indeed left Maki home. Alone. And her kitchen might not be standing when she gets back.

There are a lot of interactions that you wrote, that I just flat out found hilarious, okay? :P

Skipping back to critiques, I think there was one moment that stuck with me… not because it was amazing but because it was ultimately one of the most unsatisfying in it. The moment where Maki goes “they know.” It’s quite obviously cliffhanger material, but nothing is quite as much a punch in the gut as getting to the next chapter and realizing that the worry that Nico has is essentially worthless (not completely, but you get what I mean). It’s akin to seeing an episode of something and ending with major developments… only for It to get regened as a dream at the beginning of next episode. Maybe I’m being a bit overly harsh but that’s what it felt like to me.

Wow, okay, I’m at 1400 words. That’s, um, huh. More then I’ve done in a long while.

Moving on…

As a story, and from my own personal experience of trying to write semi-realistic slowburn, there is something that I have to say I’m most envious of and that is the way that you created drama within the story.

For instance, the way Maki’s father is set up.

For all intents and purposes, he is the primary antagonist, or as close as we get to one. He is the one that Maki is the most concerned with, the one that continually gives Maki stress like you wouldn’t believe, the one who basically drives her to the point of several mental breakdowns and a panic attack or two. Yet for all of this, outside of the final chapter, I don’t think he says more then maybe… 10 or 15 lines? Rather it’s the looming possibility that makes him such a negative force. Realistically, he can’t do all that much to harm Maki. I mean, he COULD, but I feel like that’d be a whole another type of story.

In that way, this story is very much about Maki failing to meet her father’s expectations. Its not something grandiose like saving the world or the school, nor is it about her father blowing up. Rather its infinitely a much smaller and larger thing. Perhaps the glory of it all is that he doesn’t need to be. In fact there is real no conflict besides what Maki sets up for herself. No external forces conspiring against them, just what Maki thinks would make her father happy.

To be perfectly honest, the moment Nico rang the doorbell, I was so into the story that I could feel Maki’s anxiety, my heart was just about to pound out of my chest.

I think, at it’s core, Love Novels’ theme is about choice.

While I would call Nico and Maki the main characters, I would argue heavily that Nico isn’t the main, main character. She effectively is the same person as she was at the beginning. The only character who experiences real character growth is, of course, Maki. She goes from being a caged bird to a freed one.  

To an extent.

I have to believe that this story is not over by a long shot(not just because part two is up to 3 chapters, of which I’ve read a bit of the first… thought I should this first tho).

Namely I’m wondering if Maki is actually going to finish her medical degree.

A reoccurring theme that occurs throughout this story is that of choice, and Nico brings up multiple times that Maki isn’t truly happy being a doctor, but instead hints at how she is happier being behind the piano, or being an idol. Which makes me think if she might change majors or drop out completely? Much like it was stated above, given her father isn’t abusive nor is the one with money and her mother actually gives a damn, she isn’t going to lose her inheritance at this point (though I do wonder if she will buy the café Nico works at just to make sure she doesn’t have to work ever again and lazes about in bed all day…)

At this point I’m getting speculative because I’m wanting to lock my speculations in a time capsule before starting part 2, so just a warning about that and what not…

Another thing I’ve noticed, and it still stumps me is the way the first chapter starts. The tone feels off. Like something much greater is about happen that day, when all conventional story telling wisdom would make it be the happy times before the bad, not Maki getting a sense of foreboding doom.

I have two great hopes for the next part. Maybe three, but the third is super long term.

First, I’m hoping that its something that focuses more on Nico’s development instead of Maki. I say this because as a character, Nico has literally no reason I can think of to block her from doing her dreams of being a professional idol. She doesn’t have to pay for the kids’ college, and Maki can pay her share of rent/food money. Going along with the theme of choice, it would be Nico’s turn to deal with that, albeit with some help from her ever so supportive girlfriend/soulmate/princess ;)

Another would be to see Maki’s continued development, i.e. seeing her continue her choice to do something she is passionate about not something that was pre-chosen for her at birth.

My final curiosity is less about the characters and more about the ship. Namely what you will do with a relationship in the long term. As of now, they are currently in their honey moon phase, and like all things, as the poem, Ozymandias teaches us, nothing is eternal. The good times won’t be around forever, or if they do this might get stale really quick.

I’m actually personally quite excited that you are continuing this on past the getting together stage. I’m very, VERY interested in the long term. How the stress of a first relationship would get to them, or how they would just do the wrong thing. Really anything like that. I want to see them screw up, and take a break, or get angry and yell at each other. Something that breaks their bond so it can be remolded. Speaking of which…

This might be a personal gripe, but while I can accept that they could all (Muse) of them be other than straight (quite easily, actually), I’m curious to why you had them all pair up (besides honoka)?

Buh, I think I may have missed a few things, but I’ve gone over triple the character limit that Ao3 allows so I think I should post this. I might update it later, however.

Like I said before, this was awesome! You should feel proud ^_^

Cheers!

[xadoheandterra]

I finally got most of my thoughts in order for continuing Patriciate. I fell into a bit of a fight with myself on how to handle the next little bit of the story--there’s a lot of moving parts, y’know? Balancing those is not easy, plus the worldbuilding I needed to work through which has resulted in a need to edit a few of the previous chapters (which I’ll get to! Eventually....) so that’s a thing.

