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tea-earl-grey · 3 months

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For the writer’s ask game: 🖍 and 🤔

from this ask game

🖍: Post any sentence from your wip.

I have a few wips rn but the one I'm actually hoping to finish and post soon-ish is a post s1 Picard fic from Seven and Raffi's pov. a large part of it is shippy but there's a lot of other stuff too including this scene where Seven goes back to the Artifact to find Hugh's body and bury him. (yeah I know this says sentence but uh... here's a full page instead.)

When she looked down at Hugh’s body, face grey and body stiff (like he’s returning to the drone they all are underneath), Seven saw someone who deserved to live.

They were never close friends. They might not had even been friends. Hugh found Seven a few months after Voyager returned and explained that he was an ex-Borg as well, that his unimatrix was split off from the Collective after he encountered a Starfleet vessel and after conflict and infighting, he and thirty others had made it to the Federation. He said that ten more had died in surgery and Seven noticed that Hugh’s scars looked fresher than her’s.

Apparently, as Hugh relayed, he nearly wept after finding out there was another ‘liberated Borg’ (as he said back then, long before the word xB crossed anyone’s lips) on a famous Starfleet ship. And, “Who knows how many more are out there? How many more need our help?” He sounded so hopeful and Seven remembered brusquely asking him to leave. Other former Borg weren’t her concern, she already had Icheb after all, and the last thing Seven wanted were more people pointing out the fact she wasn’t human.

Two years later she left Earth after realizing that no matter what she did and how she acted, no one would think of her as human anyways.

And six years after that, Seven watched Icheb be dissected on a lab table and she started to see Hugh’s point. Maybe sentimentality does have tactical value.

And that same year, before Seven could offer any overtures of an apology, Hugh launched the Borg Reclamation Project. And the Romulans sold Borg parts to the same cruel underground that killed her son, creating more demand that she knew wouldn’t be satisfied with words like ‘ethically obtained’. Seven noticed idealism often clouded people’s vision to what was right in front of them.

They still crossed paths on occasion, mostly when Seven met an xB who needed help or on the occasion when Hugh needed a favor. There were a few subspace messages – Seven asking if Hugh knew a safe doctor to see after she dislocated her arm beyond her own ability to repair. Or another time when Hugh needed a favor on one of the worlds the Rangers patrolled.

The point was – Hugh had long since figured out that Seven didn’t care for his project or his idealism and would happily forget that she was an ex-Borg, xB, whatever the hell you want to call people like them, if anyone would let her.

The point was – Hugh was better than her. He cared more. He wanted a community, a culture, in some broken old Cube. And look where it had gotten him.

Seven picked up his body from the floor. “Are you coming?” she asked the two xBs in front of her.

When neither of them answered, she walked away with Hugh in her arms. These people weren’t her concern.

They were lost, leaderless, broken. They were what Seven could have been so easily if a Starfleet Captain didn’t look at a Borg drone and give her dreams of humanity.

She looked back for just a second.

But Seven lacked Hugh’s earnest hope of a better future and certainly didn’t have Janeway’s hero complex. They deserved someone better than her.

🤔: What's a story you'd love to write but haven't even started yet?

(glances at the notes app on my phone and laughs nervously)

out of the seven years of prompts/ideas I've gathered, I'm probably most likely to write the Star Trek ones at some point and the best ones are:

years after ds9, Jake goes through the death of a loved one and finds himself drawn back to Bajoran religion for the first time in a long while and

something about Voyager and the "died and came back wrong" trope as they come back to Earth and their family members start noticing that they aren't the same people and the grief that accompanies that realization (I did write a small scene of this from Janeway's sister's pov but I need to scrap the whole thing and start over)

i have about 3 fic ideas that are all just character studies of Seven through the lens of disability

a j7 fic where Picard era Seven and Voyager era Seven switch places

a post-ds9 fic where Worf and Ezri realize that since Klingon law doesn't differentiated between Trill hosts, they're still legally married and have to figure out how to get a divorce/annulment (more of a comedy with some moments about grief)

a Voyager/Gallifrey crossover (aka Janeway and Gallifrey era Romana are very similar and they Would Not Get Along)

