#i have most of the major plot points and the first 10k written but

[jfleamont]

I have a kind of specific question that I'm hoping you and your followers could help me out with.

I'm writing my own version of the classic marauders fic, but I suck at writing the death eaters I don't enjoy writing antagonistic characters particularly and don't even have a super clear idea of who is who/ who fits to include(besides perhaps the main ones like Snape and regulus) especially since there's so little canon, so the majority is often fan made. of course they are essential to the plot though!

I want it to obviously be my own work, but I would really appreciate any pointers of where to start with these characters, even just a list of the right characters to start developing my own interpretations of.

this is obviously a very big ask, so any help or pointers anyone can offer to give me a nudge in the right direction I'd be so grateful for!

Hello! Sorry for the late reply, I had two exams and I have two more coming up but I've been dying to reply to this ask since you sent it :)

I'll preface this by saying that, much like you, I'm really not into these kind of characters and I don't enjoy writing them, nor do I have the skill to do so. I have only written one-shots and none of them had any Death Eaters in them; however, I do have a WIP (that I started almost one year ago and that I plan on finishing sometime this summer) that's going to be around 10k and it will most certainly feature those kind of characters, so this is actually really helpful for me too and it might help me get out of this funk since I haven't worked on that WIP in months.

That said, let's get to work!

The first name that comes to mind is Lucius Malfoy. We have quite a bit of info about him in canon, and I believe he's 6 or 7 years older than the Marauders. He was a prefect and was in the Slug Club, and was friends with Snape for the brief time they were at Hogwarts together. After leaving Hogwarts he married Narcissa Black, another pureblood, got a job at the ministry and at one point he met Voldemort. If you want to write him into your story, depending on the year your fic takes place, you could show him taking Snape under his wing and giving speeches about blood purity. I think by then he was already a prefect so he probably abused his power and gave detentions to Gryffindors and Muggleborns/Halfbloods for no reason; I don't know if he'd use violence or hexes, because he's far too diplomatic for that. I think he was really good at convincing people, he manipulated them and made them do the dirty work for him. He'd occasionally hex people for fun but due to his upbringing, he knew better than picking petty fights in the hallways, and he strikes me as the kind of person who was very driven and who thought about the bigger picture. He had, after all, a place in the wizarding world by right of birth, and his family was quite openly in favour of blood purity and all that racist bullshit. Snape, on the other hand, had always been picked on and he learnt at a very young age how to defend himself (and was easily triggered). Lucius didn't need to. He didn't have Snape's rage and didn't want revenge. If you want to start your story when the Marauders are a bit older (16 or 17), you could say that the wannabe Death Eaters at Hogwarts sort of idolised him because he was so young but already in Voldemort's inner circle; furthermore, you could have him actually recruit students, and have them take Unbreakable vows, teach them the Unforgivable Curses and make them get the Dark Mark. They could meet in Hogsmeade (since he's no longer a student), kinda like Harry does with his first DA meeting.

Barty Crouch Junior is another Death Eater that comes to mind and it could be an interesting character to work with. He was at Hogwarts during the 70s and roughly the same age as James & his friends. He came from a pureblood family, but I don't think they were the kind of people who actually wanted Muggleborns dead; after all, Crouch Senior was already a prominent figure in politics, and he was head of the DMLE (Department of Magical Law Enforcement). But he did have an aggressive approach towards criminals, which partly explains his son's obsession with violence. Barty Junior also had a very complicated relationship with his father, a man who was probably incapable of showing affection and was too busy working to take care of his son. I think Barty hated him but wanted to impress him at the same time and, in a very fucked up way, he did those horrible things because he wanted his father to pay attention to him. We don't know why he chose to become a DE, but my impression is that he was a very lonely, insecure kid and he found a sense of belonging at Hogwarts, something I don't think he ever felt when he was at home. Whether he joined the very people his father was after out of spite or not, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he did believe in those things by the time he was older. He was also very intelligent - he disguised himself as Moody for nearly a year - albeit highly unpredictable. He was delirious and insane in some scenes, but overall quite reasonable when he pretended to be Moody, so he could have had a personality disorder, but if you want to write about that you should do some research and be careful, because associating villains with mental illnesses could do more harm than good if not done well, and it's a slippery slope. All I'm gonna say is that he definitely had some daddy issues, that's for sure.

Then of course we have Regulus, whose family was very much against Muggleborns. We know quite a lot about the Black household thanks to Sirius, and there are different headcanons floating around about the kind of bond the two brothers had. In my opinion, Regulus looked up to his brother and was envious of him: even at eleven years old, Sirius had already made up his mind about his parents' view of the world and wanted nothing to do with them. It shows that he was an independent thinker, and I think Regulus wondered for a long time how he could do that so easily. Was Regulus not strong enough? Or did he feel like he didn't have a choice? Because Sirius had James, so he wasn't completely alone. Regulus had no one. Obviously, I know he did have a choice, and he shared his parents' (and Voldemort's) political views. When Voldemort hurt Kreacher he turned against him, which is very interesting and unusual, mainly because pureblood families do not have any sort of respect or affection towards elves, while Regulus clearly did.

As for the others, I think Mulciber and Avery are mentioned by Lily while they were in Hogwarts, and they're the ones who cursed Mary Macdonald (this is mentioned in SWM). I think they went to Azkaban after the first war, unlike Evan Rosier (mentioned during Karkaroff's trial) who was killed when they tried to arrest him.

I suggest you also look into the Sacred Twenty-Eight - a list of pureblood families from which the Potters were excluded because they had been pro-muggle for a couple of generations, I think - to get an idea and maybe an inspiration for an original DE character.

So, if you want to include Death Eaters in your fic, you could make a list of possible characters and mention their relationships and friendships; you could make one of them really good at dueling, and another one good at flying (and make them James' rival during Quidditch matches). Death Eaters were Voldemort's followers first, and friends second, so it makes sense that there was a hierarchy: you can choose one of them as a leader, and the others could be the minions, the brawns and the brains (Snape would probably be the latter since he was smart and actually invented some hexes that were very useful to the DEs). And if you want to make things even more interesting, some of them could also be from different Hogwarts houses (not the ones I've mentioned because they're all canonically Slytherins), and they could also be girls!

If you want more ideas, there's a 2014 film called 'The Riot Club' (which I didn't like to be honest, but that's not the point lol) that explores the violent behaviour that often occurs in these kind of social circles; and while you're at it, you could also research 'hazing', a phenomenon that is often associated with fraternities and sororities in college that, while pretty disturbing, could also make for a much more compelling story.

Historically, boarding schools have often been described as toxic environments: for the majority of the year these young kids are separated from their families and while this is beneficial for some, for others it's very dangerous. During the most vulnerable period of their lives, they have to rely on authority figures that do not, however, provide the love and affection that parents do; this creates a dissonance, and kids either isolate themselves, or create their own 'families', and some are more dysfunctional than others (i.e. the Marauders vs. Snape's gang).

This is all I could think about, but as always people are welcome to add their own thoughts and headcanons!

Hope this helps, and feel free to ask me whatever you want :)

#oof this was a long one #was gonna put this in the jily tag but it has nothing to do with them #but i also don't wanna tag the DEs I mentioned bc I don't want to attract their fans #I loved talking about this tho #very interesting and i'm definitely gonna think about this a lot in the future #mainly bc it makes their world even more fucked up and i'm even more mad at dumbledore #harry potter #marauders #marauders era #mwpp #mpp #death eaters #jfleamont rambles #asks

[bisamwilson]

O and P from the fanfic ask game! (Sidenote: excited to read your Sambucky Star Wars au!!)

hi cat!!! thanks for the ask <3 (from this list)

so excited that you're excited for my star wars au!!! i'm perhaps a little unreasonably proud of/happy with that one im ngl

O: How do you begin a story—with the plot, or the characters?

i mean i feel like i'm generally writing about the same two to three characters in most fics so by default i tend to start with the characters? every fic i've written has mostly been in pursuit of hammering out the exact characterization i have for sam and bucky that fits in with what we've seen in the mcu (and same with torres in the sbj fics i've written!)

there are some exceptions to this tho! the one last stop au is a major one; i was reading one last stop in august/september of 2021 and i was like oh my god this could SO easily have sambucky vibes and then i started writing based on having that general plot outline, and it was the fic that launched me into writing in general! the princess diaries au is another good example of plot first; i'd always wanted to write one for a fandom but had never had the inspo before sambucky + i really wasn't sure exactly what side characters were going into each role until i started writing. i'd planned to make sam's arranged marriage partner maria rambeau and have her pair up with bucky's fake date carol danvers at first, and had even written that up till like halfway through chapter 4 before i went back and changed this to ayo and sarahayo!

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the storu unfold as you go?)

this is almost entirely dependent on how long the fic is! if it's a fic i think is probably going to end up >10k (princess diaries, one last stop, sam takes bucky home to delacroix before civil war au, potential upcoming ghost au), then i've usually got at least a general outline before i start, if not a very detailed list of exactly what major plot points happen in each chapter like i did with the princess diaries au (of course this got changed some in the early stages, seeing my answer above, but it was pretty much entirely finalized by the time i finished chapter 4)

if it's one of my shorter fics, sometimes things just get written down and then they work! the star wars au is actually a great example of this. i truly did think i was gonna be writing a fun little space romp and then it turned into feelings and angst and longing and a short indictment of some of the jedi rules for way of life. the first chapter of renaissance man, two chapters of some invisible string tying you to me, and all of we don't talk anymore got written on discord pretty spontaneously and in one go, so these are also some pretty great examples of "sometimes words just happen"

tldr; this is pretty fic dependent (and often fic length dependent!)

#thanks for the ask <3 #cataroo #ask game #ask #ask meme

[heich0e]

hi liv! (☆▽☆) so i was having my #percolatethoughtoftheday today and i was wondering (if you're comfortable with it ofc) if you can share some of the planning process for percolate with us? were there any major plot point changes that would've greatly affected the story? was there anything you removed that you regretted, was there anything you added in last minute, which scene was the hardest to get right, which scene did you speed through, etc etc? because percolate is like 130k+ words which means it definitely has gone through some really ~intense planning~, i'm curious to know more about its behind the scenes process... kinda like how they post behind the scenes footage for a film or a music video after it's released! :-O

have a great sunday <3 (and enjoy ur party... hehe)

yuna :( this is so cute :( i hope you had a great weekend sweet girl

all of percolate's plot was planned and written out in may of 2021. it started as what was supposed to be a one-shot for a friend's birthday (who, as far as I'm aware, has never actually even read the fic LMAO) but the word count was quickly in the thousands and I knew that I had something a bit more unwieldy than expected on my hands. If I'm remembering correctly I hit 10k words in about a day of writing, and I immediately knew that in order to include all of the events that I saw in my head in the story I'd need it to be multichaptered.

I set a kind of arbitrary number of chapters (12 initially) based on the word count of what I then knew to be chapter 1, and took 12 pages of paper and wrote out (by hand!!) the plot and the major story points that I wanted to happen in each chapter. I still have all of those papers, and they're so illegible and chaotic that I'm sure if anyone else tried to read them it would be like a different language LMAO. The planning process was actually very easy, and happened so quickly (all in the span of an hour or so), and then I guess all that was really left to do was write it.

The only major deviations from my initial plot outline that I can speak to are that chapter 10 (levi's POV) was a late, last-minute addition, because I felt that it was important to show at least a bit of what he'd been experiencing so far. There was also another chapter (I think 9 or 11?) that I ended up having to split into 2 because it was going to be too long. There was also a very brief moment in time where Rookie and Erwin were going to hook up but that was scrapped within the first few days, and I'm happy with that decision because I think it would have really unnecessarily complicated the (already kind of messy) plot.

Honestly I sped through writing most of the fic--I know that there were MONTHS LONG waits between chapters, but when I did finally overcome my fic anxiety and just sit down with my chapter outlines to write them, I would say that no chapter took me more than a couple of hours to write. Chapter 14 was likely the hardest just in terms of the amount of stress I felt. By that point there were so many people waiting for the ending that I felt an enormous pressure to do justice to this story that they had been so kind about, and followed intently. I really didn't ever think that anyone would read this fic, so by the time the end rolled around I was more than a bit overwhelmed lmaooo.

If I knew at the outset what I know now about how percolate would be received I think it would have scared me off writing it. I'd never written anything like it before, much less shared it with the world, and it really did just start off as a fun thing I was doing for myself. I'm glad I wrote it, even more glad people actually read it, and am so so sso so so so grateful for the things that I learned and the people who I've gotten to meet through the experience.

Anyway, I have talked for long enough now. If anyone actually reads this unduly long post my sincerest apologies!!

#liv got mail #perc lore #perc asks

[asummersday]

@imdefnotvanessa

3. describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

starting off strong lmfao

uhm.

okay so for oneshots, i'll just come up with an idea and i just kinda go from there, no actual outline or plan. i prefer my fics to have a happy ending, so i do have the end in mind, and its basically just "it ends with comfort and/or cuddles".

honestly, i only come up with a vague idea of what i want to happen and let the fic do its own thing.

for some of my longer works (three-shots or oneshots that go over 10k and have a plot), i'll come up with a mental list of the things i want to happen, no real outlines to worry about there either.

regarding fics with more than 3 chapters: i havent written those since 2020 (which is. wild) so i only have one example for this (since my last longfic was zero outline, just a core concept, "fuck it we ball". i like the energy 16 y/o me brought to the table tbh). what i did for all the ashes in my wake was that i made an outline (just filled with the major plot points in the fic, bullet point style) just to have a general direction to take the fic in.

then i made a chapter by chapter outline (that i update everytime i veer off-track or introduce something i didnt originally intend to add in (*cough* big mama *cough*)). i just jot down the basic things that will happen, how its gonna end, plus some basic notes regarding the progress of the internal + external conflicts. stuff to keep in mind and the such.

(sorry if this one is a bit all over the place, it's hard to really describe my creative process other than just saying "chaos and dozens of sticky notes")

15. how do you write smut scenes? Do you get very visual or detailed? How important is it to be realistic?

i've never actually written any smut scene. first, i think i'd be very bad at it, but also i've just never really wanted to write anything smutty.

