ofmermaidstories

[ofmermaidstories]

u kno bakugou so well i always wanna kno ur THOTS, what are they today queen 🤨🎤

this is like, less about katsuki and more about his mother but like… do you think there’s ever a time when he’s a teenager, like, maybe after the war and the hospitalisation and the new scars that he like—comes back from UA with idk, some kind of prototype for a new gauntlet in his bag and mitsuki like, suddenly just misses the days when he was five or six and upends his bag on his bedroom floor with a clatter of perfectly shaped rocks and sticks? like she yells at him every time for the mess, and he just shouts back and tells her not to touch his cool sticks and suddenly he’s seventeen and tired from training and pulling out this weaponry from his backpack and telling her not to touch it because it’s being shit and he has to fix the damn thing and—do you think she just ever misses that pile of sticks, those stupid rocks?

#ofmermaidstories-asks #rocks and sticks ARE pretty cool tho 🪨 🪵

[ofmermaidstories]

i am staying up late watching fallout and i gotta say… not nearly enough characters ask “ok but what the fuck does that mean??” for my tastes LOL.

#i am enjoying it LOL #it makes me wanna redownload fallout shelter……. if i do no one is seeing hide nor hair of me for like six months tho

[ofmermaidstories]

Hi Mermie 🥺🤍hope ur having a great day⭐️

For the writer-ask game I wanted to ask u 1, 48, and 49 🫶

i hope UR having a great day, starry. 🥺😌⭐️

1.     Do you listen to music when you write?

how funny for u, starry, to ask me this question—because my answer, my habit now, actually comes from the animator’s survival kit. 🥹 have you read it??? for our friends that haven’t, there’s a part where the author is explaining how, when he was learning under one of the old animation masters, Milt Kahl (one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, basically the OG guys that like, invented animation as we know it today), that he made the mistake of asking whether or not Milt listened to music while he drew his pages—only to have Milt explode at him.

“I’m not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time!” Milt tells him.

i read the animator’s survival kit when i was a babby and wanted to do animation—and those pages in particular have always (and immediately) stuck with me, because Milt was like—right? like i’ll listen to music when i draw, but at the same time, i’m not really listening to it, i’m focusing on something else. and it’s worse when i’m trying to write—I can’t listen and think at the same time—so no, i don’t listen to music when i write. 🥹 if i need to block out a more irritating/distracting noise i’ll play like, idk, some white noise or nature sounds—but that’s about it. i haven’t listened to music when i write ever since reading that.

48.  What’s the most self-insert character/scene you’ve ever written?

i think the most perfect 1:1 example i have is—you do remember in SJLT, when Scribbles starts carrying those letters around? like a good luck charm, just in her bag? that’s a mermie thing!! i did that for a while a few years ago, now, when i was in a rough place. different circumstances, and a different letter-writer lmao—but it meant the same thing. and we both needed it the same way, i think.

49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?

the MHA canon cast would be so incredibly stressful to deal with. 💀 maybe Kaminari? I think he’d be a sweetheart. Momo and Jirou, too—they’d both be used to being around big personalities, so I think they could handle me slipping in there too. 😌

#ofmermaidstories-asks #starry 🥺 hello my night sky 🥹🌌 #survey tag weh

[ofmermaidstories]

HIII MEEEERRRMMSS!!!! :)) how are you? hope youre doing well :) for the game — i was thinking 28… 44…. 45….. but if thats too many you can like ignore whichever one is the most boring

junie. u could ask me to guess what colour ur socks are and i would be glad for the chance to sit and play along. i love u. 🥹 nothing u could think of, or say, or worry about or wanna ask would be boring to me, ur an entire universe within urself and it’s an honour to even graze against the expanse. 🌌🪲

but ok let’s go lmaooo.

28.  Favourite side character

in canon, or fic?? in canon i have a soft spot for tokoyami and dark shadow; and mineta, actually, i think his design is so fun (specifically the way his nose and mouth are drawn!! and his big eyes, they stand out from how hori does others!). 13 too, actually—she’s fun with or without her helmet!!!

