#this fic consumed me lol and it's such a writing for myself project that i reread it and don't mind if it doesn't get any attention

[dimdiamond]

Happy Fanfic Writers Appreciation Day! 🥳

What is your favorite line/scene that you've written so far this year?

Sorry, answering this a day later but thank you so much for the ask❣️❣️❣️

Uhhh this year I've been writing a lot of "Six Goodbyes and One Hello" and there's this scene I really liked for some reason but it's from a chapter I haven't posted yet and I hope this small part of the scene makes some sense out of context. You can read it under the read more.

Chang laid his head on his shoulder and judging from his tired face he didn't do it to mess up with him… It was only natural to get exhausted after such an eventful day so Chester let him be… he also was too tired to fight back…

“My mom was wearing rose perfume…” Chang's quiet voice startled him more than his yell would have done. “The only luxury she allowed herself was this single small bottle of rose perfume… The only thing I can still remember clearly of her was that she smelled like roses whenever she smiled the brightest…” Despite talking about his lost family, he was still smiling…

How can you be so strong…

“What was her name?”

“Guiying… It comes from ‘Gui’, meaning laurel, cassia or cinnamon, and ‘Ying’ which means flower, petal or even hero, brave...”

He couldn't help but smirk with the teacher switch he had on, no matter the timing… “Beautiful name… Did you take from her?”

“I suppose as most sons take from their mothers… I don't have any photos of them…”

Oh, so that's why…

His arm already covered Chang's arm so the least he could do was to squeeze his hand, now colder than before… “I am sure you took the best from both your parents so whenever you look at yourself in the mirror you see both of them…”

The blessing and the curse of genes…

Chang didn't say anything to that, he only nudged his face on his shoulder, hiding it from him, and turned his hand in a way that now their palms were touching, but his small hand was still fully covered by the big one on the top…

No one was ever so open to me… no one ever showed me such trust…

Chester would cry if he was stronger… “The only reason I like apple blossoms is because it was what I usually saw outside my window… Whenever they came it meant that winter was over and so was finally the snow…”

“You don't like snow?” Chang showed his face that stared at him with all interest.

Staring back at him, the feeling was only enhanced… “Aye, I came to hate it… even more now…”

His eyes widened but then they lowered as his voice. “Yeah, me too…”

Every time he opened up this thing happened… How should he lighten up the mood…? “And after the blossoms the apples came and I would grab one to eat or my mom would bake them with sugar and cinnamon so I guess I have to connect something with my hunger to be interested…!”

Why wasn't Chang laughing with him…?! Why was he staring at the void skeptically…?! “I see…”

WHAT DO YOU SEE?! THAT I'M A GLUTTON?!

This was one of the many reasons he avoided talking about himself… Eventually, he made things awkward… It was easier when he stepped back and let the others open as much as they wanted…

This is so cowardly and unfair… Chang isn't either of them…

He gulped- hopefully his fear- and talked, trying to find some courage by looking at their hands… “I want to talk to you about… all the things I haven't talked about and I should have… But I can't now…” Not until Lee could verify him that there was no danger… But Chester would demand a clear answer from him and then… “ I will tell you… everything… Just give me some time…”

Some time passed by with no reaction from him and Chester was becoming more and more sure that Chang had no intention of giving importance to empty words and unfair requests… That was only fair but it didn't mean it didn't hurt…

Then his hand shifted and his long fingers slipped through his own thick ones and they intertwined… How was it possible for two so different hands to fit each other and look like one…? His eyes were stuck on this view and all his senses focused on this touch… as if it was the most extraordinary thing in the world…

So this is your answer…? You'll get through me no matter the obstacles…?

This was so characteristically like Chang it made Chester want to laugh but, thankfully, he held it inside with a smirk. The only urge he allowed himself to indulge was to hold his hand tighter and not let it go during the rest drive… Even more bizarre was that he felt no resistance or movement of his hand to get free from his grip and, the one time Chester dared to take his eyes from their hands to the face laying on his shoulder, he saw Chang smiling with his eyes closed…

[shiftylinguini]

Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack:

@phoebe-delia asked in response to this fun lil ask game:

Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back? . (for the ask anything) Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back?

Now THIS. This is a good question, and something that is very much on my mind and has been for a while, as I am currently absolutely in the midst of this and trying to army crawl my way out. I don't have any magic bullets (is that the saying? idk) but I have been here before and i do have a small arsenal of tips or methods that I find can help me. 

Here is my Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack (In no particular order):

Write anything 

This is hardly groundbreaking advice, and it's also the hardest thing to actually do (imo) so do not beat yourself up if it takes a while to get to this. Basically, write ANYTHING―it can be aimless, it can be pointless, it can be crap (crap is subjective!! don't let the brain gremlins win!!). 

Don't think about posting it, don't worry about anyone else ever reading it, just fling a few words onto a page and feel the rusty faucet turn on, proving to yourself that it still works. 

Try and sus out what it is that's blocking you 

Again this one is hard and annoying but functional. Once you can put your finger on the particular reason you're staring at a flashing black line on a blank page it can help you kick that reason off your lawn and into the bin. 

And then, take it out of the bin and be kind to yourself about whatever that reason is. Maybe you feel shit because you're comparing yourself to others, your last fic felt like a lead balloon, you can't muster enthusiasm for what you once loved doing and fear that it's gone forever, you're projecting in a Tumblr post―whatever it is, it's something all the writers you admire and aspire to be like have felt, and been annoyed with themselves for, and so you can wrap it up in a blanket and put it on a shelf and be kind to it so it, (respectfully) shuts the fuck up. 

(and remember, everyone feels insecure about their stuff. Like literally everyone, at some stage, feels like their stuff is rubbish)

Cheat on your OTP 

Okay this one might not work for everyone, but it really does for me lol. Ruts (not the sexy kind) can often come with not wanting to engage in my usual ships, being annoyed by my lack of ability to fucking write them/anything/all my ideas taste like cardboard/bleh, and stepping out on them and reading something new can snap me out of it. Just, an injection of new ideas or scenarios or words or even just a little reprieve from being fed up with myself, which ideally, is why we're all here anyway. 

(And then I come crawling back, and am welcomed with open arms haha)

In a similar vein:

Engage in media 

This subtitle is genuinely terrible, i am sorry, LMAO, but essentially: find a piece of media that makes you go "oh, helLO sailor", unhinge your jaw like a snake, and consume it whole. 

Let it nourish you, inspire you, excite you, making you feel SOMETHING, and then take that and think "fuck, what if i wrote bleepbloopblarp" and even if you write nary a single word, you've thought about it and that fucking counts. 

It might be an album, a book, a song, a show, gifs of a hot person, the wikipedia summary of a movie, literally anything counts here if it makes you feel a twinge of creativity. 

Ask yourself, what would Astolat do? 

No for real. @candybarrnerd and I genuinely use this haha.  

Worried your idea is stupid? Astolat would say write it. 

Worried it's too weird? Nah, just write it. 

It's dumb and no one will read it? Just write it for you *waggles eyebrows* (and then find out that yeah, nah, someone else will absolutely read this and be real fucking happy about it haha.)

Worried you're a one trick pony and have already written this fic before, like, and not even once before, and also you're projecting again in Tumblr post? WRITE IT AGAIN! As Astolat once said, "it's a fic so nice, I wrote it thrice". 

It's good advice. 

Make a friend or lean hard on the ones you have here

Misery loves company because it knows they'll come out of this together :). I know, I know, that's fucking NAFF, but fandom is all about finding like-minded freaks and blowing up their DMs because you saw a gif and now feel a kind of ways about it. 

And lastly: 

FUCK STATS! 

I mean I love stats (yay validation!), but god can they make you feel like a worthless shit (hey where did my validation go :((( ). It can be really insidious, so piss that right off when it starts to fuck with your confidence or outlook on your own writing.

Hopefully there is something useful here, even if it's just looking at this advice and thinking "no that's shit, it's writing POISON" cos then you can maybe do the version you think is NOT shit, and that might work. 

Good luck, fellow travelers!!

[connorsnothereeither]

So like, a while ago I did a little update on the Brink fics, and I figured it was worth giving a kinda sad update on my other Fable fics as well.

At this stage, there are no plans to continue or finish Your Skin Beneath My Teeth (the second book in the Blood series).

I know this is probably disappointing, because I know a lot of people really loved the Vampire AU. But from a personal writing level, I’m just sort of unhappy with the direction of the books, and I don’t have the time to commit to rewriting them. I’m not invested enough in my own story, and while that’s a shame, I don’t know if there’s much I can do without just giving myself time to stew on it.

There’s also a logistical side to things as well. Fable is coming to an end in less than a month. I feel like it’ll probably take me months to finish the Brink series still first, which are the fics I’m personally more passionate about. And at a certain point, I don’t want Fable to be the only thing that consumes my writing for the next year+. Not to mention the time I want to dedicate to other SMPs and creative projects I’m involved in, like Cantripped, Bound SMP, and Terramortis, with even more stuff in the works.

On top of all that like… I’m just a guy, ya know. I’m a full time student, work part-time most days of the week, commute between 2 major cities regularly, and I have other things that just deserve my time more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in fandoms for years, I know it’s shitty when fics you enjoy never get an ending. But I hope that like, people get where I’m coming from with discontinuing it, I guess.

Besides, there is, technically, an ending for Blood. I’ve had the ending written since the end of the first book (it’s just getting there that’s the problem) and so if people would like, as some sort of closure for the story, I would be happy to release that here on Tumblr or on my Kofi or something. Maybe I’ll make a follow up post with a poll.

I might as well mention that there is likewise no plan to “finish” the Band AU, but since that was always a collection of one-shots, there was never really a plan or end for any of it. It was always kinda disjointed without an end in sight lol.

I’m not saying that I’m NEVER going to go back to these fics. Just that it’s unlikely. But who knows, maybe someday I’ll crawl out of the dirt to finish them-

If you did only follow my Fable fics for the Blood books though, I’m sure some elements of my other fan works might appeal to you, if you want to give them a go! The horror/contemplations of humanity are the key theme of Brink, and the mystery/thriller, high stakes political conflict mixed with interpersonal melodrama is the focus of Cascading Skies, my new Bound fic. And of course those and so many more things are just key elements to like all of my storytelling my canon characters lol. But if none of that ticks your boxes, it was great to have y’all along for the bloody vampire ride :D

Anyway this was me getting sappy about setting aside a project I worked really hard on lol. Sometimes you gotta do that and sometimes that’s okay, and that’s an attitude I struggle with but am getting better at. I know don’t owe y’all any kind of explanation for this, I could have just stopped and let it die, but I wanted to give one. More for me personally really; I needed to say something about it publicly to like… fully cement in my mind what I decided on a long time ago. Anyway, catch y’all later when I’m not incredibly tired, and hopefully with a more silly goofy post ✌️

[lunchtimebedamned1997]

Warmups #1 (Plus Charlastor!)

Turns out warmups really DO help in art (fuck me, right?) and these are all from yesterday and today, hope you enjoy it!

