#this post was written for uhhhh 2 people?

[goldyluna]

I got inspired by @rosehippiefield's post about Shin's advice on how to deal with Midori and his own behavior towards Sara (that you can find here!). It made me want to analyze more his reasons behind all of his cruel acts. And how some other people from our main cast were affected because of the death game. So.

People can act very differently in different situations. Their emotions and behaviors are always connected to something they go through. No matter if we understand why and how.

So people that are aggressive, cruel, judgmental, rude, miserable, or every other negative adjective usually have a reason for being the way they are. Knowing the reason is really important for understanding others behavior. Of course understanding the reason doesn’t automatically mean we should like this person or forgive them!

Aggression can happen as a natural response to stress, fear, or a sense of losing control. People also react harshly and negatively when they feel like they are mistreated, people don't listen to them, or they are just frustrated. Fear is a really important factor in how we act too.

In Your Turn To Die we have a really specific situation. A few unsuspecting people got kidnapped and put in an unknown place to fight for their lives.

Death itself is a really strong stressor. So adding to it that basically everything is unknown is really not helping with the pressure.

Like was said before, people can behave differently even in similar situations. Really important are the personality, previous experience and predispositions.

Our main cast experiences different things, and because of that, their perspective and way of going through their current situation can be even more different.

Each of them will react differently because of the trauma and reactions of the body to the situation. Some of them even had traumas before landing in the Death Game by Majority.

There, of course, will be feelings connected with experienced trauma (during and afterwards). There are some that we can also see in the game:

Anger

Numbness or difficulty feeling any strong emotions

Lost

Fear or panic

Grief

Worried

Irritation

Confusion

Restless

Hypervigilance

Shock or horror

Shame

People may be affected by trauma in many different ways. There may be problems with looking after yourself, not being able to have a stable job, being distrustful, forgetting things or they can struggle with low self-esteem. People like that can experience flashbacks, panic attacks, dissociation or suicidal thoughts.

After this long introduction, let's take a closer look at some of our characters!

NAO Nao lost someone very dear to her. She even went a little crazy for a moment. But she is so strong mentally she moved past the death, she didn't give up.

A lot can be said about Nao. That she is rational, really smart, selfless and she is not afraid of making sacrifices for a greater goal. That's why it was her that pushed fake Reko down the pit, saving Sara from making the decision.

She doesn't hold a grudge against Shin. She really pays attention to details, so she notices Reko behaves differently. But she still hits Shin because she got scared (Kai's making) and, more importantly, we get the Massacre Ending.

It is not the greater good, this is not selfless. It is selfish and only for her (and Sara), so she can live. Because it is not fair for anyone to be destined to die.

KANNA Kanna was searching for comfort from Sara. She viewed her as someone safe and trustworthy. Someone she can look up to as a big sister.

I am not saying she was replacing Kugie, but at that moment she needed a sisterly figure and Sara suited this role so well. She gave her support and spent time with her. Sara was the one that was there for Kanna and was from the very beginning.

We see Kanna as someone cowardly, shy and innocent. Maybe a little too trusting. The death she experienced at the beginning didn't help and only made the whole experience worse. But she was with people that she trusted and wanted to help. That she was so brave in the second Main Game, making her death a choice. And even if she lived, her demeanor changed. At least a little. She wants to live for those that died for her and it is making her stronger.

Kanna will always be Kanna, but thanks to all the people that support her, she could show her real self. The prettiest flower in the game.

Q-TARO Q-taro is someone who changed his ways. He could escape with the tokens he got (and did), he could leave Gin for dead. But he wants what he thinks is the best. Being alive was the best he could think of at the beginning.

He is an easygoing and friendly giant with high levels of anxiety and selfishness. He has his moments of doubt, like with the tokens.

When we give him enough tokens, he escapes. Even when Rio tells him that, if he inserts all tokens, everyone else will die. Even when he is offered his tokens back. He just apologizes and turns away from Sara.

When we won't do the trade with him, he can't go with his plan. When his doll talks during the coffin roulette, he admits he wanted to abandon them all even if it meant killing someone. And when he talked with Mai after she woke up, he said that he would do the same as her, but he didn't have the opportunity.

He trusted Mai and didn't blame her for the stabbing because he understood. He made the whole plan of saving others by dying himself. Sacrifice from a guy wanting to live hits so hard.

KEIJI The thing with Keiji is complicated. He is a liar, a murderer and a skiver. But he also is so full of guilt and anger. He is still grieving. Years passed, but he still feels guilty about the death of Mr. Policeman.

He is angry, desperate, lost in the dark thoughts. And he acts on them during his First Trial. But Megumi was his friend once, someone really important to him. They drank together, worked together, spent a lot of time together. So he had another's blood on his hands and the whole death game on his head.

He isn't trusting anyone because he knows he himself has something to hide. But he suppresses all the emotions and hides behind humor and fake flirting. He lies about being a policeman because he thinks that would be the way for others to not think he did anything horrible.

He doesn't feel like someone who can do anything about his situation, let alone theirs all. It is easier to give responsibility to another person, even if she is only 17 years old.

He acts how he believes is the best. He acts without telling the person that is supposed to trust him the most his plans. For the best or for the worst.

The death game isn't really a good supplement for therapy.

SARA Sara is very strong-minded, very befitting for a leader. She is our main character, so it is obvious a lot will revolve around her. But even this is too much. There is just so much on her shoulders.

She is only in high school but she almost died a few times (and she did, probably, as we are the players, so the GAME OVER screen isn't strange for us) in a very short time. She got people she can trust and those that hate her and make her life harder. She became a leader for all of them and they look up to her.

"Are you going to be our goddess of victory... or our angel of death?”

A lot of pressure is put on her. She will be the reason everyone will survive or die. Isn't that comforting, Keiji?

But okay, some may say that she is a born leader anyway, but she holds onto Keiji really hard. He is her anchor after Joe. It is also a way to destroy her if she will ever lose him. Because while Sara is she's extremely competent, she makes mistakes. But we know she will always get up.

Sara is also even more interesting, because we know her rate of survival is 15.5% (and the % of our participants is really curious in itself and deserves its own post). We saw a lot of faces of Sara thanks to simulations. She could be merciless, manipulative and ready to do anything to survive. She is obsessed and selfish, not caring for anyone else, just herself.

And we can't blame her, she wants to live. When we are desperate, we do things that aren't good. Those horrible situations, life-threatening ones, make us different people.

Have you ever heard about the Johari Window?

The Johari Window is a quadrant diagram that is used to show how we know ourselves and how others perceive us. It can be a tool to understand ourselves—how we behave, our character traits, skills, attitudes, knowledge and reactions.

Like the name suggests, there are four parts to this model.

Open Part - there are things that are known to you and others. If you know you are shy and you act shy towards other people, all of you know that you are shy. We know Nao is an artist. She knows that and tells others she went to study art. She was completely Open with that.

Hidden Part - is when there are aspects only known to you. You keep them hidden from others so others won't know those things about you. For example, you can be very opinionated, but you don't show it to others. Then they can't know that your opinions may be different than theirs because they can't hear your thoughts.

Blind Spot - it is the complete opposite of the previous part. There are things that others know about you, but you are not aware of them. Kanna is really clever. She figured out the password to Kai's laptop when Shin had a problem with it and she knew that Shin tampered with her sister's message. But she still thinks of herself as not smart (she says that in chapter 2 part 2).

Unknown Part - this one is really interesting, because about this part neither you nor others know about yet. Mostly it stays a secret, but sometimes, where there is a really unpredictable situation that can, for example be life-threatening, that Part may come to light.

We never can know how we will behave during those situations that we never lived through. We don't know if we will fight, flight, freeze, flop or fawn.

Q-taro and Sara are perfect examples of the Unknown Part of the Johari Window.

Q-taro's high level of stress pushed him to do some horrible things. When he had to actively choose if it was him or Gin that would die, he didn't do anything. He let Gin get hit because he was afraid to die, even if the poison would work slower on him. Some shame him for this, but if we were in his place, would we do differently? Click a button that could kill us. We don't know and we hopefully won't.

We may say we would do or not do some things, but until the situation happens to us, we won't be sure.

Similar with Sara and her behavior. All the things she did, all the thoughts, emotions, relationships and ways of doing things we see are a result of some really important factor. She changes after the logic route, why?

Because of Joe. He is her tranquilizer, her anchor, her morality. He was the person that made Sara care during the death game.

Her whole behavior switched only because of one person.

When we pick Kanna to live, Sara is how we know her. Compassionate, strong, mature. But when Shin lives, Joe dies again, but this time in her memories. It makes the situation similar to those in simulations.

Even Sara is terrified by what she is doing.

SHIN (+ Midori)

And that's why Shin is so suspicious of Sara all the time! But let's start at the beginning with him.

Shin is, like every character in YTTD, a very complex character. We know him as an annoying, scary and cruel man for most of the game. Some of us hate him still and some took him as their favorite.

What he did and his reasons aren't forgettable. But it is nice to see a reason behind his behavior.

Midori is sadistic and really cruel. He torments others for his own amusement and loves to watch them break. He loves to make others be afraid of him—and that's why he always tries to be intimidating by holding eye contact and saying unsettling things. He is mean and childish, but he also is really good at reading people. He uses that for his own use, to push the limits of others, control them and let them fall in desperation.

