#of about 5 sentences. which isn't a lot but it's fun to see how much i can fit in that. maybe bump that up to 10 sentences?

[quietwingsinthesky]

okay so that's 24 prompts done, which is all the non-anon ones and the emoji anon ones, and that's just because my brain needed to organize this somehow or else i would have been overwhelmed and not done anything at all. which leaves about 28 more to do 👍 we got this folks

[sissylittlefeather]

Your Love's Been A Long Time Coming: Chapter 5

A/N: I'm sorry this took me so long. I've been dealing with a lot of writers block and I'm honestly not even sure this is any good. I have so much for Elvis and Viv that I want to get to. I hope people continue to read it. Or I'll just write it for me. But if you do read it, please please please leave a comment. I live for comments.

Need to catch up? Here is my masterlist.

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI, cussing, oral sex (m receiving), swallowing, teensy bit of angst

Word count: ~2.4k

Oh, Elvis, she thinks. Why won't you come and rescue me from myself?

******

In December of 1962, Elvis brings Priscilla over from Germany in an attempt to stop thinking about Vivian. He hosts a New Year's Eve party and invites everyone, including her. He's hoping that seeing Viv and Priscilla in the same room will help him realize that Viv is not what he's looking for. He's been thinking about it a lot and honestly, she's too independent anyway. She probably wouldn't make a good wife. Priscilla, on the other hand, is young enough to still be molded and she seems ready to do whatever he asks. Isn't that what a wife should be? He repeats it like a mantra: not Vivian. Not Vivian. Not Vivian.

At the party, Priscilla and Viv reconnect briefly. He forgot they had known each other in Germany. Elvis nods and smiles awkwardly and then she turns to move around the party, leaving him with Cilla by his side. For the most part, he's successful in staying focused on Cilla. He catches glimpses of Viv briefly as she walks through the crowd, always with a drink in her hand.

Finally, he finds himself next to her at the table with the food in the dining room with no one else around.

"You're really serious about this thing with Priscilla?" Viv asks with her eyebrows raised.

"Yeah. Why?"

"She's a teenager."

"She makes sense to me, Viv." Vivian shrugs and concedes.

"I can't argue with that. She's not very complicated, so I believe that she makes sense to you." Elvis turns to look at her suddenly. Is she jealous?

"That's not fair, Viv."

"Is it not? I'm sorry. I just think you need someone more like..." She stops short of what she was going to say. He has an idea of how that sentence would've ended, though. "It doesn't matter. You like simplicity."

Something between rage and frustration bubbles up inside him.

"Which one of my friends are you fucking tonight, Viv?" He immediately regrets saying it as her mouth pops open and her eyes get glassy. "I'm sorry-"

"No, that's fair. Maybe Red." She turns and walks away from him quickly.

"Viv!" He calls after her but she doesn't turn around. "Goddamnit."

"You okay?" Elvis hears Cilla and works to recover his facade, turning to face her.

"Oh yeah, it's nothing, baby." She smiles and he is filled with the desire to take the stairs two at a time and go to bed. Alone.

******

Vivian sits in the bathroom trying to compose herself after her conversation with Elvis. She's a joke to him. And this girl, this Priscilla, she's what he wants. She'll never be that. She wasn't that sweet and demure even when she was 17.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door and she wipes her tears, assessing her makeup in the mirror, and opens it. It's Red. But despite what she said earlier, she pushes past him and goes straight to the front door. She has no desire to see Elvis and Priscilla kiss at midnight.

******

Elvis and Vivian avoid each other as much as possible before the spring of '63 when they both pick up the film Fun in Acapulco. Viv still hasn't managed to land another speaking part, but her work as an extra keeps her paid enough to eat. And when it doesn't, Elvis makes sure she's taken care of.

Filming the same movie means being on set together and after their last encounter, it's pretty awkward. Still, when Elvis finds himself in a particular predicament, she's the only one he can find to help.

His least favorite part of this movie is the pair of tiny blue shorts they have him wearing in several scenes. They're a lot like the ones from Blue Hawaii, but for some reason these just won't come off, especially when they're wet.

That's how Elvis finds himself in this situation. He has to go the bathroom. Badly. But they're in the middle of filming. Once the director finally calls cut, he's absolutely ready to burst. He makes his way to his trailer, frantically trying to figure out how to get his shorts off. Thats when he sees Vivian.

"Viv!" She stops dead in her tracks, recognizing his voice. She turns to him.

"What, Elvis?"

"I need your help." His desperation is palpable.

"With what?"

"Just come with me, please." He grabs her hand and practically drags her to his trailer. Once inside, he shuts the door and turns to her. "I have to pee so bad I might die."

"Okay? What does that have to-"

"I can't get these fucking shorts off, Viv."

"Oh, shit."

"I'm going to piss myself."

"Well, they're already wet." He looks at her with panic on his face.

"Are you gonna help me or not?!" She tries to focus and make sure she doesn't laugh.

"Yes, come here." She tries to tug on the shorts, but they don't budge.

"What if I kinda lift them off of me before you pull."

"Yeah, let's try that." Vivian gets on her knees in front of him to pull when he says to. He looks down at her on her knees in front of him and looks at the ceiling. He whispers to himself.

"Don't get hard. Don't get hard. Don't get hard."

"What's that?" Viv asks.

"Oh! Nothing." He takes a deep breath and tries to focus on what's happening.

"Okay, I'm gonna count to three. You lift them and I'll pull down. 1... 2... 3!" She gives his shorts a firm tug and they come down to his thighs. What neither of them realized about their plan is that pulling the shorts down means his dick is going to be right in her face.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry." She tries to look away, but he whimpers, trying really hard not to pee on her. Finally, she gets the shorts down his legs and off and he runs into the bathroom. She sits in the living area with his shorts in her hand, laughing quietly.

He opens the door a little and hollers to her.

"Toss me the shorts. I think I can get them back on." But he can't. After about 12 minutes of struggling, he comes out with them stuck on his thighs, his hands covering himself. "Can you...?"

"Yes, I will. Come here." He waddles over to her with his hand still covering himself. He goes back to praying his body won't respond to the image of Vivian on her knees in front of him. He's doing okay, until she gets the shorts up higher and she puts her hand on him gently to try to stuff him into the shorts. He whimpers at her touch and becomes noticeably hard.

"God, I'm sorry..."

"It's okay; it happens, Elvis." She keeps trying to pull the shorts up despite his massive rock-hard erection.

Just then, there's a sharp knock on the door.

"Elvis, we need you back on set. Now." It's the director.

"Uh, just a second?"

"We don't have any more seconds. Wrap up what you're doing and come out. Now." They can tell by the director's tone that he assumes Elvis must be in there having sex with someone. Elvis is annoyed. That would be a much better excuse than what's actually happening.

He looks at Vivian frantically, his dick still standing at full attention with her on her knees trying to tuck it into the shorts. She whispers.

"It's not gonna fit like this. Can you... fix it?"

"Make it go away, you mean? I don't really have time to use my hand. And I can't think it away. That never works for me." It does work sometimes, but he knows it won't with the image of Viv on her knees.

"That settles it, then."

"Settles wh- OH MY GOD VIVIAN." Elvis falls backwards and braces himself as Vivian wraps her mouth around his cock and starts moving. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

He moans softly as she pulls off of him to explain.

"You need this gone. This'll work and it'll be faster than your hand. You want me to stop?" She looks up at him with his dick in her hand.

"No..."

"This is purely functional." She pulls him deep into her throat and sucks on him. His eyes roll back with the sensation of her warm little mouth on him. He's dreamed of this for so long, but the reality is better than he ever could've imagined. Her mouth moves skillfully up and down, complemented by her hand moving his foreskin back and forth. She licks a circle around the head and then deep throats him again. He grunts as his orgasm begins to build and he knows he won't last much longer.

The director pounds on the door again and hollers something, but Elvis is incapable of listening. Viv is working him with her mouth and hand, pulling out all her tricks to get him off as quickly as possible.

"Oh, god, Viv... that's so good..." He moans as she gets him closer and closer to the edge. He's gripping the counter behind him so tightly that his knuckles are white. She pulls back off of him and looks up at him with her big blue eyes, licking the precum off the tip of him.

"Let go, baby. You have to cum. Now." Something about her telling him what to do pushes him the last little bit and he tumbles into a mind-blowing orgasm, shooting his release down her throat. She swallows it easily, sucking until he relaxes, and then stops.

"Holy fuck, Viv..."

"Ah ha!" She cheers as she's finally able to get his shorts up and tuck his package into the front. Standing up, he looks into her eyes and wants to kiss her so badly. Still, despite what just happened, he's not sure he can.

"We're gonna talk about this later."

"Okay."

Just as the director is about to knock again, Elvis opens the door and walks out.

"What? I had to go to the bathroom."

******

Viv waits about ten minutes and then makes her way back to where she's supposed to be filming, in shock over what just happened. And now he wants to talk about it? What is there to say?

******

Elvis doesn't see Vivian again until the summer after the shorts incident. He can't decide if she's purposefully avoiding him or just busy, but she stays away. Part of him wonders if she's avoiding the conversation they were supposed to have after the blowjob. It never happened.

In July, Elvis is in Memphis just before he leaves for California to meet his costars and start filming his next movie. He comes across Vivian on Beale street.

"Viv!" When she sees him, she looks for an escape and doesn't see one, so she waits for him to catch up to where she is. "Where the hell have you been?"

"I've just been really busy."

"Look, I really need to talk to you. I'm leaving for California at 3. Will you come with me to Graceland? Please?" She looks around again for an exit and then looks back at him.

"Yeah."

"Good!" He grabs her hand and practically drags her to his car. They make small talk about what they've both been doing for the whole drive. Once they get to Graceland, Elvis settles them into the tv room.

"Are we ever going to talk about the head you gave me?" Viv shifts in her seat, obviously uncomfortable.

"What is there to say, Elvis? I sucked your dick to get it back in your shorts. That's it."

"That's it?!" He thinks back to the incredible orgasm he had at her doing. He wouldn't mind it happening again.

"Yeah? That's it." All of a sudden, something else bubbles up inside him and he stands up.

"VIVIAN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"Wrong with me?!"

"Do I really mean so little to you that you can suck my cock and have absolutely no feelings about it?!"

"It was just to-"

"Get my shorts on. I know. Why am I just a sex object to you? Something to play with when you've been drinking?"

"What?" He's not talking about the blowjob anymore.

"Why do I mean nothing to you?"

"Elvis... I-"

"Why can't you see how much I-"

"Will you let me finish?!" He sits back down on the couch seething. "You don't mean nothing to me. You mean too much to me."

"Too much? What does that mean?" Vivian rolls her eyes and he's somewhere between wanting to slap her and wanting to kiss her.

"Elvis. Do you remember what I told you when you got in the fight with Joe?"

"Which part?"

"The part about how if I let myself, I could fall in love with you?" His heart pounds wildly in his chest.

"Yeah?"

"I've wanted you since the moment I met you. And not just for sex. Sex is like... I don't even know what it means for me but it's not love and you... I..." His stomach turns over and he's overcome with a need to take her in his arms and show her what love can be. Is she finally admitting what he's felt for all these years?

"Viv." He whispers it and cups her cheek in his hand. She leans into his touch. Just then, there's a knock on the door. Elvis curses loudly and then gets up to answer it. It's the Colonel.

"My boy, we need to head to the airport. You need to be in California soon." Elvis nods and then turns to Vivian, who has followed him up to the foyer. He tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

"We will finish this when I get back, okay?"

She nods.

But he doesn't come back. Not this version of him anyway. The costar he goes to California to meet is a woman named Ann Margaret. And when he meets her, Vivian and all her complications become a distant memory.

But Priscilla? Priscilla won't go down so easily. She moved to the United States to marry him and she won't be deterred by the small matter of him being in love with another woman.

