#since last week all i been doing is writing and reading star trek fanfic

[mejomonster]

All that to say ToT

1 i am juggling writing like 4 original stories right now, most with extensive outlines, and sequels outlined, so while ive got creative freedom to ADD and flesh out these stories i am also viscerally aware that every vague part of my outline is a risk to possibly veer off course and i LIKE the sequel plans so i do not want to have to change Their outlines drastically

And 2 i am contemplating finishing my old spirk fic What will they find when i am ripped apart. I have the next chapter outline. I have read my outline. Rip i decided to add pon farr to an already complicated story. Rip i decided to add Uhura/T'pring. Rip i decided to add T'pring at all, life would be easier had i mininized the cast lol. And of course. Im already juggling a Episode level A plot/B plot structure that is sort of like the DS9 episode structures, one part big political Fairies and Vulcans and the Federation and the Enrerprise as mediator, another part Spock and Kirk fwb and Chapel/Uhura/McCoy friends (or more?). And like. I remember. When i started that fic. It was meant to be pwp! Or porn with feelings rather. Point is somehow each chapter qent from 15 pages pwp to 50% p with considerahle emotional plot, and 50% big b plot, and those were some big fucking chapters. Upside is i love how i wrote. Downside is What was my mind thinking like did it KNOW did it KNOW it was planning such a LONG story why do i tend to plan such long stories

3 good bad news. I calculated if ill finish my original draft by january 1 and calculator said... if i write 9500 words a day. Upside is it said at my current rate of 2000 words a day, i will finish by January 15. So i wont pass my deadline a horrific amount. Bets are still up for if i somehow finish it by jan 1 or not. Cause of how focused i can get... i think theres still a good 70% chance i finish by then... i suspect i will hit my 60,000 word goal somehow. But i have a fear i will turn this story into a 120,000 word beast tbh. Meaning even if i hit the word count goal... the draft might not be finished -.- we will see

4 id really like to get back to writing some fanfic so like. Thats my reward if i get a draft done ToT

[tnc-n3cl]

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it 🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

Thanks for the ask @unmaskedcardinal !

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

Well, I've been a huge Trekkie since like '93 or so and actually wrote a few stories in high school that were deep into my Trek fanfic idea (I'll explain more in a moment). So these were your typical short stories, and I edited them a lot over the years and worked on the lore stuff. Then 2005 rolls around and Star Trek: Enterprise got canceled, and I read a few script based "virtual series".

These were basically a group of fans writing and editing stories and making some art (and even a few videos with some of them) in script format and trying to release one episode every week as if they were doing a TV show. So I got it in my head to try that and started working on my Star Trek fic.

I had this plan for a long saga: Frontlines (10 years after VOY, "mini-series" lasting roughly a year), New Frontiers (12 years after Frontlines, another "mini-series"), Dark Frontiers (picks up right after New Frontiers), First Line & An unnamed series (full length series running concurrently, like 30 years or so after Dark Frontiers, don't have the exact date on hand) and finally Redemption to wrap everything up.

Those stories I wrote in high school were set during First Line, the first one actually intended for use as a season finale. Frontlines revolved around a galaxy wide conflict against the Borg, each episode focusing on two different fleets (after a couple episodes that bounce around a LOT). For example, "Battle Has Begun" focuses on the U.S.S. Archer (an Akira-class ship) assisting the Xindi in repelling the Borg (said ship's tactical officer is one Lt. Comm. Jack Archer while the XO is Comm. Tuvok) as the A Plot, while the B Plot revolves around a new Klingon ship (with Ambassador Worf aboard) helping out a Nebula-class U.S.S. Einstein who eventually aid Picard aboard the Enterprise who's working with a Romulan taskforce lead by Sela.

More or less this conflict with the Borg is to get most of the major powers of the Milky Way working together. The Borg were receiving help from Borg from an alternate quantum reality (not the Mirror Universe). Blowing up the Borg Transuniversal Gateway leads to the formation of an anomaly that Lenara Kahn does science on to form a stable wormhole to another galaxy. This is where New Frontiers picks up.

Jack Archer's captain of the Enterprise-F now and heads to this new Galaxy (the Mura Galaxy) and gets an assignment to find out what happened to a Klingon survey team, which leads to an encounter with a race that get named the Dinozons who are velociraptors that were moved off Earth by some mysterious race for mysterious reasons. Their evolution was tampered with via self-replicating nanomachines that are passed down from parent to child and effectively deactivate the humanoid program from TNG's "The Chase".

So they still look like velociraptors, and things just get weirder from there cause there were dolphin aliens, wolf aliens, and raptor (bird) aliens all fitting this mold. Oh, and they all know they're originally from Earth. They were all in this big alliance 1,000 years ago until this big galaxy wide war ripped apart the Mura Galaxy and they all drifted apart in the aftermath. Archer gets ordered to make first contact with them all, conspiracies happen, the bad guys from the war 1,000 years ago return and seal the wormhole stranding the Milky Way people in the Mura Galaxy.

That's where Dark Frontiers comes in, dealing with that whole mess. So by First Line, the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, etc. survivors had all formed an Alliance with the weird aliens and one of these Alliance ships (Excalibur) was the hero ship for the stories that I wrote in high school.

Then I drew a Stargate ship that lead to me writing Stargate: Crusade, then LoZ brain weasels started burrowing and now I've got The Realm Walker...

TL;DR I got into writing fanfiction as a coping mechanism of sorts for the cancellation of ENT. Or at the very least that's what made me really buckle down and write down the ideas that had been floating around in my brain for a decade or so.

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

I have to pick a favorite?! Oh man... Um... *spins wheel* How bout this BotW themed Midna?

Well first off I love Midna so anything with her is more or less guarantied to be a fave. Love the blue glow of the Ancient Sheikah tech added to the Fused Shadow. In general I really love this artist's style (check out this kinda scary Kass or this Teba).

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

Hmm... I guess an untagged kink I'm not into? Or maybe a really bad take on a character?

Writer Truth & Dare Ask Game

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

a fanfic writer questionnaire that you should absolutely do

Filling out my own questionnaire :) For funsies.

THE BASICS

Name(s): Lurkinglurkerwholurks

Where do you post fic? AO3, with Tumblr crossposting

Primary/current fic writing fandom: BatFam

Secondary/past/rotating fic writing fandoms: MCU (3 fics) with secondary tags on the BatFam posts to Stranger Things, Tenet, and Queen’s Thief.

Are there fandoms you write for but don’t read, or vice versa? I don’t read any of those secondary tags. I don’t write but very selectively read Star Wars, Star Trek, and FMA. (I used to read TAZ but don’t anymore.)

THE STATS

How long have you been writing fics? Since March 2018. I posted my first fic that April.

How many have you written? 91 (holy cow)

How many have you posted (complete or incomplete)? 91. One of those is incomplete and one is in progress. I have fragments of a couple more, but not enough to even count as half fics.

What’s your word count by year? Not totally sure because my two big fics stretched across multiple years. According to AO3:

2018 - 83,394

2019 - 102,244

2020 - 164,370

2021 - 114,915

2022 - 79,981 (so far)

But with the understanding that Nature and Nurture (109,065) started in 2018 and ended in 2020 and The Return (52,589) started in 2020 and ended in 2021.

What was your first posted fic? Mother Bruce and His Baby Birds

If you write in more than one fandom, which is your most popular? BatFam. By far.

What is your most popular fic by bookmark? The Return. 2,496.

What is your most popular fic by subscription? Also The Return, lol. 1,171

What is your longest fic? Nature and Nurture. Word count listed above.

How long did it take you to write it? Published dates are from 5/3/2018, to 3/5/2020. SYMMETRY. I can’t remember how long that first chapter took me to write, though, and I had the last chapter written at least a week before I posted it.

What is your shortest fic? Choose - Lose. 699 words.