Shin spent a lot of time with Midori. He was his only friend in school and he was so scared of him. Midori did everything to make Shin uncomfortable, but also unable to leave him.

But thanks to that, he knows a lot about him. Shin knows Midori loves control, so taking it away from him is lethal. He knows that Midori is so afraid of death (even if Midori thinks nobody will ever kill him), he is a coward that cares only about himself.

When Shin gives Sara advice, it is so ironic. He tells Sara she should act how he acts towards her. To try to intimidate Midori, make him scared, take away his control.

The advice is important, because only thanks to that can we see how Shin sees Sara and his situation.

Sara is so similar to Midori. Shin can see in her all those cruel acts that never happened. She is in so much control because she is the leader and makes a lot of final decisions. She can be so intimidating. She has sometimes emotional outbursts (that are entirely justified). Additionally, she has a really high % of survival that automatically makes her the most dangerous enemy.

Of course Sara isn't like Midori. Their reasons are different and Sara is genuinely a really good person. But Shin has problems with distinguishing them.

Shin definitely got traumatized during his "friendship time" with Midori. It affected him so much, he is searching for danger in anything remotly similar to what he already knows. His defence mechanism and heuristic try to save him, but it does more harm than good.

He got hurt by someone close to him, so he is extra careful. He doesn't want to be too close to people, prefers to be distant and mean. He prefers to act as someone he hates and is scared of, why?

Because he is afraid. In his own eyes, he is weak and easy to get rid of if he is useless. He thinks the way to survive is to act as the only person that made him feel the worst.

Intimidation, cruelty, cunning, manipulation, lies. Those are the keys to survival in the world where it is kill or be killed. If he is those things, he may live longer than if he were himself.

But as we know, Shin also isn't like Midori. He cares—for Kanna, Gin, even for Keiji and Sara. And he wants them all to escape, despite everything. But going back to old Shin isn't an option anymore. Too much has happened.

Fear is infinitely connected with anger. Anger makes people mean and impulsive. That's why after Kanna's death, he made the worst Joe experience for Sara. That's why he was so mean to Kanna when it turned out that she isn't the Sacrifice and is ready to die for him.

That's why he hates Sara. He is so, so afraid it hurts.

He wants to destroy any possibility that could hurt him and the only way, in his opinion, for that to happen is to hit first. And that's how they should fight with Midori.

Fight fire with fire.

But if anyone knows how extinguishing fire with fire works, then they know that at the end both fire dies and the forest will still be burnt. There will always be victims, no matter if they are main or side characters.

Fire destroys. Midori is so widespread that he can't be stopped by using only water. Sara is a small fire that Shin wants to nip in the bud before it is greater than the forest itself.

But we are heading towards the end slowly. There are fewer and fewer people. Relations will always be strained but also deeper, on another level. Let's see how they will act in the final chapter!

THE END

Finally, I just want to say: there always will be choices to choose, decisions to decide and fires to fight. We can hate, love or like anyone for any reason, but it is important to understand the other person.

Sometimes life is so unpredictable. We won't know what will happen and what we will do. We don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

But let's be kind to ourselves and others. We don't know what they went through and what will happen to us.

[cjlouwho]

hey so uhhhh i need the next chapter asap desperately 😭😭

I love that people are loving this fic 😩 I think it's one of my favorites that I've ever written. I wanna stay ahead by a few chapters. Once I finish chapter 5 (which is actually half written now) I'll post chapter two 💕 However, I can give you a sneak peak on how chapter 2 starts. Here you go:

Then

“Whatcha makin', Buck?” Maddie asked as she sat at the bar, looking around at the disaster that was Buck's kitchen.

“I'm learning how to make croquembouche,” he replied, giving her a wide smile.

“Wow, that's... How's it going?”

“Great! Well, it's- good, I think. The eggs scrambled when I tried the pastry cream the first time. Second time, I don't think my caramel actually, um, caramelized. Third time I almost set the place on fire,” he added with a shrug, “but this time I- I think I've got it.”

“Have you gotten to the stacking part yet?”

He stared down at his puffs, half filled with cream and the others waiting. “No, I haven't made it that far.”

Maddie gave him a sympathetic smile. “Evan-”

“I know what you're gonna say, Maddie,” Buck interrupted, turning from her to pretend to look for something in the fridge. “You're gonna tell me I need to move on and get over it, just like everyone else. But, i- it's not that simple.”

“Buck-”

[luddlestons]

2024: Fic in Review

Borrowed from @ziskandra because it seemed like a very nice format to review in!

Total Number of Fics: 33 (the count on AO3 lies because I have two works posted this year that are art, not fics)

Total Wordcount: 201,240 (why am I like this)

Fandoms: 2 (Critical Role - 31/33, BG3 - 2/33)

Smut scenes: 32 - I am counting the orgy fic as all one long sex scene.

Most Popular Fic (by bookmarks): Buttoned Up and Undressed, which tracks, as it was a gift fic for the one and only zmeess, was written relatively near the beginning of the year and is for the largest ship I wrote about this year.

Most Popular Fic (by kudos): Same ^

New things I tried: Incorporating more of my art into the text of my fics and deliberately illustrating fics in general.

Fic I spent the most time on: As for which I spent the most time actually writing, I have no clue, bc I don't track that, but the one that took the longest to complete was Sleep, and Lack Thereof, which I started in February and finished in August. I spent a lot of time dithering because I was writing some new kink stuff, and because I continually got distracted by Ashton Greymoore.

Fic I spent the least time on: Twenty-Five Words or Less, which is entirely dialogue and under 1k besides.

Favourite thing I wrote: you're the universe i'm helpless in, which has so much fun prose and fanciful descriptions of plants! while being horny! and sad!

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected? oh WAY more. I spent SO much time being busy being gay, and I still wrote TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND WORDS??? insanity. What am I doing.

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion: I don't know if anything's UNDER appreciated, but if people want a deep cut rec from me, A Completely Normal Vacation is my favorite I've done that doesn't seem to have a lot of eyes on it compared to my other stuff. probably because it's about Kingsley!

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: uhhhh well Home for Winter's Crest literally has a paragraph about me falling for my boyfriend in there. It's not outright like "A/N: this is about my love life," but have fun guessing what it is, I suppose!

Biggest Disappointment: Just that I didn't have the motivation to finish Certain as the Moon Rises, but hey, there's always next year!

Biggest Surprise: The amount of folks who were all-in ready to go with my Ashton/Essek series! The ship literally didn't exist when I got there (there was ONE Ash/Essek/Caleb fic but I started off the Ash/Essek tag) and still has hardly anything in there but so many people told me they loved it. I'm constantly desperate for more of this ship too!

My Favourite Part Of Fandom This Year: I got to work on some pretty awesome collaborations this year, specifically working on Unlaced, Undone with zmeess and doing art for a few of the latest chapters of Mistakes Aren't Regrets, which I've been following since near the start!

Writing goals for next year: keep doing whatever the hell I want! I would also like to do more original fiction, but this is a fanfic review lol

Did you meet last years goal?: last year's goal was also 'do whatever the hell I want', so yes!

(Not doing any specific tags, but if you do this after seeing it from me, please tag me bc I'd love to read!)

[hyobros]

Cheritz's changes in staff over the lifetime of The Ssum

I wanted to write a post about this because it was the nail in the coffin convincing me that The Ssum won't get better. I really want to be optimistic, I was for the first year of the game's release. But with how hard they're fumbling June's route, and having some context by seeing the dramatic changes that happen behind the scenes, I don't have any hope for the game's future in its original concept.

So here's a big fat list of credits, comparison of them, and my own stupid commentary.

A comparison of the beta OPs credits (2018) vs the new OP credits (April 2022)

Project Directed by-

Sujin Ri (this stays constant)

Project Managed by-

Heinrich Dortmann (this stays constant during the time periods I'm comparing- we'll come back to this later)

Character Model by-

Yuseung An (this credit never appears again so uhhhh)

Game Designed by-

Yoonji Shin, Haeyoung Go (this credit also never appears again)

Project Assisted by-

2018:

Youngtak Lee, Heetae Lee, Yeonwoo Jung, Kyungha Kim, Kyungho Kim, Jihyun Jang, Hyejin Hong, Daniel Hong, Seungiim(?) Hwang, Dakyoung Lee

April 2022:

Heetae Lee, Junghee Choi

Art illustrated by-

2018:

Ilbo Sim, Jinhee Lee, Jihyeon Choi, Hyunju Na, Juhul Kim, Jaehee Hwang, Mirae Kang

April 2022:

Ilbo Sim, Jihyeon Choi, Minji Kim, Mirae Kang, Youngjoo You, Yura Lee

Programmed by-

2018:

Mansu Park, Marcos Arroyo, Rachel Tay, Soonyong Hong, Seungjin Lee, Myungjun Choi

April 2022:

Gunsoo Lee, Kukhwa Park, Moonhyuk Jang, Myungjun Choi, Seungjin Lee, Wonbok Lee, Youngkwon Jeon

Scenario Written by-

2018:

Jinseo Park, Minjeong Kim, E Hyun Kim, Eunchong Jang

April 2022:

Jinseo Park, Lilly Hwang, Minjung Kim, Saerom Shin, Summer Yoon, Youngran Moon

Language Localized by-

2018:

Sunhee Moon, Minkyung Chi, Sungjae Choi, Junhee Kim

April 2022:

Minkyung Chi, Pilhwa Hong, Saenanseul Kim, Sorim Byeon

Sound Resourced by-

2018:

(N/A)

April 2022:

Songhee Kim

Customer Service/Communication with Users by-

2018:

Sunkyeong Yun, Hyeseon Yang

April 2022:

Donghee Yoon, Joyce Hong, Sanghee An, Subin Kim

Credits from 2019

These are in the lyric booklet included in the Teo Love Bundle. Strangely enough, I'm already seeing differences between the 2018 credits and 2019. Uh oh?