20. have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

i DO actually have a common setting for patrol scenes!! i like to set those in warehouses more often than not. not sure why, maybe because it's such a generic bad guy location, or because it's a location that doesn't require too much research. when in doubt on where to set your patrol/fight scene, put em in a warehouse!

other than that, i like to compare my characters feeling dizzy/about to pass out to feeling like they're underwater/everything feels muffled/murky

similarly, when a character wakes up after passing out/being knocked out, i like to write "it was like breaching the surface of a murky pond" or something like that

(i wish i could put more here, im just very bad at noticing my own writing patterns lmao.)

26. which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

my one and only crackfic ghosts? in front of MY salad? where duke thomas decides the best sibling bonding activity is trying to summon a ghost when he lives in gotham city. this was written in one sitting at 3 in the morning, and you can tell.

here's a little gem from this nonsensical fic:

“So,” Duke said nervously. “Does anyone know how to unsummon a ghost?” Another lamp was knocked off a cabinet and smashed on the ground. Alfred was really not gonna be happy.

55. of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

hm. for this fandom, my favorite to write for is Leo (i dont think ive been subtle about that LMFAO)

the choice wasn't really swayed by followers or readers, he's just so easy to write for me because i relate to him (and raph) the most, and we share a similar sense of humor which really makes writing internal dialogue and his pov chapters easy for me. and this is especially true for ataimw, but im the oldest and i saw a lot of myself in leo when he was arguing with raph in the movie and i quite literally went "oh so he is EXACTLY like me during arguments"

i do HC leo as the younger twin, so with me being the oldest sibling, you would THINK raph would be easier to write for me but nope!! apparently not!!

(maybe its bc i see leo as having adhd like me and going "i can write that. I CAN WRITE THAT")

thank you for the ask!! <33

get to know your fic writer

#ask game

[lyrebright]

I posted 500 times in 2022

That's 187 more posts than 2021!

62 posts created (12%)

438 posts reblogged (88%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lyrebright

@starcrossed-sky

@causalityparadoxes

@vaspider

@rinastray

I tagged 250 of my posts in 2022

Only 50% of my posts had no tags

#xbc3 - 34 posts

#lyre does tma - 31 posts

#lyre rambles - 19 posts

#niafic - 14 posts

#lyre writes - 11 posts

#laugh tag - 7 posts

#critically acclaimed mmorpg - 6 posts

#tma - 5 posts

#inspo - 5 posts

#lmao - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#first of all his almost breakdown centered in around having to read the ones that need the tape. thinking about what i observed in mag032

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

niafic wordcount progress

10k! 

23 notes - Posted September 5, 2022

#4

i am going to finish this noelfic chapter for pride month i swear on all that is good and gay

27 notes - Posted June 2, 2022

#3

I think a lot of people online these days that consume media and participate in fandom completely misunderstand and disregard the value of tragedy

59 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

#2

Season 2 of The Magnus Archives was an experience.

Season 1 was fun and atmospheric, but even as the plot outside of the statements became more and more prevalent, the vibes of it were still very anthology horror. From the start, S2 diverged from that with the addition of Jon's supplementals at the end of each statement--with the meta plot and the statements being far more tightly interwoven. The mystery is no longer whether or not what is going on is real, or Jane Prentiss: Prentiss is dead, and we know the supernatural is real for certain, and more to the point, so does Jon, and he always has.

Hearing that in MAG039 that Jon has always believed the "real" statements--the ones that would not record on modern equipment, only on tape--but had pretended not to because he felt watched was something of a reframing of everything for me.

Until then, I hadn't really thought about how, oh, yeah, they're still doing the bogus ones that record easy peasy as well as the ones we hear.

Maybe it would have been easier to keep it in mind if I was listening to the episodes as they aired (like one a week, I believe?) instead of binging them. Like...that would have really sold the toll you can hear them take on Jon. Once a week, you encounter a statement that won't record like the rest, and the dread creeps up on you as you know, you know, what is written down here on these pages is different to the vast majority of what fills the archive, and you desperately do not want to think that means it is real, but you sit down with your tape recorder and you do your job and as you recite those awful awful words you can Feel you are not alone. Something Is Seeing You.

It Really makes the accidents he makes re: dates and names in some statements more understandable, actually. And explains why he doesn't want to re record them to fix those mistakes--sounds exhausted at the very idea.

I was keeping this in mind as I went through S2, using it to inform my new understanding of Jon's character and the progression of his arc and development--

--and then the finale, and perhaps more pertinently, the first episode of S3, broke that understanding once more down to its foundations.

(Keep in mind that I have not seen past MAG081. I stopped myself from progressing further so as to not give myself even MORE backlog on my liveblog posts to finish, and to write out my thoughts on Jonathan Sims as he and they stand right now, before canon gives me more to work with.

I reiterate: I have only seen up to MAG081, 'A Guest For Mr. Spider;' please do not spoil me for anything further along in canon.)

The revelation that MAG081 gave me is both very layered and very simple (and, I'm sure, has been discussed to death already because I am very late to this party :P): Jon's character is best understood through the lens of his trauma.

Of course, it makes his hatred of Leitners make so much more sense, as well as his hatred of spiders--I think it personally even made some things click as to why he was so quick to believe Jane Prentiss as Real when he denied other events with similar amounts of evidence; while I have since come to the conclusion that whatever the spiders are, They ARE Their Own Thing, I was initially lumping them in with the other bugs, and Jon, encountering a worm woman, could very well have done the same--these are things he has survived, and thus fears all the more intently, because he knows them.

What's quite a bit more telling about Jon As A Person to me, though, is the things he says in his own statement that he seems not to think much of. Jonathan Sims was, by his own words, a "deeply annoying child," and I can't begin to explain how much that hurts me, as an ND adult who related to a lot of how he explained his reading habits, though in the other direction (I would fixate on only one thing and read it and only it for weeks).

It opened up my eyes to the fact that Jon definitely sees himself in a negative light. I'm not sure just yet how deep that self hatred runs, but there's no denying it's there. Somehow, he buried his pessimism under his mask of skepticism and snark, but it's almost more real than either of those things, and it's only aggravated by the survivor's guilt he carries even to this day.

It's a lot. This man--I don't yet know Jon's exact age, but from context clues of his personal timeline he has to be around thirty, I think? Maybe just before or past it?--underwent a severe trauma at the age of eight. It's very much understood that the first decade of life very much does inform a lot of who you'll grow up to be, and Jon didn't undergo anything so easy to explain as a car accident or physical abuse. No, on top of the already damaging record of being an orphan and being raised by a grandmother he knew resented having to do so, Jon's greatest childhood trauma came in the form of watching a bully twice his age getting taken by a giant spider that had initially been aiming for him.

That's...not something you can explain, and have believed, and Jon knew that. But it also means it's something he couldn't get support for; it means that even as he knew it was real and remembered it as real he was likely asking himself: Was That Real? and that sort of doubting of your reality is damaging for anyone, let alone a child under ten!

Is it any wonder, then, that he found himself drawn to puzzling out the paranormal? Is it any wonder, then, that when encountering more cases of true encounters, that his idea was equal to the childish and simple ideal of If I Can't See You, You Can't See Me?

And is it, then, any wonder, how spectacular a mental breakdown he has in the lead up to the S2 finale?

Going into TMA, I was told by almost all my friends who have listened to it that I was going to like Jon. "He's your type," they told me, "total blorbo material," and listening to the early episodes I could only think...surely not. What do they think of me?

But I first started to change my mind around the time of his first live statement; Naomi Herne. Maybe I read this differently than most, but for all his bluster and terrible bedside manner (which actually got him a complaint, which is still hysterical, I'll be more lovely, he says, like this is something he's been harped on at before, in those exact words), I sincerely do think that when he suggested she reach out and maybe speak to someone: he was being sincere. She just took it poorly, because Jon had spent the rest of their time together acting poorly.

This is a running theme as time goes on--even more so throughout S2, to be honest. But it doesn't just start after the trauma of the S1 finale; Martin is being menaced by Jane Prentiss, because he encountered her trying to prove himself to Jon's exacting standards, after Jon has spent the rest of the season thus far being hypercritical of him? With MAG081 in mind, it's easy to see how Jon's survivors guilt immediately kicks into gear and berates him for how he's been acting when he knows, he knows that the supernatural is out there and it's deadly.

He immediately tells Martin to stay in the archives, where he thinks it will be safe. And this compassion continues as a core part of his character, even if that's really all we get to see of it--the core, under the mask. He's gentle and concerned with Sasha in her live statement, too, and immediately goes to argue with Elias about better "defenses" for the archives with new knowledge in mind. And it doesn't end there! He's still a snarky little bitch about it, but each interaction with Melanie throughout S1 and S2 made me :D. And, one of perhaps the most standout moments in my mind, currently:

Helen Richardson. God, I'm still having so many feelings about that episode.

Imagine you're Jon. You've spent all this time thus far trying desperately not to see the things you are seeing so as to not be seen by the thing you are sure is seeing you, but then a worm woman attacks you, and you're badly scarred, and your predecessor was murdered, and there's an itching sense of Something Is Wrong, Someone Here Is Lying To Me that you cannot shake, and it is only aggravating your paranoia. On top of that, you can no longer hide your head away in the sand; you have admitted your skepticism was an act, you are throwing yourself headfirst into chasing after the spooky things you've only been reading about up to this point because you need answers, and even when you're not running around in creepy tunnels, you cannot escape the new reality that you have found yourself a part of because it is now choosing to intrude on you directly.

Jon's instant connection with Helen--and his recognition of Michael and, no doubt, his subtle, unconscious fear that Helen could have very well been Sasha--is currently one of the most tragic things that have happened in TMA, outside of Sasha herself (don't worry, ha, I am Bracing For Worse).

Jon's history with the live statement givers isn't the greatest; outside of Martin and Sasha, they all seemed to find him short or abrasive at best, even if they didn't all lead to a formal "knock it off" from Elias. But with Helen, he's sympathetic, he's empathetic, he's gentle, he believes her, and when she's taken once more by the very monster that she had managed to escape, right from his office--well, he attacks that monster. Give her back, he says, of a woman he's known for five minutes, and gets stabbed for his trouble.

I am not a brave man, Jon says of himself, but I think that's more of his negative self framing, because you can be brave and still afraid, brave and still a coward; the antithesis to bravery is not fear, it is antipathy, and if there is one thing Jon is firmly good at it is feeling things, deeply.

Helen, I think, is the real firestarter to the pinnacle of this part of Jon's development, that culminates in all that Sasha was. When he was a child, a monster snatched away a life right before his eyes, one he can't help but feel like should have been his own.

And when he was an adult, two monsters did the same to two women he felt a connection to--though he didn't realise the first one had happened til much, much later.

S2 had me riding a highwire of tension. I've mentioned in my liveblog posts that what happened to Sasha struck at a personal, deep-seated and fairly irrational fear of mine, so I was waiting, the entire season, for something to happen with Not!Sasha. Hearing Jon later muse that his paranoia was aggravated and worsened by the presence of Not!Sasha was honestly highly validating, because it was doing that to me, too.

See the full post

74 notes - Posted July 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

so! you want to rip a fic from fanfiction dot net?

I’m sure at this point we’ve all seen the posts about FFN’s inevitable demise. Not to downplay how much that would suck, for all we riff on FFN--but people have been saying that for literal years at this point, and while I do not doubt that FFN is dying, it’s probably not going to up and vanish on us in the next week. It’s got some good time of chugging and wheezing along left yet.

But among the panic there are people asking sincere questions about what can be done to save fics from FFN in the case of the site going down and taking literal decades of fandom history with it, and I’m seeing a surprising amount of people saying that the only way to do it is to either screenshot the fics or type them out yourself because copy/paste does not work on FFN. And that is just blatantly not true. There are many ways in which you can save fics from FFN. Here are just a few:

You can copy/paste directly from the mobile site. This is probably one of the easiest methods for anyone to do. Just click on the URL of the chapter you’re reading, and change the www. to m. Hit enter and the page will reload in mobile mode. You can now copy/paste the chapter right into a word document. You will have to go chapter by chapter.

CTRL+S. Go to the fic you want to save, and hit ctrl+s. Save the damn webpage. This will keep it in the exact format of the webpage, which you could see as a pro or a con, but it will also keep the ads, which does suck. You’ll also have to go chapter by chapter with this method but it does go a lot faster than manually copy/pasting the text.

HTML to PDF. This method I’m admittedly a little less sure about, since when I used it it was like, 2013 and I was in highschool so I’m not sure how viable it still is, but--just a quick google search should find you a website that will let you save a webpage as a PDF file. I have folders and folders of fics I saved back in highschool using this method. It will again have to go chapter by chapter and just like saving the webpage will keep the format of the site intact--down to keeping the ads.

Use a fanfiction downloader. Two I’ve been using for years are FF2eBook and FicHub. You put in the link of the fic you want to download and it converts the entire thing into a file for you. Yes, the entire thing--you don’t need to manually go through chapter by chapter. By default, both sites download in epub format, though FicHub does have a few other options. I’ve never really experimented with them though because I’m personally fine with epub, and there are a million epub to pdf (or other file type) converters out there.

And there you go: a handful of ways for you to save your favourite fics before FFN goes under. Again, I don’t think it’s something to be too worried about, but the best time to do your part for fandom preservation was yesterday. The second best time is to get started right now. There is no reason to wait for FFN to be on its death bed to start saving fics. I’ve been doing this for years just so I have fics to read offline. 

I’m a little too young to have been around for livejournal, but I was one of those weirdos that posted their first fics on quizilla. I remember when quizilla just...changed. And so much was lost. Looking back, almost none of what was posted on quizilla was actually good, but it was still something that someone put time and effort and passion into creating, and it was important.

There is almost no way that when FFN inevitably goes down that its entire archive will be saved. But we can do our best to save as much as we can. Stop panicking and start saving.