How long did it take you to write it? Less than a day. Maybe less than an hour, even. I kind of went into a writerly fugue state and banged it out.

How many series do you have? 14. That is so many.

Who’s your most commonly tagged character? Bruce Wayne (66)

What’s your most commonly tagged relationship (slash or &)? “Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne” and “Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne” are both tied at 16. I... don’t think I have any /.

What’s your most commonly used other tag? Whump (26). Thanks, Whumptober.

THE EMOTIONS

Was there a fic or writer who inspired you to start writing your own posted works? @audreycritter​ and @unpretty​. Unpretty intrigued me with a Batman I didn’t hate. Audrey reeled me in with CEC. But also @starknjarvis27​ because I wanted to surprise her.

What do you remember about writing your first posted fic? Nerves. So many nerves.

Is there a fic or fics you’re most proud of, and why? I answered that here and the full answer is way too long!

Is there a fic you would redo completely if you could? Mother Bruce. Not because I don’t like it (I do! very much!) but because it was my first fic ever. I’m a better writer now, for one, and also while I think that BatFam is a nice BatFam, it may not necessarily be my BatFam, you know?

Is there a specific detail (setting, interaction, quirk, dialogue) you stole from your own life to use in a fic? Oh gosh, so many. I steal little bits and pieces from people I know all the time, because those tend to be the things that give the fictional people I write about texture. “How did you ever think to make up ____.” Eh, if it’s a small things, odds are I didn’t. I can’t come up with an example right now, but when I do, I’ll ETA.

Is there a line in your fic that makes you smile/snicker/chuckle every time you remember it? I give most of my best lines to Jason, but Tim’s breeziness never fails to delight me. “His therapist would call that a red flag, but que sera sera, YOLO, and so forth” is a classic. Also Bruce’s flummoxed “Did you just try to batarang me… with me?”

Is there a line in your fic that makes you sad every time you remember it? lollllllllll. Well. I have 6 works tagged “I Made Myself Cry,” so. But Damian’s I’m sorry I was difficult. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be a good son. I’m sorry I was such an awful brother. I’m sorry I made you so angry. Please don’t be sad for too long. Please don’t forget about me. still hits hard.

Are there any story ideas you’ve considered but are too nervous/intimidated to attempt? What are they? Yes. No spoilers, but one of these days I’m going to recreate a specific scene from a specific non-DC show that has stuck with me for years.

[1lostsoul0fishbowl]

Tag Game

I was tagged by @lokinightfury (hi! 😄)

Favorite colors: straight from the crayola box, plum and jungle green. and probably red too

Relationship status: who’s asking? 😜 jk, married for eons

3 favorite foods: okay I love food and my favorites change all the time, but this week it’s blueberry pancakes, lemon loaf cake from starbucks, and cheese tortellini

Top 3 shows: stranger things (obviously), freaks and geeks, the joy of painting with Bob Ross

Top 3 characters: again, this changes all the time, but it’s currently Eddie Munson, Max Mayfield, and Gareth Emerson

Song stuck in my head: life in a northern town, by the dream academy (since I’m currently writing stranger things fanfic, I’m constantly listening to 80s music)

Last movie watched: glass onion (hey @lokinightfury the wedding singer is my favorite movie of all time!)

Last thing I googled: “what dessert is Indiana known for”

Last song I listened to: bombs away, by the police

Dream trip: Alaska, I think… I always wanted to see the northern lights

Currently watching: the mandalorian, Star Trek Picard, Abbott elementary, MST3k

Currently reading: wayyyy too much stranger things fanfiction

Current obsession: probably the honest answer to that is “Eddie Munson” but let’s pretend I had something more interesting and creative to say instead

I tag anyone who’d like to do it, but I’ll specifically tag… hoo boy I’ve only been here for like three days and I’m not sure if I can tag people who don’t follow me so I’ll just tag my very first follower @paladinmoony 🥰

[galacticlamps]

Tag 9 ppl you want to get to know better

tagged by @observethewalrus​

First ship: I genuinely don’t know? And now that I’m realizing I don’t know I’m actually a tiny bit sad about that. I’d started writing things that can only be described as fanfiction long before I was old enough to be online and before we evolved past dial-up in my house & being on the computer became simple enough to not feel like a hassle anyway - which is all just to say that when I did wind up interacting with fannish communities later on, fanfic specifically wasn’t something totally new to me so I never had vivid memories of my first experiences of it. As a kid fanfic was what you basically had to do when you reached the end of any media you’d even somewhat enjoyed and the author rather rudely neglected to go on telling the story infinitely - so I think it must’ve been a while before shipping became a major thing on my radar, and it probably happened gradually. I do distinctly remember finding it a little ironic in high school that so much online/tumblr specific fandom was about shipping, and I was in multiple fandoms and had several ships, but I didn’t have any big passionate (or even non-canon & in need of defending) ships for my main fandom, which was always Doctor Who - though at the time, just nuwho. There, the only things I could be said to ship were pretty straightforward pairings like the Ponds, Doctor/River, Jack/Ianto, etc. - and I’m guessing whatever things I had that counted as ships before I got into fandom were similar to those, just a kind of passing approval of/investment in ships that were already well-established elements of their source material.

Three Ships: well Two/Jamie always (connected to the above tangent, I was involved in fandom for close to a decade before I came across them, but I’d never found cause to use the term otp before then), and at the moment the other ships taking up the next-most space in my brain are probably Ben/Polly and Geordi/Data

Last Song: Ruin by the Amazing Devil (I remember it playing as I drove home last night)

Last Movie: ah see I’m actually quite bad about watching movies/even remembering they exist. There’s a real possibility the most recent one was The Final Frontier, simply because I’ve been doing a long slow chronological trek through Star Trek, and I’m currently in the early 90s so I know I must have watched that one at some point in the last year or so, and more recently than any of the ones that came out before it

Currently Reading: Ok this I’m legitimately embarrassed about, because I’m not normally anywhere near this slow with books at all, and neither of these are bad, boring, or even slow-paced, it’s solely a matter of how horribly hectic & unpredictable my life’s been for the last few months - but I’ve been both near the end of Bare-Arsed Banditti and a couple hundred pages deep into The Two Towers since the end of August (I hate that fact so much but I need to admit it. It’s available information on my Storygraph account anyway it should not be so hard to say)

Currently Consuming: Twining’s Irish Breakfast tea, black. I am often consuming twining’s irish breakfast tea black

Currently Craving: a break - or maybe just routine in general? I’ve been doing a lot of overlapping freelance work lately: short-term projects that don’t last long enough to allow for anything like ‘time off’ & have all the busy-ness of full-time without any of the stability, which kinda feels like the worst of both worlds tbh. 2022 was a rough year for me for that in general, but it got especially bad in the fall & winter and I’m hoping to get a better handle on my own schedule in the next few weeks one way or another, but I’m sorry to anyone I’ve kinda ghosted in the interim

Tagging: @uighean​ @terryfphanatics​ @seismologically-silly​ and anybody else who wants to do it!

