#this is of course wildly Not Accurate to that other au i wrote but honestly i like this one better

[fala-alfredo-pasta]

Just wanted to ask about your talentswap pics for Nagito and Chiaki. Does the Tragedy still happen in it, and if so does either or both of them become part of Ultimate Despair? Also if its only one of them, would Chiaki still die or would it be Nagito in her place. And lastly how are their relationships with their classmates altered in the AU?

I honestly didn’t think anyone was gonna remember my talentswap au much less ask about it in 2023 you have no clue how excited I am to write this lololol

I also wrote a little too much so I’m adding a read more because this got quite lengthy

Okay admittedly though, I didn’t think too too deeply into this au so some of what you asked is what I’m speculating could potentially happen probably.

The tragedy: Does in fact happen ✅ though not in the same way it went down in the games/anime

I’m not sure who will be the Ultimate Despair seeing as what really spurred Junko into becoming who she is was her ultimate analysis talent that basically made everyday life a general bore to her who can quite literally predict 99% of outcomes accurately. The only real excitement she got was when chaos struck and caused disorder in the usual schematics. She learned to thrive in not only her own perpetual despair of boredom but also in the despair in others—becoming the Ultimate Despair we know today. On top of which it’s because of this talent she was able to pull off the tragedy (and most of her schemes) to begin with so if I swap everyone in this au that would include her too. Not sure what unlucky soul would wind up with the Ultimate Analyst talent, but much like how Nagito’s talent greatly impacts the character’s personality and entire backstory, so too would this one. 

What I do know is that Junko would most likely NOT be the Ultimate Despair in this au. Though, that being said, she won’t be an entirely nice person either. I do believe that Junko has a personality type that leans more towards the mean side regardless. Her obsession with despair just made it extreme. (Although if Ryouko is anything to go by, perhaps she is a relatively nice person. ‘Course it’s hard to judge considering that Ryouko forgets everyone within 24 hours and so her relationship with others makes it hard to establish how Junko would treat them in the long term).

Something to note though is just because someone gets the analyst talent doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to be Ultimate Despair. After all, everyone’s getting swapped and maybe a character winding up with a wildly different talent impacts them enough to take up that title instead. Which is why I say the tragedy will most likely NOT go down the same way Junko orchestrated it. Which brings me to my next point:

Chiaki does not get sacrificed. For a couple of reasons: she’s not the class’ beacon of hope as her lucky talent causes Chiaki to become closed off in order to keep everyone in a far enough distance from her so they don’t get hurt. As such she’s more like the class cryptid at best. She’s still kind and values life, and most of her classmate see her like an aloof stray cat they’d like to befriend someday but runs away whenever you get close, but the bad luck she’s experienced has left her rather pessimistic and anxious. Also, since the Ultimate Despair isn’t Junko and might do things differently, not sure how many (if any) class 77 students are going to be sacrificed in the way Chiaki was.

Regardless, SHSL Gamer Nagito certainly wouldn’t be sacrificed seeing as he uh…doesn’t have the best reputation among his classmates. His woefully pitiful social skills, interest in concerning hobbies (*cough*bomb making/playing with literal fire*cough*), and romanticizing of people’s struggles (because he still loves hope in the form of how greatly it shines at the end of a storyline—and the harder the level=the more struggle one faces, the more satisfying and brighter that ending will be), doesn’t lend itself well to making friends irl. As such he wouldn’t be their beacon of hope. Just the creepy gamer guy.

More specifically he’s a rich kid who hasn’t struggled much in life besides his (unintentional) self-imposed isolation from others to focus exclusively on his games that crippled his social skills. As such, Nagito isn’t as humble nor as self-depreciating as OG Nagito is. You probably won’t like him as much as the original because of it. Yet, he’s still just as manipulative—if not more, to get what he wants, and for all his lack of social skills, he does have a way with words when he’s trying to give a “pep talk” to another player—I mean person—to keep them from quitting (if he finds the effort worth making/their storyline interesting enough). He’s grown a little tired of playing games alone (read: lonely and bored).

On the tangent of gamer Nagito though, he really would lend himself well to being a mastermind and perhaps, maybe to some capacity he is one. Or maybe even THE one. One of the ones anyway. Wouldn’t it be fun to see the world plunge into what resembles an apocalyptic survival game and seeing everyone deal with the most unimaginable struggle to date and watching their storylines play out? See who persevered? See whose hope was too weak and died like the disappointing npcs they are? But wouldn’t it be even more fun to be among them, to be player and participant?