SCROLL TO END FOR TIMELAPSE <3

Pretty much just Hazbin and some OCs of mine! (That's basically all I've been drawing the last month or two lol) I've also been reading way too much (not really, fight me) Charlastor/RadioBelle fics and consuming ALL the artwork. I might just be obsessed with Al in general though - *sigh* - before my Charlastor fixation it was RadioStatic/Silence. Anything with the Strawberry Pimp or Vox tbh. Fuck I'm just rambling about Hazbin, huh? uhhhh where was I? RIGHT here's the one and only reference I actively used besides glancing at some official Hazbin art:

I saw it, and then immediately fell into a fit of laughter at the idea of drawing Charlie and Al like this. The whole drawing process made my cheeks hurt bc I was giggling over getting to make those two idiots be, well, adorable fucking idiots! XD

Anyways, here's the speedpaint!

Anatomy is so harrrrrd but I'm actually really proud of myself for how I did with this one, I'm still terrified of drawing the lower body but heyyyy, problem for another day!

OH I almost forgot to talk about my own characters a little?! Hyperfixation, what have you done to me?!!! We've got four of my babies here, all from the same project called Ashland Bites, which will hopefully, someday, be an animated series! I've been writing it for years and years (slow but steady, I'm a team of exactly one person lmao) and I've been trying to get my art skills honed so I can do as much of the (probably very distant, but hopefully someday) future pre-production work myself! I started learning more about animating recently, and the openness that Vivienne Medrano allows her cast and crew to have has been a godsend for learning more about the different steps of the process (all while feeding my ravenous little neurodivergent brain with that good good fixation content lmao)

Can't share too much about my own project at the mo, but let me just say it's got Vampires, the fair folk, godesses, ancient fantasy cultures, modern humans running around thinkin' the world is our definition of 'normal', and SO much more (I wish I could tell u all the things oh my GODDD)

Thanks for taking a look at my work *smooches ya*

[yuzuocha]

𝚢𝚞·𝚣𝚞·𝚘·𝚌𝚑𝚊 | ユズオチャ

noun

1. a type of citrus tea that originated from China and is now also widely produced and consumed in Japan and Korea.

2. the owner of this ridiculous blog.

‣ about me

hi there and welcome to my primarily sfw blog! i am yuzuocha but call me yuzu :D

they/them

日本語/한국어/ENG

i write mainly for love and deepspace, but there might be some other fandom content here and there (i.e. project sekai)

this is a fic, art and incorrect quotes blog that is 16+! while i know i can't prevent under 16 folks from reading, content here can get freaky.

INBOX IS OPEN. PLEASE SEND A MESSAGE IM LONELY HERE

‣ please click below for more info and a masterlist!

‣ requests

i only accept up to three characters per headcanon/drabble request. you're free to request the same headcanon/drabble for different characters, though; this is to make requests into bite-sized pieces for me! you are welcome to also request one-shots or even multi-chapter fics >:D do your worst!

however do know that i only accept these requests as suggestions, not explicitly favors i have to do. if it interests me, you're in luck. if it doesn't interest me, you ain't in luck. only times i'd take it as a request is if it's for a friend i personally know or whatnot.

this blog will be NON-EXPLICIT for the most part, anyway. obviously there's going to be suggestive themes, plenty of implications and a whole lot of softcore (like c'mon look at my first post kek), however i absolutely refuse to write or draw outright smut. we got enough smut artists and writers in the lds fandom and i think we don't got enough fluff-angst writers HAHA

‣ things to know

this blog is 16+ — while I don't explicitly discourage readers under the aforementioned age from consuming my content, most, if not all of my content contains somewhat suggestive themes and contain suggestive, violent and/or triggering themes. additionally, the game itself holds aforementioned themes, so i thought i might as well put a soft-minimum just to give myself some peace and mind lol. please use your personal discretion before you consume my work!

i have a taglist! please let me know if you'd like to be a part of it through commenting here or through my inbox! i'll give you lots of smooches as a ty <3

finally — i have commissions available for both art and writing! please contact me through my discord yuzuocha for details :D

‣ masterlist

headcanon

‣ the horrors of gacha. — Xavier & Zayne & Rafayel

‣ kith? kith. [pt. i] — Xavier & Zayne

‣ moments of panic. — All

‣ back in the days. — All

‣ domestic times. — All

‣ a living proof of your love. — All

one-shot + drabble

‣ heartstring fortissimo. — Xavier

‣ eclipse. — Xavier

‣ drunk mind, sober feelings. — Xavier

‣ a second love at second sight. — Rafayel

‣ post-care. — Zayne

multi-fic

‣ player one, player two. — Xavier

‣ illuminate. — Xavier

but really really fast

main story ‣ prologue

main story ‣ chapter ɪ

main story ‣ chapter ɪɪ

main story ‣ chapter ɪɪɪ

main story ‣ chapter ɪᴠ

main story ‣ chapter ᴠ

main story ‣ chapter ᴠɪ

main story ‣ chapter ᴠɪɪ

main story ‣ chapter ᴠɪɪɪ

incorrect quotes

ɪ ‣ truth conundrum

ɪɪ ‣ caleb v. ladder

ɪɪɪ ‣ xavier's mc sensor

ɪᴠ ‣ rafayel's morals

ᴠ ‣ anti-consolation

ᴠɪ ‣ following directions with faith

ᴠɪɪ ‣ rafayel's rancid rizzing

ᴠɪɪɪ ‣ who let xavier cook

ɪx ‣ "helping out"

x ‣ false alarm

xɪ ‣ fiery motivation

xɪɪ ‣ self love

xɪɪɪ ‣ vroom vroom

xɪᴠ ‣ how to treat a short person

xᴠ ‣ is rafayel into choking?

xᴠɪ ‣ sanity loss documentary

xᴠɪɪ ‣ spooky broccoli

xᴠɪɪɪ ‣ xavier's tendencies

xɪx ‣ "what keeps you up at night"

xx ‣ speling is hahrd

xxɪ ‣ subway surfers was fire ngl

xxɪɪ ‣ whoever threw that shell, fuck you

xxɪɪɪ ‣ innocent until proven guilty

xxɪᴠ ‣ happy middle fingers

xxᴠ ‣ single when drunk?

xxᴠɪ ‣ a cursed bless

xxᴠɪɪ ‣ serotonin, too!

xxᴠɪɪɪ ‣ he isn't wrong, per se

xxɪx ‣ lie detector

xxx ‣ an artist's perspective, apparently

xxxɪ ‣ yeah no he bucked up

xxxɪɪ ‣ a cursed bless 2.0

xxxɪɪɪ ‣ caleb's sick of it lol

xxxɪᴠ ‣ propriety over honesty

xxxᴠ ‣ words of (questionable) truth

xxxᴠɪ ‣ caleb technically didn't lie

xxxᴠɪɪ ‣ she thought she was playing chess, he was playing 4d chess

xxxᴠɪɪɪ ‣ as long as rafayel's happy, i guess

xxxɪx ‣ who let xavier cook 2.0

xʟ ‣ nice card, shitty purpose

xʟɪ ‣ put a price tag in bed

xʟɪɪ ‣ mission accomplished (?)

xʟɪɪɪ ‣ asshole of the year

xʟɪᴠ ‣ "KILL IT KILL IT KILL ITTTTTT"

xʟᴠ ‣ local fish intentionally stranded on walmart parking lot

xʟᴠɪ ‣ cereal hits when drunk

xʟᴠɪɪ ‣ zayne can't be left alone, poor him

xʟᴠɪɪɪ ‣ a chair that can kick you

xʟɪx ‣ needs and wants

ʟ ‣ honesty so brutal it hurts

ʟɪ ‣ yea just buy whipped cream instead

ʟɪɪ ‣ words v. stones

ʟɪɪɪ ‣ living in the present

ʟɪᴠ ‣ popcorn doesn't last

ʟᴠ ‣ war of words

ʟᴠɪ ‣ it is trash can, not trash cannot

ʟᴠɪɪ ‣ newton's rolling in his grave

ʟᴠɪɪɪ ‣ carnival avocado

ʟɪx ‣ how much white stuff can fit in a mouth?

ʟx ‣ 6 cm per second, which is frankly impressive

ʟxɪ ‣ xavier v. jeremiah getting punched

ʟxɪɪ ‣ hunter's "reflexes"

ʟxɪɪɪ ‣ declaration (?) of love

ʟxɪᴠ ‣ double friendzone'd

ʟxᴠ ‣ rafayel's garden

ʟxᴠɪ ‣ reminiscence (?)

ʟxᴠɪɪ ‣ xavier the almighty sun

ʟxᴠɪɪɪ ‣ xavier the almighty mosquito

ʟxɪx ‣ the duality of fish

ʟxx ‣ didn't happen if there ain't no evidence

ʟxxɪ ‣ life is just one big capitalist experience fr

ʟxxɪɪ ‣ oof lmfao

ʟxxɪɪɪ ‣ you something get eat might

ʟxxɪᴠ ‣ father v. further v. farther

ʟxxᴠ ‣ hobbies

ʟxxᴠɪ ‣ the ends justify the means, right?

ʟxxᴠɪɪ ‣ so short they can duck liability

ʟxxᴠɪɪɪ ‣ cashed in the wrong way

ʟxxɪx ‣ love is an open door

ʟxxɪx ‣ efficiency > flirting

ʟxxx ‣ viral for all the wrong reasons

ʟxxxɪ ‣ killer fashion

ʟxxxɪɪ ‣ package

ʟxxxɪɪɪ ‣ cancelling out

[clementinegreye]

clementinegreye's masterlist and navigation station:

REQUESTS: OPEN!

you can make requests or simply come chat to me; here

💌 hotd:

🪩 aemond targaryen

the end of love || 1.1k

aemond cheating on his wife is not cool - but it can be poetic when he’s filled with regret.

adoration and resentment (coming soon - currently on Ao3 and going through a re-write!)

lover you should've come over (modern!aemond x brothers best friend reader. coming soon!)

