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sapphicscholar · 4 years ago

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2020 Fic Year-in-Review!

It has been ... a year (both for global/national and personal reasons). I did less writing than I had planned to. Didn’t finish those WIPs like I promised myself I would. But! I worked my butt off to be there 110% for my students, and I still managed to write words and new fics! (According to AO3, I came in just under 200,000 words written/posted this year, which is more than I expected and a nice little boost.)

With the whole “5 fics you’re proudest of” end-of-year meme going around (thanks for the heads up about it @chainofclovers!) and having been tagged at some point in a fic-in-review thing whose questions I’ve lost, I want to focus on being happy with some of the things I did! So, without further ado, 5 fics in chronological order of posting that I’m proud of!

1. Swipe Right for Soulmates - Supercat, T

In general, I really dislike soulmate AUs, and that’s putting it lightly. I’ve read a handful I adore; I’ve tried to write through my issues with the trope a few times; and this is perhaps my favorite of my attempts at playing with it! I got to do a few fun things with genre in this rival-CEO fic and write Cat and Kara into a rivals-to-friends-to-lovers arc, which I don’t think we get too often with this pairing. Anyway, it was fun and felt different, and it still makes me smile!

2. Your fav is in fandom series - one Supercat, M; one Sanvers, T

These two one-shots are meant as a kind of cracky love letter to fandom and the kinds of relational practices it can foster at its best. It came to be in the early weeks of the pandemic and lockdown in the US when, utterly unable to sleep one night (all the nights?!?), I turned to my wife at 1am and asked: “So...which one of the Supergirl characters would be the fandom asshole?” Originally there was meant to be a third fic feat. Lucy/Alura (Majorly Judging You) with my personal headcanon that Lucy organizes the big annual events like fic exchanges and ship weeks and that Alura takes the whole “thank your mods!” A/Ns very seriously, messaging Lucy each and every day of an event with personalized thank you notes that lead to a friendship, then more.

3. If you give an alien a syllabus... - General Danvers, G

Another love letter--this time to community colleges and the wonderful people who staff and attend them. This fic felt vital when I was writing it (there was a lot of stuff going on at my own university and many across the country that I was putting my job on the line to fight), and it was meant as a gift for a close friend who teaches at a local community college at a time when we couldn’t see each other in person. Even though I’ve only ever written a couple General Danvers fics, I quite enjoy fics about them (they were some of the earliest ones I ever read in the Supergirl tag!), and it’s always a lovely fandom to visit!

4. you showed me colors you know i can’t see with anyone else - Supercat, E

Despite being the only angsty thing I’ve written in quarantine when most of my fics have trended toward the cracky or the weird, I actually really enjoyed this smutty, feelings-heavy, years-later/post-breakup Supercat fic! I know that fic often shows some of the best of what life and love can be (which is awesome, even if I’m partial to messy characters who don’t do well with or think of themselves as deserving or wanting a neat happily ever after trajectory), but this felt a little gritty in ways that I personally like. It’s the aftermath of two complicated women coming together and shattering, showcasing all the messy emotions that remain when they start the process of picking those pieces back up and finding a new way to put them back together. Hilariously, I went into it envisioning something with a similar premise but lighter--essentially what would be a part 2 to this fic if I ever wrote it. It was meant to be about Cat and Kara after this initial moment of coming back together for the first time in years, seeing them sneak around almost like teenagers as they tried to keep this precious thing to themselves while they rekindled it and figured out what it could be away from the judgment of everyone who was there when they fell apart the first time.

5. Writing Retreats Are For Lovers - Supercat, M

Another AU! Well, Cat’s pretty much canon Cat, but featuring ABD PhD candidate Kara who meets her at a writing retreat as she tries to get the dissertation written and Cat finally gets a writing coach to help her through the worst case of writers’ block she’s had in years. It hit close to the heart and was very, very fun to write! I always have fun getting to bring characters into new settings to see what about them is integral to who they are and what is context-dependent, much like I’m intrigued by the different (and very similar!) ways relationship dynamics play out, especially early on, when the characters are in new settings and/or roles.

