#thanks for the tag wing!

[toastytoaster22]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @wingsonghalo

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

47!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

753,979 holy shit

3. What fandoms do you write for?

These days just Mob Psycho 100, but I have written for Digimon Adventure and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle as well.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

A little surprised by number 5 here! its such a teeny fic compared to the others.

Issho 2. Break 3. A Mother Muses 4. Socha 5. Stars on My Ceiling

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try! There was a big gap in 2022 where i had a newborn and zero time and energy, but usually I try to get a thank you out to everyone.

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

I'm the "happy ending guaranteed" author so very few of my fics end sad, but I do have a Digimon fic called Hugs Are Like Vitamins that is an exception to the rule. Very sad ending.

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

The end of Issho is probably the most satisfying ending, but I am unsure if its the happiest. Honestly, Stars on My Ceiling is cavity inducing. Effervescent is also painfully sweet. Chapter three of Into Bloom. all of these are pure fluff.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Extremely rarely. It has happened, and I don't engage. Deleted! Goodbye!

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

You know, I don't consider Leaps and Bounds smut. Its a fic that has a lot of explicit sex in it, but the story is about learning to be comfortable in the bedroom. If the sex is sexy, that's a bonus hahaha

10. Do you write crossovers?

I haven't yet, but I think about them sometimes...

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. Here's hoping it stays that way.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Two, I think! Break was translated into Russian by @teawithbread!!! Thanks so much!!

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

No, I think I would be a nightmare to work with actually. I have had people ask and I politely decline.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I am not very into romance in general, so I have to say TeruMob. They're basically the only ship I care about. I enjoy the idea of TaKari in Digimon but more as soulmates... could be platonic or romantic. They are inseparable no matter what.

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

My Never Hopeless sequel, A Dream In The Dark. UGHHHHHHHHH its only on ff.net bc i am so ashamed of dropping a project. I do still have the BINDER i wrote all my notes in though so perhaps when I am 80 I can dig it up and finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Children! Hello! I write realistic children! And connecting readers to memories they forgot they had, apparently. Its a frequent comment topic.

I'm very good at describing hard to describe emotions and I think my pacing is good. I like writing endings that punch you with a final line to tie it all together. I'm a sucker for that shit.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I slow down dialogue with a few too many movement descriptions, I think. I just really like body language aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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

I am too tired to really think this through. For the most part, seeing as I am writing for shows that are originally in Japanese, I try to keep food names accurate. I try to translate words unless they have no english equivalent like genkan. Foyer or entryway doesn't feel the same? I also tend to keep specific titles in japanese, seeing as they can get awkward or clunky when changed to english equivalents.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

On Ao3 it was Digimon and that's all you're getting out of me.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

I love all my children equally (Issho). But no seriously Break is insanely good and when i have Nightjar finished I will feel like its my new favorite child. Usually its whatever the last thing i wrote was.

UUUUUUUUU Tagging @ygodmyy20 @sodasexual @babovens @and-devi-remains @fizzy-champagne

[okartichoke]

i do not have a name for this au yet but, hey ! look ! listen ! i drew some more :3

(gregory is a red kite too, forgot to write that in)

next set will probably be about DL-6 (more manfred with that one too) and how it is different in this universe. cuz like, a bunch of cases change if (almost) everyone can fly, and i’m real excited to dig into that

link to masterpost || explanations below cut

okay i didn’t know how to make this concise, so i wrote an essay 💀💀💀

Explanation for kestrel Fran: (to clarify first: i went off the behaviors of an American kestrel, but the coloration of a banded kestrel because it fits her better)

Originally, I planned to have her as a peregrine falcon because of her whole “speedrunner” vibe, but peregrines have to really commit to their dives yknow? franziska commits but she can adapt and retry faster than a peregrine, so i switched it (but as always i’m indecisive as hell and everything is subject to change LOL)

i liked the peregrines pattern for her though,, the banded kestrel looks pretty similar. also kestrels are small and i think that’s cute sue me :3

i also struggled a lot (A LOT) to come up with something i liked for Miles, but i ended up pretty happy with the kite ! ( not all prosecutors are birds of prey btw, these 3 just so happened to be lol )

thanks for reading if you got this far :33 hope you enjoyed my ace attorney bird wings au ted talk

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Danse Macabre

[Commission]

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 333

I once more believe Battinson Batman needs to be given a child. Or multiple. Multiple children. I am also once more rotating Ghosts Have Wings Au. 

So Batman, still early in his whole vigilante career ends up busting a shipment, nothing too surprising there. Pretty usual honestly. Except for what was in one of the crates already open. Because it looks like some sort of gemstones but… perfectly spherical. Strange. Suspicious.��

But it’s also late, er, early in the morning, and the GCPD is notoriously corrupt, so like, he’s not going to just leave the weird gemstones, each about the size of a plum or so. (Dear Gotham he’s apparently hungry, and might inwardly vow to never let anyone realize what his tired mind decided to use as measurement) 

So he, unknowingly spurred on by more than just a slight bit of ecto contamination, takes the strange spheres back home. Just puts them in his pockets and heads back to the manor that they moved back into after the whole Riddler mess. (He even found a cool cave! With a bunch of terrifying bats, but they made a glass separator! For safety!) 