[why-its-kai]

tag game ! tagged by @gilshaelos thank u!!

fave color: PURPLE i love purble all varieties of it. excellent color 💜💜💜💜💜💜

currently reading: nothing at the moment (besides various fanfics lol) BUT i just finished Q-Squared by Peter David, which was a very good Star Trek novel !! very wild ride tho it took me a while to finish it since i’ve been struggling with my book reading focus for a while now :(

last song: “Maine” by John Linnell (State Songs was today’s grocery shopping soundtrack haha)

last series: finished watching Legend (1995) a few weeks ago…wonderfully fun series but sadly only ever got one season and has probably the cheapest, lowest video quality dvd release i’ve ever seen and it’s not streaming anywhere so unfortunately had no choice but to watch it in that awful quality. but sci-fi/western/steampunk is like my fav genre combo so i loved it !! also John de Lancie playing a main character 🥰

currently watching more Star Trek, recently watched a bit more of the original series and i checked out Lower Decks yesterday and really liked that! still need to finish Deep Space Nine but i keep putting it off bc i don’t want it to end 😭😭😭😭😭

last movie: hmmmmm good question. i’m not sure i remember when i last watched a movie. maybe it was the Aristocats? rewatched that recently it’s one of my fav childhood movies! full of nostalgia i love it so much. and i love the animation in it, so expressive and fun aaahhh hand drawn animation my beloved

currently working on: oh man i have so many art and writing projects in wip hell bc i don’t mcfreaking have the energy to work on them OTL

also i’ve got my extremely specific special interest related project lol, i’ve been working on going thru the Trigun anime next episode preview clips and finding where they are in the actual episodes and documenting any changes made since a lot of the previews actually use incomplete or altered footage like different backgrounds, missing animations/effects, and redrawn cels !!! i even found what looks to be parts of a deleted scene in one of them !!!!!!! it’s super interesting (to me at least haha) and i’m about halfway thru the episodes now. once i have that completed and organized, i plan on sharing all my findings !!

too tired to do any tag but feel free to do this and say i tagged u if u want to do it uwu

[discotreque]

LwD 2.03: We’ll Always Have Tom Paris

I’ve lived in the same apartment for eight years now, and yesterday was the fifth catastrophic mechanical failure of the same bathroom toilet—all unrelated issues, too; this time it was the fill valve. At this point I don’t know whether to call a plumber or an exorcist… but anyway, it’s been kind of hard to focus on Star Trek! Ugh.

This week’s episode is credited to M. Willis, who I last encountered on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a show about which I wrote literally 100,000 words of fanfic last year, in between Picard and Lower Decks when I had no Star Trek to obsess over. Willis’s She-Ra episodes tended to be slightly off-format in execution, with big action set pieces, lots of characters in unexpected combinations, and usually an emotional game-changer of a climax—and her last credit on this show was “Much Ado About Boimler,” which obviously had all those elements too. She writes to her strengths!

Spoilers within:

If you need me, I’m going to be ugly-laughing about “Voy” for the rest of the day. (Wow, that does actually save a ton of time!)

SHAXS IS BACKXS!!!! The lower-deckers never knowing how or why a senior officer came back from the dead is a perfect microcosm of this show. I love that he still calls Rutherford “Baby Bear,” and I love the weird cosmic horror that LwD keeps sprinkling into the Star Trek universe. (What does that koala know?) I hope this doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of Kayshon! His appearance on the bridge gives me hope we’ll get to keep both characters around.

Star Trek has always had fairly fuzzy world-building for the world outside Starfleet—understandable, since 99% of Star Trek takes place within Starfleet—but it’s been such a thrill to see LwD (and Picard) finally establish some in-universe pop culture that isn’t conveniently familiar to 20th- or 21st-century audiences. Like the Zebulon Sisters last season—a band that apparently does USO-style tours of Starfleet ships? Delightful. Kestra Troi-Riker having a t-shirt from a Sex Pistols cover band in Klingon? Fucking brilliant. Tendi bonding with the guy at the storage place over the “Klingon acid punk” playing from his little Bluetooth speaker? PUT IT IN MY VEINS.

They really put the character development in gear this week! I liked how we locked in a couple of things already established in extra-canonical material: Mariner’s bisexuality, which Mike McMahan mentioned in an interview last year, and Tendi’s given name, D’vana (which I was sure we’d heard on the show before, but I guess not?).

Speaking of Mariner’s love life, is human–Bynar dating just… by definition a threesome situation?

We learned a lot of new things about Tendi, though, and every single one makes her 10 times more interesting to me. Remember last season, when she said “many” Orions hadn’t been pirates or slavers “for over five years”? Is the implication that something happened in Orion culture—around the end of the Dominion War?—that led to Tendi (and presumably others) rejecting a life of crime and joining Starfleet? How long was she “the Mistress of Winter Constellations” before that—or is it more of an inherited title? I want more Tendi lore!!!!

(Speaking of Tendi’s life, another quick and confounding piece of information for my red-yarn “what the hell is up with Tendiford” theory board: Mariner asks if they’re dating and Tendi’s response is “Not really!” Not really? That’s not no, D’vana!)

This show continues to be a surprisingly conventional workplace sitcom underneath all the excellent Star Trek (and that’s not a bad thing, just a genre overlap that keeps falling out of the front of my mind). Boimler’s inability to use the computer hit way too close to home for me this week: a couple years ago, I returned to a job after a long-term leave of absence, during which time I’d been assigned to a new manager—who’d never had an employee return from long-term leave before, so he didn’t know what to do beforehand—so I spent my first day back just chilling at my desk, fucking around on my phone, because there was literally nothing else I could do without logging into the system first. Too real!

Something we’ve seen in this show that I’m not sure we’ve seen before w/r/t the food replicators is somebody putting a tray of food into the replicator to add more food on top of it—in this case Shaxs getting spicy kiwi ketchup (?!) on a hot dog he seems to have already replicated. (He couldn’t have asked for “hot dog, with spicy kiwi ketchup” in the first place? This is haunting me worse than him coming back from the dead.)

As a certified cat lady, the T’Ana plotline—and its resolution—made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe (unless that was the toxoplasmosis). I should have seen it coming, but I was too distracted by the second-hand embarrassment of them breaking “Jeremy” (and the completely unprecedented Star Trek plot of a doctor getting off on her grandmother’s family heirloom…).

Miscellany:

Jet offering to carry Boimler across the threshold of the door like a bride… am I going to ship THIS now?

Mariner interpreting Tendi’s “talk like a pirate!” in the same way a modern millennial would—“Arr, how ya be doin’ today, me fellow Orion?”—might have been my favourite dumb joke in the entire episode. (“I’m allergic to, uh, pheromones?”)

Tawny Newsome read the line about “only one name, like Odo!” in the script and apparently literally called Mike McMahan out of the blue to remind him that Odo’s name is short for “Odo’ital” and she didn’t want nitpicking nerds on her case. He told her the line was so funny he would accept the nitpicking, so don’t blame Tawny—she tried to warn him!

“There’s like, only a couple people in the quadrant who can say they got beat up by Tom Paris.” Is that a burn? I think that’s a burn.

Another banger of an episode. This show is more confident this season, and I’m loving it—and based on what I’ve heard from people who’ve seen the next two episodes, it only gets better from here. HYYYYYYYPE!!!!!!

See you next week—I’ve got to go fashion a toilet plunger into a crucifix, apparently.

[petermorwood]

Do you see yourself as more of a 'research and combine' writer or more of an 'intuitive' writer? I think I'm more intuitive tbh

I’ve done both.

My very first novel was written “off the cuff” without an outline or synopsis, maybe because I had no notion of trying for publication. I was just reacting to some very bad published fantasy that I’d read.

(@dduane​‘s first Star Trek novel happened the same way: after reading a truly wretched example of TrekFic she declared that “I could eat a packet of typing paper and BARF a better book...” The better book was “The Wounded Sky”, though AFAIK - it was before we met - no barfing was involved.)

This was the late 1970s-early 1980s, so there was nothing like AO3, photocopying a +400pp MS would have cost a fortune, and anyway friends who were interested had already borrowed and read the original typescript.

Also - confession - I was never an SF-F fan, so had never heard of fanfic, or been to an SF con; I thought they were only for published writers...

Since meeting DD I tend to outline, and a good outline has been a lifesaver on a couple of time-sensitive occasions. As for research, I’ll only get really deeply into something if it’s (1) important, (2) interesting and (3) something I don’t already know “from my learnings”, i.e. more than half a century of reading everything I could get my hands on.

*****

The trick is knowing when to stop researching and start writing; however those “learnings” let me make educated guesses about stuff I haven’t researched, so I suppose that writing would be intuitive.

