#they're a wacky only works in fandom ship

[spoiledqueenie]

TimLonnie but miraculous ladybug style and worse bc

Lonnie hates trust fund baby Tim Drake but falls face-first into the dirt for Boy Wonder, Robin.

Tim's bi-awakening his ex-girlfriend's one-month fling, and he doesn't know how to deal, but this Anarky guy is the most annoying piece of shite he'd ever met.

Stephanie is their Luka. She wants to bash their head together until they bleed to death

[wrengrif]

Alright, last Random Thoughts for today

Be mad at Aziraphale! Look at the horrible things that he said! Look at him leaving Crowley after Crowley poured out his heart! He went off to toxic Heaven on an impossible mission!

Be mad at Crowley! Look at the horrible things HE said! Look how he doesn't ever take responsibility for his actions! He walked out when Aziraphale needed him the most!

You know what? You can be angry at both of them. You can blame both of them for not taking the time to actually see the problems right in front of their faces. You can be mad that Aziraphale never asked Crowley to move in with him directly, for not seeing how on edge and depressed Crowley was, how he never seemed to relax, always waiting for another shoe to fall. You can be mad at Crowley for not realizing just how seriously manic Aziraphale was, how the angel was going around without an rudder, using Crowley as a proxy!Heaven to report to.

They both made mistakes. They both have something to learn in their separation. They both have to come back to this friendship, this relationship, having made progress in their own self-realizations.

I think that's what Neil, and the script, have been leading to all along. They're stronger together, but only if they are working together. Equal partnership, fifty-fifty. Balancing out each other's weaknesses, supporting each other's strengths.

We, as a fandom, should not be, in my personal opinion, Pro-Crowley or Pro-Aziraphale. We should be Pro-Ineffable Husbands. We accept they are both fucked up, that we love them anyways, and we're going with them on their wacky journey of personal growth, and eventually, their triumphant reconciliation. That's why we got on this crazy ship to begin with.

So. To them. To Us. To their world.

[storyspinner91]

Twenty Fanfic Writer Questions

Tagged by @littleblackraincloudofcourse

Tagging @lowkeyed1 @evodevo-geekmonkey @dianels @bisexualshakespeare @spybrarian @blackdalek

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 

7 (3 are WiP)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 

186,452

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Willow! ...Technically other things too but really it's just Willow with playful skins.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Red Embers: dark alternate future AU, resistance fighters against the Wyrm's tyranny, grim & gritty

Like Constellations, a Million Years Away: sprawling mecha sci-fi AU set in the world of the Lancer tabletop roleplaying game. The Questies all pilot giant mechs; four books (2 done), one focused on each of Jade, Kit, Graydon, and Elora (in that order). Posthumanism, anticolonial to the extent a fanfic can be, utopian, dramatic.

Soft Blazing Crowns: Tanthamoretober one-shot. Modern AU. Elora helps Jade with a sexy photoshoot for a gift for Kit.

Full: (E-rated) Tanthamoretober one-shot. Modern AU. Straight-up smut drabble, 100 words on the dot. Extremely funny to me that this is in the top 5. :P

The Loving Hurt: Canon-set one-shot digging into the violence implied by the canon against the Bone Reavers, Scorpia's backstory, how Jade got her name. Dark, grim, not pleasant to write and in some ways probably not to read TBH. I was in A Mood!

5. Do you respond to comments?

Religiously! Sometimes it takes me a while, but I do.

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

Hmmm. I mean I think it's gotta be The Loving Hurt. Like I said. Dark. Blame the show's writers, I do. :P

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

Gonna resist the temptation to say Full and instead say I think that it'll probably be Flawless Five vol. 1 when it's finished in a few weeks!

8. Do you get hate on fics? 

Not so far!

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

The only thing I'd consider smut is Full. Otherwise, not anywhere that you can see. ;)

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

No true crossovers, though Like Constellations is set (loosely) in the Lancer Universe.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so! They're too weird!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

No but I'd be so honored.

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

Nope!

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

I am a Tanthamore diehard, what can I say.

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

If you'd asked me recently I'd probably have said "all of them." Fortunately I'm feeling a little better lately! I hope to finish all of the current ones; Constellations is a slow, weighty project, F5 I hope to have done very shortly, Embers...we'll figure that out after F5.

16. What are your writing strengths? 

I think I'm pretty good at dialogue, and I'm decent though not incredible at humor (especially character-based humor). I'm also a decent mimic - though this can feel a little clunky sometimes, I think I'm able to adjust my voice pretty easily to suit a situation, genre, or style. My unhinged and unpopular fic Excerpts from a new translation... is a pretty good example of that, lol. And on that note: I have a lot of fun with wacky metatextual stuff.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Taking the wacky meta stuff too far; not being bold enough in straying from the established character arcs/plots in canon; I don't think I'm great at writing really juicy interiority. Starting very large projects that will take forever to finish. ':)

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

I'm comfortable enough in Spanish to write simple dialogue in that language. I've done one line in Latin (which I'm comfortable with since it's functionally a dead language) and made up some words in a conlang for Constellations. Wouldn't try anything via Google Translate though.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Willow! At least if we count conscious fanfiction. If we're going back to the Days of Yore probably Animorphs when I was a wee one.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? 

