#pretty sure i need to write a coda to this specific scene now....

[sibylsleaves]

15 + 23 + 39 <3

hello bestie ily <3

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

You WOULD ask me this! How DO I write smut scenes?? Truthfully, I'm kind of new to it, but enjoying the process because it often feels like, at least when it comes to Buck and Eddie, once I get started a lot of it just kind of flows. I don't outline smut scenes the same way I outline other types of scenes, but I usually have some idea of what the overall ~vibe of the scene should be and what specific positions/sex acts I'm writing about.

Everything else, including the dialogue, tends to just unfold pretty organically, although I'll occasionally move or rewrite certain parts to my liking. And when it comes to writing the actual, uh......completion of the act, I tend to really need to dig deep for those descriptions, because honestly there's only so many ways to describe an orgasm 😂 I hope to write sex scenes where the actions themselves are clear, but the mechanics don't (or at least shouldn't!) take over the entire scene. I'm more interested in the dynamic between the characters and the ebb and flow of emotions over the course of the scene.

There is for sure some suspension of disbelief when it comes to writing smut, but I do try and keep things mostly grounded in reality. I think it feels more true to the characters, and honestly sexier, than letting things get into total fantasy land. I am also not a man, nor do I have a lot of sex with men (not to get too personal), so I do have to do some research. And then there are certainly other things that I've just taken artistic liberty with. I mean, come on, we all know what we're here for, and it's not necessarily 100% accuracy!

23. Best writing advice for other writers?

asjfhsfdkjvfbh I have no idea what to say here because I know what works for me but that does not necessarily mean it will work for anyone else. I guess my best advice is just to trust the process, whatever that is for you. The more you write the more you'll recognize the phases you go through with a particular piece (or just in general). And the easier it becomes to wait out or overcome periods of stagnation, and recognize when things actually aren't right vs. you're just going through the natural ups and downs of writing.

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

From the coda fic:

“But it’s Eddie,” Buck says helplessly. 

Hen smiles sadly. “It doesn’t always have to be your job, Buck.”

Buck knows that. He knows he likes to fix things, and he knows it doesn’t always have to be his job. He gets that now, he really does.

“I’ve got him,” Hen promises, her hand soft and warm over Buck’s. “Bobby’s got him. Chim’s got him. You just focus on getting better. That’s what’s going to help him the most.”

Buck swallows, meets Hen’s gaze, and nods. 

send me asks about writing

#sibyl answers #fanfic asks #colonoscopys

[meetmeatthecoda]

Coda, how are you doing?

If you have time, can I ask about Director’s Cut on “Epsy”?

Hello, my dear friend!! 😄 I'm doing well, thank you so much for asking!! 😍 I hope you are doing fabulous!! 🥰 I certainly have time for this (at least now I do - I'm sorry for the delay on this 😂) & I am flattered you want to hear more about Espy - I had fun with it! - so I'll put my notes under a read more for convenience!! ❤️

So, I basically wrote this fic around the idea of Liz having second thoughts about her revenge mission on Red, him getting hurt in the crossfire, Liz panicking about it & rethinking things, & - ultimately - Liz observing Red when he can't see her, like in the end of the Borne Supremacy where Jason Borne is looking at Pam Lundy (unbeknownst to her) & tells her to "get some rest, you look tired". Weird inspiration, I know, but I just loved that twist at this point in season 8 for Red & Liz. (That's also why I chose the title "espy" 😁)

I had specific settings in mind for both scenes in this fic & I loved the idea of Liz, Skip, & Agnes at a fountain for the first scene with Agnes having fun looking at the ducks 😊🦆

I remember having a hard time writing Liz's mental state in the beginning of this but, at this point, I find it kind of necessary to always define the current mentality of either Red or Liz, given that writing Lizzington always comes with a certain amount of mental gymnastics & AU 😒😒😒 But I think I established what I wanted to, which was Liz feeling confident but - overall - that the physical distance is giving her some mental clarity & making her question her motivations which imo it definitely should have.

I also really enjoyed putting Skip firmly in the role of bad guy/T*m replacement in terms of sliminess. He rubbed me the wrong way from the start, so it was super satisfying to draw parallels from him to T*m & establish Liz's mistrust of him which imo she should have had.

I also got tons of petty satisfaction from writing him completely horrible with Agnes & having Liz make the parenthetical observation that Red would never treat Agnes that way, tee hee.

I wrote Liz's scheme falling through mostly bc this was on the heels of the ep where she endangered a whole plane full of innocent passengers for her own stupid goals, while the only chance of saving them rested in the completely uninformed Task Force's hands, so it could have easily been a disaster. That was appalling to me at the time (way to go TPTB) so this scenario was meant to be a bit of a reality check for Liz while keeping innocent people out of the way & only banging up Red a bit, something which would serve as a wake-up call for her in more ways than one.

I loved writing the ultimate confrontation between Liz & Skip, occurring over her feelings about Red, & for some reason I adored the line about Liz feeling a bland satisfaction at being able to push around Skip & parenthetically wishing that "Tom and all the damage he did would stay dead where they belong." I thought that line hit different & I liked it.

(I had fun making Agnes understanding & agreeable & excited about playing princesses on the plane, cause we barely got any decent mommy!Liz moments in canon & it's really sad 🥲)

And the "she has someone she needs to see." line before the break was meant to be a nod to the title, as well as foreshadowing.

I remember having a little trouble writing Red's opening paragraphs, establishing his perspective on what happened & more so on his injuries, which is something - along with action - I'm not very good at writing LOL

But I liked the mental image of Red booking it out of an empty building while Aram is counting down on the phone stuck in his pocket. Poor thing.

(I also needed Dembe strictly in the role of caretaker while not being technically in the fic & I got a chuckle out of writing that he dropped Red off to investigate the empty building & peace-d out to go get a cheeseburger, cause he has such a canon love for food 😂)

I also liked the idea of Liz's apparent betrayal hurting Red more than any injury he sustained cause I love angstttttt 🥲

I loved the idea of Red being too tired & sore to even get a drink when alcohol was surely something he relied on in that time when Liz was out to get him, meanwhile him collapsing in the chair instead of a bed was more of a necessity plot-wise so Liz could see him through the window wall - which I also remember was hard to describe. I kept fiddling with the description.

The attempted verbal sparring & Red's befuddlement over Liz's unexpected concern was very fun to write.

I couldn't help but include that whiplash line, it made me snort 😏

I liked the lighter, softer conversation of Red asking where Liz is, Liz calmly declining to answer but bringing up Agnes, & Red asking how she is.

I almost didn't include Liz saying that Agnes asks about Red, that was a last minute addition, but I once I thought of it & realized it fit in pretty well, I liked the added emotional depth & it being the climax of the conversation with Red's desperate "it doesn't have to be this way -" followed by Liz just not being ready for the next part of the conversation & Red accepting that & letting her go with a wish for her to be safe.

And of course the little twist of the Jason Bourne-esque ending - I remember tweaking and re-tweaking that paragraph & the subsequent ending bc it's the real center of the fic & I wanted it to be good.

And the last line is a reference to the title as well 😊

Well, there you go, my friend, I hope this was interesting/entertaining for you to read!! 😅 Thank you so much again for asking about this fic, I really appreciate!! 🥰 Much love to you, my friend!! ❤️

#The Blacklist #Lizzington #fanfic #espy #ask games #fanfic writers: director's cut #mine #ask #sweetangelpalacebagel #here you go my friend #:D #i hope you like this #:) #much love to you!! #<3

[bettsfic]

hey betts! can you give us any insight into your new drafting process (the one you mentioned on Twitter?) those results have me green with envy

sure! this is going to be a fairly quick run-down because i have to start planning my classes here soon.