I can always go back and add more detail later if needed. Often it isn’t needed, because despite the often-pedantic nature of many of my posts, I’ve also said more than once that if “vague” propels a story as well as “precise”, go for vague.

Referring generically to “a gun”, “a car”, “a plane” (etc.) means there’s far less risk of making a mistake than if you throw in lots of “convincing” details about a “Jaguar XK180 convertible with dual Stromberg downdraft carburettors”, or a “Spitfire Mk XIIb with clipped wingtips and two-stage supercharger”, or a “WheyPac Arbitration firing a .321 Magnum 234 grain boat-tailed bullet at 9876 feet per second”...

Depending where you got them (or indeed when they were written) those details might be wrong. Those who don’t know don’t need every nut and bolt described, while those who do know may be turned off by “obvious” (to them, anyway) mistakes, and either read the rest of the story as a slightly irritated game of spot-the-next-error, or stop reading altogether.

It doesn’t hurt to know lots of details, though, because that lets you judge - intuitively? - whether they’re needed or not. It’s also a useful way to add Something Important; for instance if someone needs to fall out of a moving car it may be worth knowing about so-called “suicide doors” (AKA coach doors) and what kinds of car had / have them.

****

All jargon and technobabble needs explained to someone, especially if it’s there to justify the never-seen-before, never-seen-again Deus Ex Machina Of The Week. This, unless done with care, slows the pace of the story, and often does so at a point when slowing is the last thing that should happen.

YMMV, though IMO if it needs explained to someone IN the story, get rid of it. One character telling another “As You Know...” sets my teeth on edge. If it’s in the middle of an action scene, why are they being told THEN? If they already know “As you know...” why are they being told AT ALL?

(For audience benefit, of course, but come on, there has to be a better way than spoon-feeding...)

I suppose knowing when to explain something in detail and when to just leave it as background material is also intuitive.

That, however, feels like a whole new post. :->

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa has 8 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files fics at AO3 and her website. She writes Mulder and Scully in a very lovely way. I've recced 3 of my favorites of her fics here before: Bird in Snow, Fall: East on M St, and Skuamorph. Big thanks to Tabula Rasa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm always extremely pleasantly surprised to get kudos (or, very rarely, a comment) on my old fic, but I'm always happy to see it! I did post them all (I think) to AO3. I'm not surprised people are still reading fic, though. It's an iconic show and now with streaming, it's really easy to watch older shows and natural to want fic about them!

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

XF was my first fandom, definitely my first online fandom, and so it will always have a special place in my heart. Also... I had a great time! I stumbled upon and joined the Scullyfic email list by accident, but it was the best thing I could have done. I learned a lot about how to be a writer and how to be in fandom, and those lessons are still important to me. Foundational. Also, in terms of modern fandom drama, XF was more low-key on the drama (although it didn't seem like it at the time!). But I learned something that's always served me well: find like-minded people, and hang out with them. Don't worry about the rest.

Also... you can't control the show, but you kind of can control the canon.

Because of Scully, I ended up taking a forensic anthropology class in university-- and now I have a Master's in a forensic science! Part of the Scully Effect, and proud of it!

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Definitely mostly email list! I never really got the hang of message boards. Posting fic was exhausting, and tbh I never figured out how to work Ephemeral. I checked it every day, though! I loved, after a new episode, everyone sending in their thoughts and reading everyone's experiences together. Fandom was a lot more work back then, tbh!

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

That fic can be just as good, or better, than traditionally published works. There are works of XF fic that have stuck with me for years now, far more than some books I've read. That fan writers can know the characters better than the show writers. The fandom in general was really smart, and mostly more adult than me (I joined fandom when I went away to college, so I always felt at the younger end of the scale. That was good though!).

Also, my first time reading and writing porn. Not gonna lie, I was shocked the first time I accidentally read smut. But I adjusted fast. lol

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I was still a kid (now we would say preteen) when the show premiered- I think in middle school. But I was already into ghosts, aliens, monsters, solving mysteries, and I'd already imprinted on the dynamic thanks to Square One (really)! I was also just old enough to start developing celebrity crushes. Hilariously, I did not twig to the fact that I'm bisexual the entire time I was in XF fandom, despite having enormous crushes on BOTH Mulder and Scully. Ahhhh!

Also, my whole family was into the show, but I was definitely the one with the hyperfixation. I used to take notes and record the episodes as I watched. It just had the right stuff and hit at the right time. And I've always been obsessive.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As a kid I also really liked Star Trek, and someone had given my dad a book about the history of Star Trek, which I read. This included mentions of fandom and fanfic. As soon as I had a private-- and perhaps more importantly fast-- internet connection (in college), I went looking for XF fanfic, and that was that. Hooked immediately. Also I shipped them A LOT so that's what I went looking for.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I tend to not go back to a fandom once I have a new fandom, so I wouldn't say I'm in it. I did hang around the edges for the revival, of course, because I wanted to experience that with the same people, but since the revival was mostly not that great (with a few exceptions), I didn't get pulled back into it. But I still think of the people I knew in the fandom a lot, and always hope they're doing well.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I've never left fandom, and I've been in a BUNCH: Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Bandom, Supernatural, now CQL/The Untamed and other Chinese-media fandoms, with many smaller ones in between or on the side. I feel like at their core fandoms tend to be similar, although where you host the fandom makes a big difference: Livejournal, tumblr, twitter. I think that because fandoms now tend to be bigger and more diverse (which is good) there tends to be more wank (which is bad). In some of them I was close to a group of people, some of them not. Honestly the best thing is when someone you know from an old fandom is in your new fandom. It's so much fun. I have really good friends thanks to fandom, and I've had them for YEARS. Like. 15 years.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to focus more on ships than characters, but some of my all-time favs: Scully, Hermione, Sirius Black, Castiel, Lan Wangji, Xie Lian. That's just fandom-oriented ones, otherwise we'd be here all day. :D

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I don't often rewatch episodes any more, although if I come across an ep on tv I might. I definitely still think about them though! For example, I'm a teacher now, and just a couple weeks ago one of my colleagues mentioned he'd heard the students saying they shipped two of their classmates, and he was like "Ship? I don't get it" and I was like "HOO BOY, do I have a story for you!" And I explained how shipping came from XF fandom, and why. That was fun. I definitely still think about Mulder and Scully too-- I mean, they're cultural touchstones, so they do come up sometimes in greater pop culture. Also, I was in Hannibal fandom for a while, and Gillian Anderson is still The Best.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I haven't read XF fic in years, even the ones I remember as being really significant/important to me. I still have my all-time favs saved on an external HD though! Fic in another fandom- every day lol.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Blinded by White Light by DashaK has stuck with me. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Ruby-Throated Warbler by I forget I'm so sorry -- that's lasted as my ideal post-canon MSR and as an interesting and different way to tell a story.  [Lilydale note: It’s by rah.] I was always thrilled to see fic by Brandon, JET, MaybeAmanda, Syntax6... and, frankly, everyone on the Scullyfic/ Emuse list. So many talented people in that fandom!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Things Outside, which is the only thing I've ever written based on a dream, and I'm really satisfied with it. It was hard to write but so much fun to revel in the weirdness. I always kind of wanted to write more because I know a lot more about the situation, but otoh, I like the open, ambiguous ending (usually I am very HEA).

In other fandoms, King & Country in bandom (MCR) and in Supernatural I'm very proud of Hope and Clay. I struggle to write casefics even though I love to read them, but that one really worked out.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I don't think I'll ever write something new. There is an old fic that may be done but it was smut so I was too shy to post it at the time. In theory if I find it and it's decent, I could post it!

