#tbh this scene is one of the first bit of dialogue I wrote for ST

[notebooknonbinary]

Moving day is tomorrow, which means a bitch (me) is about to have spotty internet for a few days (to about a week).

So in preemptive apology would anyone want me to post a dialogue scene from near the end of my fic? It’s not plot relevant so it won’t be spoiling anything and since the fic is only about half (2/3rds maybe?) done, dialogue is all I have for it. But it’s a (potentially?) funny little chat between Will and Dustin.

(Also if u don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, the fic in question is a sequel to This fic that I wrote about a month ago /shameless plug😌)

I hope you’re all doing well!!

[jewelledfoxes]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks @medusasfinalgirl for tagging me!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 16 atm! (1 anonymous) Which is wild to me. English was my least favourite subject in school.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 198,609 which, again, absolutely wild.

3. What fandoms do you write for? At the minute, just stranger things. But my early fics were Game of Thrones and Bridgerton.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? I'm just going off ST fics so:

(Anything You) Want - friends to lovers mutual pining Nice (Just Ain't My Type) - silly celebrity rivals au (I Don't Have To Tell You But) You're The Only One - AYW college sequel This Be The Verse - on a theme of parenthood Stay - AYW Eddie POV

I only consider 2 of these to actually be amongst my "best" fics tho.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes! I definitely try my best to respond to everything as quickly as possible. I feel very honoured that there are people out there who take time out of their day to let me know they enjoyed. Makes my day every single time!!

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Oooh okay, Haunt Me, Then! (kinktober spectrophilia fic) for now, but it's very possible that She's Got A Boyfriend Anyway (classic cheating-on-Jason fic) might beat it when I get round to finishing it.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I don't know if any of my fics have particularly strong happy endings, but off the top of my head it's got to be This Be The Verse.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Defo not on hellcheer ones! Everyone's so nice here!!! <3 My very first fic got SO MUCH hate on it but that's because I wrote it when I was 17 and it WAS terrible.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Really never thought I would, but more of my fics have smut in them than not these days lol. Idk, something about hellcheer just really made me go ...these two should be going at it.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I don't, and I'd be very surprised if I ever do tbh.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Nope!

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

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I haven't, and I'm not really sure I can ever imagine myself co-writing.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? I mean, I've not written 13 fics for any ship other than hellcheer so that's something. In terms of longevity, Katniss/Peeta and Finnick/Annie still have the same effect on me as they did when I first read the book at like 13 years old.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? What a stressful question! I doubt I'll finish off Hard to Forgive (Hard to Forget) because it would be one of those proper multi-chapters (40k words ish by my estimates) and I just don't think I could do it.

16. What are your writing strengths? Hmm I'm not sure. I used to be quite good at setting a scene but I think I'm losing that a little. If I'm honest, recently I've been really proud of the sheer volume of what I've been writing and my willingness to venture out of my comfort zone.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? God, where to start. Weak dialogue, my repetitive writing style, difficulty writing endings, complete inability to do anything concisely. But I genuinely feel like I'm slowly improving bit by bit!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I did French and Spanish in school, French to a slightly higher level than Spanish, so I'd feel comfortable including either of those at a school level (like them trying out saying things like "at the weekend I like to go to the park" and "I have two brothers and no sisters" in a class) but wouldn't want to risk anything more complex!

19. First fandom you wrote for? The Hunger Games. I never posted it anywhere, but I still have my old drafts for fics that I look back on every now and again just to see how far I've come!

20. Favorite fic you've written? So hard to choose! This Be The Verse because it felt so immensely personal to write or Cherry (sapphic hellcheer) because it was a long time coming. Both are eclipsed by a soon-to-be-uploaded kinktober foot fic that I will reveal is called Heart and Sole (and yes it's as dumb and silly as the title implies)!

Okay that was fun! I'm not 100% sure on who I follow writes but I'm p sure @gingertumericlemon, @bibiche007 and @achilleanenjolras all do, so would love to hear your responses if you fancy it!