Honorable Mention: Queen of All Mediums - Supecat, G

It’s weird and quirky and a first foray into writing a historical AU based on a period I know so much--like, too much--about to start figuring out how to strike that balance between “what do people need to know for your fic?” vs. “what do you want people to know but honestly it won’t hurt their experience of the story if they don’t?” I have a very long nineteenth-century authors period piece all outlined, which I’ve debated trying to make original fiction or a Supercat fic. I don’t know where it’ll go, if anywhere, but it was nice getting to dip my toes into the historical romance genre here, even if it’s just a tiny little one-shot about spiritualism with a sprinkling of nineteenth-century class and gender politics in the US.

Theres a lot I could say about trends in my fic writing this year (so little angst! largely AU! no new WIPs!), but I won’t bore you all with my theories about why x or why not y. I wasn’t surprised by most of what I found looking through what I wrote, though I was shocked to find that I wrote only Supergirl pairings this year--a variety of pairings (only some of which appear on this list), but still. My writing and reading didn’t match up at all, and my random fic outlines and drafty drafts also include a much broader variety (some seeds of what was, at one point, to become a multi-chapter Grace/Frankie fic that I think I’ll need to ease into with a couple one-shots; several fully sketched out SwanQueen fics from binge-watching the whole series for the first time during the pandemic and having SO MANY thoughts about both the show’s promising notes and its many disappointments, as well as the fandom’s fabulous works; and a handful of notes about Dead to Me that are honestly closer to meta than fics proper anyway).

Honestly I’d love to see other people doing this! Consider yourself tagged, and feel free to tag me in your responses--I’d love to hear all about what writing you’re proud of!

#fic year in review #fanfic #fic meta #personal post #i have so many more thoughts #don't give an academic an open text box ever

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sheliesshattered · 5 years ago

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Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top: @claraaoswald, @ambitious-witch, @someillplanetreigns, and @junoinferno, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one.

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it.

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories.

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him:

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later.

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!”

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt.

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point.

Eventually, but not yet.

#long post #about me #my writing #like seriously all of it #fanfiction #fandom life #AO3 #Home The Long Way 'Round #For As Long As We Get #All Hands #Truth Universally Acknowledged #et al #if you read that chapter let me know what you think!#❤️

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thewhiterabbit42 · 6 years ago

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WIP Tournament

Week 2 - Roommates vs Sex Pollen

Roommates [Gabriel x reader]: You start a new chapter of your life far from home where you don’t know anyone, including the person you’re sharing an apartment with. It isn’t long before you start to notice strange things lurking in the shadows and about him. Is your roommate really as great as he seems? Or is there something he’s hiding?

Sex Pollen [Debriel x OFC]: Not your average sex pollen fic.

Below the cut are 300-500 ~800-1200 words from the beginning of each WIP and tags that currently apply to the story as a whole. Choose which one you want to see continued by:

Sending an Ask (anon’s allowed)

Leaving a comment on this post or in the body/tags of reblogs

Voting is open until 6/14. Thanks in advance to everyone who does!

Roommates

Section warning: a swear, maybe?

General story tags: long fic, canon divergent, normal reader, nurse!reader, dark fic, stalking, more tags to come as story develops

You wake up to what can only be described as sheer deliciousness; a smorgasbord of smells that remind you of the big breakfasts your mom used to make on Sundays when you were younger. It fills you with an aching warmth that’s bittersweet. You’re so far away from your family, from everything you’ve ever known, and as much as you miss them and everything familiar, a reminder of it all fills you with comfort.

You have a feeling that’s exactly why your place smells like a brunch buffet.

Everyone was against you moving away, let alone moving in with a stranger. A man no less, and every piece of advice you received had nothing to do with starting a new life, but protecting yourself in your own apartment, like he was guaranteed to be some monster.

Yet, Gabriel has been nothing but a godsend.

