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l-1-z-a · 10 months

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How and why was The Sims developed?

Answer by Mike Sellers:

I first saw what would later become the Sims as a prototype Will Wright was working on. This was in the summer of 1995, when we were pitching Will on our new game and company. He heard us out, gave us great advice, and then showed us his cool prototype (very much like Will overall). He had a little man (graphically made out of animated, unconnected rods) walking around a gridded floor space. Will wanted to show us something he'd just completed: he dropped a toilet onto the grid, and the man went over to it, sat down on it, and then after a moment got up (complete with flushing sound if memory serves me correctly). Very funny, and it gave a glimmer of what the Sims would become. The ability to have the animations needed to use an object bound to the object rather than in the Sim was in fact an important internal feature of the game.

Fast forward to 1999. I had just joined Maxis to design SimCity Online (which never came out, but instead became The Sims 2). The Sims was in high gear. The "Dollhouse" team as it was known internally was working hard on getting the game out -- beset by the usual difficulties and some additional ones they had taken on. They had spent a long time (years) creating a graphical programming language called Edith for programming the Sims and their environment. This was rickety and in many ways all but unusable unless you knew the undocumented Secret Ways to make it work, which only a few did.

There was also a lot of question about what the game actually was. Initially they tried to market it to early audiences as a sort of Tamagotchi on steroids, as you had to care for your Sims or they'd be unhappy, not want to go to work, etc. What they quickly realized though is that people almost instantly started telling stories about the Sims, even to themselves, as if in a way to make sense of what they were doing -- or maybe just because telling stories is what we as humans do. So the team shifted their marketing approach back toward being something of a "dollhouse simulator" (without, I think, ever saying those words publicly) where people could tell their own stories. Buying stuff was just a way to keep your Sims happy, and to keep people who liked setting up and decorating a space (which turned out to be most people) happy too. Career advancement for the Sims was a thin trail of an explicit set of goals for those players who wanted them. But mostly it was about whatever story you wanted to tell with your Sims.

There continued to be a lot of problems with the game internally, though the team mostly hung together well and got things done. Many of the executives at EA (who had purchased Maxis in 1997, though the cultural transition was still continuing even in 1999) didn't really believe in the product, but thought that we could get it out, and as one said, "it'll sell maybe 250K units [not a very good showing], and be out of Will's hair." Of course it was a monstrous hit, and suddenly everything in the studio was focused on the Sims -- but that's another story.

And related discussion:

Jeff Kesselman (25 years in the video game industry. CS major from UW Madison. Have done everything from tool and library coding up to CTO. Currently teach Game Programming at Northeastern University and Daniel Webster College and write academic apps for MIT.):

The Goal Oriented Behavior of the Sims is really remarkable in the industry even today. I am happily stealing many of the basic ideas for our dynamic context aware monster AI in Underworld Ascendant.

So thanks to Will and the team, your insights live on...

Answer by Mike Sellers:

Jeff, glad you're able to make use of this, but I have to say, the internal behavioral model of the Sims had me tearing my hair out. Not just because the software architecture was ludicrously bad (which it was -- function parameters in Edith passed as register variables that could be over-written silently at any time by an intervening call! wheee!), but because it was just Bad AI. Yes, the Sims used a utility model to decide what to do next... sorta. They took in "advertisements" from objects and people around them, munched on them a bit to score them versus internal needs and then... chose at random from among the top three options. Not really rocket science.

And they were totally oblivious of anything happening to anyone else. My favorite is what we called the "Sim slap" situation: Adam is "in love with" Betty and is standing next to her. Carl walks up and slaps Betty. Betty cries (hard-wired reaction). Adam does absolutely nothing. He has no situational awareness and is totally unaware of the events transpiring. (Note, I believe later teams fixed this, but I don't know if it was special-cased or a general architectural solution.)

In no small part because of this experience, I spent several years working on better "social AI" (this is where my work with DARPA came in). I still love utility architectures, but they need a lot of beefing up to get past being stupidly dogged and reactionary.

Anyway, I hope your AI work goes well -- let me know if you'd ever like to discuss it! And thanks for the chance to rant about ancient history. :)

#Mike Sellers #sims #the sims #game development

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asshlyyyy · 1 year

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End of 2022 Writing Wrap-Up

Thank you for tagging me @venus-haze, I think this is such a cool idea. Especially because people are of the Elvis/Austin!Elvis fandom came into play around July. I removed favorite thing I read because my brain doesn't remember half of what I read.

Total Words Published: After doing some math, 233k words, but give or take some for the hundreds places, around 233-240k I would say. Which is like- Okay- I can see at the end of this year it will be much more crazier.

Additional Words Written: In headcanons there is 9.3k words. For WIPs, give or take 5-10k words. I don't exactly have WIPs... if that makes sense.

Grand Total of Words: Give or take 250k or more.

Fandoms: When I first started, The Quarry. Mainly Elvis, Austin Butler, and most recently Top Gun Maverick. Marvel is also another I happen to be in. I have an imagines book over on my wattpad. If you want to check it out my username is Ashlerber.

Highest Everything (raw hits, kudos, comments): This took awhile to find, mostly because when you look at your notes in full, I'm pretty sure it shows the highest for the month... So thank you Tumblr for sending me on a wild goose chase. Lucky, I know relatively which ones would be at the top.

Just The Nurse Pt. 1

Highest Kudos to Hits Ratio: This one is easier because it tends to be the same one as above, so if you guessed correctly, it would indeed be...

Just The Nurse Pt. 1

New Things I Tried: I've been writing for quite some time. Every time I join a new fandom and I write for them, I lead into that 'new thing I tried'. The man thing I think I would say... is that I wrote a fic where the reader and Elvis were both dead and they were ghosts.

Fic I Spent The Most Time On: The one I spent the most time on is definitely the one that is in a sense my longest? I am not counting series because those obviously take longer. With that being said it is...

Help, I Need Somebody

Favorite Thing I Wrote: I tend to like everything I write. Because if I cannot like it myself how is anyone else? I could be basic and say it is Just The Nurse, but I've written so many. Here are the top three that are the favorite things I wrote.

No. 1 Expiration Date

No. 2 Number Deux

No. 3 Habits

Writing Goals for 2023: I want to try out new things definitely. What I mean by that is I want to do some more serious things. I want to do some darker things. I really want to see what I am capable of.

New Works: As of right now, the ones that I have planned are as listed. There is no particular date that these will come out. I am hoping throughout January. I will not be including the 12 Days because... that is done... It just needs posted.

Nothing really new...

Trying to finish up some series, do some part twos that I planned.

Do some request.

Throw in some new stuff here and there.

Uh- I'm going to tag one person who will 100% not do it, but I will still tag just in case. @babyhoneypresley

#asshlyyyy writes

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tunglo · 2 years

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Fanfiction 21 Q&A Tag Game

Answer the 21 questions!

★ What fandoms have you written for?

Uh, there’s a lot... Over 50, at least.

★ How many works do you have on AO3?

144 - but a fair few of those are oneshot collections so, yeah, I dread to think what the actual fic number is!

★ What are your top 3 fics by kudos on A03?

4242 - Make Me Smile (DBH, Reed900)

1155 - Come Up and See Me (DBH, Reed900) Yeah, I named my Reed900 fics after Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. #NoRegrets

1131 - Kink Meme Fills, etc (The Hobbit, Bilbo/Bofur)

★ Which fic has the least kudos?

I was heartened to see on my stats page that they all have at least one kudos. I’ll take that! :D

★ Which fic has the most comments and which has the least?