Elvis is trapped between three women and Vivian? She's the quietest of the three with what she assumes is the smallest claim on his heart.

She fades into the background easily, watching the feud that happens between Ann Margaret and Priscilla, her love for him never diminishing, but they never finish the conversation that they started.

******

Until next time!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Taglist:

@ccab @elvisfatass @elvisalltheway101 @aliypop @18lkpeters @dkayfixates @tacozebra051 @your-nanas-house @deniseinmn @joshuntildawn13 @lookingforrainbows @60svintage @littlehoneyposts @epthedream69 @louisejoy86 @rjmartin11 @from-memphis-with-love @deltafalax @jhoneybees @everythingelvispresley @returntopresley

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Welcome to the Drabble-A-Thon! We're back, baby!

What is it?

From December 1st to December 8th, I will be offering 1,000-word drabble commissions for $5 through Ko-Fi!

How does it work?

If you make a donation of $5 on Ko-Fi, and give a 1-2 sentence description of your drabble idea in the donation note, I will write a 1,000 word* story! The story will be posted publicly on Ko-Fi, and cross-posted to Tumblr as well**. These will be done on a first-come first-serve basis, and I will keep a post on Ko-Fi and Tumblr updated on what number submission I am on. Because I don't know how many prompts will be given, I can't give a firm estimate on when the pieces will be delivered, so the queue will be the best way to see when your request is being worked on! 

*The finished drabble will be a minimum of 1,000 words, if I go over by a bit, that is on me, and just a fun bonus for you! 

**Ko-fi has strict guidelines for NSFW material, and anything rated "Explicit" will only be able to be posted to Tumblr. If you would like a PDF copy as well, please provide an email address to send it to in your message!

Are there any rules I should know about?

First and foremost, please make sure that you read my general commission guide which can be found here. Keep in mind I do not write Sub!/Bottom!Tomura or Dom!/Top!Dabi. If you have a question about your concept that is not answered by the guidelines, please feel free to DM me on Tumblr before donating! 

In addition, please note that 1k isn't a lot of words, so try to keep concepts simple enough to be executed within that amount of story! 

These drabbles also cannot be add-ons to other existing stories. For example, no drabble prompt can be for a story set after the end of Changing Currents, or an exploration of Dabi's time on the streets before Tomura adopted him in A Cat by Any Other Name. These are for stand-alone pieces in order to keep things simple and not conflict with the canon of my existing works! 

Can I donate more than $5 to get a longer story?

No. This is a drabble-a-thon! While you are welcome to donate however much you would like, every $5 only gets one 1k word story. If you would like to donate $10, then you are welcome to put two drabble prompts in your donation note which will then both enter the queue and be posted! Every multiple of 5 is eligible for a new prompt! 

If you would still like a longer story from me, then you can always DM me about setting up a full commission! 

I want to participate, but I want to remain anonymous/I want to be tagged by a name other than the name used for the donation.

No problem! If you want to remain anonymous, simply put your name as "Anonymous" in for your name/nickname, and you can then type your prompt in the message box. You can send this message privately, and only I should be able to read your prompt! 

If you want to be tagged by your Tumblr username, then you can also add that in your message and I will tag you appropriately when your prompt is posted! 

I want to participate but I don't have any idea what to ask for!

Coming up with story prompts can be hard! You can send in 1-2 sentences of your idea, or you can simply send in a kind of AU, a rating, or a kink (or a few of them 👀), and let me take it from there! If you really, really can't think of anything at all, then just send in "Free Style", and I'll come up with something to fill the drabble! This is meant to be fun, please don't feel any pressure!

I want to participate, but I don't have any money!

That's absolutely okay! Please do not feel any pressure to participate! Money is tight for a lot of people right now and your needs, safety, and comfort come first! 

My question wasn't answered here! 

Please feel free to DM me or send an ask on Tumblr! I'll do my best to answer! 

Thank you so much to anyone who chooses to participate! I can't wait to see what stories we're able to bring to life! 

[veebs-hates-video-games]

It's that time again where I make an entirely too long summary of every game I played this year. There were far too many of them this time around (well over 100, but some of them I only played long enough to know they're not my thing, and a bunch are weird short little things), so I'll try to keep it to a sentence or two for most of them. On the off chance anyone's interested in more of my thoughts they should nearly all have at least one other more detailed post on here somewhere, hopefully all properly tagged at this point and everything.

Also hopefully the formatting makes it easy to skim through, broken into categories and with each individual game bolded, because I would be astonished if anyone actually reads the entire thing. It's over 180 games and 7500 words, so, uh...good luck?

I think I'll just stick with the same categories I've used in the past couple years. On average the categories further down the list have things I liked more, but there are things in one category that I might've liked more or less than some things in the categories next to them, and they're mostly not really ordered within each category.

So with that said, let's start with the worst gaming experiences I had in 2024:

Bomb Dolls: Probably more fun with other people, but it was borderline unplayable for me so I didn't want to subject anyone else to it.

Sayonara Wild Hearts: Anything that feels like it was designed in a lab to give me seizures and migraines simultaneously isn't allowed to place higher than this.

Gwenblade: It tries to do something interesting, but it has a pretty profound lack of polish that makes it just not work.

Survivors of the Dawn: It must get better later on, but it felt so sluggish and unsatisfying at the beginning that I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Neverwinter Nights 2: I guess I still really don't get along with RTwP and most CRPGs.

Persona 5 Strikers: This finally convinced me to give up for good on the SMT/Persona games, because I clearly do not click with their pacing or storytelling conventions in general.

Mouthwashing: The most profound sensation of boredom I experienced all year. Extremely not my thing, but I'm pretty picky when it comes to horror.

On to games that weren't the worst but still completely failed to live up to whatever (possibly incorrect) expectations I had of them:

Strawberry Vinegar: Weird miss for ebi-hime, with characters that felt awkwardly written and like they didn't suit their ages.

Scanner Sombre: Incredible tech demo, frustrating game.

CrossCode: I liked most things about it except for the actual gameplay, which was really not my jam.

Nier: Automata: Somehow feels substantially worse to play than any other Platinum game I've ever played, and the story and characters completely failed to grab me in the first half dozen hours.

Death end re;Quest 2: Huge let down after how surprisingly interesting but flawed the first was. They dropped almost everything I liked about the original, and even though they thankfully toned down the visual fanservice, the character writing was enough worse to counter that.

Dead Cells: Seems like probably a pretty good game, but having pretty obvious influences from Dark Souls in your gameplay mechanics is usually a good way to make me not have a good time.

Owlboy: It's pretty? Not much else going for it.

Night in the Woods: I did genuinely like a lot of stuff about it, but it just felt like it wasn't really going anywhere, and some of the night scenes were impossible for me to see with my weird/bad vision without turning the screen brightness to retina-searing levels.

Her Name Was Fire: What if 20 Minutes Till Dawn except everything was slightly worse?

Final Fantasy XIII-2: The first half was great and felt like a weird hybrid of Radiant Historia and Pokemon with a Final Fantasy skin, but the closer I got to the end the worse everything about it got until I quit in the final area. A contributing part of why the entire FF series is now banished.

Muse Dash: It's alright? The UI is a nightmare about a trainwreck though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: I love the metanarrative of the story commenting on itself and how much more fleshed out the characters are, but as a game I didn't have a very good time playing it, and I continue to not vibe with the way Nomura/Nojima tell stories. The other main reason FF is now banished.

God of War: I was pretty hopeful about Dad of Boy, but I just don't like how it feels to play. A contributor to why I'm increasingly skeptical of giving most AAA games a shot.

It gets so lonely here: Second person is not a valid POV (for me personally).

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor: The mining mechanic is pretty neat, but otherwise it's one of the less interesting/satisfying things I've played in the genre.

Spider-Man: Most stuff about it is...fine? But aside from the great movement nothing else really makes it above fine other than the typical stuff that comes with throwing lots of money at making a game. Another major reason why I'm increasingly wary of buying or playing most AAA games.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania: The least fun I've ever had playing Vampire Survivors, almost entirely due to it not having its own separate adventure mode to introduce stuff on its own terms in more digestible chunks.

Neva: Not bad, but basically everything about it that's different from Gris is different in a way I don't personally like as much.

Once on a windswept night: see: It gets so lonely here

Stray: I only lasted a couple hours before getting bored. I don't even mind that it's mostly a walking simulator since I've enjoyed plenty of those since they were first a thing, but aside from the novelty of being a cat nothing about it really clicked with me.

Next we have games that I liked what they were doing overall but they're just not really my thing:

Gorogoa: Good art and a clever way to structure the puzzles and how you navigate them/between them, but it's not really my kind of puzzle game.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights: Probably the closest I've come to liking a game with Souls-like influences. Well put together metroidvania that feels good to play, but the combat got exhausting the further I went.

Snakebird: The addition of gravity and puzzles make Snake a lot more interesting, but I wasn't into the flow of it enough to want to finish it.

Please, Touch the Artwork: Good framing device and clever way to turn recognizable art styles into puzzles, but the individual puzzles didn't stay interesting enough to me after a while.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: It does some really clever stuff, but I think I just don't really jive with how movement feels in modern 2D Mario games anymore compared to the ones from the 80s and 90s (but I still love the 3D ones). Also maybe kind of a victim of how sometimes Nintendo polishes their games almost too much, and the removal of any rough edges ends up detracting a bit from things I personally like.

Toodee and Topdee: The dimension/perspective swapping is neat, but it wasn't quite enough on its own to pull me through the entire game.

Tens!: Reasonably satisfying, and a pretty polished presentation, but this one also didn't hold my interest all the way through.

The Shape of Things: Another one with good presentation and decent (but slightly janky) puzzle mechanics that didn't quite hook me.

OscarWildeCard: Excellent name, and card battles to determine who has the gayest dinner party is a fun idea, but it's not really my style of card game in the end.

From Ashes, Bloom: I really like the creature and how it moves and interacts, but in the end it's a tower defense game, and those have never been my thing.

Cypher: I really like Matthew Brown's puzzle games in general, and I liked this too at first, but once I got to the point where I couldn't mostly hold the puzzles entirely in my head anymore I lost interest. I probably would've had a great time with it when I was younger and had more patience for taking my own notes though.

Manifold Garden: It looks good and has some good ideas, but kind of like Antichamber I feel like it'd be more interesting to me if I didn't instantly already wrap my head around the way it messes with space. The burdens of having an intuitive understanding of unusual geometry, I guess.

Burly Men at Sea: Seemed like it had potential, but the UI is awkward enough on the Switch that I didn't feel like finding out.

Railbound: Another puzzle game where I liked learning how it works but didn't feel like sticking around beyond that.

Rabi-Ribi: It seems cute enough, but I didn't click with how movement feels and the pacing was a bit off for me.

Cureocity: Has a good premise, and I liked the idea of the combat system, but I felt like I wasn't getting enough out of it for what I was putting in.

Parallax: The core puzzle concept is solid, but it gets a little tedious having to run around the map to actually put solutions into action. Also the most broken default controller layout I've seen in a long time.

Kero Blaster: Nothing really wrong with it, but it didn't hook me. Definitely not another Cave Story.

Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist: There's almost something there and the art's pretty decent, but the Switch version is Not Great, and it feels like it could use a bit more work in general.

Psychopomp: Seems like there could potentially be something interesting going on there, but it's borderline unplayable with a controller.

Press Any Button: This one also might eventually go somewhere interesting, or at least it definitely hints at it, but the gameplay segments started getting pretty tedious before I found out.

stitch.: Great presentation of the puzzles, crappy mobile game presentation for the menus, and solidly average actual puzzles.