As of release + a few months

These screenshots don't feature all the credits, unfortunately. I'm relying on screenshots someone else took because I'm not proactive but hindsight is 20/20.

Changes: Project is no longer managed by Heinrich Dortmann, instead by Juho Woo. Scenario team cut down to 2 people, one of which is a new name (Jooyoung Lim). Art team also cut down to 2 people. Sound is no longer resourced by Songhee Kim, but Jaeryeon Park and ROGIA. All new team of directing assistants as well, it expanded to 4 people but they're all new names. 2 fewer programmers, only one of the listed names was already working.

October 2023 (June's release)

Here's where it somehow gets worse lol.

Changes: A lot. Directing assisted by 1 person. They were not a part of the team credited in the OP. Down to 3 programmers, only 1 being in the OP. Entirely new art team! It's up to 4 people, but all of them are new, even compared to only a few months prior. Down to 1 scenario writer pobrecita (but we're coming back to that). Since I don't have screenshots of the project assistant credits from launch, can't say anything for that, except that Gui Zhenghao is new compared to the OP but the number of staff there remained the same. Flaming Heart is gone for the BGM! He's been working with Cheritz for forever but is gone now. One person from the communication team left, so they're down to 2. That would explain why emails have been slower since October. Only 1 translator, though Cheritz is now looking to recruit new ones.

Important note:

According to Cheritz's post acknowledging their use of gAI, Sujin Ri was not involved in writing season 1 of the game, but IS the main writer for season 2. I won't make a rant about how much I hate what she's writing cuz this isn't the post for that, but it explains why season 2 is so vastly different.

The fact that only a few people (like, in the lower single digits) remain even from 2019/early 2022, let alone who's still around from 2018, is really frustrating for the game. The game started with one vision, but now it's being turned into something completely different. Even the app's functions are inconsistant between season 1 and 2 (and a little so between Harry and Teo). According to an email I got from Cheritz, season 2 takes place a few years before season 1. Just sit with that knowledge for a bit :P. It's like the current people in charge of The Ssum (*cough Sujiin Ri*) couldn't be bothered to keep the original concept in mind, let alone how the timeline would work.

This post was a long time coming, I was caught up in just how bizarre this all is and finding tons of stuff that I haven't even included in the post. Writing this has taken about 3 hours (including the time I spent on a post ONLY FOR TUMBLR TO NOT WANNA WORK PROPERLY WHEN I TRIED TO POST IT SO IT GOT DELETED) and uhhh yeah. Now I gotta wait a few years to ask former staff if their NDAs are expired yet LOL

[nightfall-1409]

Oops so that was a while!

Nightfall Update ahead of the holidays! (and a push for myself to, blog again). some details under the cut but tl;dr it's been a while but im back here and trying to be back here! with new stuff! And updates to certain things too damn!

Rough year for me! Probably for many people really :(

good stuff first

uhhh biggest news is that through all the bullshit i was able to participate in the clone bang. The last 6 weeks of my life have been so stressful bc I had to write like 80% of the damn fic. It's a 125k monster of a fic that i feel quite proud of, the last 45k of it was written in literally the last two weekends. upcoming details in a promo post as soon as I hear back from my last artist <3

With that, though, my creative writing juices thoroughly uh. revitalized. to recovene followers: ezra chapter is coming soon :) that was a mean cliffhanger, i did not expect for my brain to literally commit mutiny :( sorry

I hope to have that done before bang posting starts (December baby here we come)

uhhhh only other thing is I am attending sanfrancisco expo ! lookin forward 2 that as well.

some generalized health stuff. the heat stroke i suffered last year was apparently maybe not a heat stroke (noted by the fact I was consistently worsening) and that sentence is still terrifying to me bc as i recall i couldnt fuckin read or turn around without wanting to fall over for like a month and a half there. But. whatever. It was a slow decline for a while, I was still getting some stuff out, but eventually, the amt of pain i was in overwhelmed me in june n it consumed me whole from july - august with slow improvement happening from then on.

it took me. quite a long time to see a specialist (and it was originally going to be longer! haha!) , but i've been seen. and am on treatment. and it sucks bc flashing lights still kill me (including literally shadows of the setting sun through a line of trees and a CEILING FAN are you KIDDING ME) and migraines r like. my best most toxic friend <3 it's so overrrr. We do not know what happened beyond my facial nerves just deciding to go balling insane. L. or what started that. L. But its finally getting better!! yay. we're so back.

to the ppl who've reached out 2 me / tagged me / putstuff in my inbox in ao3 or thought about me ;w; bro.. thank you !!! it killed me all the time bc it was like. I wanted to participate!! I want to have fun!! but the amt of energy things took. insane. but it was nice to be thought abt regardless. I want to be back now and have fun again. have a lovely night <3

[phneltwrites]

12 and 28 🥰

hi hi! 💜

12. [how many wips do you have] on the one hand i have a million ideas but actually i mostly focus on one thing at a time and then the rest of the ideas fight it out thunderdome style until their turn comes. I've for sure got 2 (wlw wilmon, space whump simon) but odds are good something else will emerge from the ooze and clobber those other two and then idk you'll end up with mob affiliated micke and accidental kidnapping wilmon in Spain. it's tough to predict

28. [fave fic written this year] oh no my children. uhhhh ahhhh?? Probably Wolf Comes Home (futurefic where August leaking the video is revealed and it's a big scandal) because I think it came closest to doing the thing I wanted it to. I'm always trying to communicate something and sometimes the fic falls far short of that and this one I think I mostly said what I wanted to say. Though I do feel bad for all of the readers who didn't know how anti-monarchy I am and were surprised by the ending. idk if i should tag for that or what.

I really like how angry Young Royals as a show is. The way it doesn't let the things that grieve the characters go by. It's that anger that comes from deep humanism, every character in the show is so believable and real. the system, it's the system, and it forces the viewer to look at what these theoretically privileged existences do to the people in them. no babies with jobs 2k25!!! That only by being genuinely honest and coming to terms with the burdens of the legacy can the characters be good to each other. anyway big feelings! wrote that fic angry posted it happy had a great time

[crimetimesteadicam]

ok @morporkian-cryptid tagged me to do this fic author interview so here we go...

if you would like to do this, i am officially tagging you, yes you, right now. tag me back so i can see your answers

1 How many works do you have on AO3?

i got 40

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,044,749

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

sorry like none of these are lupin iii. a blight on my lupin iii blog

Wabisabi (991 kudos) - Spirited Away. idk it's short and cute, read it

BONES OF BLACK MARROW (952 kudos) - Homestuck. the infamous cyoa cannibalism sex fic. scrolling through the things people say about it in the bookmarks is always so funny

Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (925 kudos) - Homestuck. no clue why it has so many kudos lol it was like the first long thing i've ever wrote (a whole decade ago??? jesus). it's a d&d/discworld joke

Vanitas vanitatum (914 kudos) - Homestuck. the same d&d/discworld joke except the LI is turbo depressed. notable for being the only fic i ever outlined and edited and that's why it whips

Supermassive Retinol Overdose! (677 kudos) - hey look, a lupin fic made it on here!

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

i do when i have something meaningful to say besides "thank you!" i don't have a lot of thoughts about my own work so therefore i tend to not respond if there's not a direct question :( my head is empty. i always respond to every single comment on the last chapter of longfics though because i'm always impressed people read that far lol. genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading all that

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

idk uhhhh i wrote a series once where two of the main couples break up at the end, but it wasn't really angsty

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

they all end pretty happily

7. Do you write crossovers?

if i did it was so long ago i don't remember it

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

no but people used to send passive aggressive hate about my art in fics once in a while. hasn't happened in like 2+ years

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

yes. every kind. EVERY KIND

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

a bot will sometimes scrape my high kudos homestuck fics and plant them on a junk ebook site

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think like 7 of them got translated into russian and do numbers on ficbook.net

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

in the past me and my friend would sit around a laptop and scream laugh write our way through crack fics

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

right now it's jiglup and fujilup

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

i finish almost all my WIPs because i'm a freak. if i don't finish a WIP it's because some dramatic life event happened. this has only occurred two times

15. What are your writing strengths?

im a funny binch

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

i don't outline or edit or re-read any of my fanfic. i just type it and then eyeball it for typos and then post it. i COULD outline and such to really make the narrative nice and tight, but i don't find it very fun to do (for fanfic) and this is like, my relaxing wind down hobby. i just wanna have fun haha. the only reason my fics like, make sense, is because i write at least one ending scene first thing and always aim for that, and also i write out of order so i kinda know the route of the story

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

it's fine if it makes sense to do it there as a narrative device

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

h-hetalia crack fic.....