Which is why, I feel like Nagito played a great part in the tragedy in that he helped make it happen. Though, I don’t believe he was the only mastermind. This was a team effort. Nagito ISN’T the Ultimate Despair after all. Just their co-mastermind. Because he would really like an immersive survival game experience where stakes are high and there’s much to lose. I really wouldn’t put it above him to request to be turned into a remnant too. After all, he has more fun playing the game than making it—it wouldn’t be fair if he started off with an advantage while everyone else already had the disadvantage of their morals being corrupted right? Course Nagito already had loose morals as is so how effective his remnant transformation is can be questioned. How much is he affected and how much is he playing the part for the sake of the game? Who knows~ A good player doesn’t reveal his skill set right off the bat y’know.

Chiaki, meanwhile, will potentially become a remnant as well. I say potentially because I feel she’d be a sort of in-between the way Original Nagito was. Not fully despair fueled as her other classmates, but also not entirely trustworthy either. This is due to her constant living with despair due to her luck with a combination of her innate kindness that fend off some of the effects of remnant-fication. As a remnant, she goes back and forth between wanting to cause despair and wanting to help her classmates (and the world) get better. In a way it sort of makes her one of the more unstable remnants, in that you don’t know when she’s here to genuinely help and when she might do something in a wave of despair. It’s like a coin toss and you gotta hope you’re lucky and get her in one of her helpful moods.

This has gotten long enough but dang this au really does bring me lots of joy to explore. If I had more time on my hands I would get into other characters and what their swaps are and how that’s changed their backstory but for now take this instead.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I read your Steve and Logan bits and they are amazing. But consider this; Steve learns that Logan, who's older than WW1, has lost his memories. He gives a statement in an interview describing this man, this patriot who always looked after other people in his own gruff way, describes his side-burns, his claws, his cigars. And suddenly, people are calling into the station; "Yeah, think I met this guy a few years ago" "My granddad has this photo..." "So, In this bar one time..."

And all these people call in, sharing their own memories of this mysterious Cryptid named Logan who is apparently an immortal, grumpy, wandering dad-friend who's also a patriot and he helped punch out Nazi's and free camps and beats up assholes who don't respect women. And the whole while Logan is watching this from a TV screen with Kitty or Rogue holding his hand so gently, after they dragged him to the couch in a hurry. "You recording this?" "Don't worry, we won't let you miss a single word."

Okay but if we’re gonna do this we’re gonna do this HARDCORE HISTORIAN STYLE, and it initially comes up while Steve is being interviewed for a book about the Howling Commandos or a bit for the History Channel or something.  Because this person is like “Hey, there are a bunch of stories of you showing up somewhere with only one dude for backup, was that Bucky?”  And we’ll assume that this is before the whole Winter Soldier thing, so that’s not a hideously loaded question.  

And Steve kind of laughs and he’s like, “Oh, wow, God, that was actually this dude on detached duty from the Canadian special forces, he and I got sent on a bunch of missions together.  His name was Logan, he was the weirdest guy I ever met, and I knew some pretty weird guys, but he could take a hit even better than I could, so when the Howlies were laid up, they sent us out together.”  And he launches into this story about how one time he and Logan stole a plane complete with pilot and stormed a prison camp that was holding German Jews before sending them up to Poland, and the historian he’s talking to is taking frantic notes and trying not to drool because THIS IS A NEW GUY.  CAPTAIN AMERICA’S STORY IS METICULOUSLY WELL DOCUMENTED BUT NO ONE’S EVER MENTIONED THIS GUY.

There are no pictures, obviously, so Steve does a sketch for this historian, because he’s helpful like that and also because.  Like.  Listen.  Steve’s been through a lot of weird shit, and to be sure this Logan he used to know could take a bullet and keep coming no problem, but this dude’s probably been dead fifty or sixty years.  No harm in giving him a little posthumous glory, right?

So this historian runs back to her university and starts doing research on the Internet.  She reaches out to her coworkers first, then to anyone else she knows, then to the premier WWII and Captain America scholars of the world, and asks all of them “Do you happen to know who the fuck this dude is?”

And like, no, they don’t.  They’ve got no idea.  Steve’s not even totally sure what the guy’s real last name was, because Jameson is common as hell and there’s no Logan Jameson on the books.  So they start doing research into this WWII cryptid, and finally they reach an old woman who listens to her grandson’s boyfriend talk passionately about this new project he’s working on and goes “Oh, yeah, I met Cap in Germany one time, there was a guy with him who sounds kind of like what you’re talking about.”