Thumper: Pretty unusual aesthetic and music style for a rhythm game, but I don't have the reaction time to keep up with it when brain no worky like lately.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: I can appreciate what they're going for, and it definitely addresses some of the issues I had with BotW/TotK, but I'm still having a really hard time getting as into it as older games in the series.

Spitkiss: I'm into the idea, and the presentation is really fun, but I bounced off somewhere in the middle as the levels got more heavily focused on tighter timing of actions. Seems fun for someone more into that sort of thing though.

After those we have the ones that are the most "fine, I guess" of the year that I had mixed feelings about:

Townscaper: More of a toy than a game, but I got it in a game bundle and messed around with it on a Steam Deck. It's fun briefly to see what you can make with it, but that's about it.

Little Noah: Scion of Paradise: Most of my time with it wasn't actually this year, but this is the year I concluded that even though the characters are cute and the way you build combos is kinda neat, the game itself is only ok. Also the Switch version doesn't run great.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R: The first 2/3 or so of it is great. The art style used in the remake is gorgeous, and the characters and running around doing typical JRPG stuff feels like all the things that made 90s JRPGs great. Then I got to what previously would've been disc 2 and it all fell apart into what makes 90s JRPGs so hard to go back to sometimes.

Fallow: I like most stuff about it except for actually playing it, which was kind of frustrating. Her music's still great though.

Ape Out: It's alright. I'm not very good at it.

Downwell: It's fine. I get what they're going for, and it feels like they succeeded, but I didn't stick with it super long.

Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling: This one gets an award for suffering the most from a bad translation or not being written in the creator's native language. It'd probably be pretty decent if that was cleaned up.

Astronomical Club for Queers: Dialogue's a bit awkward, but overall it shows potential for making something decent in the future.

Hardcore Cottagecore: This one has serious student project/game jam vibes. With some polish and balance they could make something alright though.

A Little to the Left: Deserves an award for "game that most makes me want to go replay Unpacking instead". Fine, but I lost interest after a while.

Twilight Survivors: I've definitely played worse bullet heaven games, but at least when I tried it this one didn't have much unique about it good or bad.

Geometry Survivor: It's close to being pretty decent, but it just doesn't quite feel good enough to play to me to stick with it too long.

Ikenfell: The characters are good and the story is ok, but I could've done without the gameplay. The "instant victory" button was one of my favorite buttons I pushed this year and saved the game enough for me to actually finish.

Star Ocean: First Departure R: It probably would've been more fun if I'd played it in the 90s. Significantly less compelling than SO2R but not actually bad or anything.

Cats Organized Neatly: Presentation's alright, but the process of solving the puzzles isn't the most satisfying for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Fixes a lot of the issues I had with BotW, and the abilities feel a lot more polished and like they complement each other better, but I still ultimately don't love the way these recent Zelda games play and am probably done with them until the next major franchise overhaul.

The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne: It's fine. There's just only so much it can really do in like ten minutes.

Jewel Match Solitaire Summertime: It's a perfectly competent solitaire game, just like all the other Jewel Match Solitaire games. Good for when brain no worky, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

Xenogears: The first time I tried playing it was before Xenosaga was even out. I tried going back to it to finally finish it, but I forgot how rough the translation was and how janky some stuff like the camera is. At least now I remember why I've never finished it.

One Deck Dungeon: It plays out in an interesting way with the way everything is built around dice rolls, but it just didn't grab me enough to get me to keep playing.

the static speaks my name: It was just strange enough to be a little bit interesting, but not strange enough to stick with me at all for more than a day or two.

Stray Cats in Cozy Town: Might be my least favorite Devcats game I've played because the different angle makes it harder to come up with a good search pattern.

TREE: Another ten minute free one. I liked it more before replaying it to get the last achievement.

Witcheye: Pretty unique movement and fun for a while, but the difficulty increase later in the game didn't feel like it fit as well with what the controls let me do.

RYB: Some pretty good puzzles, but the more mechanics are introduced the less well it reads visually.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia: I've tried more than once to go back and finish it, and while I still like most things about it, the map design and a couple enemy types annoy me enough that I finally had to accept I'm not going to beat this one.

Graceful Explosion Machine: Surprisingly well balanced and an interesting gameplay loop swapping between weapons, but sometimes I lose track of enemies in the visual clutter. Also it's physically painful for me to play some of the later levels.

Frincess&Cnight: Good pixel art and fun interactions between the two characters' abilities, but the increasingly tight timings and need to start levels over for any mistake got a little annoying at some point.

CARS: More interactive art than a game. Fun to poke at for a bit, but probably not leaving a lasting impression.

VOYAGER: Slightly more of a game than the previous one, but mostly it's just tracing out fun patterns with your orbit while pretty good music plays.

Dragon Quest XI S: I played the demo on Steam a while ago and loved it, but having to replay the entire opening dozen hours when I got the full game on the Switch was painful enough to make me lose interest. There's so much stuff it does well, but It sure does start slow.

Project X Zone: I do enjoy a lot of stuff about it, but there are so many levels that each take so long to finish that after a while it got kind of tedious.

A Slug's Dream: Pretty good puzzles and presentation, but at some point I drifted away and never went back.

Puddle Knight: Same as above.

Please Fix the Road: Also same as above.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout: The most atrociously paced intro ever before suddenly becoming very good a few hours in, but the tediousness of needing to replace all my stuff at once toward the end of the game instead of stuff opening up more gradually killed my enthusiasm before finishing it.

Otoko Cross: Pretty Boys Mahjong Solitaire: A friend gifted me Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire years ago as a joke, so I impulsively got this on sale in memory of that. Totally fine but nothing special as a game, and if they toned down the horniness a bit some of the character designs/outfits would actually be pretty cute.

Death Becomes You: Some decent ideas and an interesting world, but some of the writting is kind of off-putting and some of the endings feel kind of abrupt and unearned.

this morning I decided to die: I get what they were going for and can appreciate it, but it didn't entirely land for me.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age: One of my favorite mainline FF games since the 90s, and I did genuinely have a pretty good time with it a lot of the time, but every time I got back into it it would pull some annoying crap to pull me back out again.

Tales of Berseria: I liked a couple of the characters enough to keep me playing for a while and the story is fine, but I got bored of the actual gameplay eventually and gave up.

Tales of Arise: Feels better to play than Berseria, but even though it hints at something interesting going on nothing in the first couple hours hooked me enough to get me to keep going.

KarmaZoo: I love the idea, but it doesn't get to go higher than this because it requires other people to play and I couldn't find any when I tried.

Margo: Definitely a fan of the art style, but the overall experience was only ok. It was probably somewhat negatively influenced by it being a pain to get it to run on the Steam Deck and still running terribly when it did, a very rare experience for me.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk: It continues the pattern of most Musou/Warriors games that aren't affiliated with Nintendo in some way just not really being as good these days. It's ok, but it's noticeably more clunky and less polished than even the original Hyrule Warriors was and just doesn't feel as good to play.

Moving on, next we have games that were pretty good and generally met my expectations:

Luna's Fishing Garden: I didn't love either difficulty option for the fishing minigame, and it dragged a bit toward the end, but overall it's pretty cute and chill. Special mention to the "you got a fish" animation for being great.

Kuukiyomi 2: Consider It More! - New Era: I apparently never mentioned this in a post anywhere, or at least I can't find it. Anyway, it's more of the same from the first one, which is a good thing for the most part. It's basically WarioWare, except the minigames are about being considerate (or being a jerk if you'd prefer) in various situations. Cheap, short, and a decent way to be amused for a little while.

TET: Cute, funny, includes recipes. A good use of ten minutes and $0 if preparing food for Vietnamese Lunar New Year sounds like a good time. Also feels much better with a touchscreen.

Clickolding: Like I said earlier this year, it's the most about sex work anything's ever been without explicitly stating it's about sex work, and it will do its best to make you vaguely uncomfortable about that. Didn't leave quite as much of an impression on me as their other game I played last year, Can Androids Pray, but still pretty good.

An Arcade Full of Cats: Not my favorite Devcats game ever, but still enjoyable. As someone old enough to remember arcades it was fun seeing all the terrible cat puns on old games, and they did a pretty good job of capturing the general feel.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore: Most of my time with this was before this year, but I finally made it through the last third of it. I have some issues with the dungeons dragging on too long and the almost non-existent quest tracking, but the characters and story and combat are mostly fun, and it's the only SMT/Persona-adjacent game I've actually enjoyed other than BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.

Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between: It didn't hit me as hard as the original over a decade ago, and a couple sections just didn't really land for me, but when it does work it does some interesting stuff. The train section was probably my favorite because it actually gets to expand on its ideas a bit more there.

The Fairy's Song: What if La Belle Dame sans Merci but make it yuri? Nothing revolutionary, but it does everything well enough to be enjoyable, enough that I'll probably get through the sequel one of these days too.

Bury me, my Love: Manages to capture both the surreal horror and mind-numbing mundanity of being a refugee seeking asylum and does a fairly effective job of it. The lack of typical VN QoL features kept me from going through again to see stuff I missed though.

Takorita Meets Fries: Fluffy nonsense about merpeople in search of french fries, and I mean that in a good way.

GOODBYE WORLD: The story and art were just enough to keep me going through the annoying platforming sections (which make narrative sense to be there, and even for them to be bad, but still), and the way it all came together in the end is what bumped it up as high as this.

Blackberry Honey: Yuri that's mostly cute and fluffy and fun while it lasts. I have Questions about the way the main character's boobs are drawn though. What's wrong with your boobs?

Voxelgram DLC #1: One one hand it's good because more Voxelgram is good, but on the other the larger puzzles are mostly just more tedious. Still good enough puzzles to get my poor ADHD brain to focus on something while listening to podcasts or whatever.

rat chaos: A replay of something I played many, many years ago. Not my favorite of the Twine boom back in the day, but having an "unleash rat chaos" button makes it memorable.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line DLC: Still not my favorite style of music/rhythm game so it doesn't go higher, but there's some good music in there, and it was still enjoyable enough that I had fun going through everything.

A Hero and a Garden: Cute, fun characters, good music (including the unlockable remixes after you finish the game), and somehow made in Ren'Py, which is not intended for this genre at all.

Hide & Dance!: I like it for similar reasons to the other games I played by hap (which will be further down this list), but it doesn't have quite as many opportunities for the silly humor that makes their games work.

Subsurface Circular: "You are a robot detective solving robot crimes by talking to other robots on the subway" is a great premise, and I was not expecting Thomas Was Alone (still my favorite Mike Bithell game I've played) to be canon.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land: It was genuinely great for a while, and they did an excellent job translating what makes Kirby fun into 3D, but I kept finding more minor annoyances the closer I got to the end, and I gave up entirely on the postgame stuff pretty quickly because it wasn't doing it for me.

Clear Skye Thinking: More cute yuri fluff that won't leave a lasting impression, but it was a good palate cleanser.

Regency Solitaire 2: Basically just Regency Solitaire again, which is fine with me. These always feel a bit more substantial and more polished than the other solitaire games Grey Alien publishes, so it's nice to have another of these after years of mostly just Jewel Match Solitaire.

Zenzizenzic: Good bullet hell game with good music, and everything is so many squares. Sadly not available anywhere anymore, and neither is the soundtrack. Also sadly I'm not very good at it.

Wedding Witch: I got it mostly as a joke after it popped up in a Steam friend's activity, but it's actually pretty competently made. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the stuff from this in a little more substantial game that's somewhat less horny.

A Park Full of Cats: More Devcats hidden cats. If you're into it you're into it, and this is more of it.

Gordy and the Monster Moon; One of the more recent entries in the Frog Fractions Cinematic Universe. A successful attempt to see what would happen if you made a traditional Zelda game without most of the things most people think of as making something a Zelda game.

Art Sqool: I've seen people complain that it's janky and gives you bad tools for drawing, but the whole point feels like that even if you only can make "bad" art you still did something creative and made an art. Fun to mess around with if you can engage with it on its own terms.