But in Bruce’s defense of forgetting about them, he’s more than a little tired and hungry and just wants to sleep for a bit, y’know? So maybe he forgets about the gems as he falls asleep in the chair in the cave (Alfred was not pleased!) until he starts digging around for them. Erm. Did they fall out somewhere?? There’s no holes in his belt pockets… 

And maybe these sort of things shouldn’t slip his mind, the spheres had felt Weird with a capital W, but he gets forced to a circus and there’s an… accident. So maybe he pushed it away as not important because there’s now an angry grieving eight-year old living with him and he’s panickedly reading any and all sort of parenting books he can get a hold of because he has no clue what he’s doing. 

Yeah, maybe his back is itching like crazy no matter what he tries, and maybe he threw up the other day, but it’s fine. This is fine. 

….

Oh dear Gotham those are feathers, this is not fine- ALFREEED!

[ef-1]

yeah F1 is cool but imagine a driver gets shunted and he bodily rips off his rear wing (Which fucking says "Race Against CRIME") as he's being swarmed by officials

And he just yeets it at the guy who shunted him

[gabe-lovebot]

councilor 3D model

i learnt 3d modelling from the ground up to bring him to life. he's yours now. do whatever you want with him

[link]

please credit me if you make something using the model (or even ping/link me to it, i would love to see what you made!)

currently available as a .blend, .fbx and an SFM port.

[boogflake]

The blue fairy 🦋🪄

[sunnylolli]

can we ask about wip's or is that top secret🙈?? 👀

Hehehe, they're not top secret, but bear with me because they're all a bit out of a context 🥹

I've been yapping a lot to my besties about the avian au, mostly and mainly because I love it so much. So I've been doodling concept designs for a tiny fraction of our conversations! But I never thought there was enough art to make the au make sense in posts, so I never got the courage to post it!

And then I have some stuff that's not really fleshed out beyond laughing or crying, or both over it:

I have others that are just a head with no body or anything, too, but I don't count those are WIPs I count them as thoughts and prayers

[nodadraws]

tobytobytoby.csp

[starflungwaddledee]

artfight attacks of @aseuki's lady helia and @das-a-kirby-blog's cherubim knight!

[peach-moths]

Atlas moth Raph !!!

And with that the four main turtle brothers have been drawn with their respective moths from my moth list yay!!!

[if-you-heart]

me when my slime is finally allowed to leave gay baby jail

plooberts

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

With the rise of booktok/booktwt, there's been this weird movement against literary criticism. It's a bizarre phenomenon, but this uptick in condemnation of criticism is so stifling. I understand that with the rise of these platforms, many people are being reintroduced into the habit of reading, which is why at the base level, I understand why many 'popular' books on booktok tend to be cozier.

The argument always falls into the 'this book means too much to me' or 'let people enjoy things,' which is rhetoric I understand -- at least fundamentally. But reading and writing have always been conduits for criticism, healthy natural criticism. We grow as writers and readers because of criticism. It's just so frustrating to see arguments like "how could you not like this character they've been the x trauma," or "why read this book if you're not going to come out liking it," and it's like...why not. That has always been the point of reading. Having a character go through copious amounts of trauma does not always translate to a character that's well-crafted. Good worldbuilding doesn't always translate to having a good story, or having beautiful prose doesn't always translate into a good plot.

There is just so much that goes into writing a story other than being able to formulate tropable (is that a word lol) characters. Good ideas don't always translate into good stories. And engaging critically with the text you read is how we figure that out, how we make sure authors are giving us a good craft. Writing is a form of entertainment too, and just like we'd do a poorly crafted show, we should always be questioning the things we read, even if we enjoy those things.

It's just werd to see people argue that we shouldn't read literature unless we know for certain we are going to like it. Or seeing people not be able to stand honest criticism of the world they've fallen in love with. I love ASOIAF -- but boy oh boy are there a lot of problems in the story: racial undertones, questionable writing decisions, weird ness overall. I also think engaging critically helps us understand how an author's biases can inform what they write. Like, HP Lovecraft wrote eerie stories, he was also a raging racist. But we can argue that his fear of PoC, his antisemitism, and all of his weird fears informed a lot of what he was writing. His writing is so eerie because a lot of that fear comes from very real, nasty places. It's not to say we have to censor his works, but he influences a lot of horror today and those fears, that racial undertone, it is still very prevalent in horror movies today. That fear of the 'unknown,'

Gone with the Wind is an incredibly racist book. It's also a well-written book. I think a lot of people also like confine criticism to just a syntax/prose/technical level -- when in reality criticism should also be applied on an ideological level. Books that are well-written, well-plotted, etc., are also -- and should also -- be up for criticism. A book can be very well-written and also propagate harmful ideologies. I often read books that I know that (on an ideological level), I might not agree with. We can learn a lot from the books we read, even the ones we hate.