💌 criminal minds:

🍋 aaron hotchner

the sweetest sin of all || 3.4k

the sweetest sin of all (part 2) || 2.6k

who'd have thought aaron hotchner was a man so consumed by longing (lightly inspiredin the midst of investigating a serial killer who chooses victims based on the seven deadly sins, aaron hotchner finds himself entangled in more than just the case (inspired by hozier's new song 'too sweet'):

🌷spencer reid

safer dreams || 2.3k

it's not easy to keep someone safe in your nightmares, something Spencer knows all too well.

false god || 1.2k

it's never a good idea to reminisce about a relationship, especially one that ended with betrayal left you with a permanent scar

some stuff about me and my writing below the line:

about me: hi! my name’s soph, im 23 and an aquarius.

some quick fire facts about me; i’m a cat person, i have a chronic illness, get anxious a lot and my favourite show is criminal minds (in case you couldn’t tell), im trying to get back into reading this year, i have an abnormal amount of jellycats (yes the soft toys) and i love fruit (all fruit)! 🍋‍🟩🍓🍒🍊

i’ve been writing since i was 15 and i’ve been posting my work for a few years now, albeit under different blogs and i post some of my stories on Ao3, which i’ll link below.

writing/requests notes and guidelines:

i currently only write for criminal minds and hotd. i’m happy to write angst, fluff, hurt/comfort etc. just be specific in the ask what you’d like and i can try accommodate it!

i use she/her pronouns and therefore feel comfortable writing from that perspective (or gender neutral). i’m hesitant to write male!reader as i don’t want to inaccurately portray something i have no experience with.

as a guideline i definitely won’t write anything containing rape, hardcore incest or child abuse, non-consensual sex or anything including minors or those underage. i am also hesitant to write really abusive situations.

i’ve never written smut but, i guess i could give it a go. if you’re request it and i don’t write it, i’m probably not comfortable with it. 🌷☁️🐚

my requests are OPEN and right now and i’ll write for any criminal minds/hotd character (i’ll give anything a try once lol) if you want to request something or even just come have a chat and get to know me better my inbox is always open!

i always appreciate feedback and comments, likes and reblog also! but if you just fancy reading something go ahead, there’s no pressure on this blog to interact, it’s always appreciated but i know how i sometimes interact with things on tumblr so i understand. 🌟

my works are only posted here on this blog and on Ao3, if you see them somewhere else please let me know. 🩷

note: i do not support AI or using AI to write, i’ve been practicing writing for many years and i think it’s a shame to use it and it feels like it undervalues the hard work people put in to writing. while AI might be a useful tool for some things my writing does NOT include it and my writing is my own. (i do use grammarly to check my spelling because i can be a silly goose and miss things because i edit all my fics myself but that’s it).

you can also find my work here on Ao3:

[namesnamesandmorenames]

Okay, so since my last post I have decided to make a few previously select or multi-select properties into separate database relations properties– I've also completed separated my fanfiction and old library databases and I am letting myself put fan art banners and more fun icons on some pages lol. One of these projects– you'll be able to see which because I haven't finished it– is going to be incredibly time consuming 😞. Again, this is starting as a speech to text voice note so it's going to get really conversational and probably have typos even though I'm going to edit it later. So sorry about that. I already typed it out once I can't.

Short spiel– I'm a library science grad student who is using notion to create a person fanfiction database. It's for fun but it's kinda interesting how my classes impacted what I do with it so I decided to make a post or two. I'll do a line brake now so you don't have to read more if you're not interested 🙂

Okay so the first section I consider a like Retrieval Information section– It answers questions like have I read this? Where can I find it? Who wrote it? Is there a podfic? Who recorded it? What stage in the writing process is it (One Shot, Multi Chapters, Work In Progress, Abandoned)? Was it written for a challenge/ is it in a collection (excluding personal favorite collections which there are so many of on ao3 I swear- pet peeve but I get it I was once one of those people, now I have a database that I've sunk too much time into lol)

The sorting section is actually automatically filled out based on the Creator information, I explained my tbr sorting is based on favorite, prolific, or new to the fandom authors so it's easiest to trust pull that information from the Creator record in a roll-up property because then I can move everything in a group if I miss something at the end of the week when I'm adding things.

Story info is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion, I pulled all of it from ao3 though I will fudge the information if I read a fic on Tumblr that isn't cross-posted. The pages it's not really useful per se. Just something that I think is interesting. It's also based on the PDF versions that you can download on ao3 and even then not really because I just averaged out the pages on one fic and have been dividing page numbers by that number for ages lol. Timeline I mentioned in my previous post. It's all based on 911 because I am currently hyperfixated on it to a degree that is genuinely… not great.

Authorized Tags… I'm still working on this. This is the time consuming project. I decided to make the multi-select property Tags– which has an insane amount of tags in it, which are all kind of jumbled because I was using different language for all of them like for instance “Evan Buckley is a Teacher” and “Bartender Buck” are both tags in that property but also it's just in that section so I can't even see everything that's in there and at this point there's over like 200+ tags that I can't really search very well and I can't really browse fics in the tags easily so it limits use in that way. Also, there's no real organization so everything that could be tagged wasn't there- also creators all use tags in very different ways so a lot of that was me tagging fic as I read them because this is a personal database, it's just what I want to do. But basically Authorized Tags is *loosely* based off of Authorized Heading from my cataloging course lol. Basically I've cleaned up the language and created more of a type and tier organization (“Evan Buckley is a Teacher” and “Bartender Buck” are now “Teacher! Buck” and “Bartender! Buck” respectfully and are specific character tags under the broad character tag of “Not a Firefighter! Evan Buckley”) so I'll be able to find things easier… when I finished retagging the like 3000 records that I've been tagging multi select up until now 😭. This is also giving me the chance to pull my OOC/Bashing tag into a little alien 👽 check box- like I said the tags are mine some creators tag way more extensively than me, others imo under tag– bashing isn't a DNF for me and I just ignore it when fix are tagged “Specific Character! Bashing” because sometimes people will tag that when it's just canon accurate behavior in my opinion? And again actual bashing doesn't bother me *most of the time* but it is one of the things that I want to know about effect on first glance if I'm going to reread.

Series was a single select property up until my last post actually… it was much easier to convert because unlike tags not every fic is in a series lol. But also I am going to go back and see if there were any fics that aren't in what I would consider a series but are how some creators use series like a place where they collect their one shots or a bunch of fic that they wrote with a single trope or even personal entries to fandom challenges, I also decided to use this database to track works that were inspired by other works if it's a very direct correlation– like if there's a sequel or one shot in the same world written by another Creator. The previous/next relations direct to other related works within the database, if Fic 1 is previous to Fic 2, Fic 2 is next to Fic 1. You'll be surprised how long it took me to add these fields or you'll think it's overkill– it's both. Part of the reason that I really needed these is because both the tags and the series properties were select properties. I could tag a fic as a sequel fic but that didn't directly connect me to its predecessor, I can see that'll work as part of a series but I would still have to leave the record to then go and look to see what else is in that series. It's kind of a non-issue. Obviously all of this is non-issues. This is way too in-depth for what it is. But it's going to be even more of a non-issue now that Series is a separate database but I'll probably still keep it for conveniences sake because if nothing else it is convenient.

Housekeeping– when did I start and when did I finish the fic? Was it a favorite? Was there a quote that I took note of while reading it?

Meta-Metadata (I had that labeled as just metadata for an embarrassingly long time considering literally the entire record is metadata…) I used to have a record created property but it broke somehow. I don't know I want it back. I'm going to try at some point. I just haven't gotten around to it. It's not like a useful thing. It's just interesting to see how long after a record is created I back get around to reading it you know? But the two check boxes there are formulas attached to the read status. The first one includes up-to-date works as read And the second one only includes read read works as read– I like keeping up to date with a few authors so if they have work in progress work that I am keeping up to date with, I want it included in their tally on their record. So I have two separate roll-ups for read lol.

You'll see on the completed record that the only thing that I have written in the bottom part is reread dates. I don't know, I've never felt the need to take notes outside of the records? Or if I do, it's very rarely. I haven't really figured out a way to record reread dates in a way that doesn't seem clunky to me so I just put it there.

But yeah as you can see way too extensive lol a lot of these properties won't apply to every fic and are therefore hidden when empty (a few are always hidden in the collapsed view (Next/Previous notably) because if I'm looking for that information I'll look for it, you know?)

So here is a completed record of one of my favorite fics!

As you can see, a few things have been collapsed the labeling is always hidden because I don't really need it it's just so it's not a wall of properties on the back end, but you can also easily find the information that's important in my opinion?

Anyway I'm tagging @percyjackson-winchester because they asked me too if you have questions or want me to make a follow up post about the Series of Creator Databases (of the Tags Database when I finish it lol) let me know 😅

[pmpmyread]

Hi hi Minnie!!! For the ask game!

☉ what do you do when you get stuck writing?

✎ how do you think readers would guess a fic was yours if you posted anonymously?

Helloo Lexi, thank you for the tag!!

☉ what do you do when you get stuck writing?

Well. This one is tragically timely because guess what? lol… I like to think that 80% of the time, I’m rational enough to disengage; I’ll consume something completely unrelated, go for a walk, boot up a game, destress, touch some grass… For the other 20% however, it’s just me, stubbornly agonizing over an incomplete page, maybe I'll try a new paragraph, try a new story, or sit there trying to pinpoint when it is exactly that I became the type of person who willingly tortures herself. lmfao.

✎ how do you think readers would guess a fic was yours if you posted anonymously?

In terms of format, I've written a few xReader fics that follow what I think could be a recognizable formula: thematic headcanon oneshots which follow the evolution of a relationship over time. In terms of writing style, I tend to slant more descriptive than dialogue, I like to keep close to canon characterizations and I love to surface the more implicit, subtle side of intimacy between two characters in an evolving relationship. At least, that’s the lane I aspire to carve out for myself as a fic writer, and what I can only hope to see readers recognize and enjoy in my projects! I am currently experimenting with different formats with some of my WIPs, (some I'm sure will stick more than others lol), so I am excited to share those eventually!

Thanks again for the asks! I appreciate you for bringing what turned out to be a nice serendipitous exercise for me, more than I can convey! 🩵 Link to the fic ask game

[shouyuus]

new ask on the new blog!! i love the aesthetics!

glad to hear that things are going well on your part!! and yeah, i remember back in the days fandom on tumblr was more interactive, but it was also when we were all stuck at home because of external circumstances :’) i wish your bf all the best for finding a job… TT . TT i technically can enter tech, but i study design. i know user interface & user experience is an overlap of design and tech, but it’s highly competitive and i don’t really have the confidence… i don’t have a good portfolio to fall back on, haha. i think… looking at current happenings i am not optimistic about the economy either, but i will stay positive that eventually i’ll find something…

happy 30th birthday btw!!! what are 3 advice / tips you gained abt life or writing? (no pressure) — @anonymilk

you are so right soy sauce is the backbone of any great culinary dish… so are fics… i didn’t know soy sauce is shouyou in japanese! that makes your fic rec blog makes sense. ahhh, that’s so cute that your blog is technically soy sauce with inspiration from hinata and ur own name. i really like urls like that. so much story and meaning behind it XD how was it like setting up a brand new blog? any thing u might have done differently? — @anonymilk oh yes… what does it mean when a series is limited… — @anonymilk

gonna combine ur asks !!! hehe so! yes - the tech market is hard rn but i have faith and he's the best boi so he'll find something eventually; i think you'll def find something too! unfortunately i think in this economy, it rly just is about grinding and sending out a bunch of apps, and then eventually, something will come around.

thank u for the bday wishes!!!! hmmm 3 pieces of advice? i think:

don't be afraid of being silly! growing up is overrated and yes, there's a time and a place for that, but don't let go of the things that bring you joy, no matter how "weird" they are, or how "niche" or whatever. if it makes u happy, then it makes you happy!

sometimes ur emotions aren't a choice, but whenever they are, you're allowed to make the choice to not feel a thing -- this was a bit harder for me to learn, bc its hard to think of being like "in control" of ur emotions without trying to be like deny, deny, nope, nope, nope. but at least for me "choosing" not to feel a certain type of way is acknowledging like "cool okay so, my body/brain is having this type of kneejerk reaction, and that's fine, but also im not gonna let it consume me" and after that, it gets a bit easier to handle

specifically about writing? don't be so hard on urself! :) this is a true passion project right -- we don't make money, we do it bc we want to and it makes us happy, and it maybe makes a few other ppl happy too, and that's a pretty cool thing! ur allowed to take breaks, to step away, to do you and live ur life and come back to this hobby later! it'll always be here waiting for you

T B H setting up the new blog was kinda stressful but FUn stressful. like it took an obscene amount of time to figure out the kind of aesthetic i wanted to have, and then to like... re-acquaint myself with html and photoshop and all that LOL but im rly happy with how it's turning out so far !!!

and yES so a limited series is just like... a mini-series. so in tv that's like 3-4 episodes instead of a 10-12 episode "season" of tv. and i borrowed that term bc instead of having like 10 chapters, this "series" is only rly like... 4 chapters and a bit more so !!! that's all!