(anon is referring to this tweet)

required reading

shitty first drafts by anne lamott, which is where i modified my process from

on fear by mary ruefle, which talks about procedure and i may have taken the wrong meaning from the essay but basically, my entire process is about mitigating the fear innate in writers’ block by having a procedure in place to counteract it

tools

google docs (or some other word processor)

google calendar (or some other calendar app; i wrote about my scheduling process here)

toggl (or some other timekeeping app)

airtable (i’ve also used trello, but i like airtable better. ps big thanks to @electricalice​ for introducing me to it! it’s a lifesaver)

pre-writing

so first you need an idea. whenever i have an idea, even if there’s 0 chance i’ll end up writing it, i add it to my airtable, plus any notes or details i come up with. i also copy and paste any text convos i have about the fic, like if i headcanon something with a friend. (i used trello for this until recently; it works just fine and is a bit easier to use. airtable also has a kanban function though, along with other formats, so it’s a bit more flexible)

airtable is a project management spreadsheet software. i’m sure there are others out there, but i started fiddling with this one and haven’t looked back. it takes a little while to figure out, and you might have to google some things you want it to do that aren’t terribly intuitive. 

my fanfic table, filtered by ideas, looks like this:

(you may have to expand to look at it, also note that the pretty colors are a Pro feature of the app and i’m still on my trial)

the idea here is to have space to store my ideas. let’s say i hang out with a friend and we started talking about fic, and i bring up i have an idea for a endgame coda but i’m not really sure where to take it, so we start headcanoning back and forth, and now i have a few scene ideas. i made my endgame coda card already right after i saw the movie, so all i have to do is open the app and jot down the main points of my headcanoning. now when i go home and start working on it, i can easily pull up our brainstorming session.

narrative outlining

i have never been an outliner or a planner. i’ve always been a pantser. i have a premise and i run with it, and that worked for me for a long time. pantsing has a lot of benefits: your story always surprises you! you can get really immersed! it’s certainly the more whimsical writing process.

but what i found was that i would often write myself into a corner, or lose steam once i realized what should have been a 10k fic was actually going to be 80k and i didn’t like the story enough to sit with it for 80k. i also spent a long time thinking about future scenes and writing them down but losing them later, or forgetting about them.

so i started doing narrative outlines, which are just me going “and then THIS happens” repeatedly and sometimes inputting “and something causes this other thing” until eventually i have the whole story written out. the goal of the narrative outline is pacing. all you have to do is get the major beats down. it doesn’t have to be good. no one is going to see it (unless you want them to).

ideally my paragraphs will be all around the same size. those are going to become my chapters. if a paragraph is significantly shorter than another, it’s likely that i don’t have that beat fleshed out yet. i call chapters “beats” because to me, each one should have its own arc, and end at a high or low point in the story.

in my fanfic airtable, i have a table for chapters. all chapters of all multi-chap wips go here, and i can filter out ones that are complete later. 

the beauty of the chapters table is that it can connect to your ideas/wip table and vice versa so everything is kept together. i had 7 paragraphs in my narrative outline so i made 7 rows. 

notice i also gave myself a due date. i don’t really like due dates, but i’m trying them on for now and seeing how it goes. 

i copy and paste the chapter paragraph as i go into the “summary” field. then, as scene or line ideas come to me, i toss them in the “scenes/lines” field. I was in a car for 8 hours and coming up with scenes all over the place, and i needed somewhere to put them. if i didn’t know where they went, i put them in my idea table instead, and filed them later.

you’re still idea-ing, you’re still outlining, but now it’s time to write.

gauge

i make a folder for the fic and open a doc and label it ch1. then i copy and paste the narrative outline paragraph into the doc and separate it out by scene with an asterisk between each one. 

here’s where the timesheet and calendar come in. i have a reminder on my calendar to schedule the following day, and on that schedule i put my writing time. when it’s time to write, i start the toggl clock. at the end of each week, i put in my time in my personal timesheet. 

the first chapter or 10% of anything i’m writing tends to take longer than the rest, because i need to get into the story, and choose the voice and tense and tone and things like that. so i take however long i take to make what i call a gauge. in knitting, a gauge is the thing that determines the size of the piece. if you’re knitting a sweater, you knit a little square to make sure the sweater comes out the size you need it to be.

so i write the gauge and it takes however long it takes. sometimes i rewrite it a few times, test out POVs and tenses and description and whatever else. what i like best, what seems the most sustainable, is what i choose. i wrote 3 chapters of a novel in present tense and a childish tone before i decided it needed to be first person reflective and i rewrote the whole thing. 

don’t get frustrated with yourself if your gauge doesn’t work. that’s what the gauge is for. you’ll know you’ve chosen the right voice if, by the end of your gauge, you’re really eager to keep writing. 

down draft & punch list

so now you’ve got a pretty gauge to follow, and the rest is going to be an absolute mess. the down draft is exactly what it sounds like – you get the idea down. i personally believe you need to tell the story to yourself a few times in order to get good at telling the story, or to know what the story is. you’ve told yourself the story once in outline form, and now you’re just breaking out the scenes a little bit more. 

the key to the down draft is not to self-edit. i’m not talking about going back and tweaking typos and shit, that’s fine, whatever. i mean doubting yourself structurally. like, oh shit, you forgot to mention that they took off their clothes and now they’re naked.

here’s where the punch list comes in, which is yet another table. (i’ve also used google tasks for this, because it pops up in a side window. either works!) a punch list is a to do list. instead of fixing things, you put the thing on your punch list and save it for the next draft. a down draft is all about speed and figuring out where all the pieces go. revising during the down draft only slows you down. 

the punch list is my solution to the contrived advice “you can fix it later!” to which i always say, “BUT I WON’T REMEMBER TO FIX IT LATER I HAVE TO FIX IT NOW.” as soon as you think of something to fix, put it on the table. it may seem like it’s faster to fix things as you go. it is not. i promise.

this is all my punch list notes for all fics, which i then connect to my other tables/filter as needed. put everything in your punch list. it’s better to make a punch list item that you don’t end up implementing than forget an important revision note. if you end up putting the project down for a while, you’ll want to know what you’d intended. 

up draft

in the up draft, you clean up the down draft. here, i take each document in a new window, put it on the right half of the screen, and open a new document to put on the left. 

then i rewrite the whole fucking thing. i pull up my punch list and fix all the things as i go, to the best of my ability. here’s where the writing gets pretty and fleshed out. but still, it doesn’t need to be perfect. you have more revisions to go. it’s important to remember during this entire process that everything can be changed. nothing is permanent. you’re not writing in stone. there’s no cost to words or documents, so you can revise as much as you want.

it’s also worth noting that the longer your project, the more sectioned out your story will be. sometimes you’ll have a chapter on a down draft and another chapter on an up draft. sometimes you might down draft out of order just to make sure you get your ideas down when they occur. whatever works for you. the idea is that you’re constantly building spaces in which to put your stuff that can be easily found and implemented. the creative process is messy, so you need to make clean spaces to put the mess in.

while you’re up-drafting, you’re still idea-ing and outlining and down-drafting and punch-listing. maybe you don’t have the answer to a problem yet, but you might later. decision fatigue in the creative process is real. this process is designed to mitigate decision fatigue. there are only ever so many decisions to make at once when you expand out your process like this one.

and sometimes, sadly, the solution to a problem never happen. that’s okay. what you write might be flawed. in fact it should be flawed. flaws are what make things beautiful. all you can do is the best you can do, and if it’s not good enough for your tastes, you can learn from your mistakes and try again. 

beta

sometimes i have a beta and sometimes i don’t, depending on how confident i am about the work. when i have a beta, this is the stage i send them my stuff. sometimes i tell them specific things i’m looking for, like just line edits, or cheerleading, or whatever else. sometimes i have questions about whether or not something is working. i tell them what date i intend to post and when i would like edits to be done by, and if they don’t get around to it, that’s okay. i can just hustle a little harder in the next revision.