I just feel like we're getting to the point where people are just telling people to 'shut up and read' and making spaces for conversation a uniform experience. I don't want to be in a space where everyone agrees with the same point. Either people won't accept criticism of their favorite book, or they think criticism shouldn't be applied to books they think are well written. Reading invokes natural criticism -- so does writing. That's literally what writing is; asking questions, interrogating the world around you. It's why we have literary devices, techniques, and elements. It's never just taking the words being printed at face value.

You can identify with a character's trauma and still understand that their badly written. You can read a story, hate everything about it, and still like a character. As I stated a while back, I'm reading Fourth Wing; the book is terrible, but I like the main character. The worldbuilding is also terrible, but the author writes her PoC characters with respect. It's not hard to acknowledge one thing about the text, and still find enough to enjoy the book. And authors grow when we're honest about what worked and what didn't work. Shadow and Bone was very formulaic and derivative at points, but Six of Crows is much more inventive and inclusive. Veronica Roth's Carve the Mark had some weird racial problems, but Chosen Ones was a much better book in terms of representation. Percy Jackson is the same way. These writers grow, not just by virtue of time, but because they were critiqued and listened to that critique. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien always publically criticized each other's work. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes had a legendary friendship and back and forth with one another's works which provides so much insight into the conversations black authors and creatives were having.

Writing has always been about asking questions; prodding here and there, critiquing. It has always been a conversation, a dialogue. I urge people to love what they read, and read what they love, but always ask questions, always understand different perspectives, and always keep your mind open. Please stop stifling and controlling the conversations about your favorite literature, and please understand that everyone will not come out with the same reading experience as you. It doesn't make their experience any less valid than yours.

[cherubchoirs]

in the tomb of saint gabriel

(may your woes be many)

[once-in-a-blood-moon]

solomon couldn't stand your pact marks.

well, no, that wasn't the right way to put it. he was proud, even jealous of your pacts. they were one of the many admirable things about you! he just hated... looking at them. he knew what other people thought when they saw them.

when one would see those marks on your skin for the first time, they would be able to get a glimpse at your relationship with the brothers. one of trust and respect, gathered from just a glance. meanwhile, one would have to be told about his and your relationship. one look at you couldn't decipher all the time you two have shared together, filled with chatting between classes, practicing magic for hours, and endless love.

at first, solomon tried to mitigate this with his own marks upon your skin. wearing lipstick as he placed a kiss on your neck, a few stray bite marks from your time together at night. but those, while fun, were temporary. and solomon needed something permanent.

why not a ring?

(Hope you don't mind me adding on, anon. Thank you for the delicious meal! Literally so honored to read your beautiful work! 🥹)

Getting the ring was the easy part. Getting you away from the brothers long enough to propose...was not.

The lengths Solomon went through to be able to have a private moment with you might put him in a record book as the three realms' most whipped man. With the mask of his "shady" persona secured, he lets his silver tongue weave him through these seven obstacles, the sin of each dripping from it with only you on his mind.

Swallowing his pride, breathing in greed, spitting out envy...his wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. A vicious rinse, repeat until he's either buttered them up or grated them down until they finally gave in. But he did it. With the day cleared of any interruptions, his plans were set in motion.

He decides to have a redo of your very first date, flying you up and walking in the sky amongst the stars. It's just the two of you against the ever inky black sky of the Devildom, a place that has become synonymous with your presence. Only this time, there are no surprise gales, no surprise drones -- just the surprise of a velvet heart-shaped box in the inside pocket of his coat.

Solomon brings up fond memories of your time together as you both near the spot he's picked to pop the question. He's filled with a giddy glee that soon you'll have something that binds you to him, something to show the world you're his.

Still, there's a little voice in the back of his head reminding him that you could say no. That perhaps he's not worthy. Does he deserve to have matching rings adorned on his and your fingers forevermore? Does he dare stand by your side as your equal when you are, in fact, so far above him?

He decides it's best not to dwell on such thoughts as this is meant to be a happy occasion, as long as all goes well.

Your feet touch the ground once he lowers you both on top of a cliff that overlooks the Devildom, the moon hanging brightly above. As you take in the magnificent sight, he lowers himself on one knee behind you, waiting with bated breath for you to turn on your own volition.

The moment you do, he knows he'll have to keep this memory stored away with his magic, just staring in awe. The moon is angled just right that it shines right behind your head like a halo. Your eyes are as wide as saucers while your jaw is slacked. With the way you look, he truly wonders if he's in the Celestial Realm.

Nervously, Solomon begins his improvised speech after clearing his throat, "my dearest apprentice, it is with great honor that I'm knelt before you tonight. I have dreamt of this moment more than I'd care to admit, yet I never thought it'd come true. But here I am, willing to give you all of me, if you're willing to give me all of you. You are the sun to my moon, the air in my lungs, the very reason why I believe I've lived so long. I was always meant to find you and work side by side to protect the human realm together. And most importantly, to love you. So, please do this old sorcerer a favor...by marrying me..."

He pulls out the ring box, opening it to offer you the ring within. The blessed box is shaking as he trembles, waiting patiently for your answer.

Happy tears spring from his eyes once you say, "yes." The ring is carefully slipped onto your finger, and a single word comes to Solomon's mind.

Mine.

[ryllen]

the kind of fanservice he digs

----