#wip: nano 2020

[k--havok]

📝"what stages are you currently in your WIPs?" for the ask game :D

Hello! Thank you for the ask! I'll go ahead and do all my WIPs that at least have some sort of scrap laying around, even if they are on hiatus or whatever!

Soft Touches, Godless Hands Book I - First Draft, am editing

Waking into Divinity Book I - First Draft, am writing

Waking into Divinity Book II - Outline

The Tales of Ozoarth, Book I - Outline, some writing

Rane & Korzan's Fantastical Adventures - First Draft, am writing, currently on hiatus as me and my partner don't have the time to work on it together.

The Ghost & The Machine - Outline

Mirroring Shadows - First Draft NaNo novel, currently on hiatus since I changed a lot of the world building and reworked the plot so I may go back and rewrite chunks of it.

Osiris' Trials - First Draft, first chapters currently posted to AO3 here. I've been discovery writing this so there isn't too much of an outline. Will probably eventually get around to it tho.

A Colloquy between Gods - First Draft NaNo novel, am writing, currently on hiatus just because I got a bit bored of writing it and wanted to work on other things. I wrote this during the stay-in-place orders of 2020 to give myself something to do.

The Cadence of Me and You - Outline. Will eventually get back around to it when the plot bunny strikes me again.

[anisaanisa]

🚀 20 Questions 🚀

Tag game tag game! Thank you @mayarab, your timing is impeccible, for nano is right round the corner (eek!) 🤸‍♀️

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

27!

2. What’s your total AO3 words count?

197,644!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Inuyasha and the effervescent No Fandom!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. One Word 2. Homecoming 3. Evermore 4. Members Only 5. Two for the Show

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

Yes! Though sporadic, I do try (operative) and respond to all of them. It takes a certain set of variables for me to aquire the spoons, but I get there eventually. As for the why, I just like to say thanks :3

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hm. You caught me. I am a compulsive happy ending built writer.

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

Probably One Word? It's the most picket-fenced ending, at the very least.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No. Inuyasha is a drop in the fanfiction ocean, and hate in this realm tends to be an echo, rather than a rabble.

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

I do! All kinds! Sex positivity is nifty my dudes!

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

I do not. Never say never though!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! The lovely @minakok translated One Word into Spanish, and I am eternally grateful for her and those who have had a chance to read it 😭

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Technically, yes! I joined in on an AU art challenge that resulted in InuKag as a Reylo role-reversal piece. One thang led to another and before you know it, @boflicker and I went from brainworming to actualising that into a fic, Irredeemable. I've done a fair few art collabs, but this one is extra special to me; not only is Bo an excellent writer, but a stellar collaborater, and we are very often haunted by this story and it's characters while they're out there in the big wild kicking ass and taking names (love you BoBo) :3

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Gosh. This one is so hard. How ever shall I pick? (deadpan, unserious)

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

...lower your voice. I have every intention of finishing everything ever, prommy. Sharing is another question though :3

16. What are your writing strengths?

Characters (question mark) and The Hook(tm), possibly.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Momentum and retaining motivation via associated annoyances.

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

I mean. Yeah, why not? If it calls for it, it calls for it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Inuyasha! Dated November 2020!

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

One that I haven't posted 🦇

Weeheeeee this was a good finger stretch. I'm gonna tag @inussunflower @sin-and-punishment @moonnue @iam-jacks-redacted-information and anyone else that wants to join! ψ(｀∇´)ψ

[radiowrites]

2023 Writer Year-In-Review

Hi, I’m RaisedonRadio & FortressofmyPast on AO3 and FF.net. This is an on-going tradition since 2015. Check out my past year-end posts: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Tagging a few, but if you come across this, consider it an open tag! You’re welcome to tag me back, I’d love to read it!

@writercorianarose @shesailsships @talesofsorrowandofruin @azdesertwillow @goneahead @littlemissfandomworld @dreams-of-kalopsia @halleyuhm

Big change for me compared to last year—in addition to NaNoWriMo, I actually posted fanfics! I tried to add some new questions to this year’s edition, I hope they might even move out of my tiny circle.

Total Word Counts: 51,920 for 2023 NaNoWriMo 15,570 on 2022 NaNoWriMo project 19,193 for July 2023 Camp NaNoWriMo (mostly fanfics) 28,310 in published fanfics (this number is overlapping with camp nano, I wasn’t paying attention, so I’m not going to add everything together)

Total Number Of Completed Works: 10 Total Number of WIPS worked on this year: 10 or so How Many WIPs do you still have: 23

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote way more than expected! I seriously didn’t think I would do NaNoWriMo again. And I published ten fics! That’s ten more than last year!

Did you take any writing risks this year? The NaNoWriMo project was definitely a risk for me. I basically had an idea and no outline. It was quite a challenge to my perfectionism issues—I had to basically never reread anything and just keep going, fully aware that I can better foreshadow the ideas that came up halfway through in the next rewrite.

Biggest Surprise: I wrote for NaNoWriMo again, which I was pretty sure wouldn't happen lol, and hit the word count, all through discovery writing, and having very little idea where I was going with it.

Biggest Disappointment: I dropped that above mentioned project the moment November ended! I can tell it has potential, hidden in there. I will definitely return to it.

Do you have any writing goals for the new year? I’d love to at least finish the first draft of the 2023 NaNoWriMo project, bringing it to a tentative end so I can actually reread it and go from there. And keep writing fanfic, and maybe even work on the 2022 nanowrimo project…

Fanfiction Questions Below! (if you don’t write fanfiction feel free to skip or rework the questions for your original works.)

Fandoms I’ve written in this year: I wrote fics for 7 different fandoms! For the following kdramas: Island, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Memorist, Royal Secret Agent, W: Two Worlds, May I Help You?, and a little Korean Web drama called Handmade Love.

Your most popular story of the year? That would be Besides You with 327 hits and 47 kudos. However Superhero got the most comment interaction with 4!

The story that was easiest/or most fun to write: I Think He Knows was fun to write! I do just love brooding with a heart of gold formerly immortal male leads.

Hardest story to write: Rescue Me, Superhero, Restore, and Prayers & Promises were four works that I had left for dead, and came back and found them to be basically finished and just needed proofreading. (So just in case anyone wondered how I turned out three of those in like two days: they were actually done and I was hellbent on getting them out of my WIPs list)

Your sweetest story: That would definitely be Superhero. I altered my normal narrative style to better fit the child’s character, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Your saddest scene: I feel like I hit a lot of angst this year, but nothing really sad?

The sexiest moment you’ve written this year? *coughs* I wrote five pieces of smut. (Half of my fanfics were smut this year?!) Umm, I’m torn between Beside You and Don’t Blame Me? But also Never Be the Same and Take On Me???

Your favorite tag: (whether you use it the most or just something witty/perfect for the story) My brother announced to me that he reads all my tags (he was trying to embarrass me about one of my smut pieces) so I did a shout out to him in the next fic. He saw it within the day, I was actually impressed.

Most unintentionally telling story: (have you accidentally or purposefully exposed a detail about yourself?) Religious guilt seems to be a reoccurring tag this year. In all seriousness, not quite sure why, but yet it kinda makes sense? (its complicated lmao) And for some reason not one, but two fics ended with marriage proposals?! (I’m so single.)

