#the amount of wips i have purely for this game is also really something

[cherubchoirs]

i could draw something for every single one of gabe’s taunts in 6-2....he makes me so unwell

[hebuiltfive]

Hi! A bit for the ask game!

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you anticipated.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

Thank you for the ask @edutainer2022!

I ramble a lot so I'll put most of this under a cut!

5. Ooh, this one is hard! I try to 'never say never' with any idea. Usually I'll work it into another story somewhere or just put it on a shelf of indefinite hiatus, but rarely do I look at an idea and say never. That being said, there are a fair few ideas that have yet to see the light of day and it's very possible that they never will.

The first one that comes to mind was my very first Thunderbirds fanfic I began to write but was never fully realised: a catastrophe on-board Titanic 2, an unfortunately named cruise ship that would catapult IR into intense media scrutiny and legal issues.

Another example might be Penelope taking Gordon on a trip to the Maldives for his birthday. It's been over a year since that idea was first formed and I've yet to actually write it out. I feel like it may never see the light of day!

Then there was an idea of the boys playing around in the pool too, but again, beyond a cliche title, nothing more ever came of that one.

There are plenty of others, I'm sure, I just can't think of them at the moment. Some may one day be weaselled into other fics, but there are plenty that have been shelved!

10. A fair few actually! I usually expect a couple of likes on my things and that's it. The Thunderfam are always so supportive though, which is something I'm still getting used to even after a year and a half of being here, because previous fandoms were often the opposite.

I think I was surprised by most of my Thundertober pieces from last year, especially Hospital. I hadn't thought anyone -bar a few, including your good self! - would be interested in a Havoc POV. I'm working on a sequel (of sorts) still, but holding back mainly because of that same thought. Maybe I should return to it at some point.

Also, WSHSB. The amount of changes to the plot of this story (it's so different to when I first started writing it last year!) is unreal and I honestly was just writing it purely for myself, thinking no-one would be interested in it at all! The reception is always very heartwarming whenever I post anything about it because in my head it's still just my silly little story 😂

18. This is another tough one. It took me a while to find a couple.

Maybe “I’m mad as hell that you would dare to stoop so goddamn low, is what I am.” / “I’m the villain.” from Seeking An Absolution purely because I'm biased as it was so much fun writing Jeff and the Hood, but also because the Hood is unapologetically evil. And he's more than happy to admit that. Exploring that was entertaining aha!

Also: "And who is going to save you?" which is from a piece that's still a WIP on my notes app. I think it's an important question that no-one in IR ever really considers - they're just doing their job, well aware of the risks and have made peace with that mostly - but the people close to them might want to ask on occasion.

I have a few others but I feel like I've rambled on for quite a while now. Thank you again for the ask! This was fun!

[tkwrites]

Sorry for the length of this but I wanted to go through and find particular parts of your series that I really liked and show how I really appreciate the little things you add. Turns out that list was way too long after just one part so switched it to some quotes that I found funny/made me laugh xxx

“So you're what, 20?” “I hope I look older than that!”

“Were you worried I was going to ask for pictures of your feet or something?” 

She snorted. Every time she saw Quinn, he was in a variation of three outfits: jeans and a jacket, athletic wear, or a game day suit.  Okay but had to bring up how accurate this is, have you seen this man in the past like fortnight? He has worn the same suit to every game, I mean iconic for sure but dude come on aha

The interaction with Quinn and Emma when she asks if he's slept with Sarah yet is also so cute and funny to me aha

They ended with a very off key “Yooooou!” and the camera turned back to the front, showing Elias with a teasing, mischievous glint in his eyes, “Happy birthday, Sarah!” he said. “Thanks for making Huggy bearable!” 

“You keep in touch with everyone who was there that night?” he joked, hoping she would see how ridiculous her worry was. 

“Gee, thanks, Hughes,” she said, flatly. “I had no idea ice is slippery.”

“Can you hold me?” he asked. It came out quieter than he thought it would. Okay this one isn't funny but this was from the first one I ever read and remember this being the point when I was like 'aww this is cute af' 🥹 just how he was clearly so in love with this person and not afraid to be seen in whatever state

“If you want me to go back to sleep, straddling my thigh isn’t the way to do it,” he teased. 

She pointed to the bed, “you want to tell me they're not going to know we weren't just having sex?” Just the pure 'bitch please' tone I read this in aha

Have the best day and thankyou endlessly for this series ��

Can we know what kind of scenarios you have as wips? All good if you'd rather not xx

I do have a question actually, what do you envision Sarah does with the puck Quinn gave here from her first game? Is it on display or tucked away somewhere?

Well goodnight from me and best vibes sent your way always x

Oh my goodness, Alora. 🥹😢😭 Thank you so much. This was such an incredible message to receive during such a hard week.

I don't even know what to say. I feel so very blessed. Every time I get a message like this - scratch that, this is the first message with so much detail I've received - it just kills my imposter syndrome a little bit more. Thank you for that. I really can't even express how much it means to me.

I'm happy to share my wip list. I've put it below the cut in case someone doesn't want to be spoiled. A caveat, though: some of these pieces are farther along than others. Some are 99% finished, but I'm waiting for a little more context before posting them. Some have barely been started, while others have a good amount of work done on them. I write fics on the side of my regular, full-time job and living my life, so sometimes progress is slow going.

I honestly kind of forgot about Quinn giving Sarah that puck.

She definitely has the puck Quinn gave her out on display. It's on her desk, used mostly to hold her place in/as a weight to hold open her text books when she's studying.

Thank you for asking!

Endless love sent your way! 😘

WIP list:

(These are in no particular order)

Quinn meets Sarah's uncle

Sarah gets bombarded by fan girls on social media and bonds with the other WAGs

The Canucks are eliminated from the playoffs - comfort ensues

Quinn and Sarah discuss no longer using condoms and put that into practice

Golf. Of course. We meet sassy Sarah for the first time.

Sarah meets Jack and Luke during the playoffs

Sarah’s finals

Sarah and Quinn discuss the summer situation

Sarah does a photo shoot for Quinns birthday (I can't decide if this one is super dumb or not. If you'd like to beta read it, let me know)

All of the summer shenanigans including but not limited to :

Car sex

A black bikini

The lake house

Quinn meets Sarah's siblings

And an unnamed Nico Hischier x art student Lena 3 part friends-to-lovers series.

[crackinglamb]

AO3 Year End Roundup, 2023

Normally, I'd do this in a couple days, but we're close enough for government work (and I'm on a deliberate break anyhow, so nothing new is being posted). Normally this would also be a tag game, but I haven't seen it floating around yet, so...

Hey, you wanna do your own roundup? Go for it. Yes, I mean you (looking at you, DAFF crew). Consider this an open invite. Tag me back so I can see what y'all have been up to.

Words posted: 241,283 . This total has had subtracted from it the amount that already existed for the fic that carried over from last year (which was WG, of course). So this is actually what I posted this year.

Additional Words Written: ~166K. I have several WIP's going on in the background. One of which is finished and will begin posting after New Year's. Another of which is about halfway done. The rest are...procrastination projects/getting the wiggles out. They may never see the light of day. But they count as writing, so they are included.

Grand total of words: 407, 283 (goodness gracious)

Fandoms: 2

Works: 12, 11 of which were new.

Highest Kudos: Into the Current, at 271 (just like last year, I'm not counting WG since it wasn't new). The Iron Bull/OFC, rated E, 79K words, complete.

Highest Hit Oneshot: The Mighty Fall, at 706. Sookie Stackhouse/Eric Northman. Rated T, 2900 words.

New Things I Tried: I wrote a trio of fics for True Blood/Southern Vampire Mysteries this year. The WIP that's finished and waiting for the new year is a continuation of this series.

I also posted a ficlet I'd originally posted here on tumblr for archiving purposes. Some Years Into the Future...

Fic I Spent the Most Time On: Driftwood, my Bullmance series. Writing ItC itself wasn't particularly long, about two months, but T3, the next fic, is still being written. At first it was all going to be one long fic, but then I decided I've had enough of epics (meaning any work significantly over 100K words), and split it into parts.

Fic I Spent the Least Time On: The Mighty Fall. I have finally gotten to use the tag 'I wrote this instead of sleeping'. 🤣

Favorite Thing I Wrote: Usually, I have trouble with this category. I'm poly, you know. But this year, I actually DO have a fave. Okay...I have two.