This passionate history major immediately sends an email in all caps to his adviser and it just says “MY BOYFRIEND’S GRANNY KNOWS WHO WE’RE TALKING ABOUT PLEASE COME TO KANSAS ASAP THANKS” or whatever, because, listen, historians are Like That.  Speaking as someone who could easily have claimed to be a history major based on my thesis, I would have gone to Kansas in 0.2 seconds if someone had been like “What’s up we found that book you were after but we can’t take it out of the museum.”  It does stuff to you.  Trust me here.

So this woman tells the story of how Cap and his weird buddy broke her and her mother and father out of a temporary prison camp, and this history professor immediately takes all the tiny bits of information and starts asking around, looking for literally anyone else who knows this Logan dude.  He saved your ass one time in Paris?  He gave you some rations in Berlin?  He beat your grandfather’s ass in Russia?  He took three bullets for you?  You had a passing conversation?  This historian and his extremely pumped undergrad who just changed his senior thesis want to hear about it.

And then someone gets in touch with them and is like “Hey, I know you’re looking for WWII stories, but this guy saved my dad’s entire unit on the Somme and I have pictures?”  And someone else is like “Hey, I have a file from a Vietnam MASH unit for a Logan who looks like that guy, do you want it?”  And someone else is like “Uh, fuck all of y’all, I think this is him in the Civil War, what do I do about that?”

AND SO BEGINS LOGAN, THE HISTORICAL CRYPTID.

This undergrad is taking an extra year of college and basically getting a Bachelor’s degree in Tracking Weird Mutants Through History, and also his adviser is very lucky to be on tenure, because otherwise he would have been laughed out of the college three times by now.  But there is an absolute preponderance of evidence, is the thing, so it just turns into this massive quest to investigate exactly whether or not Logan the Mystery Dude was actually in China for the Boxer Rebellion or whatever.

Forget this being a collaborative effort between colleges, there are multiple continents involved in this by now.  Canadian government is under pressure to turn out their WWII special operations files for this guy from five different big name universities in five different countries, including their own.  Things are getting a little wild in academia.  Steve’s been interviewed nine times and he has a filter set up in his email specifically to catch stuff from the University of Toronto.

It takes a little bit for Kitty’s bubbe to get a phone call.  Kitty’s bubbe has been living a quiet-ass life in Illinois and likes it that way, especially because her last name is not Pryde and therefore Kitty and her weird friends can crash at Bubbe’s house whenever they’re in the area without any trouble.  It’s fine if her granddaughter wants to run around in spandex and save the world and shit, she’s honestly much more chill about it than Kitty’s parents, but Bubbe does not care for news crews in her neighborhood thank you very much.

But so eventually this nice old Ashkenazi woman gets a phone call from an extremely pumped undergrad who read a very brief statement she gave in a news article forty years ago about Captain America, who she is very grateful to for breaking her, her older sister, and their little brother out of a prison camp during WWII and also helping them get across the border.  Did she happen to see anyone else?  Why yes, very polite young man, the Captain had another man with him, he was very grumpy but he let my brother ride on his shoulders so I liked him very much.  That’s great, would she mind if someone came and talked to her about that?  No, very polite young man, not at all, when would work for you?

And she gives Kitty a call that night, because she gives Kitty a weekly call since Kitty and her parents are going through a rough spot to the tune of “please God stop risking your life//listen I’m saving people I’m not going to stop learn to cope”.  Bubbe mentions offhand that she’s going to have a talk with this very polite young historian about the Shoah and Kitty’s understandably a little concerned for her bubbe’s mental health, and asks some questions.  

So Kitty hears her bubbe out in increasing degrees of shock, hangs up the phone, and immediately goes and does an extensive google.

Then she goes and hammers on Logan’s door until he says to come in, slams her computer down in front of him, and says “Holy shit, Logan, why didn’t you tell us that you knew Captain America?”

“Uh, because I mostly didn’t,” Logan says, wary.  “Don’t remember that much.”

“You might want to take a look at this, then,” Kitty says, and Logan looks through her fifteen tabs and thanks her and calls the university that seems best informed.

Which is the story of how an extremely pumped undergrad gets a phone call from the object of his thesis that opens with “This is gonna sound pretty fuckin’ wild, but my name is Logan and I’m pretty sure you can catch me up on the last hundred years better than I can.”