Fire Emblem Engage DLC: I played the main game last year, but I didn't get around to doing DLC stuff like the Fell Xenologue until this year. Not quite as good as the main story (which was one of my favorite games last year), but I still overall had a good time with it.

Super PSTW Action RPG: Replay of something I played years ago, so it can't go any higher, but if it didn't break my own self-imposed rules it would be GOTY every year.

A Tower Full of Cats: More Devcats? More Devcats. See every other entry for them.

Shovel Knight: Really well put together platformer inspired by old 8-bit ones on stuff like the NES and clearly made by people with a deep love for and understanding of them.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk: This and the next one go together. They didn't completely win me over, but I'll give them points for managing to nether glamorize nor stigmatize trauma or psychosis and avoid having an ending that's either tragic or fixes everything. Not perfect, but they at least tried to do something interesting with it.

Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk: See above

Meet Her There: Does what it's trying to do pretty well even if the writing's a bit stiff. Content warnings on this one aren't messing around. Also it's funny how many people totally missed how full of gender it is.

Florence: Effective storytelling with almost zero text or dialogue, and they actually manage to do some clever things to tie the very minimalist gameplay into that to enhance it.

Boyfriend Dungeon post-launch content: I played the game itself right when it came out and had a good time with it, but it took me until pretty recently to go back and do the additional stuff added after it came out. I probably would've liked it more if I'd been able to do it all at once, but it was still enjoyable enough to be worthwhile.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force: Definitely an improvement over SO2R (which was great in the first half but kinda fell apart in what would've originally been disc 2). This one still stumbles a bit toward the end but holds it together a bit better. Enough characters I liked and satisfying enough combat/exploration to keep me going until the end, and the nyoom button might've been my favorite button to push all year.

Be My Horde: Or at least what of it is finished up until now. I like the idea of having your only resource being dead enemies you've killed and most abilities revolving around upgrades/enhancements of your resurrection ability. The voice acting is also surprisingly good/fun. Definitely has potential if future additions to it can build on its strengths, but we'll see how that goes.

Pesticide Not Required: Possibly the most unusual premise for a bullet heaven game I've played, crossing it with a farming sim. Somehow it actually works? Builds feel kinda samey after a while unfortunately, but it's cute enough and interesting enough seeing how farming/fishing/mining manages to work simultaneously with killing hundreds of bugs at once to be enjoyable for a bit.

Golf Club Nostalgia: I'm absolutely terrible at the actual gameplay (thank you story mode), but the story and worldbuilding told through the radio broadcasts were interesting enough and kept me going. Not subtle about its politics or who it's commenting on even though it doesn't name any names.

I commissioned some bees 0: Not really anything special on its own, but I'm a big fan of the idea of commissioning multiple artists to draw whatever they want as long as they can fit a hundred bees in it somewhere.

Point of Mew: Short enough that its cuteness and charm can carry it through to the end.

Locke(d): I appreciate that someone took a hypothetical scenario from an essay, interpreted it completely literally, and then used that setup to talk about the ideas of the essay.

The Great Voyage: Not nearly as good as their second game, Vengeful Heart (which will be further down the list), but you can see how they got from here to there and how some of that stuff was already here to begin with.

CATO: Buttered Cat: Some reasonably clever puzzles, and building your game mechanics off the idea of a cat with buttered toast strapped to its back is silly enough that I can't not like it.

The Knight Witch: It didn't quite win me over enough to finish it, but what I did play of it was pretty well put together and enjoyable enough.

Peglin: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Peggle into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Words Can Kill: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Scrabble into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Across-Stitch: The tweaks to the typical picross/nonograms rules are just enough to keep things interesting, and I probably would've spent even more time with it if it didn't have some unfortunate color palatte choices.

memories: Another little yuri VN, this time sad. I liked the way it tied different memories to different outfits, and it's reasonably well told for what it is. It desperately needs a way to adjust the text speed though.

Next but not quite last are the ones that exceeded my expectations in some way without necessarily being better than the ones in the previous category (although some are here because they were good). I could also just have gotten more out of them than I was led to think I would:

Seraphim Slum: A VN that isn't afraid to get weird with it, and by weird I don't mean rawrxdlolrandom, I mean surrealness and strange metaphors and corruption/destruction as a form of love. I can dig it.

9th Sentinel Sisters: Seems unfortunately abandoned at this point, but what they finished of it is a fairly enjoyable bullet heaven game with a bit of a different feel and aesthetic from what I'm used to seeing. Translation's pretty awful though.

20 Minutes Till Dawn: One of the better bullet heaven games I've played, with a great monochrome-plus-one-accent-color aesthetic (the character portraits are particularly good) and different builds that genuinely feel different to play. Play on anything but the Switch if you have the option though, because it has atrocious slowdown with certain builds (although it still remains remarkably stable even then).

DoraKone: More yuri fluff about four queer girls spending the summer playing the my OC do not steal version of Pokemon GO. It's cute, and I liked the way they managed to tie the developing friendships/relationships into playing the game together in a way that actually felt like it worked.

A Time Traveller's Guide to Past Delicacies: More surreal weirdness, but this time with sock puppets too. I'm still undecided on what it's trying to say, but I really enjoyed the way it said it, and it captures both the fun and the janky parts of 90s FMV games well.

Bayonetta 2: The main reason this counts as exceeding my expectations is that the first game was full of great ideas but felt really unpolished in a lot of ways, and I wasn't expecting something that's still an entire decade old to have really fixed all that. But they did for the most part, and all the potential from the original finally came together properly.

Vectronom: Aside from pure rhythm games, this might be the first thing I've played since 140 that integrates the music and gameplay as well as it does. Bonus points to whoever decided to include some stuff with odd time signatures and rhythms later in the game.

Vampire Survivors: Emergency Meeting and Operation Guns: I liked both of these as much as I disliked Ode to Castlevania. They're much more interesting than the previous DLC was and experiment a bit more mechanically, and the adventure mode does a great job of introducing all the new stuff and teaching you the new mechanics and maps.

Lies as a Starting Point: A good example of how this category isn't necessarily better than "worse" categories in my list. It's pretty decent and the three storylines come together in a satisfying way in the end, but the translation is awful. I still got more out of it than I thought I would though.

Before I Forget: Ironically for a story about memory problems I forgot a lot of it because of my own memory problems. This nearly ended up in the best category though, and I appreciated how they made the story about who the character is as a person instead of just what's wrong with her.

Mom Hid My Game!: This and the next two are basically three parts of the same game, which is the offspring of a point and click adventure and WarioWare. Pretty short with lots of little bite-sized puzzles and a silly sense of humor.

Mom Hid My Game! 2: see above

My Brother Ate My Pudding!: see above

Soulstone Survivors: Another of my favorite bullet heaven games I've played. The addition of an active dodge and a lot of layered interactions between abilities makes it a bit more involved to play, but in a good way if you're looking for that sort of thing.

Bio Prototype: Not my favorite to actually play and the UI isn't great, but you can do some absolutely wild things with what basically amounts to a programmable build system to DIY your own weapons with very few restrictions.

20 Small Mazes: A great example of something that takes a simple concept, explores it thoroughly, and then ends without wasting time or energy on anything unnecessary.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: As someone who's been playing the different variations on this since the original mod, this was a more effective story commenting on its own (re)telling and its own audience's expectations than FF7R was, at least for me.

Halls of Torment: What's this? Another of my favorite bullet heaven games? The standout for this one might be how so many of the achievements/unlocks are really well thought out to get you to approach playing the game in ways you might not have tried otherwise and are often little mini-puzzles themselves.

SeaBed: Very slow burn VN that ultimately pays off in the end even if I liked the journey a bit more than the destination.

Everything is going to be OK: On the surface it's very coping with adversity through absurdity, but if you keep digging it has more to say about trauma and depression and misogyny and the value of artists and so on.

Will The Man Get Frog: Cute little PICO-8 game/toy for creating haikus using an extremely limited set of randomly chosen words. Fun to mess around with to try to come up with anything remotely coherent.

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place: Interactive poetry about being a willing participant in the destruction of history and trying to explain or justify it while also being aware of the sense of loss.

Luckily, My Arm Is a Shotgun: Nothing revolutionary, but it's surprisingly polished for something so small and cheap, and the titular shotgun is very satisfying.

a completely normal dating simulation that is definitely completely sweet, innnocent and normal: SOMETHINGETH ANIVERSARY EDITION: It feels like someone in high school in 2011 dumped their Tumblr into Ren'Py while also feeling like a flash animation from the 00s. I'm not sure the humor would hold up for me if I did all the different routes, but what I did play of it was the kind of thing I haven't seen in years.

And finally we have the ones I enjoyed the most or felt I got the most out of, not really in any particular order other than vaguely the order I finished them and added them to my list:

The Witcher 3: Absolutely my least favorite gameplay of anything anywhere near this high on the list, but the world and characters are so interesting and well developed that it more than makes up for it. I know they had an entire series of novels and short stories to draw on, but they've added so much more on their own, and it's only gotten bigger and better with each new game. They do a great job of making it feel like the world is much, much larger with a lot of stuff going on outside the small corner you're seeing at any given time.

Ghost Trick: It has a ridiculous premise and clever puzzles and a good sense of humor, but something else that particularly stands out about it is that despite the relatively simple art style it has some of the most fluid and expressive animations that give a ton of personality to everyone.

Vengeful Heart: Possibly my favorite retro aesthetic in anything I've played recently and definitely the best anyone's nailed the PC-98 look in a while, but even more than that the characters and story are great. They do a great job showing people from totally different backgrounds with totally different approaches working together against an oppressive power structure, and rather than everything working out perfectly there are definitely problems, but it still shows hope for overcoming them and a path toward the future.

Unicorn Overlord: Unlike Vanillaware's previous game the writing is only ok, but the art continues to be excellent, and it's easily their best iteration on their RTS ideas to date. I don't think the story will leave much of a lasting impression on me, but I had such a great time with the gameplay for the entire time I was playing that I don't mind.

OPUS: Echo of Starsong: Definitely kind of a slow burn that took me a bit to warm up to, but I really liked how things came together in the end as I got to know more about the characters and what was going on. It's also good at showing restraint though, not neatly wrapping everything up, and it left me with more to think about than when I started.

We Know the Devil: Another one that's good at hinting at and suggesting things without explicitly coming right out and directly telling you everything, and some scenes hit differently when replaying to see the other endings when you know enough to be able to read it as commenting on itself.

Jack Jeanne: A strong contender for my favorite thing I played this year. Definitely my favorite music/rhythm game, the best music in general, and the most gender. So many things in it can be read on multiple levels at once as being about the nature of art and performance, what gender even is, and how (or even if) to engage with an audience.

Visions of Mana: It's a shame the studio got shut down right when it released, because they definitely understood what made the old games in the series so much fun, and they finally made a new non-remake Mana game that's actually pretty great for the first time in over two decades.

1000xRESIST: I'm undecided on whether it's my favorite thing I played this past year, but it's definitely my favorite piece of media in general that came out in 2024. It's another one where everything works on like 17 levels simultaneously, like generational trauma, the nature of language and communication, the protests in Hong Kong, the experience of being an immigrant or a child of immigrants, both biological and found family, memory and what we choose to forget or to pass on, and like a dozen more things.

A Highland Song: If you're noticing that most stuff in this category is here because it has great writing/storytelling you're not wrong, and this one is no exception. The way what's going on is gradually revealed is satisfying, and the way it's structured across different paths keeps things interesting. It also does a great job of seamlessly blending realism and history with myth and legend, treating them all as equally meaningful and important to the people and world.