1,129 notes - Posted September 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[scribespirare]

I hate plotting so much end me

#xyz #i have most of the major plot points and the first 10k written but #i need more and just UGH

[valenhell]

From the studio that brought you “I can’t find good Byler fics in the ao3 tag”, comes:

"The Definitive Byler fic rec list"

Literally no one asked for this but because I spent the majority of last year (...and 2019, and 2018...) reading byler fics and coping with life, I thought I’d make a list of some of my absolute favorites. 

The other day I was basically starving for some byler fics and the angel @magicalfairy provided me with some of her faves so I thought I’d do the same, because I love reading, and I love all of these fics and I appreciate their writers💗 And fic writers in general, come on!

- This is a mix of long works and one-shots/short stories. - Everything is mostly fluff with a tad of angst and a lot of internalized homophobia conflict.  - Every fic is completed, except for the ones I mention that they are not. - I try my best to lay out the stories in a way that I won’t spoil you the plot but also warning you of some stuff you might don’t like. Either way, all of these fics are correctly tagged by their respective authors/owners, so read at your own risk. For better understanding, in between brackets I denote Rating, Words and quantity of Chapters. - I feel like I should clarify, none of these are narrated in the singular first person. None of that “And I told him...”, no. 

Long fics

a dream always the same (T, 99k, 35 chapters) What happened in those few weeks between the Battle of Starcourt and the Byers leaving Hawkins. Literally a satisfying and very needed fill in of season three, with a good dose of Mike’s thoughts and conflict. Mike’s characterization is specially amazing in this one. The writing style is amazing and I know the author put everything into making it historically accurate, and it was really sweet. You probably read it, it’s by the amazing sevensided here on Tumblr🧡

Spring Break (T, 120k, 14/15 chapters) The slowburn of my dreams. Lots of internalized conflict and conflict with each other. Conflict within the Party (uhh kind of), conflict with Mike and Will. Byers family has moved and the kids are visiting! Chaos. Characterization is on point. Yeah, I know it’s unfinished, but the fourteenth chapter actually serves as a pretty nice ending. 

This is where it starts (M, 148.8k, 24 chapters) Aged up characters. The Party is in college and Will disappears again, but now it’s different. Mike knows he didn’t vanish from thin air, and the discovery he and the Party end up making is pretty insane. Mystery solving/fantasy/third dimension, throw in a bit of D&D and Mike realizing some shit, and you get this marvelous fic. It’s a breath of fresh air. The world building is definitely one of the elements that stands out the most, because it’s very nicely described, it sounds like a dream and it’s completely immersive. Absolute gem of a fic. 

there’s a Starman waiting in the sky (M, 30.6k, 8 chapters) Do I need to say anything? Will is out there living his best life and Mike realizes that wow, umm, maybe his best friend looks a bit too nice with that costume... and wait, is he getting horny? It’s actually really fun and sexy.

The Evening Speaks (T, 23k, 7 chapters) In where Mike is a late-night college radio host and Will is the art student that stays up till late to catch up with Wheeler on the Mic. They flirt through songs y’all, this one is really sweet. 

heads or tails? (E, 24k, 3 chapters) Aged up characters. I know most people don’t enjoy sex in fics and with specific characters but this one is insanely well written. It’s a slowburn that commits to the tension and with every word you are grasping and anticipating their next move. I think you can find the author here on Tumblr as yousaidyes🧡

The Man of Average (M, 56.7k, 5/? chapters) Aged up characters. No but you don’t understand, the writing here is absolute gourmet. The story is exciting as well, it’s super interesting. Weirdly enough, for being very aged up characters, they are well characterized but they don’t feel like teenagers. They are naturally Mike and Will. The author really captured Mike and Will’s essence. I know, it’s unfinished and it’s updated very rarely, but this is the typical fic you can’t believe someone just posted on the internet for free. I will say though, I think it’s definitely not for everyone. Read at your own risk.

Heartstrings (E, 82.8k, 24/? chapters) Aged up characters. By the same author of The Man of Average. A collection of memories, the road to Mike and Will’s happy ever after. And fucking hell!!!!! You’ll cry and get angry, you’ll cheer for them, then you’ll want to crash their faces together because god dammit you love each other!!! But yeah, same thing here. The writing and the way the story is laid out as a nonlinear narrative is brilliant. And I also think this is one of the best Will versions I’ve read. The author might as well be the og creator of this two characters tbh. You can find the author here as mylesimeblr🧡

Sinners behind the walls (T, 1.5k, 1/1) And because I can’t stop recommending this author, a little thing of Mike tormenting himself but also being too deeply committed to Will. 

The Red Envelope series (T/E, 167K, two completed works) Something happens that Will thought was impossible and from there, pure drama and romance. Anything by this author has the potential to become your absolute favorite fic, but this series in particular is amazing. I doubt that any of you haven’t read this, but it doesn’t hurt to put it in this list. I’m pretty sure the author is serendipitous-magic on Tumblr🧡

A New Fight series (T, 91k, two completed works, one WIP) And finally the Star Wars AU that we all needed. But this isn’t your typical “Mike is Han”, “Will is Leia” and “El is Luke”, it’s way more interesting than that, and the author has appropriated the Star Wars world like no other. I’ll admit I’m not a 100% fluent in SW lore but this is amazing to me either way. This author is also on Tumblr, tea-for-one-please🧡

- Yes, most of these are (if not all), in a way, canon compliant/canonverse/canon continuation into fanon. (In a way)

One-shots and short stories

Sundae for Two, Please (G, 4.8k) Steve being the supportive friend and older brother these kids collectively need. (not Jonathan erasure, we love him). Steve is very sweet himself, and this little cute thing through his POV is gorgeous. Yes, it’s byler.

Backstage (T, 10k, 2/2) Jonathan, you forgot to mention to Will how hot your new band’s guitarist is, dude. Now he’s hyperventilating and weirdly flirting with him in the corner. Background Stonathan because why not.

102 Peach Street (G, 3.8k) Established relationship, but not only that, they are married :’’))) PURE fluff. Extreme fluffiness. Diabetes. 

sweatshirts and bottled up feelings (T, 3.2k) Or, Mike thinks that the sweatshirt Will wears looks insanely good on him. And kitchens are for lovers. 

kiss it better (T, 16.3k) Basically one of the best character studies of a few precise moments of Mike and Will’s relationship and feelings. 

will wonders ever cease (T, 11.3k) #i ship will and happiness. Omfg what a beautiful piece of fanfic. Will centric, this kid really deserves all the good in the world.

The Calm After the Storm (T, 1.6k) Tooth rotting fluff, boyfriends in love. Boyfriends being lazy, cuddling, love words, kisses. Boys loving each other’s company... Basically, Mike and Will in their element. What more can you ask for?

neither of us ready to let go (T, 4.8k) That scene from season three, but a bit of a fix it. 

Still in love (G, 1k) Domestic, married life au fluff. Y’all, I’m a sucker for established Byler, even if I can’t find many fics with it. But this is very sweet. It takes place in 2020, but I don’t think there are any mentions of the COVID-19 crisis that I remember.

I Nver Find Out ‘Til I’m Head Over Heels (G, 12.5K) Classic 5+1 fic. If you haven’t read it, where have you been? This is your moment. In where Mike keeps inviting Will to the school dances and Will thinks it’s just a joke until he realizes it’s not. 

Before You’re Gone (T, 5.9k) Will is leaving Hawkins and Mike thinks this is a great moment for a confession. This one I discovered last friday, thank you friend @magicalfairy 💗

You’re weird Wheeler (M, 4.5k) Mike unintentionally starts a tradition of going to each other to talk about their sexual encounters just after they finish. Will keeps getting more explicit with the details he shares, and he makes his best friend interested. This one is really fun y’all.

Out-Of-Town Friends (N/R, 4.6K) It’s not rated. I haven’t re- read it but I’d say it would probably fall in a T rating. So cute!! Will has new friends and sneaks off every friday and the Party doesn’t know where he is going, so Mike decides to follow him and is surprised. 

Snowed Under (G, 1.3k) By the same author of The New Fight series. Mike is spending christmas by himself in college because a snowstorm hits Chicago and Nancy can’t drive to see him, but then he has a surprise visitor. Ahhh just a lil sweet holiday fic. Super cute. 

you love me anyway series (T, 7.1k, three completed works) Literally just the cutest thing ever. Established Byler. Will loves to take pictures and he loves taking pictures of Mike. It’s adorable. 

you wanna be friends forever (i can think of something better) (T, 9k) This one is so amazing. So. Amazing. From Will’s POV, my kid deserves the world and he gets it. 

okay not to be okay (T, 4.9k) Mike is a bit sad but then everything is okay. 

can’t hold out forever (G, 18.4k) Y’all!!!!! 5+1 sweetness. Mike has been falling in love since kindergarten. And it’s long af, you’ll enjoy it. 

even if it takes forever (G, 1.3k) College short AU, they miss each other, they love each other, they promise all to each other. It is sappy y’all.

clear as day (N/R, 18.4K, 4 chapters) It’s not rated, but I’d say it falls in the T category. Strangers to friends to lovers. And also, everyone is pretty gay; we have our dynamic trio Mike, Max and El as disaster lesbians (and gay). Will works at the library and he is also gay. Lucas and Dustin and Will are the best friends we needed. It’s very sweet and the Party is kind of formed here!

I went overboard with the one-shots, so you must have realized how much I love long one-shots and I favor them over long works lmao but they are all amazing!!! If it’s on this list, I probably read it at 2 am, sobbing in my bed. So. Hope you enjoy it☺️🧡

#these are my all time favorites that i think you should read #it’s a good start #i've been putting together this post since friday #and i just realize that #apparently all of these have angst in some degree #who would i be if I didn’t read angst ajsjsj #but funny thing is that i try not to —but then the best stories are basically made of it #anyway #most of these are what I consider fandom classics #everyone in the byler fandom is so talented at writing😫💗 #is stonathan the actual ship name? lmao #byler #stranger things #byeler #byler fic rec #fic rec #ao3 #st #st.txt #me.txt #long post #stranger things fic

[buskies]

If no one else asks I wanna- nay I need- know about Points of Contact 2 and 3. Finally got the chance to read the last chapter today of the first one and I was wrung out emotionally like a wet towel.

Asdfghjkl thank you for asking @thearchdemongreatlydisapproves!! Since this got long, I’ll be answering in two posts. This one’s for Act 2. Act 3 can be found here.

I should preface this all with the following points:

First, I started Points of Contact directly after beating the trilogy for the first time this year, so I was full of that initial need to fill that post-Mass Effect void. I ended up trawling through the kinkmeme, searching for anything that might spark my inspiration, and found a first contact prompt. Next thing I know, I’m 10K words in and I’ve sketched out the entire plot.

Second, and this is mostly relevant for Act 2, Points of Contact was always going to be an Action/Adventure fic. I love battle-weary-but-determined soldier Shepard who becomes figurehead, and I really wanted to write her. Plus action scenes are fun.

So this all to say Points of Contact started out as purely self-indulgent—but also extremely ambitious, since I’m a new fan and also have never written the types of scenes I have sketched out for Act 2.

!!MAJOR SPOILERS FOR POINTS OF CONTACT UNDER THE CUT!!

SO. The First Contact "War."

Most of the scenes are written out, but some of the details tying everything together, and the very important transition between Act 1 and 2, are mildly eluding me. Part of this is because I’m a new fan and need to do a deep dive into the lore/timelines. I also strive for realism as much as possible, but I know little about the military or technology. So this means that instead of writing, I end up finding myself going down hours-long rabbit holes over details like, “how WOULD crops be pollinated if humans were to colonize a different planet?” Details not even BioWare seems to care about, so why should I??

To show a bit of my underbelly, I’m a little insecure about this act. It’s a challenge to write a cross-genre story and I often feel like I’m setting myself up for failure. Points of Contact started out as a cheerful and mostly lighthearted fic, and now I’m bringing in war? So I’m not even entirely sure if I’ll keep the full First Contact War or if instead I’ll make it more of a skirmish? I’m leaning toward that.

I don’t think that Act 2 will be as long as Act 1 or Act 3, but I’ve given myself a month to try and figure out what the hell I’m doing. I wish I could say I’m a more organized writer, but I’m so not haha.

So anyway, sorry about the impassioned rambling! I have a lot of Feelings with a capital F about this fic. Here is a snip snip from Act 2. It’s subject to change slightly as I go through my editing process, but is one of the first scenes I wrote for Points of Contact, so it should survive any cuts. The other character in this scene will most definitely survive any cuts at least!

She found him in a small room at the end of the hall. Shepard had heard comments before about how all turians looked the same, but she had no problems differentiating between them. This turian was a rich brown, with an intricate white pattern on his face. His face plates were less pronounced as Garrus’s, and his fringe was much shorter. Handsome, but not nearly as handsome as Garrus, although that might have been her personal bias speaking.

The turian lifted his head from his chest to look at her, then dropped his head back against the wall. For a moment, it was eight months ago, and it was Garrus she was staring at, battered and bleeding, dropping his head against his chair in defeat when he couldn’t get his hands to unlatch his safety belt.

“Oh great. It’s you,” the turian said.

“Are all turians so sarcastic?” asked Shepard, easing into the room. Although the turian was pretty banged up, she had read the reports on him. Fast, strong, deadly in both close combat and with a gun in his hand. He was clearly some sort of specialist, and Shepard was too good at her job to take any stupid chances.

“Met a lot of us, have we?” said the turian.

“You could say that.” She stopped a safe distance from him, then tossed the turian’s omni-tool and several packs of medigel on the floor by his feet. “Your gun and armor are in the locker outside the front door, guarded by a cloaked drone. If you try to come back in here, it will pump you so full of bullets you’ll be spitting metal for the rest of your short life.”

The turian stared down at the omni-tool, mandibles flickering slightly. “Is this a new form of torture? Give me a taste of freedom and then—what, the omni-tool explodes as soon as I put it on?”

“I’m not that creative,” said Shepard. “Nor that good at tech, to be honest.”

The turian frowned up at her. “Is your squad waiting just outside the door or something?”

“No.”

The turian made no move to pick up the omni-tool. “What’s your game, then?”

“I’m letting you go.”

“Why? Are you some sort of turian fetishist? Because sorry to say, but you’re really not my type.”