[schmedterlingfreud]

💗​ Day [21 of 100] of Productivity 💗​

Writing: - Effetto Luna, Chapter 19 -- Finished and posted (let's f0cking goooo!)

I was waiting for this moment from like… the very first second I just started to think about and to plan this long fic. This is the very famous chapter-like "I'm going to write and consume myself in a nearly 200,000 words fic just for the pleasure to arrive to this specific scene". So my brain is simply going ape shit like this…

(This is how I'm going ape shit btw... 🙈​) I worked very, very hard for months to build every single sentence for the better, to write this chapter just the way I was thinking about it. I swam through a very large amount of emotion during the process of writing, so I hope this will be perceived even by my readers through my words. I hope my beloved readers will be moved just like I was moved during the writing. To me, writing this chapter was a challenge - hard, funny and maybe even illuminating. Smut writing was never my favorite cup of tea, I confess, even if I've always enjoyed reading about it. I wrote something in my past fics, but sex was never really important in the big picture of my stories. I would have never imagined myself writing something this smutty, lol. I wish I could show this to my past self to encourage and motivate her.

I would like to dedicate this chapter and my thoughts to all writers who fear to face something new, to writers who sometimes feel intimidated by their own writing, who may not feel "enough" when it comes to inking their own ideas. Don't give up and believe in yourself! Give yourself the chance to experiment, to come past your insecurities, and to celebrate your successes. ♡♡♡

Reading: - The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick - The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

Listening to: Il cielo in una stanza, by Mina

Snacking on: Chocolate Galatine (I ate the whole package, wtf is wrong with me...)

Extra: My new job rhythms can be very tiresome, and I find them very often fatiguing my body, maybe because I'm not yet used to my new chores. I hope it's temporary because, at the same time, my mind is experimenting with an exciting creative sprunt, and it's very frustrating when your brain says "Yes! Let's do it!", while your body replies: "No, please, I can't, I need rest". But I carry on. Slow or fast, I must carry on, hoping to do my best every day. Because having something to aim for is the perfect secret to endure every-day-challenges, I'm seriously planning my next (and 5th) tattoo. Five is my lucky number, so I wanted it to be dedicated to Hetalia. More than ten years in this fandom and I don't have a Hetalia tattoo yet – funny how I did the “Luca” one before the “Hetalia” one, are we joking or what? Respect the hierarchy, belin! 🐟🇮🇹​

[sleeptowns]

a year (or so) of fics, in retrospect

once every handful of years i remember to look back at the collection of projects i’ve finished recently and to simulate a critique as if i’m an art school student — and also as if i’m the haunted teacher’s assistant who wants to be gentle on the prof’s behalf but actually hates your work and also i am the other students who have been sitting there for seven hours straight and can’t offer much more except say, “it’s fine.” a one-man critique day, all parts played by me. 

sometimes i do this and the last period of writing has been drier than a pizza slice left in the winter sun, but this time i’m lucky that these last couple of years have been the closest i’ve had to a writing pax romana.

with that said, i’m not entirely sure how valid i am whenever i think these days that my writing has gone through some drastic changes in the last year; i’m not even sure if it’s accurate to call any of it growth, though i’m aware it’s the sort of thing i won’t have a clear perspective on until a few years after the fact. but i do know that i’m lucky to have so many works to act as markers for different periods of my writing, and while it’s far from a sure method of evaluation, there are parts there that i’m able to at least assess, if not outright measure. in the last year or so, my fics have started mutating towards — not really a separate sort of output than my previous ones, but definitely older somehow. older and quite different because of it: stylistic choices i would have steered clear of before, failed and/or lacklustre genre explorations, even relationship dynamics that were previously unfamiliar territory. my most recent fic feels like a culmination of all my attempts at wrestling with my writing in the ring, and now that it’s a few weeks behind me and i get to look at it with fresh(er) eyes and accept that it’s my favourite child (i’m sorry flls... you’re not too far behind), it’s also reminded me that i have a now overdue fic roundup to write. 

tangentially speaking, it’s interesting that you never really hear about self-taught writers. self-taught artists, yes, and self-taught musicians, but never quite self-taught writers. i don’t exactly purport to have taught myself everything i know about writing, and i know you can’t really be self-anything as a writer; what i lack in technique and finesse learned from proper writing classes, teachers, and/or workshops, i owe to the media i’ve consumed, good and bad, as well as to the creators i love and to all the thoughtful readers i’ve had over the years. if i’m self-taught in any way, then the self as a teacher was reared by countless others who have honed in me a limitless capacity to be an observer to stories, mine and all else. 

this post is just a roundup of all my fics from december 2020 to january 2023, including only the ones with enough substantial content to write about, which disqualifies a lot of the fics i left at one or five scenes max but qualifies the ones i abandoned at one chapter. just a little something for me to reference as i figure out where to take my writing next and hopefully move towards some kind of ✨ growth ✨ lol 

・・・・・・

FIRST LOVE, LATE SPRING december 2020 to march 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | dual pov romance, multimedia (?)

i covered a bit of the early chapters and conceptualization for flls in a separate post, but as i was reflecting on how to write a continuation, it occurred to me that if there’s a clear before and after to the current state of my writing, then the first portion of flls chapter five is where i’ll find it. 

when i was drafting my 58393th version of that chapter — nothing was working, none of it was the right vibe i needed, most of them too detached or too on-the-nose but never the perfect middle — i happened upon trying second person pov by accident. i’m not the biggest fan of second person (though to be fair, i don’t think anyone is) but by that point i was so sick of writing and rewriting this one section and not getting anywhere that i wondered if i should just lean all the way into that disgust. why not do something i hated entirely? and act of desperation as that was, the moment i started writing in curt, nauseating second person, i knew it was the right choice. 

the thing about writing flls!yuuji is that he felt both alive and unfamiliar. flls!megumi was easier to understand, even if he was trickier to write — but yuuji, i had to really work to get to know. one thing about him that i knew to be careful about from the very beginning of jjk is that it would be too surface level to think this boy is an extrovert. yuuji is usually painted as an energetic, sunny person, and i don’t think he’s not that, but there’s something about yuuji that’s also very internal and almost innately… isolated? i don’t know if that’s necessarily the right word, but there’s a lot about him as a character that’s out of view or grasp, which ironically i find people taking at face value. in flls, he required a lot more balance than megumi, who was a dam waiting to be relieved of its duties. flls!yuuji knows who or what he is — how could he not, when he’s never had a choice but to be this person, this kid who lost his grandpa, this kid who needs love but doesn’t know how to ask for it because he doesn’t even know there are forms of it he can ask for? 

how to write a character like that? how to nudge someone who doesn’t reveal even at his most revealing towards the christmas eve fight i had set up in the beginning of flls chapter one? back before chapter six of flls came out, i saw a lot of people argue that megumi and yuuji just needed to communicate, and yes, of course they do, but i was also very adamant as i started chapter five that the real tragedy about them is that communication will do nothing in the end. even if they magically became master communicators about their needs and wants and insecurities, none of it will change the fact that neither of them are ready to love and be loved by the other person. at least not in any way that constitutes a relationship that feels like love. 

i think that’s the key to writing the relationship in flls. it was never a question that they loved each other, and how much. never. this is probably the first piece of ~growth i appreciated about flls. it would be easy to write a romance where the main conflict is them not knowing the other loved them back, but flls got rid of that quite early. i left no room for doubt — or at least this is the hope — that flls!itfs loved each other in a way no one else would be able to compare to. they’re it for each other. but if it had been as simple as portraying that, then i never would have finished flls at all, and it definitely wouldn’t have been my longest fic at the time. 

instead — what if it was a given that they loved each other, and it still wasn’t enough? what kind of story can we spin about that? what kind of questions and answers can we find?

that’s actually such a pretentious way to frame that, but the fact of the matter is that i needed to not waste space now that we’re five chapters in. this is the beginning of the end. how do we shift gears and take the tone of the entire story along with it? i don’t know if there’s something about second person pov that’s just inherently full of dread, but it did quite a bit of work in chapter five. it felt disembodying for me as a writer, and i could only hope the same for readers. i was really, really worried some people will give up reading altogether thinking all of chapter five will be in second person, but i didn’t want to compromise. it was going to be second person for most of their real relationship or nothing: vaguely dissociative, intensely drained, with no room to actually enjoy being each other’s boyfriend. the main challenge was to not go from zero to a hundred in a snap. i had the room to do so in only one chapter, but i had to find a way to keep a tight rein on the pace or else the whole fic will fail. 

there also had to be love. and longing. and a desperation to make it work. i think that was yuuji in a nutshell — someone desperate to make it work, whatever this thing is. that’s what constitutes his strengths and his weaknesses, in canon and in flls. i wanted to find a way to make that palpable to a reader the way it was palpable to me while writing yuuji in second person. somewhere along making sure to tether myself to him by knowing what pieces of media he’d reference (high school musical and fullmetal alchemist) and his life outside of megumi (work, basketball, tea with nanami, skateboarding), i had to also drown with yuuji in the hope that the reader would follow. chapter three afforded me the luxury of only examining yuuji from the omniscience of a writer writing in third person — i could dismantle him through the therapy scene, could show myself and the reader a way to understand him, but i could not take us there to where he is. 

i don’t know how successful the second person pov was, ultimately, though i’d be lying if i said it wasn’t what i thought was truly best at the time. it probably wasn’t that creative to anyone but me, but it gave me a nudge towards different ways to explore… vibes. atmosphere, maybe, is the more formal word for it. if not for the second person pov choice in flls, i wouldn’t have been nudged towards kamo’s newsletter to act as the midway point of the story, the last palate cleanser i’ll allow myself and the reader, and i never would have written please let me love you forever and days of brutalism and hairpin turns the way i did. i owe a lot to that tiny but crucial choice, as does flls as a whole. everything that followed that section — the fight, the aftermath of the fight, the breakup — relied on it to make themselves work, and it’s funny (and valuable to note) how it’s something as seemingly inconsequential as a pov choice that set the tone. 

especially because there’s nothing special, really, about those following scenes. the christmas eve fight, megumi’s conversation in the car with geto, the break-up itself — all of it followed my standard flow of dialogue. sure, there’s more tension when you’re writing an argument, let alone when writing scenes that will inevitably lead to a break-up, but all scenes, particularly dialogue, have to feel fraught with some kind of energy and inevitable anyway. for the remainder of chapter five and six, i just coasted on the tone set up by the beginning of chapter five, and that’s knowledge that has served me quite well since. atmosphere goes a long, long way, and with my writing style, a healthy balance between dialogue and introspection will take me the rest of the way to the finish line. the part of flls that i’ve heard people find the most heartbreaking were also its simplest. all of chapter six is dedicated to one wedding, and chapter seven to one evening. i wish i could say there was a trick there, that i agonized over how to write such important scenes, but my personal takeaway is that there is no trick. the point is that you get the story to a point where those scenes write themselves; there’s nowhere else for the flow to go, and geto’s gentle unpacking of megumi, the last few scenes before megumi and yuuji break up, and the bittersweet reunion after two necessary years — i can only hope they carried a sense of “this is the only way it could have gone” the way they did for me. geto doesn’t tell megumi anything we don’t already know from earlier chapters, if only just now put into words. megumi and yuuji also don’t tell each other anything, in the breakup scene and the getting back together sections, that we haven’t already gleaned from them. from the moment kamo’s newsletter ended and we headed into act two — everything was just wrapping up what i left for myself.  