Ys X: Nordics: Sometimes you just need to go on a wacky adventure though, and Adol's shenanigans continue to be fun. The gameplay continues to feel tight and polished, and they also keep managing to have a large cast of interesting and likeable characters. It's just a good time.

I guess this time I'll only be tagging that last category because I played entirely too many games in 2024 and don't actually have enough tags for the top two categories like usual. There were some huge disappointments, but there were even more things that I didn't expect to like as much as I did, and there was a bunch of really great stuff in general.

[drowninginships]

An Ask Game for Writers to Procrastinate Working on Your WIP(s)

First of all, thank you soooo much to @monbons and @valeffelees for tagging me, I nearly had a whole breakdown over how nice this fandom is and how good it feels to be included in something like this. Yall are the sweetest, thank you <3 1. 🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s): Uhhhh, yall name your WIPs beforehand? I currently have two documents titled "nose ring simon" and "wing fic" and I typically title it just before I post it.

2. 🍄Describe your WIP/one of your WIP(s) in the format of “___ + ___ =___” I think you'll find this is a pretty easy formula for most, if not all, of my fics. Simon + Piercing + Baz Horny. Alternatively, Simon + Wings = Baz Horny. Sensing a theme?

3. 🌍What tags or warnings will one of your WIP(s) need if you intend to share it? Explicit tags, for sure. It'd be pretty funny to tag the wingfic as monsterfucking, so I'll probably do that, but otherwise, nothing crazy going on here. Just boys very much in love.

4. 🧭An alternative title to one of your WIP(s)? "wing fic" often affectionately gets called "how the fuck do wings work" or "goddamn motherfucking physics"

5. ⚠️Which WIP you're most likely to finish or update next? Definitely the piercing one. The wing fic isn't cohesive or coherent at this time, and it's more of a collection of scenes rather than a whole fic, anyway. I'm having a lot of fun writing the piercing one!!!

6. 💾What is your document of your WIP/ a WIP called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as) Please see answer #1. It's truly mind boggling to know that some of yall are out here naming WIPs.

7. 🖍Post Any sentence(s) from your WIP.

Of course it's gold. Everything about Simon is gold. His mind, his body, his soul. The color of his skin and his hair when the sun shines through it from behind. The small loop now adorning his nostril.

8. ♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP. For wing fic, I was trying to figure out a way to make an au scene where everyone has wings, and I could do a little, like, wing caretaking session? But I couldn't find a solid enough reason for everyone to have wings, and also I realized I just didn't care enough about that scene to pursue it further.

9. 🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet? I find this question particularly difficult. I don't know that there are any stories I want to tell, right now. Usually when I want to write something, I schedule it in and I do it. Right now, there's nothing on the back-burner.

10. 🤡How many WIPS are you actively working on? Only the 2! I'm not usually one to work on multiples at a time.

11. 🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now? Re: "goddamn motherfucking physics," I've never been super into fantasy or a fandom that particularly liked wings, so I genuinely have no clue how these things work. I took on this project as a gift for @valeffelees after he lamented the lack of wing fics for him to devour, and while I'm not an expert, I'm certainly trying my best. But like, the anatomy??? of a wing???

12. ❤️Not a question, just a second Kudos to send. Again, thank you both so much for tagging me. You're exactly who I would have tagged here, so instead of tagging you both again, I'll tag @thewholelemon even though I know you've already filled this out <3 Also, I'll tag @chaoticgaywitch @iamamythologicalcreature @youarenevertooold @beastmonstertitan and @brilla-brilla-estrellita because you all played our stupid little poetry game and brought me a lot of joy!

[lavender-lotion]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

How many works do you have on ao3?

868, which is bonkers???

What's your total ao3 word count?

2,445,126 words! I'm aiming for 5mil within the next decade haha

What fandoms do you write for?

CURRENTLY I am (only) writing teen wolf fic! it's so strange to be back where I started, but it's also been really nice coming back to all these familiar characters

Top five fics by kudos:

1. (baby) maybe that matters more - Steter, 40k

2. The Perceptions of You and I - Seter, 5k

3. With You, I Belong - Stalion, 59k

4. Mates and Marriage Proposals - Steter, 15k

5. Breathing You In - Steter, 29k

... should I just call myself a steter writer at this point?

Do you respond to comments?

yes!! all the time. literally nothing brings me as much joy as comments do

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I reaaaaally don't write a lot of angst, but one of the unhappiest fics I've ever written is probably this one?

And Now? - Stetopher, 300 words

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

there actually isn't one fic I would say that fits this? I primarily write schmoop, so a lot of my fic would count as having very happy endings! p

Do you get hate on fics?

oooooooh yeah babes. I've gotten some mean comments lol

Do you write smut?

yes! not a favourite thing of mine, but I do write it here and there. I recently wrote a fic w/ smut that I really really liked it!

keep me warm in the cradle of your skin - Sterekira, 7k

Craziest crossover:

ooooh this is actually SUCH an easy answer for me! it's 100% this one teen wolf/x-men cross over (possibly my only one?) where Logan (wolverine) knew the sheriff from the way when they'd been lovers and he goes to find him, and stiles is a lil jean grey esque character. I think about this thing allllll the time, too. I freaking love it.

what-ifs (don’t fuckin’ matter to no one) - Logan (X-Men)/Sheriff Stilinski, 2k

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I have actually! I only know of one for sure, and it was a stackson fic that someone had reposted to ao3? im so glad I found it (I think someone sent it to me?) and I was able to report it and get it taken down!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! I love it, it's such a crazy labour of love. if you wanna translate my work, just send me a link so I can see it!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

me & @flightinflame co-wrote an almando series where we wrote the same fic from different pov's which was a suuuuuper super fun experience! I've started a few other co-writes, but unfortunately they've never taken off and gone anywhere :(

there's nothing i wouldn't do to make you feel my love - Almando, 27k

All time favourite ship?

nope. nope nope nope I don't knowwwwwww

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

oh!! this is marked completed on ao3 now because honestly, I'm never going to finish it, but I love love love the premise of this one and I always wished I had finished it

Love Thy Family - Stilinskicest, 12k

What are your writing strengths?

this is soooo tricky lol I hate talking about myself. I would say probably dialogue! I also really like how I write romance, specifically getting together works, and I think I do a good job at nailing down the feelings that go along with them!

What are your writing weaknesses?

settings. actions. plot. I hate plot!

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I used to use a looooot more than I do now, and I would use google translate. it's never GREAT, so I mostly avoid it now. I'll translate like, a single sentence every now and again, but I don't do a lot with it anymore.

as for how I feel about it as a reader - as long as I can figure out what's going on from context clues, I really don't mind it!

First fandom you wrote in?

Percy Jackson & the Olympians!

To Long For Lust - Percico, 3k

Favorite fic you've written?

this is sooooo hard and so unfair and so difficultimpossiblehorrible to answer. if I had to pick one, gun to my head, it would currently be poly fic. it's the longest, plotiest, most developed thing I've ever written, and if nothing else, it's shown me that I can write things I've never imagined being able to write! once im done act 4, I wanna print it out lol

lift our faces, together, towards the glistening - Stisaackson, 159k

@lucky-bishop @mirrorthoughts @thotpuppy @like-lazarus @rosieposiepuddingnpie @kordyceps @whimsicalmeerkat

[cacodaemonia]

20 Questions for Writers

Thanks so much for the tag, @lyntergalactic! :D I feel like I've done this before, but it must have been a while ago. It looks fun! (also, I'm pasting just the questions at the bottom of the post if anyone wants to copy those)

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 247, though I'm not really sure what the ratio is for images versus fics... Okay, apparently, 97 of them are tagged with 'fanart' and have fewer than 100 words, so somewhere around 100 image-only works and 147 fics.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 1,141,145; which includes a few collabs and fics for which I just contributed an image.

3. What fandoms do you write for? TCW exclusively 😅 Though I've done a handful of images for other things like Arcane, Dune, Trigun, The Expanse, House of the Dragon...

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? A bunch of my works with the most kudos are images, but if we're talking fics, then I think it's just some of my oldest ones...

That’s Not How It Happened (This Is How It Happened) - Fives arc fix-it and my first fic.

Orbital Decay - Codywan that I haven't edited since I posted it, so I can't vouch for the quality.

Modulation - Another one I haven't touched since I posted it, but it's an 'Echo gets rescued much earlier than in canon and he and Fives reunite' fix-it of sorts.

Will You Walk With Me? - Waxer's pov from the start of the war to the (fix-it) end, and it mostly focuses on his and Boil's friendship (Waxer & Boil or Waxer/Boil pre-relationship - take your pick). Even though this certainly isn't the best thing I've written, it's my baby. 🧡

Interference - Umbara fix-it featuring minor canon characters and some necessary OCs in the first chapter, then more major canon characters later.

More stuff below the cut, since this is a long list...

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably You're Just Harder to See Than Most, which ends very sadly on its own, but it's part of a larger fix-it including Modulation above, so Fives and Echo get reunited.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Pfff like basically all of them, idk XD;

8. Do you get hate on fics? No, just on one sketch dump, where someone went through 6 chapters of spicy cloneshippy images and then decided they needed to complain about it being gross and immoral 🤣 It was hysterical kjlksahfg

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Oh yes, I'm a certified smut goblin. Not really sure what the question means by 'what kind,' but I guess 'porn with feelings' is probably the AO3 tag that would most accurately describe all of the smut I've written XD

10. Do you write crossovers? Nope.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes! :D

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Hm, I suppose if we're defining that as like, "what ship have you intensely shipped for the longest amount of time," it would be destiel? I was veeeeeery into that ship for many years.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I've had one wip sitting around for over a year, and for a while I was thinking I wasn't going to get back to it ever. But I made a little vibes playlist for it and had some help brainstorming, so I'm hopeful I can start tackling it again after I get some current stuff drafted.

16. What are your writing strengths? Starting something and working on it until it's finished.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I have a lot of trouble generating ideas on my own.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I think it's fine as long as it's either A. very short and clear from context or B. for some reason, the writer is intending to confuse the reader and obfuscate what was said. I know I've said it before, but I'm not gonna scroll to the bottom of a fic every few paragraphs to find the translations for whole phrases or sentences. If the amount of 'other language' starts making the dialogue difficult to follow, I'm just gonna nope out.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Technically, I wrote one thing for Gundam Wing back in like 2000, but I can't even remember what I did with it or what it was about, exactly. Other than that, TCW.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? flsdlfg that's really difficult... idk man, if it's quality we're talking about rather than sentimentality, I'd say it's a toss-up between these three 😅:

My Heart's Red Muscle - Canon-divergent AU where Waxer is a cyborg.

Kinktober 2022 - Character studies/development through smut, where Waxer and Boil find a list of sexy things to try out, so it's kind of meta. It's from my main Open Skies AU, and I'm weirdly proud of this one XD;

We Could Breathe Underwater - Force-sensitive Waxer and Boil AU

Phew! Okay this took me like three sessions to answer, but it was fun :)

No-pressure tags: anyone who sees this and wants to do it, plus @lizardberries @elismor @bilbosmom-belladonna @valkeakuulas @petrifiedforests @marbled-polecat @writegowrite @sophronist @marbled-polecat @ivalane

20 Questions for Writers

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments?

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

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

8. Do you get hate on fics?

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

10. Do you write crossovers?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

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

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

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

16. What are your writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

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

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

[nightimedreamersworld]

Six Sentence Sunday

Thanks for the tags today, friends @letraspal @artsyunderstudy @j-nipper-95 @hushed-chorus @iamamythologicalcreature @larkral @forabeatofadrum @confused-bi-queer love to see what you guys are working on!

So, the good news is: my vacation is finally here!! Which means lots of free time to write and read and relax. Whoo!

The even better news is: I've fully shifted into CORB mode. You guys, I lucked out. I get to work with not one but two absolutely amazing artists for this fest, and it's been so fun to come up with ideas with them both.