How Deep the Bullet Lies - a gift for @rosella-writes, for the Solas Lovers Exchange. Solas/Cassandra Pentaghast with a whumpy open ending. Rated M, 4200 words.

More Than Mere Stone - a gift for my beloved @ir0n-angel in the same exchange. Solas/F!Trevelyan, pure fluff. Rated G, 1500 words.

Favorite Thing I Read: In Twain, by CatC. It's everything I wanted in a 'background character gets caught up in events' fic. With a sizzlingly hot Bullmance and So Much Cole. I think I've read it three or four times already. At least. If you need something comforting and wonderful, I cannot recommend it enough. It's simply delightful, and so is the author. Rated E, 172K words, WIP.

Something I Finished: I did it, at long last. I finished What a Wicked Game to Play. It was the focus of NaNo (and took literally three days once I put my mind to it, hence much of the other writing I did that hasn't been published). It feels really good to have my beloved Behemoth marked with a green checkmark. The story itself isn't finished, and I'll eventually write more for Imogen and Co., but for now, it is Done.

Writing Goals for 2024 – Keep on keeping on. I want to finish T3, so I can start posting it. I want to finish a couple other things from the WIP list. There will of course be a new Fluffuary prompt list. Biggest goal, however, is simply not to burn myself out. I've started waiting to publish until a fic is finished, which has done wonders for my stress levels. No more posting gaps on an in-progress fic.

Allow me to Gush about some things I wrote this year.

(Otherwise known as: honorable mentions)

Out of the Dark - Lark Cadash was once going to have an epic fic to her name. But I'm Tired, and frankly, I'm bored with rewriting the events of DA:I over and over again. So I've turned her into a series, where I can just put up oneshots and short chaptered things in no particular order that add up to one big story. This is one of them. Post-canon, Lark goes into the Deep Roads to find the answer to a riddle that's bugged her for her entire life. She gets more than she asked for, with a side serving of sad Solas. I've had many of the headcannons included in it for a long time, with no home. Now, they're out there in the world. Rated G, 4800 words.

What Lies Beneath - my actual giftfic for the Solas Lovers Exchange. I had such fun writing this, and had ideas for it as soon as I received the assignment. I got to set something in the Hissing Waste, which is one of my favorite places in the game, as well as write a polyship for my two favorite romances. F!Cadash/Solas/Iron Bull, rated T, 3400 words.

Maker Damned Fools - back in 2020, I wrote a Varric/Hawke short little thing for the first Fluffuary. I always wanted to go back and expand it into a fuller story. Add it to the pile of Things I Finished This Year. From their meeting to post-canon. Rated E, 32K words.

What a Wicked Game to Play - *deep satisfied sigh* It took two years and ten months to complete, with near constant weekly updates. It's 412K words by itself (not counting the rest of the series). It contains about 350 embedded images of either screenshots or fanart. It is both the highest hit (over 90K) and highest kudo'd (1535) work on my archive. Affectionately known as 'the Behemoth', extensively written with my signature yeeting of canon. Imogen McLean, MGIT, Inquisitor, beloved of Fen'Harel. I am stupendously proud of this work, but I am also incredibly happy it's done. I set out to write an epic, and I damn well succeeded. Rated E.

See y'all on the flipside! 💕

[mell0bee]

YESSSSSSSSS WRITING TAG TIMEEEEE EHEHHEHEHEHHEHEEEE

1, 5, 12, 16, 19, and 20

P.S: check more of your asks!!!! >:3

YIPEEE thanks kiki sorry it took me a bit to do this

1- the last sentence you wrote

“Oh my god, her voice must have risen like, three octaves when you smiled at her. “

some luz dialogue from luz & hunter’s guide, talking about willow to hunter, lmao

5- first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unfinished wip

“The gods of the pantheon seem to have their doubts, not seeing the greatness his uncle does in him.”

wow i had to pull this one from the VAULTS. i don’t actually have any current wip drafts (just a ton of loosely planned ideas) so this one is from like 2022. it’s an owl house mythology au loosely based off of hades (the video game) in which the golden guard gets reincarnated over and over and tries to escape. i like the concept but have no idea what the plot would be so on the shelf it will sit until i figure that out

12- a trope you’re really into right now

hmmmm not really a fanfic trope but ive been thinking a lot about crouching moron, hidden badass. specifically the variant where a character is deliberately hiding how badass they actually are by acting like a moron, at least partially. invoking this trope is like, how to make that character my favorite character 101.

as for fanfic tropes. uh. a favorite of mine that never gets old is childhood friends to enemies to friends to lovers. so many of the ships that have been giving me brain worms throughout the last 5 or so years fall in this category. *cough* sashanne *cough* narumitsu *cough COUGH* catradora. it’s the layer of being previously childhood friends and having that past pure and unconditional friendship. and then having that all torn apart and then rebuilt again. S-tier drama.

16- favorite place to write

99% of my writing is done in my bed bc im paranoid that if i wrote at my desk my parents would be able to see because they tend to randomly barge into my room. when im at college i tend to write a lot less but at least i can do it at my desk lmao

19- the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

for ‘the girl, the cat, and the black hole calamity’ i went down quite the rabbit hole of archaic and modern physics concepts like entropy, black holes & atomic decay. it was very fun and absolutely none of it ended up in the fic because i was like. why would 13yo anne care about this nerdy physics stuff lmao

i also have researched a lot (A LOT) of archetypal literature, historical figures, jungian psych, & various myths (specifically irish myth) which is on paper for the persona 5 swap au fic that im never gonna write buuuuut mostly was out of my own curiosity. when i was first learning how to write i read up on archetypical literature and campbell and stuff quite a bit so it was very fun to revisit. also this swap au lives in my brain rent-free. it would theoretically be a longfic covering the events of the entire game but i can’t do that. but im gonna have to do SOMETHING with it considering the sheer amount of effort ive put into the planning and reworking all of the main cast’s personas to the point where im pretty sure ive put more thought into my picks than the original p5 writers lmao

20- in what year did you publish your first fic?

cannot be bothered to find the exact year but i know i was 13 so probably 2016 or 2017. yknow what’s funny is i spent most of middle and high school thinking that when i got to college i’d stop writing fic and doing fandom stuff in general and yet here i am, going into my senior year of college, still on the same fandom clownery that i was 8 years ago. lmao.

[galactic-pirates]

Fanfic Witing Emoji Ask Game: 🦉, 🚿, 🤷‍♀️, :)

Yay thank you!

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write? Answered here :)

🚿 Where do your best ideas seem to strike? Lol I love that the emoji for this is the shower because that is the classic isn't it? For me it's probably not that. To be honest my best ideas seem to strike when I'm actively hunting them. Sometimes I need to let them percolate a bit and I'll do some cleaning, or build some lego, or go make a hot drink, do other chores etc. (percolating time is important). But otherwise it's when I'm at my desk working. Before I can think of the answers, I need to ask the questions (percolating doesn't work otherwise).

🤷‍♀️What's a fic you didn't expect to be popular, but really took off? Answered here :)

🐎 Would you ever do a medieval or pirate au? For fic? No because I'm not writing fanfic anymore BUT please allow me to ramble for a minute. My current novel is in a lot of ways a portal fantasy and the world they fall into is the typical cliché medieval magical kingdom. I have another novel as a WIP which is a Camelot retelling (so also medieval in a lot of ways). Then we come to pirates - I'm going to say no, not in the traditional sense but I do have a Steampunk WIP which has airships so... maybe something? And I think space pirates will have to be a thing in something at some point. So maybe some kind of AU's with those aesthetics eventually.

🟥How long do you spend in edits? This is a funny question because I'm deep in edits at the moment for my novel. Over 42 hours and counting and I've not even finished my first edit pass yet (I'm thinking there will be 3 passes, plus one final check). I don't think edits have ever taken this long before and I'm thinking maybe that means I'm finally doing them properly?

These are actual edits (so about how I'm saying it, not about what I'm saying). I'm not talking about revision. This book has already been revised and redrafted multiple times. No I'm purely talking edits, so execution not content. I'm starting to be afraid the edits will take as long as the draft did (110 hours for this one), but we'll see I guess.

