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canonicallyobserving911 · 5 months

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WIP Wednesday

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

This is an EPIC LOVE STORY!

Season 7 FANON Speculation: Buddie Multi-Chapter Fanfic - Hiatus Reading: “I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

Chapter 16 is available on AO3 and Chapter 17 will be posted soon.

Currently 16 chapters completed: 549.4K Words Rated: Mature

One chapter will be posted at a time.

I'm excited to finish writing Chapter 17 because there's a lot happening as Buck and Eddie continue to prepare for everything that's going to happen in the next seven weeks.

For anyone who hasn't read Chapter 16, here's a brief overview: Buck and Eddie hired a travel agent to help them schedule everything for their upcoming international adventure. They also hired a tax accountant for the 12-million-dollar settlement money Buck was awarded after the sperm donor lawsuit ended and they hired a financial advisor so they could invest some of it.

They'll tie the knot before Christmas 2023 but they are NOT getting married in the U.S. and they won't have a wedding ceremony until May 2024. Currently, they think Chris is the only person who knows they're together but now several people have witnessed their romantic and emotionally intimate moments including Bobby, Chimney, Athena, Hen, Karen, Maddie and Ravi. Even though Adriana is in El Paso, she realized Eddie and Buck are together too.

Who else is going to realize they're together in Chapter 17?

___________

Here's a snippet from Chapter 17 of a call Buck gets early one morning while Eddie's on shift.

___________

Buck slowly wakes up out of a deep sleep when his cellphone starts ringing. He opens his eyes, looks at the clock on the nightstand and wonders who would be calling him at 4:12AM.

He wipes his eyes, clears his throat then he sticks his arm out from underneath the comforter to grab his cellphone. He looks at the caller ID and when he sees Bobby’s name, he immediately sits up in bed and goes on full alert because he wouldn’t be calling this time of morning unless it was an emergency.

He slides his finger across the screen and in his rough and raspy voice, he answers, “Bobby?”

“Buck?!”

Instantly, he recognizes Bobby’s speaking in his captain’s voice. He knows it well because he’s heard it many times over the last seven years. It’s always distinct and different from his regular speaking voice whenever he’s about to deliver bad news to a victim’s family.

Everything starts happening in slow motion and to him it feels like ginger ale is floating around in his skull. He also feels like he’s drowning because his eyes aren’t focused and it seems like he’s looking through some cloudy water that might be filled with debris or swimming pool cleaner or something else but he's not sure.

A few seconds pass and he realizes the reason he’s having a difficult time seeing is because his eyes are full of tears.

Any words he’s planning to speak get choked in his throat because realization sets in and he knows Bobby’s calling because something bad happened.

His voice is just above a squeak when he whisper asks, “What is it?”

“Buck, listen to me... I need you to meet me Cedars Sinai.”

There’s a lump in his throat now because he knows that tone but he asks anyway, “Why?”

“It’s Eddie…”

He can’t hear anything else after he hears Eddie’s name because a high-pitched noise starts ringing in his ears.

What happened to Eddie? 🧐

How is Buck going to handle it when he arrives at the hospital? 👀

Will he be in a catatonic state of shock like he was after the shooting? 🤷🏽‍♀️

___________

Fic Summary: Months after Buck and Eddie were hit by the same lightning strike; they’re still struggling with the aftermath of it. But before they make their love confessions, they’ll spend time getting to know themselves as individuals first. Eddie learns to enjoy the simple things in life as he participates in activities on his own and with new friends while Buck learns the rest of the 31-year-old deep dark family secret about his conception and birth. Their journey to forever is still a work in progress but once they finally admit they’re in love with each other, everything that follows their love confessions will be cataclysmic.

__________

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 - Eddie makes a new friend while Buck receives devastating news regarding the sperm donation he made for Connor and Kameron.

Chapter 2 - Buck does a lot of research to learn more about the abnormalities found in his red blood cells and Eddie starts a new therapy journey that’s all about him and not the traumas he’s experienced.

Chapter 3 - After more than a month, Buck and Eddie finally spend time together outside of work but it doesn’t end well and they part with a lot of uncertainty regarding their places in each other’s lives.

Chapter 4 - Eddie has a few realizations about his life which causes him to consider moving back to El Paso, TX while Buck continues to be reminded of his past which causes him to take an impromptu road trip across America.

Chapter 5 - Both Buck and Eddie have difficult conversations with their parents and Buck finally learns the truth behind the reason why his mother despised him while Eddie finally tells his mother about the way she tries to control him.

Chapter 6 - More than two weeks after Buck pushed Eddie away after suggesting they needed a break; Eddie decides to try again. Eddie’s there for Buck when he’s at his worst just like Buck was there for him when he was at his worst and he won’t let Buck give up.

Chapter 7 - After Buck’s mental breakdown, Eddie has his back the same way Buck had his when he had his own breakdown more than a year ago. They share several vulnerable and emotionally intimate moments with one another and they begin to realize their small, sweet and caring gestures matter just as much if not more than any grand gesture ever could because these are the foundations of a long-lasting love relationship.

Chapter 8 - Buck, Eddie and Chris all have their own therapists and during their sessions, they reflect on their pasts while they’re in the present so they can prepare for their future together as a family.

Chapter 9 - Buck and Eddie are there for each other when Buck has to testify as a witness during the trial. But by the end of it, they’ll both realize their individual and shared traumas are going to keep resurfacing until they talk about them, deal with the fact that they’re in love with one another and face the fact that they can’t live without each other.

Chapter 10 - As Buck and Eddie finally begin to confront their past traumas, they realize how much they need each other to fill in the gaps of their memories. Additionally, the universe screams at them for what appears to be the one hundredth time so Buck can realize he doesn’t have to ‘find it’ because he already ‘made it’ and Eddie’s reminded tomorrow isn’t promised and he doesn’t have to die alone if he doesn’t want to.

Chapter 11 - A “virga” or dry thunderstorm is in the forecast but once the rain starts, the thunderstorm happening outside won’t be able to match the storm brewing inside between Buck and Eddie. It’s the universe’s final scream and when the tumultuous winds begin to blow, they’ll have one last chance to hold onto everything they’ve built over the last six years or they’ll lose it all forever.

Chapter 12 - Buck and Eddie have always shared a deep physical attraction and an emotional intimacy that’s unmatched but now that they’re in a relationship, they’re learning how to navigate the romantic intimacy they’ve been waiting for six years to explore. The love they have for each other is a once in a lifetime, soulmate, love of their lives type of love that transcends space and time.

Chapter 13 - While navigating the newness of their romantic relationship, Buck and Eddie take advantage of every moment they spend together. As their individual lives, people from their pasts, time constraints and the possibility of losing each other again make attempts to interrupt and interfere with their journey to forever, they love, care for, support and hold onto each other even tighter to withstand it all.

Chapter 14 - Buck and Eddie can see the lights at the end of the tunnels regarding the results of Buck’s Cancer Screening along with everything else they’re dealing with. But are the lights they see exits to the tunnels or are they headlights on different runaway trains that are speeding towards them in an effort to interrupt their forever?

Chapter 15 - Buck and Eddie have known they were exactly who the other one wanted in a partner since they met six years ago when they agreed to have each other’s backs. They’re in a romantic relationship, they’re both preparing to ask the other one to spend forever with them and by the end of the seventh week into their relationship, together they will plan their most important and greatest adventure for their future.

Chapter 16 - As Buck and Eddie begin to prepare for their marriage ceremony that will take place in Rome, Italy in December 2023, they start planning their first international adventure as a romantic couple. Even though Chris is still the only person they’ve told about their relationship, several people who know them have already witnessed the love they share and as the days continue, others will witness it too.

Chapter 17 - Will be posted soon.

__________

Read chapters 1-16 are available on AO3.

Continue reading on AO3

Chapter 17 will be posted soon.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #christopher diaz #the buckley diaz family #buckley diaz family #911 on abc #911 abc #buddie fanfic #ao3 fanfic #911 fanfic #Fanonwriter2023 on AO3 #Hiatus Reading #WIP Wednesday #buddie wip #Chapter 17 will be posted soon.#“I'm still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

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fangirleaconmigo · 16 days

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How do you search Dandelion/Geralt fanfics on ao3? cause on that site Jaskier and Dandelion are one and the same thing

Hello! This is a very good question.

They are the same characters, but can feel distinctly different across formats, depending on what you focus in on. Here is a post I did that includes a link to my write up on differences and similarities across books and show for Geralt.

And sometimes, you are in the mood for a specific flavor. For me, if I'm in a book!Gerlion mood, I search Geralt/Jaskier-Dandelion ship tag, click on it, then filter for the books on the fandom tag.

Yes, people over-tag (I am sure I am considered one of the worst offenders) but it helps a lot.

I just brought up the Ship, and while there are 17, 168 fics for Geralt/Jaskier-Dandelion in the Wiedźmin The Witcher All Media Types fandom, there are only 2482 in the 'Wiedźmin Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski. and 2302 in Video Games.

Are all two thousand some in those categories all properly tagged to the fandom? Probably not. But it narrows it waaaaaaaay down for you. Then I think you just go hunting.

Your ask made me realize that I need to tag my Gerlion fics Gerlion. I think if we all did that, it would help.

And speaking of my fics. For anyone interested, here is my general approach.

I have spent so much time in this fandom and across the formats that my witcher source brain is not even a stew across canons, it's a puree. I don't think I can separate them all out on a broader scale. My Geralt has experienced book Geralt creep for sure. It's all mushed together.

But if I can identify a specific lore in my fic that I can source to one of those sources, I'll tag it. If I mentioned Eskel's succubus or Aiden, then I tag games. If I reference a conversation from the books, I will tag that.

I am not saying this is correct, I am just saying it's what I do.

And if, when I'm writing, the Jaskier voice starts getting more and more arch and sarcastic I go, fuck, this one is Dandelion. lol And I'll put that in my summary or tags somewhere. But I need to go back and make sure I have Gerlion specifically in all of those.

But of course Posada Remix has all four characters, so that one is painstakingly characterized out so that they are all distinct.

So yeah, filter for the books, and some do tag Gerlion, but not all.

I don't know if that helped but hopefully so. Thanks for the ask!

#gerlion #the witcher #geraskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier

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calciseptinefic · 1 year

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a luxury few can afford

Marvel || Wade Wilson/Peter Parker || Part 1 notes: i cannot believe this is what gets me back on tumblr. jfc. this fic is also available on ao3 warnings: discussion of blowjobs?

Peter has exhausted his resources.

Correction: he has exhausted most of his resources. Which are... limited to begin with, as he is a broke college student slash vigilante slash part-time photographer running on little more than fumes and cheap pizza slices. He could maybe find another solution to his problem given more time, energy, and money, but he has none of those things. Zero. Zippo. Nada. And the man he's been tracking—some mid-level goon working for Kingpin—is going to leave the country in less than three days. If Peter doesn't want to waste several months of stake-outs and information gathering, then he needs to resort to his last resort:

Asking a favor of Wade 'Merc with a Mouth' Wilson.

"Sounds like I'm gonna get shot at," Wade says contemplatively around a mouthful of masticated Mexican mush. As is usual, they're sitting on the ledge of a building, feet dangling a dozen stories above a dimly lit alley. "And I charge extra for being shot at. I mean, it's not like being shot at is gonna do anything except temporarily make me look even more like swiss cheese, but..." He takes another massive bite of his food, finishing it. "It's the principle of the thing."

"And what's the going rate for swiss cheese?" Peter asks as casually as possible.

Wade names a price with a few more zeroes on it than Peter can afford.

"Ah," Peter says.

"But for you, baby boy, I can give a discount!"

Peter has a feeling that even a discount would still be wildly outside his budget.

"Let's pretend I don't have any money," Peter says instead of asking, picking at the tinfoil keeping his burrito warm. His late dinner (early breakfast?) is starting to look a little sad, the congealed cheese greasy and the shredded lettuce limp. "Let's pretend the food truck took the last of my already meager paycheck, and that the only thing I have to offer is a favor."

"Ah, the favor," says Wade wisely. "Ye ol' tit for tat. The mutual scratching of mutual backs. The amorphous, ambiguous assumption that sometime in the unknown future, I will need you to do something for me that I am unable to do for myself, for whatever contrived reason the author thinks of."

"Umm, yes?"

"Umm, let me think about this." Wade bunches up the leftover mess of tinfoil and parchment paper from his own meal and tosses it over the side of the building. Amazingly, a few seconds later, there's a soft plink as the ball makes it into an open dumpster. "And my answer is... no."

"Why not?" asks Peter, voice rising.

"Because there's not a whole lot you can do that I can't." Wade shrugs.

"That's not true!" Peter protests.

"It isn't?" The smile Wade gives him is wry, an unexpected flash of straight white teeth against angry, pockmarked skin. "I can't think of much that would require your superhero spidery-ness that I cannot accomplish with a) my distinct lack of morality and b) my god-tier ninja skills. Oh, and c) this pesky inability to die. That's super duper helpful, in the right contexts."