44.  How much research do you do?

ehhh. probably not enough (for what i like to tackle, lmao) to be honest. but a bit! for shouto’s fic i kinda had to go on a glut of research about several different things (sdkfhsdkjfh) so that has it’s own doc with like, my notes and sources and stuff. screenshots of interesting things! it sounds impressive but i promise it’s really shallow, lmao, and i think the end result will be like, relatively light on all the stuff i’ve learnt but—eh. no knowledge is wasted lmao.

45.  How much world building do you do?

omg okay, but like, what counts as world building in this situation tho??? because omg, junie, can i just rant about this? im gonna rant about this LMAOO i have a LOT of opinions and ur here now so!!!!!! 🥹 soz!!!! but like, what does that mean tho? LOL. world building. what does that mean??? i see it thrown around all the time and like, to me in a fanfic it’s like… what world building??? we write fanfic LMAO. the world is built for us, that’s literally the point. i don’t consider the lightweight stuff of like, making up a guy and shoving him into a preexisting world to be world building. to me world building as a definition is strict: like, you’re literally building a world. you have to figure out a money system, what are coins worth? how is justice is carried out? how does that effect the rich vs. the poor? how do people clean their asses, what does the plumbing in their cities entail. what kind of crops do they grow and what does that mean for like, easy-to-make sweets? basically what i am saying is that i think to qualify for the term u need to build a world outside of the borrowed one ur writing in and quite frankly i don’t really consider the pro-hero AUs i write to fall under that category LOL. the hard stuff is already done!!! quirks have rules, quirk society has rules… it’s all neat and tidy. i just slip our reader-inserts in like barbie dolls into a dreamhouse and go from there. 😎🌴

#ofmermaidstories-asks #junie junie june-bug 🪲🌾 my precious junie hello hi #survey things sdlkjf

[ofmermaidstories]

mermie! hello again!

my last ask for the game reminded me that i wanted to ask - how do you write your action scenes? is there a specific method you use to keep track of everything going on ?

i hope the rest of today and the weekend goes great for you! 🥹 🌼

bluebelle. 🥺 you too!!! a nice easy weekend. 😌 but ok lemme have a think. 🧐 honestly? it’s outlining. i’m a big outliner for my work, so i plan for my fight scenes from the get-go. when i’m writing the outline for them i guess i just keep in mind like—what i want to achieve with the fight, and where our MC is, what they’re doing (are they fighting, or trying to stay out of the way?) and what they’d see/encounter as a result! like if you have someone in the thick of it, who’s fighting, their scope is… kinda gonna narrow? like they’re gonna focus on whoever/whatever they’re fighting, so then you’re just concentrating on the outcome of that immediate action. but someone on the edges of a fight is gonna see more of it, get the bigger picture. so really it literally depends on like… what you’re trying to achieve with including it!!! everything else (the fluidity of the fighting, the movements, etc etc etc) is a matter of like, practise. 💀 writing it repeatedly bc u like to punish yourself. 💀💀

#ofmermaidstories-asks #LOL i hope that helps even a little bit birdie sdlkfjlskdfj #i whinge about fight scenes all the time bc i think they’re hard but—they’re satisfying too 🥹

[ofmermaidstories]

Hi Ofmermaids, love you OfMermaids💛 For the ask game, can I ask for 36, 37, 38? TIA!

hi anon 🥹💗 love you anon 😌💕

36.  Last sentence you wrote

It’s early evening; he’s sprawled out on his couch, boneless from a long day and you had hovered beside him, unsure if you were allowed to follow—allowed to want him, to want the ease of touching him whenever you could.

it’s from the bakugou birthday one-shot. 🥹

37.  First sentence of your current WIP

Katsuki celebrates his birthday three times over, like a fairytale task, the first year you’re with him.

i keep quoting this one… the nature of it being the first sentence of my current WIP, though. 🥹

38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had

i’d love to say something shocking but tbh most of my ideas are pretty conventional. 🥹 like, weird to me means—adjacent to the surreal, or absurd? like… finding a mermaid in a manhole and keeping her in your bathtub and then using her weeping (colourful) sores as paint kinda surreal. checking into a hotel where, if you’re unable to find a partner, you end up being turned into a animal kinda absurd. stuff like that! nothing that i can think of, off the top of my head, meets the same kinda… playfulness that i think those kind of ideas inherently have! because isn’t that what weird is? to be playful in like… the questions or ideas you ask/put forward? lmaoo.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #kisses for u anon muah muah #survey tag weh

[ofmermaidstories]

👀👀👀👀👀 merms I'd like to ask.... 25 and 38.