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

once i figure out how to draw zenigata it's over for you bitches. luzeni hours on da clock

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

for lupin iii fic, i like Lightkeepers the best

[emocl0wnpp]

The hyperfixation is getting worse soooo

Time for a terribly written infopost about my creepypasta oc Claws :D

☆Basic infos☆

Before "shit went down" infos(the red head and the purple ghost pics basically):

Name before death: Nicolas Marshall Rhodes Nicole M. Rhodes

Date of birth: 29th of October, 1978

Age before death: 27

Pronouns: He/Him She/her

Gender: MtF transgender

Sexuality: questioning everything

Nationality: Hungarian,British

Height: 195cm/ 6"3

Personality: naive,anxious, shy, nervous, smart, quiet, people-pleaser, workaholic, overworked, tired, reserved, introverted, a bit loud around friends

Other stuff idk how to categorize-

She lived in Hungary until she was 6, after that her family moved to Britain(specifically Liverpool)

She had 2 older brothers(they were twins), and a younger sister(she's on the picture with Claws before her death-)

Her dad was Hungarian and her mom was british

HUUUUUUGEEE horror fan, ESPECIALLY a BIG BIG fan of IT and Pennywise in general-

Owns every exsisting piece of merch of Pennywise

Wanted to become a detective

She studied at Oxford University and got her diploma there too :3

(The plush doll on the picture of her as a human will later on become her body)

Picked up the habit of smoking and drinking out of stress

Ended up in hell as a purple ghost/soul like being (i will talk abt this more i promise--)

Cause of death:

Stabbed by her ex 15 times on her back (i will make a post/edit this one with her backstory I PROMISE😭😭)

Date of death: 25th of December,2005

☆After death info :D☆

Name: Claws

Age: doesn't really matter anymore cuz yk she's dead

Pronouns: still She/her

Sexuality: demisexual,panromantic

Species: now a plush ragdoll

Height: 300cm/ 9"8

Personality now: sarcastic, smart, cautious, observant, still workaholic, honest, loyal, obedient, competitive, sharp-tongued, secretive, serious, stubborn, sometimes violent, rather cold hearted (though she's a real sweetheart under those sharp claws and teeth)

Uhhhh random fun facts cuz im terrible at writing bios-

Still a huge IT and Pennywise fan

Best friends,later on dating with Laughing Jack(ironic considering how much of a Pennywise fan she is)

Best friends with Laughing Jill

Works as Zalgo's proxy (not by choice tho-)

Literally no bones or internal organs,just plush stuffing

She's hella flexible too

She doesn't need to eat or drink but still does for the taste

Still smoking and drinking at times

Zalgo makes her do all sorts of jobs, not only is she an assassin,she's also his secretary and the babysitter for his kids-

..cannibal-

She's a shapeshifter :D

A playlist for her:

I'll probably edit the post when more stuff comes to my mind lol

Thought i'd add this here too-

[daka-d3monb0y]

1- What's the name of your AU if there is one? If no official name what would you call it?

Time Variant Authority/ Time Travel AU

2- What is the most prominent differing factor between your AU and the original source Material?

Time travel was discovered by The Creator, though he deemed it too powerful and catastrophic to use. Eclipse got his grubby little hands on it and just had it. Monty discovers it and is the first to use it.

3- What is your favorite character in the source material and who's your favorite character within your AU?

In canon I Miku is my favorite character xD, I just like the chaos she brings. In this AU my favorite character in this is Eclipse. He's more of an evil Solar actually and that's what's interesting to me.

4- Are any of the characters in a relationship (QPR, Romantic, Emotional, ect.)? If so what are the most defined ones you've built so far, and within the universe how did their bond come along?

There are canon romantic relationships. But I go into Eclipse's relationship with Puppet a lot, we see how they fell apart by his actions when he's time travelling. Monty and Moon's relationship is vital to the story, Moon is a kind of key character to the universe itself.

5-What 'fanfic tropes/fanfic tags' does your AU use?

Uhhhhhh I have no clue.

6-Do any characters within your AU have any disabilities (mental or physical)?

Monty has ADHD, Sun has anxiety and OCD, Moon is "eccentric", Eclipse is a sociopath, and Puppet has PTSD. Uhh idk what else.

7- Do any characters have familial bond amongst eachother? If so how strong are their bonds, and how did they come about?

The family bond is very important to this story. Eclipse is Lunar's father in this so their relationship is important. As the AU progresses Eclipse becomes addicted to time travel and the power he has being able to change time itself, he ends up isolating himself from Lunar and the rest of his family.

Sun and Moon were made by Creator, separating made Eclipse, he made Lunar, Earth is made by Creator. Bloodmoon and KC were never made/born, instead Moon, Eclipse, and Lunar have parts of the homicide code.

8- What are the ages of the characters in your au? Or are the ageless/immortal?

Robots (for the main variant of this AU). Everyone is adults except Lunar.

9- what's the general world like? Is it futuristic, modern, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, does it take place mainly in a coffee shop or something of the sort?

Starts out in the Pizzaplex, they're just doing their jobs. Moon dies actually, Monty time travels Eclipse follows him. Eclipse keeps doing it, changing the dimension as he pleases.

[Moon never invented portal travel, or doesn't until later. So nobody knew there were other dimensions, it was kinda just a theory Moon had.]

10 - are you working on any fanworks (fanfic, askblogs, rp blogs, animation, comics, ect.) about this au? If so link them!

I'd like to make a comic-type thing for this, but it will mostly be written out and released on Wattpad and AO3.

11 - What is the worst thing(s) that happened to a character(s)? Did they have a tough life, a loss, or anything of the sort? If so what? How did it affect them?

It starts out "happy". In the way of there isn't the craziness and adventures the canon has. There's just the Pizzaplex. I'll explain later in the story how the homicide code was an important thing earlier but is no longer as much anymore. Moon never fully trusts Eclipse, especially around people.

12 - what's the best thing(s) that happened to a character(s)? How did it affect them?

Uhhhh July 16th never happened. So yay. Maybe I'll add an adult Evelien. Creator doesn't appear as bad as he is in canon.

13 - Did you take any unique design choices for any of the characters? If so describe or show them off!

I plan to draw but for now have Gacha designs (the designs can/ might change)

14 - What character(s) in the AU have been worked on and built up the most and what are they like?

Eclipse is the main character, and kind of the villain in the story. I go into Lunar a lot too.

15 - What is your least favorite character in the source material, and what's your least favorite character in your au?

Vegeta. I love him, but I hate him. He's so cringe. Probably in the AU too, because I need some chaos.

16- Is there any major personality changes you made to the characters?

Lunar mostly. He's considered a kid but he matures a lot throughout the story. He's a lot more like his dad than he should be.

17 - What is the most 'out of character' thing in your AU?

Idk I try to keep them pretty close to the original scouse material?

18 - How long have you been working on this AU?

A few days tbh xD.

19 - Is there any OC's or self-inserts? If so what are they like and how do they affect the story?

I don't use OCs in fanfiction media.

20 - What inspired this AU?

There's somewhere in an Astral Spiff video (I think in a few) where he explains when doing tasks out of order in SB you have to be careful to not skip one of Moon's segments or he jumpscares you. That's been called TVA Moon, and the inspiration for this AU.

21 - Has your AU steered off of your original plan for it at all? If so do you like how its changed? If it stayed the same what's the base idea for it exactly?

I accidentally started writing it as a Human AU variant, so throughout the story you see two parallel dimensions. Both the Eclipses will technically meet.

22 - Do you have any variations of this specific AU? If you do how do they differ amongst eachother?

Oh. Well, yeah, the human variant. And later when you're at the TVA you see hundreds of people time travelling.

23 - Does this AU bring you comfort/was it made for comfort?

No. It's very angst heavy. It starts with Moon's death, there is nothing comforting about this.

24 - Is this your only TSBS AU or do you have any other ones? If other ones is this one your favorite?

I have a bunch. I mostly write for my Main Human AU. I enjoyed working on it.

25 - What parts of the AU are you proudest of?

The reveal of TVA Moon. He just throws Eclipse on the ground and drags him through a portal. It's really funny, and the whole AU has always been about him even tho we follow Eclipse.

26 - Do you keep this AU mostly private to yourself? If so why?

No. I just have only been working on this for a few days lol.

27 - would you consider this AU to be dark, light, fluffy, or what would it fall under and why?

Dark probably. It's got angst, Eclipse destroying his life and dimension, hurting his family. Yeah :P

[firebugging]

MUTUAL APPRECIATION POST!!!!!

Hope everyone's year has been good so far, I've wanted to do this for a while, so here's my little ramble!!

I wanted to do as many people as possible but I am a COWARD and just went until I feel like I wrote too much, everything is utc :3

ALRIGHTTTTT, STARTING OFF WITH @eslover. I remember our first interaction the best tbh... (milgram tree, kotorb!!) you're the person that made really want to try and branch out to talk to other people within the milgramblr community (I still get a bit embarrassed though). You're super nice and I'm really grateful that we're mutuals! Truly the McMido acc ever !!