it’s worth noting that i did try to complicate the final chapter a bit. i tried a split pov between yuuji and megumi at first, as a way to finally reconcile their two perspectives, but that felt too cheesy. i tried an outing to nagoya for nobara’s birthday, tried to divide the pov amongst the people in their lives (junpei, nanami, nobara, etc), and even to do my usual cyclical structure of starting with the same image we did in chapter two, this time in yuuji’s funabashi apartment — but those all felt too on the nose. i trusted my flls readers. maybe that’s what all it came down to. i trusted them to know these people, and this story, and i didn’t want to do too much and compromise that trust. and in the end, i would argue, returning to simplicity made the story what it was. 

something i love to think about is how to explain my fics to others. i know it’s been said a lot that the ao3 tagging system has convinced a mini generation of writers that tags and names of tropes are all you need to pitch/be pitched a story, and i wholeheartedly agree. or i might just be terrible at advertising my work, with an obnoxious aversion to learning how to do it better to boot, but to be fair, i think my premises are all just as boring as they are ridiculous. flls is a college au with two friends with benefits turned fake boyfriends turned real boyfriends turned exes. that’s it. there’s nothing else in the plot but that. yet it’s a lot more to me than that, and sometimes that’s all you have when you send a story out into the world. the knowledge that it was briefly yours, and now it isn’t, but that doesn’t at all devalue what you’ve taken away from spending time with it. 

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US april 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | short form, childhood friends

this is one of a handful of attempts at writing a trope i don’t love all that much, inspired largely by the atmosphere in “horatio” by t.j klune. i was very conflicted about this fic when i first published it, primarily because it was so short and written in a sparse style i didn’t know how to evaluate, and partly because it didn’t feel substantial. in a post i’ve put on private since, i’d written: 

what if i repeat the same themes in another context? that doesn’t make the theme carry any less weight as long as i put heart and sincerity and compassion into how i’m writing about it. there’s something that is equally as much self-deprecation as it is borderline vanity in me placing these rules upon myself. i’ve always known i wrote first and foremost out of love, out of what makes me excited to write — and that still applies here. i was thrilled to be able to experiment with a short, snappy fic. and that’s far more important, isn’t it, than whether i’m writing a different dissertation angle on love or friendship or family or career? it doesn’t feel like it, no, but it should, because i know it is. i know that what matters to me is that writing is fun and compassionate, and i know that as long as one person finds comfort in a world i’ve built, it’s enough.

i don’t sound very convinced there, and i wasn’t. i still don’t know what to make about us. i like that it’s short, and i endeavour to write more short fics with nothing specific or significant about them — but it’s hard to stomach its existence, let alone see it as something to love. it just feels so… not empty, but definitely less than what i’m used to asking from myself. it’s short, it’s sweet, it’s snappy. it’s also formulaic in its own sparse way, and i think it works because of the sweetness, but the truth is that if i hadn’t written it for itafushi week, i would never have greenlit it for publishing. i still wrestle nowadays with wanting to delete it, but it matters so little to me that i can’t even justify that much. it’s a weird limbo of a story, though i still hope to explore this kind of writing more in the future. 

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SOME KIND OF WE june 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | sequel to existing complete story

broke my own rules here by revisiting a story past its run, but to be very fair, it was less out of sentiment (though there was also that) so much as me startling at my first proper reread of the latter half of flls and realizing there are still unresolved arcs for megumi because the final chapter set two years later only had yuuji’s pov. not many of them, and none especially urgent, but i thought it would be a good opportunity to reorient the story to something quieter and more mature than what the central conflicts in flls left room for. i’m not convinced the back-and-forth between pieces of their recent few months being together and the present evening worked as seamlessly as i wanted it to, but it was still a nice opportunity to use a non-linear narrative to explore the growth and development of a relationship that i left at quite the bittersweet open-endedness. what was only delicately certain by the end of flls was made concretely certain through some kind of we, even if it did run a bit too sentimental and saccharine. but i think it can be forgiven, considering what yuuji and megumi went through in flls proper. 

the main challenge of this fic was figuring out which portions of their life post-flls were worth including, and the first draft had five potential sections:

tokyo, for megumi’s first visit back after moving to chiba, mostly dedicated to him realizing that home — after being rooted for so long to this city, this one apartment with his dad, the same neighborhood and transit lines, to the gojo-geto household — now finally belongs somewhere else, with someone else. 

funabashi, most of which was preserved in the version that was published. 

sendai, to visit grandpa itadori’s grave, which i decided to streamline into a single scene at the end of the final some kind of we draft to cut away the excess and break it down to the core of why i wanted them to make this visit — which is to hammer home for yuuji that he isn’t alone anymore, that he has someone taking care of him and loving him without fail and with care, and to give megumi the agency to solidify, for his own sake, that he’s someone who means the whole universe to yuuji. enough that what place is his will always and solely be his, and enough that megumi will be allowed to love and take care of another person in a way that’s both eternal and an ever-evolving work in progress. 

okinawa, for a trip that was only referenced as a backdrop in the final version but that i still like to think a lot about even now. a cc anon said once that the gojo-geto household must be so lonely with all the kids grown up, but as i talked about in another reply once (it’s too far back for me to have time to dig out at this point), i do love to imagine yuuji and megumi being uncles to the next generation, even if not outright parents themselves. sometimes you don’t know what you’re capable of giving as someone who was denied so much as a kid until you see someone so young, a stranger to the world, and know what to give them precisely because you didn’t have it once. and between yuuji not having much family and megumi’s life being complicated by the fact that he has too much family, i think they’re well-equipped to be uncles to tsumiki’s kids and beyond. and i was tempted for a bit to show this in the annual okinawa trips i mentioned in the final version of skow, but there just isn’t enough space without becoming superfluous. 

kuantan, to visit nanami, mostly to reconsolidate the rather serious interaction megumi and nanami had in flls into something gentler, considering he’s still family to yuuji and while nanami might say yuuji doesn’t need his blessing, yuuji will want it anyway. i never did end up writing this part, so it’s not exactly canon to the au and i’m hesitant to make it so, but the idea was to end with megumi asking for both nanami’s blessing and help to propose to yuuji on that malaysia trip.

the end result for this fic was a little lesson for me in cutting and cutting and keeping my hand light on the source, until i’m left with what i consider necessary. the final version of some kind of we is more a collection of vignettes than a straightforward account of megumi and yuuji’s life together post-flls, which i found much more strangely fitting. i feel like i spent so much of flls trying to get them to a point where they’re ready to be with each other, and i just wanted to dedicate skow to them not just making it work but building love on top of the foundations they secure. it’s one thing to portray that through a whole fic dedicated to each milestone; it’s another to write ordinary moments that are made extraordinary because they have chosen that for and with each other. neither of them say i love you out loud in the entire fic, but i wanted there to be no doubt that they do say it. that they do love each other, and that this part isn’t the obstacle it used to be. they’re just some kind of them, together, and this time it doesn’t feel bittersweet for me to send them off to the world for good knowing there’s love falling out of the spaces between each vignette i wrote. 

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HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND october 2021, jujutsu kaisen trial element | fantasy au

yikes. one of two fics in this round-up that i abandoned at chapter one. started this because an idea occurred to me while reading the atlas six, wrote until i had to stop, then didn’t look back once even when it would have served me to. 

i flew too eagerly close to the sun with this one, truly, but as far as intentions go, i think both my mind and heart were in the right place. it’s quite clear where this one went wrong: i had neither time nor the energy to dedicate to it; i started it on the same whim i start most other things but this time didn’t have the passion for it — and i confess i just didn’t have the patience required to work on writing the story i wanted to write.

it was also one of those lessons in how often big ideas — or an attempt at them — cannot sustain a story. i had what i thought were clear ideas and intentions about the themes i wanted to cover in this one (the downfall of religious devotion, reconstruction, academic institutions versus personal/individual responsibility, all of which just look like buzzwords now that i’m typing them out, omg), but it just didn’t leave room for the kind of story i like to write. i guess my main takeaway here is that the pitfall of high(er) concept genre stories is that you have to make space for the world at the cost of room for character writing; it’s just the nature of how much space in the narrative you can allot for each individual aspect of the story, and with stuff like fantasy and sci-fi, the worldbuilding takes up a significant amount more than your run-of-the-mill slice of life story where the only world i have to worry about sketching is where someone lives and works. 

i do like some parts? it’s kind of crude, how i tried to reconcile my writing style with genre-specific bits, but it’s not all terrible. this sequence is alright:

Megumi was seven the first time he restored something. 

Every part of it had been an accident, and he remembers it now only in fragments. The wet rag in his hand as he wiped down the dining hall tables, having to climb the chairs to get to each corner. The horrible echo of something shattering in the kitchen, where Tsumiki had been tasked to do all the dishwashing for the evening. The panic on her face when Megumi got to her, both of them crowding around the shards of ceramic left by what was once a plate. The spill of harsh candlelight from above the sink, the harsher shadows it sent dancing around the broken glass. 

But he does remember the remembering. The knowing of what the plate had looked like once, the image behind his eyes anchoring him in place as he latched onto the curl of the shadows on the floor. It would be more intuitive, more rudimentary, than anything he’d learn to do later in life, propelled by the worry on Tsumiki’s face and the footsteps he swore he could hear coming towards them from the other end of the servants’ quarters they called home back then—but it had taken only a single blink for the shadows to cover the plate, tighten around it into darkness, and then retreat to where they were, leaving a clean, untouched plate in the middle of the kitchen floor. 

it could be better, but it still could be worse. and i do like the overall architectural imagery and how i managed to scrounge up some standard fare coziness somewhere in the cold, almost-medieval setting. 

as far as disastrously failed ventures go, this one could be a lot more embarrassing than it is. i’m not mad at it. it’s far from good enough, and if i didn’t write it in such a frenzy, i probably never would have allowed it to be published. but. it’s a useful failure. 