Are any of your fics named after/heavily inspired by music? I’m RaisedonRadio and it would be concerning if—checks list—less than 8 of the 10 fics weren’t named after songs, haha! (I’m actually just really bad at naming fics…)

Good To You and Besides You are both songs by the band Marianas Trench, and are heavily inspired by the songs. Rescue Me is by OneRepublic, one of those more vibes than lyrics inspired. I Think He Knows by Taylor Swift was definitely on repeat for that fic, as well as Don't Blame Me. (Poems), Prayers, and Promises was more a steal the name of the song by John Denver, for some reason I think Cold by Corbyn was on repeat when writing that one. Take On Me was named more for the similarities between the MV and the series! Never Be The Same was for the vibes of the song by Camila Cabello but not really the lyrics.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Maybe it’s cheating but I’m not sure if I can really choose? I know it’s not a common writer sentiment but I really do like them all for different reasons.

Like I churned out Good To You and Besides You within ten days of each other in July, after not writing any fanfic basically for a year and a half.

And then I pulled Rescue Me out of the dead drafts pile and made myself work on more description.

I Think He Knows was my first foray into a brand new fandom.

Don’t Blame Me is one of my rare canon divergence fics.

Restore was another dead draft that I found to be mostly complete, and decide to release into the world even if I knew there was so much more I could have done with it.

Prayers and Promises was not only another new fandom, but for some reason, I decided to write for a side character. It’s still sitting on just 1 hit and that makes it all the better that I really wrote it for myself.

Superhero was out of my comfort zone of writing for a kid’s perspective and I was so happy with how it turned out.

Take On Me was a draft sitting at less than 1k words and I challenged myself to finish it before the new year, and got it done in two days.

And then, to finish it all off with the intense desire to have ten fics under the belt for 2023, I wrote Never Be The Same in less than two days for the last drama I had watched, and the speed that the last two fics were actually finished was a huge change for me.

Fanfiction risks you took this year? I wrote fanfic for not one, but two fandoms that I had to create the first tags for on AO3! Also, as I started to slip into just writing for kdramas this year, I’ve basically become my own proofreader and editor at this point. Any mistakes are my own, lol.

My favorite part of fandom this year: That would be getting two kudos and a comment on I Think He Knows, one of the fics that is the first in its fandom tag. To actually connect with more fans of such a tiny project was so cool!

Thanks for reading and here’s to next year!

[crackinglamb]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @theluckywizard, thank you! 💕

Tagging @lilbittymonster, @bogunicorn, @bdafic, @shretl, @mordinette, @fogsblue, @effelants, @sociallyacceptablemadness and @natsora. No pressure!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

107!

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

1,776,919, as of this morning.

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Currently only Dragon Age and Southern Vampire Mysteries/True Blood. But in the past I've written for Fallout 4, Mass Effect Trilogy, Dr. Who, Borderlands, and The Wayhaven Chronicles.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

What a Wicked Game to Play - the Behemoth, the Epic, the...story that ate my life for nearly two years straight. It currently sits at a cool 400K words and will be the focus of my NaNo goal this year. I'd like to have it finished. Solas/OFC, rated E.

Twist - the fic that got me really going in DA. An MGIT re-envisioning of the base game and all the what happens next? 197K words, complete. Solas/OFC, rated E. Fun fact, I started writing this fic before I'd ever played the game. 2020 was...uh...quite a year.

Junkyard Dogs - my very first fic. I started writing this before I really even knew what fic was. Before I even had heard of AO3. My sibspring got me an invite and the rest is history. I'm still incredibly proud of this fic, although I don't write quite like this anymore. 107K words, complete. Hancock/F!SoSu, rated E. (Are you noticing a trend? Yes, I write a lot of smut.)

Twist Some More - you guessed it, the sequel to Twist. My love letter to Carly and Solas and the happily ever after the game didn't give us. Baby included. 67K words, complete. Solas/OFC, rated E.

Humans Are Just...Like That - okay, so there's a story that goes with this one. This is a oneshot for Mass Effect, and it was brought to life via a long, hilarious thread in an ME discord server. I made a comment to the effect of 'someone should turn this into a fic' and everyone told me to go for it. So I did. It's a little bit crack, a little bit everybody lives and a whole lot of yup, humans are just like that. ~3K words. Background FemShep/Garrus, rated T.

5. do you respond to comments?

Yes, always! (Caveat: as long as it's polite. If you're rude, I'll call you on it, then freeze the thread.)

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

No More My Heart Beats Without You, one of only 4 of my works with the Major Character Death warning. Solas/F!Trevelyan, 5555 words (I didn't plan that, but it's cool), rated E.

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

TSM, without a doubt. The whole point of it was to write a fluffy, gloriously happy tribute to my first DA OC, Carly Lavellan. It'll make your teeth ache, I promise.

8. do you get hate on fics?

I've gotten some on WG, which is why I now moderate comments on it. It's gotten statistically big enough (in terms of both hits and word length) that some people are just not gonna groove with it. And hey, that's fine. But you don't need to tell me about it, okay? Just hit the back button.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Yes. And...yes. I've written all kinds. My only rule for smut is consenting adults.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Nope!

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

I got asked about a fic being translated, but I don't know if it ever happened.

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

I have written two fics with my beloved @ir0n-angel. One for FO4 (a Deacon/F!SoSu oneshot) and one for DA (Solavellan modern AU, incomplete, been on hiatus for a couple years. Someday we'll finish it.)

And I've participated in three years' worth of round robin style collaboration with the DAFF server.

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

*snort Poly here. Don't ask me to pick a favorite, it doesn't work like that. 🤣🤣🤣

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

Just Like Fire. It started out as a prompt fic to get me out of a slump. Actual Solavellan, canon compliant even. So you see where my problem is, right? I mean, I am the one whose blog title is Canon Shall Be YEETED. I've thought about maybe just tying up the loose ends and skipping ahead to the ending I've already written for it, but then I lose interest again after about five minutes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

16. what are your writing strengths?

Good dialogue, lots of banter. I am routinely told by readers how well I keep characterization believable.

Good smut, realistic without being clinical.

Headcannon glitter. Being detailed oriented means I overthink and come up with some really deep ideas.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

FINISHING THE DAMN THING. *ahem* I'm okay, I'm good.

Endings are rough for me. Not in that I don't know what I want to do with them, but more by the time I get to them, I've either lost interest or lost motivation. Or both. I know it looks like I'm on top of it when you look at my archive (only three incomplete WIP's out of 107), but some of them caused me Stress(tm) to finish and I've never been really happy with them.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I do it sparingly so it doesn't bog down the story. I translate it at the end, be that by chapter or oneshot. I know better than to fully trust google translate. And I'm careful with using fanon resources if the language is made up.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Fallout 4, with the above mentioned JD. I stayed there for quite a while too. To date it's still my second most written fandom.

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Again, poly. But I have some notables that I've returned to time and again. An incomplete sampling:

Maker Damned Fools - this is actually the first thing I wrote for DA. Varric/F!Hawke. 32K words, rated E. Initially it was a Fluffuary fic, but I always planned to expand on it. This year I did. Highlights for me reading it: chapters 4, 7 and 9.

Soft In Skyhold - another Fluffuary entry. Written as part of WG's overarching 'verse. So, Imogen and Solas, Adoribull, Varric and Elly Hawke, Terisin Mahariel and Morrigan. Cassandra and the Sky-Watcher. ~29K words, rated T. Highlights for me: chapters 5, 11, 13, 22, and 25.

She's My Plus One - my Dr. Who fic. Nine/Rose. Written x +1 style. 12K words, rated M. Highlights for me: chapters 4-6.