Difficult to pick...but Like Constellations is the baby, the one I'll finish come hell or high water (I hope). On the other hand, Flawless Five is probably the most fun (to write, and maybe to read if you like that sort of thing) and Red Embers is the one that in many ways I find most exciting. Like I said - hard to choose!

[tr1ck5]

It's so funny how some people think that Quistis should've been Squall's love interest instead of Rinoa either because they think Quistis is prettier and/or because she's known Squall longer. Yet they conveniently ignore the facts, from the game itself, that:

1) Squall literally never liked Quistis in any way whatsoever, not when they were kids in the orphanage and not at Garden. He literally said that when they were kids, Quistis was "difficult to deal with." She annoyed him as a kid. Even after they forgot their childhood, he still didn't like her during all those years at Garden.

2) Then he himself pointed out how inappropriate she was being towards him because she's his teacher. It doesn't matter that she's only a year older than him; she was still in a position of power and authority over him for at least a year. If he actually reciprocated her feelings, their relationship would've been extremely inappropriate and she could've gotten in trouble for it.

Also, these same people like to claim that Rinoa forced him to become her Knight, or really forced him to do whatever she wanted him to do, when he literally made that decision of his own free will. He chose to be Rinoa's Knight because he wanted to. He chose to take Rinoa to Esthar and free her from her coma because he wanted to. He chose to rescue Rinoa from space because he wanted to. No one forced him to do any of that shit.

I swear, these certain people make me scratch my head and wonder if they even played FF8 at all 🤦‍♀️ @angelosearch @doortotomorrow @ethernalium

Listen dear anon, while I totally agree with you on all of this; I've learned a long time ago that people will ship who they wanna ship regardless of canon so I just let them do their thing (and that's part of the beauty of fandom!!) and honestly I've actually read some interesting Squall/Quistis fics in the past that made it work! While it's not my preferred ship *by far*, there's always room for imagination.

That being said, one of the big reason that I personally think Squall/Quistis doesn't really work is that they are simply *too alike*. Both of them have this independent, serious, lone wolf type personality, not to mention we can assume both of them were pretty much prodigies (Squall being looked up to despite everything and being top of his classes + Quistis becoming instructor at friggin' *eighteen*).

Squall thinking Quistis was "annoying" and "difficult to deal with" actually tells us a lot about how Squall also views himself, consciously or not, I think. Tl;dr: Squall doesn't like himself very much -> he and Quistis are pretty alike personality-wise -> ergo: Squall doesn't like Quistis very much. At least that's my reasoning! Now, I do think their relationship gets less tense as the game progresses (though I don't buy her whole 'oh I thought it was love but it was really sisterly love'. Girl was still crushing on Squall, but decided to put a stop to this awkward situation between them in her own way so they could both move on... Maturity!~)

And yes, her pursuing him rather aggressively while being his direct superior is of course one hundred percent inappropriate, but we have to remind ourselves that... She's a teenager. They're all teenagers. Despite the training and the weapons and powerful guardian forces they're still all a bunch of kids on the cusp of becoming adults, with the maturity and wacky hormones that go with it. Of course they're gonna make mistakes.

Look at me going off again oop lol

The whole "Rinoa forced him to become her knight" angle is new (and quite baffling) to me, I must admit. The iconic line ("Even if you become the world's enemy, I'll be your knight") wasn't even said out loud, the idiot said it in his head lmao. But again, fandom gonna fandom, whatcha gonna do!

[shatteredhourglass]

Fic Writer's Showcase Game

tagged by @drgrlfriend - thank you!

Rules: Go to your published works on AO3 and list the first fic you ever published there, the last fic you published, any fic that you wrote for a fandom/ship only once, your favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship that has the most works, the fic you wish more people read, the fic you agonized over the most, the fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort, and a work you are proud of—for whatever reason. <3

First Fic:

Left Foot Forward (Marvel, Winterhawk, Omegaverse, E) - This was born of me reading first Bucky fics, then Clint fics, then running out of winterhawk fics and going 'I should write some so that other people make more for me to read. Maybe I'll do all the popular tropes.' I was terribly depressed at the time and spent most of my days watching the food network and doing nothing, so this actually saved me in a lot of ways.