I've got a general outline + some words for both of these wips and I'm so excited. Have a snippet for each:

#Wip 1, Baz pov: a list.

1. The Mage is my captor. He sent numpties, of all creatures, and told them to lock me up in a coffin.

2. He doesn't want me dead, just locked up. There must be a reason, and I'm going to find out what it is. Soon.

3. Simon Snow isn't coming to my rescue—hell, he might as well be in on this, following orders from his mentor. He's probably guarding the damn bridge, waiting with his sword at the ready in case I try to escape.

4. (I know it probably isn't true—I'd be able to smell him a mile away—but still, the thought sticks, rotting in my mind.)

5. No one is coming to my aid—I've heard the numpties talking about a ramson. If my family pays, that would be like admitting defeat. Maybe it's what the Mage really wants: to wring out as much money and resources as he can using me.

6. Despite knowing all those facts, I won't stay here. I'm tired of the dark.

7. I don't need to be saved. I'll take matters into my own hands.

And #Wip 2 (also Baz):

I grew up underneath the Cirque's lights.

My first memories belong to the stage, watching my mother dance with flames like they were part of her. Like she was made of fire.

She was the star of the circus. Natasha the Great, they called her. They might as well have named an entire show after her.

I'd like to say I learned everything I know from her. I would have, if I'd had the chance.

But I learned it, anyway. Fiona likes to tell everyone that I used to do handstands before I even learned how to walk. Which is a gross exaggeration, but not far from the truth.

I suppose I do fare better upside down.

“It's the blood rushing to your head," Snow poked me once. “Makes you even more of a prick."

So there you have it. These both feel very tentative and drafty, but it's a start. I can't wait to tell you more about them!

Tagging a few friends for Wednesday: @cutestkilla @bookish-bogwitch @captain-aralias @rimeswithpurple @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @ivelovedhimthroughworse @whatevertheweather @fatalfangirl @aristocratic-otter @blackberrysummerblog @prettygoododds @palimpsessed @valeffelees @facewithoutheart and anyone who'd like to share!

[whenthechickencry]

Our Confession

I actually have read both this one and Last Note Before, it was a long while ago though... so I know the general gist but I don't quite remember all the details

The way Beatrice is doing her dead inside sprite before she realizes others were in the room and then she plays up her hamminess a bunch is really sad, aaa.

Dlanor constantly tells Beatrice she's a good writer and she's so excited but a little sad she won't get to see it as a full-blown game first, and Beatrice is like you don't need to flatter me but she's right Beato you should accept her compliments.

Iirc what the Booklet did for this was having the pages be sealed after this and you had to unseal them, which is actually extremely cool. They did their best here but a simple choice prompt just can't match that, I think.

Haha, the complaining about how Natsuhi is hard to make an accomplice... she's like the only person that cares about the headship as much as the gold, Eva as well but Eva isn't getting that without Sayo's help anyways, thinking about it even in Episode 4 she was one of the first to go,, so I can imagine getting her to cooperate is kind of hard. Granted, once you bring up Jessica to the equation you can probably get her to relent.

Beatrice getting a gun sprite is kind of uncanny, haha, really bringing it home was an early draft before Sayo had the chance to embellish the story with magic.

Kinzo being willing to explain to his children that he would blow them up if he felt like it worked in Sayo's favor when getting accomplices, I suppose.

You know, the fact Genji was like "hey! you are a product of incest. we rewrote your entire life for your incestuous grandfather. All your lovers are your cousins. Everything in your life is a lie. By the way, you have a bomb to blow everything up!" like okaayyy what were you expecting at that point Genji.

It's kind of interesting Beatrice tells accomplices that Kuwadorian is safe - technically Rosa could have probably survived Episode 2 with Maria if she just checked Shannon's corpses and realized she really was dead and just tried to make a mad dash to Kuwadorian, maybe.

Krauss is like yeah sure, sure, why not I guess. The fact that Natsuhi is the one more hesitant about this when she's the one thrust into solving all their problems, figuring out what to do, and she never had the option to not do her part...

This episode really does feel like tearing up the guts of Umineko... you can tell a lot of the accomplices act a little weird around Battler so you can guess Sayo probably told them vaguely of her plan, but it's the sort of thing you don't expect to be explicitly confirmed.

Kumasawa is grinning here, haha, she really does think she's a prank up to the very end.... it's kind of sad. She probably can't even imagine Sayo as someone who would do what she did, but I guess that also shows the way she didn't reach out to try and understand her enough...

It's kind of funny how sometimes you see the story going, ah, shit, sorry I have to embellish this more, right.

While thinking on how to properly kill 5 people she gets distracted by the fact she wants to draw a cute girl instead of a man, haha.

It's kind of funny because she does absolutely think they also did something wrong, but I guess talking to herself like this also makes it easier for her to justify herself to her...

Huh... now that I think about it most magic circles were indeed in places that people don't usually go to, ie the shed or Kinzo's rooms... I did think Sayo did the drawings in between murders, haha

The fact Sayo writes some of her tales while thinking about how the argument with Battler is going to go is kind of funny, haha. I wonder what the Japanese version said for metaworld here... it's not a sentence the translation has used so far and the side arcs don't have the greatest translation, so I am curious...

Beatrice is making fun of Battler for reading so many mystery novels but not being able to figure out the mystery, but also praises the person able to see the fantasy aspect of it...

The fact that so many of the mysteries in Umineko rely on several characters thinking that Shannon/Kanon wouldn't do X is very sad... like Sayo is writing these stories with the assumptions that no one in the family actually understands her and won't care to try to, so her mysteries are safe.

It's kind of interesting how in the episodes Sayo does this they mix up whether a Sayo actor is doing it or whether it's an actual conclusion the characters reached, in order to have more difficulty seeing the pattern. For ex: in Ep1 Eva, the accomplice, and Natsuhi both brought up this argument. Eva was an accomplice but Natsuhi isn't.

It's brought up that Gohda and Kumasawa don't know its actual murder, I knew about Kumasawa but didn't know about Gohda, actually... I think the roulette accomplices always know or at least figure it out early enough. Kumasawa's the one who is always clueless. Not really sure about Gohda in ep2, though. I think a lot of people were probably clueless in ep4.

This scene always fucks me up.... the way one of the few light conversations we see between Sayo and Kumasawa is here, the fact Sayo is crying after what she does before resuming the mocking Beatrice act. The use of "End of a Daydream" as the song...

In general this episode really highlights how? Disassociative? Sayo was during all of this. She constantly switches from doing the cruel witch that laughs at everyone's misfortune, to passing the blame on to Battler for what happened, to being fucked up about what is happening. None of these are Sayo on their own but all of them together make up Sayo. I think an episode like this really helps you see how all of the Sayos are one Sayo. Its role as a post-Umineko arc is interesting too. Even people sympathetic to Sayo occasionally role her as ie the innocent victim who did nothing wrong or flatten her into her relationship with Battler. Sayo is so much more than that and this episode forces you to confront that.

Shannon's words here hit so hard... Sayo here is affirming she was an incomprehensible being that was impossible to understand in the first place. In general, Shannon seems to be the persona most resigned to giving up... Beatrice might think its a long shot but her game and the meta arguments show that she does have a hope that she can be understood. Kanon might not think better is possible, but still yearns for it and isn't satisfied with what they have; as opposed to Shannon who seems completely resigned to the fact no one will understand them and that there is no hope for the future. Ofc all of these are the same person, so it's not useful to see them as totally different perspectives. But I think trying to understand each persona on their own is useful to analyzing Sayo. Like, why is the persona that has completely given up tied to George? Why is the persona that wants better but doesn't think its possible tied to Jessica? I think answering those kinds of questions can help you understand what was going on in Sayo's head during a lot of moments as well as help you contextualize their relationships more.

It's kind of funny how they do the missing corpse trick with Kanon constantly but never with Shannon, when Shannon's corpse appears its either after Sayo is dead or they hide the corpse another way entirely. R07 probably didn't want you to figure out they were the only corpses allowed to do this.

Dlanor points out that Beatrice surely wants to be understood by more than one person, Beatrice doesn't really answer to that remark and just says it's fine for her to just hope that one person understands her.

Of course, Dlanor did end up guiding Battler to Beatrice... and thankfully he didn't have to release her guts in order to do it, but... Battler still didn't understand her with just Beatrice's own words and actions. He needed to be guided and prompted by others to be able to get there, and it was still too late. This is still very sad.

Beatrice gets a shocked expression once Dlanor points out that said prince needs to have love for her or otherwise they won't get to her, and Beatrice relents in giving her the manuscript as long as Dlanor agrees to not release it before she is dead.

Now, on to the present.

Of course, Sayo didn't *just* want Battler to understand her. She wanted others to be able to see her heart. She wanted others to stop painting over her for the benefit of others. She wanted everyone to see her for the full person that she was. But that seems like such an impossible, naive dream that she won't even accept to having it.

There's just so much going on here... Dlanor begging for you to understand her, the reuse of the episode 4 red truth. Dlanor points out that just understanding what went on in the gameboards isn't enough to understand Sayo, there is still so much more for you to understand.

This is the first of all the side arcs I would say is completely required reading, Umineko's Saikoroshi basically. The writing here was excellent, allowing you to see the gameboard from a different perspective helps you understand Sayo much more. Being post-ep8 also lets them be so much more explicit with things they didn't have as much of liberty in the main arcs. There are so many heartbreaking scenes in this episode. If anyone reading this hasn't read this arc, I really beg you to do so.

[alchemiclee]

people always wonder why I don't read for fun. I have a few reasons:

slow. you know how some articles tell you how long of a read it will be? I just read one that says "less than a 5 minute read" and you know how long it took me? a little over 15.....this was a distraction-free read. i'm just extremely slow.

speaking of distractions. from inside and outside, they are everywhere. i'll either stop reading completely and not realize until who-knows-how-long later, (I have 100 unfinished tabs open on my web browser i started reading at some point...) or i'll be reading words, but my mind is elsewhere. so I need to reread it because I forgot everything immediately or didn't process anything at all.

dyslexia. reading comprehension isn't my strongest skill. often, things don't make sense when I read them, so I must reread. sometimes more than one or twice. sometimes I can reread the same sentence 5 times and its different every time. brain likes to mix things up to keep it fresh, at the cost of it making any sense at all. eventually I can get there, but at what cost.....

sleepy. when I try to read for a long time (which isn't that long tbh,) the processing my brain has to go through—deciphering dyslexic jumbled up nonsense, trying to concentrate and not letting distractions pull me away, in general trying to understanding what i'm reading—I get very sleepy. it's exhausting. the whole process of reading for me is so exhausting. the concentration it takes is too much for my brain so it literally shuts down and gives up. at least that's why I think I fall asleep every time I try read anything that's longer than this post (though sometimes even this much is enough to make me fall asleep). I have no control over when my brain decides it's time to fall asleep.

visualizing. i've always been extremely envious of everyone who likes to read. you can all see what you're reading in your heads as if you're watching a movie. when I learned people can do that, I got so shocked and jealous. it always confused me when people would hate on movies because it "doesn't look how they imagined" while i'd rather see the movie because it shows me how things are supposed to look. I would enjoy reading too if I saw more than words on a paper! I can get the general concept, like I know what a tree and a bird nest are. if a story says "the heavy wind knocked a bird nest out of the tree beside me" I won't see it happen in my head, but I know what it means.

processing. while having to deal with all this above, it can lead to me lacking the necessary skills to even process what i'm reading. if i'm reading a research paper or textbook, most of it can go over my head and i won't understand most of it. the words are too jumbled together, there's too many, and they aren't simple enough to quickly make sense of them individually. the boredom from the subject might also affect processing ability if it's something I don't care about, like school textbooks. if i'm reading a story, I might get the general idea of what's happening, but I will miss all the deeper details and hidden meanings. i'll hear/see people talk about something from a story that I never caught. it's like they're enjoying a secret they found in the pages that I never got access to. everyone else enjoys stories so much more than me, because they're doing it in such a different way. i feel very left out because I know i'll be missing out on a lot of the story.

people used to (and still do) always shame me for choosing to not read or not enjoying it. but if you had all these conditions applied to you, would you still enjoy reading? or would the struggle not be worth it? I do know some people can have one or more of these problems and still enjoy reading. i've met them and they have shamed me because they "have these problems and still read and enjoy it anyway." i've recently been trying out audiobooks. this is ever so slightly easier than reading, but still comes with some of the same issues as well as its own, such as my auditory processing disorder. this is basically the audio version of my dyslexia.

in the end, I still need a visual. I listened to an audio version of tgcf, for example, and then watched the donghua. suddenly, things I heard in the audio version made sense because I saw them for the first time! most of what I was hearing didn't make much sense because I can't simply "see it in my head" like everyone else. so watching the movie/show adaptation is better for me, even if it's not "good" or the best option. my preferred reading material is comics. it has both reading and visuals. if you want me to read something with you, present me with a comic/manga!