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do! I write fic very slowly, but I do write still! I have a million ideas for stories, but I'm so slow at the actual writing part.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I usually take a jumping-off point from canon, or of course, something I need to fix or expand on. Or sometimes I start telling myself a story as I fall asleep and the idea grabs me long enough I can manage to write it.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I was getting into fandom and realized people didn't use their real names. I flipped through my history book looking for inspiration, and decided tabula rasa was a great name for a writer. I tend to add an X because it's rare to get "tabularasa" as a username, and the X is indeed for X-Files (so I'm something like tabulaxrasa most places). I usually go by Tabula Rasa or Tab, though. And I still use it because 1) it IS a great name for a writer; and 2) it's not fandom-specific so I can keep it in every fandom.

I identify with it so much I have answered to this name in class (oops). I have a "Tab" t-shirt (as in the soda, but I have worn it to Comic-Con for ease of ID-- better than a nametag!). And my mom got me a necklace with a "tab" typewriter key as a charm, which I adore. Yes, I have accidental merch of myself.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

As you can tell from the above, my family knows (my family being my parents and sister). They are supportive! I think my mom read a couple stories? But obviously she has to know the fandom to get it... I got my sister into fic, and we even wrote a couple fics together (in Gundam Wing). She's a lot more selective about fandoms, but she's joined fandoms on her own, too. She's just not in one constantly, like me. :p

I tend not to tell not-online friends unless I have felt them out and know they're super fannish, or they bring it up first.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Most of my old fic is now on AO3 and I hang out on twitter a lot, @tabula_x_rasa

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I'm really glad people are still in this fandom! It will always be so important to me. Thank you Lilydale, for this nostalgia trip!

(Posted by Lilydale on March 30, 2021)

[johannestevans]

Return to Normal Business

Hello!

I've been juggling a lot of health issues recently, and as a result of this I'd unfortunately dropped off my regular update schedule for a few months. I'll now be returning to the normal schedule, and a weekly update of works most recently published will be coming out on Saturdays going forward - this summary will be dispatched directly to inboxes by email via ButtonDown, as well as posted on  Tumblr.

I will be posting from Wales instead of Ireland for the foreseeable future, and as well as the usual retinue of TweetFic, essays and analysis, short fiction, and serial updates, I'm currently on a big Star Trek kick, and as well as posting episode analyses and likely specifically Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-themed essays , I'm also writing a bit of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fanfiction at the moment!

If you're a fan of DS9 or Star Trek, it might be to your taste, but fanfic isn't part of any of my subscription models and of course, being fanfiction of a property that's not in the public domain, it won't be posted behind a paywall on Patreon or Medium - fanfiction will be posted on Ao3. It's just a little hobby stuff I'm doing on the side, so if people are into it, great, and if not, hopefully it's not too annoying in amongst the rest!

I'm going to put a summary of everything I've published since I last put out my weekly round-up in July and from here on, we'll be returning to our usual scheduled round-up each week.

Thanks so much for the patience and all the love, everybody! I'm feeling far, far better and much recovered compared to how I was a few months ago, and everyone's support has been lovely.

Summary of New Works Published

Serial Update: Powder and Feathers

Chapter Forty-Nine: Party Favour. Jean-Pierre and Aimé orchestrate their gangbang.

This chapter is pure filth.

Chapter content warnings: levels of dubious consent and consensual non-consent, with other men under the impression that Jean-Pierre is drunk; object insertion; messy sex; power exchange and power play; manipulation; rape fantasy; referenced violence; transphobia and misgendering; homophobia

Read on Medium / / Read on WorldAnvil

Serial Updates: An Uncommon Betrothal

Several updates of An Uncommon Betrothal have come out over the past few months, so I'm just going to pop a list of them all here!

Chapter Four: Read on Medium / / Read on WorldAnvil

Chapter Five: Read on Medium / / Read on WorldAnvil

Chapter Six: Read on Medium / / Read on WorldAnvil

Chapter Seven: Read on Medium / / Read on WorldAnvil

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episode Analyses

This is a new format I’m going to be experimenting while working my way through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over the next few months — I’ve seen the whole series many times before, and it’s my plan to do these write-ups which will be a mix of blog and live-reaction, character and story analysis and commentary, and other ephemera and thoughts on the show and the episode itself.

Effectively, the purpose of this and the other entries going forward is to do close-readings of each episode I have in front of me.

My main interests in watching Deep Space Nine are typically in queer-coding, the depiction of neurodivergence, mental illness, and disability, and in the Cardassians and the Ferengi.

S1:E1-E2 Emissary Part 1 & 2: Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

S1:E3 A Man Alone: Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

S1: E4 Past Prologue: Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read Ao3

TweetFic: A King's Man

The nastiest, NASTIEST men in this one, when an assassin is caught by his mark, the king, and held captive.

CW for violence, manipulation, heavily weighted power dynamics, consent issues, threats, and general MEAN Men.

Read on Twitter

Romance Short: The Blacksmith and the Florist

Romantic short: a chronically fatigued enchanter becomes fascinated with one of the neighbours. Adapted from a TweetFic — short and sweet! Discussions of chronic fatigue and pain throughout. Rated T, M/M, 2.3k.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

Star Trek Deep Space Nine Fanfic: Tease

Garak/Bashir, Rated M, 1.5k. In the aftermath of the incident with Tahna Los, Garak catches Julian on the way back to his quarters.

Read on Ao3

Star Trek Deep Space Nine TweetFic: Aging Men

Garak/Bashir, bickering about growing older, dialogue only.

Read on Twitter

TweetFic: On The Job

Silly little slice of life and flirtation between a hotel receptionist and the new maintenance guy! Short and sweet.

Read on Twitter

Star Trek Deep Space Nine Fanfic: Interpersonal Studies

Fanfic serial. Garak/Bashir, Rated E, 15k+.

Garak and Julian work to get the measure of one another, each of them trying to see what's hidden under the other man's skin.

Playing with a lot of the canon relationship development but actually letting them touch and play with one another - leaning into Bashir's autism and his status as an augment from the beginning, not to mention his analysis of Garak, and Garak's own analysis of him.

Read on Ao3

Erotic Short: Suspended Pleasures

Rope bondage and potion play in the apothecary’s office. Rated E. 1k. M/M short between a cis apothecary and a trans partner.

Age difference, suspension bondage, overstimulation, crying, come inflation, and fear of getting caught, as well as mentions of exhibitionism.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

Erotic Short: Fit For Purpose

Supervillains and superheroes, but with massive cocks and stretchy bodies. Oh, yes, you read that right.

M/M explicit short between a huge cis male alien superhero and a trans man supervillain with whole-body elasticity. 4.2k.

Silly and light in humour, but extreme on the porn! Featuring pheromones (mildly dubious consent for this, but both parties use pheromones to get their way, and are enthusiastically into it), come inflation, huge size difference, unrealistic sex, alien dicks, prodigious amounts of come, dom/sub, mild corporal punishment, undernegotiated kink, rough sex, objectification, dirty talk.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

[5lazarus]

Could you expand on your take that fanfiction is more analysis than writing?