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PLEASE LET ME LOVE YOU FOREVER march to june 2022, blue period trial element | five-character gen dynamic, multimedia

what a... headache of a project. bit off more than i could chew without choking and decided to take even more bites each new chapter because why the hell not, apparently. i do appreciate how un-edited this fic is, despite it all. it feels the most bleeding-heart of all my fics from this past year or so, and it’s nice to look back at this and know exactly when i shifted my approach to it altogether because, again, why not. it’s such a valuable “why not?” to have. it’s nice when i don’t feel quite as… under surveillance? when writing a story. and i get to just go off the rails a bit. a lot, actually, with this one. it’s nothing crazy because i don’t think i can write anything crazy (though i think hairpin turns had blinks of it), but there’s definitely plenty of choices that i’m surprised i decided on with a sober mind. 

to be fair, they weren’t exactly mindblowingly successful. if i were to rate this fic out of five, despite all my fondness for it, i’d maybe give it a 2.75. it’s a well-earned mark, and i have a special soft spot for people who have read it, but i’m not mentally proud of it. emotionally so, maybe, in whatever way i can be, but if this fic didn’t feel so intimate with a much cozier readership and comment section, i’d be a lot crueler to it than i am, i think. as it is, it makes for wonderful conversation and reflection for me, and it’s always fun to consider how a story about a disbanded idol group became a metaphor for childhoods lost to growing up too fast and also involved alternate universes. 

but cycling through five povs really is too much, i think, and if it was exhausting for me to write then i imagine it was just as exhausting to read. a nicer alternative would have been to stick to one pov for each chapter, but even that was a lot to juggle considering there were also smaller dynamics going on in the background with each character. within the core group of five alone, there were thirty-one variations of scenes to write, including individual introspection and pairs — and that’s not to take into consideration trios, or groups of four or the whole five plus a secondary character, for example. i don’t know how i pulled off my usual character study here. i don’t know if i did. 

another thing about this fic is that i’m still not sure why a time loop didn’t work. i wanted it so badly to work. i thought it would be fun, but i guess time loops aren’t necessarily compatible with prose. there’s something about repetition and looping that’s best visually, but even if i had been able to stick to imagery and vibes, it would have gotten tedious at some point for me and a reader considering the quantity/length i tend to need. just something to keep in mind if i get the urge to keep trying time loops in future works and wonder why it’s not sticking seamlessly. as with a lot of things in life, if you have to force it then maybe it’s not meant to be there. or maybe you have to go shortform, narrow down the playing field?

one thing i’d commend this fic for is how it managed to unpack so much between dynamics that barely exist in canon. that, and how it managed to pack so many formats into one story — song lyrics, album reviews, tweets, a play, nonfiction, a profile, wikipedia pages, messages, i don’t even know how many more — while maintaining a semi-cohesive tone throughout. there was a lot of fun there, in figuring out how to adapt your typical characterizing to a format you haven’t tried before: how would kuwana write a preface to hashida’s book? would this particular character include rhymes in their song lyrics, or are they more of a diaristic stream of consciousness kind of lyricist? what medium best translates this character’s personality? what medium best conveys this dynamic’s under-the-skin knowing of each other? who sees more than the others, and how can i show that without using the same structure of two or three characters talking in a setting that doesn’t change? 

my favourite part is probably the fake album review at the top of chapter four? there’s something giddying about the research-like quality of figuring out how to perfect the tone that music reviewers tend to default to, but also sobering about how easily adapted this fake idol group’s history is from real life. the easiest part of the entire fic was making this group feel real to me, situated in the real life history of j-idols and beyond, even if i admit to shying away from being explicit about the worst things that would still have been grounded in reality. some references to real life idol incidents worked a little too well, but there was also how clean it felt to spin fictional lore for this group in that fake album review. from their individual songwriting styles to tobi’s own background in-story to the kind of themes and concepts a faux pretentious pitchfork reviewer might like to talk about — it was just incredibly fun. i don’t know when else i’d get the chance to write something like that. everything else paled in comparison to it soon after, though i do also tolerate whatever my writing was doing at the end of chapter five, even if some parts of that chapter also feel lacklustre through a hypercritical lens. it doesn’t hold up under extremely rigorous scrutiny, even if i consider the fact that i’d just wanted the fic wrapped up as soon as i could at the time. it could be better, more so than all the other fics in this post could be better. but i don’t mind too much that it isn’t better. i mind it a little. just a little. but its flawedness is also what forced the multimedia format to happen in the first place, and that, i like a lot.

there’s a fair amount that this fic did quite more than alright, i think. if nothing else, it was useful as a playground that i didn’t have to be too finicky about. it will be one of those projects i’ll look back at someday and laugh deliriously over because how did i think that was the only way to make it work, but with the facilities i had at the time, it’s definitely not a shitshow. it has a lot of heart — which doesn’t necessarily redeem awful works, but in passable ones, those parts of the writing meet each other halfway. please let me love you forever holds its own weight, which is plenty more than i can say for most of my other experiments. plus it contains a background relationship that is not at all the focus of the story yet will probably haunt me forever. it’s always the ones you least expect to matter that will ripple further down the line, etc.

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LOSER TAKES ALL july 2022, tomodachi game trial element | soulmates, mystery au

another unpublished little guy left to rot at one complete chapter. i don’t really have any huge problems with this one, just that i tired of its demands very quickly and didn’t have enough attachment to the dynamics in it to muster up any motivation for. but tomodachi game, and especially yuuichi and kei, are so uniquely positioned for a fic like this, and i don’t resent past me for approaching it this way at all. is a soulmate bond that fosters a telepathic link between people who come back from a brush with death kind of an unhinged premise for a mystery au? yes. but so is remodeling a breakfast restaurant with my mom and the guy i didn’t know confessed to me in high school and who is now literally displaced in more ways than one by said remodeling, and even also acting is all i know so here i am trying to find the love of my life by dating anyone for an entire month on a first come first serve basis only to be shocked when that doesn’t work. 

again. boring yet equally ridiculous elevator pitches. if i cemented anything for a fact from this abandoned wip, it’s that my premises have always been questionable, and that time and time again, the only path forward is to lean all the way into it — which i did with hairpin turns, thankfully. hand in unlovable hand and loser takes all are apart by about a year, and there’s palpable change here in my approach to worldbuilding even if i abandoned each for unrelated reasons. granted, i might just be better suited to one side of speculative fiction than the other, but that’s such a copout. when it comes to trying new things in writing, the “if he wanted to, he would” logic applies, even if the he in question ultimately finds that it doesn’t work the way he wants it to (like in hand in unlovable hand). 

loser takes all worked fine for me, and i loved the inherent intimacy in having two incredibly smart and perceptive characters in each other’s minds while trapped in this soulmate bond that isn’t necessarily romantic. not to mention yuuichi is a deeply unwell person, and his ways of showing attachment to kei range from drastically protective, such as offering to fire the receptionist that was rude to kei, to:

Sometimes, watching Kei asleep right against him, Yuuichi wants to press his lips against Kei’s pulse. To feel it warm and alive under his mouth, to hear that little sigh of ticklish laughter Kei does if someone so much as runs a soft cloth against his neck. 

And sometimes—sometimes Yuuichi is also seized by a strong thought, a strong urge, to sink something sharp into that pulse. His teeth, a fork, a shard of broken glass. Sink it in hard, deep enough to leave a bloody bruise, a scar, a puncture. Hard enough to maybe even sever that heartbeat, to tear it, slit it into silence somehow. Hard enough that it feels almost the kinder choice to imagine himself wrapping his hands around Kei’s neck—tightening them without hesitation, itself a mercy of a kind as the blood quickly drains out of Kei’s cheeks. Yuuichi imagines then how Kei will struggle, whether he’ll kick or bite Yuuichi, if he’ll reverse their positions with one twist of a martial arts trained body, or if he’ll just accept it, resign himself to it knowing that not even this, if it’s Yuuichi, could possibly be meaningless.

But it would be. It would be meaningless to kill Kei. Meaningless because Kei is singular in his position within Yuuichi’s life, loyal and intelligent and a force to be reckoned with like no one else is, not even Yuuichi’s sister, not even the only friend he trusts most. Meaningless because every time Yuuichi pictures it, every time he wonders if he’ll have it in him to press two killer’s hands around Kei’s neck, it doesn’t take long for the accompanying sting to come like a splash of boiling water on exposed skin. A kind of scolding, a kind of reminder, that just as much as it would be difficult for anyone to kill Kei—so impervious to physical harm, whose broken bones and bleeding wounds will always heal even if he jumps off a twenty-story building—it would be just as difficult for Yuuichi to do him harm and survive it without any damage done to his own heart at his own hands. 

the temptation to keep writing this is not entirely absent, to be honest. but a mystery takes care and attention, and i just don’t have that in me the way this story deserves. but this fic was delicious to write, and i think it gave me a hunger to write more dynamics that feel just as juicy. dynamics that aren’t necessarily geared towards healthy love, but ones that ooze if poked anyway. 

i definitely want to revisit the telepathy plot device i explored here someday, but for now, this fic, abandoned wip as it is, is kind of the goldilocks midpoint between failed venture (hand in unlovable hand), almost-passable venture (please let me love you forever), and basically there if being there counts taking your literal first baby step into a new frontier (days of brutalism and hairpin turns).

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HONORARY MENTIONS

i don’t mean to ignore the canonverse fics (here and where you are, i’ll give you something so real, detour, and the two manhwa fics, that is) out of favouritism, but i’m afraid there’s nothing much to say…? not that these weren’t lessons in themselves, but canonverse takes a quarter of the energy and brainpower to write, and i’ll be lying if i don’t go about them essentially all no thoughts, head empty. i talked a bit about here and where you are here, while the logic for detour, which i was happy to write for and based on exchanges with a friend, is pretty self-explanatory. i did love getting to write a character like loid (and i’m relieved that the chapters that follow the ones i took into consideration for that fic hold up the characterization i imagined for him) + it was interesting to give sexual content and the philosophy of desire or whatever a shot in i’ll give you something so real. they were effective at what i needed them to do — which is, really, just to check the temperature of the water. i always feel so rusty when any amount of time passes without me writing, and these small, low-maintenance fics work as a burst of ice cold water before jumping in. i don’t value these fics any less for their place in The Process, and i might even be extra happy when someone likes them, but as far as Advancing The Craft 🤢 goes, all of these are simply necessary bridges to get to the next checkpoint. sometimes you gotta scratch the tip of the pen before the ink starts bleeding like it’s supposed to. words are the same. it takes a while each time to get my writing to a place i recognize, and sometimes a while is an entire fic before i can write the next chapter for an ongoing multi-chaptered story.

(that said: shoutout to the particular flavour of introspection in detour, within which my favourite line was written the literal minute before i sent it off, and a big heart emoji for the fact that i’ll give you something so real unfolds in a span of barely half a day. both are very interesting to think about moving forward.)