He’s the one you call when you get held over at work (which is far more nights than it isn’t), when there’s no way you’ll make it home without falling asleep at the wheel.

He’s the one who handled everything so you could just get some sleep when the hospital messed up your parking sticker, your car got towed, and you walked out to find it gone after a twenty-four hour shift.

He’s even walked you home from the bar at two in the morning when you were worried about someone following, you even though he had to be to work in four hours.

He’s kind. Funny. He listens, better than some of your friends you’ve known for years. He runs a little hot and cold sometimes, but it’s easy to tell when he’s in a mood, and he usually keeps to himself when he’s that way. Mostly though, he’s thoughtful, so much so you almost don’t know what to do with him.

It doesn’t surprise you he’s noticed that Sundays are the hardest for you, or that he wants to do do something about it. What does, is you have no recollection of ever telling him why.

You give yourself a once over in the mirror and make a face. He’s certainly seen you worse, but it’s not lost on how you handsome he is, and how self-conscious you feel when you look washed out with some of yesterday’s makeup still shadowing your eyes.

You’re thankful you each have your own bathroom attached to your rooms so he has no idea what you really look like when you first wake up. You do a quick wash of your face and what you can with your hair, which usually means throwing it up and hoping it looks more fashionably messy than hobo chic.

What you find when you’re finally ready to emerge throws you for a loop.

If he were your boyfriend, you would be walking into a scene straight out of the movies. He’s got your red checkered apron on, (the one with the rooster on the front your brother gave you for being such a dick about how to cook a pie, because his always turn out doughy in the center and you refuse to eat them until he learns how to actually make one), and to top it all off, your roommate is humming happily to himself as he samples something from the stove.

The spread already laid out on the kitchen table is out of this world. There’s a little bit of everything from pancakes to fresh fruit, bacon, sausage, eggs, waffles, and what you suspect is a bowl of fresh, homemade whip cream.

You let out a low whistle of appreciation. “Somebody’s been busy.”

He turns, giving you a dazzling smile. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty. I didn’t expect you up for at least another hour.”

It is a little early for you considering you’re coming off back to back fifteen hour shifts, but if this were a fairy tale, you could honestly say true love’s kiss had nothing on a breakfast like this. There’s hashbrowns on the stove you didn’t even see, and what looks like a raspberry sauce simmering away.

The smell fully hits you now that you’re right there, and you’re pretty sure it’s amazing enough to wake the dead.

“Pull up a chair. Let me get you some coffee,” he offers, gesturing to your normal spot at the table.

“I can get it my–”

He cuts you off, wooden spoon leveled at you in warning. “Sit. You’ve been on your feet all weekend.”

You hesitate. You normally fight him on these things, but there’s a persistent ache that has yet to leave after an unruly old woman with dementia accused you of being the harlot who stole her husband right before trying to use her cane to take you out at the knees. Literally.

He moves toward the coffee pot, gesturing at your chair once again. “I mean it. You spend most Fridays and Saturdays helping people, while the rest of the world is out partying. Let someone return the favor.”

You’re not certain you deserve that much credit for being an ER nurse, but it’s nice to acknowledged.

You smile, shyness driving your silence as you finally take a seat.

You don’t have to remind him how you take your coffee. He knows, just as he’s absorbed what seems like a hundred other little things about you.

You can’t help but feel guilty. You don’t know much about him beyond he’s a janitor at a local college, his room looks like several decades vomited all over it at the same time, and he must roll out of bed looking perfect because never once have you caught him looking less than amazing.

It’s not that you haven’t tried. He just manages to maintain that air if mystery by talking his way out of everything.

“What are we going to do with all this food?” You wonder. You rarely see him eat unless you’re both sitting down to a meal together, and there’s more than enough there to last you for over a week.

“Figured I’d just take whatever we didn’t want to the homeless camp across town,” he says, setting a full mug down in front you.

Everyone told you that you’d get murdered in your sleep, and yet here you were, having breakfast with a freaking saint.