Gordlock Fills (Gotham, Jim Gordon/Harvey Bullock) - 1388 comment threads.

I’ve written lots without any comments, such is the pain of tiny fandoms.

★ Which complete fic do you wish had gotten more attention?

Where I Want To Be (Tucker’s Luck, Alan/Creamy)

Realistically it can’t because the fandom is restricted to like the 10 people who ever watched all of Tucker’s Luck, but I loved writing it so much.

★ Have you ever written a crossover?

I’m sure I must have, back in the day. I don’t remember them though.

★ What is the craziest fic you’ve written?

I once wrote a G rated tentacle monster romance for an exchange treat, that’s gotta be up there!

★ What’s the fic you’ve written with the saddest ending?

I don’t know to be honest - I feel like most of my faves of the fics I’ve written have sad endings.

★ What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Come Alive (Downton Abbey, Thomas Barrow/OMC) All things considering.

★ What is your smuttiest fic?

You’d have to tell me!

★ Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not hate as such, but critical comments are always a downer. The worst is actually in bookmark comments, I think, because it’s like - why have you singled this out in a way I can’t even respond to? Why even bookmark something you don’t like in the first place??

★ What is the nicest comment you’ve received?

Once, way back in LJ/FFN days, somebody sent me a really long email to say my fic - I was writing mostly young adult stuff at the time - had given them the confidence to come out to their parents. I still have a print out of it somewhere. ♥

★ Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Some have been reposted in full to random Wattpad collections and stuff, which I always find kind of baffling, but I don’t think I’m ever gonna be high enough BNF status for someone to straight up steal a fic!

★ How many fics do you have marked as incomplete?

I very rarely write multi chapter pieces because, well, my attention span isn’t long enough and I know I won’t finish it. It just stays in drafts until it’s done.

★ Which of the WIPS will most likely be finished first?

See above...

★ Which WIP are you looking forward to finishing?

Any of them. Seriously though, inspiration to finish anything is a win in my book.

★ Is there a WIP that you’re considering abandoning?

There are lots of drafts which will likely never see the light of day for whatever reason. Sometimes I cannibalise lines or two of them when I switch fandoms...

★ Which complete fic would you consider rewriting?

I wouldn’t, I’m too lazy.

★ Which complete fic is your favourite?

I wrote a Priest AU for Gotham which I’m still really proud of. Mostly because all I knew about priests past like the 15th century before I started writing was that they traditionally wore some very aesthetically pleasing clothing. Anyway, all the research reignited my interest in religious history and I’ve been doing bits of work on early Celtic Christianity and the links between Welsh Methodism and socialism ever since. So, yeah, double win.

★ What’s your total published word count?

1863553 according to AO3, but there’s probably another 250k or so of stuff I don’t admit to floating about kink memes and the like...

#tag game #ask game #ask challenge #would love to see everyone else's answers!#fandom #obikin #star wars #reed900 #gotham #gordlock #downton abbey

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intrepidradish · 1 year

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Media: Disco Elysium

Year/my age: 2022-23/32-33

Another long one!

What drew me to the media:

My husband, again, had been trying to get me to play this game for three years, but I'm not a gamer. Games make me stressed out and I'm bad at them. (He tried to get me into Hades, and I entered the first battled screen, and moaned "I have to fight things in this"? ... I did. :C Do not like.) Generally games give me panic attacks, and then when I'm bad at them, I get really sad about it. DE is nice because you don't fight anything. It goes as slow as you want, and even in hot moments there isn't a timer. Thank you DE.

What also drew me to the media was a dildo enthusiast Thongria on instagram loved the game, which as a follower, blew me away. Like hello?? What? How bizarre right?

At some point in the spring of last year a lot of DE fanart started appearing on tumblr too. Ustalabo appeared with her comic, which is incredible. I gave up. I was spending all day oscillating between watching my newborns nap and feeding them, which was in two hour cycles into the night. I was tired. I was really bored. I was really stationary (mostly on the couch) and I was really lonely. (I don't have family where I live, I had no job, and I was new to the state)

So I decided to play a game.

What made me a fan:

How could I not become a fan after the game? It's a really incredible story and its delivery is phenomenal. But ultimately, I think I became a fan because of Harry, the amnesiac cop you possess. On my first playthrough, I was very timid and horrified by the character. I ended up a moralist because of my unwillingness to say anything accusatory or polarizing (hahahahaha! so true to life!). I only drank and did drugs when Kim wasn't around, because his observational judgement made me uncomfortable about my addiction (AAAAAA). I tried to please him too but ultimately failed because of how I organized my skills (I did an empathy run but badly, so badly). It was also deeply cathartic for me as a child of an addict, who struggled throughout my childhood with the question of 'why can't you prioritize loving me over your addiction' and as I am not yet an addict, the game gives you an opportunity to live inside a deeply troubled man and maybe...maybe help him? You aren't entirely sure what the future holds for him.

At the end of the game, I was positive he was still going to detonate. I didn't like Kim/Harry, the default pairing, because I thought that Harry still had so much work to do! One week of forgetting your life doesn't fix you! Having a friend to rely on doesn't either! And Kim has his own host of issues that the game only touches lightly. So many post-game questions!

I've come around on Kim/Harry because I've thought about it a lot. I think in the face of addiction and pain, having a friend really does matter (having the right friend too). Dealing with isolation is a big theme of life (not just DE). No one is perfect either. All relationships are a bit codependent when you are in a depression cycle. That doesn't mean they are bad/good/ideal/not ideal/something to work around/something that shouldn't happen, just tread lightly right?

But also the world of Elysium is fucking incredible. It's enormous. It's got everything you want in a new environment. It's depths are unfathomable. It gives you a framework to both interact with canon, deeply, but also inject some of your own bullshit headcanons like they are the only real opinion to have. Haha it's great. The amount of material behind single sentences in the game, throw-away lines, are enough to fill an world-specific encyclopedia (and there is the skill Encyclopedia too to make it oh so much WORSE).

Have I written fanfiction for it? Why or why not?

FUCK YEAH. I'm sort of taping off now a year later. I wrote so much fucking stuff last year. It really saved my life. I was finishing up some other fanfics too but I wrote about 250K words which is wild.

My most popular story is definitely my longest. Schlep is my masterpiece at the moment. I wanted to explore Kim and Harry's relationship while recognizing they aren't necessarily perfect for each other, but that's okay. Surprisingly, even with all the kink and the unhappy themes, it was smash hit. I really enjoy reading it. That was my second fanfic for the fandom.

Final Flight was first. It has some problems for me, but I think the concept is really fun. The romantic notes were wrong though in retrospect. I was being timid. What is surprising about this fandom too is being timid doesn't win you points being a little unhinged does. Nice. 100%

I wrote a smattering of other shorter stories. Jean/Harry, Jean/Harry/Kim, Harry/Dora, Kim/Harry. I wrote a lesbian story for Dora/Klaasje, which apparently inspired a really good writer to write more lesbians! Thank you!

I think in this period my fav is Cold Front which I wrote while worried that my grandfather was going to commit suicide (he's 96, and my thoughts on it are complicated). I don't often write bittersweet fics, but I think this one hit the notes I wanted.

I also really like The Tide at my Door, which is the Dora/Harry. No one wants to read their train wreck, but I wrote some truly beautiful passages in that one that shock me to this day. Like, hello:

"In the far end of this, whatever time is, whatever this is, you’re going to break each other, but you, a woman, will be the weed in the cracks and he, the man, will be the backed-up gutter. You cannot stop this. This is what happens in gendered society, and even if the sky falls on Revachol, it will take harsher earthquakes to shake that truth."