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DAYS OF BRUTALISM AND HAIRPIN TURNS january 2023, blue lock trial element | a romantic triad, sci-fi, memory loss (finally!) 

my angel. my darling. my love. who is far from being perfect but is the closest i’ve had to at least being sure i won’t just wake up one day loathing the soul out of it. i’ll laugh at it, probably. i’ll think it’s hilarious and cringy someday soon. but it’s a work i can’t not appreciate wholeheartedly. 

my cc tells me that the first time i put it on record that i won’t mind doing a blue lock fic is may 16, 2022, and the fact that i didn’t even make it a year and did so in the most Hard To Pitch If This Was An Actual Novel And Not Just A Fic For Fun way possible is worth at least a salute of disbelief, i think. my journal from my writing hiatus also tells me i’ve been trying to make memory loss work since 2020 and managed to scratch the itch minutely with here and where you are (which is… a pretty janky piece of work, looking back now) — but i’m just really, really content, even proud, of how i managed to weave it into a fic adapted from a story about football battle royale. 

it’s almost kind of unnerving how satisfied i am with the premise of hairpin turns, even if the execution leaves quite a bit to be desired — as it always will, really, and therein is the joy of finding the next writing project. i laughed a lot at myself while writing hairpin turns, and of all the inside jokes that my works started as, this one is by far the fic to feel most like it — a fun little joke that got funnier and funnier the more of it i wrote, and so i wrote more, chasing that laughter until it was time to catch my breath. and i think with how much i require writing to feel urgent and single-minded to be fun, there’s a part of me that’s easily... bored, for lack of a better word, when something doesn’t give me that. without this fast-paced almost-violence, i get bored and restless, the way i was around all the projects i had lined up after please let me love you forever. i’m making a face as i type that but maybe i just mean to say that there were a good few months there where nothing scratched the itch in need of stimulation. i’d write scenes and they wouldn’t be awful, wouldn’t even be bad, but they weren’t exciting to me. they weren’t thrilling. they didn’t feel like i was dissecting anything, just poking at skin with a scalpel and rolling my eyes when i didn’t draw blood from a dead body — you know? 

but projects have an uncanny way of arriving in your life when you most need it, and just when i have peeled and replaced my wallpaper and assembled and reassembled my keyboards and poked at this manuscript i refuse to rewrite until i did a warm-up that felt substantial enough, the blue lock anime started airing. i knew vaguely what dynamics i wanted to write even back when i had only the manga, but i know i could not have tortured this fic out of me then. not before please let me love you forever, not before loser takes all, not even before all my failed attempts at pitching speculative fiction stories to myself at 3 AM and gritting my teeth at my own disgust. the best aus fall into your lap fully formed and fully realized before you even know what you’ll be shaping it into; they’re a little predestined that way, and aus might be why i owe fanfiction my certainty that the author is just as possessed by the narrative if the narrative has its own pace and direction. i think that’s logic that should be applicable to original projects as well. 

i did hesitate in the very beginning of hairpin turns because sci-fi was such a huge deviation from my comfort zone and i have the misfortune of being both a taurus sun and an enneagram type five. i’ve never tried writing proper sci-fi, not even a little, let alone enough to be comfortable with knowing where to start something that wasn’t merely regular slice of life with a slight sprinkling of specfic. i was sure my writing style wouldn’t be a good match for it. i still don’t think it’s a match, necessarily. my prose is a bit too sentimental for some of the demands sci-fi asked of me — and that’s fine. i wouldn’t know the precise nature of that incompatibility if i hadn’t jumped into the pool of sharks and came out of the tank somehow, disbelievingly, friends with them. i began wary of relying too much on technobabble since i’m not exactly the most stem-oriented person around, but even the background of this au wrote itself, half because blue lock was a shockingly perfect match for the world i had in my mind and half because i found that the technology i imagined for the plot was both possible and easy to break down into the narrative. even now i’m still shocked at how scientifically sound the core pitch of the story is, and the fact that it married itself well to both the overarching plot and the character dynamics i wanted to highlight was just icing on a cake i would have tried to politely finish anyway. 

it could very well be that hairpin turns is just a fluke, its parts too seamlessly glued to each other that i’m not sure it could have been anything else except luck doing the work there, but i think there’s also credit to be found in how nothing is sacred in blue lock. these are characters who have done ridiculous things and said ridiculous things, and it was a matter of matching their energy. therein is the same lesson from loser takes all: if i’ve always known that characters decide the pace, tone and atmosphere of the story and everything else in it, then doesn’t it also go to say that in order to write a story far out of my comfort zone, i need only start with characters far outside of my comfort zone?

i think with au fics in particular, a lot of the work begins with justifying why certain things are in character for them in this universe based on what we know from canon. but because those boundaries are expanded by what blue lock innately is, it doesn’t feel as weird to posit something like, what if you and your android bf get tasked with rescuing his older brother’s android bf and find out along the way that you might also both be in love with your childhood best friend? as with most other of my initial ideas, this quickly spiraled into something significantly different — which luckily for me included the memory loss idea that i’ve been wanting to explore for forever now. proper sci-fi was the perfect backdrop for it, and bachira the perfect person to willingly do it, and isagi and rin the perfect people to be left in the aftermath of that loss. stars aligned, truly. i’m incredibly grateful for it. 

whatever challenges i encountered writing this fic had nothing to do with writing it. it was as smooth to write as it was an absolute pain to edit, because the three povs are so vastly different from each other, and with no outline to mentally check each time i add a new scene, i was reliant on going back and forth again and again to make sure the worldbuilding is cohesive and the plot is coherent. at some point i couldn’t look at it anymore, and it might even be a testament to how much i appreciate the fic that i still can’t look at it now yet cannot deny how fond i am of the final result. 

with sci-fi in particular, it really is a case of faking it till you make it, and whatever lies don’t feed into each other, you can always revisit and adjust later. that’s the common sense magic of fiction, i suppose. there’s a degree of patience i held onto writing hairpin turns that i wouldn’t have had with any other previous work, and i think it benefited me more to have all three chapters written in varying increments, out of my usual linear order, than publishing it chapter by chapter. i had all the room to experiment — what does the world look like in 2070? is 2070 even the right year to set this in? is there anything big happening around that time period? how does the lingo change in the time between present and this potential future? when i run into things that feel too out of my depth to write, like isagi’s pov for instance, do i actually have a justification for saying no other than how it will be easier than trying? are there benefits to giving bachira the final chapter that i’m being biased against because i think it would be a challenge? and between all of these choices, how do i adapt existing blue lock canon, from their playstyles to the favourites listed in the egoist bible, to worldbuilding in other forms of media that i’ve always wanted to try a different approach to? 

i used to think it was unnecessary and superfluous to go into writing something while getting bogged down by stray facts about characters, in both fic and original projects, but at the same time, it’s truly the tiny details that will humanize more than knowing a character’s birthday or what traumatic events lie in their backstory. tiny details that breed more tiny details, until it’s about the fact that bachira and isagi are childhood friends in this au yet when we meet bachira again he’s calling isagi by last name, or how rin understandably questions the validity of his own humanness because we can only assume sae had recreated him in grief or defiance against mortality or whatever other emotion that we’ll never know for sure because we only ever see sae in this fic through rin, and that matters a lot more than if i gave sae a pov — and yet rin manages to love through the small things, in how the warehouse is in an eternal sunset waiting for bachira to return to him and isagi. it’s about how first love, late spring was about learning how to love someone else the way they need you to when you weren’t loved the way you needed to be, but hairpin turns is about how spending your whole life never questioning if you were loved can rob you of the facilities to put a name and shape to what you feel for someone who’s always been in your life. the things you don’t take for granted, necessarily, but you do love for granted by not calling it love.

hairpin turns is about the pieces obscured from view and all the more present because of it. it’s about lost memories, the phantom outline of a person like a haunting. it’s about how sae never once appears in a direct scene yet he looms over rin’s existence. it’s about how rin’s chapter represents the past, isagi’s the present and bachira’s the future, but time matters little in the end — how could it weigh any more, in a story about memory? it’s about the uneasy momentary peace that’s the only scene we can count on as a happy ending. it’s about the lengths you’ll go to get the chance to be ordinary about your love, even if all else about it is unconventional. 

and yet above all, what i like best about this fic is that it works towards questions that feel like being given answers. some of my other fics try to provide answers to its characters and the readers they resonate with, to give them a way to be well-equipped to move forward, while a few other fics settle on non-answers because uncertainty is the only ending there is. but hairpin turns moves outward only to ask more questions, questions that are the answers and the thesis, yet in a way that isn’t strictly open-ended. and i have no fucking clue how i managed it, but this feels like the target i’ve been itching to catch sight of this entire time. this is the kind of story and process i would like to aspire to this year, and even though it had taken me 80k to glean what i needed from it, i’m glad i stayed with this fic as a warm-up. 

anyway. this got a bit away from me, and who knows, maybe this level of pretentiousness is only because i’m still riding the high of affection for my most recent brainchild to make it to college — but i’m not totally blind to the flaws in hairpin turns. the execution of the ending itself is clunky, not because it doesn’t resolve anything but because it does, and by then, the post-rescue section has gone on for long enough that even an ending feels like an epilogue. the story overall lacks complete confidence in what it is, with some parts shadowed by a slight hovering hesitation and others weighed down by a heavy hand showing too much kindness to my non-confidence. it’s never too heavy-handed, and definitely not so much that i’ll send it to the bin, but enough that if i want something to pick apart, there are stray choices hiding in places that i’d circle as an editor for feeling too sentimental, or the tone too dissonant with the pacing, or, ironically, not explored enough. in the genre i’m used to writing, the adrenaline rush is in finding the right balance within a new choreography for a dance style i know well, but in my first real foray into speculative fiction, i think i was just trying to find my footing the whole time. i’m still surprised i made it to the other end of the tightrope, honestly. i didn’t expect to applaud myself for the bare minimum, and i still don’t. 

but all of this is a lesson for me, too. what i do know is that it’s interesting to tell a story about what’s missing, about the unsaid and the unseen, and if that’s what it will take for me to rediscover excitement in what i write so that i don’t have to sink back into the ennui of these last couple of months, then that’s a pretty darn fun goal to spend the rest of the year unpacking. 

[ginnsbaker]

I noticed na may last chapter na palang nakalagay. It has been a long ride ateee! I hated Danny but at the same, he unknowingly winged man Leigh and Y/N which I'm thankful lol (the only thing na ginawa nyang tama ay i wing man si Matt and Y/N and then leading Leigh to finding about Y/N) heh. I'm a great believer of distined fates, sucker for them actually and it might be unusual pairing at first but your fic and writing made it work seamlessly. I've learned so much about relationship here believe it or not (not because I love to torture myself with angst and slowburn).

I haven't watched sorry for your loss actually but reading this feels like I already finished watching it (the immersion is just that great *wink wink*) and then there's this whole cruel summer song inspired thing and I love the song even more that it has moved to the top of my fave songs from TS. I also like seeing character grow as the story progresses and you really showed us that especially with Leigh. I just love everything about this fic and I will undoubtedly re-read this when pangungulila is at it's peak. Hehe

Thank u so much for the ride ate (waw nag emote; I admit I might have grown as a better reader too, not just mindlessly consuming and lurking around wieee so thats that.)

P.s. the smexy scenes got me gripping and curling my toes nyehe.

P.p.s. Y/N distracted with Leigh's face while lying down on her lap, I mean ghorl. Same same I would probably die on the spot if it were me.

P.p.p.s I am so excited for the last chapter... a win is a win. Happy pride!

Helloooo bb!

Yes, it's been a helluva ride :) Thank you for being here right from the start, sharing your thoughts, reading every update etc. It's a shared journey that's now coming to an end, and really yours and everyone's thoughts helped me get here :)

P.S. lol, you're welcome

P.P.S. I was basically projecting how I'd be if I were looking right at Lizzie's face tbh :P

p.p.p.s Happy pride!!!! How did you celebrate? I'm running a 10km pride run this Saturday cause I can't party na ng gabi hahahha!

[hongthoven]

hii bun <33!

🍓, 🥤, 🔪, 🧩, 🏜️?

sorry if i went overboard lol

Hiii ♥ Thank you for asking, darling!

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

I was born a hopeless dreamer and as a child, no book, movie or tv show could ever cover all of my fantasies so I started writing my own little stories then — as for fanfiction, many years ago, I used to be Directioner and fell down the rabbit hole of fanfictions. Then came Kpop and I never left.

