#what you can glean from this is I don't write short sentences in general

[moorishflower]

Last 10 fics meme!

Rules: Post the first lines of your last ten fics posted to AO3. (Sort by date posted.) If you have fewer than ten, post what you have. 

I was tagged by @eidetictelekinetic

01) On sexual dimorphism in C. urophasianus (Dream/Hob A/B/O) Spring arrives all at once in England: trees that had previously been tightly budded burst in riotous bloom, grass grows thick and lush and new-shoot green, and birds return to the eaves and the branches and the streets, belting out their hopeful songs.

02) Little Histories (Dream/Hob roommates for a year AU) It's early morning in August when Hob's doorbell rings, and he nearly trips over himself in his haste to get it open before it rings again; his head is pounding, the result of a bit too much Scotch and a bit too little common sense last night, though, in his defence, he is recovering from a less-than-stellar breakup.

03) The the Ends of the Earth (Xenk/Edgin pre-canon divergence) Revel's End is cold, and bleak, and dead.

04) all together now (Dream/Hob Nightmare bondage) There is, Hob reflects, a certain amount of self preservation that humans are meant to cultivate over the course of their lives.

05) the way you love yourself (Dream/Hob T4T smut) "Have you ever thought about what it'd be like?"

06) Curse of the Green Hag (Xenk/Edgin fuck or die curse) Triboar is a fine enough place to raise a daughter.

07) Wolf and I (Dream/Hob sentient wolf smut) The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

08) How Adam Loved Eve (Dream/Hob soulmate marks AU) Hob Gadling is born as the sun rises on Beltane in the year of our Lord 1355, with a full head of auburn hair and a wail that could wake the Devil, and a right arm so densely covered in curling, looping, winding script that it appears nearly black.

09) Beautiful, Strange and New (Morpheus/Hob/Daniel retired Dream fixit) Hob wakes to the sour bite of bile in his mouth, a pounding head, and the sound of his doorbell ringing.

10) Dirty Talk 2: Return of Dirty Talk (Dream/Hob dirty talk smut) They have been engaging in sexual intimacy for just under a week when Hob, his hands smoothing in reverent softness over the wings of Dream's hips, says, "I think you've got the prettiest arse I've ever seen."

And I wanna taaaag @avelera @tharkuun @softest-punk and @arialerendeair !

[autumnslance]

Hello Autumn! I love your stories! You’ve inspired me to make my OC WoL to write about. The thing is I don’t know where to start? Any tips or advice you could give that could help me get started? Thank you so much!

whoop, meant to post this one earlier and got distracted! But hey; maintenance day.

I found prompt lists are a good place to start; there's all sorts of character ones out there, some for WoL and some generic ones. Even if your answers changes as you write the character, they're handy for noodling out some ideas to get started thinking about who they are and why.

Otherwise, take a look at MSQ itself. Maybe play through it, first time or in New Game+ and take some notes; how does the character feel about this, and why? Not you the player; what about your rough idea of the character's background and personality would make them react to X event or Y person? How? Why? Some will be influenced by your own knowledge of the meta and plot, but there's a lot we can glean by seeing the story as the character experiences those events.

And then we can write about it later.

We all put a bit of ourselves into our characters, we can't really help that; they are reflections of our thoughts and experiences, even when quite different from us. A "successful" OC, In My Opinion, is one that you start to realize would do or say things you never initially intended, but it's the right course of action for them.

I've spoken on this before, that trusting our own character creation, how we determine some things about the character at the outset, even subconsciously, can and will have an impact. And sometimes we just have to trust ourselves and see where that unexpected thread leads.

*stares down thousands of words, hundreds of screenshots, and a handful of art commissions, over 5 years for a ship she never meant to write to begin with*

And it's not set in stone! You might change something, find some things work better later after all, retcon a few things, follow a random thread only to find it doesn't work out...and that's OK. Don't be afraid to experiment. This is all for fun!

Also don't try to determine every detail at the beginning; it's a way to box yourself in, or an excuse to not get started in the first place. I knew on chargen that Aeryn's bio dad was a Coerthan farmer who died in a lead-up attack to Ferndale; I didn't know anything else, not even his name, for years, until a random idea from a random prompts got me. I sat on it for a while, and then eventually followed the thread into the Avengret storyline. We also didn't have Thavnair until EW, so I left a lot of things about Aeryn's family vague and purposefully off to the side of the "mainland Thavnair culture" to give myself some breathing room, and it's worked out decently.

The game's always updating, changing, and evolving; give yourself the same space the game writers do themselves, and determine if new info makes you want to retcon something or work your own lore in alongside updates; flexibility is key, and characters can be wrong, misinformed, lying, or altered by events and people they meet.

Anyway; these are a few things I work with. I think some of the earliest things in my blog you'll find for any of my characters are some short prompt responses before I started writing and posting stories involving them (and some of those answers have changed over time as I grew more certain of who they were--or they changed!). I have notes from ShB and EW MSQ--some just sentence fragments, some short scene or dialogue ideas--to get how Aeryn reacted to MSQ events and interacting with people. Most of them never end up in stories, but they're important as they let me noodle out how to write about those events.

Hope this helps! And here's to seeing your WoL join the fray. 😘