Oh, and then Logan and Steve meet up again and it’s very nice and sweet and that undergrad gets a full ride to the PhD program of his choice.  The full ride’s name is actually Tony Stark, who’s doing a favor for Steve, who’s doing a favor for Logan, who’s secretly doing a favor for the undergrad, but no one really knows that.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

tagged by @hailkuvira and @amillionsmiles. thanks!! <3

tagging uhhhh who have i somewhat interacted with that writes and hasn’t been tagged already uh @magical-merlance, @cosmicdusttrails, @tiredgaykeith, @rueitae, @elby9001, @ anyone else that wrote fic this year and wants to take a stab at it??

STATS:

Fics posted:  they’re all...VLD

Tumblr exclusives:  my fic tag for your viewing pleasure. but here’s a list of everything (i think) that i didn’t also post on ao3 (with the exception of a few that will be posted probably within the next week):

Misnomer, a crack fic

a euphoric plance kiss that i just wrote on a text post i reblogged

a Cupid AU plance ficlet i also wrote based on a text post

ficlet about Acxa, Ezor, and Zethrid after Lotor escapes them

Pidge getting Love Advice from Lance, also an addition to someone else’s text post

How I think Hunk learned Pidge is a girl, with a teeny tiny bit of plance because it’s a section of a plance fic i meant to finish that i’ve since lost this is why you save/back up your work often

Outtakes from ‘Howl at the Moon’

A The Wizard of Oz AU (honestly bless the anon that prompted this)

A shallura hurt/comfort prompt fill

Whatever the hell this is, all i know is that it’s gen but still involves kissing and is kinda a crack fic

FF.Net:  N/A

Archive of Our Own:  i’ll just go with oldest first like i did in the last section

Give a Little (5859 words), fake dating, my first posted plance fic

Ship to Wreck (3544 words), gen (despite the title hehe), sailor/age of (western) exploration-type Pidge-centric AU

Spectrum (9562 words), gen, a Wheel of Time/fantasy AU

Winging It (2187 words), gen, fun canon-verse fic where they race paper airplanes

A Slip of the Thumb (18697 words), plance, wrong number/text modern AU

Break a Leg and Other Cliches (29293 words), plance, modern ballroom dance competition AU

Incompatible Schedules (1025 words), plance, canon-verse fluff

All’s Fair in Love and Gaming (653 words), plance, canon-verse fluff

Be Gentle (4881 words), plance, canon-verse body swap AU

If Wishes Were Fishes (1167 words), plance, canon-verse vaguely bittersweet beach fic

Lightning Round (3003 words), plance, canon-verse battle couple in training fic

Build on Shaky Ground (3337 words), gen/plance (platonic), kinda angsty Garrison era

Unknowable (562 words), plance, canon-verse philosophical fluff

Wisdom of Hindsight (1344 words), plance, canon-verse angst

Caught (2727 words), plance, canon-verse lovebug AU

In Time (724 words), pallura, canon-verse hurt/comfort

The Art of Seduction (2075 words), plance, canon-verse fluff

Falling’s Not the Problem (26179 words), plance, future canon angst with a happy ending sorta thing

Smuggle Your Heart (21931 words), plance, Star Wars-ish AU

Pocket of Space (6203 words), kallura, a Vorkosigan Saga-ish AU that’s kinda...languishing at the moment

Howl at the Moon (10271 words), plance, future canon undercover fake marriage thing

Failure to Launch (1740 words), gen, Sam & Coran hurt/comfort and feels in general

Specter (18325 words), plance, future canon AU, and, um, major character death fic

What Not to Do in Chemistry Lab (2458 words), gen, modern/college AU with my chemist Hunk headcanons

Search and Rescue (1684 words), gen, pre-canon baby Holts fluff

Shopping for Disaster (6108 words), gen, canon-verse Allura & Pidge bonding-gone-wrong fic

Ink on a Page (8807 words*), gen, Pidge-centric Inkheart AU

In the Making (8184 words), plance, canon-verse/future canon ~over the years~ kinda thing

Strangeness and Charm (73407 words*), plance, a collection of prompts cross-posted from tumblr so they’re really a bunch of individual fics but i’ll count them as one for now

*word count not entirely accurate because subsequent chapters are complete but not posted

Total number:  39 (counting S&C as one fic) Total word count:  288,132 part of me wishes i was making this up

