#since i never write chronologically though by the time chapter 1 is finished i usually have around 10% finished lol

[vinelark]

can you talk more about your writing process? do you outline? what does your drafting process look like? I love to hear about the ways my fave fic writers write because everyone is so different!

hello! a while ago i wrote a bit about the broad idea-to-ao3 journey my fics usually take, and i’m always happy to go more in depth about outlining/drafting since i find it really interesting when i see other writers talk about it too 😊

i do outline, and often extensively—my outlines start out long and get longer as i go. usually my initial outline is a basic version of me telling myself the story; i have all the major beats in chronological order and all the random details/scene ideas i’ve already thought of while brainstorming. it’s very messy and often just for me, so i’m barely even using punctuation at that point. but by the time i start drafting i know where the fic ends, even if i don’t know the exact final scene/beat. for example, before i started even drafting chapter 1 of bbts i already knew what all the 5 + 1 scenarios were, when the identity reveal dropped (and didn’t drop), who the Big Bad was, and how that overarching plot connected to each scenario, so i was ready to start filling in the actual story details from there.

after that my outlines are constantly growing documents because i jump around and add things as i go, getting more detailed the closer i get to drafting—by the time i reach a scene to actually write it, it’s usually pretty well beated out for me. i zerodraft scenes right in the outline document, and then draft over those zerodrafts, so the outline eventually becomes the fic itself.

here are a few examples of what some bits of bbts chapter 4 looked like in the outline by the time i started drafting it vs. the final fic (also copied under the cut because they’re a bit long for alt text):

i don’t write every day (i wish!) but i do usually at least open the document every day or jot down ideas. especially in a mad scramble after i shower, because i always end up planning whole conversations/action sequences in my head while showering or brushing my teeth or otherwise doing something where i can’t reach for my phone immediately 😅 i tend to outline/zerodraft quickly but draft slowly (details always take so much longer than i expect), but i do write faster and faster the closer i get to finishing a chapter/fic.

also, i workshop a lot as i go! going to friends like “hey i’m trying to [hurt a character in a specific way] but having trouble blocking the scene. can anyone help me achieve this more practically” is one of my favorite parts of the process.

text for outline vs. final snippets:

original outline:

have you ever been?

hmm? yeah i, uh, studied abroad here for a bit.

ah. kon should’ve figured;

before he can feel too disappointed, though, tim flashes a small smile and says, never seen it from this angle, though.

final snippet:

“Have you ever been?” Kon asks.

“Hmm?” The mylar crinkles as Tim leans further. “Yeah I, uh, studied abroad here for a bit.”

“Ah.” Kon probably should’ve figured.

Before he can feel too disappointed, though, Tim flashes him another smile and says, “Never seen it from this angle, though. Plane windows don’t really do it justice.”

original outline:

tim and bruce talking, bruce is like, yes, it’s safer the less people know who we are, but it’s not just about that. i want you to have something to return to. i want your civilian identity to be a haven—i don’t want robin to define you. if you ever stop being robin, i want you to still be able to be tim.

also if bruce wayne is compromised, it compromises my ability to keep you safe. i want you to be safe. but i also have another reason. it’s selfish of me. if tim drake is compromised, it would be much harder to keep you here with me, as my family. as someone i can care for as bruce wayne. and i want to keep you, tim.

final snippet:

Bruce holds up a hand. “It’s not that. That is—yes, the less people who know, the safer we are. But I’m trying to say…it’s not just about that. I have trouble explaining this part; it always comes out wrong. I think the first time I tried was the first time Dick called me a despot, actually.” He snorts, quiet and wry. “I’ll try to do better this time. What it really comes down to is this: I want you to have something to return to. I want your civilian identity to be a haven—I don’t want Robin to define you. If you ever stop being Robin, I want you to still be able to be Tim. If Tim Drake is compromised, it’s harder for you to have that option. And if Bruce Wayne is compromised, too, it compromises my ability to keep you safe. I want you to be safe. But I also have another reason, and this is the selfish part. The part I couldn’t explain right last time. Which is: if Bruce Wayne were compromised, it would be much harder to keep you here with me, as someone I can help in all of your identities. As my family. Not impossible—I would never let it be impossible. But it would make it harder, and that’s what scares me, more than the rest of it combined. Because I want to keep you, Tim.”

original outline:

oh, tim says. no, that’s. it’s fine. i didn’t. doesn’t know what else to say. it’s just. i’m robin, there on the tip of his tongue. he can’t say it past the hot embarrassment clawing at his throat, pulsing behind his eyes. he summons his mother, summons brucie wayne, summons normal, boring, see-through tim drake, and manages a vacant smile

final snippet:

The words have sort of been washing over Tim like a tidal wave, but he recognizes that he’s probably supposed to respond in some way. “Oh,” he says. “No, that’s. It’s fine. I didn’t.”

He doesn’t know what else to say. His hand is still resting against the mask in his pocket, I’m Robin right there on the tip of his tongue, technically irrelevant to whether or not Kon wants to date Tim Drake. But he can’t say it past the hot embarrassment clawing at his throat, pulsing behind his eyes. He wants to ask for a minute to think, to turn around so Kon can’t see his face, and immediately feels even more humiliated for needing that. He should’ve known. He should’ve known.

“Tim?” Kon says quietly.

Tim draws in a long breath. Another. He summons his mother, summons Brucie Wayne, summons normal, boring, see-through Tim Drake, and manages a vacant smile. “It’s fine,” he says. “I get it. Thanks for being honest.”

#the scene where kon dunks tim in the ocean was fully outlined before i even started chapter 1 i think #meanwhile the whole charcuterie board thing was a surprise to me until i got to that scene #asks #my fic

[spacejammie-eimmajecaps]

For the fanfic writing meme...YOU pick 10 numbers YOU want to answer! I want to see which ones of those most excite your or you have the most to say.

My attention span is horrible right now tbh, I couldn't even read through the whole list. So these are the 10 that stood out to me when I was skimming it over:

Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

One-shots because they are quick and easy (for the most part). Multi-chaps take so much more effort. Although, multi-chaps are more satisfying to finish. Pros and cons with each. I do miss one-shots, though. Been a very long time since I've written one.

Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

I used to only write as I went, which was honestly so fun. I'd surprise myself with unintended plot twists and stuff like that. But now I plan ahead, and that's very necessary for a story like SGB, which is very long, detailed, and packed with subplots. I will say, though, that while there is a plan, I let the chapter change as needed if the plan isn't working or I think of something better while drafting, and sometimes I add scenes last minute (or cut entire scenes if it just doesn't feel like it's working). Having a plan is good, knowing when to be flexible is also good.

Do you like constructive criticism?

Depends on what that looks like.

If someone wants to point out a typo, I'll be appreciative (and I do actually have a fandom friend who used to message me when she found typos in my posted works, which I am grateful for). And if there is an obvious mistake, I don't mind it being pointed out (for example, I was messing up the serve order in games and someone very kindly pointed that out, so I fixed it, and I'm very happy that they pointed it out so that I didn't keep making that mistake).

But if someone said things like, "I don't like how you wrote that" or "that character would never do that" or "you should write that differently" or anything relating to like, personal preference, I'd be annoyed and not grateful at all.

On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

I used to be able to bang out 10-12k words in a day, back when my health wasn't so bad. Granted, the quality of those 10-12k words wasn't great at all, and part of why I write slower now is because I'm thinking about a lot more technical aspects that I used to be unaware of. Anyway, these days I can maybe get 3k written on a very good day, but 500-1000 in a day is more realistic for me now.

What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

Take a break, read books and watch shows, rest, re-read what I've already written, etc.

What’s your revision or editing process like?

1. Rough draft

2. Fill in details and missing elements

3. Focus setting/sensory details and add last minute details

4. Check that dialogue/body language matches each character (usually end up adding a few more little details as well)

5. Make sure the chapter as a whole makes sense, cut anything unnecessary, check for consistency

6. Proofreading (check line by line for typos and grammar issues)

Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

There are some fics I like to re-read maybe once a year or so, and sometimes I read a fic twice in a row if I really liked it. I'd probably re-read things much more frequently if I wasn't so busy writing.

Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

Hopefully not still writing SGB😭😭😭

Why do you continue writing fics?

Because I'm bored and have nothing better to do, and more importantly, because I enjoy it.

What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Chronological. I have to use my favorite scenes as a reward for getting that far in the story, so I don't allow myself to skip ahead.

#thanks for the ask! #stormears

[ren-c-leyn]

Happy STS Ren! What about a scene comes to you first? Piece of dialogue, first line, conflict, imaginary, voices,...What else do you need to write it down? @writingonesdreams

Also any hints on what the celebration in October will look like?👀 Your enigmatic posts are making me curious.

And if there is a writing/thinking update I would love to hear how you are doing ^^ How is the dark princess wip?

@writingonesdreams

Happy STS to you too, Dreams! :D

That depends on the scene in question. I got on a ramble, multiple rambles actually, so here's your very favorite thing to get on sts and wbw: a read more.

Some of them it's the first line, like the opening of The Shackles of Time. Some of them it's dialogue, like the scene I have in mind for the ending of book 1 of The Dark Princess wip. Some of them it's imagery, like The Time Keeper's office scene in chapter 4 of The Shackles of Time and the tea scenes in Forgotten Gods. Then, there's times it's the conflict, like the last couple of chapters of Forgotten Gods and this explosive scene in the middle of The Firewalker.

I never really know what my brain is going to latch onto to to inspire a scene in my mind, but in order to actually write the scenes out, I need to know what came before it. I can't just dive in and start writing an ending scene without knowing what happened in the middle, or the beginning, of a story. Which is why I have to write in chronological order, otherwise the scenes don't fit right and I can't get my mind to do the cause and effect chain I use to keep my stories on track.

Usually I don't need much more than that. I can roll with just a snippet of dialogue bridge where I'm at to the dialogue without an issue. I can do the same thing with just a first line of a scene and then use what came before and my ideas for where the next big plot point are to roll it that way.

If I'm working on a one shot short story, like the ones I used to write all the time for the blog, then I don't even need that much. Just some kernel of an idea and I'm good to go.

The joy of having a chaotic writing process that not even I can predict lol XD The downside of this process is that if I'm not getting that random spark of inspiration for a scene, or a scene that's relatively close, I hit snags where I need to actively start hunting for that snippet of dialogue or line or conflict or imagery I need to get the story to go again.

As for the October anniversary celebrations, what can I say besides it's a surprise? Okay, okay, I actually have a lot I can say. I'll give you a spoiler for the special post I did complete, because it turned out awesome and I need to scream about it a little bit: making things sparkly is super fun ^^ Having three people do far say they love the same sparkly thing in The Shackles of Time gives me lots of excuses to make this sparkly thing over and over again in different contexts. Oh, and I have an idea to turn one of your answers + one of your favorite Shackles of Time Incorrect Quotes into another thing. It'll be the next celebration thing I work on after the current thing I'm doing, since it's going to be a format I've never worked with before and I might need a couple of runs at it to make it work. Before I work on it, though, I'm going to finish Arlen's introduction post art so it doesn't get lost in the celebration stuff.

As for writing updates, I don't have much to report. I'm just getting back into the swing of being on tumblr regularly and creating things again. My life is settling down again, thank goodness, so I should be able to start clawing out more time for writing and plotting and stuff.

I will definitely be working on The Shackles of Time as my main focus, though, since I'm releasing those extra chapters in October and December to celebrate, along with an extra new years chapter, so I need to get ahead. I don't have enough written at the moment for all of them. Which is fine, I've been looking forward to introducing the new team, which will be the next arc. The trio have one more rookie quest to go before Glenn and Zephyr get their date mini arc. I'm looking forward to that, though I'm also a bit sad since the trio being turned loose might mean less of their fun mentors. I'm thinking of ways to keep them involved, and I think I have a few ways to keep not only Glenn and Zephyr involved, but also Wyndulin. So we'll see how that pans out when I get there.

Dark Princess is still going, though it is admittedly on the back, back burner at the moment. I have a general idea of the layouts of the kingdoms before and after The Dark Empire starts it's warpath. I also think I more or less have the diplomatic relations between the kingdoms figured out. Still have not finished building all of the characters. Did I say this is a huge cast? It's like over 20 characters I need to keep track of. No one is named, yet, and I don't have everyone's loyalties figured out. But hey, at least I have the major players in the plot more or less built. So progress!