Peter exhales slowly. Usually, he and Wade get along annoyingly well, but sometimes, Wade just annoys. So he tries again, attempting to keep his tone level as he says, reasonably, "Well, maybe there isn't anything you can think of now, at this particular moment—"

Wade interrupts him with a shake of his head. "I'm going to stop you right there, baby boy. This fic is only five k and it ain't tagged for fake dating shenanigans, so... No. I don't think that temporality is the name of the game here."

"It will be two hours of your time," Peter says.

"Ooo, a new angle!" Wade crows. "Still temporal, but okay. Lay it on me."

"Two hours, Deadpool. I need to put this guy away. Now. He's leaving for Germany soon to arrange another shipment, and the new drugs they're flooding our community with have already killed 17 people."

"Firstly, 'our community'? Really? Going for the empathetic, inclusionist vibe?" Then, without pause, Wade points out, "Fisk's men aren't the only bastards dealing. Not exactly going to solve the problem."

"No, it won't," Peter admits. "But I can't keep webbing up random dealers, because it doesn't do anything, because someone else from Kingpin's gang just replaces him. And Kingpin's operation is the biggest provider. If I can get this last bit of proof, then I can hand it over to Matt and get the actual operation shut down. Legally. The supply will be choked. Sure, some random dealers will get the trickle down from the outside, but those guys I can web up."

Wade is quiet. Peter hopes, for a moment, that Wade will sigh, say 'fuck it', and do what Peter wants in exchange for that favor he mocked. Instead, Wade says,

"Still a no, baby boy."

Peter's low-simmering irritation flares into real anger. He knows Wade isn't altruistic and that there are plenty of good reasons he has a darker view of the world. Most of the time, it doesn't bother Peter; in the years he's been Spiderman, he's grown more pragmatic, and he understands the worlds in deeper shades of gray than some of his other superhero counterparts. It's one of the reasons why he gets along with Wade when most people don't.

Right now, however, Wade's apathy for something Peter's struggling with feels like a betrayal. It stings. Deeply. Peter had been trepid about asking Wade because Wade is a wild card with a fondness for explosions and mayhem, but he had been so sure that Wade would say yes. He thought that their friendship—as odd as it was—was beginning to feel like... like... like something else. Like something more. Something that would make Wade sling an arm around Peter's shoulders and say, Okay, baby boy. Anything for you.

But Wade said no. Such sharp, sudden hurt—this needling reminder that Wade comes with a price, even for Peter—makes Peter mean, and he snarls, "Fine, then. If you won't do it because it's the right thing to do, and you won't do it in exchange for a favor, then what do you want? A blowjob?"

Peter knows he's crossed a line the moment it leaves his mouth. The whites of Wade's mask go round in shock and his mouth goes slack. Soft. A moment later, his tongue slides, searching, across his bottom lip. Peter feels a lightning strike of awareness race down his spine and pool in his gut.

"Peter."

"Wade." Peter bristles. "I told you not to use my name when we're—"

"Peter," Wade says again. Lower. Unyielding. "Shut the fuck up for two seconds. Now."

Peter closes his mouth so quickly his teeth click together. The line of Wade's shoulders is so rigid that it looks brittle, as though one quick movement would make him physically snap apart. Peter rarely sees such seriousness from Wade and, truthfully, it worries him, quietly bleeding the last of his irritation from him as two seconds becomes two minutes, becomes two more.

Together, they sit in silence stretched thick and tense, Peter still clutching his half-eaten burrito, Wade with his fists balled atop his thighs. Wade's eyes are open but unseeing, and the rise and fall of his chest is deep and rhythmic. Peter's seen him do it before, a few times, when the voices in Wade's head start screaming so loud he can't think past them; it's an attempt to put himself back into his brain's driver's seat.

A small amount of guilt wriggles beneath Peter's worry. He folds the excess tinfoil over his food and sets it aside. He isn't hungry anymore.

"I am going to give you the opportunity to take that back," Wade says, after a time. His words fall down into his lap; he hasn't looked up since he told Peter to shut up. "Because if you're fucking with me, you tell me, right now. Tell me it's a joke, and we'll laugh about it. Because if you're not serious—"

"I am." Peter interrupts. "Wade, look at me."

Because the thing is.

The thing is.

Peter's thought about it.

About Wade's mouth, his hands, his cock.

Everything about Wade is big. And Peter—who is shorter than the national average and leaner than most—cannot help but be keenly aware of the difference in their sizes. He's thought about it for years, imagining how Wade could completely box him in, how heavy Wade's weight would be atop him, how full Wade's dick would stuff him. Sure, Peter could lift Wade above him with one hand, but it's less about being overpowered and more about being engulfed, cradled or grounded by nothing more than Wade's bulk.

Peter's well aware of the obsession. He's pretty sure it's mutual, considering Wade's preoccupation with his ass and the insane amount of flirting that normally occurs between them, but he's never been sure enough. He hates that it came out like this: something meant to hurt instead of something meant to heal.

"I shouldn't have said it like that," Peter says when Wade tilts his head to the side. Not looking at him directly, no, but enough so Peter can see how carefully blank his expression is. "It wasn't a joke, but I was angry. I mean, I am angry. This means a lot to me and I do need your help, but I shouldn't've... put that out there, like that."

"Well, why not?" Wade says. His voice is still heartbreakingly even. "A little blowie for a little job. Better than a bar of gold to me, baby boy. You know I'm fucking gagging for it."

"In this case I think I'm the one who would be gagging for it," Peter jokes. Then, "Wade. Please. Look at me."

Wade does.

Peter leans towards him and places a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. Wade's textured skin is warm beneath Peter's lips. It isn't how he imagined their first kiss, but it's as dangerous as he knew it would be. Such a small movement, lasting less than a heartbeat, sending a disproportionate wave of heat through Peter's entire body. He begins to pull away and—

One of Wade's hands reaches out and—

Grabs the nape of Peter's neck and—

Hauls him back and—

Wade's mouth is unforgiving on his, closed, pressing so hard that Peter's lips are crushed against his teeth. It's a graceless kiss, bruising. A thin whine rises in Peter's throat as he turns the rest of his body into it, grabbing the straps of Wade's shoulder holsters, fingers desperate to find something to hold onto, to keep him grounded. Just a few, frantic seconds, and Peter already feels undone. Hungry. He shifts his hips, slipping his leans thighs over Wade's legs to crawl into the other man's lap, to bring their bodies close—

Wade yanks himself away, breathing hard.

"No," Wade says, hoarsely. "No no no, not now. Not when you're mad at me though—Jesus fucking Christ, don't think I'm not like, half-chubbed up in my fucking cup thinking about you glaring at me while you blow me. Holy shit, that's like, at least twenty percent of my credit line at the spank bank."

"Wade," Peter begs, his head spinning.

"I know, baby boy, I know," Wade croons. He pushes a thumb to the indent beneath Peter's swollen lip, other fingers curled under Peter's chin. "But if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it later, after the job, when we can get a pillow under your knees and I can see your pretty eyes. You understand?"

"You want me to take my mask off," Peter elaborates.

"I want you naked," Wade clarifies, his voice going low again. "Wanna see how cute you are, how far those freckles go down. Wanna see how red your cheeks get and how you cry when you choke on my cock. Those are my terms. Capice?"

Peter inhales shakily at the mental image, eyes fluttering shut. Him, on his knees, between Wade's massive thighs, struggling to take Wade's cock while Wade's scarred fingers fist in his hair. It will be the first time Wade will see him completely; not just the lower half of his face, mask pulled over his nose, or his bare hand when he takes off his glove to fine tune his web-shooter, but all of him. It's a daunting prospect. Of course it is. Only a handful of people know that Peter Parker and Spiderman are the same person. Can he trust Wade Wilson to be one of those people?

The answer comes quickly.

Yes.

He can.

In truth, over the past five years, Peter has been giving Wade small pieces of himself. Pieces of Spiderman and pieces of Peter. He finds that he's not actually scared of letting Wade see the whole of him. He might still be wary of owing Deadpool a favor—sensibility is not the mercenary's most well-known character trait—but he knows, to his bones, that he can trust Wade, the man, with this. With him.

This is not how I expected tonight to go, Peter thinks mirthfully. Aloud, he says, "When I get what I need, and I get it to Matt, I'll text you my address."

"Fuck me, baby boy," Wade hisses. His big hands, still on Peter's body, tighten briefly, then relax. "Are you absolutely, red-100-underline-underline emoji sure?"

"Been thinking about it, for awhile. Haven't you?"

"Since the day you swung into my life."

"Then you have your answer." Bravely, Peter leans in to bump his nose against Wade's. "I'll text you the details."

Wade rubs their noses together before pulling away. Peter unhooks his fingers from Wade's shoulder holsters and climbs out of Wade's lap, standing on the ledge and taking a step back. The places where they had been touching are unexpectedly cold. Peter quickly tugs his mask back down over his mouth and throat before he's tempted to do something foolish, like climb right back into Wade's arms.

"Tomorrow night," Peter says.

"Tomorrow," Wade answers.

Peter salutes as he lets himself fall off the rooftop. Gravity tugs him down and—fleetingly—he experiences the exhilarating weightlessness of free fall. Then he fires his web-shooter and swings away, the rush of air around him unable to disguise Wade's loud whoop of triumph.

Behind his mask, Peter smiles.

Part 2

#spideypool #spiderman #deadpool #peter parker #wade wilson #rating: e #pairing: wade wilson/peter parker

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littlemisspascal · 2 years

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The Infinity Cube Part 18

Main Pairing: Marcus Pike x Female Reader

Chapter Pairing: Dieter Bravo x Female Reader / Marcus Moreno x Female Reader / Nico x Female Reader / Joel Miller x Female Reader

Word Count: 4600+

Series Summary: When you play with a strange cube, you’re transported out of your current reality with your boyfriend Marcus into brand new ones starring alternate versions of your boyfriend who look and act entirely different every time. With each encounter, you start to wonder if you’ll ever make it back to your real universe?

Warnings for the chapter: Language, canon divergence (Canon? I hardly know her), lots of blood, injuries, violence, weapons--knife, crowbar, guns, major character death, references of sex, angst

Author Note: I’m doing something different with this chapter y’all. Please read the warnings. We’re also very, very close to the end of this fic and I can’t thank y’all enough for coming on this journey. I appreciate every like, comment, and reblog 💝

PART 1 / PART 17 / PART 19

You try to say something back and end up letting out a choked sound instead of words, eyes blown wide with disbelief.

You’re not a virgin–not in this universe or in your own–but regardless, being so boldly propositioned after being assaulted by a bite-happy vampire is more than enough to give you emotional whiplash, thoughts a churning and incoherent mess.

“Are you…” your tongue feels thick and awkward in your mouth, a phantom pinch of pain from when you’d bitten it after Max scared you. “Are you serious?”

Dieter nods, disarrayed and abundantly fluffy curls bobbing with the movement. “Just you and me and a bed…I think we’d be amazing together, angel.”

You tell yourself the sudden bloom of heat in the center of your chest is a reaction to the sunlight and not at all related to the mental image of a shirtless Dieter flickering in your mind.

In past universes, you’ve been dating, engaged, married and also had a child with the different Marcus variants. You probably should have anticipated being dropped into a potentially intimate moment like this one.

You remember the first time you’d turned the cube, when you’d met Din. After consoling you, he’d asked you to join him in his bed, and the memory hurts more than you expect it to. So much has changed since then. You’ve changed since then, not just in terms of continuously swapping physical bodies, but emotionally and mentally as well. You’re no longer only Specs anymore. You’re something else, something more. A hybrid of all the personas you’ve possessed, the loves you’ve experienced, and the losses you’ve endured.

Dio said all will return to the way it was before if you solve the cube, but can you truly trust his word? What if he’s lying? What if the changes are permanent?

If you make it home, will you even recognize yourself?

Dieter remains oblivious to your internal turmoil, still peering at you over the rims of his hundred-dollar sunglasses, eyes squinty and tinted red. He’s high right now, the thought comes out of nowhere, the truth of it makes the warmth in your chest turn cold.

What hurts worse is the distinct feeling he doesn’t actually know who you are. He had smiled at you a time or two when you crossed paths in the hotel lobby, but it was the same smile posted in magazines and on billboards, perfectly mastered with just the right amount of teeth. At the end of the day, he’s the lead actor in this movie and you’re one of several prop assistants. It’d be silly to expect him to pick you out of a crowd, let alone reciprocate the crush you have on him.

Or that’s what the you of this universe believes anyways. The one who doesn’t know about the multitude of realities out there where you and Brown Eyes always end up together, for better or for worse. The one who doesn’t know she has a chance.

But since you are equipped with this knowledge, you find it rather easy telling him, “No thanks.”