I started and finished a failed case fic for Jean/Harry's church raid, which I'm only posting now. And I picked up a secret santa that amazingly requested a Western AU. This was in the fall of last year, and both are about 50K words. Insane. Just insane.

Another smash hit, which surprises me, is my Halloween crack fic, Kim's Disco Inferno. I wanted to introduce Kim to the skills, and I wanted it to be a horror theme so its a blend of Silent Hill, Dante's Inferno, and more. It received some amazing fucking fanart from Shower, which got 4K likes on twitter (*giant eyeball emoji*)

It remains a tremendous pleasure interacting with the fandom through fanfiction. Everyone has been very very kind and supportive.

Opinion on the fandom:

I love this fandom! It's basically made of transmen, nonbinary folks, and beautiful lesbians, which is exactly the space I want to be in. It's also made of people interested in discussing leftist politics, the gross (sensual) side of sexuality, and the effects of poverty, addiction, trauma, and disability on people. Sign me up!

I've made some lovely friends who I talk to daily around the world.

Right now the fandom is embroiled in discourse about a lawsuit at Za/um the company that released the game and will eventually, possibly release a second game. It's a very hot topic and people are very impassioned about the issue. We, the fans as outsiders, don't really know much of what is happening outside of press releases and its quite difficult to get a bead on what's going on. People are still hot blooded to point fingers and shout as always.

I'm pretty on the fence about it. My husband bought the game on sale for $10 3 years ago. I haven't dropped a cent on it since and won't until they release (if they do) a second game. Even then I probably wouldn't pay full price because I'm a cheapskate (I'm poor). I also write fanworks for free about it, so I'm very glad the original game exists but that's sort of where my interactions end. It has brought a lot of joy to my life.

I popped into the official discord to say I'm excited about the collage maker for storytelling reasons, and got called a bootlicker (which is hilarious to me since DE made me recognize I like degradation and I'm well known for writing kink porn around boot worship. Peeps gotta come up with a better accusation against my proclivities, sorry bb). That's my contribution to the discourse.

However! I will say of all the fandom discourses I've witnessed, this one is the most justified. Some shit has gone down! It's very poltical. There is money laundering involved! Share holders! The original writers are cast out! Did they get paid? Were they forced out? A guy kicked this whole thing off from a mental institution.

Things I can say for certain is, I don't like that guy, but I don't feel like I have a strong enough understanding of IP law, Estonian millionaires and criminals, or the office politics at Za/um to really know what to make of it. People are definitely throwing themselves on the train tracks about this shit though. I hope everyone gets some time outside touching grass, because it is just a game. A game we love, but ultimately, not super important.

Would I read it again?

Oh yeah. I have such a backlog of stories I need to read from DE.

#my personal take

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progmanx · 2 years

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Mere hours before the final push, Sara is roped into regaling her students, and really anyone else who feels like listening, the tale of how she reached A-Rank.

It's a story of maddening morality, child soldier epidemics, absentee bloodlust, recursive intra-national espionage, industrial reams of red tape, good ol' fashioned class warfare, and how doing the right thing, no matter how pointless or futile it may seem in the moment, is always worth doing.

For Sara, though, it was just that fateful summer of 1201 when she met Claire Rieveldt, kinda fell for her, and, against all conceivable odds, knocked the Jaeger King on his ass.

Short Version: Five year hiatus, nothing to write about, COVID, got bored, remembered an article about this intriguing JRPG series. Loved it so much that it got me back into writing fic, and I spent six months writing a canon-compliant 250k+ word rarepair (they're foils and have parallel arcs, so it shouldn't be) femslash Byronic romance epic (@lokgifsandmusings's words, not mine) starring quite possibly the single greatest character I've ever come across in fiction.

Even if you don't have 600+ hours free to play every currently localized title, you would not be the first person to read this fandom-blind, as it were. Apparently, it's still pretty great!

(Also regardless of your feelings on this fic, please play Trails in the Sky. Do it. It's amazing, and you'll love it.)

Long Version: (Under the Cut)

Hey, so, five year hiatus. That happened. Became a teacher. Got married to @lokgifsandmusings (no, really!) Had nothing else to write, COVID happened, I got so bored I remembered this article I read on Kotaku about this intriguing JRPG series that I read four years prior. Somehow. So, I played it, and replayed it, and then went back and played it in the correct order, and played it again, and...I loved Trails so much that I wanted to write fic for it.

Except you kind of can't, because it's so airtight and exceptional that the world-building and characterization answers every question you could possibly have that isn't "what happens next"? With one notable exception: "Why are Claire and Sara so WEIRD about each other?"

Trails always circles back, but this is the ONE time it didn't. Through four games, and literally hundreds of hours, not to mention a direct point of comparison that's truly bizarre in how Sara interacts with Sharon, they are so consistently weird around one another that I couldn't stop thinking about it. They'd worked together A LOT before, that much was clear, but due to their particular roles in this universe, the context by which that could happen was...rather narrow.

I'd already wanted to write some sort of story of how Sara finally hit A-Rank (because it took an oddly long amount of time, considering her circumstances), and knew that was the perfect opportunity to explore this element, too. Okay, maybe they're exes? Nope, dug deeper. Doesn't make sense. I dug even deeper, and...the simplest explanation is that they've been together the whole time.

I shit you not, in a universe filled to the brim with many, many complex explanations and histories and stuff, "they're dating" was actually the simplest explanation.

Which is baffling because Trails is very much a series that is...Inverse Sturgeon's Law. 90% solid gold, and 10% utter garbage. Okay, well, it's more like 5% trash, at most, but it is TRULY TERRIBLE. Thankfully, it's the kind of terrible that has literally no bearing on anything and you just sorta forget exists the second it leaves the screen.

So, anyway, already neck deep in research and silently thanking whoever thought of compiling the game scripts into an easily searchable database, I wrote...something truly absurd. I wrote a canon-compliant (you have no goddamn idea how hard this was) 250k+ word femslash rarepair (they have parallel arcs and are foils, c'mon!) Byronic romance epic that is "so exceptional it's intimidating" (also @lokgifsandmusings's words). It is niche to the sixth power, but honestly I just love Sara Valestein and Claire Rieveldt so damn much that I really don't care.

If anyone wants to give reading a fic where the "barrier for entry" is 9 80+ hours of JRPGs a shot without playing any of them, go for it. Trust me, you're not the only one. If not, that's cool, too.

Without further adieu, please look forward to enjoy Thunderstruck. Or don't. Whichever.

#kiseki #trails of cold steel #sen no kiseki #sara valestein #claire rieveldt #fanfiction #i have no regrets #I will go down with this ship I'm not even kidding you guys have no idea #remember how I'm not a shipper because this broke me #even if you don't read it for the love of God play Trails in the Sky

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mittensmorgul · 2 years

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2021 in Mittens Fic

The annual summary of things I’ve written this year! I’m relieved and pleased to say that while I’ve accepted I’ll probably never hit 2015′s record word count again (sigh), at least I improved over last year’s record low. And this doesn’t even count the 54k words in my upcoming pinefest fic, since I only count posted works for this little summary. I finally feel like I’m making writing progress again! Yay!