25.  Favourite part of writing

I was gonna be a smartass and be like “how DARE u ask me this u know the answer stella HOW COULD U”, but I actually had like, a massive tantrum yesterday about writing in general LMAO. It was awful!!! I was like, what’s the point, why do I do this, I don’t enjoy this I’m not quick at it I find it so hard—and like, all of that is true ldjflkdsj. I’m not quick at it and I do find it hard. 🥺 Some days very hard!!! Especially because my imagination outstrips my output. 🥺 I have so many more things I wanna do but I’m only capable of so much and some days, like yesterday, I do sort of feel like Miyazaki in that documentary—I can feel it everyday, the limit of my ability—but. Idk. I roll around and I whinge and I whinge and I whinge and then there’s always a moment where I’m like, hunched over my phone or my tablet and I’m writing again and there’s like one normal, boring sentence, but I go back and rewrite it and it just fits into the paragraph and I’m like, oh. :) It’s this perfect moment of zen, you know? Like that small handful of words in just the right order makes all the misery and the despair and the self-questioning worth it in the end. Eventually.

38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had

Depends… what’s ur definition of weird. 👁️

#ofmermaidstories-asks #someone remind me to make that spread sheet of tags dsfkljldskjf #hiiii stells HI #survey tag sdlkfjs

[ofmermaidstories]

hi merms!! i hope you're having a lovely day! for the ask game, i'd like to ask number 27 & 34!

bluebelle. 🥹 🩵🌼🕊️ hello birdie. 🥺 i am having a lovely day, especially now you’ve said hello. 🥹

27. Favourite line/scene

Ehh. If I had to pick a favourite line it would probably be like, Bakugou being mad in surrender LOL, when he’s cross Weeds is jealous!! (“You’re a dumbass,” he says at last, like it’s a fatal diagnosis you’ve just been given in front of him)

(it makes me cackle bc i think he would be sooo mad at realising someone he likes is a little dumb sdlkfjklsdfj)

34.  What was the hardest scene you ever had to write?

Oh. I was gonna say hands down the entirety of the bunker/underground fight in something, but tbh I don’t really think that’s true anymore. Action in general is like, fiddly, but I’ve done it enough times now that I think harder parts are like—big emotional scenes. 🥺 Especially if they require the character or whatever to like, linger in those big feelies sdlkfjlksdjf. They’re a little draining sometimes. 🥹 Which makes me slow at them. 🥺 Scribbles talking to Hana’s Dad, in the last chapter of SJLT, took me ages to do compared to like, say, Deku’s last fight!

#ofmermaidstories-asks #bluebelle i need to find your tag… but i hope your evening is going easy 🌼 #survey tag weh where is that tag dsklfdjsdlkj

[ofmermaidstories]

OOOOOH OOOOH ME ME ME ME🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️

Okay okay Mermie I gotta know……..#11, #17, and hmmm let’s do #27 (of course I wanna know them ALL but that a little too much hehe)

LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!!!✨🫶🏻💗

kimmyyy hello, hi, ily2. 💕🥹 ok lessgo.

11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on this blog how hard I rode for Tamora Pierce as a kid, lmao, and how like… formative that was. If you’ve never read her stuff it’s fantasy -adventure, with a dash of romance, kinda? The first series in that world is The Song of the Lionness, where Alana trades places with her twin brother so she can train as a knight and he can study as a mage but the first series of Pierce’s I ever read was the third, The Protector of the Small, which is like idk, twenty or so years after Alana’s made waves in the world? The main character, Keladry, is the first girl since Alana to train—openly—as a Knight, and like, whereas Alana had magic and literal Gods behind her, Kel has to struggle through it alone and just sort of make her way through this infamous boys club, and you know, old men that resent her (and Alana) and dslkfjsldkfj. idk!!! It made such an impact, you know? After I finished that series I backtracked to the next one my library had, which was The Immortals, which follows a girl called Daine who can understand animals and how she ends up learning how to control her magic under the tutelage of the most powerful mages in the country (there’s an age gap romance involved that one, as a head’s up.)