Shepard snorted. “I can’t believe that’s the first place your mind went. Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m already taken. I think.” She reached up to touch her necklace, but let her hand drop before she could. “You infiltrated our base without hurting anyone for information you didn’t get. There’s no reason to keep you here.”

The turian stiffly rolled one of his shoulders. “Your colleagues seem to think otherwise.”

“My colleagues,” spat Shepard, “are breaking at least fifteen regs for their own sick pleasure. If I have anything to say about it—Look, are you going to take the omni-tool, or is my company is so scintillating that you can’t bring yourself to leave?”

The turian snorted derisively, but finally leaned forward, grabbing the wristband. His movements were slow and stiff, radiating pain, as he strapped it to the wrist. Despite her reassurances, he flinched slightly when he flicked it on, as if he were still expecting it to blow up in his face. When it didn’t, he looked back up at her, silently examining her face.

“You’re Commander Shepard,” he said. “I know because of the fringe.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You have a—reputation.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re saving me.”

Shepard crouched down so that she was the same level as the turian. “Why are turians attacking humans?”

“Ah, so the interrogation’s on again.”

Shepard rolled her eyes. “Just answer the question.”

The turian flicked his mandibles. “Humans broke an intergalactic law. It makes sense for the turians to respond.”

Shepard nodded. “And the humans think they’re fighting off an invading force. The way I see it, if everyone would just sit down and take ten minutes to sort things out, hundreds of lives could be saved.”

There was a beat of silence. “Huh,” said the turian. “I didn’t think humans could be reasonable.”

“You would, if you just stopped and talked to us sometime,” Shepard grumbled.

Deep down, she was aware that her idealistic opinion would be vastly different if it hadn’t been for Garrus. Without her history with him, she knew she would be out there, fighting the invading force with her squadmates. Maybe she should have felt guilty for the bias, but hell, who wasn’t shaped by their history?

The turian waved his omni-tool over his injuries, then got to his feet. Shepard straightened up with him. He was taller than her, but shorter than Garrus, and Shepard wondered if she would measure up every turian she met against Garrus and find them lacking. Probably. It made her feel a little pathetic.

“Thank you, Commander Shepard,” said the turian, sounding much less hostile than when she first entered the room. “For what it’s worth, I don’t disagree with you.”

“What’s your name?” Shepard asked.

The turian hesitated for a moment. “Nihlus Kryik.”

Shepard held out her hand. “Jane Shepard.”

Nihlus hesitated for even a longer moment, then took her hand and shook it once, before yanking his own hand back. Not a turian custom then. Thinking back on it, she had never shaken hands with Garrus.

“Stay safe out there, Kryik. Maybe you and I can grab a drink after all this is over.”

Nihlus chuckled, then looked surprised at himself for doing so. He shook his head. “You know,” he said, “I think I might actually like that. See you around, Shepard.”

#fic: points of contact #spoilers for points of contact #my fic writing #ask meme #tag meme

[veliseraptor]

Top 5 fics/characters/scenes that were hard to write for whatever reason, but u pulled thru :)

this is such an encouraging ask, thank you! it is a nice reminder that I can write things, actually, even when it is hard. I went with fics because that is easiest to remember, but lord are there for sure characters it’s a bear to write. I am fundamentally a coward who generally just tries to avoid those, though.

1. The Compassion of the Wicked. Writing Lymond fic is like pulling teeth. It just is. It’s hard and it’s slow and it’s often painful and usually I can end up with something I’m proud of, eventually, but it feels like I wrung blood from a stone doing it. Even more than gather frankincense that was true of this fic, I think partly because it was an interesting experiment in “how do I write threesome smut in a voice that fits with the overall tone of this fic” and what I ended up with was mostly the most allusive smut scene I’ve ever written and probably ever will write.

Also had to figure out writing Joleta! That was another piece of this fic - she was a character who didn’t come as naturally to me in terms of writing as (relatively speaking) Lymond and Gabriel both do.

2. we live until we die. The most ambitious crossover ever! aka when you build an 850,000 word edifice of AU and then you have to confront a culminating plot moment you’ve been building toward in the wake of two movies that left a lot of people very unhappy, juggling an enormous cast of characters and a snarl of continuity created over the course of six years of haphazard worldbuilding done in fits and starts, involving heavy doses of things like “plot” and “action” - god but this fic fought me! It took me, what, eight months to write? Not including the bits I wrote five years ago, I’m not counting that. But yeah, getting this fic to the finish line was a bear and a half. Ultimately I’m pretty pleased with what came out, barring a few sections I just don’t look at too closely, I feel like I more or less stuck the landing, which was the assignment I set myself here. And if I don’t end up going back to this verse (though I’d like to!) I feel good about where I’ve left it.

3. With Absolute Splendor. sometimes a person gets an ask that they take as a prompt even though it was meant for a five headcanons meme and then that person runs away with that prompt and it grows into this massive animal that provokes fits of mild hysterics over fears of having dealt with everything adequately, and are all the loose ends under control, and oh no a piece of editing feedback that gives me the overpowering urge to scrap all 120 pages of the damn thing--

Anyway, while this fic might well end up going down as the most popular thing I’ve written, second only to Life in Reverse which has several years on it, it was a lot of sweat and blood and tears getting there, particularly in the editing process, where I went through an aggressive bout of sturm and drang and self-doubt over a few things about it that had me pitching one of my periodic WELL MAYBE I SHOULD JUST DELETE THE WHOLE THING fits. But hey! It got posted, and it certainly seems to have gone over well so far!

4. we’re not friends, we’re strangers with memories. I was writing this one concurrently with Life in Reverse but in some ways I think it was harder, for a couple different reasons. One is just the fact that it was my first really long and ambitious fic that I’d...ever written, at the time. (Prior to this one I think the longest fic I’d written was After Life, Death which actually did almost match this one for word count, apparently. But that was in 2010.)

The second is the fact that as I was writing I had no idea where I was going for a good...first half of the fic, and then I knew where I was going (that Loki was going to die) but had no idea how I was going to get there. I was fumbling around trying to write myself through a dark forest, which at this point is pretty normal for me but back then with my prior experience largely being oneshots it involved a lot of screaming.

But I did manage to write through it and finish the damn thing! And while I don’t know if I could reread it without wincing (I haven’t tried) I feel like it mostly did what I wanted it to do at the time. And I’m still very proud of that last couple of chapters.

5. how this grace thing works. This fic took me years to write because I took a long pause in the middle where I got stalled and then drifted away from the books and then had to come back for a reread before I finished it, and I think what got in the way here was a lot of ‘this is nice and I feel weird about it’ which is a feeling that happens to me sometimes if I write something that feels like it’s...on the sweeter and lighter side. It feels weird and sort of wrong and therefore I start to think it must be bad.

I don’t know either, this does seem like it has some unfortunate implications for my state of mind but you know what.

runners up for this could’ve included almost any fic I wrote, especially ones longer than 10k where I almost always hit my crisis about how it’s bad and worthless and I should just give up. the vast majority of my writing attacks me like an overstimulated cat at some point during the process.

#crocordile #conversating #top five meme #confessions of a frustrated writer

[thatpinkbetch]

Bkdk Fic Rec

I’ve been inspired to write a fic rec! This one goes out to you @lonely-rabbit

At like, the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 I stayed up until 4am every night reading fics, and because I’m such a loser, I made a word doc to keep track of all of them so I wouldn’t forget them.... I tried organizing it by length but it got messy cause I’m ridiculous and cluttered, so sorry! (I’ll save my own for the end alskdjflsdkfj gotta self promote you know). This is going to get...really long, so I’ll put it under a read more! Also, just a heads up, these are all on ao3, in case that’s important to anyone!

Disclaimer: Any fics with mature or explicit content I will add a bolded warning for, even if it’s only a little bit. Normally most fics will be tagged as such, but some fics that are rated as teen I’ve found to be more suggestive than some of those rated as mature, so I will try to point it out where it feels necessary, for anyone who wishes to avoid it.

Fics under 1k:

Illuminate by TheQueen (269 words)

Summary: Bakugou watches the first firework launch and fights to keep his face neutral

Very short, plot is about a case of amnesia, also very cute and well written for that length! Not angsty at all imo

sweaty hands holding secrets - shounentwink (563 words)

Summary: Someone said Midoriya holds secrets in his hair.

It’s not true: He holds it tightly in his hands. Bakugou’s seen it.

I really like this writer! You’ll see quite a bit of them in this post alkdsjfalskdjf

Fics 1k - 10k:

Many sunflowers later - Jeka (2395 words)

Summary: Scholar Midoriya Izuku comes back to the person he left behind after his journey through the kingdom, the mighty dragon clan leader Bakugou Katsuki.

Day 1 of Twin Stars Week 2020: Fantasy AU.

First of all, fantasy au!!! Second of all, jeka!!! (I need to read more of your stuff!!) Anyways, so cute, such lovely, pretty writing, wonderful story telling, and they’re so in love TT_TT

Boom Badoom Boom - warschach (3429 words)

Summary: Izuku's working the kissing booth at the school fair, it just so happens Katsuki has been crushing on him since the first grade.

“Did you—“ Izuku parted his mouth with no sound leaving it, “Did you pay?”

“Yea.”

“For a kiss?”

This one’s a little silly but I love it still. It’s got a “kids in the 80′s over summer vacation” vibe, I think. I love warschach! I should read more of their writing... They have SUCH good bakudeku content! *It’s rated teen but there’s some suggestive content, just a heads up!

Hopeless Ramen-tic - lalazee (7155 words)

Summary:  Midoriya is a cute guy who works at a ramen stall and Bakugou is thirsty as hell, but has to hide it by being an asshat. Another love story.

Ah, so good TT_TT so much sass, such good plot development and story telling for a simple concept *It’s rated as teen but again, it can be suggestive at times!

I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind - yabakuboi (3508 words)

Suammry: For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away.

Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood.

So soft, so sweet, so good if you just want to curl up in a comfy blanket and drink hot cocoa and feel warm and cozy and a little in love

The Secret Deku Box - yabakuboi (2241 words)

Summary: “Y’know, Bakugou never, ever talks about girls,” Kaminari says, his voice thoughtful.

“And I wonder why that is.” Ashido rolls her eyes.

“I’m just curious!” Kaminari whines. Kirishima drags the box out, unlabeled and unassuming, the lid not even fully clasped over the edges. “The guy has to— Whoa, what’s that?”

Kirishima realizes a little belatedly that this is a serious breach of privacy, and Bakugou will actually murder all of them. “Nothing!” he cries, attempting to shove it back under the bed, but Ashido snatches it away.

“Please be his porn stash!” Kaminari whispers as she whips the lid off.

Cute, funny, in canon, in character, and a must read I would say! 

daisy bunches and heather branches - halcyonwhispers (5862 words)

Summary:  izuku falls in love with the foul-mouthed tattoo artist next door.

Not another flower/tattoo shop au.... aldskjflaskdjfd Okay but punk!Bakugou is ALWAYS a smart move imo

the best part of me (is the worst I can give) - halcyonwhispers (5668)

Summary: Whole sentences usually make up people’s Words, but Katsuki got stuck with a name instead.

Izuku’s name.

I am such a sucker for soulmate aus when it comes to these boys TT_TT *There is some mature content, just a heads up!

Hard to Say - halcyonwhispers (8390 words)

Summary: Izuku is a Halfling, born after his faerie father spirited away his mom and then left her behind. Never quite fitting in with the humans or any of the supernatural beings in his small town, Izuku hoped that going to a diverse college in the big city will help him finally make friends.

Katsuki’s family has been powerful witches for generations, and he’s no different. Talented and a proclaimed genius to boot, he knew he shouldn’t waste his time on this dumbass (disgustingly cute) half-blood.

Or,

two idiots fall in love and don’t get that the other’s awkward cues are just a result of romantic tension.

I am ALSO a sucker for fantasy/mythical creatures au and I LOVED this one - Bakugou absolutely unable to handle how cute Midoriya is? Perfection - but it’s unfinished, and I don’t think it ever will be continued, unfortunately TT_TT

lots to unpack (throw away the whole suitcase) - shounentwink (4315 words)

Summary: “How’d you know?” Midoriya asks.

There’s a hunch to his shoulders that wasn’t there three hours ago. Freckled shoulders are kissed sunburnt and red: he looks like someone ran him over and left him like roadkill in the sunlight. Bakugou’s working with insurance today, but he could see the sparks of green lightning even from his elevated position in their shared agency. Midoriya’s holding his thumb, cracking it over and over — it looks like he’s rubbed it raw.

“Dunno,” Bakugou says. “Maybe you’re just easy to read, nerd.”

I love this one so much, it was one of the first ones I read, it’s so good, and it’s another that really affected how I view their relationship! Idk this one just hit for me

hang the moon from us (it’s a no from me) - shounentwink (1200 words)

Summary: Midoriya’s gonna get sick of Bakugou one of these days, and then the whole ruse will be over, and the balance of power will tilt beyond salvation, but that day isn’t today and it looks like Bakugou knows it.

What an asshole.

Once again, I’m a sucker for the fantasy au... But even more, the diction, the details, the imagery...it’s absolutely all stunning here. I wish I could write this pretty

In Which Bakugou Finds His One Tru Luv - Erina (5862 words) This is the first one of a series called The Misadventures of Explodo-kill Agency!

Summary:  Welcome to the Explodo-kill agency! We can destroy your buildings, crash your cars, and help you solve one of the seven mysteries in life: who is Bakugou Katsuki's mysterious boyfriend?!

I’ll admit I’ve only read the first three but by god they are the funniest fics I’ve ever read in my life. I see that Erina has added more since the last time I checked it out! Tbh I was only interested in reading the purely bakudeku ones... (My favorite was the second one!! SO funny and cute!)

i still do - raeryn (9646 words)

Summary:  He’s losing him to pieces, but Izuku still tries to make them count. In which a battle leaves Bakugou Katsuki with amnesia, and Izuku finds himself picking up the pieces.

So, this one makes me cry. TT_TT

One Thing Straight - winningshot (9899 words)

Summary: They totally aren't.