Unrepentant - a Solavellan oneshot. It's smutty, it's a little bit kinky, it's all in her head, right? Cuz it's the Fade. Look, sometimes you just need a particular flavor of dark!Solas. Not too dark, just like 62% cacao. 3100 words, obviously rated E.

Unexpected - an FO4 fic with a Kellogg/F!SoSu pairing. Yup, you read that right. Don't judge me. This was an early attempt at writing canon divergence and I'm still super pleased with how it came out. It even has a happy ending. 30K words, rated E. Highlights for me: honestly, all of it. I'll read the whole thing in a sitting when the mood strikes me.

[firedragon1321]

Pokemon/Digimon-Esque Bullshit

Being autistic over Pokemon and writing means taking a hammer to the entire Pokemon Cinematic Universe in three hundred unique ways and getting shit that's basically only united by "there are people and monsters". I've seen more modern takes on mon stories, but I feel like they all wanna be Pokemon 2.0 or they're leaning on Ow the Edge factor. So fuck it- I'll make my own and pretend Temtem and Palwold don't exist.

Because I don't like repeating myself (when I'm really repeating myself) and there's just. SO MUCH. So many different ways to approach Pokemon, and I will turn ALL of them into at least one (1) novel.

In no particular order-

Zunru (vicious deconstruction of the "monster as fighter" concept), which I started in 2020.

I have a WIP about Ash's departure from the anime (which I'm saving along with other short WIPs to get rid of in NaNo).

The Toon-iverse Saga plops Pokemon-esque characters in the real world and skewers the fandom.

FENmons (baby's first attempt from 2016- not very good on the mon stuff, but hey- we get to make fun of the orange cheeto man!)

I have an untitled side WIP that's about the mon genre in general, and focuses more on child-friendly naivety (sort of like Toon-iverse Saga, but different, aka "help my art project is mutating (again)").

(Still haven't figured out how to work Kieran into something yet. I have a lot of feelings about him. He recontextualized the games and how people interact with the player character forever for me. Oh well. Future WIP I guess. Maybe a short story? Novella? Maybe.)

And don't get me started on the Digimon style novels/WIPs. Holy shit.

Toon-iverse Saga (again, same as above)

Singularity (more optimistic source material deconstruction than Zunru. There's a focus on modern tech like social media algorithms and artificial intelligence because I want to throw kaiju at them.)

School's Out Forever (not officially Digimon-esque, but features kids with monsters that react to their emotions- c'mon)

The untitled WIP will hook around to Digimon since it's a crossover (of original shit???)

If it's not here, Tai threw his genes at the protagonist and gave them big hair, goggles, or both. Or I used the Adventure cast as building blocks to make a group of OCs (it's actually a really good base).

TL;DR- I am drowning in hyperfixation-related WIPs.

[laments]

SOMETHING ABOUT TEETH   ⁄  camp nano 2023

 the oresteia of aeschylus, translated by robin bond (2014)  /  —,  @metamorphesque​  /  the great, season 2 episode 10, dir. colin bucksey  /  the accident has occurred, margaret atwood  /  the invisible life of addie larue, v.e. schwab  /  on earth we’re briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong  /  the funeral of atala, anne-louis girodet de roussy-trioson  /  hotel orpheus, jason meyers  /  the pale blue eye, dir. scott cooper, (x)  /  alone with you in the ether, olivie blake (2020)

genre.  speculative  +  literary  +  romance. comps.  the invisible life of addie larue meets alone with you in the ether, but everything’s more  ...  messed up ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ logline.  in a languid tale of love and violence, an immortal turns herself into the only person who can kill her. goal  /  status.  50k for camp nano, probably around 90-100k total  /  prepping hypothetical ao3 tags (sourced from the ao3 tag bot).  “soulmates”, kinda cracky kinda funky, they clearly want to bang but angst doesnt let them, it’s not established relationship but there is like (?) established romance, rated p for pretentious, there were two beds actually :(, idiots, not even in love bruv just idiots, this whole thing doesn’t make sense.

notes.  all i do is start new wips and not finish them. good thing i’m delusional. anyway, if u wanna be friends w me on nanowrimo, here’s my profile so we can cheer each other on <3 

[whimsy-of-the-stars]

whimsy-of-the-stars: a writeblr re-re-intro!

hey guys, it’s been a minute! I’m whimsy-of-the-stars, and since my main projects have kinda shifted around, I thought it would be a good time to update my intro! ngl it’s a pretty inopportune time to do a re-intro, since I’m close to the end of one draft and planning two more… it’s just overdue!

some info about me:

I’m gonna start college in the fall majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing! :D

learning languages is a passion of mine! I’m focusing on Spanish right now but I’ve dabbled in both Esperanto and Toki Pona (yeah I’m a nerd!)

I’m a video essay enjoyer and possibly maker, eventually

fiction podcasts and actual plays slap???

I have “I want to do too many things” disease and want to try making stories in many different mediums!

ttrpgs are really cool but I have yet to play them with other people! does that stop me from trying to make games… no

elements I like to write: Found family! Chosen ones (+ the subversion of)! Big Emotion™️! Organized crime (idk why it doesn’t leave me alone)! Gay people, of course!

genres I like to write (YA and middle grade): high fantasy, low fantasy, different -punk stuff, sci fi maybe, superheroes, fairy-tale esque, romance, coming of age

I also write poetry! You can find it in this tag: whimsy of the poetry

ALSO, I did DraftDash in January 2024, which was fun but I did end up petering out halfway thru. Follow my journey in the tag draftdash!

ok, now onto wips!

I am in a weird stage with a lot of my wips, but a re-intro was overdue so I decided to do it anyway!

wips I am currently writing:

apocalypse story!

status: first draft, 24k (almost done with part 1)

the basics: mg/ya apocalyptic + queer ?coming of age? story and its sequel, except they’re both short so they’re melded into one two-part book! it’s told thru diary entries with lots of extra ephemera glued in! part 1 of 2 is ALMOST done but I’m not inspired to finish it rn! ! I’m not gonna continue with part 2 right after, though, since I still need to plan it!

summary: stressed-out eighth/grader Allison goes to her old hideout in the forest to decompress, but one thing leads to another and she can’t find her way back home. the forest is seemingly ever-expanding, ever-changing, and even when she finds her friends who’ve come to rescue her, they still have to face the actual, real life botanical apocalypse that’s becoming more and more of an issue for the outside world. can they find their way home alive and well? and if they do get home, what will their home city even look like?

extras: fun fact I started this in April 2023 for camp nano and it has taken me this long to write the next 10k words! Also the main character is a bit of a self-insert, but of the person I was in lockdown in 2020!

um. That’s it for wips I’m currently writing rn lol

wips I am “revitalizing”:

(aka taking old drafts/concepts and turning them nice and new!)

Both of these have existed in different-ish iterations for years, however I am currently in the weird process of developing both of these into all-new things from an existing groundwork! Neither of them currently have “statuses” because it’s hard to explain where exactly I am right now!

heist story!

the basics: ya fantasy heist novel (maybe eventually a trilogy?) set in a faerie world that rapidly advanced not too long ago into a dieselpunk/decopunk society rife with corruption and crime!

summary: Logical and inquisitive teen Calliope is relatively normal. Her offbeat parents, however, have raised her in a house full of strange curios and old tomes of faery stories. But only when she starts to exhibit unwieldy shadow magic, and her parents invite a prim woman she’s never met before into their home do things really start to get strange. The woman whisks Calliope away through one of the aforementioned curios to a noir hubworld where ancient faerie bloodlines and newfangled magitech collide. Why? To take part in a high-stakes heist with a surprising trio of other teens who want nothing more than to take down the crime boss who runs their town.

extras: this one’s a weird one imo. it’s one of the oldest wips that I am still working on, tho this one had a break of about 3 years!!! also I originally wrote it in hot pink comic sans XD

new superhero story!