He must catch the way you shake your head, his brow quirking up. “What.”

Incredulity overtakes your features as you begin to fill the plate in front of you. "You’re unreal, you know that?“

His eyes crinkle in the corner with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “What are you on about?”

As if he doesn’t know.

His hands land on his hips as he waits for your answer.

Someone like him has to know, right?

“You’re like, I dunno, an actual angel?”

A bark of laughter escapes his lips. “Oh, honey, angels are boring. Who wants to be one of those?”

His hand lands on the back of your chair as he leans over your shoulder, stealing a piece of fruit off your plate as if to prove a point. Something warm and sweet with a hint of spice undercuts the aroma of the food surrounding you. It’s him, and the rest of your senses begin to prickle with awareness with how close he is.

Just as suddenly as he’s there, he straightens up, popping his bounty in his mouth. “Besides, if you really knew me, that is the last thing you’d call me.”

Sex Pollen

Section warning: threats of violence

General story tags: multi-chapter fic / potential series, canon divergent, dark fic, non con, dub con, smut, all the sex (oral, anal, vaginal), more to come as story develops

She presses her face against cold concrete, leaning closer to inspect the brightly glowing spellwork in front of her. The color shifts the closer she is to it, morphing into a warm golden glow that casts shadows across her face and brightens the abandoned warehouse.

Interesting.

Every field has their experts, and even though there’s technically no career path for this, she is the one hunters and scholars alike will call when they encounter anything unusual or ancient. It’s a point of pride, knowing all her hard work speaks for itself.

What she’s looking at, however, rivals anything she’s seen, save Enochian. There’s an immense power here, layers upon layers of it, woven together so finely she can’t tease it apart on sight alone. It makes Rowena’s spells look like child’s play, and has to predate most civilizations she’s aware of, which likely means two things.

One, whoever laid this trap knew what they were doing.

Two, they likely know a hell of a lot more than she does.

She stares, entranced as the light flickers, shifting hues once more. She absorbs every detail about it, wracking her brain to recognize the ancient language that fades in and out of sight.

“The craftsmanship on this is exquisite,” she marvels, the intricacy of it nearly breathtaking.

“I’ve got something exquisite for you right here.”

The remark pulls her out of her reverie, her head tilting up as a familiar set of boots moves into the side of her vision.

“Why don’t you come a little closer and I’ll show you…”

She knows she should move, but she doesn’t, opting to inch her hand closer to the edge instead. The raw energy prickles across her skin sharply, and she almost snatches it back. It feels angry, like there’s a thousand tiny hornets trying to sting her, but can’t quite get close enough to fully do it.

“Nessa.”

She can tell Sam doesn’t like her being that close, and she doesn’t blame him. She knows she has a tendency to push it, but she’s also well aware of how seconds can mean everything in situations like this.

She inhales, bolstering her resolve, fingers stretching out a little further, knowing if she could just get past the edge of it she might –

There’s a sudden movement in front of her a split second before Sam grabs beneath her arms, hauling her away from the circle and his brother who’s now crouched inches from where she lay.

The spell work cuts back to a deep red, and the smile Dean wears looks that much more menacing.

“What’s the matter, Sammy? Afraid she’ll have fun for once?” There’s a burst of sanguine in the darks of his eyes that matches the rhythm of the light flickering at his feet. "Or are you just trying to keep her to yourself?“

It’s a strange remark to make. She and Sam are friendly, perhaps even friends, but anyone with eyes and half a brain could see her relationship with that Winchester is the epitome of platonic.

Dean clucks his tongue. “It’s not nice to hold out on me, Sammy. We’re family.”

Sam helps her to her feet, and they angle their body away from Dean, trying to ignore him.

“I just needed a few more seconds,” she mutters. She tries not to sound irritable, but she can’t shake the feeling if she had the chance to touch it, she’d have that much more information to work with.

The look on his face suggests he is highly unimpressed by that statement. “It’s always a few more seconds with you.”