The fun part tho is that like, Immortals is set oh idk, a while after Lionness, and then Kel and her struggles happen a few years after Daine’s last book and all these characters like, show up in each others stories!!! 🥹 Like, they affect each other’s worlds!! They have weight, they create change!! Alana pretends to be a boy in order to train and ends up like, becoming the first female Knight, opening the land up to the Gods—and then a few years later Daine comes along, and with her wild magic tears the space between the land and the Gods wide open, sending monsters throughout the relam and making knights like Alana—someone who Daine now knows, thanks to life at the palace—scatter across the land to fight them. And then years after that you have Kel coming along, at like, what, twelve? Kel who wants to train as a knight because of the stories about Alana and her efforts in that war, Kel who grew up with brothers who like, rode off to also train as knights, who end up having to face the last of the monsters that ended up trapped in their world when the heavenly rift was closed by Daine. Daine, who’s still at the palace when Kel trains—who’s there to talk to her horse, because he’s not listening/cooperating with this young girl. This young girl who’s like, all alone in her training because the King—who’s kinda scary, who used to be a smart-assed prince who’s best friend was a girl pretending to be boy—has forbidden Alana from talking to her. And I’m not even like, scratching the surface in how they’re all interwoven LOL. They make up that whole world, they have lives outside of their own series and idk—I’ve just always liked that. 🥹 In the wake of finding Tamora’s stuff I ended up making up my own little fantasy story: it was just a rip-off of Tortall, lmao, but I napped out like a good three hundred years, roughly? Of like, interconnected generations and characters. 🥹 Like it literally starts with a random noble girl getting kidnapped by pirates and then two hundred years later her descendants marry onto the Throne like. LMAO. Tamora is a stand-out for me for like, truly instilling that interconnectivity and next-generation type storytelling in me. Her and the V.C. Andrew books, and then Juliet Marillier. The trifecta of fiction that arrived roughly the same time—just at the most perfect, impressionable age. 🥹

17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?

tbh I can’t afford to have true rituals to write—I’d never get anything done, ever, LOL. A reoccurring habit I do have though is that I end up in the same coffee shop with the same order when I’m forcing myself to write, though!! Being outside kinda puts a timer on things, which ends up prompting me to write more than noodling around at home does sdlkfjlsdkfj.

27.  Favourite line/scene

out of my own writing? easy. the ending of something (just like this). the last scene, specifically. 🎆

#ofmermaidstories-asks #hi kae hiiii #survey tag sdklfjlkdj

[ofmermaidstories]

A Writer’s Ask Game

Send me an ask with the number(s) you’d like me to answer!

The Basics 1.     Do you listen to music when you write? 2.     Are you a pantser or plotter? 3.     Computer or pen and paper? 4.     Have you ever been published, or do you want to be published? 5.     How much writing do you get done on an average day? 6.     Single or multiple POV? 7.     Standalone or series? 8.     Oldest WIP 9.     Current WIP 10.  Do you set yourself deadlines?

The Specifics 11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most 12.  Describe your perfect writing space 13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished 14.  How do you deal with self-doubts? 15.  How do you deal with writer’s block? 16.  How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied with a project? 17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have? 18.  If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and what would you write about? 19.  How do you keep yourself motivated? 20.  How many WIPs and story ideas do you have?

The Favourites 21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? 22.  Who is/are your favourite pairing(s) to write? 23.  Favourite author 24.  Favourite genre to write and read 25.  Favourite part of writing 26.  Favourite writing program 27.  Favourite line/scene 28.  Favourite side character 29.  Favourite villain 30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet

The Dark 31.  Least favourite part of writing 32.  Most difficult character to write 33.  Have you ever killed a main character? 34.  What was the hardest scene you ever had to write? 35.  What scene/story are you least looking forward to writing?