Next up, @tsuwmya! You were my first mutual here and I think you're super cool!! I really admire you, even if I don't interact with you a-lot, your ocgram is SOSO WELL DONE AND ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE SO CHEWYYY (it made me begin work on my own ocgram again actually). Your analysis posts are always such a pleasure to read and there is something about your art that makes me want to eat it like a sandwich /pos

@dearmahiru YOUUU. You're the person that made me like 0610 and MY GOD, DOOMED YURI!! They're one of my favourite ships now hehe. BUT ANYWAYS, ANOTHER PERSON WHO MAKES WONDERFULLY WRITTEN ANALYSIS POSTS, they're always such good reads and you can tell how well researched they are! In my head you're THE Mahiru mutual and I await the Kotoko final girl post!

LINA @linabirb. Uhmm... fun fact, when I initially got into Milgram, your edit blog was the first thing I really checked out in terms of fan work. I believe I was the anon that asked for heart shaped miko icons one time (I loved them btw. I ended up using them for one of my rentry pages WITH CREDIT OFC). You're really friendly and soso approachable 10/10 MUTUAL!!!

@narumimii YOU'RE LIKE A CELEBRITY 2 ME... so cool. I lovelove you edits and will probably spam like them later out of respect because photopea SUCKS and trying to understand it made me admire you for putting up with it's confusingness. Also... yurigram real I LOVE YOUR ART OK BYE

@rainbowghostcat @seariii @heynowisavedyouright and @roseofcards90 I WAS GONNA WRITE STUFF FOR YOU GUYS TOO BUT GOT EMBARRASSED AND DELETED IT I'M SO SORRY </3 BUTTT I THINK YOU'RE ALL SUPER COOL AND I AM SENDING YOU A MILGRAM CHIBI OF YOUR CHOICE...

@art-stuff-by-goose You're one of my irls and also not on milgramblr but you are my qp WIFE so I would like to thank your for putting up with me for all these years! I can be cringefail boyflop girlloser around you without worry and you also introduced SSOOSOOSO many cool games to me YOU WILL BE NUKED!! Overall you are very cool and I am gonna give you one of my silly dinosaurs :3

TO EVERYONE WHO ISN'T ON HERE!! Just know that even if we're not close, I really appreciate you! Everyone who I've interacted with here (no matter how much or how little) has really made my fandom experience so much more enjoyable, this is actually the first time I've really tried to interact with others in the community and it's been soso wonderful thus far. So thank you! I hope that you all have a wonderful 2024!! <3

Also uhmmm, I suck at interacting first so if you'd like to get closer, maybe send an ask? OK THAT'S ALL THIS WAS UHMMMMM VERY UHHHH THIS WAS A POST!!!!!!

[thana-topsy]

Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by @mongoose-bite ! Thanks so much, crunchy. :)

I'm tagging whoever else wants to chime in! I lose track of who all on here I should be tagging lol. Or who might actually want to participate in such a thing.

----

How many works do you have on AO3?

38

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 643,096 words Mostly written within the last 5 years!

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Breathing Water - My flagship fic for the longest time. It still holds up 4 years later! And I'm still simping for Neloth.

Halfway to the Sky - Coming in with only about 30 kudos less than BW, I'm always tickled and humbled and just so honored that so many people like this story.

The Shadow Over Solstheim - This one had the most kudos for the longest time just because it's my oldest multi-chapter fic. Baby's first foray into something more than a smutty one-shot! My writing is unpolished and my lore knowledge is amateurish at best, but it's just so full of verve.

Hollow Men - A fic I honestly didn't expect many people to read due to the subject matter, but one that's near and dear to my heart.

Invictus - The bonkers, off-the-rails sequel to Shadow Over Solstheim in which Topsy discovers TES Lore in real time as they write. I don't think I could ever write something this free again even if I wanted to. I'm too burdened by knowledge (much like Teldryn).

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

I try to respond to almost every comment, but sometimes I get stuck with Comment Paralysis and they just pile up in my inbox until I'm thoroughly overwhelmed. I read every single comment and blush and kick my feet excitedly, though.

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

Hmmm... I don't really do angsty endings. I like pleasant, contented endings, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes open-ended. But I guess Dreamers, my Hadvar/Ralof fic as it currently stands, has the angstiest ending. At least until I manage to finish the final chapter...

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Uhhhh... They're all pretty happy, from my perspective at least. Maybe Finding Mara takes home the gold for happiest ending. (Erandur takes home the gold, too -snerk-)

7. Do you write crossovers?

I have written exactly one crossover and it's the oldest fic on my AO3 (from 2014). Otherwise, they're fun to think about, but nah. Not really.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

If you count an entire series of callout posts, years of harassment, and people jumping to conclusions over a fic they never even read, then the answer is yes.

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

Yes. All kinds, but generally smut with a purpose. "Porn with plot" as they say. I write smut that zooms into the characters' heads, prys open their wants and desires and fears and insecurities. I write smut that can get a little hyper-realistic, to the point of sometimes being kind of gross. I write smut as a form of raw expression, people at their most vulnerable, literally stripped bare. It's one of my favorite things to write because it is an endless exercise in character study, in boundaries, in what it means to consent, and how the lines between who we think we are and what others perceive us to be get so easily blurred.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, they've gotten away with it.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, once! Someone asked if they could translate the first chapter of Halfway to the Sky into Russian.

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

Yes, back when I first joined the TES fandom. Two of my fandom bests at the time co-wrote a couple of stories with me. One is posted to AO3 (Ceasefire), and the other was a horny, whirlwind, feverdream of a fic that the other author and I mutually agreed we would probably never share with the greater world lol. We are still bests to this day and I often revisit that fic in awe and bafflement of our energy.

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

It's so tough to choose, honestly, but I gotta go with Neloth/Teldryn, because it just took me by surprise and spun out into something so wild and wonderful.

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

I never say never with my WIPs. If I've learned anything over the past 5 years in this fandom, it's that I'll pick an old WIP up on a whim. I do wanna get back to my Arvel the Swift WIP at some point. I also started working on a Dark Brotherhood-centric fic last year, too. And so help me Talos I am going to finish Dreamers.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. People talk in my head and I just write it down. It usually ends up sounding pretty natural. And pacing. I feel like I manage pacing pretty well and can make good calls as to when a scene is dragging or we need to skip forward in time a bit.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Wordiness. Relying too much on "feeling" words. Telling instead of showing more than I need to. Repetitive sentence structure. My goal in 2024 is to become more direct and succinct with my writing style.

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

Eh... I've done it before. I threw in a lot of Dunmeris and Ta'agra back in the day when I was first writing TES fic, but I'd say just use italics and translate what's being said. Or, alternatively, if the POV character can't understand what's being said, don't even use dialogue, just mention that it's being spoken. It's all gobbledygook to them anyways.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Yu Yu Hakusho (in 2004)

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

I'm monogamous with my fandom currently, so I'd really love to write something with Cicero, because it's been a long time coming.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

That's really hard to choose. They're all my favorite when I'm writing them. Each fic is its own little relationship for me. I don't write things unless I'm absolutely in love with what I'm writing. So they're all my favorite, in that sense.

[rocketkid300]

WIPS: straight up 1, 2, & 3

HIII OMG THANK YOU FOR THE ASK I love being able to talk about my long ass list of WIPS

Current WIP?

I got two rn! One that I'm actively updating, Ali Roma's On the Case, which is a haikyuu/kagehina fic! I wrote parts of it years ago, posted it during a academic crisis, and weirdly enough people liked it?? Now I'm trying to finish it lmao it's slow going since I'm pretty busy but I think about it constantly I want to get it done by the end of the month even if it kills me ENOUGH DILLYDALLYING.

The other one is a hella self indulgent fem itafushi fic, where Megumi is a bartender and Yuuji is instantly smitten. I love fem itafushi... I feel like there's so much good fanart for them but not enough fics so this is me being the yuriful change I want to see in the world LMAO. The title is a work in progress, I currently have it listed as Winners Love Winning (cringe ik, ik,).

2. WIP I tell 2-3 friends about:

My nobamaki green yuri AU!! Very near and dear to my heart for a lot of reasons, can't wait to give it the attention it deserves.

Another one I've mentioned to some friends is a post-canon itafushi fic that's all about Yuuji dealing with the consequences of adapting new techniques... think chronic pain/nausea issues... and of course him trying to tough it out which obviously doesn't go well. I love yuuji angst. It's a bit more in-depth than I can properly flesh out here but it's going to be my lil JJK post-canon thesis once it's written :)

3. WIP I talk about (hasn't started yet) :

Too many to count LMAO. Uhhhh lets see.

I've got an Itafushi Costco au cooking that involves Megumi and Yuuji pretending to be together/married so they can afford a Costco membership and going grocery shopping together every week as they fall in love for real.

Another (relatively new) one that I actually started fleshing out last night is an JJK Abbott elementary AU! Yuuji and Megumi as Janine and Gregory.... please see the vision. I work with kids as part of my job and attend public school so this would be really fun for me to write (and cathartic).