dental draft

here’s where, per anne lamott, you check every tooth. i implement my remaining punch list items and beta feedback, fix pacing issues, typos, unclear sentences, etc. sometimes i do the side-by-side window thing for chapters that are particularly messy, and sometimes i just fix the existing doc. by now your story should be looking pretty good, or the best you can get it.

final read-through :) or additional revisions :(

for fic, this is the point where i hit it and hope. i copy and paste the chapter/fic into an ao3 shell with the tags and summary i’ve kept in my airtable, and do a final readthrough. i don’t do it in the original doc because seeing it in a new font and format usually makes me notice things i’d missed before. 

for ofic, here’s where you might need more feedback and more revising if your piece isn’t working yet, or if you’ve submitted it a couple dozen places and haven’t had it accepted. while this process is thorough, sometimes pieces still aren’t working for whatever reason. don’t throw anything away, though. keep it, file it, log it in your airtable, and maybe one day while you’re driving an idea will pop into your head and you’ll be able to come back to it. 

this was a really really quick run-down of an extremely long and complicated process, but it works for me! i probably wouldn’t have been able to do this even a year ago. it’s taken me a long time to cultivate this kind of discipline, and i’m still a work in progress. so if it’s too much or too structured for you, that’s fine. maybe you can take one or two things for yourself and try them out. 

#writing advice #process #Anonymous

[five-wow]

Author Asks

Rules: answer these questions and tag five other fic writers to do the same.

I was tagged by the wonderful @novemberhush. Thank you, omg, because I love rambling about writing and this is the best kind of opportunity to do so, handed on a silver platter, ahh. 😊

-

Author Name: Square / Squares / SquaresAreNotCircles

Fandoms You Write For: I’m a fandom hopper! In the past year or so it’s been Hawaii Five-0 (a truly ridiculous amount), Shadowhunters, Venom, Harry Potter, due South and Stargate Atlantis. Other fandoms I’ve written at least one fic for are Twilight, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Glee, BBC Merlin, BBC Atlantis, Teen Wolf, In The Flesh, Star Wars, Supernatural, the MCU and High School Musical. And uh, Alexander the Great/Voltaire fic (which would be... history fandom? RPF?) and one (1) Judas/Jesus Biblefic. If we’re getting really technical, also a tiny little bit of One Direction fic.

It should be noted that all of this is about fic that ended up getting posted somewhere on the interwebs - there are multiple Star Trek (TOS/AOS and DS9) fics lingering in my drafts (!! one day I will finish one of them), as well as some How To Train Your Dragon, The Good Place and Deadpool stuff, and definitely more I’ve forgotten.

Where You Post: Since I made the switch to writing in English everything has landed on ao3, but I used to write mostly in Dutch, so there’s still close to a million words, I think, under my name on quizlet.nl (not to be confused with quizlet.com, which is a very different website).

Most Popular One-Shot: That depends on how you’re measuring popularity! Going by kudos, it’s Tell me I’m perfect (but tell me the truth), a Magnus/Alec Shadowhunters fic. It’s the truth is a really old fic about Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood from Harry Potter that has the most hits out of all my works, and That time Steve kissed every single Avenger (and also Bucky), an MCU Steve/Bucky fic, has the greatest number of comment threads.

Also, since this is an h50 blog: for my fic in this fandom Wanted: partner (in crime) has the most kudos and hits; You had me at meow has the most comments.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: I’m working on one for h50 (going slowly, so slowly), but I don’t have any posted to ao3. I used to write a lot of multi-chaptered work in my quizlet.nl days, and I think my most popular fic there was probably the second fic I ever wrote, when I was fourteen or fifteen, which was a next-gen Harry Potter fic with shifting and overlapping POVs from the three Potter kids. It was kind of, well, not great, but it’s probably what really cemented my writing habit, it’s still my longest fic ever (over a 100k!) and I got my first fandom friends out of it, including one I’m still in contact with to this day, even though neither of us writes much if anything for Harry Potter anymore.

Favourite Story You Wrote: Ohhh, that’s such an impossible question, especially because I’ve been churning out one-shots like I might actually be getting paid for it, so there’s so much to choose from, which is a thing I have difficulty doing at the best of times, holy shit. Uh, I once wrote a 70k Remus/Sirius (Harry Potter) modern college-ish AU in Dutch that I still like; weirdly, I think that Biblefic holds up (also Dutch), and the HSM fic is fun to reread once in a while because of the fourth wall break, as is That escalated quickly, a Percy/Oliver fic. Ooh, and the fic about Shuri and Stucky and a goat!

For h50, it’s even harder to choose, because my preferences change pretty much weekly (a combination of newer fic being shinier, looking back at fic from even just a few months ago and finding things I would have done differently now, and comments influencing the way I personally look at my own fic), but right now, I’d say I still really like the fic where Steve adopts some guinea pigs, the one with the slightly tipsy team bonding by talking about mutual crushes and this 9.11 coda fix fluff getting together thing.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: That Biblefic, haha, because it’s a very complicated topic and my aim was definitely not to offend. People were really sweet about it, though! Mostly, they were kind of shocked it wasn’t crack, but that’s fair, because so was I.

Also pretty much anything I post in a new fandom, really, and low key just... anything at all. I’m always a little scared I tagged something super badly or accidentally copy-pasted the wrong text or unknowingly wrote something super offensive or whatever, despite my double- and triplechecking of the posting form. (I’m also still kind of scared people on ao3 will randomly decide they hate my fic and my writing and me personally (ao3 is really big and very anonymous and coming from the small town that was quizlet.nl even in its heyday, that’s scary), but that fear has abated as I’ve posted more, just because the data is showing pretty conclusively that thought is as irrational as it sounds. Everyone is always so nice, gosh.)

How Do You Pick Your Titles: Mostly, I steal lines from random songs. I have a small pile of song lyrics to use as potential titles, because going on a seperate hunt for every new fic would take most of my waking hours. Sometimes, I’ll use a pun (like You had me at meow or Retail Therapy) or something else that I think sounds good, especially if the fic is mostly comedy and/or has a specific premise that would do well in a title (like Five times the Governor of Hawaii suspects his taskforce leaders are violating fraternization policies (and one time they tell him they are)).

Do You Outline: I’m mostly writing fic of (sometimes much) less than 5k at the moment, so not really. I do sometimes write tiny bits of a bunch of scenes and then fill in the rest around that, which is a kind of outline, in a way. For longer works, I usually make a one page bullet point list of things that need to happen and work from there, because I can’t do really extensive outlining or I’ll just get caught up in the details and lose all of the oversight a tool like that is supposed to give you, as well as most of my enthusiasm for the project.

How Many Of Your Stories Are Complete: Of the ones posted? On ao3, all of them, because unfinished posted one-shot works would require some strange bending of those concepts. On quizlet.nl, I do have some abandoned works, but I think 80% is finished.

In-Progress: SO MUCH. Seriously, just, so much, oh god. I’d really like to write another Stargate Atlantis fic (and I have 30% of one done), and something more for due South, too, and maybe a small Percy/Oliver thing again some time because they were my very first OTP and I kind of miss them, but mostly I have, like, 100+ half written things for h50. I really wish that number was an exaggeration. There’s no way they’ll all get finished, but maybe... a third? Mayhaps?

That One Truly Long H50 Fic that I was already talking about way back in October last year is also eternally “in progress”. The thing is that it has about 25k now, after a year, and I think it needs... at least four times that. Probably. So either I’ll have to stick with this fandom and my slow progress for another three years to have a shot at getting it finished, or I’ll need to find a way to up the speed a little. Maybe I could try working on it for NaNo this November? That would be pretty awesome, but honestly, part of why it’s moving this slowly is because NaNo-style fast and messy writing for this scares me a little, because I might end up writing a lot, decide it’s not what I wanted for it, and become too intimidated to ever edit and/or rewrite the entire thing. But idk, I probably just need to get over my own fears, because I really do want to write Longer Fic again. Short stuff is fun and feels really productive and that’s great, but I miss the actual slow burn and build-up that only 50k+ words can give you.