#asks #thanks for sending this i now have inspiration to write!#unfortunately i also have other things to do today that involve not thinking about Star Trek. smh.#also if anyone is interested in betaing the s1 Picard fic i'm writing feel free to dm me.#i should *hopefully* have a draft done in a week or so #(i've never actually had a beta before but i am far less confident writing these characters than other fics i've done)#long post #my posts

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gryffindorhealer · 6 months

Text

20 Questions for Fic Writers Meme

I am enjoying reading these. I've not been tagged, and I'm not tagging anyone. Because I'm pants at self promotion and I think this will help.

How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently 20, though AO3 says 21. That's due to User Error (mine, and not ruling out others). The first time I tried adding a fic to a Fest Collection, it wound up being posted to both the collection and my home, so it's up there twice.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

240,140, which isn't what AO3 says. See above, I subtract out the duplicate word count from one of the two iterations of Dreaming a Life.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Harry Potter, and that said I've got one crossover written and posted (Nexus), and another WiP (in the editing phase) which hopefully I'll start posting soon (Mystic Dream). Also that said, I really enjoy bringing Guest Charcters into my fics if it works, meaning the Guests are more or less in the role they play in their origin stories (with a bit of leeway), I do my best to keep them in character, they're just playing a similar role in a Potter fic. Examples, Arthur Fish and Barney Miller from the Barney Miller telly program both show up as Aurors; at the small hotel that Ginny and Harry stay in Washington DC over time, Basil Fawlty and Marion Ravenwood appear.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Eloped, Sort Of Meanwhile, Back At the Burrow Dreaming a Life Molly's Nightmares Portrait

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

Yes. Sometimes the response is brief and sometimes longer. Why I respond is that someone enjoyed the story enough to make a comment, at the very least I should be polite and thank them.

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

I haven't written it yet; tbf this is probably because I prefer to write fairly happy endings. That said, Honeymooners ends on something of a cliffhanger…

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

Probably Dreaming a Life.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Without going through all the comments again, I think I received one comment that said I'd written the two characters in the story Out Of Character. It wasn't particularly hateful, at least not to me. And per what I answered above, I thanked them for reading and commenting.

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

Yes. When I believe it fits the story. What kind? I dunno how to answer that, your mileage may vary from mine, cobber.

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

I've written one, Nexus. Well, actually, I've written two, but the second is still being edited. So for now, Nexus is the craziest.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

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

No, and sort of? So far it hasn't been published anywhere, one of the Discord writer's groups I'm in worked on a co-written anniversary fic.

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

In the fandom I write, Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter. I've got other ships in other fandoms, of course. Leia Organa/Han Solo is one. Honor Harrington/Paul Tankersley (though that ends tragically) is another.

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

The future is unwritten; I don't know I will never finish something.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialog, and descriptive "stage" setting. At least, based on feedback from my beta readers.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Confidence in myself, that the words I've strung together will appeal to others. I consider the craft of writing to be a work in progress, and keep studying to make mine better, stronger.

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

When it's appropriate, do it. Translation programs help, and translation programs do not excuse you from finding help from someone who is a native speaker of whatever language. Try, but do not feel obligated, to put enough into a scene to allow readers to get the gist of it by context.

One of the places I do this, I try to avoid writing Fleur Delacour Weasley's French accent attrociously so there's only a few touches in her dialog that hint at that. And what I've done (with the help mentioned above) is when she is feeling strongly about something, she reverts to speaking French. Bill and their children all can speak French as well, though not perhaps the rest of the Weasleys…

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

One which probably no one thinks is a fandom. Hey, I was 12 years old. And no, none of that exists any more. Oh, the fandom? 12 O'clock High

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

While I'm tempted to say I haven't written it yet, I will say I can't narrow it to one. So: Dreaming a Life is way up there. Between the two iterations, it's also the most hit fic I've written. After that one Portrait, Proposals, and Vignettes.

#writing #writers #art

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