Back when I was writing fanfic I didn't tend to do much more than a proof read. So the amount of time editing, was really the length of time it took me to re-read it carefully and make a few tweaks. So not that long at all.

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

for the 'bored fanfic writer' ask game

25, 27, 29

Thanks for sending these questions! :) (Link to the ask game)

29) Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

Found this paragraph floating in isolation at the bottom of the doc for a random Sloanshir idea that never really got going. But this random paragraph definitely slaps:

He rolled over and stared at the armchair by the porthole. Empty, but for the pall cast on it by a memory. It was funny how many years of pleasant memories—how many books from Garak he’d read while curled up there, how many lovers in his lap—had been overshadowed by a single interaction. But getting rid of the chair, or even moving it elsewhere, would have meant giving Sloan the power to destroy any part of his life simply by touching it.

25) Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

Haha yeah... T_T Usually I'm fine if I know the fic is gonna work out okay (or if I can at least picture a happier potential post-fic future), but if I know that the ending of the fic or projected future is also a big bummer then I run a very high risk of upsetting myself so much that I don't finish the fic lollll.

So, I don't actually upset myself at all while writing horrible creepy sloanshir hurt/no comfort or whatever, because even if the comfort's not in the scope of the fic, I so strongly believe in Garashir ending up together in any given scenario that I just extrapolate in my mind that it'll be fine eventually. XD

The only real problem comes in when I attempt to write Garashir bad endings (for the ship or for either person involved). Like... I REALLY wanted to finish writing my wip about the events of "The Quickening" making Julian slowly go full mad scientist once he's back on the station, but writing it made me too sad because it was important to the concept that it needed to have a devastatingly tragic ending. T_T

27) Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why?

Literally every single fic I've ever written. XD But that's not a helpful answer lol.

I always feel extra nervous posting rarepair fics. With Garashir, there are TONS of canon interactions to model their behavior after, and I've also read soooo much fic about them, which means I have a very good understanding of their dynamic at various points in the timeline of canon, and I know what characterization choices work for me and what doesn't. With Siskarak, there are not that many eps that show the two of them interacting so there's more extrapolation involved in figuring out their dynamic and how to translate that into a sexual relationship, and in terms of fic I have written a solid chunk of what's even out there so I usually put tons of pressure on myself to make sure it's good. And not only good, but like, meshes well with canon and actually follows from what we know about the characters, because I want people to understand how I got from point A to point B.

In addition to that, the longer the fic (or the longer I've spent on the fic), the more nervous I feel when I post. More words, more potential to write something unclear or OOC. XD More time spent, more critical I am of it by the time I post it, because I feel like it should be better than it is given the amount of effort spent. In all honesty drabbles (100 word fics) or other very short ficlets (anything <1000 words) don't make me all that nervous to post anymore, purely due to the time spent writing being so low, which is why I've been posting so many short fics lately lmaooo. If I can bang something out all at once and post without thinking, that's ideal, because then I agonize over it waaaay less beforehand and I don't feel bad if it doesn't get many readers. XD

Posting explicit fics also always makes me a lil nervous, due to the potential embarrassment of what if I've gotten something so wrong that it takes the reader out of the steaminess of the moment.

All that said, my "Second Skin" Siskarak fic, you're a criminal as long as you're mine, recently made me very nervous to post, because it's rarepair smut and it's the second longest thing I've written all year, haha. (Everyone PLEASE go tell me I did a good job, I worked so hard on it.)

[jennyandvastraflint]

Would you do 6) eu characters for the kmk ask game, please? And maybe also (or alternatively) 16) characters that appear in Moffat who and/or 19) Characters you have written fic for?

Just pick as many as and whoever you like for each category <3

Thank youuuu! Since I am lazy and don't have pictures of more EU characters, just have the Bloomsbury Bunch XD (Art credit for the Bloomsbury Bunch goes to the A Photograph to Remember poster by @pookachuka)

Thomas Foster is just such a sweetie pie, he's a struggling artist and a bit of a dreamer, and his boyfriend Stonn keeps him grounded a bit. I really wanna boop his nose <3

Then there's Vella, my beloved cranky Silurian who totally isn't Vastra's ex... I want to punch and boop her in equal measure, but I think booping her would mean I'll lose at least one finger (worth it.) Still, I wanna punch her for a) being mean to Jenny and b) locking Jenny and Strax up for a bit... Also she should definitely get some therapy to sort out her inferiority complex

And then there's Stonn who is a Sontaran and Tom is his boyfriend. Unfortunately, he has discovered capitalism and is pretty annoying about that... I wanna punch him on the probic vent (or maybe boop him) like Jenny did when she tricked him and knocked him out XD

Here's characters I've written for! It's missing a few, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to search more pictures on my phone. I haven't technically PUBLISHED anything featuring Tom and Stonn YET, but I do have a really fun WIP (the Mamma Mia one)

Of the others, I think Missy needs to be punched a lot. I would like to travel with her, but I feel like she'd kill me in ten seconds and I am a bit inclined to live on.

I'd like to travel with Thirteen and Yaz, but I also wanna boop them, so they go in the middle somewhere. I think they'd be loads of fun, even though I'd fill the Dan role in that team XD

Then we have Jenny and Vastra, themmmm! I wanna boop them one billion times. I do kinda wanna travel in the TARDIS with them, but I also think I couldn't realistically put up with That amount of flirting XDDD Like I love them but PLEASE GET A ROOM XD

Similar for Haruka and Michiru, I wanna boop them so much and it would be maybe kinda interesting to travel with them in the TARDIS, but again, these lesbians know no shame and I'd rather not XD Also chances are I'd turn out to have a pure heart and they'd sacrifice me or something idk.

I wanna boop Seven and Janeway. I do actually trust them with a TARDIS (sort of) I've just realised, though Janeway would use it to violate the Prime Directive and do loads of time travel shenanigans with it. I think Janeway cannot be trusted with a TARDIS she is too ADHD for that (actually isn't the Doctor too...) Seven would like the TARDIS I think, they'd get along. Actually, I'd love to travel with them. Please imagine they're beneath Jenny and Vastra on the line between TARDIS and boop XD

And Strax my babygirl the queen the moment the icon. I love him and he deserves to be booped one billion times he is so sweet I love him. Would not trust him to navigate a TARDIS really, and I also don't wanna punch him. Sooooo <3

I hope you enjoyed these, friend!

[theblackrivergame]

Twine Challenge for IF Authors!

ID: A banner with a blue geometric background, with the words “April 2022″ in small font and then “Twine Frenzy” in a larger font below it. There’s a speech bubble graphic in one corner of the banner, some binary code in another, and a square grid pattern at the bottom. end ID.

Hey everybody! No doubt you’re wondering what all this is about… well allow me to explain. 

Each year in April, the same group of people who run NaNoWriMo in November do a kind of Sister Challenge in April called Script Frenzy, aimed at screenwriters. Now for Script Frenzy, the goal is to finish 50 pages of script – which probably initially seems much lower than NaNoWriMo’s 50k words. But the thing is, for a screenwriter, you’re including things like specific camera directions and shots, and specific actions to be performed, and that’s usually way more important for a script than just a pure wordcount. Because they’re working with a whole secondary medium, the focus of what’s needed for a good script is naturally different than what’s needed for a good book.

What's my point here, you ask?

Well… writing an IF is kind of the same! We’re also working with an entire secondary medium (code), and sometimes tertiary and quaternary mediums too if people have visuals and sound effects rolled in! So judging our ability to generate output solely based on the metrics from an entirely different endeavour can often leave people feeling like they’re not making any good progress when in fact they are.

I know there’s a couple of authors working on porting their games to twine right now, and I myself did it long ago with The Black River, and it’s an absolutely gruelling, thankless task. Judged by the standard of regular novel-writing, where the focus is Maek Werds, it feels like you’re getting absolutely Nothing done – but that’s an unfair comparison, because you don’t generally have to stop midway through a novel and convert it all into cuneiform before you can continue.

IF authors as a group kind of need to get better at judging our output on a metric tailored specifically to our art, and to an engine that a lot of us are using currently (which is to say, twine).

So, in the tradition of Script Frenzy scrapping a wordcount and going with something more helpful to screenwriters, I’m going to be doing a challenge in April I’m calling Twine Frenzy, where my goal for the month is to finish at least 50 passages, including code and variations, on my current main project, The Black River (though I might get ambitious and also try on some secondary wips, who knows lol). Anybody can join in if they want, no matter what they’re working on specifically in twine – 50 passages ported into a new engine is also a huge amount of work, my dude! – and hopefully this will also help us view the way we work in a bit of a kinder light, given time.