Dieter’s surprised, eyebrows lifting higher up his wrinkled forehead. “You’re certain, angel?” He licks his lower lip, seeming uncharacteristically nervous, wringing his hands together. “I promise to be good to you. Anything you want–”

You silence him with a finger pressed against his lips, the corner of your mouth curling into a soft smile. “Trust me, Brown Eyes, it’s better this way. For both of us.”

And it’s the truth. You’d barely withstood the guilt of nearly stealing Orange’s life with Frankie. The consequences of sleeping with Dieter–robbing Angel of the experience and simultaneously cheating on Marcus–would be ones you’d never recover from.

You spare a glance down at the cube in your grip, loathing its existence, how it manipulates you against your will just as you attempt to manipulate it with every twist and turn of your hands. But perhaps what you loathe most of all, you think, watching as a row of broken heart symbols seems to shimmer, reflecting the sunlight, is what the invention of the Devil has taught you about love.

Love doesn’t just come in one form. It shifts and evolves, strengthens and weakens, never appearing the same way twice. Just like the multiverse.

“Okay,” Dieter says at last, and it’s just one word but the way he looks at you when he says it, like you are important to him–like maybe he has known who you are all this time–settles any lingering unease in your stomach. Makes you think Angel will be just fine.

You close your eyes and turn the cube again, knowing that when you open them another universe and another love will be awaiting you.

“Ghost,” someone says, voice tight with concern, and the sound rouses your consciousness.

Blinking your eyes open, you instantly regret it and squeeze them again shut because being awake means being aware of the pain throbbing from your face. Something wet and sticky is oozing from a cut on your forehead, but your brain hurts too much to instruct your arms to wipe it away. There’s a sense of detachment from reality, making it incredibly hard to focus on all the noises and murmurings going on around you, and you can’t stop the groan escaping your throat.

Callused, yet gentle hands cup your face, and that same voice says again, low and muffled by your cotton-stuffed ears, “Ghost.”

You’re almost sure you’re Ghost. Somewhere in your mind, beyond the radiating pain from your head wound and confusion of being unceremoniously dumped in a new universe, familiarity rings a quiet bell.

“I-I didn’t m-mean to hurt her!” Someone–a little girl by the sound of it, you think—says through breath-hitching sobs, utterly distraught. “It–it was an accident!”

“It’s okay, Guppy,” another girl tries to reassure her, but there’s an audible note of nervousness laced in her voice even your weak hearing picks up on. “Ghost will be fine, right, Dad?”

“Of course,” a man replies, and it’s the same person who’s been saying your name over and over, his thumbs softly brushing across your cheeks. You don’t need to open your eyes to know it’s your Brown Eyes. There's a brief pause and then, speaking directly to you, he pleads, “Come on, Ghost. Open your eyes.”

If anyone else had begged you, you would have ignored them. But because it’s him, you can’t resist, squinting through hazy vision to see his face hovering over you, brown eyes shining with worry behind thick black frames.

“Marcus,” you rasp, mouth dry as sandpaper, and there’s a moment where you don’t know what hurts more: your face or your heart. You dig your nails into your palm, but nothing changes. You’re not imagining things or mixing up universes again—this is real. The cube has reached a new level of cruelty, finding another Brown Eyes to tempt you with who shares the same name as your love.

“I’ve got you,” he answers softly, offering a small smile as he peers down at you.

“What happened?” you ask, still unable to remember what exactly led to you lying on the floor in the middle of—you turn your head slightly, taking everything in at a snail’s pace. You’re in the Heroics training gym, noticing the safety padding on the floor and walls. Eyes drifting a little further to the side reveals a group of kids staring back at you, all wearing identical worried expressions.

One girl near the front looks just like Marcus, same dark brown hair and eyes, same little concerned crease between her eyebrows. She has an arm wrapped around the shoulders of a younger, tinier girl who aggressively rubs at her tear-streaked face with her shirt sleeves. You should probably be more concerned about the crying child, but you can’t stop your gaze from returning back to the dark-haired girl.

There’s not a doubt in your mind she’s related to Marcus—the resemblance is too distinct to ignore—which most likely means she was the one who said Dad earlier. And if that’s true then…Marcus has a daughter.

“Training accident,” Marcus says, drawing your attention back to him. “Guppy’s water shark–sorry, Mr. Chompy Face–was spooked by your invisibility and took it out on your face.”

Huh. That might be one of the weirdest sentences you’ve ever heard in your whole life.

Marcus helps you sit up and some of the dizziness starts to clear from your head. He grabs your wrist to stop you from prodding at the still sluggishly bleeding wound above your left brow and narrows his eyes critically at it.

“How’s it look, Brown Eyes?”

“You’ll probably need stitches,” he murmurs, and his fingers squeeze your wrist in a gesture you’re not sure is supposed to be more reassuring for you or for him. “But I don’t think it will scar.”

He looks over at the kids then, specifically Guppy. “It’s alright, sweetheart. A quick trip to the nurse and Ghost will be right back here teaching you and Mr. Chompy Face how to kick butt.”

Guppy doesn’t seem convinced until you give her a soft smile when she looks at you. “O-okay,” she sniffs. “Get better soon, Miss Ghost.”

“Missy,” the dark-haired girl looks up at her father’s voice, “you’re in charge until we get back.”

Missy–what a sweet name for Marcus’ daughter. His daughter. God your brain is really obsessing over that detail right now. Maybe because your only other experience with a child was Frankie’s baby and for as much as the little infant looked like Frankie with her precious curls, there’s something so different and utterly captivating about seeing Marcus’ mannerisms and expressions replicated in the young girl.

As Marcus pulls you onto your feet, three things happen at once.

There is a touch of cold metal where Marcus’ hand is wrapped around your elbow to steady you. A wedding band, to be more precise.

Missy says, “If you see Mom, tell her hi for me.”

And you realize with painstaking clarity there are no guarantees you and Brown Eyes are together in every universe. Nobody ever said life was fair or that love had to be reciprocated.

You want to blame the head injury for your unawareness, but the truth is it should have been obvious from the moment you saw Missy. Frankie’s baby shared at least some of your physical characteristics—Missy doesn’t share any similarities with you at all. She’s half Marcus, half a woman who Marcus calls his wife. A woman Marcus loves dearly—you can tell just by the look on his face right now as he tells Missy of course, eyes soft at the corners with adoration.

A look that up until now you’ve always seen directed at yourself.

You bite your lip, telling yourself not to cry.

You want to leave. You need to leave.

But you can’t without the damn cube, so instead you walk with Marcus down the long hallways of the Heroics’ headquarters to the medical wing, pretending Marcus’ hand on your arm doesn’t have an effect on you or your fragile heart. Marcus mistakes your silence as a side effect of your head injury, reassuring you that the stitches and a couple of painkillers will make you feel better.

Maybe they’ll help with the external wound, but the internal ones? From this universe and Max’s universe, Veracruz’s and Dave’s and all the other times you’ve been hurt, stressed out, and absolutely terrified? Those won’t be going away any time soon. You privately doubt they’ll ever truly go away at all.

You find the cube when you’re ushered into one of the offices to wait for a nurse, sitting on the counter in-between a jar of cotton balls and tongue depressors. The part of you that isn’t on the verge of crying wants to laugh because of course it’s waiting for you here. Of course you’d find it only after the distressing truth is revealed.

Inhaling a ragged breath, you sneak one last peek at Marcus talking to some of the nurses outside the room, a friendly grin on his face. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen your Brown Eyes smile so brightly, totally at ease. He doesn’t seem tired or worn out or rough around the edges. No tension in his shoulders from carrying the weight of the world.

A question takes shape in your mind right as you twist the cube, igniting your insecurities all at once like a wildfire: how many Brown Eyes are happier and better off out there without you in the picture?

The pool water is blue and crystalline, refreshingly cool against your calves, bringing a smile to your face as you lightly kick your feet. Sunlight filters in through the overhead trees, caressing your arms, and you didn’t think it was possible to find the perfect balance of temperature between hot and cold but this particular spot right here on the tiled edge of the pool is absolutely perfect.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

Nico gazes at you from the other side of the pool, black turtleneck clinging tightly to his broad shoulders, brown eyes knocking the air from your lungs with their piercing intensity. He smirks, a little smug around the edges, as if he knows exactly what kind of effect he has on you.

And if you could breathe, you’d laugh at yourself because you’re so gone for this man. All it takes is one look and your heart is his.

“You’re not so bad looking yourself,” you say with a teasing arch of your eyebrows.

Nico’s gaze lowers and you might think he’s shy as he trails his fingertips over the water’s surface if not for the lingering smirk. You watch the ripples, how they distort his reflection, and for a second he looks like another man. Another man so very much like Nico, and yet so very different. Hair a little shorter, features a little softer with youth, eyes a little more expressive.

You blink and there’s your Nico again. He reminds you of the sun–blazing and passionate, unignorable, and always out of reach no matter how hard you try to close the distance.

Sunken in the depths of the pool, the cube waits for you to make a decision.

Nico starts muttering about future renovations he’d like to see done to the house looming behind him–a massive, rectangular structure, all white in color with large glass windows viewing straight into the living room and kitchen–even though you both know he’ll never be the type to settle down and establish roots.

It’s easy enough to tune him out, hypnotized by the sight far below your swishing feet. Dio claimed the cube showed up exactly when and where you needed it. So, what does it say about this universe, that the cube would choose such a low resting place?

You’re not paying attention to Nico, until–

“A fireplace would be nice, don’t you agree, mi sirenita?” he’s saying, still making ripples with his fingertips. “We could make love by the fire on winter nights…”

Make love. Those are emotional words, affectionate and tender. They’re sugar sweet on his tongue. Blissfully warm. You could listen to him speak for hours and hours.

Something twists unpleasantly in your chest. You wonder if this is how Icarus felt when he flew too close to the sun, wanting to linger in the beauty of it all so badly he stopped caring about the consequences.

“I’d like that.” There’s a tremor to your voice which immediately catches his attention, and you can feel his eyes on you, steady and burning, even though you don’t look up to meet them. “It sounds like a nice home.”

“Yes,” he agrees after a long moment spent scrutinizing you. “I’ve never had a home before. Never really wanted one, to be honest. But I think…there is something appealing about the idea of sharing one with you.”

That unpleasant pain twists sharper, and you understand now why the cube waits for you at the bottom of the pool. It’s to remind you that just like Icarus, no matter how much you wish or how far you stretch your hands out, you’ll never touch the sun. Sooner or later, as long as the cube remains unsolved, you’re destined to get burned.

You push off the edge, plunging underwater without a second thought. Your eyes sting and your clothes stretch and expand, but down, down, down you go. Arms reaching out, legs kicking. Sirenita has always loved the water and it’s only because of her routine of weekly swims that your lungs don’t seize up before you reach the bottom and the cube is back in your hands again.

When you turn it this time, anger burns in your veins. This place was too beautiful, too seductive, too damn tempting. It doesn’t feel like a victory anymore to switch universes. Not when your heart tears a little more with every man you fall for and must leave behind.

Home, you think desperately, just before you pop out of existence, recalling your apartment where Marcus’ things have slowly, gradually become intermixed with yours. I just want to go home.

Blood.

There is so, so much blood.

Hands restrain your arms, a knee in the center of your back keeping you pinned to the concrete floor. Your assailant’s grip tightens when you struggle, bruising your wrists while they press more of their weight on you, crushing your ribcage.

Cuts litter your face and arms, stinging against the chill of the autumn air, but you barely notice the pain. All you can see, all you can focus on, is Joel.

A beaten and bloody mess, barely holding onto consciousness by a mere thread, making this god-awful wheezing sound with every breath. His brown eyes are open, but glossed over, unseeing, body sprawled out on the floor like a puppet whose strings have been cut. A scarlet pool forms beneath him, drip by drip flowing freely from his injuries.

“Joel,” you rasp, tears leaking out of the corners of your eyes. You just want him to look at you, to tell you what to do because everything is falling apart and he always knows the right thing to say to calm you down. He’s always been the only one who knew how to make the pain of this hellhole of a world go away.

A figure crouches down next to Joel, face unrecognizable beneath the hood of their coat, a crowbar in their hand slick with freshly spilt blood.

It was supposed to have been a regular, run-of-the-mill supply run. Get in, get out, and head back to Jackson. It was supposed to have been a beautiful day with nice weather and even nicer company. The first time you and Joel have been alone in weeks without anybody else from the community needing your attention.

The old shipping warehouse some of the community’s scouts found last week had been easy to break into. (Too easy, you’ll realize in hindsight.) Inside had been a little like a treasure trove of miscellaneous items—books, technology, canned goods, pieces of nostalgia from a lifetime before the outbreak.

You’d found a box of old movies, covered in dust with most of the discs cracked, and started asking Joel about them while he packed his bag with whatever he deemed worth bringing back. The mood had been light, both of you bantering back and forth.

“Admit it, Brown Eyes,” you’d taunted, holding up a dvd with a couple kissing on the front, “this is how you would have wooed me if we’d had normal lives. Dinner and a movie, maybe walk me up to my front door and try to sneak a kiss, hmm?”