[gorgeousundertow]

First Line Analysis

Rules: post the first lines of up to 10 of your last fics/chapters posted on AO3 or your WIPs and try to draw some conclusions.

Thank you to @ackackh for tagging me! I'm going to go in reverse order to see if I can learn something about the growth of my writing (or maybe the reverse, lol)

10. Richard Winters finished his letter, but hesitated over how to sign it. (From He That Shall Live This Day, and See Old Age)

I'm happy with this. It's short, but it invites the reader in; something is going on in Dick's mind, something he feels uncertain about, and since this is fandom, we already know this character so rarely feels uncertain.

9. Dear Mom & Dad, You'll be glad to know that Officer Candidate School is going to be a lot more pleasant than Basic Training was, or is looks like it so far, anyway. (From From This Day To The Ending of the World)

This one is more challenging, because it's an epistolary story, and, well, I just don't think Dick would be that good a writer. He would be straightforward and a little stiff, which felt true to voice but also frustrating sometimes (which was the joy of that fic). That said, we know he's at OCS, so we know where in the timeline we are, and we know who he meets at OCS, and that's fun too. (It's a little hilarious that these both start with letters. Sensing a theme).

8. Thornton: Thanks for coming in today, Captain Speirs. Speirs: I wasn't aware I had a choice. (From The Berlin Dossier)

Okay, I cheated, because the first lines of this fic are actually from Speirs' OSS file, but this is the first dialogue. This is another story told entirely in found documents, with some OCs. I guess this works okay? It establishes Speirs' cool discomfort with the situation.

7. Brad bought a ticket off of a scalper for way too much money and wondered what the fuck he was doing. (From Serpentine)

I loooooove this first line. It establishes place (well, not Iraq) and Brad never doesn't know what he's doing, so something is clearly going on. Plus it just feels very Brad.

6. Gunnery Sergeant Mike Wynn sat in his humvee and tried to think about what his wife was doing right now. (From Wall of Calm)

I don't love this as much. It establishes place and mood, but it doesn't invite me in the way the last one did.

5. CO. Col. Lt. Billy Turner. West Point. Demands fawning attention. Shouts. 3/10. (From Don't Give it a Hand, Offer it a Soul)

*cries.* Okay, so what this tells me is I need to stop writing epistolary fics. (Just kidding, I never will). But, er, they don't make for the best opening sentences.

4. Brad stood with his back straight and his eyes forward, his hands clasped behind his back in as convincing a position of penitence as he could manage, and tried to remember why he’d decided to become a cop. From The Burden of Tomorrow

At least it's a complete sentence? This isn't my favorite, either, although I guess it does what I needed it to do, which is establish the universe: Brad is a cop.

3. Dick Winters was not a lord, but he wasn’t a servant, either, not precisely. (From an in-process Ever After AU)

Same as above - it's just about establishing the universe. Utilitarian, 4/10

2. Upon reflection, it was stupid to show up for an interview as an office manager for a mid-level law firm in a three-thousand dollar suit. (From an in-process ArthurEames Inception fic)

Yay, back on my game! This is another line I love because whatttttt is going on. (The next line reveals that it is Arthur who has done this, but of course it is, in Inception only Arthur wears clothes worth $3k). It tells us that Arthur has left dreamshare and it's Not Going Very Well, which raises a lot of questions and invites the reader to keep going.

Alfie tucks his spectacles in his vest and frowns at the door; on the other side of it is Tommy Shelby, patiently awaiting his retaliation for being a bloody-minded prick. (From an in-process Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders fic)

I literally just wrote this ten seconds ago, because this fic is loosely mapped but entirely unwritten. So I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I wanted to establish the power dynamics right off the bat - because that is what this fic is going to be about. I might play with it...but it's clear that Tommy's in trouble, but he's also still very much Tommy Fucking Shelby. Plus I just love Alfie's spectacles and will talk about them for hours.

My takeaways...judging from a first sentence is hard. First sentences have a lot to do, but so far as I'm concerned their jobs are these:

-ask the reader if they want to read more

-establish whose POV we're in

-establish the universe/what's going on (at least a little bit)

I think I'm consistently good about the last two...and need to work on the first one. :(

Tagging @blood-mocha-latte @mercurygray @nanuk-dain @noneedtoamputate @almost-a-class-act and anyone else who wants to put themself through this painful process

[catusbeanius]

tagged by @smollestduck-sketches !!! thankies!! also i'm gonna extend this to fics ive written but never published bc the only fics I've published were my frantic fanfics with some friends LSKSLKDJ

1. how many works?

If we count each franfic fanfic, then easily over twenty. A lot of my fics are half-finished though so if we discount them and the frantic fanfics, then more like 3 or 5? Probably just 1 actually smh

2. total word count?

Uhhh...... Lemme count rq. 1800 on the frantics (not distinguishing between my writing and my friends' writing), and then 7200 from whatevers in the obsidian document I opened. Theres more on scrivener and random sheets of paper, but my laptop is slow and I don't have time to find them all :(

3. what fandoms do u write for?

Twst and Enstars, pretty much. Technically some crossovers with Sam & Max as well!! Ig technically OM as well then

4. top 5 fics by kudos

Don't have any :(

5. do u respond to comments?

I would if I got them!!

6. fic u wrote with the angstiest ending?

That one fic about Cherio angsting over Trickstar (i think it's on my old laptop and that one's even slower smh. I gotta transfer these things at some point. If I find it, maybe I'll post it!! But it was a mild vent fic)

7. fic u wrote with the happiest ending?

All of my fics are mildly hopeful (if I finish them) but I liked this one Cherio lore Mally birthday fic I wrote where rat-kun showed up and ate his cake. I could probably post that one, but it doesn't make much sense without the Cherio lore context (which I haven't written down yet :( )

8. do u get hate on fics?

Yeah, from myself (I'm jk, I don't hate my writing)

9. do u write smut?

Teehee :3 Technically, I have. Probably won't do it again, though. Eh, we'll see.

10. craziest crossover fics?

OM and Sam & Max

11. have u ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of

12. ever had a fic translated?

Very, very technically yes though bc I would write fics in class in a secret script and then decode them at home SLKD (but, as I said, that's more decoding than translating)

13. ever co-written a fic?

Yes! The frantics

14. all time favorite ship?

Lilia Vanrouge x urmom /j Serious answer, idek ;v; Anything that makes Mika or Malleus happy, I suppose! (ShuNaruMika especially). I'd also say anything that makes Lilia happy but you can't really ship him with anyone bc he's so old it'll always be a little weird

15. what's a wip u wanna finish but doubt u will?

Cherio Lore :( I can write a synopsis of it, but I really want to organically present the ideas through typical novel writing as practice before I really write my own stories. Alas, idk what happens in the middle (as always)

16. writing strengths?

Abstract descriptions! I hope, at least. I love writing them!!

17. writing weaknesses?

Dialogue fs. Idk how people talk. Also, sentence variation. I'm a predictable guy and I have my favorite words!!

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

The thing is, if it's in a different script to the language you're writing in (for example, English and Japanese), there's not a way for the reader to read it, yk? And idk if there's a way to organically integrate a translation. Even if your reader isn't supposed to know what they're saying, what's the point in including the dialogue in the first place? You can just say they said something in Japanese. Unless it's assumed your reader knows the other language, then it adds some dramatic irony. Ofc, there's gonna be ways you can fit it in well since each situation is different, but I wouldn't add it explicitly in quotations, per se. This is coming from a semi-bilingual language nerd semi-studying to be an editor (aka, don't take it to heart bc I'm not a professional)

19. first fandom u wrote in?

Bnha. Bad, bad, bad stuff. I get chills thinking about it.

20. fav fic youve written?

Any Lilia angst, tbh. I don't even care for angst why do I always write Lilia angst istg (and it's delicious every time)

This was fun!! Hopefully it was interesting!!

I pass this game onto you, my friends :>

@unnecessarilysalty @multilevelwriter-blog

[xplrvibes]

waiting for your review

Ok, I'm finished!

Here's my review:

It sucked.

.

.

I'm kidding, don't throw tomatoes lol.

No, actually, I did not mind this video at all! I have a few critiques, but honestly, I feel like it was kind of a throwback to some of their 2022 content in a way, so it hit that nostalgic button in my brain just right.

Let me break down a little bit about each person that appeared in this video before I get into anything else:

1. Jake

Now, any of you who have been around me long enough know that I wasn't a huge fan of Jake in the 2019 haunted videos (and I loved Jake in his own videos at the time, I just felt like he derailed everything and could get downright disrespectful in the paranormal stuff). I haven't really been paying attention to him at all since his murderbilia days, so I really have very little frame of reference as to how much he's changed over the years.

And wow - he's changed a lot.

I have to give him props for being more open to doing this stuff than I feel he used to be, and I do think it was kind of endearing to watch him get all excited and over explain the Estes Method and everything he was hearing.

I am curious as to why his voice sounds so different, though. Why does he talk like a game show host now? 😭

2. Johnnie

I gotta give Johnnie props as well. He was clearly scared, but he went for it without any peer pressure almost every single time. Good for him.

I am curious about the "ring" like figure he saw towards the beginning of the video; was that him psyching himself up to the point of hallucination, or something real? Interesting either way, but I do wonder.

3. Adam

This dude...

Where do I begin? I know we've met Adam before, but I don't remember him being this animated and excited in the past? Bro was high on life (and other things) during this whole thing and, while that is a bit suspicious, it was also kind od endearing.

Dude loves his job. Can't hate him for that.

Anyway, when he started getting into his little theory (which I did not like cause I hate anything involving time travel cause it makes me brain HURT), I swear to God he sounded exactly like my friend from high school's boyfriend. This guy used to smoke a blunt, turn on the Doors, and start sentences with things like, "What if we're haunting the future already and the future's manipulating the past?"

So that was also nostalgic to me.

Do I buy his theory? No. Do I think it was interesting that they kept hearing things that people are now saying sounded like Sam and Colby talking to one another all night? Sure. That's fun. We like fun.

4. Sam

I didn't like the Kansas City barbecue thing at all - and not because it was offensive or whatever, cause it did not personally offend me (although if it did you, cool).

It felt scripted. I don't want scripted. Idk. Just come by being a weirdo naturally or don't do it at all.

Other than that, I have to give Sam props for climbing through that rusty ass old power station in those shoes and jeans without falling and breaking his back (again). That was daunting.

5. Colby

This motherfucker.

Why does Colby always wait until he's off by himself to start talking about his intuitive feelings?

Ok, with that out of the way, here's what I thought about the video itself.