Hints of their relationship is found in all of their friends’ social media accounts, but majority of their fans still think that Katsuki and Izuku are in relationships with anybody but each other.

It was amusing up until it became sad.

Lmao it’s a little salty but I guess I can be too. This is a social media fic! There’s multiple ships in this one, too

A Demolition Boy & his Cryptid BF - kewltie (8472 words)

Summary: Bakugou of the Demolition Squad is famous for running one of the most popular Youtube channels on the web that regularly blow shit up and jumped off a perfectly good building for shit and giggles. He's also famous for his Cryptid BF™, never appearing on camera except for a few bodyshots and all information on him is kept locked up tighter than Fort Knox, therefore drawing all sort of attention and curiosity toward his mysterious boyfriend.

Deku from Deku Explains is a hopeless chatterbox who is known for uploading 20-30 minutes video that talked about his favorite shows and comics and have one of the most devoted following on Youtube. He also can't seem to shut up about his boyfriend Kacchan, who regularly make his presence on the channel as a disembodied voice.

They should theoretically have nothing in common except a shared platform to host their content and an army of fans with an endless curiosity and devotion to their Youtubers. Vidcon is where we lay our scene and the internet is about to get a rude wake up call.

Okay kewltie is SO GOOD and very creative! The formatting is phenomenal, it’s like you’re actually experiencing a social media melt down in real time lol

be my good luck charm - writedeku (6785 words)

Summary: See, the thing is, Midoriya Izuku had been born with a curse. It’s not a curse that’s particularly visible. He doesn’t have horns, or a tortured face, and it’s not the kind of silly curse like a friend of his had way down south in Diagnor, wherein the girl had been born without the ability to say the word duck. Midoriya Izuku is just extremely unlucky.

(Or the AU in which Izuku's the world's unluckiest travelling merchant, and Katsuki is someone who may be able to help him. For a price, that is.)

Oh I adore this one! It’s so cute and such a good narrative! Nice and warm, and Bakugou trying his damnedest to be suave, and it somehow working because Midoriya is just as flustered. *Another one rated as teen but some suggestive content.

Smells Like Victory - majjale (2377 words)

Summary: Bakugou takes two steps into the room and stops, clapping a hand over his nose. “Ugh, what stinks like Deku in here?”

"Good afternoon, Bakugou. That would be the amortentia."

I must admit, not a fan of HP, but majjale...TT_TT majjale writes these two boys so well. This one is really, really good!

Cherish Me - Justaperson1718 (2376 words)

Summary: “What?”

Izuku looked back down at his menu and flipped the page, a small smile on his face. “Nothing.”

Katsuki glared at Izuku from across the table. “If it was nothing then you wouldn’t be staring at me.”

“It’s just a little funny watching you try to look your best for our date when you always look great anyway,” Izuku explained. He wouldn’t look up from his menu while he spoke, but his words remained ingrained with confidence nevertheless. He considered what he was saying to be fact, and nothing else. “Even when you’re not trying in front of the cameras, it’s still hard to take my eyes off of you.”

This is a sequel to a fic that’ll be in the next section, because it’s longer, called Manage Me. Please read that one first before this one! (Not part of a series, but they’re the same story line)

Fascinating - Justaperson1718 (1556 words)

Summary: “I’m not staring at you,” Izuku replied, his eyes focused intently on Katsuki. He’s still wearing his pajamas, sitting on his knees in their shared bed. He was awake moments before Katsuki, and waited eagerly for the other to awake.

Katsuki glanced over his shoulder after his shirt was on and glared. “You’re fucking staring at me right now.”

Izuku shook his head, humming his disapproval quietly. “I’m watching you.”

“That’s the same damn thing,” Katsuki said while searching for a pair of pants in the dresser. “Your eyes are fixated on me like I’m your life’s fucking goal or some shit.”

“I just like watching you get dressed.” Izuku tilted his head to the side and smiled softly at Katsuki’s confused stare. “I know, it’s weird. But I like it.”

*There is a little bit of implied mature content, but overall, it’s just so sweet and intimate, and I just simply adore this one.

in a place once filled with gold - dorenamryn (9226 words)

Summary: It felt strange to remember such details, for they were things a friend should know, and as far as Katsuki was concerned, he and Deku hadn’t been friends in a very, very long time. He could admit, with reluctance, that they were on the path there, now, even though they would never make it. Katsuki would die before they could get the chance.

or: There is a garden growing in Katsuki’s lungs, and he is helpless to stop it.

“Hanahaki disease” okay, I can explain myself. Okay, I can’t. In any case, you got angst with a happy ending if that’s what you’re into!

Kaleidoscope - DPRenFTW (5141 words)

Summary: Izuku is a witch. He just needs to find his familiar. Enter a boy that is a wolf, and a wolf that is a boy - with wild red eyes and sharp smiles.

And Izuku thinks:

"Oh, it's him."

Just as beautiful and fascinating as the name implies! I seriously recommend for the beautiful writing, the gorgeous world, the mythical creatures au, and the lovely bakudeku romance!

Learning Curve - sensiblysilly (4222 words)

Summary: Deku and Katsuki’s first kiss goes rather differently than planned.

And Katsuki’s quickly learning that relationships can be unpredictable - especially when taking into account the variable that is Midoriya Izuku.

This really is just a careful handling of a teenage romance where perhaps one of them may have shit they’re still working through. It’s really sweet, and a careful study at boundaries and the building of a relationship. I actually stumbled across this while looking for another with the same name and ended up pleasantly surprised. Kacchan can has a little validation, as a treat.

4/20 is a national holiday - Ereri_Garbage (

Summary: Izuku is a drug dealer that doesn't really accept the fact he's a drug dealer, Katsuki is hot as hell as shouldn't be allowed a facebook.

Happy (Late) birthday Katsuki and happy (late) 4/20. I actually half assed an edit on this one so it took longer to post than I thought it would.

Uummmm lmao yes I have a sense of humor. ;ALDSKJFLSKDJF Okay, I say that, but this is not a crack fic, it’s a good story that I enjoy with good writing, and *it has mature, content, obviously for multiple reasons here. It’s rated as mature but there are borderline explicit moments imo. It’s a fun fic and funny, too! And, ngl, it really does remind me of college... But forget about me, the bakudeku is wonderful too of course :)

Drinking Watermelon - warschach (8906 words)

Summary: For whatever reason, maybe divine fate, Izuku turned and looked over his shoulder and waved to them.

Katsuki’s heart full on stopped right then, and his fingers forgot their duty on the rails, and his body neglected its job to keep Katsuki balanced.

Izuku’s summer sweet smile fell into concern as Katsuki went airborne and cracked his skull on the porch.

or Katsuki works as a camp counselor, and Izuku is a boy made of summer heat and sunlight.

Love it when people have Bakugou as absolutely enamored with Midoriya; it’s so good and true. Anyways this one makes me like summer camp story lines. It’s funny and also cute and great writing! *It’s got explicit content, just a heads up. Warschach stories just have this youthful 80′s vibe, I don’t know how else to explain it.

there are listed buildings - semiautomatichearts (3309)

Summary: Katsuki first sees colors bloom when he is only three years old. It is timid Izuku, hiding behind the cover of his mother's leg who looks upon him with wide eyes, and Katsuki's world explodes in shades of greens and pinks and blues, and he is so startled, he begins to cry.

His life is then on defined in color, in shades his peers can't see, by the forlorn, timid stare in Izuku's eyes that always lets off more than he is willing to tell. There is a schism driven between himself and his fated other, and Katsuki strives to be better than fate, better than what is defined for him. He is more than the written pages of a book, to be cracked open and read by the gods.

He wonders if it is possible for colors to bloom for someone who will never love you back.

Ah...soulmates :) So interesting how bakudeku fits into soulmate aus like this one when they’ve known each other as kids! And when they’ve had this complex push and pull thing going on all their lives! The writing is beautiful, and so is the story!

Promise Ring - bkdkwritingsdump (3579)

Summary:  The midwest in the 1950′s is no place for boys who like kissing boys: something Izuku and Katsuki know all too well growing up there. However, the undeniable bond between the nervous science geek and the aloof delinquent will still find a way to blossom in such a desert.

Cute, sweet, makes my gay heart ache. Longing not just for the one you love, but just to feel right loving them. Very pretty story line, lovely story telling!

Fics 10k - 30k:

Fishy - warschach (19417 words)

Summary: Izuku’s convinced his hot co-worker/neighbor, Katsuki, is a mermaid-or merman- you gotta consider genders even with mythical creatures- and plans to prove it.

(or this is kinda like the show ‘Monster Quest’, except Izuku actually finds said monster, falls in love, and have sexy times.)

Another warschach! I love this one, I love how they write bakudeku, particularly as college students, their stories (at least, the ones that I’ve read) always feel so warm, like a summer’s day, but not a lazy one, one that’s playful? If that makes sense? *This one is explicit, another heads up!

Manage Me - Justaperson1718 (10756 words)

Summary: Izuku caught himself moving forward, his head tilted somewhat to the side, and his eyes shot wide open. His gaze met Katsuki’s half-lidded eyes now that he was no longer in a dreamlike state, and seeing the way Katsuki was looking at him—waiting for him—made him realize Katsuki would’ve let him do it. He might have even wanted him to do it.

“You’re both doing fabulous!” the photographer called out to them, packing his camera into his bag and getting ready to leave. “I just got word that what we have now should be good, so we’ll stop there. Thank you for your time! Lock the door on your way out after you change.”

The pair stayed frozen in place, with Izuku’s arms around Katsuki’s neck and Katsuki’s hands resting on Izuku’s waist, while the photographer and his supervisor left.

“Kacchan,” Izuku cooed once they were gone. “Did you want to…?”

Love the story, love the bakudeku! Very, very good bakudeku TT_TT very sweet *There is some mature content in here as well

point to a map (we’ve been there) - cosmicfuss (10589 words)

Summary: Serendipity / sĕr″ən-dĭp′ĭ-tē Serendipity is the occurrence of an unplanned fortunate discovery. Two men find themselves on a subway, hot coffee on one while the other is in the middle of a screaming match. After that they can't seem to stop finding each other, no matter how far they go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this fic owns my entire soul. I love the story, the ease of their relationship, just how lovely they are together. It’s another kind of nice, fluffy fic you’d read on a bad day where you come home and curl up in a blanket and listen to a ten hour video of thunderstorm white noise. *Again, some more mature content in here

Partners - tsukithewolf (13619 words) Another series! Two parts to this one this time

Summary: It is said that in Musutafu there is a charm that one can buy at a temple that will lead you to your destined partner. They say that if the charm works, you would be able to follow the red string of fate to the person you were meant to be with. And if the person returns your feelings, they would be able to see the string as well, proving that both were meant to be.

Three-year-old Katsuki and Izuku misunderstand what the word "partner" means and discover the charm and the rumor behind it is not only true, but more than expected.

Gets a little heavy, depression, bullying, suicidal thoughts, etc. But it must get worse before it gets better, that kind of thing. I also just adore the second part (called Bond) - maybe because it’s much fluffier, what about it?

Learning Curve - iknewaman (10304 words)

Summary: “Izuku.” Uraraka repeats as she motions at the person stood next to her. Green curls, average height, and, well. Up close, not such a bad smile. Uraraka points a thumb at Bakugou and enunciates slowly, “This is Bakugou. He can speak sign language too.”

Wait. Sign language?

The stranger— well, Izuku— looks at him with a raised brow. Their free hand lifts up as they make a slight motion of the hand.‘

Really?’

*

Bored out of his mind at a house party one night Bakugou is introduced to Izuku, a deaf student who offers to help teach Bakugou sign language in exchange for a favour-- or well, is prompted into asking for a favour.

Ah, I really want to explain this one a little bit? I’d never been into fanfiction ever, only really getting into it with these boys. This was the second one I read, I remember, and it caught me off guard, and it intrigued me. It really surprised me as to what fanfiction could be. Ngl I had biased perceptions of fanfics - I used to be one of those people who thought fanfiction could never be good writing - and this one slapped me in the face with it’s subtle beauty and creative story and heart melting capabilities, and very, very real relationship and growth. Anyways it’s so cute how happy Deku is to teach Kacchan sign language TT_TT Make sure to read the tags!

The Keeper and the Sun God’s Heir - SurelyHeavenWaits (12746 words)

Summary:  The Titans' have stolen something important from Izuku, heir of the Sun God, and he wants it back.

This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one this one- Oh my god this one. Okay so what, I was a Percy Jackson kid, what about it? I love the mythical aus, particularly the god ones. But beyond that, the writing is so beautiful, just like the world, and the imagery. The bakudeku...absolutely stunning. The story itself? Incredible. Cannot recommend more. *There is explicit content in this, though I will say, it’s all in the last chapter, and all of the story is in the first two chapters. There’s also a second part as it’s a series and it’s short but it’s cute and sweet TT_TT

seven days - aaAAAaaahhhhHHHHH (10094 words)

Summary: There’s something about the green haired boy, an aura that just drew Katsuki in before he even knew his name.

[Sometimes your mind forgets, but your heart remembers]

Heed my warning: DON’T read this in front of other people. I bawl every time I read this one TT_TT I know I said I don’t like angst but AJLSKDFJALSKDFJ it has a hopeful ending! I mean yeah you’re gonna cry but...hope? :’) (that username really says it all tbh)

Fics 30k+

Notice me, nerd - useless_donut (40000 words)

Summary: Bakugou is in love with Midoriya. He doesn’t hide it, in fact it’s so painfully obvious that the entire class of 3-A has him figured out in a matter of months (days, in some cases). Too bad Midoriya is the most oblivious motherfucker out there, and Bakugou is too damn stubborn to actually ask him out.

Will the class of 3-A survive the sexual tension? Who will snap first? Someone put Bakugou out of his misery, please, before everyone else dies of second-hand embarrassment.

(a love story as witnessed by the class of 3-A)

Love the idea of Bakugou being brazen and brash, cause yeah, he is. So fucking funny though how that translates to him flirting. Gotta say, thought I was gonna cringe, but his “I’m gay af” outfit really ended up being A Look. Love the mutual pining, it really is strong in this one. *Okay, mature content in this one lads.