Joel huffed a laugh through his nose. “I don’t think anybody living in this century says wooed anymore, sunshine.” A pause. “But yeah. That sounds about right. You would have been completely and totally wooed.”

And then a gunshot obliterated the tender moment, bullet slicing through the cartilage of Joel’s knee, dropping him with a howl of agony.

A pair of figures in dark clothes and hoods emerged from the shadows. The taller of the two disarmed you and delivered several nasty slashes with a knife before you could even think of defending yourself. They said nothing, gave away no hints of their identities.

Fighting back against the weight on your back proved fruitless. Helplessly, you were forced to watch the unknown figure pull out a crowbar and slam it against Joel’s body, forced to listen to every sickening crack of bone, every whimper and grunt. Panic clawed at your lungs, heart threatening to beat out of your chest, and you’d wanted to scream but couldn’t find your breath, couldn’t understand what the hell was happening. Why it was happening.

“What do you want?” you ask, tremors racking your body, eyes locked on Joel’s across the gap of distance, still silently begging him to say something, do something.

The hooded stranger’s head tilts, acknowledging your question but doesn’t provide an answer to it. Instead, they trail the edge of the crowbar over Joel’s face, smearing the blood like it’s paint on a canvas.

“Stop it,” you spit out, teeth clicking together. “Leave us the hell alone! I swear to God I’ll kill you—”

The rest of your threat is cut off by the shifting of pressure on your spine and lungs as the second unknown entity leans forward, mouth near your ear so close you can feel their hot breath on your marred cheek. “God stopped listening a long time ago.”

His voice sounds like he regularly gargles with rocks. The blood rushes in your ears, head spinning, and panic rolls through your body, an icy, nauseating wave. He’s made a mistake though, face so close to the back of your head, and you rear up with a battle cry, skull busting his nose with an echoing crack.

The man’s grip loosens. You take advantage of the moment of weakness, squirming like mad and managing a solid elbow to his stomach. Rolling over, you grapple with the nameless man, using your smaller flexibility against his thicker bulk, screaming curses at him the whole while.

Your hands are still trembling, jittery with shock, and it takes two attempts to snatch the knife from his waistband—your knife he stole from you, the one with the engraving of a sun on the handle—before burying the blade home in his chest, puncturing his heart with a wicked sneer on your lips.

There isn’t time to celebrate the win. In one fluid motion, fueled by a volatile cocktail of momentum and adrenaline, you push his body off and seize the gun tucked in the holster at his hip, aiming at his partner.

You pull the trigger, an explosion of sound rattling every bone in your body, and then the second attacker is knocked backwards off their feet, hood slipping off to reveal a young woman with a scarred face, a gaping hole in the center of her chest gushing red. You feel more than hear your heavy exhale of air, ears still ringing, panic still clawing at your nerve endings. You have no idea who they were, what they wanted except to clearly release their pent-up aggressions upon you and—

“Joel,” you breathe, setting the gun aside and crawling across the floor. Your hands hover over his body, wanting to touch but fuck there’s so much blood. It seeps through the fabric of your jeans where you’re kneeled next to him, warm and sticky, coats his face and his backside. He’s still making that awful whistling, wheezing sound as he fights for each breath.

“Oh fuck, Joel,” your voice reaches a new pitch, hysteria creeping in. “Oh God. I–You can’t—Please Joel, don’t leave me. Not like this. Not like this.”

There’s no indication he hears your pleas. No fluttering of his eyes, no twitching of his fingers when you reach for them, nothing at all.

A whine burns a hole in your throat. He needs help. He needs a hospital. Something that is already hard to find in this world overrun by an incurable infection. But a working one? Damn near impossible.

And even if you could find one, you don’t have the strength to get him there on your own. Which means…Which means he’s going to…

“No,” you choke out, fear twisting your stomach into knots. “Damnit Joel, please get up. Look at me, Joel. Look. At. Me!”

But instead of looking at you, of showing you those beautiful brown eyes you love and adore, his breathing hitches and slows, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

You press your forehead against his temple, uncaring of the blood smearing across your skin, dousing your hair. “Joel, don’t do this,” you sob, teardrops raining down upon his face. “Stay with me. Just a little longer.”

We deserve a better story than this.

Recognition bursts in your mind, a lightning strike eliciting a sharp gasp. That’s…not the first time you’ve thought of those words. There had been another moment, so very long ago, where the situation had been reversed and you were the one dying. Where Joel had brought you a cube to make the pain go away.

No. Not Joel.

Pero.

You lean back on your heels, a bead of blood sliding down your forehead and along the ridge of your nose before following the tearstained track down your cheek.

It happened again, you think, blinking slowly. I forgot who I really am.

Looking down at Joel is a mistake that threatens your fragile grip on your identity. His body is still. Silent. He’s…gone. He’s dead, and yet you can still feel the phantom touch of his hands around your waist, his lips on yours with the roughness of his beard scratching at your chin.

You turn away with a scream, slamming your fists against the cement, unleashing the multitudes of anger and pain and heartache contained within your body.

Minutes or possibly hours later, you sit there, breathing through your nose because your throat is raw and inflamed. Everything hurts beyond words. Your back and shoulders ache from the man pinning you down, several ribs possibly cracked. Knuckles split open, bits of bone peeking out.

This universe has reduced you to a bleeding and quivering mess of agony, surrounded by bodies, one of them your Brown Eyes.

And still you push yourself onto your feet. Still you scrutinize the warehouse shelves and boxes. Still you keep looking for the cube. Your heart is numb, your hopes shattered, but there’s nothing worth staying here for. Not anymore.

Your muscles throb with each step, but maybe there is a higher power listening after all because somehow, miraculously, you find the golden cube on a shelf next to a stack of books. Your shoulders tense when you notice the titles match the ones discussed with Ezra. Cloud Atlas on top of the pile.

The cube vibrates in your hands when you grab it. A short wobble of movement you’re unsure what to think of. If it’s trying to soothe you or if it’s laughing at your pain. And then you think: Does it even matter?

Joel’s still going to die, Sunshine’s still going to mourn, and you’re still going to carry the trauma from this universe into the next one.

When you turn the cube with your blood-soaked hands, one thing is certain: you’re losing this fight.

You can’t solve the Infinity Cube. You can’t save the thief’s heart or reunite him with his dear. It’s all too much. There’s too much at stake, too much pressure on your chest, too much suffering. You’re never going to make it home, never going to see Marcus again and you can’t change it–you can’t stop it.

The thief’s punishment will continue on and on and on…

…

Unless…

Unless it’s possible the cycle which began with one Brown Eyes’ mistake, can be undone with the help of another Brown Eyes.

Maybe you’ve been a fool this whole time, trying to do this all by yourself.

Maybe there is still a little hope left to believe in after all.

…

“Javi, what do you know about the multiverse?”

#the infinity cube #dieter bravo x reader #nico x reader #marcus moreno x reader #joel miller x reader #dieter bravo x you #house comes with a bird #marcus moreno x you #the last of us hbo #pedrostories #my writing #my fic

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chocochipbiscuit · 7 months

Text

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I was tagged by @anneapocalypse, thank you Anne! <3

And I would like to tag @replicafatale. @formlessvoidbeast, @bittylildragon, and @meikuree if you are so inclined!

Blank questions for your convenience! My answers are below the cut.

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. do you get hate on fics?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

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

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

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

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

1. how many works do you have on ao3? 178, over almost 10 years! Though I suspect if I actually went back to tally them, the vast majority would be skewed towards my early years, back when I’d crank out a fic or two every week for the kink meme then post with minimal editing. Ah, youth.

2. what’s your total ao3 word count? 910,453! Again, I strongly suspect they’re skewed towards the beginning.

3. what fandoms do you write for? I started out pretty intensely monofandom for Fallout, but I write a lot of Dragon Age these days. Which is ironic because I don’t consider myself ‘that’ big a Dragon Age fan, but the fandom exchanges are fun and I’m familiar enough with the setting and characters that I don’t mind picking up pinch hits or writing impulsive ‘what if’ fics.

In general, I almost exclusively write for video game fandoms. (with a few books thrown in…)

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

The Vashoth and The Qunari (Dragon Age, The Iron Bull/F!Qunari Inquisitor, rated E)

Belief (Fallout 4, Cait/F!Sole Survivor, rated G)

A Dream of Red (Dragon Age, Leliana/Morrigan, rated E)

And They Say Size Doesn’t Matter (Fallout 3, Fawkes/F!Lone Wanderer, rated E)

Data Collection (Fallout 4, Cait/F!Sole Survivor, rated E)

Basically: they’re all older fics, mostly smut, and mostly written while the fandoms were still new (or new-ish) and popular. The Vashoth and the Qunari was written before Inquisition even came out, and was written mostly from frenetic fandom speculation. I wouldn’t call it my best fic, just one that happened to strike while the hype machine was still active.

And They Say Size Doesn’t Matter has the questionable distinction of being the longest mutie smut fic on AO3, mostly because each chapter was written for various kink meme fills and then put somewhat in order. It makes me cringe a bit to reread it (I could do it so much better now! I could write with so much more nuance! I would have made less questionable decisions about characterization and description, or at least different questionable decisions!) but I still look back fondly on it.

5. do you respond to comments? Absolutely, though I’m rather late to respond sometimes! The only ones I don’t respond to (and usually just delete) are comments that make demands without any other attempt at interaction. (Ex: “next time write X/Y with New Kink” or “tag your trans characters” when there’s a perfectly nice author’s note at the beginning if you feel shocked or scandalized by the existence of trans characters in a fic that doesn’t focus on being trans and where the trans characters are minor or background!)

…anyways, mild aside: I consider tagging to be both warning (“please don’t read if X, Y, or Z bothers you, or at least prepare yourself”) and advertisement (“please do read if Tropes A, B, or C are appealing to you!”) rather than simple description. If I went out of my way to describe everything that might be relevant in a fic, including every single minor character who gets a single line of mention, then my tags bloat beyond what I consider useable. I try to include notes at the beginning to clarify or mention content that I don’t think needs to be warned/advertised for. Which is part of why I find it weird and borderline hostile to have specific identity tags demanded without explanation.

(And that said, I tag myself biracial bisexual….nah.)

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I don’t write a lot of angst, but I do have a story that ends ‘unhappily for now’!

Schroedinger’s Pussy (The Locked Tomb, Gideon/Harrow, rated E) is a fic about yes, pussy spanking, but also denial of feelings and ends with an unresolved sex thing that Harrow refuses to talk about, and Gideon in an empty room. In my head they’ll work through it (eventually) but obviously, not in this fic!

The weirdest dark fic I’ve written was an older kink meme fill, and it’s something that I promised from the beginning would only end in pain.

Pain (Fallout: New Vegas, Vulpes Inculta/Rose of Sharon Cassidy/Boone Craig, rated E) is morally dubious not-actually-a-love-triangle fic with under negotiated BDSM and an ambiguous ending that most likely ended with Vulpes’ off-screen death at Cass and Boone’s hands. It’s a fic I still think about sometimes, not because I think it was the best, but because I feel like it shows when I was more willing to be weird and experimental around fraught topics and messy dynamics. I don’t write that sort of thing now simply because I don’t enjoy it, but I’m still glad I had the experience of experimenting.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I love happy endings, but don’t often enjoy fluff! By which I mean: I want a happy ending to feel earned. I prefer desserts that have a little salt or bitterness to cut through the sweet and add balance. I want a fic to feel the same way.

That said: I think most of my fics have happy endings, if not always fluffy one.

That also said, I think never gonna say I’m sorry (Borderlands 3, Amara/Tyreen Calypso, rated E) fits the bill because it’s both a fix-it fic and villainous decay arc and I love that for Tyreen, the emotional journey and character growth she goes on from wanting to destroy the world to being willing to destroy herself in order to save it, and ultimately being pulled back to be told no, sometimes you gotta live even when it feels so much harder.

Fun fact: this fic has two endings, one in which Tyreen murders her brother (because just because she’s trying to be a good guy doesn’t mean she’s actually a good guy yet!) and one in which she tries the harder and messier path of not murdering him. I originally wrote the murder chapter because I didn’t think Tyreen would be at the point of being willing to forgive her own brother for attempting to kill her, but @bittylildragon made a note that essentially Troy was being punished for twink crimes, so I decided what the hey, I’ll try an alternate ending. And now I think that’s actually my favorite!

8. do you get hate on fics? Not on AO3. Some on Tumblr before I closed my inbox to anons. A couple on the old kink meme, back when it was self-destructing from the weirdly polarizing “Gay Wasteland” vs “the icky hets” arguments.

Funnily enough, I don't think I ever received a homophobic comment from a straight person! (Straight hate?). But I sure got comments accusing me of being ‘secretly het’ or a ‘proghet’ or ‘trying to trick lesbians into reading Big Dude/Smol Lady’ fic! Because fandom forbid being a bi woman who prefers to read and write fic that centers women! Even if that means that sometimes this means reading, writing, or recommending F/M fic instead of M/M!