He has her there, but he’s usually not the huffy one when it comes to her lack of self-preservation. She imagines someone has to be, though, considering the usual suspects aren’t themselves enough to care about these things… possibly anything.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get that close again.”

She recognizes what he’s saying is sound advice. She also proceeds to stuff it into the part of her brain that also knows her life would be so much easier if she just did stuff like keep a running grocery list as things ran out or found a nice, normal man to settle down with.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, eyes drifting back to the circle as Dean smoothly stands up. The movement is graceful as it is intimidating, the sheer confidence pouring off him sending a shiver down her spine.

“I mean it.” Sam rarely snaps, and the severity beneath his words has her refocusing on him.

Ness can see it in his face that he’s nervous, really nervous, and she doesn’t blame him. Not only is this Dean intense, but whatever they’re dealing with is strong enough to also overpower an archangel.

“C'mon, Sammikins, we’ll take real good care of her,” Gabriel slinks out from behind Dean, drifting back into view, and his stare rakes over her in ways she can feel before devouring Sam. "Or you, if you prefer.“

“He’s all yours,” Dean passes, eyes never straying from her.

“Hear that? You’re all mine, big boy.”

Gabriel winks.

Sam makes a face.

She simply wonders what kind of hunger it is that’s overtaken their consciousness.

By the way Dean licks his lips, continuing to stare like Ness might be the last tasty morsel in existence, she might have an idea.

Which leads to a completely different one.

"Walk up to the circle ”

Sam stares at her. Hard. Likely trying to decide if she really said what he thinks she did, or if there’s possibly something crazy in his ear. "Excuse me?“

“What’sa matter, Sammy? Scared?” Dean taunts. “You should be. I may not have a hammer this time, but who’s to say I need a weapon to bash your head in.”

Well that answers that question.

Sam comes to the same conclusion a moment later. “That’s… not just a lust spell, is it.”

“That’s a hard no,” she drawls

Roommates or Sex Pollen? Send an ask and let me know!

#wip tournament: round 2 #week 2 #roommates vs sex pollen

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thisweekingundamwing · 7 years ago

Text

TWIGW May 13-19

Hello Amazing Fandom!

Thanks to everyone who submitted something, and thanks to everyone who keeps contributing and helping our tiny fandom truck along!

Here’s the round up for this week - if we missed anything, drop us a line! And don’t forget to leave the creators some love!

XOXO

Mod CB

Fanfiction:

A Little Piece of Gundam Wing

The archive is being ported to AO3! Check it out!

ammiehawk

What Do You Say?

On the road with a new companion after the events in St. Louis, what will Sam and Dean do with a supposed civilian now traveling with them? Will Sam and Dean be able to keep their secrets? Or will secrets between the brothers break them apart?

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Trowa Barton, 1x5

Warnings: Supernatural crossover, slash, supernatural elements

@anaranesindanarie

Death Unspeaking - Final Chapter!

What happens when a Gundam Pilot is mute? Will the other Pilots look down at him because of it? Will he overcome the odds or will the odds overcome him?

Pairings: 2x3

Warnings: Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Underage, Mute!Duo, Gundams, Eventual Canon Divergence, Mobile Suits, Fighting, Eventual Yaoi, AU, Sign Language, just pure awesomeness, Blowing Shit Up, blowing ships up, Circus

@claraxbarton and @kangofu-cb

Bad Company

"The only hell and the only paradise are the ones we build ourselves." - Unknown

Years after the wars, Preventers has decided to tackle one of the most powerful and oldest of all the Terran crime syndicates. Embedded dangerously deep in an undercover operation targeting the violent and bloodthirsty Sinaloa Cartel, Trowa Barton is pushed beyond even his flexible morals - and when his new "partner" arrives in the very unexpected and unwelcome form of Duo Maxwell, the one person he'd been trying to protect at all costs, both men must deal with the realization that preserving peace for humanity is turning into a bloodsport. What follows is race against time to uncover the evidence they need to bring Sinaloa, and its beautiful but deadly leaders, down - all while keeping each other alive in the process

Pairings: 2x3, 1x4

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Human Trafficking, Gang Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Moral Dilemmas

@duointherain

Perfection

Heero is a very good Preventer agent. Duo used to be his partner. Now he's stuck with Burt Gummer. If he could find Duo, he'd love to confess his love. Life is not fair. Then, in order to get Burt to resign from Preventers, Heero, Wufei, Quatre, and Trowa agree to an easy mission of delivering supplies to Perfection National Monument. There they find Duo. Things are going to get grabby, and not just with the graboids!