While You Were Sleeping - Belkacaramelka (71197 words)

Summary: The one where quirkless fanboy Midoriya Izuku rescues Pro Hero Todoroki Shouto, gets mistaken as his fiancé while he is in a coma, and gets caught up in the most unlikely fake engagement... until his childhood enemy and Todoroki's classmate Bakugou Katsuki tries to catch him out, and they both end up discovering a lot more about each other than they'd expected.

Quirkless AU based on the film; endgame BakuDeku. -- Katsuki didn’t know when the change had happened: how he had gone from asking why Todoroki chose Deku of all people, to wondering why it was Todoroki that Deku chose. Troublesome Deku, who cooed like an idiot at cats, tripped at a random catcall and sang badly. Who, despite everything, proved that it wasn’t the quirk that defined a person. Deku, who was too much, not his, and undeniably off limits to begin with.

Update: Epilogue added

*This one has mature content. If you can, please, for the love of god, read this fic. It’s like, tied with my favorite bkdk fic perhaps ever. It’s based on the movie of the same title, a nineties romcom with Sandra Bullock, but Belkacaramelka has so effortlessly made it into it’s own story, fit it so perfectly inside of the bnha world. I definitely stayed up until 6:30am reading this one. It’s got such good badass Midoriya, who is also sweet, and really really good reconciliation between bakudeku.

All Gifted - fitzefitcher (39129 words)

Summary: The thing about gifts is that they're meant to be given, they're meant to be shared; so Izuku will take his gifts, so freely given to him, and share them with all he holds dear.

Izuku is born without any gifts, as his kind often are, to a witch mother and salamander father, on one sweltering night in July.

This one is unfinished...and I highly doubt it will ever be. But what has been written is incredible. Once again, I’m a sucker for the magic/mythical creatures aus. But the relationship is great! The characterization is great! The found family trope that was building up is great!

under a hollow sun - umbrage (40572 words)

Summary: Midoriya is cursed with emptiness.

Misfortune leads him to a man of ancient magic and endless rage.

To stop an unfathomable evil, their mismatched halves must become whole.

Uuuggghhhh this was so good! I don’t think it’s going to be finished either :( Once again, fantasy au, more amazing writing, on point characterization, incredible pacing, makes you hungry for more story.

all the savage soul requires - majjale (58032 words)

Summary: Bakugou seems to have exhausted his patience for words and no longer acknowledges that Midoriya exists, so Midoriya crosses his legs, stares down at his hands limned in firelight, and makes a list of things he knows.

One. His name is Midoriya Izuku.

Two. He is a Godmarked, future god of life, heir to the divine throne.

Three. The gods have been fighting Death for eons, and now he's coming for recompense with everything he’s got.

This is majjale, so of course, the writing is more than beautiful; it’s absolutely breathtaking. This may be my favorite fic ever - unfortunately I don’t think it will ever be finished either TT_TT There’s the gods/fantasy au, which you know by now I love. But the characterization of our two boys is absolutely perfect, and I mean that as literally as possible. And the story being crafted between the two, the memory loss, the obvious history muddled by it all, it was so dense, and the PINING, so incredibly written, flowing so naturally. It wasn’t even close to being done, but it was wonderful, still is wonderful. 

My Writing: (You can skip this if you hate shameless self promotion)

You’re too damn flicking cute (1815 words)

Summary:  Bakugou is certain his shitty boyfriend is instigating kisses. Maybe it doesn't help that he keeps giving them away like it's a damn going out of business sale, but the stupid nerd is too fucking cute. Either way, like everything else, this is a competition, and he's going to win it.

Please don’t read this unless you’re going to the dentist afterwards! I’ve been told it’s so sweet it’ll give you instant cavities >_>;;;;

Bakugou Katsuki, you smooth motherfucker (10118 words)

Summary: Everyone around him knows that Bakugou Katsuki has a very special way with words. To the untrained ear he is loud and crass; to those that speak Kacchan, he is caring and inspiring. Yet there are rare moments, moments so fleeting you blink and you miss them, where Bakugou’s words pierce straight through Midoriya’s chest, and surprise everyone around him.

Goddammit, if only he would say them to Midoriya’s face.

Or, the five times Bakugou said something nice about Midoriya, and the one time he said something kind to him (but that was too long of a title).

I think most would consider this my best published fic; it’s one of those snapshot fics, “the five times where x did this, and the one time where they didn’t.” The recurring comment I get on this one is both of them being super in character, so I think that’s it’s defining characteristic! Bakugou and Midoriya have never known a life without the other, and in a perfect world, they never will.

Here, let me fix that (11247 words)

Summary: Bakugou honestly never thought he’d see Deku ever again. And now that they were together in this tiny compartment, alone for the next two and a half minutes, he had no clue what to say. He’d just apologized, right? So perhaps he could leave it at that and carry on with the original plan to never see the green-haired man that reminded him of dense forests, late night adventures, and tear-stained faces, ever again.

Ha! Who is he kidding? These bitches are soulmates.

I’ve gotten some critiques on this one, so sorry in advance if it’s not to your liking! Basically, what if Midoriya never got his quirk? Obviously, life would find a way to put them together because, as previously stated, these bitches are soulmates.

Plenty of Time (16654 words)

Summary: Bakugou found what little sleep he got restless and filled with nightmares that he forgot the second he opened his eyes. Tonight was the first time in a long time where he just had a normal dream - and it happened to be about Deku.

How fucking typical.

In other words, two dorks realize they have feelings for each other but don't know what to do about said feelings.

Ah, my first fic. Very simple, boys being boys, kinda like a slow burn? Idk how to explain this one, just boys figuring out their feelings and trying to figure out what to do about them. Been told these two are a little stupid but I think that’s valid.

We’re all time bombs waiting to explode (39223 words)

Summary: We have now entered the slipstream of time, into an alternate dimension where it neither is, nor isn’t, the 80’s. Two teenagers, burdened with the weight of adolescence in the modern world, find themselves struggling side by side, in part because of each other.

Bakugou, the most popular boy in school, has everything he could possibly want; status, power, and an unbreakable will. Having been dragged along behind him all the way to the top, Midoriya can’t help but wonder how (and why) he ended up standing beside his childhood friend-turned bully-turned friend again, weighed down by their complicated past and present. As the tension between them grows every day, and the arrival of a new, pretty face causes it to peak, it won’t be long before something - or someone - snaps.

I am...very bad at titles, and summaries apparently. This was my Heathers au, but it very quickly diverges from the original (I don’t do sad endings....) *This one has mature content, including implied sexual activity, drug use, and underage drinking, along with other heavy topics; please read the tags! Though tbh Midoriya is 17 for a couple weeks before it hits his birthday halfway through, so keep that in mind I guess? I kind of went heavy with this one, but I think the pay off was immense. This is the one with the most amount of comments stating it’s their favorite bkdk fic ever (and I cry). It’s a rough start, with a rough journey, but so is bakudeku! There’s a lot of petty drama, and then all of a sudden it’s Not That Petty and very much Far Too Real. Many have cried reading the ending, I cried writing it. My sister says it’s her favorite of mine. Now, I did kind of push this out without polishing it so much because I was losing my willpower, so if it feels lacking, that’s one hundred percent my fault.

Okay that was a lot! It took me a couple days...I hope I wasn’t too annoying with all my opinions! Please have a nice day. and enjoy some good reads, even if they aren’t the ones in this post!

#bakudeku #katsudeku #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #bnha #bkdk #fics #my writing #god i really hope i didn't fuck up any of this #i spent a long time on it alksdjflaskjdflkasdjf #this is 39 fics without my own #and 44 including mine #i can tell i've forgotten some but #idk it's hard TT_TT #anyways it's 2:30am #if i go to bed at 4am one more time i'm gonna throw myself down a flight of stairs #i hope this is good enough as is! #most of this was written very late so I hope it doesn't sound...crazed

[prydon]

I had some questions about your writing, if you don’t mind me asking. Mostly just because I’m curious and I keep thinking about your recent fic and how the quality is SO GOOD lmao:

How long do you let an idea incubate in your brain before you sit down and start on it? Do you make an outline first or just kind of start and then get together an outline?

How many ideas do you have floating around right now, and how many of those do you think you’ll write?

How long does it take you to write a chapter (I know your chapter lengths change, but let’s say 7K words. Because honestly your quality in your chapters is soooo good and only improving so I wanted to know how long it takes, how many times you reread it/edit it, etc!)

What’s the thing you like beat about your writing style that you think you do really well?

Again I was just curious for a closer look into the way you write because I think it’s so fascinating!! Hope you’re doing well! :)

FIRST OF ALL you are so sweet, i'm really honored that you like my work enough to be interested in hearing about stuff like this!!!

second of all i'm so sorry for the ramble you are about to receive haha i am incapable of being concise

- OKAY, first question: often times i'll have some vague concepts in my head for several weeks or months, but either intentionally put them on the backburner bc i need to work on other stuff or have some roadblock preventing me from starting on them--for example, with constellations i'd always wanted to write a childhood friends au, but i hadn't been able to come up with an interesting explanation for how juno and nureyev could meet as kids and didn't want to start outlining a story for that idea until i did. which ended up being for the best, bc once i finally did figure out how they'd meet (aka nureyev coming to hyperion as an illegal stowaway with a group of brahman revolutionaries), that informed pretty much every other major plot point that happens in the fic.

i do always make an outline first--i'm usually pretty uncomfortable going into writing something without having at least a general idea of all of its story beats from beginning to end (with some exceptions.....). but i also almost never turn a concept into an outline until i'm actually ready/have time to write the fic that goes along with it, bc once i have an outline i become rabid and need to write the thing asiufhaus.

- how many ideas do i have floating around right now? uhh idk, i do have a document just called "fic/art ideas" that has base concepts for a bunch of different potential works, but i don't even remember half of them. i think in a way i have a sort of... idea holding area?? full of stuff that might be cool but i don't have serious intentions to write, and then every couple months some of those ideas might float up to surface and become more developed before eventually being written.

so right now i'd say i have about five things that i'm either actively writing, have outlined, or intend to write soon (constellations ch11, bang fic, short multichapter, one shot, sequel to [spoiler]), then ~three beyond that which have no clear plans but are Likely to be written someday, aand then a dozen miscellaneous ideas that may or may not ever go anywhere.

- how long does it take me to write a chapter? (thank you btw i'm so flattered ;u; and surprised you feel like they're getting better bc tbh i was worried they were getting worse lol) hmmm, that one's tough just bc i'm so often working on multiple things. like there was a little less than a month between the two chapters i wrote most recently, but that's because i also wrote a separate one shot during that time.

i'd say maybe two weeks? but it also depends on my motivation to write the thing. i've written 10k one shots in a matter of days in the past bc i was just that inspired. constellations tends to take a bit longer just bc having to write a fic in order is the bane of my existence and i'm always writing other stuff alongside it bc if i was stuck working on only one story for seven+ months straight i'd physically die asuifhsa

as for how many times i reread or edit them.... maybe three times? i tend to read over a chapter or one shot a couple times while writing it, then one last time as an ao3 draft so i can see it complete and in its final format before posting it. if i'm working with a beta, it could be like seven or eight times though lol.

- favorite thing about my writing style.... i guess one of my favorite things in stuff i've read is the use of understatement, and so i'm proud of how i've been able to incorporate that into my own style. like, deliberately underplaying an emotional moment or stating a Very Big thing very simply as a way to underscore just how big it is. i always think of this section from the poem "ten love letters", which i also once named a fic after: "Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love with someone who is in love with someone else. I don’t know how to turn that into poetry."

i adore the idea of an emotion or circumstance being so awful that you can't even put it into words--or you have to simplify it down into something smaller in order to swallow it. which uhhh i guess i should now relate to my own work since that was the question lol. i've probably written lines inspired by that idea countless times, but two examples from ch9 of constellations are "[annie] doesn't come back in thirty minutes" and juno's line about how there's no one left to water the flowers anymore. juno doesn't actually care about the flowers, but it's a way of turning his grief into something smaller, something that can be voiced and apologized for.

UHHHHH YEAH i guess that's it asiofjsif, sorry for how long it was. i was honestly feeling pretty down earlier but this ask really helped distract me and cheer me up, so thank you so much <3

#asks #anonymous #writing #i guess

[jebazzled]

it ain’t your muse! (shut up & write, ft. rihanna)

You nerds are always talking about your muse. My muse this, my muse that, I have no muse, my muse went the way of the dinosaurs, if my muse comes out of its burrow and sees its shadow I won’t be able to write for six weeks.

Shut up about your fucking muse!

It is true that you might go through periods where it is hard to find time and energy to write, or negative experiences in a writing community might leave you with anxiety surrounding writing. But by and large, writers block is something you can overcome! 

Please, for the love of god, let me help you. 

Writing is a muscle, and you’ve got to exercise it if you don’t want it to atrophy. 

This tutorial is a bit of tough love about y’all and y’all’s diddly-darn muses, and some advice for snapping yourself out of it!

So here’s the thing about writing, my loves. You have to actually do it. 

TERRIBLY inconvenient, I know.

I’m not here to tell you how to manage your work-life balance or how to manage your time. If you’re not writing much because you straight up don’t have time to write much, my advice is simple: pare down on your characters, focus on the plots that matter most to you, and spend some mental health juice on reminding yourself that there isn’t an RP Prom Queen, and even if there were, it’s better not to live or die by that bizarro crown. 

But if you’re having trouble writing because of Your Muse... I’m cracking my knuckles. 

We’ve all written with folks before - or been that folk before - who need a very specific set of circumstances if they’re going to write: they need time to Pinterest, need to listen to a specific playlist, need to get in the mindset, need the thread to scratch a very specific itch and need all of it to come together before the moon passes out of a waxing gibbous. As a fellow dev ho, I understand the appeal of writing to suit a mood, of vibing to a playlist, of prioritizing the stuff you’re going fucking feral for, of having the stars align while you do the thing. But if you’re like this when you’re writing for other people - 

well, you’re making things difficult for both you and your writing partners! We can’t control the external constraints on our time, e.g. work and school, and we can’t always control the nonsense our psychology spins to keep us from writing. But some things are within our control, and by god, if there is any control to be had in the year of Mother Sappho 2021, don’t you want it? 