THANK YOUUU AGAIN FOR THE ASKS :)

[forest-hashira]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

AHHH LIN!!! ok ok uhhhh. this is cheating a little bit bc two of these are series but they really are so special to me, i can't possibly pick just one chapter/installment from either of them. anyways, here are five of my favorites, not necessarily in order (edit: why the FUCK was this so hard???):

Noble Blood - stsg x gn reader; jjk dragon rider au. by word count, this is the longest multichap fic i've ever posted. it's really niche, since it's 1.) a reader insert, 2.) a poly ship, & 3.) a high fantasy AU, but it one of my favorite things i've ever written in my life, and i've been writing (fic & original writing) for over half my life.

Transfem Gojo - trans woman gojo satoru x gn reader. i've always loved playing around with characters' genders and sexualities, which like... there's definitely some projection happening there, but we don't need to talk about that. i also didn't expect the concept to turn into a whole series, but it has, and honestly i couldn't be happier about it, especially when it brought one of my favorite people into my life ( @dr-runs-with-scissors ily) and when i see how much other people love her, even if it's a very small group. again, a very niche concept, but i love it.

Too Much - kocho shinobu x gn autistic reader; shinobu helps reader through a meltdown. this fic was a gift for red ( @redlikerozez), actually! i really like this one bc, as someone who is autistic, it fulfilled a very specific hole in the reader insert space (at least in my experience). it was also nice to write for a character i hadn't yet written for, who is also a female characters and a character that generally has less fic written about her!

Lucky Shot - outlaw geto suguru & fem reader; platonic w/ open ending; gun violence, blood/injury, minor character death. i really liked all the entries i did for riley's collab, but this one is probably my favorite of the three! it was also my first geto fic that didn't include gojo.

Day Off - maki & gn reader; you spend the day at the arcade. this fic is the only one i've ever written based on a request (for @/yuutito), but it was so much fun to write! maki deserves more fics and writing something platonic is always nice.

honorable mention goes to my selkie shoko x gn reader fic Lost & Found.

[fungalwyrms]

From @diableriedoll s post :)))

Vampire the Masquerade Questions for players/storytellers!

1.Are you a VtM player, storyteller, both or neither? If neither, how do you get your VtM fix?

-I ran my groups first game, and am now also a player! I got my fix by running it lol.

2. How and when did you get into VtM?

- I had a friend tell me he wanted to play a few years ago in college but we both knew nothing about the system, so I downloaded the V5 pdf.

3. Which edition do you play/ prefer?

-We play homebrewed V5 where we pull from old versions and add new stuff.

4. What's your favourite clan? Why?

- Tzimisce and Ravnos. The Dragons because I FUCKING LOVE NASTY BODY HORROR SHAPESHIFTER!!! Also a lot of the lore just fascinated me, especially the Different canon Tzimisce. Ravnos is definitely because the Bane and Compulsions are fun to me. I love when my characters have some kind of negative side effect. The no haven and needing to move every night is fun.

5. What's your least favourite clan? Why?

- Probably Torreador but it’s just because their Bane is kind of Boring. People can make some fun ideas with them I just find the bane kind of blasé.

6. Which clan haven't you played/ developed but would love to try?

- Banu Haqim, and Ministry.

7. What is your favourite discipline? Why?

- Vicissitude :3, I love you body horror.

8. Describe your worst Messy Critical and/ or Bestial Failure that you've played/ seen/ suffered.

- NA still as yet to happen

9. What's your favourite piece of VtM Media? eg. Games, books.. The TV series...

-….theres a tv series…. (My favorite media is the Tabletop game but also Bloodlines is fun)

10. What's been your favourite interaction throughout your VtM experiences? Can be in game, playing video games.. anything.

- inside bit but @ my friends “I lied” and Norn (tzimisce) Flesh Changing out of sight and everyone freaking out because all they could hear was flesh tearing. Only for that character, Norn, to become the biggest joke NPC (with love and hate.)

You and Your Characters

11. How many characters do you have?

- uhhhh 45 according to Pinterest. ((THERES MORE it’s 48)

12. Who was your first Character?

-First character I designed fully was a Nosferatu named Micheal who ran an underground Courier system in a city where Nos were mostly unaligned.

13. Do you have a comfort character? What makes them special to you?

- I have 3

Aodh (Ravnos) I had initially written him to die in my game but some character interactions with a player developed into a cute romance that means a lot to me and actually saved him in the game.

Killian (Nosferatu) Her story is just one I related to when I wrote it, religious trauma and things.

and Dr. Johann (Tzimisce) I made a sad old man who is everyone’s dad. Yes he’s a scary dragon but that’s besides the point.

14. Who is the (in character) oldest and the (in character) youngest? Would they like each other?

My oldest Vampire I made I think is Aura (Ravnos)

My Youngest is Killian (mentioned above)

Aura technically died when Killian was like a year old, but if they met in current somehow I think Killian would find Aura a bit Scary and Aura would probably think she was Camarilla.

15. Do any of your characters have a trait or flaw of your own? If so, what is it?

- Ha… most of them. Mostly

16. Do you have a character that was created from a dumb/ silly idea but now you can't imagine not having them?

-Oh absolutely. I think my first thoughts when I make any Tzimisce is usually a joke or half of one. Like Norn, Praying Mantis Joke turned Scary Flesh Monster.

17. You suddenly switch places with one of your characters, which one would you prefer to be?

-hmm… Eddie.. As a genderfluid I’d love to flesh change but also Scary goth girlfriend.

18. One of your characters takes your place, which one would you prefer to control of your life?

-OH GOD, Beck. I think he could manage my job and other stuff at my same level.

19. Which character is least spoken about? Speak about them now!

- hmmmmmmmm hard choice I yap a lot. Nuo is a super fun Brujah I made whose whole thing was being anal about how people communicated with the Anarchs in the game I was runnings city. She was mostly just a show off.

20. Is there something specific that influences you for your character creations?

- Other media, themes I like. Etc.

This or That

21. Tremere or Salubri?

- hard… hard, I made more Tremere but Salubri fun.

22. Ventrue or Lasombra?

- Lasombra

23. Banu Haqim or The Ministry?

- Banu Haqim

24. Caine or Lilith?

-HA… Lilith

25. Blood Sorcery or Thinblood Alchemy?��

- Honestly throwing a curve ball; neither, Koldunic Sorcery

BONUS QUESTIONS! (Not answering but leaving in for friends)

You have been given a chance to play your perfect Chronicle, let's build it! 

26. Who is your Storyteller?

27. Where and when is it set?

28. What is your sect?

29. What clan are you going for?

30. Your Coterie is yourself plus four other players. Who are they? (Can be anyone!)

@buggbears @huntersnightmare your turn.

[skyeqt]

I wrote a quine, without strings, in a calculator

Okay so I should probably clarify some things, the calculator in question (dc) is more of a "calculating tool", it is built into most linux distributions, and it is a command line tool. I should also clarify "without strings", because dc itself does support strings, and I do actually use strings, however, I do not use string literals (I'll explain that more later), and I only use strings that are 1 character long at most.

So first of all, why did I decide to do this, well, this all started when I found a neat quine for dc:

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

If you're curious about how this works, and what I turned it into, it'll be under the cut, for more technical people, you can skip or skim the first text block, after that is when it gets interesting.

So first of all, what is a quine, a quine is a computer program that outputs its own source code, this is easier said than done, the major problem is one of information, the process of executing source code normally means a lot of code, for a little output, but for a quine you want the exact same amount of code and output. First of all, let's explain dc "code" itself, and then this example. Dc uses reverse polish notation, and is stack-based and arbitrary precision. Now for the nerds reading this, you already understand this, for everybody else's benefit, let's start at the beginning, reverse polish notation means what you'd write as 1+1 normally (infix notation), would instead be written as 1 1 +, this seems weird, but for computers, makes a lot of sense, you need to tell it the numbers first, and then what you want to do with them. Arbitrary precision is quite easy to explain, this means it can handle numbers as big, or as small, or with as many decimal points as you want, it will just get slower the more complex it gets, most calculators are fixed precision, have you ever done a calculation so large you get "Infinity" out the other end? That just means it can't handle a bigger number, and wants to tell you that in an easy to understand way, big number=infinity. Now as for stack based, you can think of a stack a bit pile a pile of stuff, if you take something off, you're probably taking it off the top, and if you put something on, you're probably also putting it ontop. So here you can imagine a tower of numbers, when I write 1 1 +, what I'm actually doing is throwing 1 onto the tower, twice, and then the + symbol says "hey take 2 numbers of the top, add them, and throw the result back on", and so the stack will look like: 1 then 1, 1, then during the add it has nothing, then it has a 2. I'm going to start speeding up a bit here, most of dc works this way: you have commands that deal with the stack itself, commands that do maths, and commands that do "side things". Most* of these are 1 letter long, for example, what if I want to write the 1+1 example a little differently, I could do 1d+, this puts 1 on the stack (the pile of numbers), then duplicates it, so you have two 1s now, and then adds those, simple enough. Lets move onto something a little more complex, let's multiply, what if I take 10 10 * well I get 100 on the stack, like you may expect, but this isn't output yet, we can print it with p, and sure enough we see the 100, I can print the entire stack with f, which is just 100 too for now, I can print it slightly differently with n, I'll get into that later, or I can print with P which uhhhh "d", what happened there? Well you see d is character 100 in ASCII, what exactly ASCII is, if you don't know, don't worry, just think of it as a big list of letters, with corresponding numbers. And final piece of knowledge here will be, what is a string, well it's basically just some text, like this post! Although normally a lot shorter, and without all the fancy formatting. Now with all that out of the way, how does the quine I started with actually work?