Still haven't built the magic system, but I think I figured out the basic structure I'm going to be going with. It's inspired by The Shackles of Time's multiple traditions, the Lumen from Long Live The Queen, with a twist of The Plight of a Sparrow's consequences. Maybe. That's the general framework that's sticking with me as I'm looking into different magic systems, so I think that's the one I'm going to be going with. I need to set down and set up the rules of the magic system as a whole, but I'm going to put that on the back burner until I finish building the court. How many nobles could there be in a castle? *insert laughter that slowly trails off into a long sigh*

As one of my housemates are fond of saying: You just can't make anything easy on yourself, can you, Ren?

The answer is no, no I can not, but at least it makes for good stories, right?

#sts #The Shackles of Time #The Dark Princess of Acontinum

[mypoisonedvine]

Love, Theoretically | Sebastian Stan x reader (Chapter 4)

(Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3)

series summary: having lost your husband, sister, and best friend all to the same extramarital affair, you ran away to a secluded villa in the Hungarian countryside to write and get a little time away from the life you’d left behind.  you were only looking for peace and perhaps some inspiration for your novel, but instead you found an unlikely connection with the immigrant repairman– even though the two of you don’t speak the same language.

word count: 2.5k

warnings: some awkwardness, and almost-nudity, and a sex scene but not the kind you’re expecting (lol) just fluff y’all!

moodboard and inspiration credit to @evnscvll​

Mrs. Alberti asking you for the rent made you realize a month had passed.  You couldn’t tell if it had gone by quickly or slowly; a little of both, perhaps.

You pulled the finished page from your typewriter and placed it in the stack.  You were finally done with the first chapter; pretty good for a month of time to work, incredible for how distracted you’d been.  Still, as you flipped through the pages you’d worked on, you appreciated that this was simply the very beginning of a very early draft.  You realized you should probably write the ending next, as that was usually how you handled a mystery like this, but you were compelled to try a different method this time and see if you could get the first draft done chronologically.  You got the sense that this story wasn’t going to end the way you’d thought it would when you’d started it...

Your evening jog took a new path this time, one which happened to run right past the smaller cottage that Mrs. Alberti inhabited.  You noticed her windows were open— as they should be on a day as nice as this— and for a second you glanced and saw someone inside…

Wait, is that… Arnold Schwarzenegger?

With a chuckle, you realized that you were seeing the TV.  As you ran further ahead, the angle changed to show it was Sebastian sitting on the end of her bed and watching it.  She’d mentioned that she was going out for groceries today… was he just hanging out in there to get some TV time, or was he taking a break from something he’d been doing for her?

This pressing question needed answers ASAP.  The only solution now was to go inside and talk to him, of course.

His eyes stayed glued on the screen even as you stepped into the house and pushed open the creaky old door to the bedroom.  Seeing the TV again, you realized that this wasn’t just any old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie— it was the best Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

“Are you watching Terminator?” you asked with incredulous joy, and he finally turned around.

“Da!” he beamed.  “Terminatorul,” he explained, pointing to the television.  “Ma voi intoarce,” he mimicked in a deep voice.

“I’ll be back!” you translated as you realized he was quoting the most iconic line, sitting down next to him on the foot of the bed and watching the movie as well.

It was dubbed in Romanian— technically you couldn’t tell that it was Romanian just by hearing it, but you could tell based on how entranced Sebastian was by it; he must’ve understood what was going on.  The best part was that you understood it too, based mainly on context clues and your vague memory of the movie.  Being able to share something with him was unexpectedly gratifying.    

He was over halfway in, and you were trying to figure out what was going on now; this scene was all a conversation, so it was all lost on you.  Sarah Connor and what’s-his-face talking about something, presumably about how her son was the future leader of the resistance against the machines.  You realized that this was a sort of strange movie.  And why was the guy shirtless for seemingly no reason?  No wonder Sebastian likes this movie, this guy must be his role model, you thought as you chuckled to yourself.

Okay, they weren’t talking anymore… they were kissing.  That’s fine— good for them right?  It’s not weird to watch this right next to Sebastian… although it is weird that they’re still kissing...

Oh god.  This movie has a sex scene?  Why didn’t you remember this part?

You cleared your throat and avoided looking at him.  But that just meant you were staring down the screen, and didn’t that make it seem like you were really into Linda Hamilton getting sensually railed?  So you glanced to him to break the tension and nope, that definitely made it worse as you both suddenly made eye contact and then instantly looked away.  Your heart was racing for no particularly good reason, and your palms were all sweaty— just in time for his hand to brush against yours.  You didn’t want to jerk away for fear of seeming flighty.  Nothing wrong with the side of his hand touching yours, right?

Well, a lot of things were wrong with it, specifically the way that it was making your breaths short and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, but you didn’t want him to know any of that so you stayed still.

It seemed to go on forever, and it would’ve been laughably cheesy if you were with anyone else.  Normally, you had no trouble at all laughing with Sebastian, but this was different.  

“Această parte este... interesantă…” Sebastian mumbled.  

“I didn’t realize it was going to go on this long,” you replied, scratching the back of your neck.  “It’s probably good to break the silen— oh shit, that’s a boob!” you gasped.  “They can show this on TV?!”

Sebastian laughed a bit, apparently noticing how your change in tone conveniently coincided with the nip-slip.  

Just a few more minutes of excruciating awkwardness and it was over; you both let out a not-so-subtle sigh of relief when it ended.

“I thought it would never end,” you chuckled nervously.

“Nu fi gelos, ea nu este nimic în comparație cu tine,” he replied, still looking at you even though you were looking anywhere but back at him.  You weren’t sure you’d ever be able to look him in the eye again after that— not that it had ever been easy for you.  But now that he was staring at you it felt even weirder to not look back.  So you did, just for a second, only to be startled by the sound of the bedroom door opening.

You jumped up from the bed, and Sebastian turned as well.

“Oh!” Mrs. Alberti gasped.  “I didn’t expect to see… both of you in here.”

“Ți-am răsturnat salteaua și ți-am schimbat așternutul,” Sebastian offered as he jumped up, motioning to the bed quickly.  What could he possibly mean by that?

“We were just watching some TV,” you explained.

“Uh huh,” Mrs. Alberti smiled.  “Well, Sebastian, that’ll be all, thank you,” she dismissed him with a smile and a little bow.  

“Mulțumesc. Bună seara,” Sebastian bowed in return, nodding at you before scurrying out of the room.  You started to leave as well, but Mrs. Alberti stopped you with a hand on your shoulder.

“Sweetheart, were you two really just watching TV?” she asked quietly, eyebrow raised in question.

“Um, yeah…” you replied, confused.

“Then why did you both jump up like I was interrupting something important?  Seriously, I was concerned you were in the middle of ruining the sheets he’d just put on for me.”

You choked but broke into an awkward grin.  “Uh, I’m not sure.  I guess you just startled us.”

“Yes, well, it’s my room, so you maybe shouldn’t be so surprised when I show up there next time.  You two have the whole house to yourselves, not sure why you had to come all the way over here—”

“Mrs. Alberti, really, it’s not like that,” you assured.

She squinted as she leaned in closer, examining your face.  With her incredibly short stature, she had to pull you down towards her to get a better look.  “Hmph,” she frowned suddenly, “I don’t think you’re lying.  Honestly?  I sort of wish you were.”

“Wh— why?” you stammered.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “I suppose I thought you two would make a handsome couple.”

“Yeah, well, he’d be doing most of the heavy lifting in that department,” you chuckled.

“You speak poorly of yourself too often,” she frowned again, slapping you on the shoulder.  “You’re perfectly deserving of someone like Sebastian.”

“Well, that’s sort of irrelevant, isn’t it?  We don’t even speak the same language,” you reminded her firmly.

“Did you and your ex-husband speak the same language?” 

You stopped, straightening up and looking back at her with wide eyes.

“I’m old,” she explained with a glimmer in her eye, “but I’m not stupid.  And I’m sorry that you’re going through that.”

“Um, thank you,” you mumbled, still shell shocked from her deduction and from hearing someone refer to your husband as your ex-husband for the first time.  You figured you should get into that habit soon, but it was difficult to imagine.  Even as much as you’d loved being here so far, part of you imagined that it was just a vacation, and soon you’d go home and go back to the life you’d had.  Of course you would go back home someday, it wasn’t like you were moving to the Hungarian countryside, but the home you’d be going back to was going to be entirely unrecognizable to you.  “And, to answer your question,” you continued, “of course my hu— ex-husband spoke English…”

Mrs. Alberti laughed, but in a sad way.  It was the saddest you’d seen her since you’d arrived, even more than when she’d told you about Mr. Alberti’s passing.  “Sweetheart,” she sighed, “obviously you both spoke English.  But I don’t think you spoke the same language at all.”

You furrowed your brows as you pondered that.  You’d known what she meant the first time she said it, but you hadn’t allowed yourself to accept it.  Mostly because it made you immediately realize that she was right about your marriage.  If only she’d thought to tell you before it had ended the way it did.

“Goodnight,” she smiled, stepping past you as you left her room, and her house, and stepped into the night.

You usually worked in your room, but it was feeling a little extra musty this morning so you decided to haul your typewriter to the lakeside and work in the sunshine and fresh air.  You could’ve asked Sebastian to lift it for you, but frankly, you'd been hoping to avoid Sebastian as he had been the biggest barrier to your writing progress so far.  And yet, with your luck, of course he would appear— and not to garden or hammer or do anything like that, but simply to bring you coffee.

"Cafea," he smiled as he offered you the mug.

You accepted it with a smile of your own, although you wondered if he could tell you were nervous.  "Thank you—”

You were cut off by him lifting your empty mug from this morning, which had been holding down all of your completed pages.  The wind inconveniently picked up at that moment, and instantly the pages were swept into the air and right towards the lake.

"Shit!" you yelped as you lept up, pushing him aside to run to the pier.  Still, you couldn't even get close to catching any of them, and watched helplessly as they fell into the water.

You felt yourself be shoved away and didn't realize until he was in the water that it was Sebastian, diving past you to swim after your papers.

"No, don't— it's not worth it!” you called out, but he ignored you, paddling ahead with all the determination and speed of a professional swimmer— maybe he was one before he did this, you wouldn’t know.  You chewed your nails and felt horrifically guilty for all the work he was doing, and with a burst of foreign courage, you found yourself shirking your cardigan and shirt to join him.  Maybe he didn’t mind getting his clothes wet with dirty lake water, but you did.  

As you shimmied your skirt down, he looked back at you and his eyes went a little wide.  When you woke up this morning, you had no intentions of stripping in front of Sebastian, let alone near-skinny dipping with him, but then again, you hadn’t planned on half your novel blowing away either.  

You tossed your clothes aside and took one last stabilizing breath before diving in.

“Fuck, it’s cold!” you screeched once your head was back above the surface, and you heard him laughing.  You weren’t particularly in a laughing mood as you tried to grab the soaked papers around you.

“Arăți ca o pisică care a căzut în cadă,” he chuckled as he swam closer again, holding a ball of wet parchment in his hand and grabbing a few more on the way.

After fishing a few final pages out of the reeds, the two of you awkwardly walked up to the shore.  Now that you were in your underwear with the wind blowing on you, you were jealous of his wet clothes which, while doing almost nothing, did at least shield him from the elements.

You dashed into the cottage side-by-side, like kids racing down the street— though really it was just a matter of self preservation.  When you did make it inside, you started to lay the papers flat on the table to at least start the drying process; you hadn’t even realized he’d left the room until he came back and wrapped a fluffy towel around you, giving you one of those gentle smiles that made your heart just melt.

“Thank you,” you mumbled, noticing the way his hands rested on your shoulders longer than they needed to.  Even through the terrycloth his hands felt strong, and warm, and his touch made you shiver in a way totally irrelevant to the cold.

“Cu plăcere,” he replied.

“It’s a shame you can’t understand me,” you sighed.  Only as you said it aloud did you realize that he did understand you; sure, he didn’t understand the words you were speaking, but, in a way no one else had before, he understood you.  Somehow.

“Nu vorbesc engleza, dar înțeleg limba iubirii,” he spoke softly, nearly a whisper.  “Și cred că înțelegeți și voi asta.”

Even with no idea what he was saying, the way that he was looking at you said even more.  You wanted to kiss him more than you'd wanted anything in a long time, but even in that wretchedly perfect moment you knew it wasn't worth the trouble.  First of all, you couldn't be sure that he felt anywhere near the same way about you.  Secondly, even if he did, this was exactly the wrong time— and place, now that you thought about it— to be starting something.  Thirdly, he probably didn't want to start something at all!  He was just a nice young man who did exceptionally stupid things in order to make you happy.  That's normal handyman stuff, right?

'Odd jobs,' that's what Mrs. Alberti had said he did for her, and for you by extension as a guest in her place.

"Cafea?" Sebastian offered you, stepping back towards the kitchen.