Coming Soon: Hopefully a lot? For h50, that is. I have no idea what’s getting posted next, because I’m never entirely sure what’s going to be finished next and something really random might come jumping in, but at the moment I’m trying to direct most of my energies at a slightly longer fic I’ve been working on for months (not The Long Fic, a different one), a fic labeled “9.01 memory loss fic”, another one temporarly entitled “Perfect Kauai beach house vacation”, and maybe an ace!Steve fic I’ve been working on, if I ever manage to uh, actually finish that, instead of rewriting three sentences during every round of editing and never actually adding anything to fill in the gaps it still has. There will also be more season 10 codas, in all likelihood.

Do You Accept Prompts: I’ve never done that before in the traditional way, but I’m thinking about it! I’d love to try (and it would be a breath of fresh air, in some ways!), but the main thing holding me back is that I have way too much on my plate with just my own ideas to work off of, and I don’t want to disappoint people. Maybe if I do drabble-ish prompt fills? It’s definitely been on my mind.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I’m excited for a lot of stuff, but honestly, the top spot right now probably goes to the ace!Steve fic. I’m not even sure it’s that good, necessarily, but it’s, idk, really cathartic, I suppose. Seriously self-indulgent in strange but very good ways. I really like writing it. (Second spot goes to the beach vacation fic, because I haven’t actually written that much for it, but it’s been my go-to easy happy place for the last few weeks.)

-

I’m tagging @love2hulksmash @thekristen999 @stephmcx @girlonastring @flowerfan2 and @pterawaters, which is six people because I can’t count, but I’m about to make it seven because I’m also tagging you, the person reading this (hi there!). Say I tagged you and tag me so I can read it! I know that kind of thing can feel awkward, but it won’t be, because I’m cheering you on. Go for it, if you want to do it. :D

#tagged in #writing #* #question: [requires maybe two words to be answered] #me: [writes two lengty paragraphs] #i guess that also tells you something about what kind of writer i am

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

First Monday of the month, woohoo!

(And also kind of a NaNo roundup post because that was last month, after all…)

NaNo:

Sooooo I didn’t finish, lol. Not that I was…super expecting to, exactly, but I was hopeful! I think I just missed too many days in a row and lost all my momentum.

In terms of my goals, I was hoping to write:

1. 20-25k on Precipice 2. 20-25k on our faces like a mirror 3. 10-20k on Other Projects. 4. 50-70k total

In terms of what I actually accomplished:

1. 9,241 on Precipice (Sooooooo....about half of what I’d hoped, a little less. But I still got a fair amount done/prepped for upcoming chapters, plus a couple chapters actually posted, even while doing other stuff, so...go me!) 2. 9,043 on our faces like a mirror (Again, a bit less than half of what I’d hoped for, but I got enough done for the story/etc. to take a real Shape in my head. ...ish. See the specific OFLAM stuff later on in the post...) 3. 10,601 on Other Projects (Hey, I actually met this goal! ...barely, but still! Mostly thanks to the Nikita/Rebels crossover, lol...) 4. 28,885 total

Original Fiction:

I got a decent chunk of a big backstory piece for Lux done (in the form of a “then” and “now” set of scenes/vignettes for the five Archangels)--that being said, I’m not sure I actually like what I have there, lol. I know more or less what I need to cover, but the details are fiddly. Also not sure whether I should refer to Lux by her current name, for consistency’s sake, or use a different name (either Lightbringer or just Lucifer) since she does technically reshape her name after being released when the main Apocalypse storyline kicks off…also debating whether Lux should be/present as female way back when--angels don’t really do gender the way humans do in this ‘verse, but the closest human term for Lux would be genderfluid, sooooo IDK. Also also, for the ‘Now’ part…ehhh, I’m not sure I should have this be the first thing I post involving Trixie…but I’ll keep poking at it and see what comes out.

(I’d also planned to work on the big Kesshare character study saturation for The Farglass Cycle this month, and maybe go back to my untitled first-contact story, but neither of those happened, lol.)

Precipice:

We’re in the home stretch! Kinda. So to speak. Probably three to four more chapters in Arc Seven, which I’m hoping-fingers-crossed I’ll finish by the end of the calendar year??? (But given how much other stuff I hope to work on (see Other Fanfic Projects for more details…)

At that point--and I know I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably put it in an A/N in the next chapter or so, but following the end of Milestones, I’m planning to break off into a second/sequel fic, working title Protectors. This is at least in part because length (over 200k wtf I was anticipating 50-75k, maybe 100k, for these seven arcs @.@), but also was sort of planned even without the Length issue, due to some thematic/structure shifts following a six-year timeskip. Which, if you do the math, you can probably figure out where that’ll land us and why I might be structuring it this way…

Anyway, I’ve increasingly realized that there’s some stuff I should probably set up that I’ll need for later arcs in Part 2 involving some Rebels characters, more with the Last Batch, plus a Sith Apprentice who needs to turn up and die (although the gap between Infernalis and the next apprentice I actually care about/have a name and some kind of Plot for is only about four years in my mental timeline, so maybe there isn’t an active Apprentice in that period*…hmmmmm…), some background about the Hands, etc. But I feel like it’s all a little too disjointed for an entire additional arc. So, Arc 7.5, tentatively titled Preludes, is also going to be a thing XD I don’t think I’ll have a fixed schedule for that vs. the main storyline--and, honestly, it’ll probably work more like a collection of one-shots taking place during the timeskip than a proper Arc, but a little more Relevant than stuff that goes in Bonus Content, if that makes sense? It’ll probably be posted alongside at least arcs 8 and 9. Which, incidentally, take place more or less back-to-back and cover a fairly short period of time, but there is A Lot of plot/setup that goes into them. Like. If I tried to do it all as one arc, it’d be at least twice as long as any of the other arcs I’ve done, possibly including Arc Four--certainly over twenty chapters, I think--plus there’s a good (and by good I mean Horrible) place where I can split the arcs, so…we’ll see how that goes.

(…still not sure what to do with Maul, lol. He may just be Sir Darth Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic, or he might turn up in arc 10/11/13, which are the sort of vaguest of the next seven arcs which make up Protectors, in terms of how much I have planned out…)

(*On a semi-related note, I’ve been asked about Inquisitors a couple times in comments lately, and…well, I’ll probably mention this when I reply to the commenter in question, but I figured I’d set it out here as well, in case anyone else was wondering the same thing but doesn’t read other peoples’ comments. Like I’m pretty sure I mentioned at the start, when I plotted out** the bulk of this fic, I hadn’t seen Rebels yet. I’ve since decided to integrate a few characters/plot points (Kallus and Zeb will feature prominently in a subplot in arcs 13 and 14, for example), but, as a rule, characters and plot points from Rebels haven’t been taken into account unless I Really Like Them and/or they’re a good way to fill in a plot hole in a later arc, as with Kallus and Zeb. So, for example, when I include Thrawn, I’m writing more towards Legends!Thrawn in terms of personality, though the two have blended a bit in my head and I do reference specific events in Disney!Thrawn’s personal timeline; and b) more relevantly, I hadn’t made any plans to include Inquisitors, and that…hasn’t really changed. So, I might have them in Preludes, but they almost certainly won’t show up on-page/be super-relevant in the main arcs of the fic, sorry :/ )

(**Loooool I say “Plotted Out” like I’m the kind of author with a Master Plan or at least an outline. But I did have a general idea of the Major Plot Points going in, such as when Rex and Ahsoka would turn up, Luke’s storyline with Lavinia, how many Apprentices I would need to make them work, etc., and I’ve had parts of Arcs 8, 9, and 14 written for like at least two years now, so I know more or less where I’m going--though they’ll be edited once I have more of the connective tissue in place, in case I’ve accidentally Jossed myself…or I change my mind, which is becoming A Possibility with a major event set to happen in Arc 14, so…we’ll see.)