Anyway I think I’ve got a better handle on how I’m running the Order of the Precusor Monks now. I’ve even made a series of notes to go with naming conventions! Just...gotta put down all the OCs. Guh. OC heavy section yeah that’s always fun, but tricky to handle sometimes. Right. Anyway.

I’ve got the first whole scene finished, roughly 1400 words written, and 3 pages. Which is small for the moment, but I’m trying to pace myself. Still, for nearly a year of needing to get my thoughts in order that’s no bad, aye?

I still can’t believe I started writing this story 3 years ago. Holy shit it’s three years old what the fuck. Just...mind blowing.

Anyway, here’s a whole mess and copy of some of my notes to help me keep shit straight.

Named OC’s:

Aylín of House Karga, Duchess Rahmi of House Karga, Duke, deceased Koray Aksoy of House Karga side-branch Zoe of House Asul, Marchioness Lyra, Secretary/Receptionist to King Jak Alain, cheerful old man helping relief efforts Acolyte Kyla of the Precursor Monks Warrior Master Talin of the Precursor Monks Diplomatic Envoy Guardian Master Irma of the Precursor Monks Diplomatic Envoy Guardian Novice Finn of the Precursor Monks Diplomatic Envoy Warrior Apprentice Liren of the Precursor Monks Diplomatic Envoy Healer Sage Kira of the Precursor Monks Diplomatic Envoy Marauder Chieftan Aermsmin, Talin’s Uncle (technically) ; born to the Marauder Clans of the Wastes Healer Elder Fors of the Precursor Monks, Member of the Council of Elders

Titles:

King of House Mar (considered a non-gendered title) Baron/Baroness of House Praxis Marquess/Marchioness of House Asul (need to correct Chapter 12 to reflect this) Duchess/Duke of House Karga Earl/Countess of House Hagai (need to correct Chapter 12 to reflect this)

Order of the Precursor Monks: (need to edit Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 to reflect these changes)

Head of the Precursor Monks (Master Seem of no Role) Council of Elders (roughly 5-8 currently of various Roles) Sages (roughly 10-15 currently of various Roles) Masters (roughly 30 currently of various Roles) Apprentices (roughly 20 currently of various Roles) Novices (roughly 25 currently of various Roles) Acolytes (roughly 25-30 of no Role)

Roles of the Precursor Monks: Warrior (typically yellow and red eco saturates) Guardian (typically red and blue eco saturates) Healer (typically green and blue eco saturates) Seem calls all of her monks guardians despite the Role assigned, and only uses Roles when they are important to the definition of the persons skills. A part of this is because there are more Guardians within the Order than Warriors or Healers. Any Role can be a part of any job within the Order of the Precursor Monks. The group of healers/doctors/caretakers are comprised of more than just Healers for example. There are Warriors and Guardians too. Same with diplomatic envoys to the Marauder Clans, and even envoys into Haven (although they’ve been less in recent years)

There’s a lot of talk about Roles and Positions within the Order of the Precursor Monks in Chapter 16. So basically there’s a difference between Healer and healer and Guardian and guardian when used in the story that is mostly contextual based.

For names I’m trying to keep things fairly simple and close to the names we’ve seen in canon. Which means I’m trying to have a few four-five letter names which seem to be common, mostly simplistic, and then names that are based upon weapons/items for Marauder Clans (based on Kleaver being a former Marauder) -- hence Talin (for talon, claw) and Aermsmin (for marksman, armorer) of the named OCs of Marauder descent.

I’ve also worked on a way that Marauder’s speak, as Marauders a built up in the story from a mix of Haven criminals rejected from Spargus (only a few actually stay and join the clans, most die attempting to enter Spargus as citizens) and a clan of roaming natives to the Wastes that may or may not have originated as part of one of the towns in TPL. I’m not sure entirely on their origins, they could easily have moved in from a desert land further out when the desert expanded to include the lands surrounding what was once Gol and Maia’s Citadel and the Volcano that the Red Sage did his research into. At any rate they are a culture like Spargus has its own culture (and Damas has worked damn hard to integrate himself into it, which is why he’s accepted as leader even though he’s Havenite born) and how Haven has its own culture.

Basically a lot of culture clashes, and its why Aermsmin speaks as he does. A lot of the Marauder culture is living in the now, so Aermsmin talks about things in an active and present tense. It’s partially a translation issue between the languages the Marauder’s use among themselves, and the more commonly spoken tongue seen in Spargus and Haven, which is a more modern derivative of the language spoken in TPL. Spargus also has its own language, but it’s not really spoken or used much these days, especially since a lot of Havenites have immigrated into Spargus and Spargus has a lot of frequent contact with Haven itself before Damas took over. Essentially Haven has a controlling interest in Spargus and while the majority of the people of Haven don’t know about the city the nobility definitely does, and they have sort of occupied Spargus in the past.

Spargus and the Marauder Clans otherwise have an actual complicated relationship and common ancestor in language and culture that has drifted apart due to Haven interference.

I’m currently in the process of designing more OCs to be tossed into the mix, since the Precursor Monks have a lot of members to them and things are happening in the Wastes, and detailing some more world building information alongside writing the actual chapter. So it’s taken me ages and I’m sorry but it’s getting there! It’s actually getting there!