[saltyseagoat83]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @1lostsoul0fishbowl <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

9 with many more planned

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

211803 at this time, between all fics

3. What fandoms do you write for?

All my works at this time are for Stranger Things, but I have some starters in progress in google docs for The Witcher and Shadow and Bone 

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I Was Born to Love You - Modern Steddie AU with hints of other ships - One-shot

Extroverts and Introverts - Eddie/OC - Series

How It Should Have Been - Eddissy/Hellcheer centric overall ST AU fix-it - Series

Life Is Ours, We Live It Our Way - Edancy (Eddie/Nancy) AU season 3 timeline - Series

Tied for 5th:

The Unnamed Feeling - Billy/OC - Series

Running Away, Running Toward - Eddissy (aka Hellcheer) ‘Chrissy lives’ AU - Series

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do as often as I can, but while I read them all I don’t always have time or energy for replies

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

I haven’t written any such endings, tbh.  I’m too much of a sucker for happy endings (and I don’t mean that sexually).  Plus, aside from one-shots, I haven’t finished any of my fics yet.  They’re all works in progress.

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

Both of my one-shots, mainly because no other fics have endings yet xD

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet, and I hope I never do.  I already have self-esteem issues related to a combo of abuse lasting from 6-7ish through 15/16 and bullying from as far back as preschool up through those same years.

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

I do on occasion, when the mood strikes.  The fluffy kind that involves 18+ only.  All lovey and shit.  Little bit of kink to it but nothing hardcore.  No slapping, degradation, humiliation, etc.  No underage of any kind, no scato/uro/necro/emeto type paraphilias, no cheating.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven’t done so yet, but I’m not ruling out the possibility.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

To my knowledge, no

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I’m aware of

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

Not exactly, but I do forum-based RP so… kind of adjacent maybe?

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oh my goddess.  Don’t ask me this.  Especially without narrowing it down to a single fandom.  I have -far- too many ships I love, both canon and otherwise lmao.

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

Hell if I know.  It may take me forever and a day, but I do intend to finish all my fics one way or another.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Uhm…. not sure on this one. I'm too harsh a critic of myself to be able to accurately answer this.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I refuse to write fics that involve cheating or love triangles, especially those involving any main characters of said fic. A little jealousy here and there is the most I'll do, and not with any regularity.  I have ONE fic that involves active abuse and only included the bare minimum necessary for that.  (It’s the Billy/OC fic I mentioned above.)  I can’t and won’t do more than the minimum, b/c it’s a triggery subject for me so I have to be very careful with reading or writing such subject matter. I also feel like people may not enjoy my smutty scenes as much as they do other writers', because I don't do the heavy BDSM (spit, slapping, spanking, degradation, humiliation, etc) that so many others do.

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

I’m only fluent in English, so I’d need the help of Google Translate for that.  I’ve used it for RP stuff, but not in fic writing yet.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I can’t remember exactly.  First fandom RP was… I -think- Star Wars.  First published fanfic was Stranger Things (Running Away, Running Toward).  First fandom writing at all… ummm… maybe some Disney thing or other when I was a kid?  I’m not entirely sure.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

This is like asking me to pick which of my 4 cats is my favorite hahahahaha.  But also, I regularly question my skills as a writer, b/c self-esteem issues.  >.>

Random tags: @thatbagginsbitch @hellfire--cult @andvys @munson-blurbs

[ais-n]

1 | more like apologise for how harmful it was? how the mlm relationships were so clearly hetero? the sex scenes were so straight to me tbh. and i say this as someone who has read the books twice. first time i didn't see what i saw the second time. i think you genuinely wanted to have people of colour representation but it's very racist to me how hsin and emilio were done. constantly called "exotic" which is a thing americans like to use so much when it's not their ethnicity.

Hi! Thanks for the detailed explanation, I appreciate it! At first I had such HIGH HOPES I could reply to all three of your asks in one place but it turns out I talked too much (go figure lol) So I’m going to do then one at a time. I did want to start out replying to one offhand comment in the 3rd ask and then I’ll get into the rest. Below is what I had written before I realized I need to split it into three and then edited out saying I’m answering all at once. For anyone who hasn’t seen all three asks yet, that’s why part of what I’m talking about isn’t represented above - anon, hopefully it makes more sense to you since you know the future right now from what you had written in the past. ....wow, I made that confusing.

