#runner ups: queen of candia; nothing wrong with being a seed guy; my funny valentine; famous last words; all my wips

[pricemarshfield]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️

thank you for the ask, neutral!! time to show my deeply multifandom roots and not have any of these share the same fandom 🫡 below the cut because i’m chatty as hell

number one on the list is a recent one but absolutely my all-time favorite thing i’ve ever written: talk, a bg3/raphtav-and-also-haarlep-is-there smut oneshot

i don’t use this tweet here because it’s smut, but because no fic has EVER gripped me by the brain and haunted me for months until i wrote it like this one did and also because the devil’s hot. i laid awake at night in a cold sweat thinking about this even before i’d finished house of hope for the first time. i’m not even being hyperbolic here, this fic GOT me. also this fic converted me from haarlep-neutral to haarlep’s personal cheerleader. they’re so fun

my beloved darling tav already had a very strong characterization to me but i still feel like i Learned her through writing this, and certainly learned a lot about her dynamics with raphael and haarlep. enough that i’m braving actually writing a longfic for them, and feel free to hold me to this because otherwise it’ll languish in my drafts for another six months. but i’m actually formatting the first chapter for ao3, it’s Genuinely almost done !! promise

fun story about this is i cheerfully told my mom i’d finished writing something after i posted this and she asked to read it. i was like haha. well i’ll do that after work! and then i didn’t ♥️

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number two on the list is what i’d have confidently said was the best thing i’ve ever writtennbefore talk, and that’s one of my dimension 20 big bang 2021 fics: plant a garden in the yard, then, a fantasy high/aelwyn & ayda friendship fic where they explore the deeply haunted tunnels beneath aelwyn’s deeply haunted house

it’s hard to overstate how personal this fic ended up being to me, enough that i hold it as close to my heart as my other d21bb fic which i wrote about grief while Actively grieving. both fics for that event ended up being a good deal more melancholic and introspective than i thought they would at the start, but this one Feels more intimate (for lack of a better word)

aelwyn & ayda are both characters that mean a lot to me on their own, and figuring out their friendship—prickly and uncomfortable as it starts—was honestly healing. there’s something really cathartic about writing a character who’s gone through such extraordinary circumstances in their canon finding a path Towards genuine connection and happiness, even if they don’t find it and Especially if things still aren’t perfect.

also the only time i’ve ever actually hit ao3’s comment length limit was on a reply to an absolutely lovely comment my friend shark left on it so :) the response to this fic was also really nice!

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number three on the list is my queen b magnum opus even though i have one that’s like 8 times longer than it: teeth, the book 1 mc/poppy romance i craved/theoretically a smut oneshot that became something more.

this is a remix of another fic i wrote, so it feels weird to prop it up higher than the original, but i’m just so fond of this one. queen b is a very silly game and poppy min-sinclair can be a VERY silly character but my bea for this fic is another oc i grew deeply attached to, and i think the sheer self-indulgence of the fic shines through, in a good way.

also, i think the characterization in this is strong enough that i’ve been able to recommend it to friends with better taste who haven’t played queen b, and they’ve still enjoyed it! which is just IMMENSELY validating as a writer :’)

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number four and five on the list are my niche oneshots which i wrote for a target audience of me, myself, and i, and i think that’s part of why they work as well as they do!

four is a session with dr. martin whitly, a prodigal son fic which focused on ainsley & martin, namely ainsley relying really heavily on her father, despite the fact he’s a serial killer that she Knows he’s manipulative and terrible.

the fact that i wrote this before the season 1 finale is astounding to me. i have never called characterization beats harder than this, and i feel comfortable saying that even though the actual plot points are quite different, and also even though ainsley isn’t canonically gay. that’s okay because i know and perceive the truth <3

prodigal son’s cancellation is something i’m hard-pressed to say i’m Upset about this far out, but i wish every day that the episode where some ainsley issues got addressed had lived to see the light of day.

this fic i Cannot recommend to people who haven’t watched prodigal son because it’s me extrapolating and picking at lines of dialogue that Suggest a lot without confirming much, but that’s also really fun, in its own way. some of the best fics i’ve ever read are enjoyable specifically as transformative media.

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five is walk with the devil, a the martian/ares3some noir au which was honestly 90% a style experiment but like i fucking nailed it?? there was a stretch of a couple years where some of my best work were from smashing together whatever pairing i wanted to write with a bunch of prompts and seeing what i could make from it (werewolf au caitvi was also one, and a runner-up on this list)

this fic has a lot of hallmarks that i know people aren’t usually a fan of, but i love it. non-linear narrative. major character death but also maybe not, you won’t get closure and neither will the characters. actively avoiding concrete details in favor of a strong, hopeless tone. bringing in a ton of the cast for no reason. LOTS of 1940s slang. and because of that it’s my baby. weirdly i feel like my johanssen characterization is better in this than in either of my two canonverse fics?

i don’t know that i’d write fic for the martian like this again—a lot of what i like about it is really different from the more transformative fandom approach for the things that compel me to write—but i’m glad i did, because this fic is my darling. more people should be experimental in their fics because some of the weirdest stuff will almost always be some of the best !!!

anyway answering this made me so very hyped to write more once i’m off work !!!