"Yes, thank you," you nodded quickly, smiling at him.  He smiled back and carded his fingers through his damp hair before disappearing into the kitchen to start a fresh pot.

Odd jobs indeed.

#sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan fluff #sebastian stan au #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan fanfic

[16woodsequ]

I have three questions about writing fanfiction and you’re the best fanfic writer I’ve seen so I’m going to ask them to you if that‘s alright

1. How do you write a lot in chapters, because I never manage to write more than 1k words about the chapter topic

2. How do you stay motivated for writing a long fic?

3. Do you have any tips about how to deal with a large ensemble of characters?

First of all, I'd like to say how happy and honoured I am for this ask! It made me so happy you thought of me. I'll do my best to answer helpfully.

My response ended up being pretty long, to I'll leave it under the cut.

1.

In general, my chapters are between 3k to 6k. I find 4k-5k is a good range for me. Before I talk about writing more in chapters, I think it is important to say that short chapters are not wrong. Short chapters can be wonderful to read!

If you want to work on writing more, I have a few suggestions. First though, the way my writing style works is I go into a story generally knowing the basic plot points, and I write all the chapters first, before I post them. So keep this in mind, since my techniques might need to be adapted for your style.

When starting a chapter, I have what I call the 'bone and meat' method. To write around 5k words, I find each chapter has enough room to explore 3-5 "events". These are the bones of a chapter.

As an example. I will use chapter five of "Alternatively", because I'm guessing you read that one. (If not you can send another ask with some you've read and I can use those).

The bones of this chapter are:

Prelude/set up to Steve learning about Bucky.

Pierce taking Steve to see Bucky

Steve having a breakdown in the elevator

Steve and Tony talking about it

These are the four main things that needed to happen in this chapter. I don't always start a chapter knowing what will happen at the end, but usually by 500 words in, I've figured out what out of my plot points will be happening in the next 5k of words.

When deciding what will be the bones of a chapter, I find I have two systems. Either I give the reader a satisfying cathartic ending, or I leave them in anticipation.

Chapter five is a good example of a mini-arc within a chapter that ends with a satisfying emotional catharsis. If you think of it along a story plotting graph, the prelude is the exposition, Pierce taking Steve to Bucky is the conflict/rising action, Steve's breakdown is the emotional climax of the chapter, and Tony and Steve's conversation is the falling action/resolution.

The ending event of the chapter feels natural, because while the story isn't finished, the emotions and events of the chapter have been tied together and dealt with for the time being.

An anticipatory ending for a chapter would be more like a cliffhanger, and would probably end near the climax of whatever plot points are happening. (Such as chapter 3 of Alternatively, the emotional climax of the chapter hits right at the end.)

So basically, your overall story has rising action and a climax, but if each chapter is roughly outfitted around that too, then it may be easier to write long chapters.

Once you have the bones of a chapter, all you need to do is add in the meat to fill out whatever word count you are aiming for. If you have written the bones of a chapter, but still aren't at a word count you like, then it is simply a case of adding more depth to what is already happening—showing the emotions of the characters, getting into their head, bringing up past events and relating them to what is currently happening, foreshadowing, describing the scene/senses, etc.

Please know that when I'm writing my chapters, I'm not obsessively planning out the steps of a chapter and thinking of all these things constantly. These are just patterns I've noticed after the fact, so they are not hard and fast rules.

2.

As for how I stay motivated for long stories, the thing that works best for me is writing all the chapters before I post the story. I know this system doesn't work for every author (and believe me, sometimes I really want to post), but I find doing so relieves pressure on me, and I don't feel guilty if I don't write a story for weeks or months because I am working on something else.

That being said, for my large Alternate Timeline series, I didn't have time to write all the chapters ahead of time. By the time I was writing The Alternate Handler, I had about a 10 chapter lead.

Things that helped me stay motivated is finding parts of the story that I really wanted to write. I usually write chronologically, so having moments that I knew where coming and I was excited for helped motivate me to continue.

Also, recognising that I sometimes made things harder for myself. Sometimes I'd be stuck on how to finish a scene, or expressing something, and my writing would slow, until I would realise that sometimes things don't need to be written in exact detail. If you don't know how to get a character to walk out of a room, sometimes you can just end the scene there. Unless something is plot relevant, you can write around it, if it is an issue.

Sometimes, if I'm stuck on a story or a chapter, it helps to take a step back and figure out what the actual blockage is. Often it won't be what I think it is. Sometimes it isn't because I don't know how to write it, or I don't know what to write—sometimes I can't write a scene because I haven't seen the movie in a while, and all I need to do is find the battle on youtube and rewatch it. Sometimes it is because I don't know how an engine works, and I need to either look up the information, or make a note of it and move on to another scene.

And sometimes you just gotta clunk out a scene word after word, because once you do, it will be done, and you can always make it better later. You can't edit what isn't written.

3.

Writing Marvel gives me plenty of opportunity to deal with large casts. Generally what happens is I end up focusing on the relationship between a few main characters, while the other characters have less focus.

In my Alternative Timeline series, the relationships between Steve, Bucky, and Tony are the focus.

Of course, this doesn't mean I want to forget about the other members. You'll notice especially in Bucky and Tony's stories that they have secondary relationships with other people like Natasha, Bruce, Clint, Pepper, Peter, and Nebula. These secondary characters get scenes with the main characters too, kind of on a rotational basis.

So first tip is to trim down how many characters you are focusing on, and how many characters are interacting with each other in each scene.

In fics I will often have Thor be away on Asgard, or Clint and Natasha doing missions, etc, so they don't get underfoot.

That being said, there are times like during group meetings, when you can't avoid having everyone in the same room.

In those times, it is important not to forget who is in the room. I will literally count on my fingers, or write down lists of who is supposed to be at the table, so I can remember.

A good example of this on a small scale is Steve's birthday party in chapter 14 of The Alternate Handler. That one has almost every Avenger but Thor sitting in a circle, playing a game. I had specific moments in mind, so I needed to remember who was sitting by who. I wrote down the names in order so I wouldn't forget, and could properly situate people in my head.

An example on a bigger scale is chapter 26 of The Alternate End. In this chapter, the Avengers have a meeting with practically every other character who was there at the final battle.

Yet again, I pare down the cast a little. T'Challa and Shuri aren't there because they are in Wakanda.

To help keep control of the larger group, I start with a vague idea of where everyone is sitting, and then don't go into deeper detail than I have to.

In the scene, we know the Guardians, Peter, and Thor and Loki are all sitting kind of near each other, but I don't specify who is sitting next to who unless I need to.

I also have Tony looking around the table for a few hundred words, seeing each group, and slowly but surely introducing them to the reader. Tony hasn't seen the whole group for a while, so he has a reason to catch the reader up to speed on what has been happening. While he thinks about the life developments of the people around him, the reader starts to get an idea of who is in the room, and their general mood.

A final tip I often use is staggered entrances. If you have a large group, and something Plot Worthy needs to happen when Character A and B talk, then don't have the meeting ready to start right away.

Have some people already sitting, so that your POV character can process them, then have some more people come in, and then some more. (I do this in chapter 19 of The Alternate End, before the time travel jump.)

With a big group, you need time to show what needs to be shown, so give yourself the space to breathe and give the characters the right amount of attention.

I hope these tips and notes were helpful. Feel free to come back with more questions, or details about your own writing style if what I said doesn't work nicely for you!

And remember, these are just tips, not the golden rule.

Have a great day!

#asks #anon #writing asks #writing tips #writing suggestions #writing help #writing #fanfic writing #story writing #chapter writing #plotting

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

#by alexseanchai #miraculous ladybug #tag game

[clarionglass]

tagged by @dheiress to post the first line of my last 20 fics (thank you! <3)

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 other authors!

aight my lads here we go, there’s going to be a few unpublished wips and other piece of dubious writing in here bc i doubt i have 20 stories but anyway, here we go (this is very long! press j to skip or just get that dash scrollin bc this might take a while :// ) in very rough chronological order going backwards, starting with the published work:

1. so i ran to the river (tma grifters au, unpublished yet but will be soon!): The sunlight feels different on a face fresh out of prison, and it feels even better to Jonathan Sims now that he’s truly home.

2. crowned by an overture bold and beyond (tma pretentious college au, based loosely on the secret history):  It was a cool, rainy day in late March when I first approached the Magnus Institute--one of those days that served as a reminder that the London spring, that fragile creature, was still all too vulnerable to the occasional strike from the claws of winter.

3. we should ride this wave to shore (tma chatfic where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts): Friday, 3:14 P.M. “archives research & statement envestigation” Timothy Stoker renamed the group “drinks drinks drinks” Timothy Stoker changed Sasha James’s nickname to saucy sash Timothy Stoker changed Martin Blackwood’s nickname to martini kart Timothy Stoker changed his nickname to stonked stonked: so how bout it lads saucy sash: oh god.

4. i am the maker of rules (dealing with fools) (tma chatfic, an elias-and-peter-focused accompaniment to wsrtwts): Monday, 7:39 P.M. Elias Bouchard to Peter Lukas Elias Bouchard: Peter, I need to talk to you. Elias Bouchard: I’ve had the most infuriating day at work.

5. An Optimistic Tragedy (good omens orchestra au that i swear to god i’ll finish one day): Three years ago Eve shifted in her chair, her mind clearly on things other than Milhaud and the music in front of her.

6. The Spaces Between the Stars (the Beast of a dw fic that i can’t even begin to describe; a mate and i have been working on this since 2015 and it’s a sprawling mass of writing that encompasses Many google docs--what’s on ao3 atm is a very small percentage of it,,,,): The Doctor clutched the TARDIS railing as if somehow, it could take the pain away.

7. Carol of the Bells (a chrismas chatfic companion to aot! i’ve always been a sucker for a chatfic but oof looking back on this one my formatting style sure has changed): [Friday December 13, 1:31am] Anthony Crowley to Angelface: u up? ;)

8. An Exploration into The Nature of Human Beings, sub. Homo Sapiens: A Research Paper by Milton Jones (british comedy rpf. this is my oldest piece on ao3 and it shows, but there’s a special place in my heart for this dorky lil fic about an alien researcher making a place for himself in british comedy. fun fact! i actually added the final three sentences to this a couple of days ago, and will post it when i do my next fic update): <<I knew you’d be down here, as per usual. Do you never stop working?>>

and now for the stuff that i like but hasn’t yet/will never/one day, if i get my act together, might be posted to ao3... please ask me about these bc i love them, even though i’ll probably never post them :)

9. untitled mitchell spy comedy (a show that @monimolimnion​ and i want to pitch to the bbc in which david mitchell and victoria coren mitchell are married spies who work for MI5 and MI6 respectively, and most of britcom pops up in one place or another. it’s nothing more than a Lot of planning and a few snippets, but i love returning to this doc): [David is sitting at his desk, shaking his head at an open file.] David: They’re taking the piss. That’s what they’re doing, they’re taking the piss.

10. In the Demonic Style (a good omens au of @teashoesandhair’s glorious smooching contest piece, which is the first piece of fiction writing in the reblog chain. i’ve promised a chapter 2 to this, which i’m halfway through, and feel incredibly guilty for not finishing. still, my quarter-year’s resolution is to finish something old whenever i post something new, so maybe it’ll get done soon!): “It’s the end of the world” was not a good statement with which to start one’s morning in any circumstances, but the angel Bryndael was in the middle of cataloguing his newest shipment of tea samples when said statement reached his ears, and he didn’t much appreciate being disturbed.

11. magpie (good omens canon-mostly-compliant fic based around the song magpie by the unthanks/the magpie folk song/nursery rhyme): Wednesday (approximately 11 years before the end of the world) From a bird’s-eye view, St James’s Park was beautiful at this time of year.

12. untitled ficlet for tales of dwrwedd (a present for my writing buddy! the link is to her fic, i just wrote a bit of her two witcherverse ocs being soft as hell): The two women seated by the hearth didn't look old, either of them. But there was something about the pair--in their movements, or their mannerisms--that suggested an age far beyond what their unlined faces would suggest.

13: Tempo d’Attacco (an original bit of Light Crime a la midsomer murders, set in a university music department that is naturally a thinly-veiled copy of my own, hence why it will never ever be posted anywhere. i wrote this for my supervisor at the end of honours (her character is the sleuth) :P ) Dr Marisa Tan didn’t exactly start her morning well, on the day that everything seemed to upend itself.

patterns...... i’m not seeing that many, tbh? idk if i could call this in media res, but there’s certainly a good bit of plot starting without heaps of setup. 

my favourite? hmmmmmm i’d say my favourites would be crowned by an overture bold and beyond, and in the demonic style. i gotta say, going back to revisit a lot of my older writing has been nice! time and distance have been v kind :)

i’m hella bad at tagging things so if you see this and want to share your own writing please go ahead! i’m very shy when it comes to Fandom Interaction (tm) so i don’t feel comfortable launching myself into people’s notes (i loved this tho! i just need other people to make the first move lol), however i will give a specific shoutout to @monimolimnion whose writing i adore and who needs to do this!