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

ʚɞ atarashi & paradise lost by @setsugekka are probably my two favorite hongjoong fics on tumblr — this author isn't on tumblr anymore but I re-read their works many, many times a month because some pieces are just mind-blowing and just tickle me in all the right ways. also highly recommend their ongoing woo x joong fic inertia on ao3 ♥ been hooked for months.

Fics that got me kicking my feet and screaming into a pillow : warning: all of those have smut content.

ʚɞ training wheels by @luvt0kki had me dying and craving for more ♥

ʚɞ plug & play by @bangtanintotheroom ♥

ʚɞ Ugh, As if - series by @ennysbookstore ♥

ʚɞ in vino veritas by @pirateprincessblog ♥ (wink wink)

And I would read anything my beloved, fellow crazy pyeongie @nateezfics ♥ and precious lover @ja3hwa ♥

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I have yet to search for some very weird topic, I think? but one thing I do all the time is to write hand in hand with an online dictionary and some kind of thesaurus/ synonyms ressource website - as non native english speaker - so there will be times when I'm looking for a thousand different ways to describe a thing and I just have to take a moment to process and tell myself "what the HELL are you doing?"

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

I'm not an extremely sensitive audience as long as it doesn't involve anything non-consensual. I'm not too keen on extremely tooth-rooting fluff because I'm easily cringed but honestly, I'm quite a versatile reader.

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

any sort of feedback honestly, as desperate as it sounds — I feel like us writers are seriously lacking some interaction, whether it's a comment, reblog or a message in our inbox and while I'm conscious most people are here to consume and call it a day, I wish I had more interaction with the people who actually read my stories.

Then again, I know that writing short OS/smut doesn't necesseraly inspire people some long heartfelt feedback about how they enjoyed reader being railed by <idol> but it's always motivating and exciting to know people are truly enjoying your works and want to see more ♥ I'm really not constant in my writing and can spend months in writer's block hell but to know people are expecting something is utterly motivating and warms up my heart ♥

Annnnd I rambled for way too long! Thank you again for asking, this was so much fun ! ♥

[lonewolflink]

Hey, Link! Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been in love with wsc. You write everyone so distinct and lifelike I forget sometimes I’m reading a ryeji fanfic!

I was wondering if you’d ever consider writing for other itzy ships. I’d think it’d be interesting to see your interpretation of other itzyships, romantic and/or platonic!

Also, do you have a particular genre you like to read and write for? I know I love writing magical realism but I also love to read murder mysteries (i may or may not have been consumed by the idea of an itzy murder mystery 👀).

Keep doing what you’re doing and good luck with everything!

anon hello! i've just had a shit day tbh and this perked me right up and 180'd my mood. thank you for the kind words, and i'm so glad you're enjoying wsc :)

proper answers (sorry they're a bit long, i rambled) after the jump!

i have definitely considered writing for other itzy ships (both romantic and platonic), and have plans to explore some of those in the wsc universe for sure via side stories, oneshots, and the like.

i think if i was going to write a pairing other than ryeji as the centerpiece romantically, it would probably be chaerji? chaeryeong has been bias wrecking me all year...it's hard to resist writing her lol. i haven't had a chaerji fic idea that hit quite right yet, but if one does i would definitely write it. in the meantime i have been desperately pressuring @ddeongies to write a qac chaerji prequel oneshot... (I NEED IT)

"Also, do you have a particular genre you like to read and write for?"

tbh i have no idea! wsc is actually my first time trying to write fiction...like...ever (unless a concept album counts, but lyrics are a very different beast to writing a story, i'm finding!).

i suppose i'll say i'm not surprised to find that i'm enjoying writing what is basically a philosophically rich shonen sports anime with a yuri twist, but i think i'd like to try my hand at something quite different if i'm to start another bigger writing project.

i've always been quite partial to sci-fi/fantasy (my favorite author is ursula k. le guin), and could see myself writing something in either realm (...i do have the kernel of an idea for a cowboy bebop inspired itzy space bounty hunter fic...it's extremely underdeveloped though). an itzy murder mystery sounds so fun omg please tell me more (!!!!!)

...and as for magical realism i do have an idea for a jyp fam magical realism fic (...related to wsc...) but idk if i'll ever actually write it hahaha

thank you so much for this ask! it's been so cool to see how much people are enjoying wsc (and all the different ways people are enjoying it); genuinely makes me feel so motivated to write. in fact. i might...go write a scene right now... 😈

[hauntingcontradiction]

20 questions for writers

Thanks to @johnslittlespoon for the tag! Tagging anyone who wants to do it as I think everyone I know has been tagged or already done it!

how many works do you have on ao3?

3 fics at the moment.

what's your total ao3 word count?

6,591 words

what fandoms do you write for?

Mota - it’s taken over my brain and pulled me back into fandom!

top 5 fics by kudos?

lol I only have 3 fics up at the moment but by kudos:

Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

I kneel into a dream where I am good & loved

If you want to be a dog, first you must learn to wait

do you respond to comments?

Yes, I super appreciate all the comments I get! ❤️

what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

If you want to be a dog, first you must learn to wait. Only because it’s the first part of the series so it ends with John pining for Gale. I can only write happy endings for Buck/Bucky! So there will be a happy ending for the series as a whole.

what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I haven’t posted it yet but it’s the 3rd part in my “Some nights you are the sea, some nights you are the lighthouse” series that starts with “If you want to be a dog.” (wow just realised how long and unwieldy my titles are! lol they are all from poetry.) The fic is basically about warmth and safety and envisioning a hopeful future for both John and Gale after the war.

do you get hate on fics?

Not so far thankfully! I suppose since I haven’t written much 😂

do you write smut?

Yes but my smut is not very explicit because I’m not great at writing it 🤣 I also feel my smut is pretty much all the same as well, I just keep writing John being submissive or bottoming for Gale (I just have specific kinks I need to write out and I’m not done yet like John having a praise kink or my coming untouched fic 😂)

craziest crossover?

Haven’t written one.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

have you ever co-written a fic before?

No.

all time favorite ship?

Buck/Bucky as they are consuming my lifeee

what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I don’t really have any like that at the moment. Once I have the itch to write something, it kind of consumes me until I get it down and manage to express it how I want to. Otoh I don’t have wip ideas that are very lengthy or major projects!

what are your writing strengths?

I like writing emotions like character introspections or character studies.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Writing something with plot! Also I have difficulty with dialogue because I get caught up in whether it sounds like the character and getting the voices right. I also trip myself up thinking about whether it is something the character will actually reveal or talk about.

thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I don’t really have any thoughts on this.

first fandom you wrote in?

Harry Potter, I was super into Drarry.

favorite fic you've written?

Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves cos it was my first fic in the fandom and it is so extremely self-indulgent. I have such a thing for fics where John is taken care of by Gale so I wanted to write a fic like that for myself where John is so incredibly babygirl! and wrapped up in a warm blanket. The fic is like my ultimate comfort fic where it’s heavy on the comfort part of h/c and I’m sooo into words of affirmation as the comfort.

[2dents]

20 Questions for fic Writers!

Okay so, I was tagged by @outtoshatter and I'm just going to take a swing at this. Here we go.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently 22.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

202,411.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I mainly write for Dungeons and Daddies, Nark specifically. But I also have a couple in there for the Teen Wolf Sterek fandom.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

But You Have Heard of Me [ Teen Wolf, M, Wc: 82,014] (my baby!) The Taste of Perfume [DnDads, M, Wc: 58,717] (wip) Sudoku [DnDads, G, Wc: 5,226] Uno Attack [Dndads, G, Wc: 5,717] A Consuming Faith [Dndads, E, Wc: 33,963] (My baby wip! I'm aiming for another 80k with this one.)

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

Absolutely I do! If someone takes the time out of their day to not only read my silly little stories, but also comment on them, I will absolutely reply! Unless they're mean I guess? I haven't had any mean/rude comments yet so knock on wood. lol

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

I love angst. I write it into a lot of things. But as far as endings go... hmm. Well I guess that title would currently go to one of my drabbles, A Done Deal [DnDads, G, Wc: 100] but without giving away spoilers one of my wips is going to take that title as soon as I get around to writting it lol.

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

Oh, But You Have Heard of Me [ Teen Wolf, M, Wc: 82,014]. My baby~! Happy ending and maybe one day it will have a happy sequel.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I feel like I'm going to jinx myself by saying no. I haven't recieved any rude or hateful comments on any of my fics. Not even when I posted on LJ.

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

I am not confident when it comes to writing smut. I used to write a lot of it back on LJ. Now I just Fade To Black, but I do have plans to maybe write some for a wip. But idk we will see when we get there.

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

Nope! I wrote a fusion fic, But You Have Heard of Me [ Teen Wolf, M, Wc: 82,014] but no crossovers.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I had I believe 2 fics translated on LJ, but not on Ao3

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

Hahaha, yes! On LJ my irl bestie and I wrote a fic together! It was very cute, we each did a chapter following one half of the ships pov. I'd love to do it again some day it was super fun! What I really wanna do is get a bunch of different writers involved in doing a collaboration where the characters are stuck waking up in different timelines, so each chapter could be a different one-shot by a different author but they all connect. I think it would be fun.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Sora/Riku. I don't write for this ship but I will fight god about them. I've been obsessed with them since I was 12 and played Kingdom Hearts. I have fics I've been re-reading for alkjsdflks way too long omg. When I played Kh3 and Riku showed up I screamed so loud it scared my partner. You can pry them from my cold dead fingers okay.

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

Hahaha, I just recently posted this fic to my Ao3. A Divine Move [Teen Wolf, M, 8,676] Stiles is a horror game character (based off games like Until Dawn and The Blair Witch Project) and Derek is from a dating sim (Based off Hunnypop lol) It was going to get an E rating cause I had some absolutely slasher ideas for Stiles game and the plot was loosely adapted from Wreck-It-Ralph. So, maybe one day I'll get the inspiration back, but as of now it's just not there.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I have been told I have a very clear writing voice and that I'm very good at setting a scene and showing it to the reader. I think my main strength is my humor. lol I find myself very funny.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

A lack of confidence alksdfjalksd. I get so anxious trying to make sure that the movie in my head is being translated into word correctly that I sometimes over do things. Also I have the absolute worst grammar, and spelling omg.

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

If I don't speak the language enough to be confident that I'm using the words correctly I just do the "They said in language" kinda thing.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Okay, lmao. Okay okay. It was for the Gorillaz back when Demon Days had just come out.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

My two babies that I'm the most proud of are

But You Have Heard of Me [ Teen Wolf, M, Wc: 82,014]

I spent a year writting it and I made several friends because of it. It is my baby and I love it. I re-read it and still laugh at it.

A Consuming Faith [Dndads, E, Wc: 33,963]

I have been putting so much work into this fic and it's really pushing me as a writer. I have been obsessed with cult and demons since I was young, probably too young lol, so this is just basically 3 of my hyper-fixations coming together in a fun way. I have big plans for this fic and I'm very excited about it. I've been working on it for 7 months now, and I'm really hoping I can finish it before the end of the year.

Thanks for the tag! I'm going to tag some people and maybe they'll play along too, no pressure though and I have no clue what I'm doing so sorry if you didn't want to be tagged. @evanesdust @nottoolateforthegame @siogosho @missanniewhimsy @calamity-unlocked