(I am also revitalizing this one, but it’s in a way less put-together state! not much to say yet lol!) (also it’s not very new I just call it that)

it’s a ya superhero thing that features teenage (often queer) antiheroes trying to balance their heroic + civilian identities!

featuring: the shittiest entertainment/hero management company you’ve ever seen, shared trauma, gray morality, two different rock bands, and heroes that are at once government agents, influencers, and corporate concoctions!

considering making a “help me name my characters” post because i desperately have to name/rename like 3/4 of all of these characters!!!

more ideas I have bouncing around:

(lightning round!)

old ya romance wip i need to revitalize about two teens enter a competition to make a demo album and end up falling in love in the process (also they’re lesbians XD)

offbeat, ya supernatural + historical fantasy about a girl university student who is buried alive, and upon getting rescued, starts to transform into a strange underworld creature. also features a cute gravedigger :D

a musical about standardized testing (yeah lol) that’s goofy and queer and explores how seniors + juniors are so freaking stressed out all the time lol

that’s all folks! :D

[outpost51]

🌬️⚡️🌌

WIP Weather Asks

🌬 Wind - What was the easiest part of your WIP to write?

so far? i think the dream/hallucination sequences in blinding neon and stellar parallax have been the easiest and some of my favorites. like jane was off her entire ass on so many sedatives because of her biotics and also like. ancient ai brain damage. and then frankie is literally just not getting any sleep and she is quite literally a ball of stress rn

⚡️Lightning - Have you ever spontaneously added something to your story that you wouldn't have added normally? If so, what made you do it?

answered here!

🌌 Clear Skies - How long have you been writing your current WIP?

oh man let's see.

botls: early 00s, it was started some time in middle school

irregular orbit: i think i started this in 2012? it needs to undergo major rewrites before i'm willing to share like, any of it lol

caught in the crossfire: started like juuuuuust after irregular orbit

what you will i will not name: i've been writing this one on and off in tandem with crossfire because i'm as incredibly autistic about destiny as i am about mass effect

tomorrow isn't promised: 2015, i think. started revamping it in 2020? ish.

arsonist chronicles: this was my 2021 nano project! i won with it and this sucker hasn't even hit the end of act i lmao

blinding neon: 2022!

helix: also 2022, a few months down the line from blinding neon!

xatal: either late 2022 or early 2023

[targentis]

i was sure i sent you an ask for that wip game but am starting to think i only did so in my head. apologies if it didn't arrive.

💗📄🗣️

💗Is there a scene you can’t wait to write for a WIP?

oh gosh, so many. i guess in my current nano project i'm really excited to write the initial cannibalism scene, which i'm actually getting close to, and the ending which mirrors the prologue really nicely.

📄What’s a WIP you never finished that you would like to go back and revisit?

ummmmmm....all of them? :') Thread the Needle (our nano project from 2020) comes to mind, though; it needs some major reworking, but the bones are good, and i think i can turn it into a better story if i ever get around to it. it's about mad scientists and wizard apprentices and knitting.

🗣️Talk about your favourite WIP

this is like asking me to pick a favorite child. my favorite WIP changes literally every two seconds i think...so i guess i'll talk about my current nano project??? it is, as i have stated before, a "cozy horror," but cozy in the sense that i'm hoping it instills a sense of belonging for stigmatized mentally ill people with violent fantasies while horrifying everyone else. <3 it's about four dysfunctional siblings, all of whom are serial killers without the others knowing, who have to spend a year in their childhood home in order to inherit it after their father dies under mysterious circumstances. i based the four main characters on my four favorite character archetypes at one point, and it's been through many iterations since then. it's my hope that this year i'll come out with a complete draft that needs minimal restructuring!!!

[smallblueandloud]

2023 fic roundup

2023 was the year of the comeback. in 2021, i wrote about 25k; in 2022, i didn't even keep track. meanwhile, my total wordcount last year was 119,226 words. while that doesn't come close to my 200k from 2020, i am arguably prouder of last year and what it represented. my writing isn't dead! my abilities haven't vanished! i can have fun making art again :D

as always, the summer was the most productive for me. you can see that i wrote more in the spring than the fall -- this roughly corresponds to how i was doing during those times, lol. i had a Much Better spring semester than the fall. september was very rough, i had a very bad time, and it meant my mental health suffered for the rest of the year. but hey, at least i was writing essays :')

some more scattered thoughts:

i was arguably pretty consistent this year? may/june/july all had about the same wordcount (roughly) and i think that's cool. my goal isn't to be doing NaNos, it's to be writing consistently, so i'm very happy with this

ao3 says i published 67k in 2023. minus the first chapter of something out of a dream, which was published in 2020, i believe that's 65k or so total. i wrote 72k of fanfic last year, meaning that there's about 8k from last year still sitting in my google drive (a rough eyeball at my WIPs folder confirms this). these numbers don't QUITE make sense to me, since i used a fair bit of old material in what i published last year, but i'm not going to think about it too hard

i published fic for a whopping fifteen fandoms in 2023. nine of those were fandoms i'd never published anything for before! i am so, so proud of this stat. i remain multifandom as all hell and seeing that represented in my work makes me really :D

two fics -- be amazed by the sky and i got your back (and you got mine) -- were crossovers! i'd only ever written one crossover before (stay all day in the sun, which i still love dearly) and it was fun to play in these playgrounds (mostly by sticking the librarians into other universes, xD)

i published 25 fics last year! and five of those fics were less than 1k, which i also really love. this year i really tried to let go of my idea that my fics Had to be more than 4k (and super polished) before they could see the light of day. i think my writing has been more fun and less stressful because of that.

i polished off 4 multi-year WIPs last year: but the verse is sweet, something out of a dream, don't wanna see you go (but it's not forever), and all we can do today. it felt so, so good to finally get those out there. the only one i have left from The Great Hiatus of 2021-2022 is éponine de bergerac. i will finish that someday, but i'm letting her take her time, because she deserves it. (i DID make good progress on that fic, which is something at least!)

most popular fic of the year was sit there in your heartache, which. is a spirk fic written right after a relevant episode, so not a surprise lol. the fic that surprised me most is actually the sisterhood of the travelling main character plotpoints -- i kinda expected that one to vanish quietly, but the hatchetfield fandom is WAY more active than i expected! which is very cool :D

the fic with the fewest hits was sidenote, which doesn't surprise me, since the librarians isn't a very active fandom and it's a rareship within the fandom anyway. the people who DID read it were very sweet, so i am very grateful for them. (i'm doing fic with the fewest hits because i feel like it's better to focus on that than What Didn't Get Kudos)

i started 2024 with 5 WIPs. i actually already finished one (and then immediately started its sequel, whoops) (shoutout to the ds9 modern au, i'll make a real post about that sometime). none of these fics are particularly progressed, but i'll keep working on them and try to find the Finishing A Project Dopamine from ficlets if i need it.

i didn't really have any Writing Goals for 2023 aside from doing any writing at all, lol. i think for 2024 i want to try to get more consistent with my writing -- instead of doing x number of words per month (which usually happen over 3-4 Big Writing Days), i'd rather try to write for 5 days out of every week, or something like that. we'll see what i can get done.

in the meantime: thank you guys for listening. i'm proud of what i did last year, and i'm excited to see what happens next year :D

[ferusaurelius]

Get to know your fanfic writer!