I don’t really have much to offer as a reward for finishing other than my friendship and congratulations, but I did receive a request for a photo of my cat as a winning prize as a joke at one point so maybe I’ll go with that lmfao. Either way, progress is progress, and it’s always fun to have the community band together and work on something in tandem, so I hope you’ll consider joining if it at all sounds helpful or interesting!

[lumiereandcogsworth]

Maurice!!

you sent this in MARCH but i am back thinking about this wonderful man again so it is time to ANSWER. (from this ask game)

this is SO long of course. i have a lot of thoughts about this man and they’re all beloved <3

first impression

10/10 flawless design. i absolutely ADORED that they made him an artist instead of an inventor like in batb 1991. not that there’s anything wrong with 91 maurice!! i love him too!!!! but i just thought it was such a fun update. and his first scene with belle is so insanely sweet, her helping him put the gears in place and she knows which piece he needs before he even realizes it,,, gosh. i love one (1) father-daughter duo. i just adore them!! and him saying “just a bit of snow… in june” and the whole scene of him being freaked out by chip TALKING TO HIM. gosh, first impression i loved this man instantly.

impression now

i love him even more!!!!! i love how much he loves!!! i love the way he is so protective of belle, how he did everything to keep her safe, even though it hurt him so much to leave his life in paris, and his wife, behind. every now and then, now being one of those times, i get into phases where my brain is stuck in pre-canon land. young maurice raising belle, or even younger maurice falling in love with maria. them being married. them expecting their first child. them never thinking anything could go wrong until the worst happens. IT MAKES ME CRAZY. i just adore maurice so much and he’s so kind and soft and such a fun character to think and write about :”)

(him!!!)

favorite moment

gosh how could i pick one!!! HOW COULD I PICK ONE!!!! his scenes with chip and also with gaston & lefou are hilarious, he’s just such a naturally funny character - picking kevin kline to be maurice was a stellar casting choice.

but i love seeing him be a loving father!! honestly probably my favorite moment is when they’re saying goodbye to each other in the tower. the whole “go, live your life. and forget me.” “forget you! everything i am is because of you.” “i love you belle, don’t be afraid.” “i love you too, papa. i’m not afraid.” LIKE!!!! i’ve screamed about this before but there is something SO SIGNIFICANT about the fact that in a movie where the utterance of “i love you” is literally the climactic factor, the words that change everything, the first time these words are ever said is from maurice to belle. from father to daughter. it just shows like!!! THAT’S the love that belle learned!!! that’s the love belle knows!!! that’s the love belle had in her heart in order to show such immense amounts of kindness toward adam who by all accounts did not deserve such grace. but she was taught such beautiful, sweet, accepting love by her father that she was able to see past everything and find one tragic man’s deeply buried heart. i just love that scene so much, and maurice is just such a wonderful papa. he’s flawed, and he worries a lot, but everything he does for belle is out of pure love for her, as well as the lost love of his wife.

(gif cred)

idea for a story

gosh i mean, i’ve written about him a handful of times! i love that man!! i love writing about him in the village, raising his chaotic little daughter with the wild spirit and brown eyes both inherited from her mother. (which i have a little series here.) i also love writing him post-canon!! finding so much joy in this new amazing life for him and his daughter, being so happy that she finally gets to have her adventures, learning to love adam like his own son and being the father that adam never had, HAVING GRANDCHILDREN AND BEING THE BEST PÉPÈRE IN ALL OF FRANCE!!!!! he is adored by all, that sweet man. i don’t think i have any current wips in particular, but he’s around in a lot of my fics. i love to explore his relationship with adam a lot, just because there’s so much sweetness there — after such a rocky start for their first encounter haha.

i don’t know, i do have one vague idea that’s actually a REALLY old wip involving his oldest brother. the concept is basically that he somehow survived the plague and is also somehow still alive and he finds maurice years later when he’s living at the castle. but the idea stops there because i don’t really know how the encounter would go just yet. i headcanon maurice had three brothers though :) emile, and twins nicolas and félix. maurice was in the middle, after emile and before the twins.

unpopular opinion

it may be a bit unpopular to prefer him as an artist than the inventor? but from what i’ve seen in the fandom, regardless of any opinions on the movie, everyone seems to love maurice. he’s just the best :”)

(that’s him your honor!!)

favorite relationship

well, platonically, maurice and belle!! their relationship is SO!!!!!!! AAHHH!!! i love this little family so much!!!! i also love him and adam so much!!!!!

(he’s so proud of her and he sees so much of his wife in her im gonna CRY)

BUT ROMANTICALLY!!! OH MAN DO I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT MAURICE AND HIS WIFEY!!!!!!!!!! i’ve already written about their backstory in this post, so i’ll save my breath here a bit. but her name is maria and i love them IMMENSELY. even though there’s so little, it’s still so clear how much they loved each other, how much maurice still loves and misses her, some 20 years later. the way that the music box he’s making to represent paris is of the windmill, of his home, resembling the time he painted the portrait of his wife and daughter. how he still has that portrait so proudly on his wall. she was his muse! she’s still his muse! all these years later! his dear maria!

(screenshot from this gifset)

and the way it’s still so hard for him to talk about. it’s been so long and he still gets choked up. but he equally smiles so brightly because gosh, she was just everything to him. their love burned so brightly and that flame never extinguished. it’s so heartbreaking when you remember the full picture but writing about them before any tragedy struck, they’re just so in love!!

(cred!)

and you can just SEE the devastation on his face when he realizes he really has to leave her behind in paris. he’s HEARTBROKEN.

(courtesy of this video)

THAT IS THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE HOW HE IS SUPPOSED TO UP AND LEAVE HER TO DIE. OH MY GOSH IT MAKES ME INSANE.

gosh. anyway

favorite headcanon

i have so many and i don’t know where else i’ll get to write them down so i’m gonna say multiple:

oh! i headcanon his full name is Maurice James LaRue :)

he cried the day maria told him they were going to have a baby. he just couldn’t believe it, after all his struggles, all his failures, all his loneliness, he had found true love and they had created a beautiful little life together

he also cried the day his daughter was born!!!!

he called belle “little bug” when she was a kid. “bug” as she got older. i think he still calls her bug sometimes, even years and years later when she’s a mother herself <3

it’s true that maurice taught belle to dance but i think maria taught him first. he was never a bad dancer he just didn’t ever have anyone to dance with until her

since the local school wouldn’t admit his little daughter, maurice taught her everything he could. he borrowed books from pére robert and anyone who would be kind enough to spare one. he read to her and taught her to read as quickly as he could. he taught her basic math with beans and nuts spilled on the floor. he pointed out bugs and insects and the creatures of the garden and the sky. he knew it wouldn’t be everything the schools could offer but it would be as much as he could do for her. he knew his girl was bright and he wasn’t going to ever let it go to waste.

i think he’s really good at cooking. it’s another art form to him. unconventionally, maurice was always the cook in his marriage. maria grew up wealthy and never learned. maurice was often on his own, and had to gain the practice to survive. he loved cooking for her, and he loved cooking for belle, too. even more so, almost, because she was so curious and wanted to learn it all. so they would cook and bake together. he’d share recipes he remembered from his mother, as well as recipes he made up and had become all his own.

i think he had a sweet friendship with pére robert. i think he was very helpful to maurice when he first moved to the village, especially with looking after belle and just helping them get established in the town. even to this day, even as his daughter is the QUEEN, maurice will still take time to go back to the village to grab a pint with his old friend pére robert. they pass the time and have nice, neighborly discussions about life.

a sort of sad headcanon, but i’ve always thought maurice just carries such guilt with him. he knows how much belle wants to explore the world and he wishes he could muster the strength to move them back to paris but he just can’t do it. he’s too emotionally blocked. he thinks he’ll never be able to go back to paris again. (though he does, when his daughter gets married there.) and he raises belle and keeps her happy and supplied with books and adventures as much as he can, and she never indicates that she resents him in any way, (and she never does!) but he just feels guilty. like he wouldn’t blame her if one day she up and left. sick of this town. sick of him holding her back. and of course, she’d never do that. but i just think that’s something he deals with.

after belle and adam are married, he very regularly calls adam “son.” he kisses his cheek upon greetings and partings and treats him as his own. it’s overwhelming for adam (in the best way possible) but he’s so entirely grateful for him. he slowly learns to open up to him, being able to confide in him, and trust him, in a way he was never able to with his own father.

and “son” becomes such a staple term of affection that years down the road, when adam has a son of his own, he always calls him “son” — and of course, he’s named after maurice. what better man could be the namesake for their darling little boy?

maurice loves sketching his little family, loves watching them grow. his grandchildren become his little muses. and they adore him just as equally, climbing on his lap and asking him questions and telling him a million stories in mere minutes. he hangs on their every word.