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Thank you for the explanation! I appreciate you too! Also you made me laugh out loud at the gay comment, so thank you for that XD You are not making me feel worse; I appreciate the courage you no doubt had to pull together to post this :) I could be wrong but if I imagine myself in your place, I imagine feeling a little scared or intimidated to post and yet feeling it is necessary. I think it’s really cool you were able to post this in such a thoughtful explanation. Thank you!

In order to not overwhelm anyone’s inbox - and to make it easier for you - I put these all together in one ask. [[[EDIT: JUST KIDDING I talk too much - this is answering stuff from each ask at a time, sorry. I put it behind a cut to make it less long on people’s dashboards.]]] 

Still, I imagine with so much I want to talk about at once, I will probably miss things so let me know if I miss something you really wanted to talk about or you wanted follow up on something in particular.

Anyway READ MORE BELOW for a probably stupidly long reply lol Just, knowing me at least….

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Hi welcome to the below deck party! I don’t know why I said it that way. That was creepy sorry lol Anyway I’m breaking this up a little bit but the more I think about it the more I think this probably really can’t address everything properly in one place. So, again, seriously just let me know if you want follow up on anything - or if anyone does, for that matter. I’m not doing this quite in order though.

RACE: 

Yeah actually, I agree that “exotic” is pretty ??? terminology to be using tbh. I don’t imagine I would use that wording if I were writing something today and if we were to edit the series now, I’d remove it. I don’t remember the context, to be honest; whether it was only used in narration or if it was used in dialogue too. Dialogue might stay, if it’s to show a person speaks a certain way and has certain views on life, but I’d personally probably change that in narration unless it had a specific reason for being there. Which my very vague memories combined with your comment make me think probably not?

In regards to Hsin/Emilio plus even terminology like ‘exotic’ or whatever being used - so, upfront, I need you to know this whole post is not an excuse or etc. It’s just an explanation. 

I didn’t write Hsin or Emilio, so I honestly can’t speak for or about them. I would like to be able to give you some insight into “Sonny’s” background and his friends and family he said he was inspired by in writing them, or give you insight into Alicia’s background (as she is a person of color, at least I was always told she is), but I truly don’t even know what was a lie and what was truth anymore. He always told me his characters like Hsin and Emilio were based pretty directly on people he knew - well, Emilio in particular was hugely based on a cousin of his. But that cousin didn’t exist, it turns out, or at least not in the way I knew. We wrote our own characters and were in charge of their own stories, although we also co-wrote the series as a whole and had input on the plot and etc. But I never really dealt directly with Emilio or Hsin in the writing of them other than how my characters interacted with “his” characters.

I can’t speak on behalf of anyone so I honestly can’t say if Emilio and/or Hsin are concerning or not concerning portraitures of any demographic. I really feel that such a determination has to be up to each reader. I say that in part because I’ve heard over the years that people actually appreciated the way they were written, for various reasons, and some of the people saying that were from demographics that the characters represented. But that also doesn��t mean it has to be something across the board; that because one person feels a certain way, everyone else whether in or out of that demographic has to agree. Quite the opposite, really.

I wish I could even say something like “I know Sonny did a lot of research on xyz specific topic because we talked about abc in regards to it” but I can’t. I know we had those conversations but I don’t know if anything I was told is true. What I can say is the series was written basically 15 years ago. Or rather, started around 15 years ago, then written on/off over multiple years. And we started it essentially in the same vein as BL fanfic, just sort of as a fun thing to do on our off time without any initial plan to ever publicly share it. The good thing about humans and culture is we change as we grow, and there are many things we can continue to gain understanding of as we go. 

One of the really good things about the last 15 years is it’s become more and more accessible to learn about the world and its people. When we started ICoS, for example, Google streetview wasn’t a thing. In order to try to be accurate about something like the streets of a particular city, we either had to totally make shit up and say the war changed everything in that town or I had to try to track down a paper map of it and hope nothing had changed significantly since then. 