I was tagged by @callista-curations and actually got to the end of the week with a bit of energy for once, so... here we go. ;)

When did you post your first ever fanfic?

The first EVER was on ff.net probably around 2000-2004? For a friend, for an obscure show nobody's heard of. My first fic I posted for myself was 2020.

First Character(s) you wrote?

I actually wrote original characters in the Mass Effect fandom. My short thought experiment on machine translation.

Main Character(s) you’re currently writing?

Nihlus Kryik, David Anderson, Commander Rentola

Character(s) you haven’t written about before but plan to write about soon?

Nyreen Kandros, Ashley Williams. Though they might take a bit since I'm still kinda marinating on what I want to do there.

Fandom(s) you’re currently writing?

Mass Effect! Hyperfixation fandom, go! (I write meta posts for Our Flag Means Death, but do not intend to write fic.)

Platonic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?

Commander Rentola and Ashley Williams

Romantic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?

Nihlus Kryik/Saren Arterius, David Anderson/Saren Arterius (yep!).

Your top AO3 tags?

Romantic Comedy (LOL). Good job, barfics!

Current platform you use for posting?

AO3. I've read a bunch of fic for different fandoms over the years and I'm pleased to be able to contribute when I have the energy.

Snippet of the WIP you are currently working on?

So bar!fics are going to have a long!fic sequel. Keep in mind I AM A SLOW WRITER with multiple wips, to the point where the 'easy' one-shots get published first.

I'm not sure about POV or pacing, but it'll be in a different voice and tone than the originals and have actual mission-oriented plot and some developing relationship stuff.

If you don't want spoilers, I've put it below the cut. ;)

This is a Very Rough high-level outline of a fragment of the entire plot, because my 'other' current WIP is maybe gonna be a nano project. I have various wip possibilities dueling it out for my attention and will see you in December. xD

Normally I would tag a few people to play (and if you feel like playing and you are reading this, IT IS YOU WHO IS TAGGED xD), but specifics are beyond my brain tonight.

Outline time~

Saren entertains Nihlus with his own history and experience of the Skyllian Verge, as well as being a sort of guide to the full intelligence picture, as he understands it.

Nihlus (with a snap of intuition) puts together that something bigger and more urgent than Saren thinks is happening or likely to happen, and it makes him restless and want to investigate immediately, because what if his intuition is right?

Saren insists that Nihlus should go as soon as his ankle’s recovered. He has his own authority.

Nihlus declines to ‘rush’ into something and presents an alternative of walking Saren through his process and treats this as a getting-to-know you thought exercise to keep Saren distracted from how fucking miserable the detox process is.

Saren and Nihlus together, working the problem over food and no access to other sources of information beyond what they can recall, come up with a terrible plan.

Nihlus can infiltrate the merc group by having a public falling-out with Saren.

Saren can get sent to hunt down “Rogue Spectre” Nihlus in the Verge.

Nihlus treats this seriously and starts workshopping different options while Saren is getting increasingly agitated about the whole concept of the frame-up.

Saren: I can’t ask you to do this.

Nihlus: Fine, you’re not asking. I’m volunteering.

Saren: I don’t know if I can let you do this.

Nihlus: It’s my decision.

Saren: -can’t dispute this, even if he doesn’t like it-

Saren: -eventually agrees, though he doesn’t like it-

Saren: Alternatives.

They come up with others that have less advantage in discretion, timing, or access.

Saren is forced to admit that Nihlus’s idea about infiltrating a group directly is the best one, since it allows them the most flexibility in cover story and depth of access. Plus, Nihlus is marked.

Saren: I’ve never asked.

Nihlus: -tells him-

Nihlus: What are you going to need for your part to work?

Saren: You, eyes open, and no hesitation. Trust me to manage my end no matter what you hear or what happens.

Nihlus: -kinda loves this about Saren- With my life.

Saren: It may come to that.

Nihlus: We’ll worry about that when it happens.

It will happen.

Saren: A better medical regimen.

Nihlus: I’ve never asked.

Saren: -tells him-

... and that's all you get to see for now. xD Be intrigued! Be very intrigued. If you can guess what canon event this is gonna be AU for, you get bonus points. ;)

[alessandriana]

NaNoWriMo chapter 3 for the WIP game?? :D

For your sake, Spoon, I'm going answer for Nano 2016 instead of 2020 (which is Yet More MDZS Fic). ;) 2016 is one of the original SF novels I plug away at occasionally:

There was someone waiting in front of Decker's door again as he turned the corner. They were tall, with dark hair, and he was expecting Remington, so his brain took a half second to register the differences and by that time it was too late to duck back into the main corridor. Running would just imply he had a reason to run, so he pinged the guy's ID as he walked up. Felix Grozdan. Age: 46, gender: male, occupation: third shipmate on the cruiser Intervention. Further digging indicated the Intervention had arrived in port a week ago and was scheduled to ship out in a little over ten days. Decker thought about Remington's timeline, and hid a frown.

He stopped a few feet back from Grozdan, hands in his pockets. "Can I help you?" he asked. Slim chance, but maybe the guy was just looking to hire him.

Grozdan looked up, and a nasty grin crossed his face. Oh, that was not a good look. All worry about looking suspicious fell away. Decker turned and booked it down the hallway back towards civilization.

Or tried to, at least. Grozdan was fast, faster than baseline human, and Decker found himself swiftly colliding with the far wall. A hand grabbed him by the collar and flipped him around, holding him so his feet struggled to reach the ground.

"Ow," Decker coughed, grabbing the guy's hand with his left and trying to pry it loose. "What the fuck, dude? Is this really how you greet people, because I gotta say it is not very nice--" All the while his free hand twitched at his side, scanning the local area for anything he could take advantage of. The guy had a near-field connection of some kind, probably connected to the piece of hardware hooked over his ear-- Decker was more than close enough to connect, even with his shitty port, and got through the defenses in half a second. Cheap-ass shit, he thought dismissively, as the guy's life opened up to him. Communications, porn, bank accounts-- there, Decker thought, and slid past the bank's defenses with ease and into the guy's account. It wasn't much of a challenge when the log-in was biometric and he had the guy standing right in front of him. He had a transfer set up to zero out the guy's account when the guy lifted him higher and slammed him back against the wall again. "--with Remington?"

Decker opened his mouth, about to threaten to drain the guy's account if he didn't let him go. Then the last few words registered. "Uh, what?" he said, intelligently.

"I said, what the fuck are you doing with Remington?"

A few things clicked through Decker's mind at lightning speed. The fact that Remington was probably still SF. The merc crew he was so intent on joining. And this guy, from that same crew. Decker wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he was starting to get the edges of it. And he wasn't sure he wanted anyone to know he'd been associated with the SF just yet.

"Why?" he asked, extemporizing wildly. Only one plausible reason came to mind. "Are you fucking him too? Look, I'm sorry, I didn't know he was in a relationship--"

The guy's eyes widened and he loosened his grip a little in surprise. "Wait, what."

Decker leaned back so he could look the guy in the face. "You know. Remington. Tall, dark hair, the kind of ass you just want to-- urk." He choked, reaching up to grab at the hands that were clenching down on his windpipe. "Okay, so, maybe not," he whispered.

"You're telling me that every time Remington comes here you two are just fucking? The entire time? Last time he was here for five hours."