Last Fic:

A Losing Game (OFMD, Rotating Ed/Stede/Izzy But NOT Steddyhands, Death Game/Modern AU, E) - I know a lot of people are scared of reading this one because they don't know the series it's inspired by and no matter how much I promise that it doesn't matter, it's still intimidating. But I think it's the bees knees. I need to finish the companion parts, they're some of the best things I've ever written.

One-Hit Fandom:

Bad Habits / Indisposed (Dying Light 2, Aiden/Barney, PWP, Both E) - Technically a two-hit fandom and I'm always tempted to write more, but this is a hilarious instance of a character in a video game being so annoying that I was like. I need that guy OBLITERATED (sexual.)

Favourite Fic In Biggest Ship:

BANG! (Marvel, Winterhawk, Suicide Squad AU, E) - I loved writing this fic. I'm in my element when writing violent, kind of wacky comedy action romances (see ALG above as well) and BANG! was a lot of my favourite things in one. Also a call back to a few villains I loved who aren't as prominent.

Fic I Wish Was Read More:

See above for A Losing Game. I was well aware that it wouldn't have a massive reception; it's inspired by a series that people probably haven't seen, it's 80k, it's not actually Steddyhands. But it's very good. I stand by it.

Fic Most Agonised Over:

under the heel of a devil (Marvel, Ameriwinterhawk, Western AU, E) - Westerns are NOT my thing. Arson set me this challenge and I was like "welp." And went to watch a few westerns so I had some semblance of an idea of what the hell I was meant to do. I think it came out alright in the end, but it drove me nuts.

Zero-Effort Fic:

An Endless Beating Heart (OFMD, Ed/Izzy & Jack/Stede, Zombie AU, E) - Okay this is technically a snippet collection in the same verse and is Very Disjointed, but I love it. It was so easy. Zombie stuff is so cruisy for me.

Pride And Joy Fic:

Off The Mortal Coil (Marvel, Winterhawk & Platonic Bucky/Kate, Zombie AU, E) - Over 160k words. 160k. I have not and will never achieve a fic this long again. It was a labour of love and I still love it dearly.

Tagging: If you haven't done this yet, do it now. You're tagged. Go. And tag me in the post.

[theresawritesstuff]

1, 6, 7, and 9 about your current fave fic of yours (I'm not familiar with what midgexlenny is, but tell me about it if you want to!)

Lol oh I do sometimes feel bad for my poor Sherlolly mutuals putting up with me while I lose it over a different ship ❤️ they're different but the venn diagram of pairings does overlap in places.

First off, this is Midge and Lenny from Amy Sherman Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. They're two foul mouthed stand up comedians in the late 1950s/early 1960s and they're soulmates.

If you enjoy Gilmore Girls level fast paced dialogue but with more f bombs and so so so many pretty dresses I definitely recommend at least bits of the show.

Being that Lenny is a fictionalized version of real life comedian Lenny Bruce (originally intended to only appear in the pilot but they brought him back as part of the show because the chemistry was just too good. The actors are friends in real life and the joy in working together comes through in some really beautiful performances) the final canon of the show was a bit handcuffed on just how far the creators decided they could let the ship sail but that's where the fanfic comes in 😂

Which brings me to my fic Guess Who's Coming to Yom Kippur!

*What is your favorite thing about this fic?*

This was my first dive into writing for this fandom and it has been so much fun. Truly delightful! So many things I've enjoyed with this one. But my favorite thing I think is that it really is an ensemble piece. The characters of the show are all very nuanced, often delightfully flawed, sometimes wacky individuals and I love giving them all a seat at the table and getting to know them. Sometimes quite literally within the fic (it centers around a big family dinner for several chapters). I've had to think of scenes cinematically and it's stretched my dialogue writing in a really enjoyable way. There's at least one scene I wrote visualizing it as a long tracking shot with characters moving in and out, very high energy and lovingly chaotic. It's a fic that has a lot to do with family both found and blood related and how love can show up and show through in a lot of humorous ways.

*Were there any alternative versions of this fic?*

Yes! I originally came up with the idea a season prior to my actually getting around to writing it (wrote it after watching season 4, thought of it watching season 3). The original vague concept for it was much shorter and ended with Midge and Lenny in more of an ambiguous but hopeful "maybe someday" where as the current fic has them very much endgame. And I'm quite happy with that. I feel like I discover more about the story and the characters the longer I work on it. I'm eventually going to write a sequel because I'm having so much fun (another first for me!)

*Favorite line of narration/ Favorite bit of dialogue*

So this fic is currently sitting at over 62k words and counting (it comes with trying to emulate Amy Sherman Palladino levels of dialogue) Easily the longest thing I've written 😅😅😅 I'm not sure I could pick any specific favorites without reading through the whole thing again. And maybe not even then. There's a lot of moments I'm very fond of. Though most probably require more context than would make it easy to share. I'll include a snippet of the tracking shot arrival scene I mentioned since that doesn't require a ton of context from the show other than knowing the names mostly.