Slowly over the years, the globalization of information expanded. Over time, all the little details I didn’t know to even question became things I could find easily. Like, do they say W Something St or Something St W? Is it Avenue Blah or Blah Avenue? Do they even use terminology like avenue or streets? Do they commonly have alleyways everywhere or anywhere and if so how big are they? What are the roads made of? What is the lighting like? Are there basements? 

I grew up in Midwest USA on the tail end of tornado alley where a basement is an absolute must. Imagine my absolute confusion when I learned there are houses out there where they DON’T go underground. Like, at all. wtf??? From my, at that time obviously limited, experience, the only people I personally knew who didn’t have some sort of underground space were apartment dwellers or my friend who lived in the mobile home park. It was such a staple understanding in my life to assume everyone had a basement in their home that I had no idea to even question the existence of such a thing when trying to write another location within the US, let alone anywhere else in the world. And at a certain point when we were writing it, I didn’t even know to ask certain questions, or if I did I didn’t have an easy way of finding it.

If you were to read the very, very original version of Evenfall and compare it to what’s most recently released, for example, there are many differences. One example of something you might notice is the streets are totally different in Monterrey. That’s because we had to make up streets the first time around because I could not find any maps for the city. I tried but they just weren’t accessible for whatever reason; not in the detail I needed and where I could find them, or probably afford. We had to just be like “Welp, guess the war changed it all, sry!” to explain the random names and structure. But as the years passed, information spread to a minute level across the world slowly but surely. First, Google eventually had the layout of the city streets, then it had satellite imagery, then it had Google streetview, then it had people randomly uploading photos to locations, and so on. Eventually, there was enough information from big to small to feel relatively sure we could at least somewhat accurately represent the geography - not perfectly, absolutely not because we’d never been there - but an approximation that hopefully wouldn’t be too jarring for someone actually able to visit, themselves.

You may wonder why the hell I’m talking about streets in Mexico when your comment was on Hsin’s and Emilio’s characterizations, but I mention it because I look at a lot of things in writing with that same level of paranoia of wanting all the details possible to write it to try to be as accurate to at least someone’s reality as possible. That’s one reason why I haven’t written Domino, for example, which focuses on Vivienne’s life; it probably seems like it should be easy to do, and in ways it is. But I don’t feel nearly educated enough on how it would be to grow up in France in a rural then urban area with the sort of pressures she had as a young woman and with her different levels of wealth and the way she looked and etc etc to be fair to anyone who may find representation within that and to not accidentally jar them totally out of the experience by the equivalent of randomly throwing a basement in the middle of Texas because who the fuck knew Texans don’t automatically have basements in all their homes?? 

Really, with anything, there is always room for improvement - especially with anything as complex as any aspect of any demographic which inherently then serves as some form of representation for a huge variety of human beings. Humans, being complex beings themselves, will thus have an even larger variety in the way any topic can be seen. What is severely off-putting to one person might be acceptable to another. Sometimes society steps in and is like nah bro, idgaf if you’re cool with that, I’m not. And sometimes it remains so complex that it’s hard to give one exact answer.

What we tried to do was listen to feedback as we wrote and take it into account in the writing of the series itself. Also, especially later in the series, whenever possible we tried to do research as much as possible on whatever detail or topic we had going on to try to be as accurate as possible.

I’m truly not trying to skirt any sort of issue, I just don’t think I can properly say a singular reply to your concern without being unfair to different voices I’ve heard on this topic over the years. If I had never heard directly or indirectly from people that they specifically appreciate the representation of the characters, if in fact I had only ever heard concerns about them, it would be easier to say we were wrong. But I’m not part of any of the demographics so I can’t speak on behalf of any of them. Thus, I can only listen to what different people tell me, and know that regardless of what I’m told, for them that is truth and thus I respect it.

What I will say is it certainly was not the intention to upset, insult, alienate, or otherwise cause concern for anyone reading the series for anything other than the actual things intended to be fucked up like the things the characters went through and so on. I’m very sorry that the characterization is so upsetting and concerning for you. That really sucks; it takes away from the point of the story and puts you in a place that is deeply uncomfortable. I’m very sorry we put you in that position.

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RELATIONSHIPS

Actually, I’d love to hear more what you mean by your comment. I have certain inferences I make based on what I think you mean but I don’t want to misinterpret and misrepresent your concerns.