"Maybe you can't think of things to do for five hours, but--" Decker tried to brace himself, but spaceship walls were hard and so was his skull when it impacted with a resounding thunk. He blinked and found himself sprawled on the floor at Grozdan's feet with no particular memory of how he'd gotten there. "Motherfucker," he groaned, clutching at the back of his head. Christ, couldn't he have aimed somewhere else? It wasn't like he didn't have brain damage to spare already. His hand came away wet and red and sticky. He blinked again, and for a moment there were wailing alarms and the sound of airlock doors slamming, and nothing but corrupt data flowing down his nervestem--

--Grozdan leaned down, getting right up in Decker's face. "If I find out you're lying to me, I will find you again," he said, very softly. "And I know where you live."

"Why, did you want to join us or something--?"

Decker doubled over, coughing. Asshole was wearing fucking steel-toed boots. His footsteps rang on the decking as he walked away.

Decker stayed like that for a long moment, trying to put his world back together. His head spun, which wasn't all that out of the ordinary, but it wasn't usually this bad. His legs didn't seem to want to work with his brain. He slumped back against the wall. This was a low traffic corridor, one of the reasons he'd picked it to live on. No one was going to find him. He could call station security, but this was Harmony, and they were the most useless motherfuckers in existence. Besides, then he'd have to explain what had happened, and he had no desire to do that. He could call the med section, but he had first aid supplies in his room, and it seemed a waste.

While he waited for things to start working again, he sent a quick message to Riley's PCD. Wanna explain why one of your merc buddies just showed up at my door?

The message delivered, but there was no response. Decker let his head sink down against his chest. He'd get up. Eventually.

Time kind of… elided.

The next thing he was aware of was footsteps coming down the corridor at a run, and an indrawn breath. "Shit," someone said. "Decker. Fuck. Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

There were gentle hands on his face. Decker opened his eyes to see Riley up close and personal. His brows were drawn and his mouth was pressed white with worry. He was still stupidly handsome. "Hey," Decker said, a little slurred.

"Hey, there you are," Riley said, kneeling. "How do you feel? Can you tell me what happened?" He tilted Decker's head back and forth, examining his pupils.

"Feels… like the wall 'n my head had a… minor disagreement," Decker said, flinching as the moment aggravated the pounding in his skull.

Riley glanced up at the wall and winced. "That seems pretty accurate." Decker followed his gaze to see a streak of red on the wall-- probably just around five feet eight inches above the ground-- dripping down towards the floor. Huh. That was kind of gross. Someone should clean it up.

"One of y'r friends… stopped on by," Decker said. It seemed important.

"I know. I got your message." Riley smiled a little, though it wasn't precisely a happy smile. "Do you want me to call Med, or is there somewhere else you'd rather--?"

"Room." Decker gestured vaguely. "I've got… stuff."

"Inside it is." Riley slid his arms around Decker's back and under his knees, lifting him off the floor with the kind of ease that spoke of long hours in the gym. Or some kind of technological help. Did he have anything else installed besides the leg? Decker clutched at his shoulders as things spun wildly, pressing his face into Riley's chest. He hurt too much to even enjoy it. "Oh, motherfuck. Ow, ow, ow…"

Riley's arms tightened a fraction. "I am so sorry. Just a little bit further…"

The door read Decker's biosigns and opened for them. Riley maneuvered Decker onto the couch, very careful not to aggravate anything. Decker curled up on his side, hand covering his eyes, and waited for the world to stop tilting. If it ever would. Oh, god, he hoped this hadn't done too much more damage… To distract himself, he listened to the sound of Riley rummaging through his kitchen cabinets. Right idea, wrong spot. "First aid's… in the bathroom," he managed.

He wasn't sure he'd been loud enough to be heard, but Riley's footsteps moved in the correct direction. There was silence as the door swished shut, and Decker let himself drift for the moment.

He came back to a hand on his shoulder and he jerked away instinctively, which turned out to not be such a great idea when he almost fell off the couch. Riley caught him as he was about to go over.

"I got a concussion pack," he said, hands gentle as he rearranged Decker so he was further from the edge.

"Yay," Decker said, muffled by the couch cushions. They smelled weird. Could you wash a couch? Decker wasn't sure. Maybe he should try vacuuming sometime.

…nah.

"You've got like six in there. All military grade." Decker heard the poptab on the pack hiss as pressure was released, and he winced as Riley pressed it to the back of his head. The gel was cool against his skin as the nanoparticles started work on the broken skin, delivering targeted medication that would stop the bleeding and reduce the swelling. "Do you play football or something?"

Decker snorted a laugh, even as it sent a spike of pain through his head. "Yeah, 's me, the football type," he said into the fabric.

There was more rustling as Riley pulled out the scanner. "In that case, I take it you know this is going to hurt a bit," he said, free hand settling on Decker's shoulder and holding him still as he flipped the switch.

"Mhmm." Decker's hands curled in the couch as the high whining noise filled the room, growing louder until it seemed to pass beyond all rational thought, piercing straight through the center of the injury.

Decker rode it out until the medpack shut off, three quick beeps and then blessed silence. He let out the breath he'd been holding all at once, almost a sob.

"Um," Riley said, fiddling with the scanner. "It says there's some anomalies it couldn't fix?"

Decker grunted. Words. He could… words.

"Do I need to be worried about it?" Riley asked.

"'s… normal," Decker managed.

Riley's sigh was barely audible, just a breath of air on the back of Decker's neck. "If you say so."

Decker faded out after that. He could hear Riley moving around his apartment, and the water running, but it didn't seem particularly relevant or interesting. Then someone settled next to him on the couch, cushions dipping beneath his weight. A wet cloth touched the back of his head. He wanted to protest-- he didn't know Riley well enough for this level of intimacy-- but it felt good. And he smelled like blood, and he hated that.

That was the last thing Decker remembered for a while.

[the-rogue-mockingjay]

Writer's end-of-year roundup, 2022! 🎉🎆

Despite the myriad hardships of the year for me - losing my old beagle, fighting doctors, a completely stupid amount of grief/loss, migraines and disability oh my! - it's actually been an amazingly productive and inspired year? I'm very proud! I completed the second draft of my first-ever longfic, which needs another round of editing or two before it's ready to be published, and I've discovered I LOVE editing. More than I love writing, actually????? Lots of people talk about the Dreaded Editing but for me, it was vastly easier than writing the first draft was LOL. I also did what I thought I would never do, which is create another Shepard, Morrigan Vesta, and I actually wrote mostly about her during NaNoWriMo this year. I'm finally getting the hang of how to give characters unique voices (or portray a canon character's voice accurately, which is something I used to be extremely hung up on). I can honestly say I've made a lot of progress both as a person and as a writer this year, and I'm finally starting to find my joy in writing again. Very exciting!

Taking a page out of @pikapeppa 's book in how to format this year's data- I love seeing your charts every year!! My own chart ended up being quite a bit messier, but that's probably because of how I tweaked it to fit my fics. I apologize deeply if the image quality gets butchered, I am not wise in the ways of battling Tumblr's nonsense

(HEY GUESS WHO FORGOT A FIC......the one I forgot is Marevera's Dream, which is a Wayfarer post-Ep 1 pre-Ep 2 WIP, and it clocks in at 1,174 words, making my actual total 60,486!!!!!)

*I forgot to note that In this darkness, on my own is a followup to A New and Dark Horizon.

60K........DUDE!!! I haven't written that much since junior high/I got my depression diagnosis in like 2016, so this is. Big!