The Fun 36.  Last sentence you wrote 37.  First sentence or your current WIP 38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had 39.  Weirdest character concept you’ve ever had 40.  Share some backstory for one of your characters

The Rest of It 41.  Any advice for new/beginning/young writers? 42.  How do you feel about love triangles? 43.  What do you do if/when characters don’t follow the outline? 44.  How much research do you do? 45.  How much world building do you do? 46.  Do you reread your own stories? 47.  Best way to procrastinate 48.  What’s the most self-insert character/scene you’ve ever written? 49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real? 50.  [Other question—ask me anything]

#you’ve got me for like—two hours #im procrastinating on my wips 🥹

[ofmermaidstories]

Fuck it

WIP WEDNESDAY!!!!!

I have decided that I’m working too DAMN HARD TO NOT POST THE PROCESS!!!

I finished his jumper and headphones hehe

#this is stunning 😭 starry ur skill and talent 😭💕

[ofmermaidstories]

a gentle reminder that this is still the plan! i am just very slow at writing lmao.

tiny WIP update:

my priorities, in order now, are:

📝 the first one-shot in the surrender collection (happy birthday).

📝 first chapter of the shouto-fic, still (falling for you)

and then we’ll revisit after that about what comes next!!! the regency fic is still in the works, it’s just taken a back seat to happy birthday and SFFY, so once those are out we will reshuffle, i think.

[ofmermaidstories]

mermieee did you see that someone made a binded copy of surrender (whenever you're ready) ? was scrolling on tiktok earlier and i was so surprised to recognize the title in a video

lmaooo, are you talking about @syoish’s viral powerpoint video? yes!!! not organically though—kimkaelyn sent me the link a day or so ago. 🥹 how fun was the video though??? for our friends who haven’t seen it, it’s a vid of sy giving a powerpoint presentation of her past and present anime husbands, and what her girlfriend’s ratings for each one is! it’s pretty funny—sy is pretty funny!—and some of those husbands need justice, lmao. bakugou is featured twice 🥹 eren jaeger is the crowning husband in the video, though. sy has actually written a massive 100k x reader fic for him!!! modern AU, asexual reader, it’s called ten seconds and i’d recommend it if eren is your flavour! sy has this impressive skill of like, just writing her fics out. 😳 like… in their entirety. just banging them out in a couple of months and then posting them once finished!!!!! it always floors me; i think people who have the discipline and skill to sit down and just write until they’re done are genuinely unmatched!! AND, sy binds fics!! like??? i don’t have the patience for the fiddly stuff with binding but i want one sooo bad lmfao. you should see some of her newer binds!!! i’m looking forward to her showing off her copy of ten seconds, when she binds it. 😌

#ofmermaidstories-asks

[ofmermaidstories]

Shueisha is doing a range of like, “educational” manga and they’ve gotten a bunch of popular artists to do the covers and this is volume three and done by Horikoshi and i KNOW ceasar there looks like AFO (lmao) but all i can think is like how much this’d make a great template for a self-insert portrait 👁️ bakugou…… maybe 😯

#hori’s thigh agenda a bit weak here LMAOOO

[ofmermaidstories]

This is what happened when a fanfic site is profit driven. Wattpad sucks 😞

The email from Wattpad is so condescending imagine pressuring writers to update and work while they are doing it for free and fun. Also the discovery? Algorithm? Of Wattpad looks like a stressful popularity contest 😑

#fuck wattpad all my homies hate wattpad

[ofmermaidstories]

thinking about all the “small” art that’s ever existed. songs that were only ever sung in one village. stories written by children that got lost in the shuffle. personal paintings that didn’t survive the test of time. how they affected the lives of just a few, but still existed, still mattered to someone.

#our fanfics :)

[ofmermaidstories]

Bakugou Birthday is my favourite day (week tbh) in the fandom, hands down…. every year it’s so much fun because we get absolutely spoilt with art. 🥹 i love it so much!!! i love birthdays, they are so important, it’s so important to celebrate people you love and that extends to the animes. 💖🎂 last night when midnight (local time) hit my fyp on twitter instantly became an implosion of colourful fanart with confetti and cake and 🥹🥹🥹🥹 i love it i loveeee it i love birthdays even for pretend people.

#im gonna SHRIEKKKKKK i love him sommuch #my bestie’s birthday is literally in a month and i recently got her birthday present and im so excited for her to open it i hope— #she likes it dhdhdhdhd