At least some of your writers block is probably dumb as hell. So let’s beat the shit out of that part.

Anyway, if you’re yakking on and on about how your muse demands a bottle of red wine and a scented candle and fairy lights and soft socks and the blood of the servant, willfully given in order to spit out 200 words, or whatever... 

it’s not that fucking deep.

Writing is a muscle. It’s like any other muscle: you need to exercise it. 

If you’re training for a 5k, you don’t sit on your couch listening to “Eye of the Tiger” until race day. You get your ass off the cushion and pound the pavement. You probably start by alternating walks with short bursts of running. You probably don’t work your way up to actually running 5k at a time for a few weeks. And once you’ve run that first 5k, you don’t go sit on your couch to listen to “Eye of the Tiger” until the next race. You keep running to stay in shape for the next race.

Writing is like that. 

What you write does not have to be perfect. 

You can work on the post for six weeks and there will still be things you could change. You know what change your writing partner would have appreciated most? If you’d posted it for them three weeks ago. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. 

Cut yourself the same slack you cut for your writing partners. Do you yearn to keelhaul them if their reply isn’t worth a National Book Award? No, because you’re not an asshole. They’re also not an asshole. Everyone is reasonable here. Write something that responds to what they gave you and that gives them something to work with. Not every single post has to be capital-I Inspired. ✨

What you write does not have to be a vibe ready for the Goop newsletter. 

I was a creative writing major in college, and I was always having to turn stuff in for class that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to work on: a short story set in another country when I just wanted to write a play with puppets, an essay about food when I would rather write one about a weekend drive, etc. 

Sometimes, you write what you write when you write it not because it’s getting you hot and bothered but because you’ve owed a reply for A While and you feel bad about keeping someone waiting. It will still be fun, because you chose to do that thread with your character and someone else’s character for a reason, and that reason stands, even if your monkey brain is yearning to play with that slime that makes fart noises when you put it away. 

(Pro tip, here: don’t do threads you don’t actually have any interest in writing! It is less awkward to tell someone, “I am not interested in my character weed whacking your character’s lawn” than to waste their time with 10 posts of it before telling them, “I am not interested in my character weed whacking your character’s lawn.”) 

The more you write, the easier it is. 

Let’s talk about running again. A couple of years ago, I went on a bit of a kick with the running. I ran at least three times a week. I would bring my running shit with me to work so I could run in the park near my office. I would make running dates with friends. I would reward myself with a bagel from my favorite cafe if I did a run. And you know what? Once I got myself past the hurdle of pulling on my running clothes and lacing up my shoes, I enjoyed myself. When I ran 5k without slowing to a walk, I was proud of myself. When I told myself, “let’s do another loop at the park!” and stopped to take a photo of the sunset, I enjoyed myself. I would not have enjoyed myself if I hadn’t hit the goddamn pavement.

Put your ass in your fucking chair. I don’t care if you don’t have the right scented candle. Write 50 words. Right fucking now. I’ll wait.

Write another 50.

Now write another 100.

How long did that take you? Some days, it might take you 90 minutes to write 200 words. But that’s 200 more words than you would have written in 90 minutes of browsing Pinterest waiting for an angel to come down from heaven and write this post for you. 

All that bullshit you do to Feed Your Muse? It’s stalling, you idiot. 

The more you make yourself write instead of just thinking about writing, the easier it will be to actually fucking write. 

I used to sit and stare at posts for hours and hours and hours before submitting them, so worried about the post being good enough. When I moved to a neighborhood with an aboveground train line, I was able to write on my morning commute, and writing every morning - even if only the 200 words I could crank out on mobile in 30 minutes before work - got me out of my weird writers block crutches and security blankets. It didn’t take as much effort to write, anymore. I wrote over 200,000 words in 2019, and over 300,000 words in 2020, when I had barely any commute at all to use on writing. I didn’t magically have endless hours of free time. I just wasn’t wasting my free time pretending that being on Tumblr counted as writing. 

Tough love: doled out. And now:

TIPS & TRICKS FOR BEATING “””Writers Block”””

Stop acting like Writers Block is real. It’s not that it’s not real, but by telling yourself that you have Writers Block, you’re making it worse for yourself. You’re making excuses for yourself. I used Writers Block to stall writing my Topics in Creative Writing: Folktales portfolio for 3 months, and you know what happened? I still had to turn in the fucking portfolio, because the person I was writing for didn’t fucking care about my fucking Writers Block. And you know who had to sit her ass in a chair and write 30 pages of folktales in a 24 hour period? Me. It’s almost like my Writers Block was just PROCRASTINATION. 

Set a timer. If you’re looking at your list of replies owed and you’re feeling like it might be easier to “do character dev” and “build a playlist” than to write your posts, break the task into smaller pieces. If your server has a sprint bot, use it. If not, set your own timer.  Organize your list of threads with the ones you’ve owed replies on the longest at the top. Set your timer for 20 minutes and see how much you can write for the oldest post you owe. Not done? Set the timer for another 20 minutes. Keep setting that timer until that post is done and you can drop it in the tags channel. Now do the same for the second oldest.  CRANK! THEM! OUT! If you find that it’s depleting your creative energy, that’s not unusual! When I get to this point in my own posting habits, my oldest replies owed are usually for Albus Dumbledore, a character I write specifically because I hate him. It is often easier to knock out all his posts in one chunk rather than shift voice, so this ends up working out nicely. 

Don’t indulge your stupid stalling tactics. Do you typically get sidetracked by Pinterest? Put your phone away and close that tab. Do you get absorbed in lining up the perfect music for writing a post? Write in silence, asshole. Do you need to be in your favorite chair with the right lighting? Go sit on a park bench and write on mobile.  It’s nice to write in idealized environments. I rented a treehouse last summer to write 10k on a novel! I get it! But you absolutely can write in other environments, if you have to. And if you can get yourself to write on a dark skin on your iPad at an airport in the Midwest while waiting for a flight - well, shit, think of how much you’ll be able to write on a laptop when your diva ass demands are properly met!

Don’t take on shit you don’t want to write. I fully admit that these tactics feel a bit like homework/chores/a to-do list for what is of course a fun hobby. You know how they say “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life?” If you don’t take on plots, characters, and threads that don’t have a lick of interest or excitement for you, this shit won’t feel like a hassle. 

Hope this whips all you little miscreants (myself included) into shape! Now quit your yapping and start writing. 

#rp guides #resources #writing resources #on writing #stop trying to make writers block happen. it's not going to happen.

[hermionetickledthedragon]

Fan Fiction Recommendations Part V

The 5th and last part of FicRec series sadly.. Here are the 9th and 10th categories: 

Sad Fanfics

•Fanfics to cry you heart out to

1~Gradually by Lucystrn ~Mature ~Summary: "That's the first time i saw him again. The last is right now. But I am too weak and drunk to even attempt to shove the covers off his bed, stand and go away. Weak emotionally I mean, because I know that I should be running away from this thing." ~Site and Words: Fanfictionnet/ 5 Chapters, and  6,996 Words. ~Note/tw: Post-war, Hurt, comfort, romance, dark, emotionally rough.

2~Bitter sweet by provocative envy ~Mature ~Summary: When I finally came, it felt as if I had been flayed open, spine exposed, a cachet of fireworks set off in half-second increments along my vertebrae as he murmured my name so reverently I could not help but think that there must be some magic to it, to me, to him. ~Site and Words: Fanfictionnet/ 3 Chapters, and 5,746 Words ~Note/tw: Post-war, Complete.

3~Demolition Lovers by empathapathique ~Mature ~Summary: Words didn’t mean anything. Only a man who was absolutely sure of what he wanted—or was far too comfortable where he was—could tell a woman that she was the only woman he’d ever love then run off to bed another. ~Site and Words: LiveJournal, Fanfictionnet, AO3/ 3 Chapters, and 24,197 Words. ~Note/tw: Post-war, smut, angst, drama, Complete.

4~Mimi's Black Rose by xxSammySabotagexx ~Teenage ~Summary: Hermione sat beneath her tree, eyes pointed towards the sky. Tears were running down her face, as she slowly whispered, "I'm going to die." ~Site and words: Fanfiction.net, 18 chapters, 51k words ~Note/tw: Major Character Death, one of the saddest fic EVER.

5~Graveyard Valentine by Bexchan ~Teenage ~Summary: Hermione thought she was the only person in the world who would spend Valentine’s Day in a Graveyard, but she was wrong. He’s there. Every single year, with his gloves, roses, and answers. ~Site and words: Fanfiction.net, Ao3, 1 Chapter, 9k words ~Note/tw: Sad, sweet oneshot

6~Numbness by Slythadri ~Mature ~Summary: After the war, they feel numb. Maybe the way back to normalcy is through the craziness. ~Site and words: fanfiction.net, 1 chapter, 4k words ~Note/tw: Not very sad, hurt/comfort, hopeful one-shot

Unique Fanfics

•For all the non-cliche fanfiction lovers

1~Of Flavoured Names and Coloured Sounds by Pink Panda (Ejacyeolation) on Ao3 and Lance Corporal Chanyeol on ff.net ~Mature ~Summary: "He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him." ~Site and words: Fanfiction.net, Ao3, 2 Chapters, 10k words ~Note/tw: Draco has synaesthesia, one of the most unique oneshots, slight smut

2~Procuring Hermione Granger by Curly Kay ~Mature ~Summary: When an old acquaintance offers Hermione 20,000 galleons for a single strand of her hair, she goes in search of the mysterious buyer and finds herself unwittingly portkeyed into the middle of his flat. Dramione twoshot. ~Site and words: fanfiction.net, 2 chapters, 12k words ~Note/tw: smut with amazing plot

3~Classroom 204 by mimifreed ~Mature ~Summary: Hermione and Draco find themselves locked together in a dusty old classroom while a strange virus sweeps through the Wizarding community. They must learn to make the most out of their time and surroundings, and maybe address a few elephants in the room while they're at it. (8th year) ~Site and words: Fanfiction.net, 1 chapter, 15k words ~Note/tw: Quarantined during the coronavirus trope, avoidable smut, beautifully written oneshot

4~Between the Devil and Draco Malfoy by Queen of Smoke and Mirrors ~Mature ~Summary: Seventeen is a dangerous age. Hermione Granger, arrogant and precocious and bored of her mundane life, thinks she can handle a deal with the devil. But Draco Malfoy - the devil's own son - plans on dragging her down to Hell with him. ~Site and Words: Fanfictionnet/ 13 Chapters, and 38,410 Words. ~Note/tw: Dramione Devil au, Dark, Drama, anti-order, Dark Hermione, smut, OOC Hermione, complete.

5~The Commoner's Guide to Bedding a Royal by olivieblake ~Mature ~Summary: Objectively speaking, Hermione Granger knows Britain has a monarchy, just as she knows Prince Draco (the grandson of the King of England) is probably off somewhere living his royal life in total unrelation to hers. Seeing as she isn't delusional, she doesn't really expect to be his friend. She doesn't expect anything that comes after, either. ~Site and Words: Fanfictionnet, AO3/ 45 Chapters, and 527,574 Words. ~Note/tw: Dramione modern Royalty au, Multiple Pairings, Humor, Complete.

6~Modern Romances by olivieblake ~Mature ~Summary: Witch Weekly's 'Modern Romance' series asks anonymous witches and wizards to record a week in their sex lives—with comic, tragic, provocative, and patently revealing results. Each week, a new episode unfolds in the lives of the Wizarding World's elite. ~Site and Words: Fanfictionnet, AO3/ 19 Chapters, and 293,493 Words ~Note/tw: Multiple pairings, post-war, EWE, complete, fluff, angst, smut, humor, romance, drama.

So here’s the last of it. We enjoyed doing the fic Recs, maybe we’ll do it again.

Shout out to all the amazing authors who took their precious time in writing these gems, y’all real talented.

P.S. If you all have trouble finding the links DM us either on tumblr or instagram

Aight Imma head out now.

#dramione #harry potter #fandom #ships #otp #dramione fanart #dramionefan #dramione fanfic #dramioneedits #dramioneedit #dramione love #dramione ship #dramione forever #tom felton #emma watson #hermione granger #draco malfoy #dramione is life #fangirl #harry potter edit #harry potter fan #harry potter world #draco and hermione #dramione❤️ #tumblr #ravenclaw #slytherin #hufflepuff #gryffindor #dramione fakescenes

[bardofheartdive]

Author Interview

I was tagged by @alyssalenko, @cdrkateshepard, and @ghostxofxartemis. You are all lovely and I thank you! I will tag (if you want to play) @bioticfox, @ljandersen, @pigeontheoneandonly, @rock-paperback-scissors, @ronqueesha, @spaceprincealenko, @swaps55, and @theoriginalladya.

Name: Most people just call me Bard

Fandoms: Mass Effect, Mercy Thompson Series, Critical Role, MCU (Avengers)

Where you post: AO3 mostly, here on tumblr sometimes

Most popular one-shot: Recovering. My first mShenga (mShep/Kaidan Alenko/James Vega) fic and one of my favorites to this day.

Most popular multi-chapter: 12 Paramours of Christmas. Technically this is 12 one-shots from 12 different universes so I’m not sure it actually counts. Actual multi-chapter proper, Another Blue Rose. (Which I am particularly proud of because of krogan poetry.)

Actual worst part of writing: As far as parts of stories, I have the most trouble with starting scenes. As far as the act of writing, when you know exactly what you want to happen, you can see it in your mind’s eye, you can play it out like a movie in your head. You sit down to write it and... ***POOF*** it’s gone.

Favorite story you wrote: “Favorite” is hard but I’m going with Echoes Remain, my reverse Big Bang for the 2019 Mass Effect Big Bang. It was my first big bang and the longest thing I have written to date. It was exactly what I wanted to write, a trippy, mShenko angst-fest. I’m really, REALLY proud of it.