New things I tried: For starters, I paced myself during NaNo instead of forcing myself to write every day like I did during NaNo 2020. And WOW was that a night-and-day difference! In 2020, I wrote about 20k and burned myself out so bad I couldn't write for another 6-8 months. This year, I wrote about 30k, and only sat down to write about half the days, successfully dodging burnout. I think that's a valuable lesson for me in what works for me, how to balance my desire to write with what I'm actually capable of that day, and how to work with my disability without letting it limit me.

I also wrote in first person for the first time in maaaaaany years, and while it's not as comfy as third person, it wasn't bad, and it was a good way to explore the different strengths of POVs.

And since my laptop had a fatal encounter with a cup of coffee last spring (RIP little buddy), I've gotten very comfy writing on my phone, which I had previously only done for Across the Sea and Part 1 & Part 3 of broken body built anew because I was bored/inspired during a long car ride LOL.

Fic I spent the most time on: Going Over Jordan, easy. I originally wrote it during NaNo 2020, then re-wrote it at some point during 2021 (time is a weird soup so I don't remember). And then I rewrote it AGAIN this year, edited the crap out of it, printed it, and will edit it again sometime in 2023. It's a fic that exists purely because I am at times a spiteful little goblin, and I had Opinions about the MEA main mission Hunting the Archon, i.e. I didn't agree with how Bioware wrote the companions' responses to Ryder's temporary death, and my Ryder is also an anxious neurodivergent wreck like myself, so I wanted to write how that mission would have actually gone with Brynja as Pathfinder. I wanted to highlight the relationships Brynja has with her friends (particularly Jaal), and I also just wanted her take on the mission in general, because it's not the same as what's in-game. I mean....a lot of people die gruesome deaths in that mission and you see the aftermath, you see the gutted and maimed corpses. There's a lot of horror inherent to what Bioware wrote for that mission, but they glossed over it big time. I wanted to fix that.

I'd like to have someone beta read it, but Andromeda is a niche market as it were, and I've never had anyone beta my work before, so that's honestly the biggest reason it's not published yet. It would benefit greatly from beta reading I think, but uh. I don't know how to make that happen. I'm gonna publish the dang thing in 2023 or 2024 at the latest, though, even if it kills me DGKLJDHLG.

Fic I spent the least time on: I can't say for certain, but it's probably the microfics. Those took only a couple hours. Aside from those, not counting WIPs, it'd most likely be Across the Sea, which I wrote on my phone while sitting on the kitchen floor.

Favorite thing I wrote: ALMOST ALL OF THEM. In all seriousness though, there are a few that have a special place in my heart, and the most important one is Across the Sea. I'd been wanting to explore how Marian processes/copes with Thane's death pretty much since the day I created her, but I never got around to putting any of it on paper until the time came for me to say goodbye to my dog, a 17yo beagle named Maggie we adopted in 2019, last February.

It was an absolutely hellish series of events just in those few days alone: I had a sleep study done which gave me the worst migraine of my life, I threw up in a random parking lot, went home and tried to sleep the migraine off, and was woken up a few hours later to my mom sitting on my bed and saying, quietly, "Maggie's dying". My migraine quit mattering at that point. I sat with her on the couch for hours, held her paw, petted her softly. My parents took turns sitting with her in the living room overnight.

Ultimately, she was just suffering so much for so long we had to take her to the vet. It was a weekend, so it was going to be hours before they opened. Maggie got up and stumbled to the kitchen, and she laid down in front of the door to the garage, and I just...sat with her. There was nothing I could do to help or save her, so I kept her company in her last hours. In the midst of moving and the uncertainty surrounding my health, my new disabilities, traumatizing doctor appointment after traumatizing doctor appointment, I was having to say goodbye to the greatest light and joy of my life a mere 6 months after we lost the dog we've had since I was 3 years old (a shih tzu named Reggie, who wore the pride of his breed like a royal mantle and never stopped carrying himself like a king, even when he didn't recognize us anymore).

Maybe it's silly to compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a lover, but...things just clicked in my brain. I wrote Across the Sea for and about Thane and Marian, yes, but it was for me and my beagle, too, in equal measure. Thane was terminally ill but even so he died quite unexpectedly (THANKS KAI LENG), and the same was true of Maggie. So it was....maybe it's a silly thought, but it was a vent piece. I understood my grief through the lens of Marian's, since hers was so much easier to tackle than my own in its huge overwhelming weight. I'm a very private person with big emotions, and my grief was - and is - a very personal thing. Something I needed to keep close to my chest, hidden, at the time. To write Marian's grief as I waited with Maggie for the inevitable, it was like I had a companion, a friend sitting with me in that grief. I understood Marian much better then.

So perhaps mechanically speaking, Across the Sea isn't my best piece (I'm honestly not certain where it ranks quality-wise), but it is....the writing equivalent of those pendants that carry your loved one's ashes, for me. And it's done quite well on AO3. Knowing that people have enjoyed this piece that is so precious to me and comes from a place of such deep sorrow...there is no greater honor I could ask for, I think. It's a fitting tribute to a character and franchise I love, that's gotten me through many hard times, and to the beagle that made the horrors of life worth living.

(Aside from that, my other favorites are broken body built anew (first trilogy piece), Going Over Jordan (first longfic), In this darkness on my own, Farewell to Arms, Des profondeurs dans la nuit, and the ME3 early game Morrilenko duology Never Enough/In the shadow of your heart.)

Favorite thing I read: Imma be real with you chief, I have.....not read much. Not as far as books go, anyway. But I've sure read some amazing fic and interactive fiction games!!

I reread a bunch of stuff, partly to examine the technical strengths of my fave writers and stories, and partly because hey, they're my favorite stories!! Off the top of my head, the pieces I reread were: Flotsam, Ain't Sentimental, and Loose Ends by @asaara-writes; Sorrow and Resistance by @/myrini; and while I didn't get the chance to reread/finish these like I'd hoped, A Lesson in Drowning by @theherocomplex, Where the Winds of Fortune Take Me and Lovers in a Dangerous Time by pikapeppa are bookmarked both on AO3 and in my brain for the same reasons as the shorter pieces

everything @coldshrugs has written in the past year or two. Both as a writer and as a reader, shorter form fiction is more accessible to my migraine-addled brain (I love reading long stuff but it's often migraine trigger T^T) and Azia's a MASTER of short fiction???? So much punch packed into such concise words!! Incredible clarity and emotional depth!!!! There are many writers on this site that I admire and respect greatly, and Azia is one of them

My favorite IF this year is 100% Wayfarer (@/idrellegames). I haven't been able to focus on it as much as I'd have liked, but the COMPLEXITY the DEPTH. I'm in awe of it and Idrelle. The scope of the project is so massive and the intrigue and depth of the story and characters is incredible to see, Idrelle is a one-person-army of a writer. It'd be easy to think that Wayfarer is made by a team, but nope! It's all the genius and dedication of Idrelle. Having followed Wayfarer from the beginning, the only words I can describe it is awe-inspiring

My writing goals are going in a separate post because this is about 19 times longer than I meant it to be DHFLJKDSLKJHG. If you've read this far, thank you so much!!!!!!! I know it probably got a little more personal and a little bit sadder than you were expecting, so thanks for sticking with me- and I don't blame you an ounce if you skim-read this or skipped some sections. It's a lot of words!