Fanfiction can't stand on its own. It's a commentary on the story that the fic writer is interested in, interpreting another person's story and highlighting what personally struck the reader. It also uses a very, very different skillset than writing one's own story. Fanfic generally focuses on character introspection that, in the original narrative, would disrupt the plot. Fluff in Solas/Lavellan, for example, is analyzing the latent desire for two world-shaking historic figures looking to relieve pressure and sink into something normal, often domestic--and blows off steam for the fic writer. But from a storytelling standpoint, looking at the grand scheme of the pacing of the story that Dragon Age: Inquisition is trying to tell--it's more effective to have a brief exchange of dialogue, that hints at those moments the fic writer craves, and refocus on the action. (bc DA:I struggles with pacing on its own, and it's not trying to be a love story--it's about the cost of apotheosis) What makes good fanfic writing--those deep moments of character exploration, looking at those what ifs?--tends to make bad writing outside of fandom. I read a very long fantasy novel recently, that I could tell was Naruto and Avatar: the Last Airbender fanfic. It would've made a very good fanfic: what if the Southern Water Tribe had been conquered by the Fire Nation, and Katara was drafted into the military? I would've loved that story. As a novel, it was very poorly paced, and about 400 pages of the 600-page book could have been cut. Way way way too much filler--that's a fanfic writer's habit. It's an analysis of text in a storytelling format--what if this happened in canon instead of this? What if this character was like this rather than that? What if the world was slightly different? What if these people had met then, rather than now? It's writing, sure, but I don't consider my fanfic as being similar to my short fiction or longer-form pieces. It's much easier to write fanfic, for one thing. I don't have to worry about walking the reader through the suspension of disbelief, since Dragon Age has already taken care of that for me. I don't need to show that these Odo and Quark really do love each other, because anybody who's watch DS9 has already seen that, so I can just write about the two of them trolling each other. I can learn about styles--how to pace a plot, balancing a scene, cleaning up dialogue, etc. I learned quite a lot from a Star Trek Gift Exchange I did, where someone requested cosmic horror murder mystery Julian Bashir/Lore--how to take the structure of a detective story and made it weird fiction, with the shorthand of worldbuilding bc it's fanfic. But writing a cosmic horror detective mystery, as I'm working on now, as part of its own work? Very different--because in fanfic, the reader already knows the setting, the characters, the bare bones of the plot. I have much more work ahead of me, building my own story. It's interacting with someone else's story, at the end of the day. It's commenting on what could have been. That's a form of analysis. It's a subgenre of literary analysis, close to personal narrative. Creative writing, yes, but very different skillset. And when you're writing fiction, you have to unlearn a lot of fic writer habits. I read an Ursula K LeGuin essay on writing high fantasy, where I disagreed with most of what she said, but she had one point that I needed to hear--there's a problem with a lot of fiction where it just seems characters are walking in a void. You can't visualize where they are at all. In fanfic, you don't have to worry about that--you can just say the Forbidden Forest or Skyhold or Quark's Bar, and the reader already knows. But for a story, that's deadly. It hit me especially when I read Shirley Jackson's story "Elizabeth" earlier this week, and could immediately see where the protaganist was--and more than that, how she carried herself through the world she was being written in, and how that world (the desk near the door of the minuscule office) interacted with her. It's made me think

much more deeply about how I talk about movement in a story. Vladimir Nabokov used to trace characters' walks through a setting, in his talks on Jane Austen and James Joyce--because that means something. That's something fic writing loses, because all that work has already been done--it doesn't need to! It's trying to do something else, it's not building a world, it's analyzing something that was said in canon and extrapolating. I like fanfiction, I write a lot of it, I read fanfic when it strikes my fancy, but it's my conversation with the text, be it Disco Elysium, Dragon Age, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Naruto, Babylon 5, Avatar, and so on. It can't stand outside of the text, and it shouldn't. It would make absolutely no sense outside of the context in which it is written. tldr: fanfiction is commentary in the form of creative writing, it doesn't stand on its own, and the requirements of fic writing don't translate well to writing your own work.

[thewindsofsong]

get to know me

tagged by @xcziel. Took me a few days, but I finally just sat down at my computer and got to it.

name: my internet name is thewindsofsong. I also go by windy. I don’t give my rl name to anyone i haven’t met irl because I am technically internet old and trust no one with personal information

pronouns: she/her

Break so this isn't super long and annoying to get past

star sign: aries but I don’t really know what that means because I don’t follow astrology at all

height: 5'4"

time: 9:42

birthday: 4/10, but sometimes i say 4/13 because thats two unlucky numbers in one birthday

nationality: american

fave bands/groups/solo artists: Hozier, Florence and the Machine, Mitsuki, Liu Chang are the ones that come to mind right now. There’s more, but those tent to be the artists I come back to a lot. Neutral Milk Hotel is old and gone and only listened to when the mood is right

song stuck in your head: Highland cathedral because of a tiktok atm. A bunch of people sang different notes and layered on top of each other to sound like bagpipes. It was pretty awesome.

last movie you watched:Rurouni Kenshin! The 2012 live action movie!! Currently one of the organizers for a weekly watch party that happens in the dmbj discord server. Its been a lot of fun watching movies with everyone there every week!!!

last show you binged: Does Moonfall Echo count? I technically binged it, but the whole series is also like a hour a most and I watched half of it on my lunch break today

when you created your blog: some time in early 2012 i think?

the last thing you googled:月陨回声 - would it surprise anyone to know that thats the original Chinese title for Moonfall Echo? No? No one? ok….

other blogs: twoscats. I sent all the cute animal things there and then watch them on worse days.

why i chose my url: I was young and knew that i liked music and that my favorite element was air. One day the winds of song came into my head and it has been my online handle ever since.

how many people are you following: 140 which is actually a lot for me. I should go through and do some pruning… I usually keep it down to around 100. I curate my tumblr experience a lot and I credit it to being the reason why its been as positive as it has been.

how many followers do you have: 675, but my blog is also suuuuuper old so the majority of them are probably inactive blogs that are just hanging around.

average hours of sleep:6-7. I’ve tried to sleep more than that but it just doens’t happen easily. I tent to wake up super early and have a hard time falling asleep again

lucky numbers: multiples of 3 and 13

instruments: marimba. Used to play it back in high school and just loved the sound of it. Also have a lot of great memories playing in both marching band and drumline.

what i'm currently wearing: halloween pjs. They’re very comfy and Halloween is great and deserves more than just one month ok?

dream job: housewife/artisanal soap maker. Let me do nothing but focus on keeping a clean house, cooking new foods, occasionally making and selling fantastic handmade soaps! I could binge all the dramas! Write all the fanfics!! DO ALL THE THINGS!!! But alas, I live in a capitalist hellscape and must work to contribute to bills. I think I’m doing close to the next best thing which is working from home atm tho.

dream trip: all expense paid trip across japan during a non busy season. My Japanese is bad and suuupeer informal because I absorbed it all from watching 15ish years of anime, but it's workable.

fave food: right now the first thing that comes to mind is a great breakfast sandwich.

top three fictional universe you'd like to live in: star trek times? Where capitalism has been abolished and things are pretty great? Ummmmm beyond that, maybe Natsume Yuujincho universe because interesting things can happen, but they aren’t world ending. Spirits exist and sometimes they form heartbreaking connections to mortals, but they're still so beautiful! Third might be idk, dmbj world so long as I never enter a tomb? Hearing about Wu Xie’s disastrous adventures could be fun

last song: That wasn’t the tiktok one? Probably Golden Sands sung by Liu Chang

last stream: I watched a bit of Liu Chang’s 4/28 stream that got uploaded to youtube. I do not have a problem, don’t judge me.

currently reading: Cats Paw by Merinnan & xantissa for like the 16th time. I don’t really read books and i’ve never really taken the time to examine why, but with fics like theirs, I never really saw a reason to try and go into reading random books that I don’t know or characters that I don’t already have a connection to.

currently watching: Moonfall Echo. I’ll probably be rewatching it a few times because I can. Its so weird. I don’t understand how they’re actually making this work with everything else? And apparently A Chinese Ghost Story is a part of this somehow?

what is antipoetry to you: Absolutely no idea. I had to analyse a bunch of poetry back in high school, but that was a long time ago. Is antipoetry just prose?

currently craving: takoyaki lowkey allllllllll the damn time. I actually have a takoyaki pan, but making takoyaki takes so much work. I usually just make pancake balls and drench them in syrup.