"I don't feel welcome here" and "I feel like we're invading their privacy." Why does he only hit us with shit like this sporadically and off-hand? Goddannit, Colby! Give aussie anon and I what we want!

-

While I honestly don't think that much happened from a paranormal sense, I do think it was fun to watch snc take some time to do some old school abandoned type content. That was a great way to infuse the old style in with the new in a way that wouldn't cost them their careers 🤣.

Once again, I find it funny when other people do the Estes Method, cause it's interesting to see that it really isn't something that everyone can do without issues. Jake, of course, explained later that he was weeding out anything that he didn't hear crystal clear - which I actually kind of fucked with, cause there was a lot less filler in the answers he was providing - but it is interesting that Johnnie and Sam could hear words even through his headphones that Jake just wasn't saying out loud.

Also, I have to give Jake props for doing somethjng that I don't even know if snc themselves have ever done, and that's putting the emf detector up to his phone to see if that was making it spike. I appreciate that.

And this is a total aside, and nothing do with snc or Jake and Johnnie themselves, but is a personal tangent (can't say why, but just know that this bugs me on a fundamental level). Seeing the records and papers and patient data that was just casually left behind to rot and for anyone to pick through in these buildings - holy fucking lawsuit express, USA. Jesus. Wowza. The laws being broken there. I was getting anxious even seeing it all (and praying they never showed anything on camera, which thank GOD they didn't). It's amazing that companies used to get away with shit like that, like holy geez.

Anyway! You've all listened to my ramblings long enough, so let me just end this by saying that this was probably one of the better videos in terms of personalities involved in a long time (even if I don't think there was much paranormal to it, but I personally don't mind that) and I'm kind of glad now that they brought Jake and Johnnie.

I'll rate this one a solid 7.8/10!

Let me know your thoughts/ratings!

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Welcome to the Drabble-A-Thon!

What is it?

From September 6th to September 15th, I will be offering 1,000-word drabble commissions for $5 through Ko-Fi!

Why is this a thing?

My job pushed back my start date by a month and a half, and I've noticed that my 3-year-old phone's screen is starting to burn out (my last phone lasted 5 years and I am incredibly salty about this). I want to take the week I'm off to try and get some outside work to start saving up to replace it and stay ahead on bills despite the delay. 

How does it work?

If you make a donation of $5 on Ko-Fi, and give a 1-2 sentence description of your drabble idea in the donation note, I will write a 1,000 word* story! The story will be posted publicly on Ko-Fi, and cross-posted to Tumblr as well**. These will be done on a first-come first-serve basis, and I will keep a post on Ko-Fi and Tumblr updated on what number submission I am on. Because I don't know how many prompts will be given, I can't give a firm estimate on when the pieces will be delivered, so the queue will be the best way to see when your request is being worked on! 

*The finished drabble will be a minimum of 1,000 words, if I go over by a bit, that is on me, and just a fun bonus for you! 

**Ko-fi has strict guidelines for NSFW material, and anything rated "Explicit" will only be able to be posted to Tumblr. If you would like a PDF copy as well, please provide an email address to send it to in your message!

Are there any rules I should know about?

First and foremost, please make sure that you read my general commission guide which can be found here. Keep in mind I do not write Sub!/Bottom!Tomura or Dom!/Top!Dabi. If you have a question about your concept that is not answered by the guidelines, please feel free to DM me on Tumblr before donating! 

In addition, please note that 1k isn't a lot of words, so try to keep concepts simple enough to be executed within that amount of story! 

These drabbles also cannot be add-ons to other existing stories. For example, no drabble prompt can be for a story set after the end of Changing Currents, or an exploration of Dabi's time on the streets before Tomura adopted him in A Cat by Any Other Name. These are for stand-alone pieces in order to keep things simple and not conflict with the canon of my existing works! 

Can I donate more than $5 to get a longer story?

No. This is a drabble-a-thon! While you are welcome to donate however much you would like, every $5 only gets one 1k word story. If you would like to donate $10, then you are welcome to put two drabble prompts in your donation note which will then both enter the queue and be posted! Every multiple of 5 is eligible for a new prompt! 

If you would still like a longer story from me, then you can always DM me about setting up a full commission! 

I want to participate, but I want to remain anonymous/I want to be tagged by a name other than the name used for the donation.

No problem! If you want to remain anonymous, simply put your name as "Anonymous" in for your name/nickname, and you can then type your prompt in the message box. You can send this message privately, and only I should be able to read your prompt! 

If you want to be tagged by your Tumblr username, then you can also add that in your message and I will tag you appropriately when your prompt is posted! 

I want to participate but I don't have any idea what to ask for!

Coming up with story prompts can be hard! You can send in 1-2 sentences of your idea, or you can simply send in a kind of AU, a rating, or a kink (or a few of them 👀), and let me take it from there! If you really, really can't think of anything at all, then just send in "Free Style", and I'll come up with something to fill the drabble! This is meant to be fun, please don't feel any pressure!

I want to participate, but I don't have any money!

That's absolutely okay! Please do not feel any pressure to participate! Money is tight for a lot of people right now and your needs, safety, and comfort come first! 

My question wasn't answered here! 

Please feel free to DM me or send an ask on Tumblr! I'll do my best to answer! 

Thank you so much to anyone who chooses to participate! I can't wait to see what stories we're able to bring to life! 

[soopsiedaisies]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you sm for tagging me @lovelymasks and @strugglequill <3

How many works do you have on AO3?

16, though one is still hidden for fest.

What's your total AO3 word count?

140,294. Counting my, ahem, other/abandoned account, it's about 520k. Counting my drafts I think we've reached about a million.

What fandoms do you write for?

A Court of Thorns and Roses, Batman, and Harry Potter. I've got some WIPs for Bridgerton and Teen Wolf in my drafts as well though.

Top 5 fics by kudos?

an eye for an eye, a leg for a leg. A Batfam fic in which the Joker gets got.

drawn together. Another Batfam fic lmao, with Damian & Bruce being good at art.

yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me. Sirius & entourage saving little 5yo Harry from the Dursleys.

i watched as your life just fell apart. Charlus & Dorea Potter adopt Harry after Halloween and ensure Sirius gets a trial (with the help of Orion Black)

boy, you've been a naughty girl. Feysand Court of Nightmares smut.

Do you respond to comments?

I try to!! Sometimes I get a notification but I don't have the spoons to write out a deserving reply, but then I forget and then the next time I get a comment... it's been months and I'm too embarrassed to reply after such an enormously long wait. I also have a tendency to not reply to comments under the last chapter of multichaps until I've posted the new chapter.

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

grim-old-place, I think, even though it isn't really angsty. I enjoy writing happy endings and hopeful open endings far more. Big fan of fix-its, personally. But yeah, grim-old-place is probably the one with the angstiest ending (despite being only a drabble) because it's just so. Hopeless, I suppose?

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

an eye for an eye, hands down. Hopeful and happy, which is not something you'd expect for a angry&angsty revenge fic full of grief.

Do you get hate on fics?

I don't. Not yet, at least (I'm sure it'll happen though? It's part of posting your stuff online for the world to see). Very thankful I've not gotten any hate yet.

Once I got 'hate' on my attitude towards JKR (in which I think she's awful), but that was not on the fic itself, more on my author's notes.

Do you write smut?

Yes. It's very awkward for me. I'm not a very sexual person lol.

Do you write crossovers?

I haven't! No inspo for a good crossover yet either. I'm more an AU person (Bridgerton Prongsfoot, anyone?)

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No! [knocks on wood]

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've only ever been asked (I think by a bot lmao), but no, no translations (to my knowledge)

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've tried and it ended in chaos <3 The other author and I are still friends, but our schedules just didn't align at all.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Superbat! Prongsfoot is a close-second. (The ship I've shipped the longest is Zukka I believe)

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

I've got this time-travel Tomarry fic in my drafts that I want to completely write before posting, but idk if that'll happen lmao. There's a changed backstory to Harry that needs to be taken into account and it's just... a lot.

What are your writing strengths?

I'm very descriptive and (apparently) good at setting a vibe! It's always nice to hear that because those are, generally, my favourite bits in reading actual novels.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Sentence-structure variety, use of the passive voice, putting too much detail or far too little because I want to get to the fun bit, creating a well-rounded plot... many.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

I've considered it before for another WIP, but... I do think it'll take a reader out of the immersiveness of a fic. I'm also not fluent in any other language than English, Dutch, and Frisian, which may mean I'll royally fuck up any sentences I write in, say, French. There's this skin that allows you to show the translation when you hover though which is cool!! If you're confident in the other language, that might be something nice to look into haha

First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter (unpublished) or Hetalia. I think I've still got a USB stick with some ancient files on there lying around.

Favourite fic you've ever written?

oh, my dear girl. It was really fun to write female Harry in a good relationship with her aunt and cousin, and I've got some really fun bits in the upcoming sequels/chapters (undecided how I'll do that still) as well.

(There's another WIP (still unposted) that I just really love, in which Harry's consciousness travels to an alternate dimension and he ends up in the body of Henry 'Harry' Potter, James' twin brother (who is younger than James by twenty minutes). Henry's consciousness is still there and they just work together, which results in a lot of chaos (with James). )

I also adore nightcourt.gov because it's just humour and silliness which you just need sometimes.

No pressure tagging (I'm so sorry if you've already been tagged or have done this!) : @v-a-l, @plecotusauritus, @the-lonelybarricade, @separatist-apologist, @velidewrites, and anyone who'd like to do this :))

[saryasy]

Greetings! You’ve answered questions as a writer, so it’s now time to answer questions as a reader >:] (Feel free to only answer a few or none :])

1) What’s your favorite fanfic trope to read?

2) Multi chapter fanfics or oneshots?

3) Read a no dialogue story or only dialogue story?

4) What’s a thing that makes you happy when you see it in a fanfic?

5) Who’s your favorite author?

6) Recommend a fanfic! :D

7) Gush about a fanfic you read recently, if you want. Be free, lmao.

Okay byee I love your fanfics and gifs :))

hey anon!

omg thank you so much for the asks and lovely words 😭😭💖💖

okay here we go!

1) too many to count honestly. but fake dating is up up there. me and that tag are quite well acquainted at this point. I also really love childhood friends to lovers. something about the knowing each other through the good and bad, the "should we risk this beautiful friendship for something that not work" it's about the pining you see, the pining!!

2) I'm really not picky there! but if it's a longish story ~20k and more I'd probably prefer it to be multi chaptered. then again I know how tricky multi chapters can be so honestly, whatever works

3) no dialogue story for sure, I love the introspectiveness of it all. though I'm not totally opposed to an only dialogue story. it can be fun (though not a long one it can get old rather quickly)

4) yk I can't think of anything specific. lots of things make me happy in fanfic. and their absence isn't a big deal either

5) I have too many to count but I'll definitely take this opportunity to shout out some of my sambucky faves: bisamwilson, dharmainitiative, glittercake, livingincolors

6) rough surfaces by my dear friend @livingincolorsagain is a wonderful wonderful sambucky story that takes place right after their break up. it's a second chance romance sure, but it also takes a really great look at anxiety and Sam's internal struggles and mental health issues. and just, the love you thought would never die? was too strong and was going to survive whatever life threw at you? and the hopelessness of watching it die and wither, helpless to do anything about it. I really love her writing and how she writes all those characters with care and deep love. I can be found screaming about that story at any given moment btw

7) I have been reading some post-s1 good omens fic recently (still can't get myself to read post s2. the wound is too raw) and came across this very lovely story (Slow) in which Adam resets reality and makes a teany tiny assumptions about Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship status. I really loved how it was structured, idk what it's called but that sort of repeating the same sentence structure and offering a new piece of information, idk if that makes sense but yeah I love it. also it was really beautifully written, I love those pining fools

well that's it! again thank you so much nonnie for the lovely ask <33