—

belle post | adam post

[ariadne-mouse]

This week's WIP Wednesday noodling was of a linguistic nature. Namely, how fast would Common emerge and evolve in Exandria, and at what point in the past would it be difficult or impossible to understand compared to the Common of "present day"? I am curious. For reasons. Fic reasons.

I'm well aware there's not really a correct answer to this, since Exandria is at its heart a setting for an improv storytelling game and not a real place with recorded history or observable language changes over time. But I enjoy these kinds of questions, so here goes!

We have some CR canon examples of people from long ago talking to the campaign protagonists and being intelligible, such as Halas in C2, but due to a magical artifact being the conduit one could hand wave away any language barriers with "it's magic". There are lots of examples of writing from the far past being incomprehensible (see: everything in Aeor) but that wasn't established to be Archaic Common or similar, so it could have been another language entirely, or even something as mundane as spelling/orthographic changes being the problem. We do know that the floating city of Zemniaz is where Zemnian comes from, so Aeor may have had its own language or dialect too rather than using Common.

So, what else to consider that might influence Common? Language changes because of all kinds of reasons.

Migration and movement of peoples that results in mixing of language features, accents, swapping of loan words, and other influences. Common seems to be a fairly ubiquitous lingua franca all across Exandria where it isn't a vernacular (first language - possibly to humans more often than other races), so it's hard to say where the most prominent and lasting change would be driven from. We also hear different Common accents that seem determined by the speakers' first language or their region (see: Kryn speakers of Common like Essek influenced by their native Undercommon, or the accent distinctive to the Menagerie Coast)

New or lost technologies, social constructs, and other major societal changes, since language evolves with the needs of its users describing their world. Were any language aspects lost when the Age of Arcanum fell? Was anything new born from the ashes? What are Exandrians describing today that they weren't a thousand years ago, and vice versa?

Major conflicts that destroy populations and culture (the Calamity, but also the Marrow War and any wars since), shifts of power, class differences, structures of power enforcing or "legitimizing" certain uses and features of language (that's in air quotes for a reason, I am and will always be a descriptivist). Basically - who are/were the dictatorial prescriptivists of Exandria regarding Common? Not sure. Possibly the Julous Dominion in PD, which was founded by humans and halflings.

Generational turnover: this is pure speculation for DnD-verse, extrapolating from the real-world tendency for older folks to be more linguistically conservative, while the youngins are more likely to drive innovation and adopt change more easily. DnD races have wildly different lifespans, so the age composition of any society might be allll over the place. Longer lived races like elves, firbolgs, dragons, etc, with lifespans in the hundreds, might have a slowing effect on the evolution of language and Common in particular since they may perpetuate what they've learned for a longer amount of time. Shorter-lived races may innovate or change faster as elders are not around as long to influence younger people, and there are more children coming into the world more often. The only conclusion I can draw from this regarding Common is "it's complicated".

A rambling set of musings to say - did the wizards in the Age of Arcanum speak Common at all? If we were to pluck one of these wizards from the past and bring them into the "present day" of Exandria, would their use of Common be mutually intelligible with present day Common-speakers? Or would it be like a modern English speaker trying to understand Old or Middle English?

Ultimately I'll have to just make a decision for the WIP that works best for the story and stick with it, but it's been fun to ponder.

[finalfantasyix]

Meet The Team Working On A Final Fantasy 9 Remake You’ll Never Get To Play

Final Fantasy 9: Memoria Project is a fan homage like nothing we've ever seen before. “It is no secret that fan projects get shut down all the time,” Dan Eder tells us about Final Fantasy 9: Memoria Project, a fan-driven love letter to the classic JRPG. It isn’t aiming to be a playable remake of the epic adventure though - instead, it’s an aesthetic homage to its timeless world and characters.

It’s somewhat anomalous in the world of community creations, but Eder wants to use this distinct identity to craft something truly special, even if many obstacles stand in the way of making it a reality. But the team keeps moving forward: “Without a doubt, some of the most frequent comments we get from naysayers is ‘have fun with it while it lasts’ or ‘cease and desist incoming’”, Eder explains. “People are understandably skeptical of the longevity potential of yet another passion project. The key difference is that, unlike those projects, Memoria is essentially an elaborate piece of fan art, nothing more - it will have no actual gameplay, will never be released to the public, and is nothing more than a ‘what-if’ scenario. [It’s] no different from any other fan-made piece of artwork. We have never, and will never, make a single dollar out of this project, and are basically doing this for the personal gratification of the fans.”

The genesis of Memoria Project dates all the way back to Eder’s younger years, with dreams of a potential FF9 remake entering his imagination soon after the original game’s launch. That’s no great surprise - millions still regard Final Fantasy 9 as the series’ finest hour. “While it's true that the project really started to pick up steam a few months ago, it wouldn't be a stretch to say I've been planning it since high school,” Eder explains. “I remember scribbling ‘FF9 remake’ on my notepad during classes and writing imaginary new features and battle system mechanics, starting online petitions to remake FF9 for the PS2, sketching drawings depicting scenes from the ‘FF9 sequel’ and whatnot. I could confidently say that my life would probably have been completely different had my older brother not borrowed this game from his friend in the summer of 2000.

“As a non-native English speaker who had never played an RPG up until that point, my first playthrough was a challenging experience to say the least, and I can honestly say that I understood literally nothing of what was going on the first time I finished the game (how I even managed to beat it is a mystery in and of itself). It didn't really matter to me though, since I was absolutely enamored with the incredible cast of characters, jaw-dropping FMV sequences, mesmerizing music, thrilling gameplay, and just the overall atmosphere and charm it exuded at every step. My unconditional love for this game persisted throughout my entire childhood and adult life, and it is one of the central reasons why I chose to become a 3D character artist in the video game industry. In short, this project is my way of thanking this game for everything it has done for me over the past 21 years.”

Eder’s passion for this game can be found across several industry professionals who grew up with games like this and wanted to replicate them, or create something entirely unique to live up to their brilliance. This is very much how Memoria Project found its feet, beginning life as a trivial side activity before blossoming into something infinitely more ambitious. It still has a long way to go, but there’s little urgency to reach the finish line, so the team can take their time and just enjoy the nostalgic indulgence of it all.

“Memoria actually started unofficially as a side project when I reached out to Colin Valek [of] Sucker Punch Studios in early 2020 after I came across his fanart of an environment from FF7,” Eder says. “I had already modeled Princess Garnet, and thought it could be a fun idea to combine our talents to reimagine the opening area of Alexandria. Initially, it was progressing at a snail's pace - we were slowly chipping away at it for over a year without making a lot of progress. While Colin continued modeling the buildings, I created another character - Vivi.”

This glacial pace received a resurgence of sorts in January when the Alexandria scene was finally complete, with Eder and company finally being able to see how much potential the project had if it was opened up to a larger range of creators. “When I posted that WIP screenshot, the response from fellow FF fans was overwhelmingly positive, more than we could have imagined,” Eder remembers. “Very quickly, other people from the gaming industry started reaching out - environment artists, animators, riggers, concept artists. That's when I decided to turn this side project into a full-fledged modern reimagining of the original game, while always making sure to emphasize the fact that this is a non-playable proof-of-concept, since we never have any intention of doing anything to violate Square Enix's copyright. Four months after officially announcing the project, we've grown from a couple of FF fanboys to a huge team of over 20 industry veterans working collaboratively to honor this masterpiece, fueled by our love and adoration for the source material.”