Pairings: 1x2, 3x4

Warnings: none

Terminal Velocity

Duo comes looking for Heero after a long absence.. there is make-up sex. Well, then they have the whole effort of learning to live together like normal people. Mistakes will happen.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: none

@gundamwing-ellesmith

Heero's Inheritance

A headcanon/drabble: Heero has often wondered what it might be like to have something to hold onto...

Pairings: none

Warnings: headcanon-ish, illustrated

KageKagi

The Heir of House Black

Harry attends Sirius's will reading and learns that there was more to the black family than anyone expected,

Pairings: 2x4, Drarry, Ron x Hermione, 1x2

Warnings: none

Lithle

Salt

Three months after the events of Like Oxygen, Duo shows up on Wufei's doorstep. As familiar, dangerous patterns assert themselves, Wufei's left wondering if there is, or could be, anything between them beyond self-destructive desire.

Pairings: 2x5, 1xR

Warnings: Unhealthy Relationships, Post War Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, no EW, Post-War, Explicit Language, Sex, Bad Decisions, POV Chang Wufei, everyone is broken, But Maybe Trying to Get Better?

LittleMouse

WarCraft

Alternate Fantasy World - A world where people have ‘Talents’ that allow them to control certain elements. Different Talents can ‘Join’ to become a specific entity - some can heal, some can repair damage to land and buildings, some are weapons. The Talents you ‘Join’ with are called your Others. The perfect Joining is of five separate Talents. One lonely Fire Talent far to the North has given up waiting for his Others - good thing they haven’t stopped looking for him.

Pairings: none

Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, Alternate Universe, Fantasy, Non-con touching

luvsanime02

Identifying the Problem

Wufei has a problem. The other guys want to help, once they can figure out what the problem actually is.

Pairings: None

Warnings: None

A Cocktail Friday submission

Maldoror

The Source of All Things

Center, a planet where magic and technology blend. Or more accurately, fight tooth and nail. A planet of Sources, holes in our boring dimension letting through arcane power, chaos and pseudo-deities. In this hot-house of myths and very real dangers, Trowa and Quatre find a mysterious man at the end of a shamanic voyage. Portents suggest this Heero Yuy is crucial to Center’s survival. He’s important enough to have some interesting enemies after him, at any rate: a devious killer and thief called ‘Shinigami’, and a very irate Dragon. Beyond them looms an even greater threat. Indeed, the greatest of them all.

Pairings: 3x4, 2x5, 1x2x5

Warnings: alternative universe, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Plot Twists, fairly graphic depiction of sex, Mild description of self-harm, Mathematical Magic, weird science, crones - Freeform, Magic and Technologyl brawling and eventually screwing, Eventual Threesome, Kinda, Insanity of arcane origin, The universe is a pile of marbles and other dubious allegories

Two Halves

The two kingdoms of Sanq and Lin were at war for years; a conflagration involving magic, armies and political murder. The conflict left both nations devastated and strewn with refugees. The king of Sanq finds his infant son, lost at birth, among the death and the ruin, a miracle he barely dared to hope for. But there isn't just one boy, there are two, clinging together like two halves of a whole that cannot be separated. Decades later, the truth behind that second child’s existence will put a hole in the world, or possibly save it.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Fantasy AU, medieval setting with magic, starts with our heroes as children, Cousin Incest, sort of, eventually, being royalty this is in fact the norm and rather expected of them, Canon-Typical Violence

Shinigamiinochi

A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)

Duo Maxwell has been stuck his entire life. With an abusive father, a mother who doesn't even realize he exists, severely bullied at school, and hiding his sexuality, he has given up all hope for a better life. When he falls in love with his bully's boyfriend, he needs to make a choice about his future. Will he continue to let himself be abused or will he fight back?

Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, 2x3, 1xR

Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Noncon, Underage, Child Abuse, Bullying, Angst, Suicide, Incest, Alternate Universe

@stoic-rose (Alithea)

Lose By Winning

Wufei goes in for an interview. Short drabble takes place after Endless Waltz. Inspired by @lbro009

Pairings: none

Warnings: none

Sylvieforaday

Neighbors

A/U - Meilan is learning, not everything happens the way you thought it would. Sometimes you fall for the perfect girl next door when she gets knocked off her pedestal.

Pairings: RxM

Warnings: none

white_fox

Life Is A Highway

On an impulsive plan to travel from California to New York City to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Heero Yuy did not plan to pick up a hitchhiker in nowhere Texas. Faced with some setbacks and a growing attraction to his passenger, Heero goes through more challenges than he planned on facing.

Pairings: 1x2, 1xR

Warnings: light slash, Fluff, Road Trips, Dubious Morality

Snippets:

@lifeaftermeteor

The Vote, pt 1

The Vote, pt 2

@remsyk-blog

Feel good fluff

@terrablaze514

Teaser Tuesday - Secret Magic AU, Rated M; I’ve pulled this scene out just to play with the pair itself, for a late 2x5x2 (Duo/Wufei) moment. It is a combination of silly, dark, and h/c.

@vegalume

From Collide, a 13x1

Black Adder quote prompt

WIP Wednesday

Photo Edits/Manipulations

@gundamwing-ellesmith

What if Gundam Wing was real? - Chang Wufei’s office ft. Sally

Headcanons / Meta / Discussions:

@disturbed02girl

Postcard 11

@lbro009

Characterizations by Japanese vs non-Japanese fans

@lifeaftermeteor

Quatre’s (not)sleeping habits

@terrablaze514

HeadCanon Time (Secret Magic AU): The G-Boys encounter problems behind the scenes + how Quatre and Wufei reconnected.

@whenwillmailcome

Chang Wufei - MemeLord

Multiple Contributors

Q&A with Gundam Wing producer Hideyuki Tomioka and fans

Wufei and stringed instruments

Why was Zechs kept alive?

Fanart:

@chronicwhimsy

Duo and Wufei for Mermay

@duointherain

Duo

@lemontrash

Duo chilling

@zibelinbelt

Gundam Wing minifanbook about Gundam Wing

Calendar Events:

Cocktail Friday

https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/

A new prompt every Monday!

Submissions should be posted Fridays between 3 and 5pm EST, and tagged with @gwcocktailfriday, and are included in the This Week roundup on Sundays.

Interview with a Creator by @remsyk-blog @interview-with-a-creator

Remsyk has created an online interview for fandom creators to fill out and then she features one each week so that everyone in the fandom can learn a bit about each other.

If you haven’t filled out her interview, go! do! now!

This week’s featured creator is @gwepisode50 check their interview out here!

30 Day Gundam Wing Challenge

Daily questions about Gundam Wing. Please tag your participation posts with @gundamwing30daychallenge for them to be recognized.

Challenge questions and more information can be found here

Pick and choose which questions you wish to answer (or tackle them all!). The point of this challenge is to stimulate fandom participation and to promote conversation and interaction between all fans!

Submission Box Open for Diamond in the Stars (OT5) Challenge

Challenge information can be found here

Submissions due September 23, 2018

Current posts:

@terrablaze514

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 8, Day 9, Day 11, Day 12, Day 15, Day 17, Day 19

@lbro009

Day 15

Day 18

@chemicalcrush

Day 13

Day 15

Day 17

@lifeaftermeteor

Day 18

#This week in Gundam Wing #twigw #may 13 - 19 #mod cb

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