Anyways. My AO3 bookmarks and works list are free for anyone to peruse, in case you want a statistical breakdown of my preferences for F/F >>> F/M > M/M so you can yell at me about not prioritizing M/M. /sarcasm

(And as always: I do read, write, and enjoy fics that feature nonbinary characters. I always feel weird including that as an aside, because there’s so little nonbinary rep in general that it feels weird trying to analyze anything from that, and ‘nonbinary’ is a big enough umbrella that even as someone who sometimes prefers they/them, I don’t necessary resonate with or feel represented by all nonbinary characters in fiction. Which is fine! When there’s so few examples, it feels even more fraught because no single character or person can Be All The Rep, and it feels like a weird sort of pressure to presume that they are, can be, or should be. Sometimes a character should just be allowed to exist, be interesting, and be nonbinary, without going ‘oh they’re such a good role model!’)

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind? I cut my teeth on a kink meme, of course I write smut! As for what kind…whatever catches my interest, really? Which means mostly F/F, if there are dudes involved at all they’re usually Real Big Dudes. There’s usually loving attention to oral sex. Often size kink. I also like including bondage and anal sex.

I’ve been writing a lot less smut in recent years. (I’ve also been writing a lot less in general, or at least posting a lot less, for various reasons. Mostly because now that I’m no longer working graveyard shifts and am out of a time-consuming bad relationship, I have more time for non-fandom hobbies!) Partly it’s because…well, repetition. When I first started writing for kink memes, my purpose was just to write; pick a prompt, bang something out, post. It was the exhilaration of writing, of starting something new.

Now: if I’m going to write, I want to do it in a way that feels new or fresh to me, whether that means in terms of prose, emotional depth, or characterization. There’s also, admittedly, some self-consciousness: I’m no longer ‘just’ writing for prompts on a kink meme, I have the (gasp) terrible responsibility of admitting that I wrote a thing just because I like it, or think it’s interesting! It’s the tension between realizing that nah, I haven’t written anything that truly makes me blush in ages, and then the mortification of going “but who else is gonna be interested in this weird goofy playful fic where Piper sits on a birthday cake???”

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written? I’m not usually a fan of crossovers; I prefer looking at a character in their ‘home’ story and setting and how their environment shaped them. Some crossovers can be interesting if they add a new depth or layer to the existing canon (which I think is one of the reasons that Pacific Rim AUs were so popular for a while; drift-compatibility is an interesting way to explore characterization and relationships!) but I don’t often write them myself.

That said, ‘often’ doesn’t mean ‘never.’ I’ve written some AUs (unfinished Cassandra/Leliana werewolf fic, the moody cannibal mermaid AU with Aveline/Isabela) but full on crossovers are a different entity.

The closest to a crossover that I currently have is the still untitled Fallout Necromancy AU, in which I merge some of The Locked Tomb’s approach to necromancy with Fallout 4 for some incredibly unhealthy cav/necro codependencies for necromancer Hancock and cavalier Danse. It’s more true to Fallout’s canon than TLT, and still unfinished. Alas.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen? I’ve had some of my fics scraped and posted to shady publishing sites (“only $5 for all the stories you want!”) and submitted takedown requests. No in-fandom stealing that I’m aware of.

12. have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! Here is a Russian translation of what we don’t talk about (Mass Effect, Zaeed Massani/Karin Chakwas), which I was absolutely tickled pink to receive!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before? Technically, yes. The fic has been subsequently deleted and I have abolished all ties to that person, so that might be a warning. /tongue in cheek

More seriously: I don’t think I can. I’m idiosyncratic and particular about my process, and I just don’t think I’m very good at co-writing with someone. I can take an idea and feedback and process that into my fic, sometimes very heavily, and I can work off someone else’s outline or prompt, but to the level of co-writing, assuming we’re taking equal claim and responsibility for the work? It feels profanely intimate in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable, which unfortunately probably says more about me than anyone else!

That said: I have been fortunate enough to have truly excellent friends who have also played cheerleader and beta for me, sometimes offering me substantial notes that meant I had to fundamentally rewrite portions of a story. Does this make them co-writers? I don’t think so, but it’s definitely a more intense collaboration than I usually request, and it’s something I reserve for only a few people.

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship? How dare you ask this of a multi-shipper!!!!

I don’t know that I have a real answer for this. In my head, I try to split it by fandoms (but wait! Would I consider Dragon Age Origins, Awakening, DA2, and Inquisition to all have different fandoms?), but some fandoms are only occasional urges and others are more consuming passions, so….

I’ll leave it at this: if I’ve written it, I probably ship it on some level. And not all ships are “oh I think they’re gonna live happily ever after,” some ships are “hm, that could be interesting” or “oh, they could be so bad for each other in such compelling ways,” and others are “they’re good for each other at this point in time, but maybe not beyond that,” etc etc.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? If I want to finish it, I assume I eventually will. ‘Eventually’ may take a while. Life is short, love is long, and I do love stories.

16. what are your writing strengths? *hour-long fart noise* Strengths? Idk. I always feel strange talking about my strengths to begin with, and this year has been particularly rough for that because I’ve been taking more deliberate time doing writing exercises and reading different books about writing. It makes me more critical of my own work.

But if I must: sensory immersion. Character interiority. Basically, I try my best to love a character—or at least find something I can love about them, something that evokes care and pity if not admiration—and let that shape how I write them, even if they don’t love themselves. If that makes my authorial bias a bit kinder, then so be it. I feel like the world needs a little more kindness.

17. what are your writing weaknesses? *hour-long fart noise* What about my love of obscure words? If I had a nickel for every time I tried to sneak ‘palimpsest’ into my prose and been called out by a beta, I’d have two nickels! Which isn’t that often, but weird that it happened twice! (Other amazing words I often fight over including or not: phosphenes, mordant, triptych, chiaroscuro, bellicose, gelid. I get a daily word of the day from Merriam-Webster and I don’t know if it’s actually improved my vocabulary or only made me more insufferable!)

I fully admit that sometimes I get overly compelled to write something ‘pretty’ and linguistically clever than fully in the character’s voice. I jump around with sentence fragments and don’t link my scenes; sometimes it works (choppy, disjointed prose for characters who themselves are extremely angry or disconnected from their environment in some way) and more often it doesn’t.

I have mild synesthesia and an idiosyncratic interpretation of certain stimuli, and often need to revise to ensure it makes sense to anyone else. Or if I can tweak it just enough to sound refreshing and vivid. (Example: low musical notes feel ‘blue’ to me, and often bitter. Higher notes can be sharp-sweet or acidic, but usually don’t have a color association. Yellow is rancid. This only becomes a problem when I’m sleep-deprived or highly-caffeinated, as when I once had to stop my playlist because the rapid taste/sound/smell combos were making me nauseous.)

I often want to write characters as softer, kinder, or gentler than they are in canon. Does that sand out their complexity? Yes. Is it because I want them to have a kinder, softer, or gentler future than what their story gave them? Also yes.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? OH BOY DO I HAVE THOUGHTS.

Okay, so! First of all, I need to foreground this: as a Chinese-American living in the US, I find it extremely off putting when I read a story and the mere choice of capitalization and italics make it clear who the author thinks their intended audience is, and who is ‘other.’ If an author bothers capitalizing or italicizing “Pad Thai,” “Sushi,” or “Shu Mai,” (as in: “I ordered some Shu Mai.”) but not, say “Pizza,” “Burrito,” or “Croissant,” there are some pretty big assumptions going on already that make me feel alienated from the text. (As always, there’s some room to play with: if the author is intentionally writing their POV character as having those particular biases, that’s one thing. When it’s a completely unexamined bias, that’s another.)

Translated text doesn’t need to be italicized or marked as other, unless again, there’s a specific reason that the POV character might see it as ‘other.’ Most people won’t interpret their home language or heart languages as ‘other.’ A dialogue tag like ‘said in Cantonese’ or ‘said in Spanish’ is sufficient, I’ll trust in the reader to pick it up!

I am a first-generation Chinese-American who can’t read the Chinese syllabary. (And what little I speak is Cantonese, not Mandarin. The loss or use of heritage languages across the diaspora is an entire topic by itself, so please understand that this is one person’s view and experience.) Some Chinese writers prefer to write with hanzi; I prefer to write Romanized versions but what goes in a fic will depend on the POV character’s relationship to the language and how intelligible (or not) it’s meant to be to the reader. I generally include context or a note if it’s meant to be clear; if it’s something that the POV character won’t understand, I often prefer to leave it as “speaks in another language” or “said something in another language.”

In general, I find most fictional languages to be intellectual masturbation (there, I said it! :P) and am less interested in those than in how real-world languages are depicted in fiction, especially when read by people who may or may not be familiar with those actual languages and the people who speak them.

19. first fandom you wrote for? While the first fandom I ever posted for was Fallout…very technically I suppose the first fandom I ever wrote for was Pokemon. Because back when I was 9 or 10, I was very invested in Misty and Jesse because they were the only two girls who got a lot of screen time in the anime, and I just really wanted them to be friends!

In hindsight…I don’t think I was consciously thinking of it as shipping terms or romantic interest, but I thought it sucked that the only two girls who really showed up couldn’t at least be friends. So I wrote a lil’ story in which they got trapped in a cave…and obviously they had to camp together…and save each other as they looked for a way out…

Scandalous!!!!

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written? I try to love every fic at least a little before I share it with the world! But this one’s my newest baby:

(love is) the suture and the wound (Dragon Age, Leliana/Morrigan, rated E)

Thank you for reading this far! Now please drink some water and get up and stretch. :P

#choco's premium original content #20 questions for fic writers #tag memes

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missyourflight · 7 months

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Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

ty @veryspecificfantasies and @love-leah for the tags 💕

1. How many works do you have on ao3? 40 counting a couple of anons

2. What's your total ao3 word count? 193,217

3. What fandoms do you write for? just f1 at the minute - i've signed up for yuletide this year (finally a chance to get unbanned lol) so it'll be nice to have a go at something else

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? So let's say, I'll come another day (1d ziam time traveller's wife au), tomorrow on every shore (maxiel below deck sailing yacht au), Somewhere in the heart of Rome (maxiel roman holiday au), let's explore your talent (BTS femmeslash tentacles in space), all creatures wild and tame (maxiel 🦑). 2 tentacle fics in the top 5 is so funny lol... my brand

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? yes i try to! at least for the first while after something's posted. i like the livejournal vibes of a comment thread

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? i'd call them bittersweet endings rather than angsty endings but each part and grassy bits in between and Somewhere in the heart of Rome both end with the couple parting after a brief time together but like, hopefully with the sense that they found something meaningful in each other. and roman holiday kind of gets a happy ending later. kind of

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? tomorrow on every shore is probably the most uncomplicatedly happy in that they basically sail off into the sunset together. i think a lot of my fics end with like, the sense of relief or reconciliation of finding each other again, uniting your fantasy kingdoms, escaping a clone dystopia etc

8. Do you get hate on fics? not anywhere i can see it at least!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? i saw someone say that they think of themselves as writer of erotica rather than romance, and as far as that's a useful distinction re: fanfic i would definitely fall on the Romance side of it (i have read so many romance novels lol).

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? not so much crossovers with like the two sets of characters together. i may have been known to write an AU or two in my time.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that i know of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? yes!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? not published, but i had a wild time in like 2011 writing a deeply angsty and horny hal/hotspur boarding school au with a friend

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? maxiel to write, but you don't even want to see the number of pinboard bookmarks i have for merlin/arthur, ~gryles, arthur/eames, frank/gerard, stucky... it's just so many bookmarks. a ship in a smaller fandom that truly fucks me up is childermass/segundus from jonathan strange & mr norrell. bbc hot childermass you have So much to answer for

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? i don't have a lot of wips that i'm working on beyond like notes app until i start properly writing one up... i have like a maxiel omegaverse roleplay thing that i started that i don't think i can pull off the way i want to tragically

16. What are your writing strengths? hm humour? dialogue. concision. nicely turned sentences. longing and/or pining etc

17. What are your writing weaknesses? oh god. i write very slowly and all over the place and i can't sustain a plot or write anything very long. bad at sex scenes. pretty emotionally shallow. no original ideas only aus. thanks i hate it

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? i mostly find it jarring and i don't really do it

19. First fandom you wrote for? merlin 🧙‍♂️ it was an empire records au, obviously

20. Favorite fic you've written? each part and grassy bits in between is the most like nakedly personal. i still enjoy tomorrow on every shore a lot when i reread it. i'm so tender about clone max. i really loved the process of writing magnets, the pull of the moon but now that it's out i feel less good about it lol. it's like embarrassing to say but honestly when you work on something for months and it gets less ~engagement than something very silly you spent a day on it feels, let's say, disheartening. and there are like any number of reasons why something ~hits and something else doesn't - i myself, a hypocrite, have so many open tabs rn of things i loved and still need to comment on - and it makes me feel really small and mean and churlish to tell myself writing is something fun that i do for myself because i enjoy it and then turn around like, i didn't get enough compliments on that one actually (i'm a leo if you didn't know). and i did get some truly lovely comments i will treasure and i did what i wanted to do with that story and i loved writing it and i do think it's a good story even! just like the gap between your hopes and reality sometimes is deeply mortifying. like it's embarrassing that i was excited about it. it feels weirdly exposing even though nobody is ever thinking about you as much as you're thinking about yourself lol

#tag game #writing #sophposting

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unfriendlyamazon · 6 months

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20 question writer meme

love to do these thank you for taggin gme @alectoperdita

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

51 fics (plus a secret one when i made a fire emblem ao3)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

222,579 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

YGO is my main one, but i'd really like to break into stardew valley and aforementioned fire emblem 3 houses

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Baby Dragon (no surprise there)

Liking You and Me

Sweater Weather

In Awe of Flowers

A Hand to Hold

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

I do my very best to respond to comments because they make me so happy but sometimes if the fic is really old or I just don't feel like it I may not.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't really write a lot of angsty fics. Probably my angstiest work over all is Competitionverse and No Such Thing As A Free Lunch specifically since that's sort of about how things don't work. I have some angstier stuff in the works because I really want to dig into some Wheeler trauma. Did I ever post my vampire Joey origin on here? That's probably the saddest thing I've ever written.