#clari speaks #clari writes #long post

[pikapeppa]

Pikapeppa Tutors: How To Write A Longfic

Greetings, friends! I am Pikapeppa (queenofkadara on AO3), and today I’m writing a little tutorial about how to write a longfic. 

Before we dive into it, first things first: how do we define a longfic? In a nutshell: there is no fully agreed-upon answer. Different people define it in different ways. Word count is often used to define a longfic, but I don’t think that’s sufficient; furthermore, there is literally no agreement whatsoever about the word count required to count as a longfic. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will define a longfic as a multi-chaptered fic with a complex plot, and which is the same length or longer than the Great Gatsby - i.e. longer than 47k words.

Given this definition, I have completed 10 longfics, and I have completed 7 more multi-chaptered fics with complex plots which are <47 words. This is the experience I’m drawing from for this tutorial, and please be warned in advance that I have no formal writing training, so if you want advice from someone with formal training, then, it’s, er, best to look elsewhere. 😅 Please also note that this is based only on how I personally write longfics. Others might do different things, but this is just my method, which has successfully allowed me to finish every project I’ve started.

For me, writing a longfic involves following the following steps:

Know the endpoint of the fic.

Make an outline.

Write the chapters in order. 

Easy, right? NAH, BRO. It can be tough! But let’s break this all down piece by piece. Then I’ll address the final topic of editing and actually posting the fic. 

1. Know your endpoint. 

One question I’ve received is how to think long-term for a story rather than one chapter at a time. My biggest and most important piece of advice for a longfic is this: know how you want the story to end. Does your main couple live happily ever after, or do they have a terrible sad breakup? Is the villain defeated, or do they escape to wreak havoc another day? Does your character make a startling realization that spurs them to change, or do their flaws lead to their downfall? The endpoint doesn’t need to be specific, and you don’t need to know how exactly it come about. But you need to know what the most important part of your ending will be. You should know the target that you’re aiming at before you start writing. If you know the ultimate goal of your story, you can keep that in mind while writing each of your chapters so that they serve that ultimate goal. 

The nice thing about this advice: if the longfic you want to write is a retelling of a canon game/show/whatever through your OC’s eyes, then you already have the endpoint. I will call this kind of longfic a “novelization”, and this constitutes 4 of my 10 longfics. Because the endpoint is already given to you by the canon game, novelizations can be a great way to ease into writing longfics, and a great way to practice the various elements of writing a longer story such as pacing and developing relationships, since the main plot points and conclusions already exist. Similarly, if your longfic idea is a fix-it fic because you didn’t like the ending that the canon game gave you, the endpoint is already still there: you know the alternate ending that you want, and every chapter you write can be geared toward building up to that ending. 

On more than one occasion, I have put aside a fic idea I liked because I didn’t know how the story was going to end. On the flip of this, I have written an entire plot knowing nothing but the endpoint (*cough* the entire Arlathan Forest arc of Where The Winds Of Fortune Take Me *cough*). So this would actually be my #1 piece of takeaway advice: before starting a longfic, know how it’s going to end. This way, you have a clear goal that the rest of the fic can aim toward.

2. Make an outline.

A number of people have expressed concerns about outlines. How much of the story should be outlined before writing? How strictly do you need to stick to the outline? How important is it to have an outline?

I totally understand the anxiety about outlining. If you’re more of a pantser than a plotter, outlining can be tough. I personally am far more of a plotter, though I have also had the experience of flying by the seat of my pants before (see above aside re: Where The Winds Of Fortune Take Me). All I can tell you is what I usually do and what I would advise. As a quick summary before I dig into it, though, I would say this: The outline can be as detailed or as vague as you want/need it to be, and it should be fluid.

Step 1: Throw down all your ideas in no particular order. 

When I’m just starting to develop a fic idea, the outline is literally just a dumping ground of all my ideas so I don’t forget them. It contains everything in no particular chronological order including plot ideas, character traits, big moments in the romantic relationship that I want to hit, and so on. Really, then, the outline starts off as just a place to brainstorm, with no particular structure needed. 

Step 2: Organize the ideas sequentially.

Once I’ve got all my initial ideas down, I’ll start organizing them sequentially, preparing for the order in which they’ll arise in the fic. If you write on a computer, this is easy to do just by cutting and pasting events in your doc; if you’re more of a visual organizer, it might help to print or write all your ideas on slips of paper and stick them up on the wall so you can move them around, like what Jane the Virgin does.  

By the time this step is done, the outline should, at minimum, consist of a series of events/ideas/conversation snippets etc. that are ordered by when they happen in the story. It could have further organization beyond this, too, if that helps you; for example, almost all of my stories are romances, so they have headings like “Who is Rynne Hawke”, “Fenris psychology”, and “Major relationship moments”. The amount of organization you do at this point is up to you. All that matters is that you start organizing the chaotic jumble of ideas and putting them in order of when they happen in the fic. 

Step 3: Break the events into chapters.

Once my events are generally ordered, I’ll start dividing the events up chapter by chapter based on what I think would be reasonable chunks of plot/relationship development. Importantly, this remains fluid through the entire writing of the fic. I don’t think I’ve ever stuck to the number of chapters I originally planned; I always end up breaking chapters up, or moving things from a later chapter into an earlier one or vice versa, and it works just fine for me. All of this is because The outline is not set in stone. There is no reason things can’t change in the middle of the fic or be moved around as needed. The outline should be thought of as a tool to store your thoughts so you don’t forget, and to organize them in order to help you make your way toward that endpoint. 

It’s also worth noting that my outlines become more and more detailed as I get closer to the chapter in question. For example, if the story is 15 chapters, I might only have a couple lines of plot points for the last 5 chapters when I start writing. By the time I’m coming up on those last 5 chapters, I’ll have a much better idea of what will happen in them since I know what plot points and relationship points need to be wrapped up, and I’ll thus be able to add more details and ideas to the outline. Again, this calls to the outline being fluid and changing as the story goes on. It is not set in stone.

As a final note about this, if the fic is really long, such as Lovers In A Dangerous Time (67 chapters total and >500k words), it is ABSOLUTELY NOT NECESSARY to have the entire story mapped out or to know exactly what’s going to happen in the later chapters. All you need to know is your endpoint, and to have a vague sense of what might happen in those later chapters that will serve the endpoint of the story. Again, this all calls to the outline being a memory and organizational aid rather than a strict and inflexible sequence of a events. 

In sum: the outline should not be thought of as a strict roadmap for your fic. It is a tool that helps you make your way toward the ultimate endpoint of your fic. It allows you to store and organize your thoughts, and it is perfectly fine for it to be fluid and to change as the story goes on. It can be as detailed or as vague as you want, and the amount of detail in it will likely depend on whether you’re a plotter or a pantser. Outlines are never set in stone, and there is no one best way of outlining! The outline is there to help you, not to intimidate you!

 3. Write the chapters in order.

Now, I suspect that this point might raise some objections, but hear me out. Writing a long story is a labour of love, but it is still labour. In any longfic, there are going to be parts that are less fun to write. There are also going to be parts that you are REALLY REALLY JAZZED about writing, and you will want to get straight to those parts and write them because you’re psyched about them. The reason I’m suggesting that you write the chapters in order is to spread out the “work” and the “fun” evenly through the process. If you evenly distribute the less-fun and more-fun parts, then you can use the “fun” bits as a treat for yourself to get yourself through the less-fun bits. You’re basically using your own project as a reward for creating that project, and honestly, there is nothing more satisfying than getting that kind of intrinsic motivation from your own work. 

For example, I hate writing battle scenes. So when the fic gets to a point when I have to write a stupid battle scene, I keep my eye on the prize and tell myself something like: “okay, just finish this battle scene, then you can reward yourself with the fun after-battle banter or smut.”

Here’s another way to think of this: when you’re reading a story, anticipation is key. The buildup to the main event, whether that main event is a big character reveal or the First Kiss/First Fuck, is so important. If you’re reading a story, you don’t want to jump straight to the chapter where the reveal or kiss happens. You want to build up to the big moments when you’re reading a story. Why wouldn’t you want to build up to them as a writer, too?

There are more practical reasons to write sequentially, too. If you write the fic in sequence, it may be easier to keep track of what you’ve done and to know where you’re going next. It can also happen that while you’re writing, you come up with new ideas that you hadn’t thought of when you first started the fic, and those new ideas can have a huge impact on later events. But if you’ve already written the later events, it can be more difficult to incorporate the new idea into what you’ve already done. 

This is not to say you can’t write BITS of later chapters/conversations and hang on to them for later. There absolutely is room for writing when the inspiration strikes. I’ll often have an idea for a conversation or a smut scene that I can’t use until later, so I’ll just write it down and throw it into the outline until the appropriate moment arises. For example, in Lovers In A Dangerous Time, there is a very angsty conversation between Fenris and Hawke in chapter 63 that I had plotted out in point-form about 3-4 months before I actually wrote the chapter. I plotted out the most important lines of that conversation WAY ahead of time, but I forbade myself from writing the scene in detail until the rest of the fic up to threat point was written. 

TLDR: Writing sequentially helps you to reward your story writing with your own story. It allows you to build anticipation for your own story, and it lets you stay flexible and open to new ideas that arise during the process. You can and should write bits of the fun chapters, especially so you don’t forget them, but I strongly suggest saving them and rewarding yourself with them for when the proper time comes. 

Okay, those are basically my three big steps in writing a longfic! Now to talk a little bit about editing and posting. These are not so much advice as just a little bit of my own experience, and what I’ve seen/heard others do.

Editing: a few remarks

I post my fics chapter-by-chapter, which means that I edit and clean each chapter to my satisfaction before I post it. My personal editing process usually involves three passes: a first read and edit, which involves the most changes; a second edit which involves more tweaks than big changes; and a final read before I post, where I try and often fail UGH to catch typos or subtle errors.

It is not necessary to do it this way, however. I know some people prefer to write the whole story, then go back and edit it from the start. This makes total sense, really; this way you can make sure your events are cohesive, and that you haven’t left any loose ends untied that you might have forgotten about. I would say this is a matter of preference, but I wonder if your writing speed might also play a role in this. I’m a fast writer, so I don’t usually forget what I’ve done earlier in the fic by the time I get to the end. But with Where The Winds Of Fortune Take Me, which involved a month-long break at one point, I did find myself having to go back and reread old chapters to refresh my memory. So if you’re a slower writer, you might find it helpful to write the whole story, or at least big chunks of it, and then read it through for cohesion before you start to post.

Posting: a few remarks

As I mentioned before, I post chapter-by-chapter. One question I’ve been asked is whether to stick to a posting schedule, or to post when you feel like it. I have done both, and I think either choice is equally valid. All I can really do is explain my experience with this.

When I was a relatively newer writer, I was hardcore obsessed with Horizon Zero Dawn and I was posting a chapter of my Aloy/Nil longfic every day. It wasn’t just my obsession driving this, but also I was getting comments and kudos every single day on every chapter from hungry readers since it was a relatively rarepair at the time. It was basically a crazy feedback loop of me providing fic and getting a lot of comments and then being spurred to keep feeding my own obsession and provide more fic. 

Nowadays, however, I stick to a weekly update schedule for my longfics, and I have a lot of reasons for this. For readers, I get the sense that weekly updates give them something to look forward to and helps build anticipation for tense moments in the fic. It can also give readers some time to digest the previous week’s chapter before receiving the next. I also get the sense that for writers who update and write a lot [points at self], if a reader gets a million update emails from a writer, it can be overwhelming and make the reader feel guilty about not staying up to date with the writer’s works, and there is nothing I HATE more than having readers feel like it’s homework to keep up with my writing. 

My reasons are more selfish, too. I’ve discovered that if I post two chapters on the same day, many readers will only comment on the second chapter. If I space out the posting, I get more engagement from readers, and since I, like all writers, am a whore for comments, I’ve learned to purposely hold on to my chapters and space them out in the hopes that more people will engage with me when they read them. THERE, YOU ALL KNOW MY DIRTY LITTLE SECRET. PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME.