Now, the project has over 20 developers from Sucker Punch, Ubisoft, Rare, Unbroken Studios, and more all diving into this labour of love in their spare time, with composers and voice actors also contributing their talents to help make this glimpse into the world of Final Fantasy 9 worth celebrating. But Eder is aware of being overly enthusiastic, knowing that fan projects like this often doom themselves by undertaking something that isn’t feasible with so few resources.

“One of the most common traps for these kinds of fan projects is being overly ambitious,” Eder says. “Since all of us are actively working in the video game industry, we understand the importance of milestones, short term goals, and taking things one step at a time. For now, we are focusing our efforts on the opening sequence of the game, which mainly revolves around Vivi and his exploration of Alexandria. Where we go from here is still being discussed, but one thing I can say for sure is that Vivi will not be the only main character we're planning to include.” I’m told that Memoria is aiming to look indistinguishable - at least from a graphics perspective - from something you’d see in a triple-A blockbuster, and it seems the team has the pedigree to back that claim up.

Visuals are the entire point after all, since turning this project into a playable piece of media would require far more resources to create. By narrowing its focus, Memoria is able to deliver something special while also hopefully avoiding the ire of Square Enix. “The fact that this is a non-playable project definitely makes it easier for us to tailor the experience in a way that would truly allow the audience to be fully immersed in the world without having to worry about technical limitations,” Eder tells me. “Creating actual functional gameplay is a completely different ball game, one that we never had any intention of even discussing given the copyright limitations. This gives us a lot of leeway with how we are going to portray the world of Gaia in terms of character interaction, camera movement, [and] scene transitions. We have a lot of cool plans for the near future - please look forward to it!”

As for the sad truth of fan projects like this often being wiped from existence by publishers throwing out cease and desist letters, Eder is confident that Memoria occupies a niche where this won’t happen. It’s not a commercial or even playable product - it’s a piece of fan art, albeit an endlessly elaborate one. If the tides were to change, Eder believes companies should welcome the enthusiasm for experiences like this.

“If I were to be completely honest, I think it could be a potentially brilliant decision by Square Enix to do something wildly unexpected and invest in a project like this,” Eder states. “There's a considerable amount of hype, talent, motivation, and pure, unadulterated passion behind it. It's not something I would expect, but I think it could be incredibly helpful in regaining some of the trust and reverence that this legendary company was known for during its golden years.”

(source)

[parvuls]

* adapted from @librajiminn on twitter

a fun game to celebrate 2020 ending! the rules are simple: recommend your favorite omgcp fics so everyone can enjoy them, while trying to fill in enough slots to get a bingo! i ordered my recs starting from top left; my filled bingo card is at the end ✨

most recent fic you bookmarked don't tell your mother by seeingrightly [rating: unrated, probably t | words: 1k] essentially: jack is in madison, and things aren’t easy but at least they’re together. i have an unhealthy obsession with madison/4th of july fics, and every new one i discover brings me joy. i liked this one in particular because of the lovely, clean flow of the writing, and for its attention to the problematic environment: the (assumed) homophobic nature of georgia, and bitty's tension when he’s home as a result.

a fic that made you cry Your heart hurts, mine does too by the_p_in_raspberry (@thepinraspberry) [rating: t | words: 19k] essentially: this fic fills the prompt ‘what if bitty hadn’t come out to shitty?��� the fic deals with exactly the subject material implied, and is inherently painful. this what if version of bitty’s journey with his sexuality was so, so raw, but it was the good kind of pain. i’ll say that while this fic is jack/bitty at its core, i really think its real strength is the team dynamics. they are so there for each other, and it was a beautiful read.

a fic you’ve re-read multiple times Prove To Me You Got Some Coordination by amalnahurriyeh [rating: explicit | words: 17k; the series is 24.5k] “In which Jack Zimmermann has a favorite stripper, some very strong feelings about labour relations, and a good heart.“ when i prepared myself for reading a stripper au, this is not what i expected. this fic is one of my all-time favorites. i adored the politics angle, jack's awkward Helpless Good Guy gestures, and bitty being a complete badass. their soft flirting, the realistic (but positive!) take on sex work, and the careful handling of a potential unequal power dynamic. i don’t think i can count on one hand the amount of times i read this fic.

a fic from your to-read list Never Will You Ever by thefiveboxingwizards (@thefiveboxingwizards) [rating: explicit | words: ~25k (WIP)] essentially: during fall semester of Y2 the team plays never have i ever, which results in jack coming out to bitty. bitty decides to move on, just as jack starts to realize his own feelings. this is the first time i’m reccing a fic i haven’t actually read. i have a strict rule against reading wips for my own mental health (although i have great appreciation for all writers who decide to post them; kudos to you). the premise of this fic sounds so alluring, however, that i couldn’t help but marking it for later and then checking if it’s updated every few days. can’t wait to read it when it’s finished!

FREE SLOT and now what words do I have? by MyCupOfTea (@marchingatmidnight) [rating: m | words: 10k] essentially: jack and bitty love each other. bitty moves to france. jack and bitty continue to love each other, even when it’s hard. this fic could’ve fit several of my slots, but eventually i decided to just rec it on its own. it’s one of my absolute favorites in this fandom. i love it for the writing, the pacing, the decision to tackle a real obstacle in a relationship without unnecessary dramatization. i love the softness the pining trope is painted with; how the distance is awful but they deal with it so well, so healthily. i love when angst is used to build and show the strengths of a relationship, not just to hurt.

a pwp With New Eyes by luckie_dee (@luckiedee) [rating: m | words: 3.5k] essentially: mirror sex with a flavor of intercrural. this fic is set during bitty’s first visit to providence, which shifts the entire tone of the fic accordingly. everything is so tentative and new, and i just really liked how gentle jack and bitty are with each other, how they savor new things. the setting and bitty's thoughts and the whole thing was perfect, and so in character.

a fic that is pure fluff Over Heels by anonymous [rating: gen | words: 2.5k] essentially: jack and bitty and marriage. this is such a soft portrayal that it made my chest ache. it isn’t Y4-compliant, but it is so goddamn cute it doesn’t matter. i especially loved the communication between them, the choice of rings (plus the subtle mentions of jack stimming), and this sort of low key, understated proposal. the last scene with jack kissing the ring clinched it for me: i could picture it so clearly my heart flipped.

a fic with your favorite trope How to Blow a Fuck Ton of Meal Points in 1.5 Semesters. by YourPalYourBuddy (@ivecarvedawoodenheart) [rating: t | words: 5k] essentially: jack finds himself with more meal points than he could ever need, and proceeds to spend them on his team (read: bitty) - which leads to some realizations. the trope this fits is ‘year 2 canon-divergence getting together’, and it’s one trope i will never tire of. i absolutely loved the set up of this because it's so college. i loved jack's characterization, and also their conversations, how well bitty's feelings are translated through jack's eyes even when jack's not completely aware of them, and the ending.

a fic with a trope you don’t usually read Tipping the Scales by akaparalian (@floralegia) [rating: t | words : 7.5k] “Prince Eric, training for a tournament to prove his worth as a knight, goes for a ride in the woods. He accidentally finds a dragon, who accidentally became a dragon because he pissed off the wrong witch.” i’m not normally a fan of fantasy or royalty AUs, but something drew me to this fic anyway. i was not disappointed. i laughed out loud several times during this fic. i adored the translations of their personalities into a knight and a dragon (for example, jack's reaction to training - dying, dead, oh my god).

a drabble that made you want more Picture Us Together by RabbitRunnah (@doggernaut) [rating: t | words: 800] essentially: bitty sets a picture of his boyfriend as his lock screen during the madison visit, and jack finds out. it seems only fitting that i put more than one rec taking place during 4th of july on this list. the prompt was so simple, but the execution was so lovely i wished it would go on and on. things between them at this time were so new and fragile and sweet that i just never want it to end.

a fic with domestic fluff I'll settle in and dream by Stultiloquentia [rating: t | words: 9k] essentially: a future fic with emphasis on jack’s and bitty’s adult life. the realistic domesticity in this killed me dead. it is so, so lovely and soft. i enjoyed every detail, from the dog to the scenery descriptions to jack's hockey arc. every setting was so easy to imagine, and i really enjoyed the journey this fic takes the reader on.