[astoldbygingersnaps]

Harper’s 2020 Fic Wrap-Up

my very good friend and incredibly talented felow writer @sagemoderocklee came up with the idea of doing an end of the year fic wrapup in an attempt to polish the turd known as 2020, and since i actually managed to get some writing done this year i figured, why not jump on the bandwagon? 

a lot of super duper fucking shitty things happened in 2020, but i will always be proud that in this incredibly chaotic, stressful, and challenging year i managed to produce almost 180k of content (and that’s not even counting the writing i started in 2020 but haven’t published yet). so, to celebrate what’s been a pretty big achievement for me, i wanted to go through the various projects i’ve spent the last twelve months working on and give a preview of my plans for 2021.

let’s jump in!

projects i worked on/completed in 2020:

first off, let’s start with the beast to end all beasts, my personal baby, and honestly probably the reason most people follow me -- star trek au:

something bigger than the sky (shiita; 44,163 words; completed): 

i’ve said this before, but the whole idea for star trek au was literally just a joke between me and my-then girlfriend, now-fiancee, and eternal shiita enabler alexa aka @durintrash (by the way, if you follow me for my fics and you DON’T follow alexa for her corresponding art WHAT, exactly, are you doing with your life????) where i sat in a space-themed diner and said ‘haha imagine itachi as a vulcan.’ but then i blinked and suddenly somehow i’d written the prologue and the first chapter of SBTTS in the span of a week. it’s like i was possessed by a fanfic demon.

it sounds super cheesy but i honestly can’t say enough how important this fic has been to me and how much it’s pushed me to be a more productive and more dedicated writer. previously i spent a lot of time Thinking about writing and occasionally i’d put a few words on the page and then i’d go... do... something... else. but star trek au was the first idea i loved enough that it actually pushed me to write and keep writing and not give up even when i was confronted with things like writer’s block and worry over the quality of my writing. so thank you, star trek au, for being the light in a very dark year for me. 

by the end of SBTTS, i felt like i accomplished everything i wanted to do with the story’s beginning installment: i introduced all the characters and set the groundwork for their development; i showed what life on the corvus was like and how starfleet, the federation, and the universe functioned; and, more than anything, i was able to sketch out both the main protagonists -- itachi and shisui -- with all their strengths and flaws, show their relationship to one another, and hint at how that relationship would progress. 

all the stars are closer (shiita; 75,195 words; completed)

considering how slow i used to be at writing, i thought it would be, like, twelve years before i managed to get to the second part in the series. BUT then covid happened and i half-lost, half-quit my job, and like a lot of people this year i ended up with a lot of free time on my hands. and so, like a fucking demon, i finished this part in two and a half months. 

when i originally planned this part out, i really thought it would be a lot shorter and a lot lighter atmosphere-wise than it turned out. instead, this second section of the story ended up being pretty meaty in terms of length and in subject.

that said, overall, i’m really happy with how ATSAC turned out. i loved the way the characters progressed, how the relationships deepened, and how we were able to see this universe grow bigger and more complicated. and i’m very satisifed with how it set the stage for part three, which takes us to...

lovers alone wear sunlight (shiita; 41,518 words; in progress)

there’s... a lot about this part that i just can’t talk about yet, a) because it isn’t finished and b) because it contains some of the biggest plot points in the entire series thus far. if you’ve been keeping up with the stardates thus far (which i encourage you to do!) you know what part three is leading up to: itachi leaving the corvus and the dissolution of shisui and itachi’s growing relationship. 

with that in mind, i’m... more than a little terrified about writing part three, which is why the third chapter has been languishing in my google drive for months now. (and also why i started not one, but TWO new fics to cope with my writer’s block. whoops.) chapter three is where all the parts come together and shit hits the fan, and i can only hope that everyone will be as excited to read it as i am to publish it. 

next up, the two other projects i began this year:

salvation comes only in our dreams (shiita; canon divergence; 16,835 words; in progress)

for a long time, i’ve wanted to write something that’s actually set in the naruto universe and works to correct a lot of the flaws that i see in the series. there are a lot of things that bother me about naruto, but i think one of the things that frustrates me the most is the really messy and in some ways offensive resolution to the uchiha coup plot thread, and i wanted to write a story that dealt with the complicated themes of the series--imperialism, oppression, genocide, child soldiers--but, like, didn’t suck and completely drop the ball. thus, the massacre au was born. 

my main goal was to tell a story that showed a lot of these characters in ways we’ve never seen them before, specifically itachi. i didn’t want to write itachi as just an idealist who suffers and Suffers AND SUFFERS for konoha yet still remains loyal to the village for some unfathomable reason like he is in the series. i wanted to write an itachi that was sharper, more jaded, and more suspicious of the world around him, but overall was still a good person with a kind heart. and for shisui, well... obviously there’s a lot going on there, too. 

this is easily the darkest story i’ve ever written, and as the plot thickens it will certainly get darker with relationship dynamics that are complicated and unhealthy At Best. i hope that as the story goes on it’s a ride people continue to enjoy, as i was super pleasantly surprised at how popular this fic became (compared to my usual stats, at least) 

oceans between us (shiita; alternate universe; 15,039 words; in progress)

it’s good to know that i continue to be the most ridiculously niche version of myself as yes, i wrote a fucking shiita atonement au. 

with each fic i write i try to have a very specific voice that suits the particular piece and distinguishes it from other stories that include the same characters. for example, star trek au chapters tend to be more fun and light-hearted (especially shisui POV chapters) and lean more into the action movie and sci-fi adventure feel of the star trek universe, while the massacre au is written in a way that’s much heavier and guided by itachi’s emotions and experiences. my main goal with this story was to give it the same romantic, operatic, almost hazy quality that the movie has, which reflects the period setting and also the nature of this grand tragic love story. 

i knew from the beginning that there were going to be a lot of things that i cut from the film in my retelling, like the lola subplot and obviously the setting of pre-wwii england. i also knew i wanted to explore some of the aspects of the film that were implied more than outright stated, like the themes of classism and upper-class privileges. and more than anything i wanted to structure this piece around this idea of tension building and building until it finally snaps and there’s just a world of mess and hurt and loss that affects these two characters in two very different ways. 

also, the sex scene. i haven’t written a sex scene for anything in, like, a decade, so that was a lot of pressure. but i’m happy with how it came out and i think it ended up being an aspect of the story that felt like both a natural progression and necessary to show the affection these two people have for one another.

originally i was just going to end the story with shisui going to jail, but when i told alexa this i genuinely thought she was going to kill me. so, that didn’t happen lmao. but the more i tried to imagine what a second chapter would look like, the more i realized she was right, and it would have been a terrible idea to end the fic there. as for whether or not the final chapter will keep That Ending... who can say?

goals i have for 2021:

finishing lovers alone wear sunlight and, if i’m very lucky, beginning the fourth and second to last part of star trek au (yes, as it currently stands this 160k+ word series is only halfway finished. sorry not sorry)

publishing the next chapter of salvation comes only in our dreams (i don’t know when it will drop. i don’t know anything about this fic. please do not @ me) 

completing oceans between us (the second and final chapter is currently sitting at about 4k words and will probably end up at about 15k in total)

completing and publishing a new fic i’ve started at the very end of 2020, which is the shiita jurassic world au nobody but me and alexa knew they wanted. it’s essentially a 90s romcom with dinosaurs and i cannot Wait to share it. (it’s at about 9k right now and will probably end up being around 20k to 23k in total... maybe...)

FINALLY starting my dream project: the shiita olympics au i’ve been planning for years, where itachi is a figure skater and shisui is a hockey player (i’d like to keep this under 150k but at this point trying to keep my stories at a managable word count is a losing battle)

anyway, that’s it! if you managed to get this far in this very self-indulgent and shameless bit of self promotion, congrats! also, a very big thank you to everyone who’s read my fics, left me kudos and comments, and spent their time on my work, because it really does mean the world to me. 

here’s hoping 2021 is a much healthier and happier year for us all! 