Another note on posting schedules and engagement, specifically relating to AO3: when you search in AO3, by default, the results are organized in terms of most recently updated fics. Every time you update your fic, it will show up at the top of the search hit list, thus increasing the chances that someone new will notice it and decide to read it. Spreading out the frequency of your posting can thus optimize the amount of times that it shows up at the top of the search. 

All right, that’s pretty much all I have to say about all this! If I had to sum it all up, though, I would stick to the three-point process I outlined above:

Know your endpoint, and aim toward it.

Make an outline, and remember that the outline is your friend. It’s a memory tool and an organizational aid, and it can and likely will change as your fic goes on.

Write the fic in sequential order, and use your own story to motivate yourself. 

I said this before, but writing a longfic really is a labour of love. It can take months or years to finish a longfic, and it is not always easy. It’s my hope that this little tutorial will make the process less daunting and help some of you guys launch into writing that story you always wanted to write!

If anyone has any other ideas for tutorials that they’d like me to address, please feel free to send me an ask or a PM!

- Lots of love from your friendly neighbourhood Pikapeppa xoxo

#fanfic writer's life #pikapeppa tutors #writing advice #fanfic writing #writing #writing tutorial #ao3 #writing reference

[bettsfic]

Hey! I was just wondering if you would soapbox a little about your creative process. I absolutely adore your writing advice but was wondering a bit more about how your ideas form and how you choose which to pursue and do finished products look like you want them to? What's a bad habit you're trying to break? No obligation to answer, especially cause an anon is like tell me your secrets! But thank you for all you've written, you are so helpful and kind

thanks for the great question anon! i wrote a bit about my drafting process here but that doesn’t encompass the idea building side of things (also i’ve made some changes to the process so i was thinking about writing a more cohesive, updated version at some point).

i tend to think of project ideas as piles of aesthetic, and usually i only begin writing once the pile has toppled over and i can’t not write it. that’ll make more sense in a moment. 

i’ll walk through 2 examples of my idea generating process, from how they started to where they are now. 

1. Vandal

Vandal is a novel i’m working on that i really have a lot of hope for. i’m about 60k words in right now and 75% finished. it’s about a teenage girl (sierra) who casts a spell on her hot, helpful neighbor (frank) to bind them together. the spell ends up working but backfiring when he becomes her foster father. then, in his custody, sierra gets jealous and casts a spell on his girlfriend (jenny) to break them up, but that backfires too: sierra gets taken out of frank’s custody and placed with a manipulative and abusive foster brother (leo). frank more or less kidnaps sierra and they have to Run From The Law. throughout the novel, sierra is inwardly battling Vandal, an immortal archangel that has possessed her and is trying to get her to kill herself so he can break free of the prison of her body.  

the idea for that story has a looooong breadcrumb trail and a huge aesthetic pile. since i couldn’t manage to get Baby traditionally published, i had a lot of that dynamic i could adopt into something else. i wrote at length about where that idea came from but i can no longer find that post (UPDATE: here it is). it’s somewhere in my training wheels tag. in short, i spent an entire summer watching/reading age gap stories and the male perspective in them bothered me a lot, so i wanted to write a story from the younger party’s perspective, and do the reality of those situations justice. i wrote that story, though, so i didn’t want to rewrite it. 

then, in december 2019, for reasons i don’t remember, i started reading snape/hermione fics. i really liked the dynamic, but it was a little too angsty for me, and none of the fics gave me the catharsis i was looking for, which was basically Grouchy Soft Boy Takes Care Of PTSD Weary Girl. being unable to find anything that fit the exact no-conflict, angstless dynamic i was looking for, i decided to write it myself using an A/B/O reylo idea i’d been kicking around for about 8 months but i could never land on, because i didn’t know if i wanted ben or ren. that fic turned out to be Reclaimed.  

to answer one of your questions, Reclaimed didn’t turn out the way i wanted it to at all, and i’m still kind of shocked by the traffic it has. i felt bad about writing it, because i was setting down so many other things to work on it, and it was a struggle from start to finish. at the time (and this is a major theme of my process), i thought it was a waste of energy.

but it opened a very important thematic concept to me, which is the idea of voicelessness and trauma, and recovery through finding one’s voice.

fast-forward to february, i’m headcanoning with @star-sky-earth just days before i have to head to nebraska for a writing residency. she and i are talking about a certain male celebrity who shall not be named, flirting with his younger female costar who shall not be named, and i said something along the lines of, “wouldn’t it suck to get a crush on a dude like him, only to find out he likes you back, and then you realize he’s actually kind of shallow and boring?”

i remember distinctly saying, out loud, “god fucking dammit,” because, right then, an aesthetic pile had toppled over, and an entire novel unfolded itself in my brain. i pound out an outline. it’s garbage. i play around with a vocal gauge. it’s not quite right. then, two days later, i write an opening scene that i don’t think is great but i send it to some people and they’re like, oh this is fire. 

the aesthetic pile looks like this:

lolita, where dolores is the one in control

delusions of grandeur born from a major traumatic event

obsessions with fairy tales and the escapism they provide

the consequences of extreme neglect

forced voicelessness as both a theme and a major structural constraint

a lot of wolf imagery

non-chronological timelines

i proceed to spend the next two days driving across the country brain-writing. by the time i reach nebraska, i hit the ground running, and write for basically 30-40 hours a week for 5 weeks. then, because pandemic, i decide to stay 2 more weeks, but i hit a snag. i write about 14k of really boring drivel and realize my outline has failed me. i toss the 14k and re-outline and try again. then, my attention is rattled by a crush on a composer who has no interest in me. 

i go home and fall into my annual summer depression and i lose focus. so, that’s where i’m at. i really miss vandal but it’s gotten super dark and i’m finding it difficult to manage darkness with everything going on. which brings me to my next aesthetic pile that has recently toppled over.

2. Eden

that’s not the title but it’s the project name. i’ve begun writing a YA sci fi comedy with an ensemble cast. this aesthetic pile took years to build before it toppled. it started with Elixir of Erised, hands down the best fic i’ve ever written by a huge margin. i reread it this past winter and was kind of amazed i’d written it. 

i really liked the idea of a potion showing you your deepest desires, but until recently have not had the patience to build an entire world around it. so, for the past 3.5 years, i’ve kept a document of “if i WERE to a YA SFF book with the themes of EOE, what would i want to include?” over those 3.5 years, here’s what the list became:

dark academia vibes

heist plot

soulmates

that list is not really conducive to an entire universe, and i never had the motivation to sit down and think through it. 

then i watched breaking bad, and a lot of things started clicking. at the same time, i was talking to my buddy kyle about my fallen knight archetype schematic, and i began fleshing out all the archetypes that went with it. i came up with 12. i built a database. i thought, wouldn’t it be cool to write something with ALL 12 ARCHETYPES?? haha but who would be dumb enough to do that?

me. i would. 

with breaking bad as the missing plot piece (which introduces the idea of conflict around the MANUFACTURE and DISTRIBUTION of addictive substances, with an ensemble cast of morally grey characters, which leads to a war), i had enough to get started. 

i wrote an outline. i wrote another outline. i wrote a third outline. i stopped to write some histories of this place i’d built. i wrote a fourth outline. gdocs became a mess so i downloaded scrivener and taught myself how to use it. i wrote a gauge of the first chapter and landed the voice on the first try. then i did a rough sketch of how a trilogy would go. then i outlined each book in the trilogy to make sure my character trajectories were on point. then i did a lot more worldbuilding. now i’m working on my fifth outline, which breaks the entire novel down scene by scene. 

and for Reasons, i’m tasking myself with writing the first draft in 6 days across two weekends. it’s a high-stakes adventure story with a very tight timeline, so i think it’s conducive to being written quickly.

which brings me to another question you asked, which is, what bad habits do i want to break? i always, always slow down at the halfway mark. sometimes i even give up. i have no idea why. no matter how much preparation i do, no matter how solid my endgame is, at the halfway mark i either slow to a crawl or set the whole project down and pick up something new. i do this with reading books, too. i can only ever read the first half of books. then i either skip to the end or put them down forever. it’s definitely something i have to figure out because at this rate i’ll never finish anything.

okay this took way longer than i thought it would to write but i hope it answers your question. tl;dr i follow aesthetic and thematic interests until they lead me to a point where i can’t not write the stories that develop from them. 

#writing advice #process #Anonymous

[itmighthavebeenintentional]

Shackled News and a bit more

Howdy, folks. 

EDIT: I just posted the last chapter of Shackled!!!!!!!!!. I wanted to thank everyone for their lovely comments and reblogs. Everyone has been so very encouraging and excited, and it’s been fantastic, I gotta say.

Now that Shackled is finished, I will begin posting another multi- chapter Supernatural story. Please, if you’d like, take a minute to look over the preview below. If you’d like to be added to my Long Haul (everything) tag list or you’d like to be placed on the Walk Me Home list, let me know, and I will adjust accordingly. Again, thank you so much for sticking with the story, jumping in on the story, just hanging out with me and the story. Y’all are the best. 

Walk Me Home

Summary: Twenty-four years ago, Kimberly Harper met a boy who changed the course of her entire life before up and leaving one night. She spent years moving past the memories, building a stable, satisfying career as professor of folklore and mythology at the local university. Then the accidents start, and she’s forced to seek help among her hunter contacts. All it takes is a knock on her office door to send Kimber’s carefully built emotional walls crumbling to the ground.

Featuring: Teen Winchesters, high school romance, reunions, misunderstandings, high intensity emotional turmoil, Dean’s love of pie, Dean being adorable, Sam being adorable and maybe a bit nosy eventually, much group adorkable-ness, show-style investigation, mention of our favorite werewolf, gratuitous and obvious love of fall, DID I MENTION ROMANCE, fluff, smut, tension. I had fun writing it, so I hope you’ll have fun reading it. Trying to keep preview shorter, so I promise huge shoutouts to EVERYONE who helped me SO MUCH with this story.

Inspired by P!nk’s song “Walk Me Home”

Story Warnings (None of these apply to preview): Show level violence, show level parental neglect (let’s not John bash, I’m just saying), show-style witchcraft, show-level mental manipulation, stalking, bit of angst, sexual content (higher than show level),swearing, general yearning

Chapter 1 Preview

A firm tap on the door of her office makes Kimberly’s head snap up. She blinks, her eyes unable to focus quickly after looking up from her computer screen. She remembers she’s wearing her reading glasses, and slips them off her nose, letting them dangle from the chain around her neck.

“Dr. Harper? Could I take a few minutes of your time?”

“Yes, I…” Her eyes finally focus on her visitor, and the room is suddenly devoid of oxygen. “Dean? Is it...really?”

“Kimber?” 

The astonished man framed in the doorway is a far cry from the brash, charming boy she met in a different life, but she’d know him anywhere. Time has been more than kind to Dean Winchester, and Kimberly has to admit some things really do get better with age.

Which is saying a lot, considering.

“God, no one’s called me that since high school.” She stands and takes a couple of measured steps around her desk. Seeing him unexpectedly like this after so much time leaves her physically and emotionally off-balance, but the smile she offers him is genuine. “You’re a helluva sight for sore eyes. It’s been a while.”

Dean recovers from his shock quickly, crossing the small room in a few quick strides, and sweeps her into a hug. She’s engulfed in his presence, not just his physical stature (she does not remember him being this tall or broad or...solid) but also the scent and feel that is absolutely Dean. She feels a shock of vertigo as memories and emotions she’d long laid to rest all vie for immediate attention.

It hits them simultaneously that they’ve embraced for a few moments longer than necessary, and they disentangle with sheepish smiles.

“What are...no, I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Have a seat!” A lop-sided smile pulls at Dean’s lips, and suddenly she’s seventeen again, trying desperately to keep her cool as she finally gets to talk to the handsome, mysterious new kid. Warmth floods every cell of her body, and she comes dangerously close to giggling. 

“Coffee?” she offers, forgetting most of her hard-earned vocabulary in the face of her teenage dream.

“Always.”

...

The last time she’d seen Dean Winchester, his father was burning holes in his elder son’s back from the driver’s seat of his precious Impala. He glowered at Dean and Kimber, impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as the teenagers stumbled through their good-byes. Dean’s younger brother sat, slump-shouldered and defeated in the back seat, resigned to yet another relocation.

“Don’t forget my number,” Kimberly murmured, her palms sliding over his jaw, fingers threading into his close-cropped hair, and they both knew she meant, “Don’t forget me.”

“I couldn’t if I tried, sweetheart,” he whispered, his voice breaking on the last word. He cleared his throat, trying to turn away before she could see any weakness.

“Don’t,” she said, holding his face firmly. “If this is all I get of you, don’t even take that much from me.”