The way I interpret “how the mlm relationships were so clearly hetero? the sex scenes were so straight to me tbh.” is maybe related to the idea of dominance vs submission? Like making an equivalence of that to masculine = dominant = power/strength = top = Hsin, and feminine = submissive = weakness = bottom = Boyd? Is that what you’re suggesting or did you mean something else? I have a lot of thoughts on this subject but, again, I don’t want to ramble on a tangent if I am totally misunderstanding what you meant. Especially since I rambled so much above.

So if you’d like to explore the topic more and would like thoughts/answers/etc just let me know in another anon ask more specifically what you mean, if you can. Thank you :)

I’ll go onto ask 2 for now - I forgot exactly what came up in that ask vs the 3rd ask so I’m not sure how long it will take me to type up a reply. Just in case I don’t finish it today, I wanted to sign this off in the meantime with I hope you’re staying healthy and safe!

[nicolinocolino]

hi sarah! just wanted to say how much i loved "come out you're hiding", it was incredible and such a gift to this fandom

hey hey! this is so kind, thank you — i’m glad you enjoyed it!! 💛

oh god. my writing process for long fics… hm. 

more often than not, yes! usually there will be a piece of dialog or a certain scene stuck in my head that kind of prompts the whole thing! sometimes this scene or piece of dialog comes first and the story builds itself around it or it’ll come after a brainstorm or throwing plot bunnies around with someone else. in come out. you’re hiding. it was me daydreaming about things marti and nico might do if they actually were the last two men on earth. and that lead me to start dreaming about what i would do left alone in rome with no one around. (steal all the art lmao. so thats what i made them do. and then it spun down the rabbit hole of what painting nico might want to take and what painting would have nice symbolism for the story etc. fyi i never said it in the fic but it was Da Vinci’s St. Jerome in The Wilderness.)

i try to start with an outline but once i get writing things tend to change, mostly just by me adding stuff and finding connections and themes and symbolism from one part to the next. my outlines usually just look like word vomit on a page with no breaks lol. i also almost never finish my outlines? i’ll get to like, the falling action part of the story after the climax and then start writing, because the resolution usually comes from some sort of weird symbolism or dialog i didn’t mean to create that happened along the way in the actual writing itself.

i don’t tend to write in linear order because i get stuck fairly often in my writing. so i’ll just jump to a part i know i can write and connect the scenes from there. for come out. you’re hiding. though i think i only did this once or twice — i actually wrote this one pretty straightforward. a silky nightmare, however, i almost wrote that one backwards.

okay but honestly, you know those writing memes that are like “haha yeah i totally meant for this to happen in my writing i TOTALLY planned these connections and meanings” (/sarcasm) … that’s me. after i’m done writing something long i look over it and go ‘how tf did i just write all of that how did my brain think of this’ because more often than not my mind is just a bunch of static that can barely function every day. my ideas and outlines come to me in like, a 3 hour manic spiral of motivation that hits me out of nowhere and it’s the same when i write. that’s why i write so slowly. because i’m either not writing for days on end or writing 5k words at 3 am on my phone. but there are times though when i do write deliberately because i want to. i just need a lot of music and a lot of tea and a nice warm corner of my couch. and usually then i’m just editing what i’ve already written rather than writing new things. but sometimes my best internal monologues from the characters come from re-reading and editing, which i usually do throughout the writing process instead of all at the end. and i do that mainly because, as i said, i let things sit for days on end and pretty much forget what i’ve already written haha… oh well. 

i’m a bit of a messy writer, i guess. i don’t really even consider myself a “writer” tbh. i have opportunities at my work to write — blog posts and small stuff — but i don’t take those opportunities because i don’t want to. the thought of having to get my writing “approved” by someone else before going out into the world makes my insides twist. i want every word i write to come from me and me only without a filter. i don’t want anyone with “power” to “judge” my writing and make me feel worthless about it (because inside i’m a sensitive little bitch) because writing takes so so much out of me, and is a part of me that i share. (this got emotional, lol. sorry if this was longer than what you wanted, or not really an answer to your question. but thank you for asking, i enjoyed writing all this down :) 💛)