[midnightswaltz]

Rules: Answer 30 questions and tag 5 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better. @swaps55 said anyone can play so I’m playing. I haven’t quite kept up with who’s done it, but I’m tagging my friend @dieseldaisy and anyone else who wants to. 

Name/Nickname: Beth

Gender: Female

Star sign:  Aries

Height: Depends on the day apparently. Either 5′6″ or 5′7″. At least twice it was 5′8″. All without shoes on. Most at doctor’s offices.

Birthday: April

Time:~2:45p

Favorite bands: Barenaked Ladies, Of Monsters and Men, Green Day, Barenaked Ladies, Queen. Did I mention Barenaked Ladies? (Seriously, BNL have been my favorite band since middle school)

Favorite solo artist: I really don’t know. I listen to a lot of Dido.

Song stuck in my head: Critical Role C2 opening theme

Last Movie: I rewatched The Martian a couple days ago

Last show: Does Critical Role count? If not, I was watching old Mythbusters episodes last week.

When did I create this blog: March 2012

What do I post: Pretty much anything that makes me go “Wow” or laugh. So it’s a lot of random stuff

Last thing I googled: umm... I’m not going to give a clear answer. Only to say that a certain grayasexual sometimes fanfic writer is currently figuring out 2 PwPs for the first goddamn time in like 30 years of writing.

Other blogs: I can barely keep up with this one...

Why I chose my url: There’s no deep meaning. It was something I picked randomly years before Tumblr and I’ve just stuck with it because I like it.

Following: 340

Followers: 239, I’m pretty determined about blocking bots though there might be a few I missed

Average hours of sleep: the last few months I’ve been getting really good sleep 6-8 hours. There were a couple years there where it was 3-4 hours in the afternoon and 3-4 at night, it was not great. I don’t know why it’s better now.

Lucky number: 7

Instrument: I know a tiny bit of piano. I have a guitar and flute, both of which I keep intending to learn how to play

What am I wearing: Starfleet Academy T-shit, jeans and a Vox Machina hoodie

Dream job: Astronomer. Seriously. Since I was little. I just had a lot of issues with school and my mental health (anxiety and probably ADHD) so I’m about 20 years behind.

Dream trip: I’d need like a year and an insane amount of money to just wander all over the globe. Including visiting every U.S. National Park and my relations in the UK.

Nationality: American

Favorite Song: "Odds Are” by the Barenaked Ladies

Last book read: Finished? I don’t actually remember. I’m currently reading “Wizard of Earthsea” & “Steering the Craft” both by Ursula K. LeGuin and “Night Sky with the Naked Eye” by Bob King

Top three fictional universes I’d like to live in: 1: Star Trek 2: Mass Effect 3: Leverage (a universe where rich people actually get punished for doing bad shit? Hell yeah. Also the creator said he thinks Leverage is in the Stargate universe, so I’m good with that, too)

[ineffablefool]

Exactly one year ago today, I started writing fanfic.

I am definitely one of those people whose thoughts come in words, in sentences, complete with punctuation and paragraph breaks and italics for emphasis.  And when I went to bed at probably around 11:30 PM on June 30, 2019, I didn’t actually go to sleep.  My brain told me a story instead.

The story came in words and sentences and paragraph breaks, and when I woke up I wrote it down.  And then kept writing down more of it, figuring out where it was going, asking the characters “and are there ninjas?” and then noting the response.  I had spent a few fevered days discovering the existing wealth of Good Omens fanfic on AO3, and I knew I wanted to put mine there.  I also knew that I didn’t want it on my existing Tumblr, which my housemate read, so I’d have to make a new Tumblr to start interacting with the fan community there.

It took a couple days to decide what username I wanted in both places, and then a couple weeks for my AO3 account to make it through the new-account queue, which is why the story wasn’t actually posted until the 17th.

In a year I have written and published over 260,000 words.  I have another 50,000 or so written and not published, and an unknown number inside of me that haven’t been written at all.  I have slowed down a lot since the heady days of Decemberish when I was turning out two 2k-word chapters of INNW a week, but the words are still coming.  Writing them has been my primary source of relaxation and joy for a while now, and that does not appear to be changing any time soon.

There are names I see popping up in Tumblr notifications and AO3 comments, over and over again, and some of them have been here since last summer and some are much newer.  But I do see you, the people who comment on everything, and the people who like every post.  I am very pleased to keep seeing you as long as you care to stick around.  I wish you only good things whenever you decide to move on.

There are friends I have made and friends I still hope to make within this fandom, and I have learned things and seen beautiful art and read beautiful, beautiful stories.  This is a good place.  I’m glad it’s still around, and I hope it keeps being around, because media properties don’t grab me by the soul very often.  It’s pretty much been Star Trek since I was a kid, the Dark Tower series in high school and college, and this.  I’m due my next obsession about 2035.

Thank you to everyone who reads my stories, who leaves comments and kudos.  Thank you to my beautiful fat people who trust me to be kind to them (our worth as people and the size of our bodies are unrelated, I promise).  Thank you to my wonderful aspec people who trust me to value them (we are real and we are whole and our hearts still beat, I promise).  Thank you to everyone who has created a gift for me from love of my stories, who has talked to me about my stories, who has talked to me about anything important to them.  Thank you to everyone who makes the fandom what it is.

I don’t remember what days (and it was multiple days) I watched the show, originally, because it had to slow burn in my brain for a week or three before really catching.  That’s why I figure my one-year mark as today.  July 1, 2019 was the day I figured yeah, okay, I might as well do this thing.  Might as well see where it goes.

[markcampbells]

1; 8; 10; 18; 21; 39; 41!

1. Are you a side, back, or front sleeper?

So this is weird, I used to be a strict stomach sleeper who thought I could never dream of sleeping on my back and then in the last few years I became sort of half and half. I still sleep mostly on my stomach but sometimes the only way I can calm down enough to sleep is lying still on my back. Side sleeping does not work for me whatsoever.

8: Last song you listened to?

“Before You Go” - Lewis Capaldi. It plays a lot over the sound system at my work, as do one or two others of his, and I liked them enough that I bought the whole album.

10: In a perfect world, what animal would you most like to adopt?

BABY WOLF BABY WOLF BABY WOLF

18: Favorite cheesy trope?

Functional longtime married couple and all that entails. Added bonus for nonverbal cues and subtle indications of how well they know each other. +1000 if they start a found family.

21: Weirdest tumblr drama you’ve been a part of or stumbled across.

I don’t even remember what I did to provoke this, but I think I made a text post just as a quiet vent about being single, and I just got the most random anon attack about how I was like pathetic for having the interests I do and that was why I was single? I think there were remarks about my appearance as well but I don’t remember and I don’t often share photos of myself here (I sometimes did back in The Old Times). IDK, I don’t know where it came from and it was hardly new since I have a former friend who made fun of me for being interested in Jane Austen and basically implied I would be single forever because of it, but it was weird getting it on Tumblr, especially because I don’t think I had many followers at the time.

39: First writing prompt that comes to your head.

Characters are stuck together who are not typically stuck together. (Think Star Trek Beyond and Spock and McCoy.) What can they teach each other? What do they even talk about?

41: What was the last thing you got really obsessed with?

Not new, but sometimes when I revisit the Star Trek reboot films, I end up on like Star Trek benders where I just engage with EVERYTHING because I’ve missed the universe and I just toss myself into it. This week I have gone back to the original series after I stopped midway through Season 3, been reading the back catalogue of my favorite Kirk/McCoy author (shoreleave), bought two of the Discovery tie-in novels (Drastic Measures because it’s the canon take on Tarsus IV which I also read two fanfics about, and Dead Endless since it’s Paul Stamets-centric and it took too long for there to be a Paul novel fight me in the street), and bought a pansexual pride Starfleet chevron tank top because Jim Kirk is pan and I will punch whoever disagrees. (Boy does this all sound sad lined up into one sentence.)