Five blissful weeks they’d had before Dean’s father concluded his mysterious business in the area. Five weeks since she’d begun tutoring Dean in AP American History; an absolute sham, she had realized exactly five minutes into their first session. Dean may not have been caught up on the exact dates and details of what they were covering in class, but once he set eyes on the material, even she had a hard time keeping pace with his reasoning.

“Just wanted to talk to you alone,” he’d admitted that afternoon, his olive eyes sparkling. He flashed her what had to be an award-winning half-grin, showing a glimpse of perfect, dazzling white teeth and the merest touch of uncertain vulnerability. 

“Does that usually work on girls?” she asked, genuinely curious. He had to practice that expression in the mirror; it was too perfect to be natural. His face lit up as his smile spread, his cheeks gaining the faintest hint of pink. In that one moment, Kimber realized she’d lived her entire life under an overcast sky, and now the clouds had parted. His smile was the sun on her face for the first time, dazzling and vital, and she soaked it in with dizzy abandon.

“Why, is it working on you?”

“Yeah, it, um, it really is.”

They spent the next month or so getting to know each other as only kids can, when everything is new, the absolute pinnacle of priority and passion. They studied each other as fervently as they should have studied for midterms. Explaining how the Age of Enlightenment influenced the American Revolution was a complete waste of time next to finding out that the beautiful, smooth-talking, tough-as-nails Dean Winchester was actually ticklish.

Dean told her the most amazing stories, which she only learned were true after he and his family disappeared. She caught him up in history enough for the teacher to get off his back, and in return he showed her how to get rid of unwanted physical attention with minimal risk on her part.

Dean wasn’t her first kiss, but he wiped the memory of every other fumbling embrace from her mind with a searing permanence. Some nights they snuck out to the tree house in her backyard, and some nights she snuck him into her room. He would never take her out to any of the famous local make-out spots, though; he said they were too dangerous and just begging for trouble. 

She knew better than to argue with him when he got “that look” on his face, spoke to her in “that tone.” It took many years and some hard experiences of her own, but she did eventually learn that he’d been protecting her from so much more than she ever could have understood at that point in her life.

She found herself in awe of the sheer amount of wisdom contained in such a carefree, often goofy package. That they were chronologically the same age, almost to the month, was irrelevant; Dean Winchester had lived far beyond his years, and it showed.

And then one night, he’d arrived on her doorstep in the middle of dinner, asked if she could come outside for a minute. When he told her he was leaving, she knew he wasn’t joking. He’d warned her it would happen this way, that he had no idea how long they’d be in town, but she’d always imagined that future as some vague, misty destination, like “graduation” or “college.” Definitely going to happen, but not anytime soon, so might as well relax and enjoy things while you could.

“I…” But she couldn’t say it, not yet. She wanted to, had read so many novels and seen all the movies. It was the thing to say, and half her friends had already proclaimed their hearts belonging to various celebrities and hot guys around school. But staring into Dean’s eyes, so much older than they should be, she knew better than to throw that word out so lightly, carelessly.

“Yeah,” he sighed. His eyelids dropped, shoulders heaved once, and when he met her gaze again, that smooth front of cool confidence had slid back in place. “I know, sweetheart. Me, too.”

He kissed her then, despite his father’s glowering, despite her parents’ astonished looks from between the living room curtains. His hands were tight on her waist, and she raised up on her toes, pulling his face just a little closer. 

They pulled apart after a long moment, eyes locked, and she kissed him one last time, chastely, savoring the plush of his velvet-soft lips against hers. 

Then she let him go, and he went. There was nothing else they could do.

She hugged herself against the chill autumn night, ignoring the first dashes of icy rain that stung her bare arms as she watched the black Impala turn a corner and disappear.

She didn’t see him again for nearly two and a half decades. When he knocked on her office door, asking for Dr. Harper, the years melted away. She felt the sting of the rain, the chill of the night he’d left, and for a long moment, all she could do was stare.

#teen winchesters #teen sam #teen dean #dean winchester #sam winchester #original character #original female character #angst #romance #fluff #smut #this story reads like an episode #adorable dean #adorkable dean #emotional #misunderstanding #drama #stalking #witchcraft #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #Supernatural fanfic #supernatural fic #SPN #spn fic #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #high school romance #mental manipulation

[dragonheart-swtor]

Author Interview

I was tagged by @sleepswithvillains​, thanks!!

Name: Dragonheart, Dragon for short. (Also responds to Rani.) I don’t remember why I picked up the name at first, to be honest; I’ve been using it since my roleplay forum days back in middle school when I started representing and associating myself primarily with dragons online. (It did end up being hilariously ironic years later, ha.)

Fandoms: For writing, I really only post stuff for SWTOR these days. I’ve published on ff.net (*shiver*) for Frozen, Disney’s Descendants, and... I think that’s it, actually. Privately, I’ve written, uh. a lot. *shoving piles of paper into comically overstuffed drawer* Steven Universe, Star Wars/SWTOR, Frozen, Descendants, PJO, Detroit: Become Human, Homestuck, and a smattering of others. Outside of writing, add The Adventure Zone, Fantasy High, and just a whole bunch of others.

Where do you post?: AO3, these days, as well as here.

Most popular one-shot: The problem is that most of them have gone in a compilation, which I’m realizing in hindsight was a mistake probably and I might stop doing that in the future, but going by comments technically Midnight Conversations (Chapter 2) has the most.

Most popular multi-chapter: bold of you to assume I have more than one, and the one is currently stalled (though not abandoned!), to be perfectly transparent. It’s an OCs fic of mine, unconnected to though technically compliant with my SWTOR ‘verse, basically an original story set in a pre-existing universe. It’s titled Love and Lose (and Love Again) and I love it very much even though most of it and its sequel is still languishing in my private files because I’m stuck on the part that needs to go up next chronologically speaking (and will ramble about it for quite literally as long as you’ll tolerate listening to me, should anyone be interested in asking).

Favorite story written: Barring L&L, because I’ve been hyperfixated on those characters for over a year and a half but it feels mean to answer something that has only like 20% of it posted, it’s probably tied between Trust and Welcome Home, the second one almost entirely because of one (1) paragraph, because I get great joy out of writing people in deep, deep love.

Fic nervous to post: The one (1) smutfic currently publicly posted, Missed You, because my brain is dumb and I’m awkward and have to keep reminding myself I’m An Adult This Is Legal Now despite it having been a couple years since I became an adult

How I choose titles: Good question, honestly. It varies. Usually I try to pick some short phrase that’s thematic to the piece, which is easier with one-shots than multi-chaps. It needs to give me some idea of what the story’s about. As far as my temporary file names on my flash-drive - I basically just list the character(s) being focused on first for organization’s sake, and then a few words that give me enough of a reminder which one is which. “Duserra torture.odt,” “Eris Reykal Spooky.odt,” and “Eris Reykal Ship AU.odt” are all files in my star wars folder at present.

Do I outline: *distant laughter* does building extremely detailed ideas for scenes at semi-random points in the timeline without ever writing it down count? (More seriously, no, I’ve never been good at outlining. You’re lucky if you get a full round of editing out of me and I don’t just throw my first draft down on paper and call it finished.)

Complete: Do one-shots count? The collection of those has been linked a few times up above.

Coming soon?: Muses only know. (In theory: a scene between Eris and Reykal that’s been in my drafts for too long already; a two-part one-shot between Zashiil, Duserra, and Garen that’s been in my head for too long but is just now getting down on paper; and some more of the Togruta gods and religion headcanons I’ve been working on. But who ever knows when I’ll actually finish anything? Not me, that’s for sure.)

In progress: The things I just said, plus about a half-dozen other Star Wars things I float between at any given time with no actual impetus to finish things. (A lot of my writing is just... writing for the sake of writing, not even really with any intent to publish, if you hadn’t gotten that vibe from me already xD)

Prompts: Literally anything, please always feel free to tag me in things I hunger to ramble about my characters and headcanons

Upcoming work: At some point I’d like to put together a masterpost of headcanons on various things, and I’d like to start posting more of my worldbuilding headcanons in general, I just. Feel weird talking about those completely unprompted, I guess? Also, maybe at some point I’ll actually do something multi-chapter with my KOTFE crew, but again. who knows when that’ll happen. I have a lot of scene ideas it’s just a matter of getting them down.

I’ll tag @sunsetofdoom, @swtorpadawan, and @swtorcompanionsgoofin if y’all have the time and energy and want to, and ofc anyone else who wants to!

#what do i tag this #author interview meme #one-shots are easier for me than multichaps bc. i'm a lot more likely to end up abandoning a multichap #so there you go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #also the reason the name ended up being ironic is because years after i started using it i found the otherkin community and. lo and behold #to literally no one's surprise. im am dragon #and i do mean *literally no one* reactions ranged from 'yeah that seems right' to 'yknow i've been wondering about that for years' #anyway i'll quit rambling in the tags

[itssolonelyhere]

1, 4, 10, 14, 16! 💕 sorry for sending so many 🙈

Thank you, lovely lady, for sending this in!!! And it’s 100% fine 🥰 I enjoy doing these. 

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  –  what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? Right now, I’m caught in the middle of multiple JokeSaku projects. I keep jumping around, yet not doing enough to fully complete them. At this moment, I’m trying to finish chapter 21 of QotR, since it’s closest to being done. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out, but I’m never 100% satisfied 🤦‍♀️. I love working on this story because it involves a lot of dark themes, but there’s a bit of humor and assclownery that comes with it. 

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like) I don’t know if there’s a sentence or paragraph I’m really proud of, per se... but this part makes me laugh whenever I read it (though it’s actually not funny). This is from Knives and Cherry Blossoms, chapter 2 ‘Wraith’. 

"Here, kitty kitty." Craning her neck forward, Sakura crouches down to pat the grass, trying to draw the fluffy critter out. Maybe she can bring it home to have some company. It's better than being alone all the time. "Come here, sweetheart. I don't bite…"

Looking around in the shadows, her brows furrow at the sound of dead leaves crunching and twigs breaking. That's a fat fucking cat. Something doesn't feel right, the same way it did earlier. That sensation of someone's ice fingers trailing up her spine is back, but with a vengeance.

"I do."

Sakura falls back, scrambling over the grass to get away. Someone is there. Staring wildly at the dark bushes, a tall shadow looms over them and the pinkette thinks her heart's giving out. It sways, like a wraith in robes moving through the foliage and she's doesn't want to find out what it actually is.

10. How would you describe your writing process? Oh, boy! This is a travesty in itself 🙈. I literally do no outlining or plan out the chapters themselves ahead of time. There’s usually a certain scene or main point I focus on, then somehow work it into a 8-10k draft. I have little scenarios from daydreaming that I mentally shift into chronological order (this happens, then that does somewhere down the line). I pick one out, sit at my laptop, hope for the best, and just wing it. I honestly can’t believe I’ve gotten this far by pulling that crap 😅. It’s kind of like the characters whisper what happens next in my ear and I type whatever they say. I’ve never been good at organizing anything or planning, so it’s just ‘going with the flow’. 

After I get a heavy amount done, then I spend a lot of time trying to edit it. I’d be screwed if Grammarly wasn’t a thing 😭. Even then, the word might be spelled right, but it’s the wrong one for the sentence or incorrect usage. Auto-correct (or myself) sometimes puts a similar word in its place.  

14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title? Honestly, I don’t think about the title until right before I update. I usually spend about ten minutes looking over the draft to find something that relates to the chapter itself. 

16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?) Hmm... I’ve been experimenting further with dark themes in my stories and writing what I genuinely want, without letting myself be pressured to do certain things. I also try to do more POV’s from other characters than the leads to give different outlooks on what’s unfolding. 

#meta-talk game(?) #writing stuff

[ooachilliaoo]

Love Yourself Challenge

I was tagged by two amazing lovelies @rpgwarrior4824 and @pip-n-flinx – Thanks for thinking of me you guys!

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc. ) and link them below  to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Because of my weird non-chronological way of writing I haven’t actually posted 5 things this year (even if you take ‘this year’ to mean since April 19) so I’m going to include some WIP’s here if that’s ok.  

1.       Time Effect Coda Fandom: Mass Effect/ Dr Who Pairings: Shepard/Kaidan Alenko & Rose/Ten.

So, this went up yesterday and damn I have been dying to share it. Don’t get me wrong I love ‘Time Effect’ and when I started, Time Effect was just going to be a happy little adventure where Commander Shepard met the Tenth Doctor and chaos happened. (If anyone is interested, I chose Ten because I personally found his particular cadence easier to write). Then my brain went ‘hey hold up just ….HOLD UP a minute. What if we made it PAINFUL?’ and ‘Coda’ was born (though credit for the title should rightfully go to my amazing editor @faith-less-one).