For reference, past year end summaries can be found here:

2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | the closest thing I have to a 2015 wrap up post is the lil bit of text at the bottom of 2016′s post... even though my two most popular fics were from 2015 lololol

Starting the year off writing a finale fix-it I could live with really helped me get going this year, even if it meant this was the first year I failed to finish a pinefest fic. I did manage to finish the fic I’d started for that (in March 2020 lol) for the dcbb, which was a process that renewed my belief in my own ability to write long fic again.

I did manage to outdo my 2020 total fics posted, with six, and beat my 2020 total wordcount by more than 8k, for a total of 111,806 words! Thrilling!

(tries not to think about 2015′s 250k+ total lolol)

At some point recently, I also crossed the 2 million words total posted on AO3, but about 800k of that is the tumblr tittyban meta dump, and none of that really counts as fic. I’m leaving it all there anyway. It’s still stuff I wrote, and honestly if the meta count counted toward fic writing totals, I’d probably have a million words a year, easy. :’D

And if meta counts for anything, I started the @spngeorg podcast this year in an attempt to organize all my thoughts on this show. It’s just me talking through every episode of the series one week at a time, but I’ve kept up with it, which I’m super proud of myself for! Thank you to everyone who’s listened, liked, subscribed, commented, and engaged with me about it this year. Episode 39 of the podcast-- 2.17 Heart-- will drop later tonight, and if you’re interested you can start from the beginning on AnchorFM or wherever you enjoy podcasts! The fact I’ve now spent a decade with my eternal rewatch, seen the entire series at least 30 times all the way through, at least this podcast gives me a weekly reminder that I haven’t just poisoned my entire brain for nothing. :’D

With all of that out of the way, let’s get to the fic! Presented in the order it was posted:

Revenge of the Text (25427 words, rated T): Begins right after Jack takes off after defeating Chuck in 15.19. This is my best case scenario for how the show should’ve ended, and I needed to write it so I could continue to engage with the series I love. I wrote it as if it COULD have been an episode of the show, hence the rating. Though if it WAS an episode of the show, I would’ve included a lot more of Sam and Eileen’s POV, and in an ideal covid-free world, a lot of other characters in general. This is just the beginning of what I would’ve hoped for an ending, though.

what goes around... (468 words): a “what if” alternate version of a fix it, with Dean waiting in the meadow where Cas had come back from the empty before, only something sinister is waiting there with him.

Just Another Morning (1166 words, rated T): the annual DeanCasVersary fic. Pure Fluff.

You Held It In Your Hands (73239 words, rated M): my dcbb, with amazing art by the wonderful @solstheimart. It makes my heart so happy! AU medical residents!Dean and Cas, they’re roommates!, and the powers that be at the hospital where they’ve both found themselves seem to be doing everything imaginable to keep them apart. Fluff and feelings-- revealed through notes left for each other, music, and food-- ensue.

For The Best (4912 words, rated T): annual holiday fluff, Dean and Cas end up snowed in together in the bunker. Technically in the same ‘verse as Revenge of the Text, so everyone’s happy and nothing hurts.

Haunted Heart (5594 words, rated T): Despite having written this waaaaayyyyy back in 2019, in collaboration with ArtSynk, for the To Hell And Back Anthology, we’ve finally been cleared to post them to AO3. So just under the deadline for this annual list, I had a happy little bonus story (with gorgeous attendant art!) to add to this year’s totals. I’m so thrilled to have been included in this project, so thrilled by the fandom’s (and the actors!) reception to the book, and thrilled to be able to share even my little contribution to it with everyone else now. <3

And that’s my year in fic. I’m amused I’ve already got nearly half this total wordcount written for 2022 already, and so much more waiting to go. At this point my biggest obstacle to writing is the sheer overwhelming quantity of ideas on my To Be Written list. And yeah, I think it would be hilarious to share the stats on that doc here too. Ahh, to the good old days when this list was ten pages long... Why do we get new ideas faster than we can write the old ones?

which, at least means I’ll be writing fic for years to come... gotta get through this list, at least! I think I’ll save that for 2022 lol!

Thanks to everyone who’s read, kudos’ed, commented, reblogged, rec’ed, and enjoyed anything I’ve written in the last year. I love you all. <3 See you in 2022!

#things i have written #2021 fic roundup #destiel #spn fanfic #shameless self promotion #spngeorg

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hillnerd · 2 years

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Hey Hilly :) Sokka x Zuko for the ship game. And Happy new year! 💛

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ULTIMATE SHIP MEME! Send in two (or more) names and I’ll fill all this out about the ship!

General:

How long will they last? -FOREVER

How quickly did/will they fall in love? -It took time- I think Sokka is the first to recognize it as he has the most self awareness. Zuko is doing something soft or hawt and Sokka is like 'oh....... Wait I don't have those feelings for Zu--- Oh spirits I DO!what? damn!' and Zuko is all 'I have never, a day in my life, known what's going on in my own head for more than about 5% of the time because I repressed that part of my brain-- but I know I like men which father and his ilk said was shameful so I have never, a day in my life, listened to those feelings because I repressed that part of my brain... And Sokka is beautiful and makes me want to be soft in ways I didn't know I COULD. I probably have a head cold... ' So it takes a long time for the two to actually communicate anything- because Sokka is convinced Zuko doesn't like him that way and any of his 'patented moves' to test the waters are not working, and Zuko is convinced no one likes him that way unless they say something or kiss him- so yeah- pining 250k after years of knowing one another Zuko accidentally explodes saying he loves Sokka and Sokka is like 'well then let's do this! I didn't know but I had a spreadsheet of data I was considering!' A Zuko is melting into the floor because feelings.

How was their first kiss? passion, burning, sokka might still have a tiny scar from Zuko's thumbs on his hips.

Wedding:

Who proposed? Sokka- and Zuko did not know it for like 2 weeks

Who is the best man/men? Toph Aang Katara Suki and Mai

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? -

Who did the most planning? Sokka- he IS the plan guy- Zuko more complies with the traditions he is expected to so he doesn't disappoint anyone

Who stressed the most? Zuko

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big. I'm convinced Sokka would try to keep is small but Zuko is like 'but the priests and council are saying' so it ends up being fancy but without a lot of people bc Sokka and public speaking is not the kind of stress he wants on a wedding day- and I'm pretty sure the fire nation wouldn't be like 'gay wedding? let's make this super public' since they didn't even like DANCING - so yeah.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? ozai and azula (depending on her mental health at the time)

Sex:

Who is on top? I think they switch it up more when they're younger, but Sokka tops like 75% of the time when they're older

Who is the one to instigate things? Sokka is much more likely to instigate earlier in their relationship as Zuko is so uptight- but as he relaxes and realizes 'no, sokka wants you to do this' he's like- 'oh! okay- well then I'm happy to initiate kissing/more' and it becomes very even

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? like 10-12 minutes or so on average- but other times it's languorous and long, or marathon sessions- they switch it up depending on time and mood

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? Try to! Though I think Sokka is very much the sort to be like 'no it's about you tonight' and after Zuko realizes that Sokka does that a lot he's like 'No tonight is about YOU' - and eventually they're like 'ya know what? it's about both of us like 93% of the time.'