Story you were nervous to post: Fragile. This was my first fic for Critical Role and as a pinch hit for an exchange. I was nervous branching out of the Mass Effect fandom but it was really well received and my recipient liked it, which is of course the most important thing.

How you choose your titles: It varies. Usually it’s a theme/word/phrase from the story or part of a song lyrics or a quote. When I’m feeling especially lame I just use a description of the story (Five Times X and One Time Y, Name of Event and Year, etc.)

Complete works: 49 (on AO3)

Incomplete works: None that are posted anywhere. As far as WIPs in my Drive? TOO MANY TO COUNT.

Do you outline: Sometimes. It depends. I’m much more likely to do it when I’m collabing but not so much when I’m writing by myself.

Coming soon ideas, maybe? Wouldn’t that be nice?: Sooo many... as far as what actively has my attention right now, a collab with @cdrkateshepard, her OC Theo Walker with my Donovan Shepard. Also my Spectre Requisitions assignment and several super-secret gift fics (which have been in the works for so long the recipients probably aren’t even interested in them anymore).

Ask me anything: How does one do those really long, sweeping, amazing epics? I’ve broken 10k once. ONCE. How do people churn out ten times that over and over and over? It amazes me.

Best writing traits: I think I’m pretty good at making people feel. I tend toward angst and hurt/comfort because emotional response is what I want most from/for my readers. I’ve also been told I’m good at making things within the story lead to others. Small details lead to bigger events which lead to major plot points. Building the story on itself, if that makes sense.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: The aforementioned Theo/Donovan. 

Spicy Tangential Opinion: It’s okay to be discouraged or motivated to post based on audience interaction. There was a post somewhere that said something to the effect of “we write for ourselves but we post for others” and it really resonated with me. Writer/reader connection is something that’s important to me both as a writer and a reader. I will never stop writing, because I love to write, but I can definitely see myself only sharing my writing with friends because of a lack of interaction/connection/community/feedback. 

#bardic tags #bardic memes #about me #my writing

[dutten-does-the-fanfic]

Uploading schedule for “Something Great”

Hello, and welcome to a rant that neither of us had expected me to make today - or, any day, really. It is also unedited and not read through even once, because I’ll start to second-guess myself if I have to read through whatever my fingers have decided to spit out on paper. You will, however, have to suffer through my stream of consciousness. You’re welcome.

In case you were unaware, I recently started uploading an Evak fic (link: tumblr, AO3) “I Want You Here With Me (Is It Too Much to Ask for Something Great)” - it’s an AU that I’ve been working on since before I finished the third chapter of “Beat that Record” back in 2018.

Because I had the most inconsistent uploading schedule with BtR (and it was only three chapters back then) when I started working on “Something Great”, I’d decided I wanted to finish the entire thing (not aware of just how long it would end up being) and then start to upload it on a weekly schedule.

I’m a very impatient person - whenever I’ve finished writing something, I’ll be all like, “Right! Let’s edit it immediately so I can upload it!” I’m just always so incredibly excited to share the stories I’ve worked on with other people, hoping they’ll experience the same joy and love for the characters and story as I have for however long I’ve been working on it.

Honestly, writing like this for “Something Great” has actually been a really cool experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave me a lot of liberty so that I could write just because I wanted to write and I could write whatever part I wanted to write, I didn’t have to work chronologically because I had to have the next chapter ready. I got to jump around all over the place, I got to go back and edit already finished chapters because I just thought of that one thing that would be really cool. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that if I ever do multichaptered fics again, I will do it like this - just write all of it before I start uploading anything.

And now moving on to the actual point: A major reason why I wanted to have everything done before I started uploading, was so I could start uploading at a regular schedule, where you guys would know when to expect the next chapter. So I’ve been uploading “Something Great” on Fridays these past three weeks, and I’m just... not sure how I feel about it.

I’ve been considering making the uploads bi-weekly instead, and then I’ve spent a lot of time just going, should I shouldn’t I. I think one of the reasons why I’ve thought not to is because I’m only three chapters in and these are the shortest chapters (minus the epilogue) in the entire story. After chapter 5, there are no chapters below 10k, and some of them are closer to 30k at that. A bi-weekly uploading schedule would mean putting out close to 22k a week, which I don’t know if it’s too much? I also feel bad about changing it to bi-weekly, because a part of me feels like it’s defeating the purpose of spending literally two years working hard on something.

But at the same time, only uploading once a week is really stressing me out - I just don’t care much for it, especially not that the last chapter will first be uploaded at the beginning of September. If I change it to bi-weekly now, it’ll be finished at the end of July, which feels like a much more manageable timeframe for me personally. Also, because I’ve been stressing out, actually getting to finally upload this story that I’ve spent literal years falling in love with just... hasn’t been as exciting as uploading past fics have felt. And that’s a goddamn awful feeling, to be honest, especially when thinking back on just how fun it was to write and all the things I’d do to get in the mood of writing - I’d listen to music, and I’d do my spreadsheets like a nerd and I’d do these little doodles and drawings about the pivotal plot-things that would happen in each chapter’s present/past. I’d fall asleep at night thinking about what I wanted to do for a scene or run through my favourites, just because. I actually started to look forward to spending between one and two hours just sitting on the train five days a week, because that was my writing time, that was my me-time where I didn’t have to think about anything but the story and what the characters would do and what was happening to them - other than stare out of the window occasionally and see the odd fox and deer and pretty views to further dream myself away in.

And now when I’ve finally gotten to the point where it’s all done, it’s written and edited through, and I’ve actually been able to upload it, I’ve just been feeling sad and anxious about how much I’ve been stressing over only uploading on Fridays, and as I’ve been so excited about writing the story that I’d literally count the seconds until I’d be able to or I’d set of time on entire evenings just so I could work on it, it feels like something pure and dear to my heart is a little ruined because of it.

That sounded a little dramatic - it’s not that bad.

Honestly, what I’ve been trying to say, I think, is this (ooh, let’s do bullet points, because spreadsheets weren’t bad enough, y’all):

Uploads would change from only Fridays to maybe Tuesdays and Fridays?

And maybe just general thoughts? Like, what do you - either as a reader or as a writer - think about uploading schedules? Either about my fic in specific or other fics in general - I doubt people are going to be sad about more content during the week, but I don’t know. Is once a week preferable? Do you refuse to touch a non-completed story (that hasn’t been abandoned and is finished and regularly updated)? Do you have a preferable timeframe for uploading/receiving uploads? I’m just feeling a little at a loss, here, so it would be nice to hear back what you guys would like :)

and also just thank you to everyone who’s been reading and commenting on any of my stories, to be honest. Getting your feedback has always been such a cool experience, and all of this ranting has absolutely nothing to do with any of that - it’s still just as much of a joy getting to read your comments or go through your tags and just hearing about what you’ve thought of the chapter or the story in general, so the biggest thank you to all of you for being the most awesome and kind-hearted people in the entire world. You deserve it.

#rant #fanfiction #SKAM #writing

[ghostsofmemories]

Ocean in the Woods - Update #2

So, if you missed the first update or want a quick refresher (because it’s been over 3 months... wow), here’s the first update, which has a link to the WIP intro if you want to check that out.

Progress has been very slow, but hopefully now that I’m not in such a rut with a million things to do, it’ll move a little bit faster (no promises, though).

So basically, chapters 2, 3, and 4 are complete and I’ve worked my way up to 10k. It’s a little disappointing considering my original goal was 20k by the end of June and we’re already a few days into July and I only got halfway there, but I already knew that goal wasn’t realistic.

Chapter 2 is called Side Affects of Burnout and is sort of a bonding chapter between Arthur and his younger brother, Aiden. I like this chapter well enough, but I think I put this too early in the story and didn’t do enough to drive home the fact that Aiden and Arthur have a strained relationship before having them bond. However, I’m not all that worried about fixing that because no one is ever going to read this book. I was considering putting it on Wattpad in the beginning, but I’m actually perfectly content with, uh, not doing that. 

With that said, here are some fun little excerpts from Side Affects of Burnout, featuring Lance’s intro to the plot (not very many of the excerpts are well-written, I kind of gave up on editing as I went a couple weeks ago and have some passes to do before I keep going):

I had Lance in my first period, and I knew he wouldn’t notice that something was off with me. Usually, he was pretty oblivious to the rest of the world (in a very well-intentioned way) unless someone told him something was going on. He was the odd one out in our group of friends: the only one who checked the typical boxes. Cis, straight, and white. The rest of us were oddballs in school, but Lance was the oddball in our hearts.

He was folding paper airplanes out of post-it notes when I walked into the classroom. His hair was sandy blonde, uncombed, and he was wearing cargo shorts with a Darth Vader t-shirt. I was almost positive he had seen a maximum of two Star Wars movies.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s up?”

“The usual,” I said. “Sky. Clouds. Trees.” I sat in my chair next to him. Mr. Nelson didn’t assign seats, but everyone always sat in the same place. We were drawn to routine.

“That’s good,” he said, nodding, “if the sky is still up, then the world’s doing alright.”

I started out the story with Lance being somewhat of a comic relief, but I think I’m already beginning to feel some tension building up in regards to everyone labeling him as oblivious and stupid. He’s really sweet and I think he notices a lot, but just doesn’t say much about it. Here’s another section where everyone quips at Lance for being a himbo:

“Afternoon, lady and gent,” he said, sitting across from Maya and nodding at each of us respectively.

“It’s actually 11:30am,” Maya said, stealing another fry from my plate. “Labels and time in general are useless if you refuse to use them correctly.”

“Smartass,” Lance said through a bite of his sandwich. “I was just trying to be nice.”

“And I was just trying to spare you the humiliation of realizing you were wrong on your own,” she said. She started bouncing her leg after she was done stealing my fries, not knowing how to do nothing.

“He wouldn’t’ve realized on his own, Maya,” Ollie said, setting their tray down across the table from mine. “He doesn’t wear a watch or check the time.”

Vanessa, as usual, wasn’t far behind. “Lance, can you even read the time?” She was joking, of course. We always joked with Lance that way.

“Of course I can,” he said, sitting up straighter, “I just choose not to.”

And now, some of the Big Sad with Aiden and Arthur:

But the silence wasn’t horrible. I didn’t ask him to give back the water bottle I’d handed him, and I didn’t ask him why he’d been crying, and I didn’t ask him how he was tired enough to fall asleep sitting up (I also didn’t ask him to move when his head ended up on my shoulder). I wanted to be a good brother. I didn’t always need to know the details.

I love them so much and I’m kind of desperate to explore their relationship more, but so far all this book is teaching me is that I do not know how to manage all these subplots alongside the major plot of killing a monster. I’m pretty sure this’ll be the last fantasy book I ever write. Here’s a snippet of a one-sided conversation while the boys are waiting for water to boil so they can make mac n cheese.

“Hey, you can talk to me,” I said, trying to be gentle and quiet without letting my voice get pitchy. He didn’t look up, but he nodded again, his face lost in his sweater sleeves.

It was different, seeing him like this. I was so used to the Aiden that was always either smiling or sarcastic. I probably hadn’t seen him sad since he was a little kid, scraping his knees on the driveway and losing the watch he got for Christmas. He would breathe fast and panicky back then, when something went wrong. Now his breathing was slow and controlled, albeit shaky.

So yeah. At the end of this chapter, Aiden sees a girl out the window (who is Ocean, but he doesn’t know it yet) and he goes to talk to her and bring her water, and we move on to Chapter 3: River Runner. In which Ocean basically guilt trips Arthur into helping her fight the monster she brought there.

“I wasn’t mad about you not understanding my problems,” she said, standing up to follow me. I ignored her and kept walking. “I was mad at you for just sitting there and not knowing what to do besides ask stupid questions. I’m mad because you know there’s something wrong and you don’t care.”

“Why should I care?” I asked, walking faster. She would follow me all the way back to my house if she wanted to. “I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t know you and I don’t care, so handle this on your own.”

“I don’t know how to do it on my own!” she shouted, cutting around a tree and walking beside me. “I don’t exactly dedicate my life to putting myself in danger and fighting evil creatures and saving the world.”

“So why do you expect me to do it at a ten minute’s notice?”

“You’re impossible.”

“All of this,” I said between my teeth, stopping in my tracks and closing my eyes, “is impossible. You—I was never supposed to meet you. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.”

“Well it did. And there’s no taking it back now,” she said, stepping toward me. I opened my eyes, then. She was right about my height, maybe a little bit taller than me. “There is no supposed to. There’s only did and didn’t, do and don’t. And you have to decide which one you’re going with, because there is a right answer. And if you choose the wrong one, I’ll find someone else. You’ll be the boy who did nothing.”

I didn’t like how she could twist words and use them to make me do things. I didn’t want to help, but I didn’t want to do nothing.

“Fine, then.”

Pretty much all of River Runner is these two idiots yelling at each other, minus the part where Ocean is trying to open a portal. I won’t be putting an excerpt of that because it’s still extremely messy and that scene needs to be rewritten.

I only just started Chapter 5: Her and the Sun, but I’m liking it so far. There’s a lot of Maya in this chapter, including another mini description of her. Maya might be my favorite character in the book, honestly. I’ll leave it to Arthur to explain why.

She was crazy in the best way a person can be, I think. Where my mom would call me a little over the place, Maya would be in a thousand places at once. She was everything and everywhere and she could be everyone, too, if she could be.

For almost as long as I could remember, Maya and I were partners in crime. She led us into dozens of disasters and got us out of each one, too. Like when she helped me shave my head after I told her I was trans (but before I told anyone else) and told my parents there was a huge wad of gum in my hair.

“Trust me,” she told my dad, fourteen with huge eyes and hair that could compete in size with anyone else’s in the neighborhood, “my sister tried to fix it and this is a huge improvement.”

Maya’s sister is a hairdresser, at the time, but she had no idea what we were up to. Maya was just so convincing that no one bothered to check in with anyone else.

So, that’s pretty much it. Not my greatest writing, but at this point any words are good words, you know?

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#ocean in the woods #writing update #my writing #oitw #ocean #arthur benz #aiden benz #august is writing #excerpt #writing excerpt #my novel #writeblr