This one has a lot of my personal headcannons for events that happened after the Reaper war wrapped up in it which I loved laying down on paper. The Rannoch section came to me really easily, so that was joy to write. In contrast the scene on Tuchanka took so damn long and had so many iterations I honestly lost count of how many times I started over but when it was done I was SO HAPPY with the result.

2.       Promises

Fandom: Dragon Age Origins.   Pairings: Alistiar Theirin / Elissa Cousland. 

I honestly can’t remember how long I had chapter one and two of this laid down. It was definitely years maybe something as long as like…3 years? I always knew ultimately where it was going but then like DAI happened and all my Dragon Age energy went into DAI fic for a time. 

I think I actually rediscovered it when I was moving files onto my new laptop and it had been long enough that my brain was like ‘this is good’ rather than seeing like…all the mistakes? So I knuckled down. I remember though I was writing the end and I knew I’d planned to do the wedding a-la Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner but somehow when I got there the tone didn’t feel quite right. So I messaged my wonderful editor and best of friends @faith-less-one like ‘you’ve read chapters one and two of this? Should I include a Pirates of the Caribbean wedding at the end?’ and she dead ass responded, ‘honey if the opportunity for a Pirates of the Caribbean wedding presents itself you put in a Pirates of the Caribbean wedding’. So I did, because I had to, clearly.

3.       Memories Fandom: Mass Effect Characters: Liara T’Soni

Look, I’m never going to write anything better for N7 day than ‘Tough Kid’ it’s just not going to happen and I can accept that. But this? This came pretty close. Once again this contains some more of my long-held post war headcannons and it was nice to write from Liara’s perspective for once. I think this one was inspired by a post or a tweet or something that pointed out that due to the lifespan differences and ages eventually Liara and Grunt would be the only surviving members of the Normandy crew. So, I took a shot at what that might look like. 

4.       Untitled Mass Effect Longfic – hit 160K 

Fandom: Mass Effect Pairings: Shepard/Kaidan Alenko

This thing. This thing doesn’t even have an official title. But I’ll tell you what it does have - over 160K words making it the longest thing I’ve ever written.  I’ve been working on it for years - no I am not going to say how many, and it’s probably not even half way done. It’s basically a re-telling of the main storyline with a little post-war fix it tacked onto the end. It might one day be finished and see the light of day or I might end up working on it and reworking it forever.

It’s big. It’s messy and because I don’t write chronologically I need a whole ass indexed excel sheet to track what parts I’d coved already. It definitely contains some of my best writing and probably some of my worst. 160K leaves room for a lot. But hitting 160K felt good. 

5.       Untitled Robin Hood DAO AU. 

Fandom: Dragon Age Origins.   Pairings: Alistair Theirin / Elissa Cousland.

So, this was an idea I’d had for I don’t know how long. I know it happened because the BBC Robin Hood series starring Jonas Armstrong was on Amazon Prime at the same time as I was replaying DAO and my brain just went ‘what the hell’. But god knows how long it sat on the shelf as a vague idea before I even started it. The basic idea was that this would be an AU where Alistair grew up as landed nobility (still the kings’ bastard but a titled bastard). Then when he returns from an exalted march to a Ferelden ruled by Logain he basically …becomes Robin Hood.

I actually started it during NaNo. To be clear I hadn’t planned to write it during NaNo. I have a few ‘longfic WIP’s’ as a I call them and rarely the attention span to write just one of them every day for a month so usually I flip between them  (yes, I know this makes me a NaNo rebel but in my defence …shhhh). In September I work at getting all my longfics to a level word count (to make tracking the 1,667 per day easier) so I had 2 ME longfics and 2 DA longfics at precise word counts at the start of NaNo.

Then what did I do?

I started this AU instead. 15K of this AU laid down in NaNo and it’s just a joy to write. It’s got limitless capacity for banter and snark and I love writing banter and snark. I also like crafting an Alistair that’s not a million miles from DAO Alistair but changed slightly by growing up with responsibility and family.

So yeah that’s some of the stuff I’m proud of from this year.

I’ll Tag: @faith-less-one @poweredbycoffeeandwine @ljandersen @hawkeykirsah @alyssalenko @natsora & anyone else who wants to! (No obligation of course and also sorry if any of you have already done this and i missed it!)

#this is so sweet #love this idea #writer things #show me all the stuffs

[inkforhumanhands]

1, 10, 11, 13, 25, 30, 32, 35, 36, 38? :3

1. Do you listen to music when you write?

It depends. On what, you ask? Not actually sure lollll

10.  Do you set yourself deadlines?

Way back when I tried to pump out one chapter every two weeks but honestly that didn’t usually work well. Now here we are in a world where I never finish anything. :D I’ve told myself I would finish Baby by the end of the month every month since September though. -crazed laughter-

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

This is a good question. I used to read a ton but not so much anymore, so I can no longer pick out like “oh this is where I got this bit of style from.” I did have a phase in early high school where I read Catcher in the Rye and then I couldn’t help but kind of write in that style. Also this sounds pretentious af but I imitated James Joyce a bit (and badly). I’d like to think my current style is more just my own, though it tends to lean more to the poetic side.

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished

1) Be me, head empty 2) Read something, watch something, or listen to something and be like “hey what if this but mattfoggy?” 3) Pretend to write an outline or just not even pretend at this point 4) Open a Word doc and write the first sentence and/or paragraph with no idea where the rest of it is headed 5) Add sentences in chronological order (because again, how can you write out of order if you don’t know what’s going to happen next) while also editing as you go and reading out loud a bunch 6) Finish it after like 5 years 7) Final edit and proofread

25.  Favourite part of writing

getting comments a;ldfjsl;jd VALIDATE ME

30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet

Well I have at least one paragraph of all the ideas I intend to write right now besides our collab, so that wins by default. Looking forward to Foggy working with Jessica.

32.  Most difficult character to write

KAREN. I used to think Foggy because he’s far too funny for me, and maybe I just need to watch the show again or something, but I have no idea how to write Karen POV at all.

35.  What scene/story are you least looking forward to writing?

Hmm, currently exchange fic just by virtue of me not really knowing what to do with it. Besides that, I’m not really in the mood to write the suicidal Matt fic.

36.  Last sentence you wrote

Technically it was something from the exchange fic but I figure I probably shouldn’t post from that so here’s the last sentence from Baby:

A blistering kiss set the record straight.

38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had 

LOL okay i had to go in The Archives™ to search for something for this, but one time i wrote a short story about a sloth named Virgil who keeps falling asleep for 11 years at a time and then just as he’s about to die having wasted his life, a warthog named Bernadine tells him that if he eats the petals of a certain plant he’ll be transported back to the afternoon he first fell asleep. He eats the petals and regains his youth and then becomes an insomniac a;sdlkfjlkj

#ask games #happybeans #asks

[randomguywithwords]

As The Dust Settles: Chapter 10 (Dabi x Geten Slowburn)

Previous Chapters: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

––––––

Dabi spent his Friday evening slouched over the counter, occasionally sipping from his whiskey. The bar was quite empty for a Friday night, with only a few customers scattered around the chairs and stools. 

“Hey,” Dabi called. The bartender, a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, looked at him. 

“What else can I get for you, sir?” He asked politely. 

“Is this place usually this empty at this time?” Dabi swept an arm around as a gesture.

The bartender chuckled. “If anything, I gained more customers, probably thanks to you lot. You’re part of the League, right?” 

“Were, I suppose,” Dabi said boredly, but straightening up to rest his head on his palm. “Why?”

“You guys defeating the army depressed the hell out of some of ‘em. Usually their doctrine frowns upon drinking – something about wasting their days when they could be practicing, but after their commander was overthrown, I saw a big turnout that night. Largest I’ve ever had.”

“You keep saying them…” Dabi frowned, recalling something Hanabata had said. “Are you the 10% of people in Deika who aren’t part of the army?”

“Damn right. I’ve no intention of joining their crazy mission.” The bartender looked at a customer at one of the tables, nodded, and started to prepare a drink. “Only thing that sucks is getting caught in the crossfire.” 

“Ah.” Dabi took another sip. “You look alright for a guy whose city was nearly destroyed.”

The bartender waved his hand dismissively, the other placing the finished drink on the counter for collection. “I ain’t talking about what Shigaraki did. I like the guy. He taught these delusional people a lesson. My problem…” He leaned in slightly closer, lowering his voice. “Is with the army themselves.” 

“Really? I thought you would hate me and the League,” Dabi said.

“I got no issue with you folks. But I hate the soldiers. Especially the ice-man. Apocrypha, or whatever his name is.”

“Huh.” Was Dabi’s response, though his mind was whirling. He didn’t need that girl on his mind, though he was curious enough to ask, “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s merciless, cruel. I don’t know if you saw, but during the fight, I heard from some of these guys here, he took out so many of his guys just to get rid of the army of clones from Bubaigawara Jin.”

“Right…” Dabi’s mind flashed back to that glacier that sent entire houses into the air, along with the blood of both Twice’s clones and the Liberation Army. He was both disgusted and awed by the audacity of that move. Now, he felt more disturbed than anything. “Yeah, I was there. You were safe?”

“Yeah, my house was on the other side of the city. I didn’t go out that day when I saw all the soldiers marching towards the centre. Wherever the army gathers, it’s good to not go there,” The bartender said. He paused, and then added grimly, “Some of my friends didn’t heed that advice.”

“Oh.” Dabi swallowed. The statement sounded like a backhand threat or a lash of anger, but looking at the man’s face, he strangely did not detect any sign of hatred. 

“Honestly, they got what they deserved.” He gave a smile, pouring two glasses of whiskey and passing one to Dabi. “It’s on the house. I haven’t had a good talk in a long time.”

“Cheers.” Dabi grinned. The glasses clinked, and the two took a good gulp of the burning liquor.

“Is it dangerous here?” Dabi said as he set down his glass on the countertop.

“Pah, not really. Until last week, the army hadn’t really done anything, only train over and over again. At least, that’s what I could see. Maybe underground, they’ve been up to something, but I’ll be honest – I doubt they ever had plans to expand.”

“Yeah,” Dabi said non-committedly, thinking about the plans Shigaraki had laid out, taken from Re-destro’s strategies. 

“And honestly, I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. They wouldn’t let me.” The bartender grimaced, taking another gulp. “Not that it’s illegal, but the leaders – those guys in that tower, they make it sound illegal, so everyone knows it’s illegal. You get what I mean?” 

Dabi nodded slowly. He had to admit, the way Re-destro and his lieutenants kept Deika city controlled was impressive: Not with an iron fist, but soft, persuasive whispers. Noting that this man here was likely subjugated by them in all by thought, he asked a question. 

The question was probably influenced by the thoughts in his head, and the alcohol. “About that gi – guy, Apocrypha, what’s he like?”

The bartender’s expression tightened, and Dabi wondered if he’d touched on something personal – Apocrypha had apparently killed his friends, though he hadn’t seemed very affected by it. 

“Whoever that man is under that hood, he’s a monster. I’ve grown up here my whole life, and I’ve never seen a soldier so addicted to the cause. Now, I’m no soldier, but even I understand the camaraderie that soldiers should share. Apocrypha has no feelings. He kills people to achieve his goals…” The bartender leaned in closer, till Dabi could smell the whiskey on his breath. “And I’m not talking about what happened last week, but what he’s been doing since he joined.”

“What d’you mean?” Dabi asked, a sense of foreboding sending a chill down his spine, while his stomach bubbled with curiosity and trepidation. 

“Hey, Dabi!” A cheerful voice made him and the bartender look at the man who had just entered. The crimson wings made it obvious. 

“Hey, Hawks.” Dabi waved. The hero walked up to them. 

“You want anything, Hawks?” The bartender asked. 

“I’m good, thanks man.” Hawks replied, eliciting a nod from him. While the bartender busied himself with washing some glasses, Dabi turned around on his stool to face Hawks.

“What’s up?” Dabi said.

“Some people are looking for you.” Hawks glanced around, noting the few other customers within earshot. He gestured towards the exit. 

Sighing, Dabi gulped down the last of his drink, thanked the bartender and left with Hawks. 

–––––––

A few hours ago...

Shigaraki knocked aside Dabi’s raised arm with a backhand. “I let you go your own way because I don’t believe in ordering you guys around, but now that I’m leading more than a small group, I’m changing my style. You’re settling things with Apocrypha, got it?”

The two stared at each other with cold fury for a second, before Dabi spat, “Fine.” and spun on his heel to exit the room. 

Shigaraki watched Dabi leave the council room. Once the door was shut, he sat down on his chair and tapped his earpiece. “Still there, Ujiko?” 