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it. I see Sokka as having a variety of dirty talks he brings out, and that dueling/combat could be a bit of a turn on- so yeah- I can see it being a bit rough at times :)

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory. Sokka is a cuddler- Zuko won't do so in public very often.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? 0 or perhaps Mai or Suki helps them out- so 1

How many children will they adopt? 1-2

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? they try to keep it even- but Zuko is better at not being dramatic about it so he will take the worst ones

Who is the stricter parent? Zuko

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? Sokka as he's pretty good at precaution vs Zuko is not the best at knowing when something is too extreme as he's like 'i was doing that when I was 5' 'and whose Idea was that?' '...... my father's....' 'and your father--' 'is not an example of proper human interactions or standards.... I know >:( ..... 8('

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? Sokka- first off he's the one who remembers most things- and second it's FOOD

Who is the more loved parent? equal

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? Sokka- sometimes with a beard- but Zuko would show up too and be like 'why are you wearing a beard'- 'I'm on the board' 'that doesn't explain the beard---' *random person comes up* 'Ah! Mr Fire!' 'That's right. Wang Fire!' Sokka crows in a deep voice and Zuko's jaw hits the floor as horror washes over him as Sokka proceeds to do PTA stuff in a beard and silly voice under the name Wang Fire for an hour.

Who cried the most at graduation? Sokka, with Zuko being like 'why are you crying?' 'she's all grown up and <blah blah blah describes the end of an era etc> *Zuko tears up* 'oh wait, Zuko are YOU crying?' 'WHAT?! NO! I'VE NEVER CRIED A DAY IN MY LIFE *YOU* ARE CRYING- SHUT UP.'

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? Sokka loves this stuff- but Zuko usually just firelords it and lets Sokka think it was all thanks to his brilliant gift of the gab

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? Sokka

Who is the most picky in their food choice? Zuko

Who does the grocery shopping? -Sokka

How often do they bake desserts? -not that often- they more buy it than make it themselves

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? -hahahah MEAT

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? -Zuko getting Sokka his face foods of the water tribe- even though he hates them personally

Who is more likely to suggest going out? Sokka- he loves trying new food

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? Zuko in frustration

Chores:

Who cleans the room? Zuko- did you see how sparse his rooms were? vs Sokka is the sloppy sort who has plans everywhere

Who is really against chores? -neither likes them- sokka hates them more

Who cleans up after the pets? Zuko

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? Sokka

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? Zuko

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? Sokka- he was VERRRY pleased with himself

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? Sokka loves long relaxing baths - they also help with the chronic pain in his leg

Who takes the dog out for a walk? -dragon, and Zuko

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? -Sokka doesn't do it until he DOES and then he goes HARDCORE- so either there is nothing for like 2 years, or he makes a working moving model to celebrate a festival and goes full extra. Zuko goes along with whatever makes Sokka and Izumi happy

What are their goals for the relationship? -

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? Sokka

Who plays the most pranks? Sokka

#zukka #sokka #zuko #Avatar The Last Airbender

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zathechaosgod · 3 years

Text

Favourtie Stream Moments

Streamed by Philza on Twitch on Wednesday 25th of November

Hardcore boi doing hardcore things today!

Phil send techno a picture of his offline chat and techno just replied

Also rip the old alerts he’s been changing them around

RIP GREEDY GREEDY PHIL

He’s so popular now he can’t hear himself think due to the notifs lol

Greedy greedy phil might come back in a different form though!

Quartress garden again tonight!

He’s gonna make the swing he talked about before!

Scam train pog!

And we’re already having problems with the bits not coming through rip

Bits are now coming through but tts is still broken ripp

Also all tts is brian now sadge

Techno said “why are they like this” about the offline chat lmao

(you’re safe for now, but we’ll see how long it lasts)

Gapple gang catch up from monday~~~

Swing-making struggles rip

I can tell it’s gonna be pretty tho

The MCC teams just got announced on discord but Phil won’t tell us :( there’s some interesting teams though?

End of season one vid! (for mcc)

Phil paused the video specifically to say that Tommy has beef with the social media woman lmaoo

Epic Landlord lmaooo “I was never sorry”

glow squid go brr

Phil is very hyped for the new monster hunter coming to pc

“Special bois, a pig, y’know, everything a quatress should have”

“i have a few shulkers” *opens full double chest, then second double chest half filled*

“no no no” with a wagging finger bc chat was begging for an earcheck lmao

blocks go brrrr

this is in context to the people who keep asking what he’s gonna do about the warden lmao

Phil just wants to make shrubbery, but someone requested fishing lmaooo

AND AN EARCHECK LMAOOO

no progress on stream lol this is why he started doing stuff off-stream

phil asked chat what was the most stressful thing from this past week and ian decided that was the time to confess he almost broke the sub server

also phil reminds everyone stressed by school that it gets a lot better once you’re done and that you’re going to be okay!

ranboo is here as well lol, his most stressful thing was dying in hardcore with phil on the call lmao

Earcheck time!

lol i actually just found out i had my headphones on wrong pog

rip the audio is scuffed he’s gotta restart the stream :(

also he’s finally fixing the donation tts

“tommy shouldn’t be in charge of anything, really”

this is about the banned board on dream smp

finally back to the swing and the garden!

i feel like phil might’ve just gotten a new hobby, we’re looking at stuff with the pretty shaders on again

photographer!phil anyone?

SLUGZA

“is it weird chat that i thought about naming that cow and immediately killing it, just to piss you off?”

(this is why my url is the way it is lmaooo, chaosza)

the nether void took 250k+ blocks of black concrete rip

pros and cons of tall oak trees: pretty, but such a pain to take down

a zombie piglin spawned in the tall tree and he’s now called Technotree lmaoo

i actually love love love how phil names anything pig related techno

There’s like 4-5 techno’s in this hardcore workd now lol

Someone suggested snowza for mcc13 and now people are spamming cumza again help

H E

S H E

someone asked if phil has a favourite kid and he refused to answer so now chat is just “it’s techno isn’t it”

love the amount of work a single tree is taking, so much effort goes in to spawnproofing

annd there he goes making ten stacks of buttons even though he does not need that much for a single tree

lmaoo there was another fishing request available bc he restarted stream

(he refunded it, chat is still spamming scamza)

honestly i live for the way momza is always on our side lmao

SCAM TRAIN LEVEL FIVE LETS GOO

also hella pog is replacing the log underneath technotree with basalt i would’ve just left it there lmao

7K SUBS POG

People are trying to pull a quackity support but phil doesn’t cry that quickly anymore

the tree looks so cool!

SNOOP TIME

aka time to weed out the weak ones (pun fully intended)

Lmaoo we gained viewers???

7777 go brrr

bot also go brrr to time out the 7s bc the bot doesn’t care

Seriously the tree turned out awesome especially with wet hands on the background

lmao he’s got no dark oak left bc it’s all buttons

soul lanterns!!! they might be my favourite item in the game they’re so pretty!!!

momza’s mom gifted 5 subs!!!

chat is discussing options please reply below: Nanza/Granza/Granmaza/Granza-in-law/Grannyza

comprimise on 7777subs: he’ll let it actually get to the sevens in the tts if he hit it

he can’t do all of the sevens bc tts would get wayyyyy too far behind

Things i’ve learned in minecraft today: You can place coral fans on the sides of other blocks!!!

Nethertree looks absolutely awesome, especially with the lanterns!!

Also with the rate subs are going, we might hit the subgoal next stream already? 500+ subs again already wow

rip game crashed due to the shaders

whoo the garden path actually leads to stuff now!

no shrubbery yet though and a greenhouse will also be added!

ohhh fallen tree possibly!

basalt+dead coral makes for an awesome fallen log!