[that-tall-queer-bassist]

My personal Pros and Cons of my ADHD

Pros

-noticing all the little details and appreciating them in the fullest

-Emotional Dysregulation, because when I get a new plant, or find that one oddly shaped metal marble I lost a while ago, I am so excited it’s pathetic, but I love that feeling of pure joy.

-hyperfixation of the week/day/hour (i know some people describe it differently, let me be pls) . I usually switch between art mediums, and/or a few video games/social media sites. for example, I’ve been on tumblr for 3 hours as i write this, after not touching it for, i think a month?

-nuerodivergent friends. They’re just better.

-the ability to completely drown myself in information to ignore reality. Is it healthy? no. But i simply cannot handle another existiential crissi rn, so i will instead play minecraft while listening to alt rock playlists on youtube because getting spotify sounds like a lot of work.

-my ability to retain absolutely useless information, from either my, or my other nuerodivergent friends hyperfixations/special interests. I can explain to you in terrible formatting if it’s out loud, the evolution, history, training, anatomy and roles of the horse in our world, and how ao3 works, and what makes or breaks a fanfiction.

-Object Impermanence. When i literally hide myself a treat or surprise and forget about it, then get so excited when i do find/discover it again. I hide google questions, and/or song lyrics in my tabs :) its so fun. Also, hiding away stressors. Again, healthy? no, but i don’t feel like having anxiety all day, so whatever.

-Emotional Dysregulation, again. I can switch from sad or angry to happy and excited/content in a few seconds. It’s also great for getting my siblings out of their funk. ex., my sister is mad at me. I make a silly voice repeating what she said or cross my eyes at her. she laughs, then we can talk and have constructive conversation about why she shouldn’t get that upset about me “cutting off her reading time” when we share a room and I want to sleep, and know that she will be very tired tomorrow if she doesn’t also go to sleep. (We have this conversation almost every single night, i’m not even joking)

Cons

-Emotional Dysregulation. When i get upset, I’m Upset. Like, big time, ruining friendships and familial ties if i let it get out of hand, Upset. Yeah.

-Time Blindness. Constantly late, or early, or under or over estimating the amount of time it takes to do a thing, not eating til 4 because you forgot but you also should just wait til dinner, but now its 9 and I still haven’t eaten-

-Executive Dysfunction. I can’t do the things needed to function. Don’t have the mental energy to explain this one, so google it i guess? There’s a whole checklist of things you need to be able to do to function, and i can do like, three on a good day.

-Sleeping Trouble. People with adhd have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up. So, sleeping trouble. So I’m constantly tired.

-Internal Clock is SLIGHTLY OFF. Nuerotypicals have that normal sleep schedule. Adhd ers have it shifted forward by, i think, 2, 3 hours. So we go to sleep later, and wake up later, and that’s the only way to get a healthy amount of sleep. My entire family also eats dinner super late, which might be because we’re weird, but I suspect the inner clock thing cuz we all got adhd.

-Object Impermanance. I hid my math homework one time. I failed that class. 

-Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Never trying, or starting cuz I’m so terrified to get a bad reaction. Constantly masking around certain people to appeal to the few of my Nuerotypical friends. Or, y’know, majority of my extended family. They’re ableist. and homophobic. And transphobic. And racist. and sexist. The list goes on, but, yeah. Never coming out to them! :D

-Masking. It’s exhausting and I can only handle so much of it.

-Not Masking around nuerotypicals. The shoot down after finally revealing my true thoughts, urges, feelings, stims, etc. just sucks. Super disheartening. 

-Squirrel or shiny jokes when they’re made by people without adhd. Yes, I do get distracted by squirrels, and shiny things, and dice. Stop pointing it out, and/or putting me into yet another box of your labeling. 

-saying that I’m lazy, worthless, or a disaster when really it’s not helping. I already have that internal monologue, you adding to it and giving it some truth/extra ammunition is not. helping.

-Emotional Dysregulation. Again, because mood swings. like, I’m trying to be rightfully angry with you. Stop making me laugh with you’re silly faces or pointing out of a weird face someone made in a picture you took. 

-the stigma about the hyperactive subtype. I’m inattentive. I have No Energy. Ever. Sometimes i have restlessness, but there is still no energy. Stop portraying me as bouncing off the walls, especially with caffeine. Caffeine just catches my body speed up to my brain speed, settling me down a bit, at least mentally. 

-people not getting when i say I’m overstimulated, or need some time alone to process or re-energize, and following me, or continuing to do the overstimulating thing. I will literally. lose. my. mind.

-when people shut me down after I share something that is really important to me, or make fun of me for liking something an “abnormal” amount. Flashbacks to overnight camp, when whenever I said anything about horses, they said I had to do five squats, and when i got really excited about discussing the differences in riding styles/types with another person who really liked horses, but rode english, they said that it was obnoxious, when i was just.. excited to finally find someone to talk to and who felt the same way after, basically, years and years of no one getting it or wanting to listen or talking with me about the thing. To this day I don’t discuss horses with anyone, cuz it hurts so much remembering that, and the fear of it happening again is still there. 

-seeing other people be ashamed about their adhd and hesitant to mention until i talk, like, super openly about having it, in like, the first 5 minutes of knowing each other. It just.. hurts.

-I’m super empathetic, not in a way that’s helpful though. Like, wincing, or limping myself because I saw you drop something on your foot, and am imagining it so vividly that it feels like it happened to me. Reading a fic about abuse or depression, and it hitting too hard and hurting me almost physically, and on a personal level because I simply cannot handle it. Feeling someone else’s pain so vividly that i can’t comfort or help them in any way, because I am so preoccupied with  feeling their pain. 

-never being able to finish things without starting something else. All the WIPs in my google docs, istg, i will be driven insane by it. 

(y’know, this was kinda fun. As a rant, but also as a way for me to identify things about myself and my adhd that i like. Like, I know its so much shorter, but I have a hard time with positive self affirmation, so it was kinda nice. I might do it again, but just the pros part cuz the cons are kinda depressing ngl.)

(OH, Y’all should reblog with your own personal pros added on! You can add cons if you’d like to :) I’m just interested in seeing how your experiences/feeling differ from mine :) )

[northernscruffycat]

Tagged by @101flavoursofweird

I’ll tag @pandirpus @krokonoko @my-artblog-is-ssjumi @yallemagne @amberrgalaxy @swamp-y and anyone else who wants to do this. But this is a pretty long one, so don’t feel like you have to :3 (On that note, I’ll be putting most of this under a cut for exactly that reason)

How many works do you have on AO3?

131 at the moment. But some of those are different oneshots from FFN that I posted into one fic when porting over to AO3, so I’d be fascinated by what the actual amount of fanfics I’ve written is.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

1242922 words

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Just counting what’s on AO3, so far I’ve written for 17 fandoms. They are: Free!, Professor Layton, Hades Game, Steven Universe, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Yu-Gi-Oh DM, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Yu-Gi-Oh 5d’s, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario, Dr. Stone, Tintin, Night in the Woods, GetBackers, Good Omens and Cooking Mama What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

‘just wanted to write a fic where senku says ‘get excited’ during sex’ (My SenGen oneshot that gets a wave of attention whenever a new chapter or episode of Dr. Stone comes out)

‘laughable’ (An Ares/Hypnos oneshot I wrote purely as a sample for a zine app and underestimated how popular that ship is lol)

‘the prince with specific tastes; the king with specific regrets’ (THAT Theseus fic. My absolute fave thing I’ve ever written)

‘Shallow Grave, Shallow Bae’ (A Reigisa fic based on Octopimp’s 50% Off! abridged series of Free!; I honestly do think this fic slaps and I’m glad folks like it)

‘Barrel of Monkeys’ (The AsaIku & KisuHiyo collab fic I wrote with Amber that was a lotta fun and I’d love to do something like this with them again one day for a different fandom. Also, I feel like we captained the small KisuHiyo fandom with this fic back in the day)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I generally respond to comments. Almost always, unless I really can’t think of anything to say in reply, which is pretty rare. Comments make me so happy and I just want to let people who do comment know that I appreciate them.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I think the angstiest fic I wrote was a Free! fic called ‘Moves Across the Land’ - the premise of which is that Makoto died as a young adult of an illness and each chapter is a different person in his life receiving a letter that he wrote for them before he died. But that one had an optimistic ending, with Haru and Kisumi unexpectedly finding a newly strengthened friendship in sharing the grief of Makoto’s death. So I guess technically the angstiest ending I wrote was a short Archie/Maxie oneshot where Maxie gets killed by Kyogre lol