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

Probably when I wrote Seto proposing to Joey

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've gotten a few comments especially since I write trans characters and a weird one on my fire emblem fic but I'm not afraid to delete.

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

I didn't used to! It was more I didn't trust my abilities but now I've gotten lots of practice and I find smut easiest to write. It has a inherent climax.

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

I write a lot of AUs but have yet to write a crossover. Maybe I should. Maybe it's time for some characters to meet each other.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

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

I bounce ideas off @kaijous all the time and I would say we've co-written some stuff, though I don't think any of it's published.

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

KaiJou 4 Eva

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

Honestly back in the day I used to start so many fics I never finished which is why I've focused on one shots or series so at least I have something complete. I have a restaurant au in mind that's sort of based on The Bear and I'd really like to dig into it but it just seems like so much work. Of my published ones... Star Trek AU I'm sorry I abandoned you.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm good at natural dialogue and I hope my conversations flow. One thing I like to do and hopefully I'm good at is having characters react without recognizing their feelings. Especially with Seto Kaiba I try my best to write around the actual emotion he's experiencing because I don't think he'd recognize it. I think of this piece of writing advice every day of my life.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I write from third person limited perspective and I really could have a more distinct voice for each character. I'm also a bit repetitive I know.

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

It's something I struggle with especially when I write explicitly international characters. I very rarely write out non-English dialogue partially because I don't want to screw it up, and I go back and forth on italicizing non-English dialogue which I have some thoughts and feelings on that have been explained better by other people. I think especially with a Japanese speaking cast I've taken some notes from webcomics actually, but ultimately if the audience is meant to understand there's no reason to obscure it. In fact the only fic I have done another language for a fic is one where I had Seto speaking Vulcan, which is a made up language that I don't feel as strongly about screwing up.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Honestly... I think it might be YuGiOh. A long, long, long time ago I had friends posting script style fanfiction on DeviantArt and I joined in on the fun. The first fandoms I was really part of and writing fic for was Teen Titans and Avatar: the Last Airbender. Zutara and Raven/BB, in case it wasn't completely obvious.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Oh boy this is a tough one. Baby Dragon is a favorite of mine, as is In Awe of Flowers, but to be honest I think it might be Sons. It's not my most polished piece but I managed to make a fic out of the feelings I had around Grandpa and Joey that carries a lot of emotional weight for me.

To keep it going I'm gonna tag @kaijous @luxielovesparkles and whoever else wants to do it. i've been massively depressed lately but i'm crawling out of my hole and i think it's time to write again...

#fanfic #me!#idk what to tag this

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missparker · 9 months

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Hiiii, I haven't seen you on the birdsite in ages, so in lieu of, like, conversation, here are ask meme questions!

14 how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

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

66 How do you deal with writing pressure (ie. pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc.)?

74 You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

Hiiii, the bird app and I are having moral and philosophical disagreements right now but you can always find me on threads, FB, and insta.

14. how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

I am always surprised when people tell me they laughed out loud or cried or had any sort of big emotional response to something I’ve written. And while I know that’s like the goal, there’s no guarantee that what you connect to emotionally is going to hit the same note for another person. Which is to say, I think I do tend to get into the head of a character, or I let them into my head. Is that different? Who knows. I think you have to feel it a little for it to ring true.

I draw a ton from personal experience, be it conversations I’ve had, situations I’ve been in, things that I’ve felt. I always say that if you’ve read my fic, you probably know me better than anyone I know casually in my real life. Also, it’s real terrifying when someone you know in real life wants to read your fic! Stop perceiving me!

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

This is so tricky, because there’s no good way that works a) every time and b) for every person. For me, sometimes I have to write through the block and just unclog it with some trash before the good words start flowing again, but also sometimes I need the break and pushing through it only causes more harm. It’s really a matter of knowing yourself and checking in with what you need to keep making good art. Sometimes when I get stuck on a particular story, I know that I need to delete a big chunk of it but I’m stubborn and don’t want to and I spend too much time trying to fix it before ultimately doing what I knew I needed to do all along and just delete it. I think you have to be willing to admit you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. And sometimes what needs to be deleted doesn’t need to be thrown away forever, but it’s just not right for THIS story.

66. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie. pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc.)?

When it comes to fic, most of the pressure I put onto myself. I’ve learned to just ignore the comments that ask for more, demand updates etc because those don’t serve me in any positive way. I always appreciate when people read and comment, but fic is a gift we give of our time and effort and talent and it’s kind of a “you get what you get when you get it” situation. When I wrote greener grasses, I put myself on a weekly update schedule and I could do it but it was TOUGH. For my latest WIP, it’s months between updates and that’s okay too because it just has to be.

Now, for writing that gets published, it’s sort of a different can of worms. Deadlines do matter, because you’re just one author working with editors who have their own deadlines and you’re part of a big schedule of authors and editors and if you’re late, it impacts a lot of people. I get a lot more strict with myself about achieving a certain word count every day, setting aside blocks of time to revise, etc. It takes priority over other things for sure. But I treat it like any other job - triage tasks, give it the time it deserves, do my best.

74. You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

This is so funny because I think I do kind of have a distinctive style, at least people have said as such to me. One time another fic got posted and someone said it was written in a missparker style and I was like… am I so predictable?! But no, I think it was a compliment. Anyway, my style is domestic and character focused and probably someone is gonna drink coffee and probably someone is gonna go pee and probably it’s gonna start with song lyrics.

Thanks, @sarking!

Get to know your fic writer! | ask box

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fourth-dimensional-thinker · 1 year

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The “Time Is a Flat Circle” Mega-Post

I’d like to start by saying I really don’t know how other people read fan-fiction. I, personally, tend to just be a one-and-done kind of person. Unless I forgot what happened, I don’t constantly go back and re-read chapters of a multi-chapter work whenever it gets updated. I also don’t know how every fic writer works. I know some people plan meticulously and others will just add chapters on a whim.

I am a thorough planner (mostly).

Time Is a Flat Circle took me months to write, but also weeks to plan. It was made with the intent to be re-read. I wanted there to be a different experience for when you re-read it after you learn the information revealed at the end.

So, I made a very, very long guide to all those details to look out for if you ever want to re-read it.

Foreshadowing of the time loop

1) The photograph of Marty with Copernicus

This scene from Chapter 19:

The teenager reaches out and the terrier lets himself be scooped up off the ground. Copernicus licks Marty as thanks for lifting him. Marty grins broadly from the canine’s affection and moves to find a high surface to deposit Doctor Brown's dog. Just as he turns around, the flashbulb blinds him. He blinks once, twice, and then places Copernicus back on the floor so he can rub his eyes.

“That’s going to come out really blurry,” he tells the doctor.

“I’d still like to keep it; something to remember you by.”

was foreshadowed in Chapter 2:

“We’re debating if this guy looks like you.”

Marty squints at the black and white photo that he’s holding. The image shows an older teenage boy holding a dog in his arms. The picture appears to be taken in a moment in time where the boy was fidgeting around with energetic joy instead of being in a ready pose. His face is left blurry, but from what can be made out, his features aren’t too distinct from Marty’s.

“Kinda,” he tries to say nonchalantly. Marty puts it back on the shelf and walks away from it; the photograph unsettles him deeply.

2) The family portrait in Doc’s home

This scene from Chapter 13:

He also notices how, in all the portraits and photographs in the home, Erhardt Brown’s face shows up in none of them. If the judge originally appeared in any pictures, his face was cut out or painted over– and using his first impression of the man, Marty doesn’t hold the vandalism against Doctor Brown.

was foreshadowed in Chapter 2:

Marty stares at a family portrait while the other boys move on to the next room. In this photo, there are three bodies: a father’s, a mother’s, and their child’s. However, only two pairs of eyes look back at him; the father’s face has been completely painted over in the portrait.

3) The initial pain from flux capacitors

This comment from Chapter 2:

“You’re not going to want to be awake for this process, my boy,” Doctor Brown explains as he picks up Marty’s unconscious body, “it’s going to hurt tremendously.”

becomes relevant again in Chapter 17:

Marty almost gasps once the bandages fully come off; there are Y-shaped scars rooted in both of Doctor Brown’s palms.

“You have them too…”

“Yes, and I cannot express how painful they are,” he rasps. “Please tell me–don’t actually– that you weren’t conscious when you were given these.”

4) Doc and Lorraine’s phone conversation

This bit of conversation between them in Chapter 3:

Lorraine seethes. “You're beyond delusional if you think scarring my child was anything but an attack.”

“Those are a gift,” he claims. “It pains me that you think I would hurt your son, Lorraine. Don't you remember all those years ago when–?”

“I didn't know what you were back then.”

...is a reference to Doc’s meeting with Lorraine and baby Marty in all of Chapter 21.

5) The wooden horse that Marty gifts Doc

This scene in Chapter 8:

“And– oh! I also wanted to give you something too.” Marty rustles through his bag.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I saw it in a store.”

Marty offers the horse carving towards his [Emmett’s] free hand.

and this scene from Chapter 10:

Marty spots the horse carving posing proudly on the credenza. The wooden animal has been coated in dark paint with an even darker mane, tail, and hooves. The eyes are detailed with the illusion of having life.

“You painted it,” Marty notes once Emmett has cautiously brought himself next to him. “It's a nice job– really nice.”

were foreshadowed in Chapter 4:

Across town, the mad scientist puts back a small carving of a horse on his bookshelf. The little wooden figure is decades old, but has an incredible sentimental value that makes the Hope Diamond look worthless.

6) The little canary nickname

This scene in Chapter 16 (which also titled “Canary”!):

“I can make jokes, too, little canary.” [Doctor Brown says]

Marty pauses for a moment. The smile fades.

“That’s an, um, interesting thing to call someone.”

was foreshadowed in Chapter 5:

“If you try to come near me again, I’ll hang up and call the cops on you,” Marty threatens.

“This town’s law enforcement community won’t be helping you, little canary,” he says matter-of-factly. “They’re too inept to do anything but distribute parking tickets at this point.”

7) The title

I think it speaks for itself.

Hints that Doc has not turned good

1) The investigation team

When Needles mentions the rumor of the four murders that Doc is supposedly responsible for in Chapter 2:

Needles grabs his arm before Marty can fully make it out the door. “So soon? We’re in the home of a man who killed at least four people. We have an inspection to finish.”

it’s a reference to the investigation team in Chapters 24 & 25:

What was just described to the teen was the investigation team of 1978, a staple of his childhood stories. Albert Wickham was a senior police officer with over twenty years on the job under his belt. Nicole “Nicky” Newton was a budding librarian and the youngest of the bunch. Nathan Baran and Caroline Snider were both staff at the local newspaper. No one from Marty’s time has seen them in years.

2) The glass of water chapter

As we have established in Chapter 25:

“Don’t move,” he [Doc] orders. “This is the danger of quickly changing the temperature of a room.”

Emmett steadies his hands, takes a quick breath, and yanks away the heat of his kitchen.

A harsh wave of cold knocks into both of them. A faint crack is heard before the glass violently shatters asunder. Shards of ice and glass whizz in all directions. The broken pieces rain down on the floor and table top with a twinkling clatter. Underneath the table, they stay safe from the precipitation of ice and glass.

They don’t leave the shelter of the table long after the last shard landed.

“Woah,” Marty gasps. The exclamation leaves his mouth as a puff of vapor.

“When water freezes, it crystallizes, causing it to expand and break its container. What we can do with our power can match the abilities of a freezer more than tenfold,” the doctor says as they emerge from the table. “Do you understand why I don’t want it to leave our hands, Marty?”