Raiding Wilbur! 100man chaos lmao

GARBAGE DAY

#dream smp #mcyt #philza #sleepy bois inc #wilbursoot #ph1lza #philza livestream #technoblade

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or-ng-c-ss-dy · 2 years

Text

2021 FIC YEAR IN REVIEW

thanks @sublightsleeper!

number of completed works -- 36 (35 if you don’t count ‘(my day will come) if it takes a lifetime’ which i started in 2020 and finished in 2021)

total word count -- 245980 on ao3. should’ve written one last fic lol, would’ve hit 250k.

fandoms written in -- just wrestling. if we want to get pedantic, aew, chikara, and pwg.

did you write more, less, or about what you’d expected? -- i’d say more. i’ve done 100k years in other fandoms before. i’ve gotten better since those days but still, 250k is. a lot lol.

what’s your own favorite story of the year? -- i’m notoriously bad at picking favorites. i really like a lot of the visuals in ‘at home, surrounded by vultures’. i’m not counting ‘(my day will come) if it takes a lifetime’ in this since half of it was written in 2020...although more of it was posted in 2021, so maybe i should count it? if we count it, it’s definitely my favorite haha. if not, it’s probably vultures.

do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? -- i’ve posted about them a little. i wanna do another longfic and also the big swampy fic.

most popular story of the year? -- ‘wound and unwound’, a very serious fic about chuck taylor being a quickshot lmao. it was very well received and i’m very proud of it, so i’m happy that everyone liked it.

story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion -- ehh....it’s sorta hard to tell, obviously stuff posted more recently isn’t going to have as many hits as something that’s been up for awhile. if a fic is “under-appreciated”, it’s also because it might be too niche or weird. and i love niche and weird, but i’m not gonna get sore over people being like “that’s weird” when i write a fic about daily’s place being a real, sentient being that really wants chuck and orange to bang it out lmao.

most fun story to write -- i loved doing any of the mini-bang fics, it’s really fun to host those events and to write out the prompts. particularly ‘another answer i don’t understand’ for the halloween bang and ‘the endless heat’ for the summer bang. beyond those, i loved writing “the biting cold” with @kentucky-gentleman, i definitely want to do more collab fics with my friends this year.

biggest disappointment -- i didn’t finish ‘the long wait’ like i wanted to. idk what’s even going on there anyway, i love the concept and it’s not like i had no creative drive lol, it really just fell between the cracks. i will pick it up and finish it eventually!

biggest surprise -- i think the biggest surprise didn’t necessarily come from my writing itself, rather the reception to it and to the chuck/oc fandom as a whole. it’s gotten bigger than i ever thought it would, which is incredibly fun and a little scary, but it mostly just makes me happy. i love writing these two and i love that others love them just as much, it really is great!

i think everyone that i’d tag has been tagged already. thanks again, kerri!

#always fun to think about stuff like this #my word count in 2021 was pretty shocking when i first noticed it lol

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bettsfic · 3 years

Text

how i got an agent, or: my writing timeline

when i started writing, i had no idea how publishing worked and i had a lot of misconceptions about it. but i just signed my first literary agent so i thought i’d share what my experience has been getting to this point, in case it helps anyone else with their own publication goals. i’m also including financial details, like submission fees and income, because “i could never afford to pursue writing as a career” is something that kept me from taking the idea seriously.

for context, i write mostly literary fiction and i’m on the academic/scholarly writing path. this process looks a lot different for other genres.

i didn’t write this in my pretty nonfiction narrative voice; it’s really just the bare-bones facts of how it went down, how long it took, how many words i wrote (both fanfiction and original fiction), and how much it all cost.

background

2002 - 2005: read a fuckton of books, wrote some fiction, wanted to be a writer but knew it would never happen, journaled every moment of my life in intimate detail

2006: started working full-time (at a chinese restaurant) while still in high school, also started taking courses for college credit; no time to write, and forgot i had ever wanted to be a writer

2007: graduated high school, started college (psych major), still worked at the restaurant, moved out of my parents’ house into an apartment with my boyfriend; my dad got diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer

2008: continued college full-time, quit the restaurant and started part-time as a bank teller, broke up with bf and moved in with a friend at an apartment where the rent was obscenely high; had to pick up a second job altering bridal gowns

2009: continued college full-time, started dating someone else, moved in with him, had to support him, took a third job as an admin assistant

2010: continued college full-time, still had 3 jobs; my dad’s cancer became terminal

2011: my dad passed away; i graduated college with a 3.9 and $31k of debt; quit 2 of 3 jobs; got promoted at the bank; my bf cheated on me and we broke up; moved back in with my mom

2012: a very dark time; also, bought a house (because where i’m from, it’s cheaper to buy than rent)

2013: discovered fandom

2014, age 24

this is the year i started writing and posting fanfic. prior to that i was a compulsive journaler but had no drive or desire to become a writer, despite how much i had written when i was a teenager. it seemed like a very childish dream. at this point i assumed writing was just a phase like all my other hobbies i’d picked up and set down.

but fandom proved to be really healthy for me, and i made some good friends who encouraged my writing and made me want to be better at it. i was really not very good at writing. i don’t think i had any natural creative talent whatsoever, or even a particularly vivid imagination. the only thing i had going for me was the ability to put thoughts into words after a decade of obsessive journaling.

i started writing in spring, and by the end of the year my total word count was 311k. i was making a decent income at the bank, insofar as my bills were covered and i had health insurance. i still had a significant amount of credit card debt from college that i was trying to pay down, and which was eating up all my extra income.

2015, age 25

i continued writing through 2015 and went to visit @aeriallon, whom i’d met in fandom and who told me i should consider applying to MFAs. i was miserable at the bank and knew i wanted to go back to school, but i didn’t think there was a chance in hell a grad program would accept me, since my writing wasn’t very good and i hadn’t so much as taken a single english class in undergrad. she told me to just look around and do a few google searches to see what i found.

when i started searching, i assumed i would probably be more compelled toward an MEd or MSW programs and go the therapy route, which is what the plan had been in undergrad before my dad died and my life got derailed. i never wanted to be a banker, but i’d got a promotion into commercial finance that paid decently, so i took it and told myself i’d work for a year before going back to school. but then i kept getting promoted and one year became many.

i ended up being more drawn to creative writing MFA programs because they seemed to want people with weird backgrounds like mine. also the classes sounded fun and the programs were funded. i didn’t know how i would be able to afford my mortgage payment or sell my house on a fraction of the income i was making at the bank, but i figured i’d apply and see what happened.

it took 6 months to get a writing sample ready to apply to MFAs. it was the only ofic story i’d written as an adult, and in retrospect i had no idea what i was doing because at that point i didn’t read literary short fiction. but i got the sample as good as i could get it and completed my applications. i applied to 6 schools and got accepted into 1.

in 2015 i wrote 250k. i can’t find my application spreadsheet from that year, but i probably spent between $300 and $400 on application fees. early in the year, i had finally managed to pay off my credit card debt and save a little bit of money.

2016, age 26

the school i got into was within driving distance of my house, so i didn’t bother moving. i tried to quit the bank but my boss convinced me to stay on 2 days a week working from home. i agreed to it, because my grad stipend wasn’t enough to cover my bills, and i was counting on what little savings i had accrued to get me through the program. i still had no drive or interest to publish. i mostly just wanted to go back to school so i could learn how to be better at this thing i really enjoyed doing.

in the MFA, as you might imagine, i had to read a lot of stuff and write a lot of stuff, and was encouraged to begin submitting some of the short stories i wrote for workshop. i was not particularly into the idea, considering it seemed like a lot of work for little reward, and also i didn’t think my stories were very good.

i also started teaching english comp. i hated it and decided that after the MFA, i never wanted to do it again. haha. hahahahahaha

in 2016 i wrote 343k. i didn’t apply/submit in 2016 so i didn’t pay any fees, but my grad stipend was $14k for the academic year, plus the income i was making at the bank.