Happy New Year, everyone!! You guys make Tumblr great, and without the people I've met through this site, I would've missed out on not only tons of awesome media, but all y'all super cool folks and your blorbos!!! Keep on creating, everybody. Your stories, your art, your headcanons and metas and dumb jokes, you bring light into my life, and the lives of others. I want you to know that your works bring comfort and happiness to the life of one lost and drifting young woman...and I want to thank you for it, sincerely. I know for a fact I'm not the only person whose life is made better by your presence. The fact that we haven't met in-person doesn't lessen your impact by an ounce.

[radiowrites]

2022 Writer Year-In-Review

Hi, I’m RaisedonRadio & FortressofmyPast on AO3 and FF.net. This is an on-going tradition since 2015. Feel free to check out my past year-end posts: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

In the past, I have always called this my Fic-in-Review. But, well, I didn’t post any fanfics this year. But I DID write.

Tagging a few, and if you see this post and want to do it, consider yourself tagged! @writercorianarose @radio-chatter @shesailsships @talesofsorrowandofruin @goneahead @alonelyturtle

Total Number Of Completed Works: 0 (well, 1 for my nano project, though it definitely is FAR from completed.) Total Number of WIPS worked on this year: 5 WIPS Neglected This Year: 13

Total Word Count: 65,299 (53,873 from Nanowrimo)

Fandoms I’ve Written In: In addition to my original work, I actively worked on fics for Tale of the Nine Tailed (Korean Drama), and Sell Your Haunted House (Korean Drama)

Looking Back, Did You Write More Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected?

I wrote way more than expected.

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year?

I decided to join National Writing Month about two weeks before November. And I completed it!

Do You Have Any Writing Goals For The New Year?

To start the second draft of my Nano project. And to finish and post at least a couple of fanfics!

Biggest Disappointment:

I really wish I had shared a few fanfics with the world this year! I’m too tight lipped with my original work to create any interaction, ha! I often post a least one fic in the last week of December, but I started playing Don't Starve again...character died on December 30, and now I have no fics to show for it. XD

Biggest Surprise:

Finishing Nanowrimo! Gosh what a ride that was! Will I do it next year? Absolutely not Who knows!

Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to next year!

Since I didn’t post any fics this year, these questions I normally answer didn’t really apply. But if you use this format for your year-in-review and want to use these questions, I thought I’d include them below, and I hope to fill them out next year!

Most Popular Story Of The Year? What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year? Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion: Most Fun Story To Write: Most Unintentionally Telling Story: Biggest Disappointment: Biggest Surprise: My Favorite Part Of Fandom This Year:

[dandelion-wings]

1, 12, and 15?

Thank you for the ask! <3

1. what's the fic youre most proud of?

There's a handful of contenders, but honestly, overall, probably An Open Hand. I managed to accomplish multiple things with it that I wanted to do and hadn't pulled off before, and it's the first fic of that length I've seen to completion (the longest I'd written and edited to posting-level satisfaction before that was 45k). Also it's an "everything and the kitchen sink" of elements and tropes I just plain like.

12. What’s your perfect environment to create/write?

One that doesn't have a lot of other inputs! I struggle with distractions a lot, and fare best when I have a large chunk of time ahead of me (so I don't have to fear getting really into my work and then being pulled abruptly out) and minimal distractions. At home I try to create that by working on my laptop instead of my big computer (the new laptop is not as helpful as the old one in this respect because it can actually have more than one program and/or two tabs open at a time, but the trade-off is it doesn't take 15-20 minutes to open a program or new tab), down in the sunroom where the only potential physical distraction is the cat. I also tend to write quite a lot when traveling because travel naturally creates those conditions for me--plane rides, spurts of not-driving on road trips, boring hotel rooms, etc.

A mug of tea helps a lot regardless of location and circumstance, of course. :>

15. How do you think your writing as improved over time?

Hmmm. I mean, over time in general, it's improved in a lot of ways. Over the last couple of years (a.k.a. the time I've been in the Genshin fandom), I think I've done a lot of improvements on plotting and pacing, though for anyone who hasn't seen my original/older work then those improvements may not be obvious? Fanfic turns out to be a good low-stress space to play with that stuff. (One of the reasons I am so proud of An Open Hand is that I tried a lot of things around pacing in revisions, not just writing, that taught me new tricks, and I was able to bring those into play in the year following as I revised an original novel I'm working on.)

I don't think my prose has improved that much in the sentence level, and in fact I have a number of what I consider Known Bugs in my fanfic prose at present that I'm not putting effort into fixing when I write or revise because I, honestly, like my current prose flow even if it isn't ideal, and so that's the sort of killing-my-darlings I only worry about with my original work. I like purple prose, both reading and writing, and fanfic is where I can just do what's fun instead of what's Good.

But yeah, from a personal perspective, my pacing and to a lesser extent my plot flows have leveled up a fair bit from where I was in early 2020! As an example, I have a novel I wrote the first draft of as my 2020 Nano and obviously a first draft is going to be rough and a Nano one very much so, but I can hold it up against my current longfic and even with the WIPs, sheerly on the planning levels, I can see where I know more and have more of a toolbox than I did when I was slamming that out.

[ofstormsandfire]

9 & 10 for the ask game?

9: do you have any vague ideas for fics you might want to start in the future?

I have too many ideas for fics I might want to start in the future. all things considered I think my new years resolution is going to be to actually finish some of the ones I've already started.

send help. (or a fandom I'm into, if you want me to drop some actual ideas-)

10: how long have you been working on your current wip?

...which one. I have Multiple.

the main one at the moment is probably there's blood on your lies, a pokemon fanfic featuring cynthia punted a few hundred years into the past into the plot of pokemon legends arceus, which I've been working on since like... last? february? yeah according to ao3 that's when I posted the first chapter so. close enough. it's an absolute monster of a fic by multiple metrics.

the other fic I'm actively working on currently is called no one ever mentions fear, it was supposed to be my nanowrimo project, I hit 50k and wasn't done and I know from experience that if I just stop writing at the end of nano I just. won't ever bother to finish the fic.

that one's a fanfic for legend of zelda breath of the wild, in which I bonked my blorbo bird (blorbird, if you will) with the "amnesia," "character development," and "tragic backstory" sticks in no particular order. technically I only started writing that one at the beginning of november, but I was planning quite extensively for it during most of october, and it's a fic that I got the idea for a very long time ago and never actually wrote until much more recently.

I. am not actually sure exactly how long ago I got the idea for that fic, but I can tell you it has definitely been years. probably three. I remember thinking about it when I was visiting my stepfather and I haven't spoken to that man willingly in over a year, never mind set foot in the same state as him.

another wip I have, which I haven't done too much with in an embarrassingly long time but am co-writing with @thegreatandpowerfulversy, is a series of fics called Under a Broken Moon, which started when I realized that mantle in v7 of rwby in that first establishing shot really reminded me of warframe fortuna, and we consequently came up with backstories for rwby versions of all the fortuna characters, and from there it's just expanded into multiple main fics including such fun things like vox faunus in lieu of vox solaris, sienna khan cheating death with great glee, and the grineer causing Problems in vacuo.

that one, I can pinpoint when it started, because I still have the original prologue saved that never actually made it onto ao3. Vox Faunus was the first fic written in that series, back before I ended up bouncing so many ideas off of kira there that she eventually became an outright co-author. and that was originally written back in january of 2020.

anyway, those are the main wips I have at the moment, unless I'm forgetting something. I really hope I'm not forgetting something because three wips is a little much and I really, really want to get it down to two sooner rather than later.

girl help.

the relevant ask game, if you're curious?