Ship/Character breakdown: Ship breakdown:  plance, undoubtedly, wins; gen stuff takes second place. then there’s the odd shallura/kallura/pallura stuff (i like all Allura ships so) Character breakdown:  hmm. Pidge and Lance dominate, obviously. Pidge also tends to dominate by gen stuff, with Allura possibly coming in second. Poor Shiro and Keith (though i still love them) kinda......lose

Characters that had the main focus: Pidge in much of my plance and gen stuff, Lance in much of my plance stuff, Allura in a decent amount of my gen stuff as well as in that languishing kallura fic

Specifics:

Best/worst title? Best title:  None really jump out at me, but I think‘Build on Shaky Ground’. Also before i suffer some serious post-posting (hehe) embarrassment, I’ve titled this brand-spanking new fic ‘The Start of Something New?’ (the question mark is compulsory) and i’m way too proud of myself for that reference to HSM at the moment. Honorable mention to ‘Search and Rescue’ for sounding more serious than the fic’s plot actually is

Worst title:  I’m actually displeased with most, but only ‘Smuggle Your Heart’ makes me cringe every time I see it

Best/worst first line? Best:  not sure but as i look now the first line from this fic gave me a good laugh:

Lance thought that after two years in space fighting furry purple aliens while flying a sentient robot lion that merged with four other sentient robot lions to form one large robot man nothing could possible surprise him.

Worst:  if i actually took the time to look through all my fics, i’d probably find so many awful first lines, but i’m too lazy so this one is a weak first line from my one and only shallura fic:

Shiro had never seen Matt and Pidge happier.

Best/worst last line? Best:  uh to be honest i think they’re all kinda bad but here are a couple funny ones (from this and this) that don’t require much work on my part sorry i’m lazy:

Lance watched him go for a tic, shrugged, and went off in search of someone else to bother, preferably someone he would not mind kissing.

“It was strange enough that I actually don’t want to forget, so listen closely, because I won’t tell it twice.”

Worst:  point at any one of my fics. i’m never happy with the Last Line. but here from Shopping for Disaster (it makes sense in context):

He still wrote the ticket.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I wrote...way more

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

definitely VLD in general, because i was still...hesitant to get into it?? i didn’t watch it till spring of this year 2017 a few months after season 2 came out, i think What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

There’s this one (named ‘Siren Song’) that has yet to be posted into my collection on ao3 and it’s a concept i very much want to expand into a fully fledged long fic. and, to be honest, i thought it would get more notes than it did

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

By tumblr notes, this one ('A Sticky Situation’ on ao3) takes the cake with 168 notes

By kudos/bookmarks/comments on ao3, that would be A Slip of the Thumb with 225 kudos and 31 bookmarks

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

Me, constantly:  I write gen fic too guys (in all seriousness, my Inkheart AU is going to be great)

Story that could have been better?

Can i say all of them?? No?? Okay, taking recent fic into account (because i do think i’ve improved overall even in the last few months), i wish i’d spent more time and put more effort into ‘Shopping for Disaster’, especially with making the action scenes more plausible, making the Druid scarier (because i want to get better at writing horror, believe it or not), etc. Pro tip though:  don’t write while you have a headache

And actually now that i think of it, I would scrap all of ‘Wisdom of Hindsight’ because it’s awful and uses a trope i really hate

Sexiest story?

sex?? in my fanfic??

but anyway!! hmm...’The Art of Seduction’ probably had the most graphic (except also not really) makeout scene. ‘Propriety’ (part of the collection) was almost definitely the most suggestive. ‘Howl at the Moon’ had the double whammy of a fakeout makeout and a fake marriage along with the kiss at the very end of the fic. so i dunno, i guess it’s in the eye of the beholder??

as far as vibe is concerned though, i actually think ‘Smuggle Your Heart’ is kinda...sexy?? *shrugs* Saddest story?

‘Specter’ without a doubt. *cue evil laughter* Most fun?

‘Smuggle Your Heart’ was actually wildly fun to write. i was really into action scenes at the time

Story with single sweetest moment?

not sure, but in my humble opinion it would the majority of ‘Burnout’ (also from the collection), particularly this sizeable bit:

Pidge would never admit it to anyone - except to Lance himself, maybe - but she liked it when he clung to her like this, or when she latched herself onto him. There was just something soothing about having another human body pressed against hers, a balm for the mind and a relaxant for the muscles.

Some of the tension trickled out of her as she leaned back into Lance, and his arms tightened around her, sensing her need.