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes, but I ended up agreeing with it! Waaay back (probably more that 10 years ago at this point), I wrote a bunch of Layton/Rosetta oneshots that I now don’t stand by. One of them, in my naivety, I went too far with and breached uncomfortable territory. I got a couple of comments about how uncomfortable it was, so I ended up deleting that particular fic and felt better after it was gone.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I am a fledgling at writing smut, which is probably obvious to anyone who’s read my smut haha. When I do write it, I prefer to focus on the dialogue between the characters - I like a banterous smut scene. Also, they’re usually pretty tame. I like writing about handjobs, blowjobs and wanking the most when I do write smut.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, not that I know of, but that would be awesome! A few years ago, a kind person messaged me about potentially translating my Layton fic ‘Grasping Liquid’ into French, but I don’t think they went through with it in the end. Though honestly, the dialogue and slang in that fic is pretty much illegible in English, so I reckon it’d be a tough fic to translate.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, the aforementioned ‘Barrel of Monkeys’ that I co-wrote with @amberrgalaxy It was a lot of fun and I love it :D

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hmm... I don’t think I have a single all time favourite. I jump through a lot of OTPs and they always mean a lot to me, but it wouldn’t seem fair to pick out a single one that’s always shined brighter than the others, because that’s not really how my hyperfixations work. But my current favourite ships are Momus/Heracles (to be narcissistic) and TheseZag from Hades Game. While my oldest ship that I’m still invested in is Yami/Seto from Yu-Gi-Oh DM.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Shockingly, I don’t have any right now. A few years ago (I think 2018?), I made a point of going back and finishing ALL my old WIPs that I’d left hanging but intended to finish, even for fandoms I didn’t plan on going back to. So that freed my conscience of them and felt pretty good. At the moment, my only WIP is ‘if found please return to the underworld’ - an AU where Zagreus does make it to Olympus, so Hades sends Theseus, Asterius and Meg to try to get him back. But I’ve only just started writing that one, so I do hope to stick with it until it’s finished.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. Definitely dialogue. I’m told that I capture the canon voices of characters pretty well and that’s always what I’m trying the hardest to get right, so it means a lot to me. I also feel like I’m good at keeping a fic flowing, without being bogged down by too much detail. But the downside of that is that I often sacrifice description, so I still hope to find the balance. Since Hades Game has more flowery prose than I’m used to, I think getting into that series actually helped me with this.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I do not think I am experienced enough to be able to pull this off well and would worry too much about making mistakes.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

It was Pokemon, but those fics aren’t online anymore. The oldest fics you can still find buried somewhere with my name attached to them are Sonic fics.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

‘the prince with specific tastes; the king with specific regrets’ - Sometimes I look back at that fic and wonder if I actually wrote it, since I avoided falling into all of my usual traps: I researched it properly and frequently, I kept the focus on the five main characters instead of getting distracted by introducing a million other character like I usually do, I plotted the fucker out from start to finish instead of winging it, and I worked the flashbacks into it in a way that balanced the present-day out instead of distracting from it. Also, I got the whole thing written in about two months, instead of staling for years. ...Whatever possessed me when I wrote that fic, please come back. (It was the first time I’d had two weeks off together in about three years, so I think that had a lot to do with it) OH YEAH and that same kinda villain OC who I recycle in every fandom I’m in actually landed this time. It brought me so much joy to see how much people loved to hate Momus. Those two months when I was posting that fic are easily a highlight of my life. :D

[maplecornia]

fanfic writer's tag game

tagged by: @kookaine thanks for the tag dude! even though it was RIDICULOUSLY long ;-; this should be fun ig

1. What fandoms have you written for (but do not currently)?

n/a. the fandoms I started writing for I continued to write for lmao.

2. what fandoms are you currently writing for?

Let's see...BTS, NCT, Stray Kids, ATEEZ. I haven't released my NCT or Stray Kids fics yet, since I'm still working on them and I don't do teasers.

3. how long have you been writing?

since 7th grade. that was when I started writing my original story called Strong with my best friend. I mean I had a Wattpad and Tumblr account back in 2016...I just never did anything with it. It's only recently in the 2019-2021 that I've started writing fanfiction.

4. on which platforms do you post your stories?

Wattpad, ao3, Tumblr

5. what is your favorite genre to write?

probably fantasy, angst or general fiction. romance is sometimes too cheesy for me which is why i always have to add angst to the mix, lmao, but i think in fantasy and general fiction it's cool cuz you can add multiple elements and there's MAGIC. like how cool is that. also enemies to lovers is always GOLDEN in fantasy and general fiction.

6. are you a pantser or a planner?

didn't know what a pantser was until i looked it up <///3 but i'm definitely a planner. i would go crazy if i didn't plan out my fics or leave notes or anything like that. i'm overly organized that way.

7. one-shot or multiple chapter

both, really. for some ideas they only fit for oneshots, but for others they are perfect for multiple chapters. but if i'm being honest, probably multiple chapters. i write too much for oneshots ;-;

8. what is the perfect chapter length in your opinion?

1000 to 4000 words, for me it'd probably be longer, but for majority i think that this is the perfect length to get your point across and also for people to have an easy and enjoyable time to read.

9. what is your longest published story?

Infinite Stars, it's no wonder though because it's a series lmao

10. what story did you enjoy working on the most?

I love Infinite Stars to death, and it's my baby in the making, but if I had to choose which one I enjoyed the most it would have to be Your Untold Truth. I'm kinda sad it hasn't gotten more upvotes, but it's fine because I love it enough.

11. favorite request you've written?

haven't recieved one yet :/

12. are there reoccuring themes in your stories?

yep. angst, love, strange encounters, mentions of and the possibility of fate, one person changing and/or affecting your life, growing and learning from your mistakes so you can grow stronger on your own...all so i can do my one main theme, you're never truly alone.

13. current number of wips?

probably 10 now </3 Infinite Stars really be taking up a lot of my time

14. three things you've noticed about your writing?

i'm depressed. either that or I just enjoy talking about sadness. also if anything goes back the cliche hand holding or butterflies in the stomach, i will literally combust. i enjoy writing pure relationships, and whenever i try to write heated moments...let's just say they may go a little too far past the realistic side ;-;. metaphors are also a big part of my writing...and omfg the amount of filler material i create just because i think useless information is important astounds me. i never thought someone could be OVERLY descriptive...and then i met me :)))

i just realized that was more than three things RIP

15. a quote you like from a published story?

i have a lot...so i'm sorry i'm going to do more than one </3

"'You told me to be happy, so I'm going to try my best to find out what that means.'" - Your Untold Truth

"'I wasn't made to know you.'" - Your Untold Truth

(not a quote but I'm super proud of this)

"Today is a sunny day. The leaves have not yet turned their shade of red, and the flowers are in full bloom. It's a beautiful day, and on the breeze, I can almost swear I hear her whisper, a ghost of a laugh that will continue to live on in my dreams. For she will always be dancing, even if it's not with me." -Your Untold Truth

16. a quote from an unpublished story?

these are from chapters that are unreleased, so those reading Infinite Stars, here's as much of a teaser as you're going to get lmao

"Why do we keep choosing each other when we know that all we'll get is more pain?" - Infinite Stars

"We teach you to love yourself, to love others, we give you that right, but we aren't allowed to do the same?" - Infinite Stars

"Do you know how hard it is to have multiple people telling you who you are when they don't know the first thing about you?" - Infinite Stars

"Someone once told me that change is inevitable. But that doesn't mean letting go means saying goodbye." -Infinite Stars

"Why were you deciding my life before I even had a chance to make my own choice?" -Infinite Stars

"You know what I'm tired of? People trying to tell me who I am, and what I should do without me ever getting a chance to decide for myself. That should be my decision, that should be my choice and mine alone!" - Infinite Stars

17. space for you to say something to your readers.

hello my young chicken nuggets. I know a lot of you are silent readers, and that my blog ain't that big, but I'm really happy that you guys read my fics! It means a lot to me that you enjoy my writing and I hope you'll enjoy more writing to come ^^

tagging: @hyuckworld, @kabira, @words-in-purple, @junepops + anyone else who wants to do this! even though this was long as heck it was pretty fun to do