But, before that, when Doc is meeting with the investigation team, we see them all close to some sort of glass container that’s filled with water:

Snider is huddled by the windows, next to the small collection of limp yellow plants that sit in overwatered glass vases. Newton and Baran stand on guard at either side of a long side table. The only object on the table is a large glass fish tank that houses no aquatic life.

[...]

Wickham then returns to his original spot with a full glass in his hands.

And then the meeting ends on this sentence:

Emmett smiles coolly. “Now that we’re all here,” he says, fidgeting with the hem of one of his gloves, “I believe your explanation is due…”

3) The guppies

As an extension of the glass of water scene, one of the investigation team member’s guppies ends up in Doc’s house after his meeting:

He turns towards Baran. “You own a fish tank with no fish,” the scientist observes. When the other man silently stares him down, Emmett defends, “I’m only trying to make small talk, Mr. Baran.”

“I’m cleaning the tank later,” Baran gruffly answers. “The fish are in another container in the kitchen.”

“Are they difficult to care for?”

“Guppies? No.”

[...]

“Hey, when did you get fish, Doctor Brown?” “Last night,” he shouts back, “I was inspired by the meeting to take them in.”

4) Adelina, Doc and Sara’s pet cat

Adelina is a symbol of the future Doc in 1940. They share white hair, a deep interest in Marty, and a “love language” that comes off as disturbing to Marty.

As seen in Chapter 10 & 11:

Adelina strolls in. Marty glances down at her and she returns it with a deep, interested stare.

[...]

Across the room, Adelina is resting, coiled up near the fireplace. The glow of the hearth dyes her long white fur to a golden orange. She peers pointedly at him again with her big and inquisitive eyes. Marty turns on his back to look at the pale ceiling instead; their cat’s potent stare bothers him.

[...]

“What the hell?!” he shrieks, recoiling on the sofa.

Emmett comes back over and glances down at the tiny corpse. “Oh, Adelina’s already leaving you gifts.”

Still tightly curled on the couch, Marty asks incredulously: “That's a gift?”

“Yes, I know it can seem cruel, but it’s her way of showing affection.”

[...]

When he steps out of the bathroom, Marty almost steps on Adelina. The white-haired feline is sitting right in front of the doorframe, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. She trots after him when he passes by her and goes to the kitchen.

[...]

Adelina leaps onto his lap in a fluffy blur. Marty lifts his hands up slightly in a half-surrendered gesture to avoid touching her. The teenager has never been a cat person; he’s heard tales of horror from his aunt about what obnoxious menaces they can be and has witnessed the proof of her clawed forearms. Adelina decides to curl up on him, a white ball with hair held up with static electricity.

5) The painting scene in Chapter 22

So, in this chapter, pretty much everything related to painting is representative of either Doc or Marty’s emotions. I’m not going to talk about everything, since it would involve copying and pasting almost half of the chapter in here. But, one of the ways of showing that Doc hasn’t changed is with deserts. They’re used to show his inner personality, with both of them considered to be dangerous and hostile to life. Doc finds beauty and application in deserts while Marty is weary of them:

“So, why deserts?” Marty asks.

“They’re common settings for Westerns– excuse me.”

“Yeah, but some of them don’t have any horses or people in them,” the teen notes, then quickly moves aside to let Doctor Brown have access to a cabinet.

“I’ve also learned to appreciate the hidden beauty of the environment itself. Most of what lives in the desert comes out at night: jackrabbits, tortoises, toads, owls–”

“–coyotes, mountain lions, scorpions.”

“Yes, all native fauna of that habitat. Many people see the deserts as a harsh, barren landscape– would you fill up those two jars with water?–but underneath all of the thorns and storms is its rich life.”

“Most people would still die in them.”

Doctor Brown gives him an amused look. “That’s a likely fate to the inexperienced wanderer. However, I’ve read stories, tales of adventures, where someone determined enough uses his will and wits to make it through the night– especially at the skepticism of others.” He rolls out a long, thin sheet of paper over the table before turning back to Marty. “Could you see yourself surviving in the desert?”

The other one is color symbolism. The most prominent one for Doc is using red for his hidden anger. Him using that color shows up after Marty talks about his not-so-good relationship with his family:

“It’s just– it’s just that we– we fight sometimes and don’t really get along a lot of times. I don’t hate my family, Doctor Brown, but…” he [Marty] confesses, “...it'd be nice to get away from home every now and then…”

Marty glances over the scientist’s canvas. An aggravated, angry, bull-enraging color is dominating the canvas.

“You’re using an awful lot of red,” he comments.

[...]

He checks on Doctor Brown’s progress. The outraged red color had been masked well and blended into the other hues in with his horizon.

And just to hammer things home, Doc ends the chapter with this line:

“[Do] Whatever the hell you want; it’s art. You could make it complete nonsense or plan something so intricately complicated that people can’t see the hidden messages right under their noses.”

Misc things I just wanted to point out

1) In Chapter 21, when Doc tells Lorraine:

“I remember almost every conversation I’ve had. I can recall things back from when I was twenty-nine, twenty, seventeen, you name it.”

those are all the previous ages he was when Marty visited him in 1937, 1940, and 1949. I used 1920 as Doc’s birth year for this fic

2) This line from Chapter 4:

Despite his best efforts at cramming, Marty can’t distinguish a secant from a cosecant or remember which president was blamed for the Great Depression or draw a force diagram or remember the prefixes for scientific units or conjugate irregular verbs in Spanish or remember what polysyndeton is.

is an example of polysyndeton.

3) This minor mentioned character from Chapter 1:

When he [Marty] joins The Pinheads, he hears about Doctor Brown again. He's sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with his bandmates and Donnie, their drummer's older cousin and acting roadie.

is an oc I made for a writing request.

Other fun facts

I rewrote Chapter 5 & 6 each three times

Older versions of this fic had chapters were Marty went to 1941, 1953, 1960, and 1969

Marty breaking into Doc’s house, the flux capacitor scars + taking in outside energy, and the glass of water scene are the only elements that have survived since draft one

That being said, I had started working on the glass of water chapter months before it was published

I have even older concepts of a darker Doc before I came to the version of him in Time Is a Flat Circle

In the older versions, Doc is still affectionate and protective of Marty in his own unhinged way... but was also just straight up murdering people on behalf of his best friend

After that, I added a “no killing rule” to him and ended up liking that twisted version of him better

I also wrote a snippet of a “sequel” fic while I was still writing “Time Is a Flat Circle”. It involves... a grave misuse of spiders...

A full, planned out sequel is still in the imagination phase. I currently have nothing actually written down yet

#bttf #writing tag

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juuls · 1 year

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Juulna's 2022 reading stats - fics and books too!

Wow, so many statistics and so little time! Let's see... what are the most pertinent and interesting ones...? Thanks to the @fanfic-reading-challenge I got to read some pretty interesting things this year! The new one starts soon. :D

How many books did I read?

177, wow! My goal had been to read 100 (you can set a goal for yourself and keep track on Goodreads, which is awesome) so I definitely surpassed that. I used HowLongToRead to get an approximation of how many words I read in books, and it totalled 16,700,982 words. Nearly 17 million! It's actually more than my total in fics, hah.

Do I have any favourite books I'd recommend?

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

The Women's War by Jenna Glass

Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire (genocide trigger)

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Last Watch by J.S. Dewes

Heck yeah I do! These books were amazing and had me reading any sequels I could, ASAP. For those with a limited budget, check out this free online library, Library Genesis, or your own library's resources!

Now let's talk about fanfiction...

In total, I read 15,832,562 words, 4,017 chapters, and 589 fics. That works out to about 26,880 words per fic on average. But what's the monthly breakdown of all that? Some of those words, chapters, and fics are ones I did not finish (yet), but I did count as finished those WiPs which I'd caught up with.

The least I read in a month was 470,293 words in April, with 22 fics read. Not even sure what was going on with me back then. The most I read in a month is actually December! I attribute that to me finishing off or at least reading as much as I can of some long fics on the back burner. Also, there were a lot of WiPs which had updates in December, and fics I'd been reading a little at a time month after month, which I finally completed. So yeah, I read 2,030,497 words in December, fairly closely followed by October. Pretty sure I was just drowning out the lack of light these last few months. :P 7/12 months I read more than a million words, and 4/12 months were over 1.5 million, plus those labelled incomplete for both those stats.

I read 137 different romantic pairings which were the main relationship(s) of the fic. I also read 49 distinct fandoms. I definitely dug into my past and some of my favourites from when I was a kid! It was quite neat, actually!

But okay, so this is definitely getting a little dry. Here are some of my favourite fics from this year (and I may make a few rec lists from my much larger 'favourite list')!

How about some fic recs?

Red are the BEST of the best.

Knock Three Times by Jellyneau, TenRose (Doctor Who)

I sung of chaos by Sadhippie, Sansa & Cersei frenemies (GoT)

This Time, We'll Do Better by LadyTP, SanSan and others (ASoIaF)

Conqueror by mardia, Darklina (Shadow & Bone)

The Empress, Robed in Sun by Anonymous, Darklina (Shadow & Bone)

And all that's best of dark and bright by kaaterinapetrova, Iron Family (MCU)

System ID: J.A.R.V.I.S. by valdomarx, Stony (MCU)

Kudos by StonyFan1918 by RiaRose, Stony (MCU)

she swallowed the shipwreck between her ribs by justanotherpipedream (Marvel x The Witcher)

It's the Little Things that Matter by TunaFishChris, Wanda & Tony (MCU)

create / detonate by pprfaith, WinterIron (MCU)

ink and paper prayers by kitsunerei88, Chedric (Potterverse)

Three Wizards and a Baby by Lizzie_carlile, Dramione (Potterverse)

Bring Him to His Knees by Musyc, Dramione (Potterverse)

Phoenix Rising by Peanutbuttertoast, Dramione (Potterverse)

Chronos Historia by In_Dreams, Dramione, Bloody Baron/Helena Ravenclaw (Potterverse - Founders era)

Love In A Time Of The Zombie Apocalypse by rizzlewrites, Dramione (Potterverse)

Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Falling in Love by isthisselfcare, Dramione (Potterverse)

A Marauder's Plan by CatsAreCool (Rachel500), Harmony and Sirius & Harry (Potterverse)

What Would Matilda Do? by hansolo, Harry & Hermione (Potterverse)

Face On the Milk Carton by dyslexic_penquin, Theomione (Potterverse)

The Shattered Marque by Kryptaria, Johnlock (BBC Sherlock x Kushiel's Legacy)

The Intergalactic Scuttlebutt Club by Moonbeam (luvsbitca), Spirk (Star Trek: AOS)

Living in the Now by Alethia, Michael Burnham/Christopher Pike (Star Trek: Discovery x Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Gotta Love The Little Things by AquaWolfGirl, DarkJediStormPilot (Star Wars)

It Takes a Village by rightforlife, Reylo (Star Wars)

Sky Marked Souls by AnonymousMink, Reylo (Star Wars)

This Bolder Life by darkrose, Telesilla, Teyla/John/McKay/Ronon (Stargate: Atlantis)

Pegasus Non-Verbal by igrab, McShep (Stargate: Atlantis)

Written by the Victors by Sperenza, McShep (Stargate: Atlantis)

we are the raven and the ghost by Itar94, McShep (Stargate: Atlantis x His Dark Materials)

How Rue Became the Mockingjay by aimmyarrowshigh, Everlark (The Hunger Games)

Value by didoandis, Geraskier (The Witcher)

We Drift Inside Each Other (All We Need is One Another) by newtypeshadow, Stuckony (MCU x Pacific Rim)

An Unexpected Malfoy by RiverWriter, Dramione (Potterverse)

The Black Family's PR Nightmare by elphabalives17, The Black Family (Potterverse)

Heart on my Sleeve, Joy on my Cheek by freyjawriter24, Geraskier (The Witcher)

Sorry for the lack of Tumblr handle tags, I can only link 50 things a post now!

#fic recs #juulna recs #2022frc #reading challenge #2022 fic reading challenge #fanfiction #books #book recs

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h1myname1sv · 7 months

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Fic Writer 20 Questions

Thank you for tagging me @forloveofcodywan!!

1.) How many works do you have on ao3?

2.) What’s your ao3 word count?

430,621

3.) What fandoms do you write for?

MCU (mostly Loki and Daredevil, though I do branch out quite a bit), Star Wars (mainly the Prequels and Clone Wars), BBC Merlin...I believe those are my main fandoms currently. I am definitely not the type of writer to stick to one.

4.) What are your top five fics by kudos?

Four out of Five - One of my first DD fics when I was still trying to figure out how to write Matt, so I was very unsure about posting it and I genuinely do not know how it got so many kudos. Basically 4 times Matt does things without sight, and 1 time he absolutely can't. Lots of Matt and Avengers interactions.