“Guess what?” Lance said, voice soft and close to her ear.

“…did Coran get his hand stuck in something weird again?”

Lance rubbed his nose - scratching, probably - against the side of her head, then chuckled, the vibration reverberating from his chest into her back. “No,” he said. “Try again.”

“Hunk figured out a way to imitate peanut butter?”

“All right, you get one more guess before I tell you.”

Pidge rolled her eyes but said, “Did you finally find out how to swim in the upside down pool?”

“Oh, ha ha, very funny, Pidge,” Lance grumbled.

For some reason, that made her giggle, if only because the image of Lance’s last pitiful attempt to swim laps in the Castle’s pool cheered her.

“So…what?” Pidge said, turning her head slightly so that Lance could see her frown. Of course he would dangle a mystery in front of her without giving her a chance to solve it…

“I love you,” he said, pressing a doting kiss to her forehead.

Pidge’s face flushed, pleased and embarrassed all at the same time, her worries dissolving as easily as sugar in hot tea. “So?” she said, trying to show him how unaffected she was. “I love you too, so it’s not that special.”

“But you are, Pidge,” Lance said. He buried his face in her hair. “You’re special, and smart, and confident, and we wouldn’t be able to function without you. And anytime you’re faced with a challenge, it bows down to you, its queen - wait, no, it’s empress.”

Pidge laughed and rubbed her face. “Oh my God, Lance,” she said. “That’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“But it’s true,” Lance insisted. “And I know for a fact you love being praised.”

“Well…”

Lance let go of her and moved away, and Pidge missed him instantly…at least until he knelt on the floor next to her, putting him at below eye level in relation to her. He cupped her face, gently, and made sure she met his eyes. “You’re amazing, Pidge, and when you crack this code, we’ll all sing your praises.”

Pidge rested her forehead against his, reaching behind him to bury her hands in his hair. “But especially you, right?”

He smirked. “I’ll be the loudest one.”

Lance then kissed her, so softly it wasn’t much more than a warm brush of lips, and he pulled back before her eyes even closed. “Also,” he added, with a slow, sly smile, “it wouldn’t hurt to take a break, right?”

Hardest story to write?

This borderline crack fic that had a shippy premise but the prompter challenged me to write gen for it. i succeeded (i think), but was it worth it?? probably

Easiest/most fun story to write?

They’re all fun to a certain degree, but this The Wizard of Oz AU was great fun once I hit my stride. also honorable mention to ‘Smuggle Your Heart’, of which i wrote about 17k words in one day in a hyperfocusing haze (i didn’t sleep till 3 AM that day and i would’ve skipped dinner if my parents hadn’t reminded me).

(i haven’t had a day so productive yet inefficient since)

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I actually....disliked Lance until i started shipping plance, and then my love for him only grew the more i wrote him lol. even season 1 Lance can be fun to write now, if only because he’s so ridiculous

Most overdue story?

hmm, perhaps something like ‘Failure to Launch’ because there’s a lot to explore in the adultier adults important to Team Voltron, particularly what Sam - the dad - might feel about his pretty young children getting sucked into a fight like this. but *shrugs*

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

not really?? i...kinda played it safe?? perhaps ‘Ink on a Page’ is my riskiest venture to date because it’s a long fic and i have a poor track record with long fic that i start posting before finishing. hopefully i’m learning discipline and like actually finishing things

also i think ‘Specter’ was pretty risky, as would be writing anything i really have very little experience in feeling, plus people tend to feel very strongly about major character deaths and i was unsure how people (particularly people i interact with) would receive it. and i guess i learned that it’s okay to take risks?? i was pleased with the way the fic turned out (even if it broke my heart to write it), and it was sorta begging me to be written (you know that itch you get when a story wants out??). and ultimately i’m writing for myself...but it’s still nice when other people like your writing too

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Finish ‘Ink on a Page’

Finish and post my definitely unconventional The Holiday AU that’s currently languishing as a Word doc of about 20k words

Write something amazing for the plance zine

Expand/write my sailor AU (of which ‘Siren Song’ is the prelude)

Write a slow burn plance fic (to be fair, The Holiday AU and the sailor AU are looking to be slow burn, of sorts)

Maybe...not write so much by the seat of my pants, be less impulsive and more thoughtful, outline more but remain flexible, be more efficient so i don’t burnout, push myself to write even when i’m not feeling ‘inspired’

Not compare myself to other writers (sad but true)

write for a different fandom/pairing?? who even knows at this point