From here it's going to get more technical, if you're lost, don't worry, it will get even more technical later :). So in dc, you make a string with [text], so if we look at the example again, pasted here for your convenience

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

it makes one long string at the start, this string goes onto the stack, and then gets duplicated, so it's on the stack twice, then it's executed as a macro. In technical language, this is just an eval really, in less technical language, it just means take that text, and treat it like more commands, so you may see, it starts with 91P, 91 is the ASCII character code for [, which then gets printed out, not coincidentally, this is the start of the program itself. Now the "n" that comes afterwards, as I said earlier, this is a special type of print, this means print without newline (P doesn't use newlines either), which means we can keep printing without having to worry about everything being on separate lines, now what is it printing? Well what's on top of the stack, oh look, it's the copy of the entire string, which once again not coincidentally, is the entire inside of the brackets, so now we've already printed out the majority of the program, now dx is thrown on the stack, which as you may notice is the ending of the program, but we won't print it yet, we'll first print 93 as a character, which is "]", and then print dx, and this completes the quine, the output is now exactly the same as the input. Now, I found this some time ago, and uncovered it again in my command history, it's interesting, sure, but you may notice it's not very... complicated, the majority of the program is just stored as a string, so it already has access to 90% of itself from the start, and just has to do some extra odd jobs to become a full quine, I wanted to make this worse. I started modifying it, doing some odd things, which I won't go into, I wanted to remove the numbers, replacing it entirely with calculations from numbers I already have access to, like the length of a string, this wasn't so hard, but then I hit on what this post is about "can I make this without using string literals"

Can I make this without using string literals?

Yes, I can! And it took a whole day. I'll start by explaining what a string literal is, but this will largely be the end of my explaining, from here it's about to get so technical and I don't want to spend all day explaining things and make this post even longer than it's already going to be. A string literal is basically just the [text] you saw earlier, it's making a string by just, writing out the string. In dc there's only 1 other way to make a string, the "a" command, which converts a number, into a 1 character string, using the number as an ASCII character code. Strings in dc are immutable, you can only print, execute, and move them around with the usual stack operations, you cannot concatenate, you cannot modify in any way, the only other things you can do with a string, is grab the first character, or count the characters, but as I just explained, our only way to make strings creates a 1 character string, which cannot be extended, so the first character is just, the entire thing, and the length is always 1, so neither of these are useful to us. So, now we understand what the restriction of no string literals really is (there are more knock on restrictions I'll bring up later), let's get into the meat of it, how I did it.

So I've just discussed the way I'll be outputting the text (this quine will need text, since all the outputting commands are text!), with the "a" command and the single character strings it produces, let's now figure out some more restrictions. So any programmers reading this are going to be horrified by what I'm about to say. If I remove string literals, dc is no longer Turing Complete, I am trying to write a quine in a language (subset) that is not Turing Complete, and can only output 1 character at a time**. You can't loop in dc, but you can recurse, with macros, which are effectively just evaling a string, you can recurse, since these still operate on the main stack, registers, arrays, etc, they can't be passed or return anything, but this doesn't matter. Now I cannot do this, because if I only have 1 character strings via "a" then I can't create a macro that does useful work, and executes something, since that would require more than 1 command in it. So I am limited to only linear execution***. Now lets get into the architecture of this quine, and finally address all these asterisks, since they're finally about to be relevant, I started with a lot of ideas for how I'd architect these, I call these very creatively by their command structure, dScax/dSax, rotate-based execution, all-at-once stack flipping, or the worst of them all, LdzRz1-RSax (this one is just an extension of rotate-based execution), I won't bother explaining these, since these are all failed ideas, although if anybody is really curious, I might explain some other time, for now, I'll focus on the one that worked, K1+dk: ; ;ax, or if you really want to try to shoehorn a name, Kdkax execution, now, anybody intimately familiar with dc, will probably be going "what the fuck are you doing", and rightly so, so now, let's finally address the asterisks, and get into what Kdkax execution actually means, and how I used it.

*"Most commands are 1 character long, but there are exceptions, S, L, s, l, :, ; and comparisons, only : and ; are relevant here, so I won't bother with the rest, although some of the previous architectures used S and L as you may have seen. : and ; are the array operations, there are 256 arrays in dc, each one named after a character, if I want to store into array "a" I will write :a, a 2 character sequence, same for loading from array "a" ;a, I'll get into exactly how these work later **I can only output 1 character at a time with p, P, and n, but f can output multiple characters, the only catch being it puts a newline between each element of the stack, and because I can only put 1 character into each stack element, it's a newline between each character for me (except for numbers). I'll get into what this means exactly later ***I can do non-linear execution, and in fact, it was required to make this work, but I can only do this via single character macros, which is, quite the restriction to put it lightly

So I feel like I've been dancing around it now, what does my quine actually look like, well, I wanted to keep things similar to the original, where I write a program, I store it, then I output it verbatim, with some cleanup work. However, I can't store the program as strings, or even characters, I instead need to store it as numbers, and the easiest way to do this, is to store it as the char codes for dc commands, so if I want to execute my 1d+ example from before, I instead store it as 49 100 43, which when you convert them back to characters, and then execute them in sequence, to do the same thing, except I can store them, which means I can output them again, without needing to re-create them, this will come in handy later. So, well how do I execute them, well, ax is the sequence that really matters here, and it's something all my architectures have in common, it converts them to a character, then executes them, in that order, not so hard, except, I'm not storing them anymore, well then if you're familiar with dc, you might come across my first idea, dScax, which, for reasons you will understand later, became dSax, this comes close to working, it does store the numbers in a register, and execute them, but this didn't really end up working so well. I think the next most important thing to discuss though, is how I'm outputting, as I mentioned earlier "f" will be my best friend, this outputs the entire stack, this is basically the whole reason this quine is possible, it's my only way of outputting more characters from the program, than the program itself takes up, since I can't loop or recurse, and f is the only character that outputs more than 1 stack element at once, it is my ticket to outputting more than I'm inputting, and thereby "catching up" with all the characters "wasted" on setup work. So now, as I explained earlier, f prints a newline between each stack element, and I can only create 1 character stack elements, and because in a quine the output must equal the input, this also means the input must equal the output. And because I just discovered an outputting quirk, this means my input must also match this quirk, if I want this to be a quine, so, my input is limited to 1 character, or 1 number, per line, since this is the layout my stack will take, and therefore will be the layout of my output. So what does this actually mean, I originally thought I couldn't use arrays at all, but, this isn't true, the array operations are multiple character sequences yes, but turns out, there actually are multiple characters per line, there's also a linefeed character. And since there is an array per ASCII character, I am simply going to be storing everything in "array linefeed"! So now, with all of this in mind, what does the program actually look like.

Let's take a really simple example, even simpler than earlier, let's simply store 1 and then print it, this seems simple enough, 1p does it fine, but, lets convert it to my format, and it's going to get quite long already, in order to prevent it getting even longer, I'll use spaces instead of newlines, just keep in mind, they're newlines in the actual program

112 49 0 k K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x K 1 + d k ; a x

now, what the fuck is going on here, first of all, I took "1p" and converted both characters into their character codes "49 112" and then flipped them backwards (dw about it), then, I run them through the Kdkax architecture. What happens is I initialise the decimal points of precision to 0, then, I increment it, put it back, but keep a copy, and then run the array store, keep in mind, this is storing in array linefeed, but what and where is it storing? Its index is the copy of the decimal points of precision I just made, and the data it's storing at that index, is whatever comes before that on the stack, which, not coincidentally, is 49, the character code for the digit "1", then I do the same process again, but this time, the decimal points of precision is 1, not 0, and the stack is 1 shorter. So now, I store 112 (the character code for p), in index 2 of array linefeed, now you may notice, the array is looking the exact same as the original program I wanted to run, but, in character code form, it is effectively storing "1p", but as numbers in an array, instead of characters in a string. I then reset the precision with 0k, and start again, this time with the load command, which loads everything back out, except, now flipped, the stack originally read 49 112, since that's the order I put them on, the top is 49, the last thing I put on, but after putting them into the array, and taking them back out, now I'm putting on 112 last instead, so now the stack reads 112 49, which happens to be the exact start of the code, this will be important later. For now, the important part is, the numbers are still in the array, taking them out just makes a copy, so, this time I take them out again, but rather than just storing them, I convert them to a character, and then execute them, 49 -> 1 -> 1 on the stack, 112 -> p -> print the stack, and I get 1 printed out with the final x. Now this may not seem very significant, but this is how everything is going to be done from here on out.

So, what do I do next? Well now's time to start on the quine itself, you may have noticed in the last example, I mentioned how at one point, the stack exactly resembles the program itself, or at least the start of it, this is hopefully suspicious to you, so now you may wonder, what if my program starts with "f" to print out the entire stack? Well, I get all the numbers back, i.e. I get the start of the file printed out, and this will happen, no matter how many numbers (commands) I include, now we're getting somewhere, so if I write fc at the start of my program (converted into character codes and then newline separated) then I include enough copies of the whole Kdkax stuff to actually store, load, and execute it, then I can execute whatever I want, and I'll get back everything except the Kdkax stuff itself, awesome! So now we come onto, how do I get back the "Kdkax stuff", and more importantly, what are my limitations executing things like this, can I just do anything?