2017, age 27

i did a complete 180 and decided i loved teaching more than anything else in the entire world, and i was willing to do whatever it took to become a teacher. i realized that to become a teacher, i needed to publish. begrudgingly i started submitting to literary journals. i also applied to summer workshops and got into tin house, which i highly recommend if that’s something you’re interested in. at tin house i met my dream agent, who seemed really interested in my work and encouraged me to query her as soon as i had a book done.

a lot of personal drama happened that year. i was still working at the bank in addition to teaching a 2/2 and taking a full course load. in summer i had a long overdue mental breakdown.

2017 was a rough year. i wrote 149k. this is the year i started keeping a dedicated expenses spreadsheet. i spent $174 in submission fees. tin house tuition with room and board was a little over $1500 + travel. i thought it was worth it because i met the agent i thought i would later sign, but that didn’t pan out. (i made some great friends though!!) tin house was definitely an unwise financial decision; i paid for it out of what little i managed to save in 2015.

2018, age 28

early in 2018, i went from teaching comp/rhet to creative writing, which only cemented my desire to teach writing as a career. i realized i was far better at teaching writing than writing, but i knew i had to keep writing to keep teaching (shocked pikachu.jpg), so i kept submitting to journals. i got my first story accepted. i didn’t receive any payment for that publication. i quit the bank early in the year (finally! after 10 years!) and was terrified about money, in part because my student loan payments were coming out of deferment and i was still paying off my hospital bills from my breakdown.

in spring semester, i won a few departmental awards (totaling $500ish) and got a second story accepted (again, no payment). i also got accepted to another workshop which i will not name because i hated it. i graduated in may and defended my thesis in july. the thesis would later become my short story collection, zucchini.

in fall, i stayed on at my school as an adjunct, and started writing training wheels which would later become an original novel called baby.

i wrote 450k in 2018. i paid $373 in submission fees. i was also nominated for an award for one of my publications but didn’t win. the workshop i went to was like $4000 with room and board (it was a month-long workshop). i got 75% of it covered with scholarships and i paid for the rest of it out of my savings, and even though i’d intended to drive there, my mom ended up buying me a plane ticket. again, i met a lot of big-wig writers i thought for sure would help me get an agent. i told myself i was networking, and that publication was all about Who You Knew. but that turned out not to be true for me.

as an adjunct i made $3200 per course, and i taught 3 classes in fall. in winter, i got my shit together and started applying for creative writing PhDs, mostly to convince my family i was doing something with my life, with no expectation that i would get in. in winter i applied to 2 schools. with application fees and the GRE, i ended up paying well over $500.

2019, age 29

in spring semester, i taught 2 classes while i revised training wheels into baby. when i had a completed manuscript, i finally pulled the plug and used all my networking contacts to get my dream agent i’d met at tin house. i queried her, and a very popular and well-regarded author i’d met at the other workshop emailed her on my behalf to tell her good things about me. i thought for sure i had it in the bag. this author also touched base with a few other agents whom he thought would like my work.

i didn’t hear back from any of them. not even a “no thanks.” i set down querying for a while.

i got a third story picked up and published around this time, and i was paid $25 for it. they also nominated me for an award, and i don’t think i won? but i can’t find out who did win so idk.

my grandpa passed away and i decided to sell my house and move in with my grandma so she wouldn’t be alone. i got rejected from both PhD programs i applied to and decided to get a “real job” instead, and began applying for random positions that offered health insurance, because i knew i was drastically undermedicated and it was becoming a Problem.

near the end of spring semester, i moved out of my house, put it on the market, and was interviewing for a community development manager position for a nonprofit. at the same time, i found out about another university that was taking late-season applications, and i applied. five days later, i got accepted. one day after that, i got a job offer for the nonprofit. since i had no idea how long it would take for my house to sell, and being unable to afford both rent in a new city and my mortgage payment, i deferred my PhD acceptance for a year and decided to work at the nonprofit for a while. the risk was that i could only defer my admission, not my funding, so there was a chance that the following year i wouldn’t get the same funding package.

i lasted one month at the “real job” before i had another breakdown and ended up quitting.

my house sold for well under the asking price and i received only $4000 in equity once it was all said and done. that’s a lot of money to me, but considering that i’d been paying on the house for 7 years, i was expecting a lot more.

i had a year to kill until the PhD so i decided to take a break from teaching and apply to artist residencies instead. i applied to 8 residencies and got accepted into 4, but only ended up attending 3, because the 4th was outrageously priced and there was no indication of the cost when i had applied.

in winter i picked up querying agents again. i queried 10 agents every other week. i also got a ghostwriting gig writing children’s books that paid $800 a month.

in 2019 i wrote 417k. i spent $441 in submission fees (to residencies and contests, not agent queries. never pay money to query an agent!!). i ended up teaching 3 classes fall semester.

2020, age 30

i started out the year driving across the country going to residencies. the first cost $100 (no food), the second cost $250 (A LOT OF VERY GOOD FOOD), and the third paid me $500. i was at the third when the pandemic hit.

the query rejections started rolling in. i gave up in february after 60 queries. of those 60, i received 7 manuscript requests for baby, but the consensus was that it was too long and plotless (you got me there.jpg). at the second residency completed and revised zucchini and decided to begin querying with that instead. i could only find a few agents who accepted collections so i only queried 16. i got one request for the manuscript but then didn’t hear back. i gave up in april shortly after the pandemic hit.

when i figured the collection, like the novel, just wasn’t publishable, i started submitting to contests which is the more standard route for the genre. i submitted to 12 in total and was a finalist in 1. i was rejected or withdrew from the rest.

the PhD program reached out to ask if i was still interested in starting in fall, and i said i was, so they put me in the running for funding again and i was accepted. the stipend was $17k per academic year.

like most of us, i got totally derailed in spring and stopped doing basically everything. the ghostwriting gig started paying $1500 a month and i also started my creative coaching business, which slowly but surely began to supplement my income. i also received the $1200 stimulus.

when school started, i quit the ghostwriting gig. i had no intention to continue querying either book, but i saw a twitter pitch event called DVpit (diverse voices) and decided to participate. for those who don’t know, a twitter pitch event is where you tweet the pitch for your book and use the hashtag, and agents scroll through the tag and like tweets. if an agent likes your tweet, you query them.

i got one like, so i followed up with the query. the agent asked for the full MS and a couple weeks later followed up with the offer for representation. we talked on the phone, she sent me the contract, i asked for a couple changes, and then signed!

so far this year i’ve written 375k and paid $518 in submission fees. i’ll give more details when i do my end of year roundup next month. oh, and i finally paid off my student loans.

totals

word count: 2.3 million

agent queries: 77

agent MS requests: 9

agent rejections: 28

agent no responses: 44

short story submissions: 86

short story acceptances: 3

short story income: $25

total submission/application fees: $1472

my (final) query letter

honestly this query letter probably isn’t very good which is why i got such a minimal response, but it got the job done eventually.

Thank you for expressing interest in ZUCCHINI through this year's DVpit event.

ZUCCHINI is a collection that views sex through an asexual lens. It poses inquiries into constructs like gender, sexuality, and love to dissect the patriarchal/puritanical foundations from which our social perspectives often derive. Being a collection about asexuality, each story portrays a relationship that develops from forms of attraction other than physical.