Aaaaaanyway. Exciting times ahead, I hope!

Other Fanfic:

This month, I finally posted another AU outline, woohoo! …I mean, it was a super-niche Nikita/Rebels crossover with a handful of OCs thrown in but who’s counting XD (I do actually intend to finish Let’s Go Steal a Crossover and update the Ventress one at some point but…yeah).

I also put out a Kallus one-shot that I think turned out really well. May do more of those at some point, who knows…

I made some significant progress on our faces like a mirror, as mentioned above! But now I’m waffling a little bit over structure. Basically, the fic covers Bo-Katan’s backstory from the time Satine becomes Duchess, through the Civil War, and eventually leads to Bo’s eventual break with her sister to join Death Watch. It comes in two pretty distinct halves--what I call the Fugitive arc in my notes, which covers the Civil War, and the Breakdown arc, which is everything after her return to Sundari.

So, my original plan was--prologue covering at least part of the final Epic Screaming Match that leads to Bo’s departure; jump back to the Fugitive Arc; and then follow through until we catch up to the prologue, with a coda/epilogue with her and Pre Viszla. The problem is, there’s…really not a lot to connect the two halves??

I’ve got a couple options on what to do about this, but I’m not sure which would be best.

Option One: Keep the structure as-is and just let it be episodic.

Option Two: Keep the structure as-is and find some way to connect the two halves (i.e., a recurring antagonist; I do have an idea of who this could be, but the problem is, it takes away a good chunk of the focus from Bo and Satine’s relationship for the Breakdown Arc…which I don’t really want to do.)

Option Three: Remove the framing device and focus on the Breakdown Arc, and include the Fugitive Arc as flashbacks, since the Breakdown Arc can’t really stand on its own. (The main issue I have with this one is that, if I want to actually write out future chunks of Bo’s life later--meaning, her time with Death Watch, and getting her from TCW to Rebels--I won’t have these flashbacks and I don’t want to change the structure too radically for any eventual sequels? Also, I’m not sure how I feel about a flashback structure for this fic in general…)

Option Four: Remove the framing device and focus on the Fugitive Arc, ending the story with Bo’s return to Sundari. (Two issues with this one--I really do want to go into the Breakdown Arc; that’s where my interest in this story started. Also, due to the constraints of setting and so on, Bo interacts with…like…two canon characters over the course of the Fugitive Arc? And while I don’t really have a problem writing a story that’s essentially a Backstory Epic for a tertiary character, populated by about 90% OCs, I’m not sure anyone actually wants to read that, except as the lead-in to the Breakdown Arc??? But maybe I’m overthinking…)

…so, yeah. Any thoughts/opinions on which option would be Best? (I may make a separate post asking the same question later, but figured I’d lay it all out here, too!)

Also, I’m working on a Secret Santa project, and probably not going to use OFLAM for SWBB, which means I need to come up with and write a different plotline of some kind, so back to the drawing board on that one…

Also also, I do genuinely plan to get Distaff off hiatus At Some Point, especially since I’ve gotten some new comments/responses lately…but given how much else I have on my plate, writing-wise, that probably won’t happen until next year, alas.

Anyway, the long and short of it is--lots of writing planned for this month! Now let’s see how much I actually get done XD

What about the rest of you? What’ve y’all been up to/what do you have planned for next month?

#coming attractions #miscellania #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes original fic #shadowsong writes crossovers #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #feedback greatly appreciated #our faces like a mirror #precipice verse #nano2019

[doraspn]

15x06 sort-of-coda

this is for my one and only sister @boysforpielie who means the world to me <3 hope you like it sis and that it helps even if just a little bit. 

Cas left. Dean is drinking his feelings away. He may or may not pray to Cas. They may or may not end up making out. I honestly wouldn’t know, I’m not from around here.

1 of 4 | 2 of 4 | 3 of 4 | 4 of 4 

Dean had had enough of it all so when the discount Sam Malone behind the bar brought over a fresh beer before he had a chance to finish his current one, he wasn’t going to complain. When the same bartender informed him that the drink was a gift from another customer, Dean shrugged his shoulders and continued drinking. When the bartender insisted on pointing out the customer, Dean’s eyes followed all the way to the end of the bar. When the customer turned out to be a guy in a dark suit with a loosened tie around his neck, Dean took the cap off with the worn edge of the bar, raised the bottle towards him and drank some more.

Sam and Eileen were off having their romantic dinner or whatever the fuck happy couples do, and Dean was glad, he really was. But that was just it. What else was there for him to do about it? Sammy was a grown man, even Dean could see that, and he didn’t need his big brother meddling in his life anymore. If he ever did. 

Dean sighed and took another harsh pull from the bottle. Suddenly sensing a presence to his right, he turned and was greeted with a blatantly flirtatious smile. He assessed that it was safe enough and proceeded to drink. 

The conversation was the usual; I haven’t seen you around before, what brings you to these parts, what do you do, etc. The only difference was that it was usually Dean doing all the asking but this time he was just there, drinking his beer and saying whatever he felt like. He had to admit, there were definitely benefits to being chased as opposed to being the one doing the chasing. 

The music was nice and chill, mostly pop-rock from the 80s, and Dean didn’t mind. He wondered for a moment, with the corner of his mind, if the man next to him was real, before taking yet another drag from the bottle and tuning back into the conversation, feeling bored by the constant haunting thoughts. The guy, Bill was going on about how he wanted to make his own furniture and open up a store. He was well built, but then again firemen do tend to be. The way the guy’s tie hung loosely off his neck and his deep, raspy voice reminded Dean of someone he’d rather it didn’t, so he drank.

As he listened to fireman Sam talk about his hometown, Dean wished he had the option of being stranded forever in a boring-middle-of-nowhere-nothing-ever-happens, Kansas, dreaming of furniture stores (well maybe not furniture stores specifically but dreaming in general) and not be forced to wonder if even the beer bottle he seemingly had a firm grip on was fake, written into his hand by Chuck Almighty. 

He bought both of them another beer and seeing the flirtatious smile spread across the guy’s face again, one that he encouraged, Dean found himself thinking about what Sam would think if he saw him now, flirting with a man. Or at the very least not putting a stop to his flirtatious intentions. 

Probably nothing special, came the answer. Then his thoughts shifted to John and Mary, and while he knew for sure Mary wouldn’t have a problem with it due to a certain uncomfortable conversation he was forced to sit through one day at the bunker, John definitely would have had something to say about it. And as much as Dean very much felt that sharp sting in the pit of his stomach at the thought of John walking in on the current scene, as tame as it was, he also knew that John wasn’t there and too busy being happy in heaven to think about how Dean spent his evenings and nights, and who with. 

He didn’t know why he was thinking about this at all. None of it was probably real anyways, so what did it matter. He did sneer at the thought of Chuck writing this harmless man, who only dreamed of being able to build his own furniture and saved kittens from trees for a living, approaching Dean in a bar and buying him a drink. Something similar had come out of the fucker’s pen before, though Dean’s reaction to it was different back then. If it were a hot babe fresh off the cover of busty Asian beauties however... Now that sounded more like him, didn’t it. 

Which is when a strange thought started forming in Dean’s mind. He could very vaguely remember Chuck’s words the last time they saw him, as he talked about his precious story. He told Dean to pick up the gun, the gun which Dean had dropped. He couldn’t know for sure if the man next to him or the beer he was chugging down were a part of Chuck’s plan, or anything else that had happened since they found out who God really was (an absolute fucking asshole), but he was pretty certain that him dropping the gun wasn’t in the story. 

The fireman’s words were but a soft buzzing noise in the background as Dean went over this newfound revelation. His mind quickly flipped through the pages of the Winchester gospels, the way Chuck had written him killing Jack without a single doubt in his mind about Dean going through with it, the various endings Chuck was probably trying on for size that Sam was privy to thanks to their magical bullet wound version of cup phones. 