Well, put simply, no, I cannot use multicharacter sequences, and I actually can't this time, because it's being executed as a single character macro, I don't have a newline to save me, and I just get an error back, so okay that's disappointing. This multicharacter sequence rule means I also can't input numbers bigger than 1 digit, because remember, the numbers get converted into characters and then executed, and luckily, executing a number, just means throwing it on the stack, so I'm good for single digit numbers. Then in terms of math (I know, this is a post about a calculator and only now is the maths starting), I can't do anything that produces decimals, since the digits of precision is constantly being toyed with, and I also can't use the digits of precision as a storage method either, because it's in use. I can actually use the main stack though! It's thankfully left untouched (through a lot of effort), so I'm fine on that front. Other multicharacter sequences include negative numbers, strings (so I can't cheese it, even here), and conditionals.

So it was somewhere around here, I started to rely on a python script I wrote for some of the earlier testing, and I modified it to this new Kdkax architecture when I was confident this was the way forwards. It converts each character into a character code, throws that at the start, and then throws as many copies of the store, load, and execute logic as I need to execute the entire thing afterwards. This allows me to input (mostly) normal dc into the input, just keeping in mind that any multicharacter sequences will be split up. So now I can start really going, and I'll speed up from here, effectively, what I need to do, is write a dc program, that can output "0 k", then "K 1 + d k :" repeated as many times as there are characters in my program, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ;" repeated just as many times, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ; a x" also repeated just as many times, without using strings, multicharacter sequences, loops, branches, recursion, any non-integer maths, with a newline instead of a space in every sequence above. Doable. The program starts with fc, like I mentioned, this prints out all the numbers at the start, and leaves us with a clean stack, I'll explain in detail how I output the "0 k" at the start, and leave the rest as an exercise to to the reader. I want to do this by printing the entire stack, so I want to put it on backwards, k first, k is character code 107 in decimal, and I can't input this directly, because I can't do anything other than single digit numbers, so maths it is, here I abuse the O command, which loads the output base, which is 10 by default, and I then write "OO*7+a", which is effectively character((10*10)+7) written in a more normal syntax, this creates "k" on the stack, and then I can move onto 0, for which I write "0", since a number just puts itself on the stack, no need to create it via a character code, I can just throw it on there, keep in mind this will all get converted to 79 79 42 55 43 97 48, but the python script handles this for me, and I don't need to think about it. The stack now reads "0 k" and I can output this with f, and clear the stack, I then do the same deal for "K 1 + d k :", the next "0 k", "K 1 + d k ;" but here I do something a little different, because I want to output "K 1 + d k ; a x" next (after the "0 k" again), I don't clear the stack after outputting "K 1 + d k ;", and instead, I put "a x" on the stack, and then use the rotate stack commands to "slot it into place" at the end, this is a neat trick that saves some extra effort, it makes printing the "0 k" in between more difficult, but I won't get into that. For now the important part, is the output of my program now looks something like this "(copy of input numbers) 0 k K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x" this is amazing, this would be the correct output, if my program was only 1 character long at this point, now keep in mind I'm writing non-chronologically, so my program never actually looked like this, but if you're following along at home you should have this at this point:

fcOO*7+a0fcaO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**afcOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**af0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-Rf

definitely longer than 1 character, you might think at this point, it's just a matter of spamming "f" until you get there, but unfortunately, you'll never get there, every extra "f" you add, requires an extra copy of the store, load, execute block in the program, so you're outpaced 3 to 1, so what do you do about this? You print 4 at once! I want the stack to look like "K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k :" and similarly for the other steps, and then I can spam f with greater efficiency! This was somewhat trivial for the first 2, but for the ax, because I'm using the rotate to push it at the end, I need to do this 4 times too, with different rotate widths, not too hard. And now, I can finally get there, but how many times do I spam f? Until my program is exactly 3/4s printing on repeat, which makes sense if you think about it, and below, is finally the program I ended up with

fcOO*7+a0fcO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffcOO7+a0fcO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a082-R082-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a083-R083-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a084-R084*-Rffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I say finally, but this is actually pre-python script! The final program I actually ended up with will instead be included in a reblog, because it really needs its own cut. But anyway, this was how I wrote a quine, for a calculator, without using string literals.

[piedoesnotequalpi]

2024 Fic Writer End of Year Roundup

Thanks for tagging me @somanywords! Sorry it took a minute to respond. Anyway, I am currently in a state of wanting to write but being exhausted due to post-juggling festival collapse + bad sleep, so I will talk about writing instead of actually writing! Anyway @agentsnickers @we-are-inevitable @chair-in-a-ditch if you would also like to do this feel free to join in!

How many words did you publish on AO3 in 2024?

AO3 tried to claim 207,722 words, but that felt inaccurate so I double-checked and it turns out AO3 was counting the entirety of HIWB towards 2024 so I checked the word count from the back half of HIWB in the document and I posted about 108,144 words to AO3 this year!

2. How many fics did you complete this year?

10, apparently (of wildly varying lengths)! Unfortunately the juggling AU is still not complete :(

3. How many in progress or ongoing fics did you start this year?

4, I think? I have the juggling au, the camp au, and two bachelorette one-shots that may or may not end up being finished (one is more likely than the other, but it needs some revision to make the plot more cohesive).

4. What was your favorite thing you wrote?

Excluding HIWB/the bachelorette au, probably It turns my head inside out, which features high school age UKsies Sprace realizing they're both bi! I had so much fun with UKsies Spot and leaning into the Vermont of it all.

5. What piece was your most experimental or different from your usual style?

There are a few, for various reasons: give me years (and i'll want more time) for the sole reason that it is my second-ever non-Newsies fic (outside of my cursed English class Shakespeare mashup, that is); all dressed up for someone you never see since it was my first venture into present tense in a while and was a series of fairly introspective vignettes; and Got these itchy feet for a change of scene since it was not focused on any sort of interpersonal relationship and also was outside my usual preferred genre.

6. Did any fics surprise you - either while writing or their reception?

Reception: Be a little boulder. People really liked it!

While writing: I've mentioned this before, but in the Men Tell All chapter of HIWB I was writing a scene between Spot and Race and they kind of took on minds of their own and I didn't realize until I looked at the page and realized that what I had to write next was very much not what I had planned.

7. Do you have a fic you wrote and loved that went under the radar? (This is your sign to reblog/repost it!)

(sling)shot through the heart! It was for last winter's fic exchange, and it was not necessarily a broadly appealing fic (i.e. it is focused on a less commonly written platonic relationship), but I had fun writing it and the person I was writing for really appreciated it.

8. Who is an artist that inspired you?

@agentsnickers' Clarence Plumber art lives rent-free in my head tbh. I am never not thinking about him and also about Katherine and her relationship to gender and gender presentation.

9. Who is an author that inspired you?

Uhhhh I do not know if I have a good answer for this unfortunately :(

10. Who is a new author you discovered?

I started reading 911 fic this year, so some authors there? I've been really enjoying lesbianrobin's fic second child, restless child, and I've also read so much of letmetellyouaboutmyfeels' backlog of 911 fic.

11. Did you do any collaborations? How did it start?

@echofive7567 was the artist I worked with for the Newsies mini bang, so yes! I did technically do a collaboration! Also, Finn and Alex continue to contribute brain cells to the very important cause that is me writing my silly gay fanfiction when it comes to figuring out plot points and such.

12. What accomplishments are you proudest of?

Finishing How It Will Be! It is over 150,000 words! It was my first time writing a throuple! I wrote a rarepair! I balanced a very large cast of characters! I researched locations and flight schedules and activities! I wrote some very dramatic fight scenes! And people seemed to like it!

A smaller thing I'm proud of is that I have written 1/5 of the fics in the Crutchie/Albert tag on AO3 >:)

13. What did you learn about writing or creating this year?

It's okay to write slowly. After finishing the bachelorette au at a rate of about one chapter/month (where most of the chapters were over 10,000 words), I'm pretty tired.

14. Any advice you'd like to share with new or aspiring writers?

I know a lot of my writing friends are pantsers rather than planners, so they might disagree with me, but if you're writing something that is a) multichapter and/or b) over about 10,000 words, PLAN👏YOUR👏FIC👏OUT👏 (at least a little bit). I cannot tell you how many times I've lost steam because I knew how it started and knew how it ended but could not figure out what happened in the middle. You don't have to be like me (My multichapter fics have several tables involved to keep track of chapters/separate plotlines/POVs/dates/characters/god knows what else) or the one author whose event I went to that said she uses Microsoft Excel to plan her novels, but like. figure out some of what goes on in the middle of the story?

My less controversial advice is to 1) read your dialogue out loud when you're editing, and 2) use paragraph breaks early and often.

15. What are your creative goals for 2025?

Finish the juggling au! Maybe finish the camp au! Write something set in canon era! Maybe do something for that NTMD challenge I reblogged! The world is my fancy clam with the pearl inside!