Merlin's Beard! - Merlin and Arthur interrupt the final battle at Hogwarts and very casually save the day. Everyone is very confused, but they just go along with it because hey, Voldy's dead. Most definitely crack taken seriously.

Life Asked Death - The last fic in my Three of Us Against the World series! Gamora, Loki, and Nebula are actually really caring siblings, and they defeat Thanos and save the world together.

Not the Last Dragonlord - I just wanted to write a scenario in which Balinor survived, and he and Merlin get to figure out how to be father and son together. My first ever Merlin fic, too!

The World Will Pay - The first fic in my Three of Us Against the World series! We get to see how the three of them meet and get to know one another in Nebula's POV. Honestly, one of my favorite fics out of all the ones I've written.

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

Of course! They give me serotonin, and I want to give some serotonin back :)

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

The Reasonable Expectation of Deception - One of my Whumptober 2023 fics, with Thor and Loki wrapped up in an Infinity War AU. I don't want to give spoilers, exactly, but the Major Character Death tag is definitely there for a reason.

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

we're inches apart (and even closer at heart) - Matt/Nat is actually adorable and THEY GET MARRIED!!! :D

8.) Do you get hate on fics?

I think I've gotten one or two comments, but they're so insignificant I don't really remember them.

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

Nope. I don't believe I'm capable of it LOL

10.) Do you write cross overs? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don't usually write cross overs, but I have written a few. For example, the aforementioned Merlin x Harry Potter crossover.

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope not.

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think so.

13.) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No. Writing is mostly a solitary enterprise for me, but if you have a really really really good fic idea then I would theoretically be willing to cowrite a fic with you.

14.) What’s your all time favourite ship?

Do I have to choose??? Codywan or Matt/Nat, maybe. (I feel like we should come up with a ship name for them. I've seen several, but no general consensus.)

15.) What’s a WIP you’d like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I have no published WIPs because I always want to finish what I've started, but I have had a draft of The Curse sitting on my computer for quite a while. If you were wondering, it is indeed about a curse. Very creative working title, I know.

16.) What are your writing strengths?

Writing distinct POVs for different characters, probably. I do try my very best.

16.) What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot and action scenes. Sometimes, I don't know how to connect all the separate ideas I have in my head.

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

I think it's nice, as long as it's not so overdone that you might as well have written the whole fic in that language. I admire the people who can do it accurately.

18.) First fandom you wrote for?

Criminal Minds

19.) Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I don't have ONE favorite (you can probably tell that I'm the indecisive type). I've already mentioned The World Will Pay, but I also really like Falling, which is from the same series, but written in Loki's POV. Halfway to Heaven was my Whumptober 2022 fic about a powerless Matt Murdock who still manages to go toe to toe with Fisk; Faith is a Dooku character study and sort of redemption fic. Basically, I just like all the ones that feel like I gave justice to my favorite characters, because I think all fics are kind of like love letters to our favorite characters, and we want to get it right. This may be ironic, because I tend to hurt my favorite characters, but let's not look too deeply at that.

No pressure tags: @mari--lace @sinivalkoista @peppersonironi and anyone else who'd like to join in!

#fanfic #tag game #ao3 #fanfic writers #fandom

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astriiformes · 1 year

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17, 22, 31, 53?

17 - What is your favorite line you’ve ever written?

"Favorite" is a pretty hefty word and I tend to feel prouder of passages or conversations than I do of individual lines, but several people sent this one which means I'll get to choose a few, and bending the rules to share something a bit longer:

Tears pricked at Legolas’ eyes once again, this time bitterly. Long had he dwelled on this fact, and the on the deep unfairness that his head and heart and very being now all longed to go to a place he had never been, to spend his days amongst people he didn’t know. It was an uncharitable description of Valinor, he supposed, but he was not feeling particularly charitable towards the the things his heart did or did not want these days, since it seemed to have gotten them all irrevocably mixed up. Why could it not want one such as Gimli the way it wanted the West? “Forgive me,” Arwen said, starting another braid, and Legolas found that he thought her speech was littered with a few too many apologies for one who claimed he was not causing her grief, “I think I have let the vestiges of jealousy cloud my understanding of how difficult your own position is. It is very different from my own. To me, Valinor is a broken promise. To you, it is perhaps more an unwanted obligation.”

(From Chapter 5 of "I Breathed a Song Into the Air," my aroace Legolas fic that I swear is still just on hiatus, even after all this time)

22 - Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

Oh god. I don't know if I have a process. I tend to tackle various stories pretty differently. I've always had more luck finishing stories where I know the whole arc of them though, preferably down to a vague chapter count although it still tends to shift as I write. Nailing down things like whose POV makes sense for specific scenes or chapters helps me get the most out of them, and sometimes gives me new ideas. And I like being able to toss in foreshadowing or some additional thematic resonance if I know where things are at least headed, even if I don't know every detail.

I'm super inconsistent about drafts, too. Ideally I'd like to have a rough and final, but often I just edit the rough draft directly, some even as I write, which does lead to some stumbling over myself.

31 - Tell us about a character who’s an absolute joy to write

I love writing Eda -- she's so much fun and has a really distinct voice, and it's a shame she's featured in only a couple of my Owl House stories. One of many reasons I need to get to writing my Sherlock Holmes pastiche with her in the detective role properly now that the show has ended and isn't feeding me so many different plot tangents to follow instead.

53 - When writing, do you have an outline? And do you stick to it?

Sort of answered this above, but I try to, and I try less to, respectively. Having an outline is super useful but good things happen when I don't let myself get totally boxed in by them -- I tend to add/move/cut scenes and chapters pretty liberally and I think my writing is stronger for it. Outlines help, but in NaNoWriMo vocab, I'm very much a plantser.

#ask meme #my writing

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lambfromfield · 5 months

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1, 3, 12, 17, 28, 29 for da ao3 wrapped. answer my questions boy

a la this post!

How many words have you written this year?

for things i've posted on ao3, i've written 23,141 words! as we know though, i have written much more than this. i'm not counting shit in my docs cause this is not google docs wrapped WE KNOW WE KNOW

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

i'm really really proud of Dinner, and Other Small Joys. even though i'm not as much of a pjsekai girlie as i was at the beginning of this year, i still think that fic is really nice. i think that the throughlines of kanade's dad and her anxiety carry really well :3

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

well. in total, across all fandoms, i have 17 "in progress" wips, meaning i've written more than like two sentences for it. i've got a lot more ideas (23 total) and some that are in a brainstorming stage (11 total). but in terms of wips i really wanna finish, or ones i might publish, i've got about 7 on the roster!

Your favorite character to write this year?

kanadeee <3 i'm not really even sure why like logistically i should've preferred astrid more since i wrote her more? but i really liked writing kanade idk </3 i think she just ticks my brain right because she's a bit like me when i was younger and she has a great developing friend group. ONLINE FRIEND GROUP MOSTLY! LIKE I DID!!!

Favorite work you wrote this year?

not to be redundant but Dinner, and Other Small Joys lol

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

ill find one from each fic just for funsies :D ordered oldest fic to newest

let's not spill the truth, it's easier being alone: [The knife] gleams tangerine in the firelight for a moment before losing its intense glare and piercing the flesh of the mammal below.

find my rosemary hill: All the disappointment she’d been avoiding—because surely her luck wouldn’t have changed so rapidly, after all of her ups and downs so far—fell abruptly onto her like a collapsed roof, burying her under the rubble.

Dinner, and Other Small Joys: She has no father to visit the local stores with; she and her mother cannot learn to sew or knit together; there are no little siblings who run wild around her house, who need enrichment and encouragement from an older sister who only ever sits quietly alone in her room.

tired of these unchanging days: Everything moves in a simultaneous blur; the gray mixes with the flashing reds and creates an ugly, sickening brown, and the floor below turns to slush.

we're starting over and i love you, darling: Martin doesn’t react, just sits like a chiseled slab of stone or marble, and Jon gets the distinct impression that he’s chipped away at his perfection with a jagged, rusty knife—scraped the shine off because he couldn’t see in its wake.

#thank for the ask!#I love answering asks. i love ao3. i love writing. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #also notably ive written entirely female POV up until literally october lmao #that ive posted*#YIPPEEE!! data and things!!!!#also i do lowkey plan to post something before the year is over but tbh i dunno if itll happen #LIKE #its on the roster. but i dont know if itll really get done #i dont wanna post something just 2 post it. i want it to be good #the thing im planning is currently 'in progress' but well see if it works out #anyways.#:3 #silly disease #THANKS FOR DA ASK AGAIN ANNCO LOVE U

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thegirl20 · 5 months

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actually i wanna ask all of them but i narrowe them down ❤️💥✨️✍️🚀🥳🦋🦈🔎🤩🤖💛🎨 but feel free to skip i know it is many!

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

“I told you, my mother-in-law is moping all over the place, weeping and wailing like an Italian.” Bree Van De Kamp in this fic.

The reason I like this line is that in the episode the following week, Bree said to her mother-in-law: “Even Italians take a break now and again.” So I felt like I’d got the character right. That’s my favourite kind of dialogue - when it feels right for the person saying it.

There are probably more recent things I’ve written that I quite like, but that’s the one that sticks in my brain for some reason. Despite it being like 17 years old.

💥What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

Can I say the last three and a half years of Emmerdale? 😉

✨️Out of the comments you’ve received on your fics, what are two or three of your favorites?

I can’t answer this one. I enjoy any time people tell me they’ve enjoyed a fic. I love when people pull out the bits they liked the most. I love it when people tell me they can ‘hear’ the characters in my dialogue. Those are my favourite kinds of comments, because I enjoy writing dialogue so much that when it sounds right to people, I feel accomplished.

✍️What’s your ideal writing setup?

I used to write long-hand. I would jot notes down in my work notebook or whatever and then type it up, editing and enhancing as I did so. I stopped doing that and now I mostly just capture snippets of notes in google docs and build things around them. But I used to quite like the tactile sensation of writing by hand.

I don’t really have a set-up as such. I have a room that I use as an ‘office’ and sometimes if I know I need to get some writing done I’ll go in there so it feels more official. But I can write anywhere my laptop is, really.

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

It depends. Mostly my fics grow out of a single line of dialogue or a single scene I have in my head. So I’ll jot that down, then write around it. If I know the story I want to tell is longer, generally I’ll still jot down the scene or scenes I have in mind first, but I’ll try and do some bullet points outlining a vague structure and the things I know I want to include. But if it’s a short fic I just sit down and write it, generally without knowing much of what will be in it beyond the initial thing that inspired me to write it.

🥳 Why did you start writing fanfic?

I’ve always enjoyed creative writing. When I was little, like 8 or 9, I would write out scripts for my dolls or for my friends to act out. I enjoyed writing stories whenever we had to at school. So I suppose when I discovered that people wrote stories about shows I liked, and could make the characters do whatever they wanted them to do, it appealed to me.

🦋 Which character is your favorite to write?

Charity Dingle. No question.

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

I find a lot of characters difficult to write. When people don’t have a distinctive voice or way of speaking, I struggle, because I rely on dialogue a lot for characterisation. Yennefer, for example, I find difficult to write and I don’t think I really capture her a lot of the time. I tend to shove her into modern AUs and use that as a bit of an excuse.

🔎 Does anyone beta read or edit your fics?

No. Not even me!

(That sounds flippant, but it’s the truth. This is because I write because it’s fun, and it’s not fun for me to have someone essentially ‘mark’ my work. And I know this isn’t how a lot of people work with betas, and I know it can greatly enhance both the experience and the end result, but for me my brain wants to be done with something when it’s written. It doesn’t want to go back over things. That’s why I tend not to plan things out very much either - if I had written an intricate plan for something, my brain would think it was done and wouldn’t want to do it again)

🤩 What led to your interest in the fandom?

Depends which fandom, really. I’ve been known to check things out because of gifs. I have a friend who I watch a lot of tv with and she recommends things to me and vice versa. Although, just because I watch something doesn’t mean I want to get involved in the fandom. Usually I get into a fandom, and particularly writing for a fandom, if there’s subtext involved. Or if people aren’t together yet. I like to have scope for creativity.

🤖 Are non-fandom friends aware that you write fanfic?

No. Absolutely not.

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?

That people can take joy from my wee stories. Even the ones I don’t particularly like, there will be someone that likes them.

🎨 If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

This is quite funny, because @ehay offered to make art from my fic and I was unable to think of a scene that stood out. And that’s because I’m not a very visual writer at all. I don’t describe scenery or clothing or even people very much. I write dialogue. So it’s hard for me to think of scenes that I would like to see immortalised by the talented artists out there.

Incidentally, @ehay did create some scenes from one of my fics, and it is gorgeous and far more beautiful than I could ever have described: The hour of hush and wonder

And people got pretty excited about Cara Lannister back in the day.

I guess it's exciting to see fan art of AUs because I'm never going to get to 'see' the characters in those settings in canon.

#ask #Anonymous #ask response #writing

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