In this bit they're arriving at a party hosted by Midge's ex in-laws and Lenny is meeting her older brother Noah and his wife Astrid for the first time. Esther is Midge's two year old daughter. Noah is canonically a secret agent. Lenny is known for getting arrested for things he says in his stand up (a proponent of free speech in a red scare era).

They arrived at the Maisel residence as dusk began to settle in over the sleepy suburb.

"Hi everyone! Sorry we're late. Esther needed to make a pit stop," Midge called out as they let themselves through the front door.

"Us too! We just got in," Noah said from somewhere deeper in the house.

Midge set the kids loose and made her way towards the kitchen. "Mama, Shirley, what can I help with? Oh, Esther sweetie, I don't think Grandma wants you touching that."

"Hi Midge," Astrid greeted, coming in holding little Chaim.

"Hey Astrid! One second," Midge called over her shoulder, rushing to corral Esther away from the more breakable tchotkes. "Esther. Esther put that down!"

Lenny smiled, collecting the kids discarded shoes into a pile by the door.

"Oh hi! You must be Midge's friend." Astrid gave him a welcoming smile.

"Lenny," he supplied.

"Lenny. So nice to meet you. I'm Astrid. This is Chaim." She held her son out for him to hold, passing him off. "Would you mind?"

"Oh I–" Lenny took Chaim in hand on reflex as Astrid didn't wait for a yes or no.

"Thanks." 

She gave him another quick smile before dashing out the front door and wretching over the porch rail.

Lenny held Chaim at arms length, both too stunned by the transfer to know how to proceed. 

"Hello…" he attempted, looking the child in the eye.

"Astrid, honey?" Midge's brother's lanky limbs carried him into the foyer in search of his wife.

Midge returned with a rescued porcelain figurine in hand. "Hey Noah, how was traffic–oh my god."

She stepped out immediately to check on Astrid the moment she saw her, leaving Lenny with Noah and his offspring.

"Yours, I believe," Lenny said finally, handing Chaim to Noah.

"Yeah…" Noah replied, taking his son while glancing after his wife and sister in concern.

The two men stared each other down for a moment, neither one quite sure how to react to the other.

"I'm Lenny."

"I know."

[22degreehalo]

So I'm back to watching Assassination Classroom but I had to put out some laundry earlier so I looked up to see if there were any Karma/Nagisa podcasts (there are two!) and I got to thinking about what a surreal setting that fandom is and how much I love that and that got me thinking about a thread on /r/Ao3 about writing fic where the characters have weird names and how I was bummed I only got to thread when it was many hours old (as usual) so I didn't bother to leave a comment but I just felt so strongly about calling the characters 'Black' and 'White' or, like, 'America' and 'Lithuania', because some writers like to use their 'human' names but it's so much more meaningful and interesting IMO when it really is The United States of America and The Republic of Lithuania locking tongues, and then I imagined a person from Lithuania being really startled to see their country referenced out of the blue 'cause maybe they're young or old but either way they're not really familiar with Hetalia, so then I had to mentally write out a whole long comment about how Lithuania is depicted in that fandom (to my memory; it's been a while) and why I ship America/Lithuania, and I'd have to share some fic because there are some REALLY good ones, and there are the Lithuania genfics ofc and the one puella_nerdii and mithrigil wrote, but then there was another that I reread a few years ago when my phone screen broke so I had to use my first smartphone for a couple of days and I found it saved tot he device (never transferred on) and was surprised to find it even better than I'd remembered, so then I had to try and look it up and by now I'm about to have a shower because it's hot today and I know the fic's on my tablet but I only have my phone with me and I'm just standing there naked in the bathroom for ten minutes scowling down as I repeatedly google "How does your garden grow?" and various combinations of 'livejournal' 'lithuania' 'fanfiction' 'usliet' 'rec list' and eventually I got to my tablet and found it but I guess I didn't include the author's name when I copied it to a word document??? So now I had to go look up my del.icio.us recs because thank god I'd sorted that all out earlier this year and even refound this exact fic (but didn't bookmark it to ao3 for some reason), and after all that I had to give it a re-read, didn't I? Since it took so long to track down and, like, I didn't want to accidentally rec a super offensive fic to this made-up Lithuanian redditor. 'cause when I thought about it, the idea of America being this really nice guy who makes Lithuania really happy probably wouldn't fly so well in 2024, huh?

but I did read it and

it's so....... fucking good ;_________;

I want to go to Lithuania... I lolvve that fucking country so stupidly much oh my god. so fucking cringe that Im getting this worked up over a dumb gay anime fanfiction about wacky ww2 yaoi fascists but here I am and it's' actually still probably one of my favourite fics ever tbh. unironically.

so uhhHHHHHHHH that's how my afternoon went and also please read 'How Does Your Garden Grow?' by zempasuchil 🙏🙏🙏