“You actually sounded convincing,” The doctor’s voice came in reply. “Not the Dabi-Apocrypha thing. The plan you gave them. I almost believed it myself.”

“Good, it’ll throw them off the scent for a while. I trust you’ve kept up your end of the deal?” Shigaraki said.

“Yes. Come. I’ll show you everything.” At this, Shigaraki felt the build-up of that muck in his mouth. He’d experienced it so many times he no longer gagged or retched. 

The mossy-green ooze expanded and enveloped him. He lost vision temporarily as the nauseating feeling churned for a second before disappearing. He blinked, finding himself in Ujiko’s lab. The doctor himself stood before him. No chair, nothing shrouding him from sight, just him standing with his lab coat and silver glasses.

“Tomura Shigaraki, Kyudai Garaki. It’s a pleasure to work with you.” He gave a nod of respect. “You and All For One are the only two that know my true name. I trust that you’ll keep it that way.”

–––––

Plot stuff, getting a bit dry I know, especially if you’re here for Dabiten. You might not like next chapter if that’s the case, but it’ll hopefully set up the premise much better so you get a general idea of how the plot is going. And yeah, I’m aware that 10 chapters in is a horrible time to establish even more premise to the story. My excuse of first draft isn’t exactly great. So uh, fault taken.

Flow-wise, I actually don’t really like this jumping back chronologically. I think in an edited version, the 2nd scene in this chapter would be the chapter 7/8, so right after the meeting (c7) goes into this Shigaraki POV. So yeah, reading it might be a bit dissatisfactory in terms of pacing, but bear with this first draft for now. I’ll change it when it’s time.

Also, I’m happy to say that I finally planned out Dabi’s backstory, so now the issue is writing it out in a way that doesn’t break this flow. I used to do flashbacks as an independent scene with line breaks at both ends, but I personally feel that it’s lazy writing now. If I can’t think of any decent way to transition into Dabi’s past, then I might go back to what I mentioned. 

#bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha fanfic #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #mha fanfic #bnha dabi #mha dabi #dabi #geten #bnha geten #mha geten #dabixgeten #dabi x geten #dabiten #geten x dabi #getenxdabi #ATDS

[sobdasha]

"I definitely updated my list of books I was reading on tumblr so it's all good" -me, a lying liar, right before spending several months finishing my reread of All The Discworld Books I Own But In Chronological Order For The First Time Ever Which In Fact Makes A Difference.

(and then I did it again after the libraries closed)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Hm, so. I definitely read this. At some point. It was not really for me, not bad, but not really for me. This particular edition had various notes before and after the text, all of which I read, which made it an experience I got more out of. It's important for me to know that the author is aware that the protagonist is a raging misogynist who's stupid, and yes this was on purpose so you'd realize how really incredibly stupid he is and thus maybe be tricked into changing your mind yourself. It is a legit tactic, but one I tend not to enjoy, so if I hadn't been forewarned I'd have been UUUUGGGGGHHHH MAKE HIM SHUT UP ALREADY and probably rage-quit. As it was, I was able to better appreciate what Le Guin was doing here, even if this book didn't win a place in my heart and I probably won't reread. I definitely preferred Ancillary Justice's take, with the feminine pronouns. For my brain, masculine pronouns = they might as well all be men = business as usual = I didn't really get any gender queering from it. I can't really remember much else now. Oh, it was also part "survival in the wilderness" story, which they're big on making you read in school (which I find very suspicious), and which I tolerated and read a few classic ones on my own until they kept assigning these kinds of stories for us to read and now I get nothing from them and mindlessly hate them. Anyway, as I said, not bad at all but not really for me.

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin This one's a reread--I picked it up from the library during college because we were doing Titus Andronicus in class and it didn't occur to me that there might be more than one Lavinia???? But hey it worked out because later in college we did the Aeneid and then I had Background for rereading Lavinia. This is the book that is lyrical and beautiful and pulls me in and makes me care deeply about the world and the characters. This is the book of Le Guin's that makes me feel the way everyone else feels about Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness and etc. I would like to find more of Le Guin's work that makes me feel the same way, because as I've said you can really tell from her other stuff that she's a solid writer who knows her stuff. I just…don't enjoy any of the other things. Anyway I recommend. I always forget about this book, and then when I reread I'm like "wow why don't I read this more often?????"

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, N. K. Jemisin I liked every story in this short story collection. I should just reread it and try writing this up again tbh but also tbh I'll probably do the rereading and then just not write anything up again. Just read Jemisin's stuff I love her writing so much okay. ETA: that’s exactly what I did, I reread this during my covid rereads and said “I should do a proper write-up this time” and lo and behold where is it

Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin Okay, this last Earthsea book treated me much better than the others. It's probably not for everyone else, which might be why it's for me. It's much more domestic, much less "plot" happening, full of introspection, and centered on women rather than men. This novel acknowledges and confronts the rampant internalized misogyny in the previous three books, engages it in a way that the misandrist in me finds satisfying even though it never comes to a good solution for the problem. This book is more like a reflection. Earthsea has never been about "light is always good, dark is always bad; be a hero, fight evil" etc. But this one I think shifts the tone a little farther; it's less about balance, and more...I guess I'd put it as, "actions have consequences." It's not concerned with right or wrong, it's concerned with people getting hurt. It's pretty somber and serious, without any humor to balance it out, tons of bad things happen to people, lots of PTSD...but this time I really cared about the characters, and I feel like it was all handled really well? In addition to critiquing internalized misogyny, it also critiqued victim blaming. Seemed like it handled disability pretty well too--was honest about how people are jerks about it in reality, while still being optimistic and treating Therru as valuable; made occasional mentions of considering work-arounds for having only one fully-functional hand, while mostly just having Therru go about living and doing chores and being capable and assuming she did find those work-arounds without having to draw attention to it; and Therru's terrible scars didn't get magically healed at the end, the whole book makes a point all the way through that her physical scars will always be with her the same way her emotional scars will be, and she's simply learned how to go on living with them. Tehanu: a book full of trauma happening to people, where what would normally be the plot in a fantasy novel ended up not even getting started to be resolved, but Le Guin's writing and handling of the subject matter helped heal my jaded soul.

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee A quick summary of my experience: Chapter 1 - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh what is going on what even Chapter 2 - no, no this is just, this is what sci fi is like, right? Just give it a few chapters and then by the end of the book everything will probably make sense. I'm sure that's how it works. Remember how even in Ancillary Justice I ended up with two separate Battles of Valskay, but now everything is fine??? It's. Fine. Chapter 4 - (ohhhhhhh I still don't know what's going on) Several Chapters Later - still no clue what's going on, but hit my stride with the terminology, my foreign language instinct kicked in where words stopped sounding weird and while I could not for the life of me define any terms for you, I had a vague comprehension of how the words operated In Context. Sort of. And by then I had, without realizing it, begun page-turning and binging, so I guess I liked the book lol! Another serious-but-not-funny one, but with an extra dose of War Memoir and all the gruesomeness that entails (but probably, like any good War Memoir, probably not actually gratuitous and actually in fact the necessary amount of gruesome). Jedao was turned into a woobie at the last minute and, well, damn, guy knows the way to my heart. The novel apparently gripped me enough that I don't even mind that it only came into play at the very end of the game. And hey, there's two more novels to deal with that revelation, which I have picked up from the library to read immediately! Yay! Current personal theory: based on the heavy math references that made me want to cry at the start, but the almost entire absence of actual numbers, and a reference to "there's no way actual physics works like that, it was obviously a calendrical effect" or something…I'm going to throw out a wild guess that the calendar stuff (and all the social structuring that goes with it) is so that they can break and reinvent math. So they can effect a universe where 2+2=5 and therefore a bunch of people standing in this exact position makes a force field or bullets of rose thorns or whatever and some other dude can make himself immortal. This sounded like a pretty terrible theory already and it sounds even worse now I've typed it up but oh well.

Raven Stratagems, Yoon Ha Lee Guess who didn't write this up back when she read it!!! Also, I returned Ninefox Gambit to the library right before the libraries shut down for covid. So, I had Raven and Revenant on hand for months but I didn't have Ninefox on hand to do an immediate reread to see if that made the sci fi make more sense. (It probably wouldn't have, but I would have liked to do a rereading while the ending was still fresh.) By this time there is a lesser degree of visceral viscera. Lee is brutal, however, about continuing to be honest about what war costs and whether war is worth that cost (which depends, really, on whose lives you think matter. Very relevant for these times. Very much prepared me to shut up and not whine about the inconveniences of protests and their fallout. There is no pretty and clean way to have a revolution, since it involves destroying a particular [terrible] way of life, so we're all just gonna have to sacrifice together). Also I think by this point all the character development from the first novel paid off in the form of character dynamics being hilarious now despite, y’know, the gruesome shadow of war.

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee Continues to discuss the honest price of war and the messiness of fallout. Shuos "The risks I took were calculated, but boy am I bad at math" Jedao. Oh I think this is also the one where every so often one of the characters thinks, "Okay so this person is a tyrannical murderous dictator but he is ensuring that there will never again be food shortages and no one in the space empire ever goes hungry." And then Lee turns around and is like, "Haha but don't forget this same person invented a form of vital infrastructural technology (and also immortality) that is optionally based off ritual human torture sacrifice. Like he didn't have to do that to make it work. He just decided to anyway. And that's always bad :) " (Also useful in our current climate of "Okay but we should consider the other person's circumstances and point of view" and also "Yeah but that doesn't apply if they're literally Nazis tho.")

Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee A collection of short stories set in the universe of those three books. There's one story at the end that does satisfy the "But I wanted another sequel!!!" urge. And there's a bit of backstory for Jedao and Cheris. But by and large what you should be in the mood to read is flash fiction snippets that simply happen to be set in the same universe but have no bearing on the plot. Which is pretty cool and interesting if you are in the proper mindset! Even better, Lee includes author's notes at the end of each story to talk about the story, or the influences, or the context of his life at the time, etc etc. That is always my absolute favorite part of a short story collection. Also these notes told me everything I needed to know about why I liked certain things about his writing. "I wanted to write my own AUs," "If I get stuck I go on TV Tropes," "My only regret is that I had to cut the scene where Jedao goes to ~Halloween~ dressed as himself and trolls people" ahhhh that's also a regret I share.

Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee This one is YA! There is a lot less gore although I guess there was still genocide! Read this when you are in the mood for something that doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the plot is completely, conveniently contrived to give you fast-paced action and fun. Min sure has a lot of coincidental meetings that should stretch my disbelief but I don't care. Also, I am enjoying reading books with girls as protagonists that do what I'm tired of being told to love about boy protagonists--just keep barreling along with complete self-assurance that you are right and, if you run into trouble, you can egotistically figure your way out.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin Gods and mortal ruling family's messy soap opera sexcapades is not exactly my favorite genre, but luckily it is handled by Jemisin so it's all good. Lots of Souma Family Values. I'm really appreciating how Jemisin considers choice of narrator very carefully and uses it to brilliant effect in this trilogy. Stories are things told by a narrator to an audience; why should we rely on the artifice of an "impartial" "reliable" "omniscient" 3rd person narrator writing into the void? This trilogy was Jemisin's first, I believe, so it's a little awkward coming back to them now, only because Jemisin is such a powerful writer that the themes she's begun working with here have only gotten stronger with each successive work.

The Broken Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin This one I rated as I read for Protagonist Is Blind based on the scale of a sighted person going "but some of my best friends are blind!" In that regard, I think the book does really well! Blindness doesn't define Oree's life and value; Oree doesn't get magical powers that make her a blind person who isn't really blind; Oree moves away from home and gets a job and lives on her own which seems very accurate to me based on my knowledge of one (1) person who is blind; instead of being ~cured~, Oree actually gets more blind at the end of the story and this is considered a Good Ending. Also personal bonus points are awarded for references to her stick being handy for hitting people with. Some stuff was stereotypical, but Jemisin's intent was not. A+, will read again, please support including way more characters who are blind in media. Anyway I enjoyed this one.

The Kingdom of Gods, N. K. Jemisin First off, Jemisin directly up front critiques the narration choices she made in the first two books and then pays it off like a boss at the end. Like holy crap. I admit by now I was getting a bit bored of the genre, but the book was still very engaging because Jemisin is a master. It may also have been affected by how much increasing pain I've been in lately.

The Awakened Kingdom, N. K. Jemisin I'm dead. This one was way more my speed and you need the other three books to understand this novella but ohhhh my god it's perfect. I read a lot of choice passages of this aloud to my roommate because how could you resist. It's still heavy but it's hilarious. Bless Shill.

#sobdasha booking