Then a question formed and once it formed, Dean knew he had to get out of there as soon as. He stood up and ordered another beer while putting some money on the bar. With a nod he gestured toward the fireman who was clearly surprised by the abruptness of Dean’s impending departure. Dean’s eyes flickered to the loose tie around his neck one more time before rushing out of the bar without a word.

Dean wasn’t going to think it, he wouldn’t allow himself, not yet, but perhaps they still stood a chance. 

Maybe they could kill God. 

#sort of coda #flamingo writes

[bytheangell]

what does writing means to you? I see that you are so passionate about it and are constantly doing it even in small doses, almost everyday, etc. What does it means to you? Do you ever get stressed about it? How can you juggle that and alongside life in general? I'm curious about you, Elle. Where do you get all this motivation, inspiration? Do you consider yourself disciplined about it?

Alright, so to start, I love that you sent this in, Anon! I can’t imagine I’m interesting enough for anyone to be genuinely curious about?! But I appreciate that you are and I love getting personal asks as much as I love rambling about Shadowhunters, especially when they’re about writing!

Writing means everything to me, at the risk of sounding dramatic. It’s always been that One Thing I knew I was pretty good at. I love to read and write from a young age, always writing little stories or keeping a journal, and I guess it’s been a constant in my life for as long as I could remember. I joined fandom forum RPs and wrote there even when I wasn’t doing original short stories, but I wrote those on and off growing up, too. It’s always been an escape, cheap and easy to turn to whenever I need it, or a way to vent, or a way to sort through thoughts muddled in my head. I love writing. It is, by far, my favorite thing to do in my free time. 

That said, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ever get stressed about it. I write for fun, yes, and I write the things I want to write because I love them. But sometimes the words just won’t come, or I’ll let myself get distracted and not write as much as I want to that day, or not finish things as quickly as I’d like after I start them, and sometimes I let that get to me no matter how much I try not to. I just hit the one year mark of writing fanfiction. I’m still getting used to the idea that there are people actively following what I put out there, or waiting for the next bit of a series. That anyone might specifically like my writing. Sometimes I let the prompts sit too long and I feel super guilty about it. Or have more ideas than I could ever reasonably get to, but feel unreasonably upset over not just having unlimited writing time. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m allowed to do other things like watch tv or nap after work, that I don’t have to be writing every free second, even though there’s always something I could be working on. And OOF the stress of something not going over well. Is it me? Is it my writing? Or a poorly executed concept? Or bad characterization that’s missing the mark and failing? What am I doing wrong? 

Thankfully, those sorts of moments are definitely in the minority for me, and far less common now than they were when I first started. I’m more confident in my writing now, but more than that, I’ve stopped focusing so much on writing what I think other people want to read and just started writing what I want to write, even if it’s not a popular character or expected pov. And honestly? I think that shift has made all the difference throughout the past year. (Of course, that doesn’t apply to prompts, which is obviously writing exactly what someone else wants to read xD Which I LOVE getting, because someone out there specifically wants me to write a thing they’re interested in? What?! That’s like the ultimate compliment

I’m glad you called it ‘juggling’ writing with life in general, because it sure isn’t ‘balancing’ fhdas;fj;askl. There’s a lot of sleep deprivation. I never end up having a job with normal hours, so I’m either working weird swing shifts or tons of overtime, but to fit in the spurts of writing I’ve gotten used to lately I pretty much average 4-5 hours of sleep a night. #Priorities. I’m not the most social, so coming home and writing for an hour or two a day after work is a great way for me to unwind. I wish I was more disciplined about it, but really it just comes and goes in spurts. I try to write every day when I can but sometimes I’ll go for days without writing anything new, and others I’ll end up with a few thousand words in a couple of hours. I keep meaning to get into more of an proper habit of it, but I’ve never been good with things like ‘I’ll write from 6-7 am every day’ sorts of writing schedules. It always just happens when it happens  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As far as inspiration, obviously right now a lot of the coda and scene fill/povs I’m writing are taken directly from the show. I can’t help but hit the end of an episode and immediately think, ‘what would I want to happen next?’ or ‘I have a lot of feels about that one particular moment let’s elaborate on that’ or ‘what can I picture -insert character here- doing next’, and playing with things from there. A lot of it is also things I wish I saw more of in canon and willing them into existence. As far as AUs, a lot of it comes from bouncing random ideas off of friends, off of discussions on twitter or tumblr, or seeing something in a show or movie and going ‘THIS DYNAMIC, YES’.  I pull some stuff from real life, too. I did a Malec oneshot recently set with a literary magazine that stopped allowing anonymous submissions, totally a thing my lit mag did in high school. Most of it just sort of… happens. It’ll just be a random idea out of nowhere. I wish I had a better explanation. I’ve always been good at making up stories on the spot, taking one small idea, or sentence, or feeling, and turning it into something more. It almost never ends the way I meant at the start because I have a very fluid writing style and almost always just have the vaguest concept to start with and no solid ending, leaving the things I work on entirely adaptable or changeable along the way. 

And last but not least, the motivation. A lot of it is just the desire to get the ideas in my head down on paper (or, you know, google docs). I like to share ideas I have with friends because their excitement over them is a huge motivator. The positive reactions I get on the writing I post time and time again is always amazing, and while I don’t write for the kudos or likes, knowing that what I’m doing is something others enjoy is always a great motivator to create more. I’ve also come across some amazing writer friends in the fandom since I joined. Chatting with them about the ups and downs of writing fanfic, seeing the amazing content they create and being inspired not just by their writing and ideas but also their attitudes and encouragement has made all the difference over the course of this year. The Shadowhunter Fanfic Nexus is an amazing group of talented writers that was kind enough to take a chance on adopting me pretty early on. They’re always willing to help with details or to run ideas by or listen to me keysmash in frustration when things aren’t working. There’s nothing like a group of writer friends to listen to you go ‘WHAT ARE WORDS WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER I’VE NEVER HAD A CREATIVE THOUGHT IN MY LIFE’ and meet you with both understanding and the reassurance that you’re always your own worst critic and you’ll get there in the end. 

And there you have it! A little glimpse into my writing mindsets, I guess? That got more than a little rambly, sorry! I hope it was even remotely the sort of things you wanted to know and that you aren’t full of total regret for ever asking in the first place now that I wrote a small novella about myself here, xD. But you’re definitely right, I’m very passionate about writing, and I never imagined it’d be something so well received by others and I’m thankful for the opportunity to share it with so many other people!

#elle talks too much #elle af #honestly if you even read that entire thing all the kudos to YOU #I never meant for this to get so long and I'm just going to post it before I impulse delete half of it #anon glamour activated #ask rune

[magicplanetanime]

Let’s Watch HeartCatch Pretty Cure, Episode 3

Alright folks, nothin big to say here, let’s dive right in!

Episode 3 starts with another dream sequence. I get the feeling this is going to be a recurring element in the series. Namely we’ve got Tsubomi (as Cure Blossom) swooning in a moonlit garden. I am starting to think that our girl perhaps is nursing a bit of a crush.

Episode 3 - "The 2nd Precure is raring to go!”

She wakes up (accidentally smacking around the fairies in the process) and has a bit of windowside banter with Erika. She promptly does an “oh no, I’m late!” while Erika makes this absolutely incredible face.

After the OP, they meet up at school and talk a bit about how Tsubomi is trying to change her personality by starting with her looks. A reasonably solid strategy I guess, though I hope at some point the show addresses that how you act is more important than how you look--as that’s a message that little girls always need to hear.

Erika, being a possible baby gay, frames Tsubomi’s face and does this cute thing.

Imagine I posted that meme of Snoop Dogg with the “this is the cutest shit I’ve ever seen” caption.

Now, I wonder what this episode will be about.

Yeah they really do not waste any time getting to this plot point. There’s a cut to the girls eating lunch on the roof, Erika mentions she’s having weird dreams, and then

I suppose I’m glad we’re not beating around the bush? Erika takes much of the ensuing exposition remarkably in stride, being a-ok with the existence of fairies, but a little shocked that her friend Tsubomi is Cure Blossom.

The blue fairy (look, you try keeping their names straight) tries to persuade Erika to become a Precure, but is interrupted by the sudden appearance of this androgynous boy.

Who we in short order learn is the student council president. He mentions that Erika’s Fashion Club needs a member list by week’s end so the student council can draw up the club budget, and promptly departs, having successfully derailed the plot. This also happens.

Tsubomi has now blushed at 3 different people in the span of 6 minutes. Truly a maiden’s heart is an incredible thing.

There’s a small aside in here where we’re shown Sasorina back at her lord’s Evil Lair (which is by the way a gloriously ridiculous thing that looks like something out of a Tim Burton work) where she gives the usual “I only lost because I was taken by surprise” villain spiel, and then we cut back to the *truly* important plot.

Erika and Tsubomi attempt to recruit members for the fashion club around school, largely to no avail. The translators also decide to have some, erm, fun, with the subtitling.

I feel like “pansy” is kind of strong language for a middle schooler? Maybe it doesn’t have the same connotations everywhere. We promptly get some context for this girl’s refusal just a few minutes later, and

Well that’s quite sexist.

The somewhat wonky art in this shot aside, I do feel for the girl. This makes me wonder if sex-exclusive sports clubs are the norm in Japanese middle schools. *My* school had separate boys’ and girls’ sports teams but I also went to a Catholic middle school, I didn’t think it was the norm. As she sulks, a familiar face makes itself known.

The only ones who play soccer are saints....and true villains. Yes, Sasorina is back, and ready to capitalize on more girls having bad days. Charming lady, she is.

I love the fact that Soccer Girl’s (her name is actually Sayaka but let’s save calling her that for if she ever shows up after this episode) heart flower is a different species than Erika’s. It makes total sense, but it shows an attention to detail that I don’t think you’re necessarily guaranteed in a show like this. It’s just a nice way of showing that whoever was in charge of such things actually cared about putting some thematic coherence in here.

Now, that may be slightly undercut by the fact that the Desertrian this time around is what I am going to go ahead and call a Soccer Golem, because look at it, that’s a Soccer Golem.

The fact that there are not significantly more shows that feature Soccer Golems in minor antagonistic roles is frankly an indictment of the imagination and storytelling ability of our species in general.

Anywho, Tsubomi transforms, and Erika kind of majorly fangirls out in what might be my single favorite frame I’ve captured of this series so far.

There’s a bit of the general back-and-forth, a type you’re well acquainted with if you’ve ever seen a kids’ action series ever. I want to make special mention of Sayaka’s voice actress **really** hamming it up as the Soccer Golem, she really reaches into what sounds like the upper register of her range to make the thing sound truly griefstricken and half-mad.

Which is a bit of a lot to put in when you’re playing, again, a Soccer Golem, but serious props for commitment.

Sadly Cure Blossom doesn’t quite seem to be able to quite cut it on her own this time. Which Erika, watching nearby, just cannot stand.

When your friend is being beat on by a Soccer Golem.

So with minimal convincing, Erika takes the plunge.

God I love this franchise.

I will of course embed Erika’s transformation into Cure Marine right here, but there’s a specific part I want to talk about. During her transformation sequence, she briefly cradles her own head and smiles. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but it’s A) really friggin’ cute and B) a visual sign of self-love from a girl who we well know feels inadequate compared to her beautiful older sister. So the idea that Cure Marine’s transformation helps her accept herself is really actually quite sweet.

And it’s good to get that sweetness in before Marine promptly kicks a ridiculous amount of ass in a very short amount of time. Seriously, the fight scene is maybe half the length of the prior episode’s just because Marine stomps out the Soccer Golem so efficiently.

Have been roundly defeated yet again, Sasorina falls back, thus ending the main part of the episode. Also, this happens again, so I suppose this is going to be a recurring image on this blog.

Will I take a screencap every time it happens? Time will tell.

Blossom I love you but you didn’t do shit this time around.

The two console Sayaka as she awakes from her magically-induced post-transformation coma. Though the adult part of me does wonder how long this particular genre of excuse is going to hold up.

Sayaka’s solution to her earlier woes is to found a girls’ soccer club. Which, well, it doesn’t really solve the fundamental problem, but it’s something, and probably about all a student in her position could reasonably be expected to do. Anything more realistic (a parent raising a fuss or something like that) would be well outside the scope of this show, and it does fit in with the apparent theme of self-empowerment we’ve got running here.

There’s also a little coda tying up a minor plot point at the very end of the episode. Where Erika presents the repaired doll that Sasorina used to turn her into a Desertrian to Tsubomi. By the power of miraculous plot coincidence, the little girl who lost the doll in the first place happens to be walking by with her mom. This would be objectionable only if it didn’t lead to this irresponsibly cute frame.

It’s been a brisk three episodes--less so for me than a regular viewer given that I’m pausing and rewinding to take screencaps, but still--and I wonder where the show will head from here on out. I’ve yet to reach an episode that I felt comfortable covering in a post that wasn’t dedicated solely to it--a new Cure being introduced is of course a major event--perhaps we’ll get to episodes that aren’t quite so relevant to the main narrative through-line soon.

——-

If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my other anime-related writing. I have a weekly anime column at The Geek Girl Authority, and write occasional full-series reviews for Anilist.

If you wish to support my critical endeavors, you can support me on Patreon or Ko-Fi.

I can also be found on Twitter.

#Precure #Pretty Cure #HeartCatch PreCure #Mahou Shoujo #Magical Girl

[spacebuck]

⭐s for kataigida and bad moon rising! you're one of my favourite writers and your au's are so interesting! i'm dying to know more about the background lore of your stories and any world-building tidbits that didn't make the cut.

omg thank you!!

worldbuilding for these has.. mostly made the cut (or is going into codas, some of which are mostly written) so i’ve leaned more into what’s actually happened in the story lmao

kataigida:

so kataigida is pretty long so i’ll give you a director’s cut for one scene - steve taking him to the met.

bucky comes out of the water like some glorious wet (literally) dream and steve is really struggling to not drag him into one of the public bathrooms and have his wicked way with him. 

they make it to the car, and steve’s got a tesla (with a sunroof!), because environmentally friendly but still fast as hell, and he loves being able to show it off to bucky, who was last on the surface in this sort of way probably a good 20-30 years before. we’re just quietly ignoring where he got the money from because i didn’t actually think that one through, i just wanted him to have a pretty electric car tbh

and steve, steve nearly passes out when he sees bucky in jeans for the first time. boy’s got it bad, honestly.

i didn’t go into detail at the met purely because that would have ended up being 20k in and of itself because i absolutely adore that place - though i’m sure steve and bucky had a much better go of it re: the exhibits closed for cleaning (me? bitter? maybe a little). bucky buys like seven books at the gift store and keeps them at steve’s house

worldbuilding-wise, i’m most.. fascinated? proud of? the library in bucky’s palace.

water and paper don’t get along at all, but they need some way of recording things that’s fast and can be disposed of if necessary. so, they use ultra-thin Crafted “leather” that’s just thick enough to hold up to the bookmaking process, and a type of dye that’s been Crafted to bond with the leather pretty quickly. they write using brushes akin to almost small sponges, and they have to move pretty quickly when they’re writing otherwise the dye starts to separate in the water (they’re still working on it!!) but once it’s on the leather it’s almost impossible to remove. (it’s not real leather anymore - they used to use whale leather and many of the older books have it, but now it’s basically grown by crafters using the crystals, which is pretty nifty. it’s closer to plant matter now, but still has the properties of leather that let the dye bind to it.

bad moon rising:

i’m only really gonna comment on chapter one, because that’s the one that’s posted rn, and i may have to redact bits that foreshadow stuff later on, but!

steve is, quite frankly, a mess. this is a universe where he grew up without bucky, without anyone like bucky, and it’s hardened him in some ways and soften him in others. he truly believes what he’s doing is the right thing to do, truly believes that what he’s doing is to save people. he’s willing to make hard decisions, even though he’s [redacted] into thinking the way he is.

he’s also completely uncaring about himself - his magic is a tool for helping people, and he’s willing to give up everything he is to do that - that’s why he’s so cavalier about casting until he passed out. the way he sees it, he’s got very little in his life except his mission, and he’s willing to do anything to complete that mission. he’s also a dumbass who doesn’t think things through, as bucky’s starting to realise.

bucky on the other hand, bucky’s lonely. that’s the core reason he takes steve home even though if he’d stopped and thought about it he’d have realised steve was on the other side of the fence to him. wolves are pack animals, and werewolfs crave physical and emotional contact in much the same way. he’s tactile, though he’s restraining it a lot in c1, and his wolf just wants to get up in steve’s space and touch because he frankly just needs the contact. it’s been a long time since he’s done so much as hug another person. winter helps, that’s why he got the dog in the first place, but he doesn’t really fill the need for companionship that bucky has.

that also means he’s liable to get attached quickly. we’ll see how that goes for him.

send me a ⭐ and a fic (or scene if you want specifics) for a director’s cut!

#lambhouse #barneswrites #fic: kataigida #fic: bad moon rising #stevebucky #sorry this took so long!! #ask meme #barnesanswers #long post

[kittensartswriting]

25 Questions Tag

Thank you @rosecorcoranwrites for tagging me! :)

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason? I’ve been holding of a murder mystery novel I was planning about year? two? ago. At some point I realized I’m not ready for it, not because it would need better writing than fantasy, but more like I felt I didn’t understand our own world good enough yet (does that make sense?) and didn’t yet had the means and patience to do enough research to get the understanding.

2. What work of yours, if any, are you embarrassed about existing? Oh boy... Many. The bright side is, I’m so bad at finishing anything I start that I have never finished a full length novel. (Though I’ve written many and many terrible things that only counts as short stories because of length.) I remember writing starting a fantasy story in high school or primary school where main character was a prince of tyrannical kingdom and suddenly he changed to a black panther (not the superhero) and couldn’t change back. Of course he came across the shape shifting rebels and there was of course this girl that turned into a tiger and of course they didn’t get along but we all know how that ended up. I’m pretty sad that it was so many computers ago it is lost forever.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else? Chronologically. As character exercises I tend to write my favorite scenes as I invent them, but usually they don’t end up in the novel or at least without some changing.

4. Favorite character you’ve written? Would you pick a favorite of your own children??

5. Character you were most surprised to end up writing? I’ll go with Valeri. He is not the usual type to end up my main character and that is the precise reason I made him. I don’t want to limit myself with writing only characters I would like in real life. I definitely wouldn’t like him if I met him, but I like him as a character. 6. Something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now? There are no such changes for me. I have started my current wip three times from the scratch. If I feel there is such a big change that should be made I drop the project for a while and think about it. If I still want to write it, I make the change, if I have fell out of love, I move on. (Also as I’ve never get so far as the finish, it is possible.)

7. When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write? Embarrassed... Usually I’m not shy and I’m pretty confident in myself, not caring really what other think, except when it comes to writing. I’m not really sure what is it, but I think it’s that I’m pretty private person and writing is something I do right from the hearth.

8. Favorite genre to write I like historical fiction so much too (also mystery), but I have to say fantasy. I just love the world building!! At same extend you can’t do that much world building in any other genre (except scifi), and I love it.

9. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration? Read books and read especially non-fiction. Most of the time reality is stranger than fiction. 10. Write in silence or with background music? Alone or with others? Definitely alone and mostly in silence. Though sometimes instrumental music (ambient, classical or movie music)

11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing? I don’t know, I had so many flaws (still do) that I can’t really say what I was worst at.

12. Your weaknesses as an author? Firstly: finishing the god damn thing. Secondly: action scenes and writing action overall 13. Your strengths as an author? Characters and world 14. Do you make playlists for your work? Sometimes but rarely use them as I prefer silence :D 15. Why did you start writing? I had so many things in my head I wanted to put on paper. It’s my form of self-expression.  16. Are there any characters who haunt you? Currently Valeri. I can’t get him of my mind :D

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Do and outline, decide ending before starting. Outlining isn’t for everyone but it is sure worth trying. And you start with FIRST draft, it is something like a sketch, so just write it, don’t think too much. Then you can write second, and third and as many drafts as you need.

18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they? I would argue that everything that I’ve read have affected my writing style, some more than others. Nothing very clear, I think. Of course Harry Potter, almost anyone my age can say that, but I’ve read so little lately that I really don’t remember how each author writes. 19. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.? With Drive. I have docs where I write all the names of the characters, no matter how unimportant they were, and tell in few words who they are. I organize the docs by area. Then I have a docs named ‘timeline’. There I have all the historical events as well as main events of the story listed by year and month. Also I have list of character arcs and subplots for every main character.  And then of course I have list of chapters and events in each, also some notes on the chapter. As you can see I like listing things. I fill all the lists as I go along. 20. Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts? I either don’t write at all or I sit down straight seven hours and write non-stop. I don’t have in between mood

21. What do you think when you read over your older work Depends how old :D If its a few years old, it’s surprisingly good. If its about five years old it’s in the awkward zone where it is bad, but not bad enough to be funny, reading them makes hurt inside. Everything older than that is just super funny. 22. Are there subjects that make you uncomfortable to write? Not really. I’m not planning on (at least yet) showing my writing for anyone but here in internet where no one knows me and for my boyfriend who know me inside out and I have nothing to lose :D so I feel I can write literally anything. Only thing I can think of is sex scenes. I really like smut but I’m pretty bad at it, as I don’t want it to feel erotica but also I don’t want it to be censored or too vague. 23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing? Hard to name anything specific as I believe that all life experience helps writing. You know, when you write about people and life, I really helps to be people and live. 24. Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story? While starting to write Saga of a Shieldmaiden, I became kind of a expert on Finnish mythology and life and history of Vikings. My knowledge was very limited on both subjects before that. Also for a murder mystery novel (that I mentioned in the first question) I read a criminology book.

25. Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of. I answered same question before in another tag game, and I’m now too lazy to translate another paragraph. So this one is from the original Saga of a Shieldmaiden (that I’m now revising). It might be a bit too long though.

Something big was moving around me as I felt the water flowing differently. In the thickening darkness I couldn’t see anything. Or maybe I had my eyes closed, I couldn’t be sure.

It is not the sea that is suffocating you. It is the fear. You reek of it. You are so full of fear, it is dripping out of your throat. So full, your breath cannot flow.

I felt a touch on my throat. It was not a touch of a human. It was not a hand of a human. Massive crooked claw rested on my neck. The claw was rough and stony hard, full of scales. Sharp end of the nail pressed against the skin of my throat without piercing it. I felt a breath of a warm current behind my back. One breath caused so strong tide, it would have wiped me away, if the claw wouldn’t have kept me put.

Let the water into your lungs. Let the salt clean you of fear.

Every moment without air led me deeper into the dark, closer to death. Maybe he was the Death. I turned to look over my shoulder. To my horror I was faced by great, scaled, sharp-fanged head. A head of a dragon. It’s long serpentine body seemed to extend twisting into the endless blackness. The silvery scales glowed in the darkness of the sea and the deep-blue wells that were his eyes looked at me without blinking.

I’ll tag @lady-redshield-writes, @coda-wolf, @alittle-writer, @starlitesymphony and @plaguecraft! :)

#tag game #tagged #my writing #writeblr