In one story, a grieving widow purchases her first sex toy; in another, a woman uses sex to cope with the death of her abusive father, and later in the collection faces the long road to recovery; an administrative assistant seeks out a codependent relationship with her boss; a masochist hires a professional sadist to lead him toward self-actualization; a woman begins to recover from her sexual assault by staging a reenactment on her own terms; and lastly, two lifelong friends in a queerplatonic relationship decide to get married. Asexuality is an under-acknowledged identity within the LGBTQIA community and is often misunderstood. In seven stories, ZUCCHINI dissects the notion of attraction, explores the intersections of sexual identity and trauma recovery, and conveys the experience of intimacy without physical desire.

Three stories in the collection have been published in literary magazines. “Lien” appeared in volume 24 of Quarter After Eight and was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. “An Informed Purchase” appeared in the summer 2018 issue of Midwestern Gothic and won the Jordan-Goodman Prize in Fiction. “The Ashtray” appeared in issue 16 of Rivet Journal and has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.

Complete at 53,000 words, ZUCCHINI is a collection in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado’s HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, Lauren Groff’s FLORIDA, and Samantha Hunt’s THE DARK DARK.

If ZUCCHINI is of interest to you, I would be happy to send you the manuscript. Per your guidelines, I've appended the first twenty pages below, which is the entirety of the first story.

what comes next

i’m going to spend january revising the collection per my agent’s feedback. when i send it back to her, she’ll shoot it out to the first round of publishers. my understanding is that the goal is to get multiple offers on it so that it has to go to auction. if there are no offers, she’ll do another round of submissions, and so on, until we’ve exhausted our options. if that happens, we’ll reassess, but by then hopefully i’ll have another novel finished.

meanwhile, i’ll be continuing the PhD which entails teaching a 2/2, workshop, and 2 lit seminars per semester. i’m also still doing my creative coaching, writing fanfic, and working on my original projects. in summer, i’ll finally be moving to hopefully start going to school in person next fall.

the PhD is a 3 year program with an optional fourth year. i don’t see myself finishing in 3 years so i do plan to take the extra year unless something comes up. after the PhD, i’m not sure what i’ll do. a lot will probably change by then so i’m trying not to commit to one idea. i might apply to post-doc fellowships and tenure track positions, or i might leave the country and teach overseas, or i might move to LA and try to get in a writer’s room somewhere. i’ve got a lot of options.

overall thoughts/stuff i learned

first of all, you don’t have to go through all of this to publish a book. you could feasibly just write a book and query agents. the only reason it took me this long is because my PTSD brain was sabotaging me every step of the way and i didn’t start taking anything seriously until i found something i was willing to fight for (teaching). i went the MFA/literary route but other, faster routes are just as good. maybe better. probably better. actually if there’s any chance you can go a different route, you should take it.

reflecting on all of this, very little of it has anything to do with talent or being a good writer. nor does it have to do with being at the right place at the right time. i’ve only made it this far because i took very small steps over and over again, and during that walk met people who could help me -- the authors who have mentored me, the editors who accepted my stories, the agent who signed me. and as i got further along my path, i started being able to help other writers in the way i was helped.

i don’t believe i’ll ever be a great writer. the best thing i can say about my writing is that it’s competent and accessible. everything i write sets out to do something and most of the time it gets the job done. i don’t imagine i’ll ever be able to financially support myself with publishing, and i’ll certainly never be famous or well-known, but i’m good enough to keep making progress. i’ll probably continue to find opportunities that are adjacent to writing and that will keep me afloat, pending my health and provided the country doesn’t devolve into civil war.

probably the most important thing i learned in all this is that having a wide appeal isn’t the goal. you don’t write to be lauded or liked. you have to stay as true to yourself and your interests as you possibly can, so that the people who come across your path can see you and help you. you’ll need those people; no one gets anywhere alone. if you pander, if you’re too concerned with praise and success or being adored, you won’t make it very far. the rejection will eventually kill you.

with all that said, my advice to you is this: never stop writing. the ability to share our stories is the single most precious thing we have. you can’t let anything stop you from telling your stories the way you need them to be told.

#writing advice #the writing life #writing update

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

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for the tag game I'm gonna ask the first 5 questions! teehee

Okie, dokie! Lab write-up is done, now I’m free to answer! (and if my muse wakes up, might get some more of those waiting prompts written this evening, too)

Fanfiction writer asks

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!) Can I say four? Is four acceptable? You’re never gonna catch me calling it brilliant, but I’m pretty proud of my standard nowadays. My old stuff makes me cringe when I read it, but my current stuff I think I do a reasonable job with.

2. Why do you write fanfiction? Because it’s fun, and because I can! I’ve spent my entire life daydreaming stories, most of them using existing characters from other media because something about them resonated with me, and when I discovered I could write them down and share them... Well, that just made it even better!

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? I feel like my style has reached a point where it’s pretty unique. I’m not sure what about it, exactly, but I read my stuff and I read other people’s stuff and I just notice little things about how I phrase things (and the grammar laws I throw out the window when they don’t give me the effect I want - especially when it comes to sentence structure) that I don’t really see other people do? I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I think there’s something different about how I write.

4. Are there any writers that inspire you? Fairly sure I’ve answered this in a previous round of these questions... the answer is yes and no, I think. No, because my inspiration doesn’t come from people it comes from random questions, random things. I’ll read another fic and go ‘huh, that was cool but what if’, or someone will say something completely unrelated and my brain goes plot idea!

Yes, because the story of how JRR Tolkien wrote LotR fascinates me and let’s be honest, I would love to write something as impactful as LotR.

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of? Oh boy. I have pride in a lot of them for various reasons (and yes, technically I’m proud of most of them because I wrote that but I mean beyond the ‘proud creator’ pride). I’m gonna go with the first fic that came into my head, though, and that’s Tales From The Heart.

For those of you who don’t know Tales (which is probably actually a lot of my followers because I know most of you follow me for TAG fic at this point), at its heart, it’s a series of short chapters/oneshots that I wrapped together in one fic so I didn’t drive people mad posting loads of short oneshots in the archive (which is one of my personal pet peeves as a reader). It wasn’t supposed to be long, just a few short ideas I had that didn’t count as full stories in their own right for me to shove together.

Right now, it’s over 250k words and 248 chapters long. There’s more to archive, I just haven’t got around to it yet. There are three other fics in the AO3 ‘series’ and a fourth in the works.

It looks at one well-developed character and his so undeveloped they barely have names and faces let alone personalities or backstories crew, and it ran with them. Quite frankly, at this point Penguin and Shachi might as well be my own OCs I’ve poured so much time and love into developing them as main characters in it. They have a detailed backstory (which is the fourth fic I’m writing), they have personalities, developed fighting abilities. Hell, I even made Shachi technically legally blind just because whenever we see him he’s always wearing shades, so I made that a Thing rather than just a fashion statement (I admit he also has a fantasy workaround for it so it might not be a proper ‘blind character’ in terms of realistic writing but it does fit within the canon universe).

(we have since got more ‘canon’ backstory and personality for them so Tales is technically AU now, but eh, whatever. I wrote mine first)

I’m proud of a lot of my fics, but I think I’m most proud of Tales because of where it went and what it did. Where it’s still going, and what it’s still doing, because updates might have stalled but they’ve not stopped!

#ask me #fanfiction #one piece #heart pirates #penguin #shachi #tales from the heart #not fic #bonsaiiiiiii

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ariaadagio · 4 years

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TSSKSF Update

TSSKSF = The Super Secret Kitchen Sink Fic; it was my nickname for this thing when I didn’t have a title. The context being, my original concept for this fic was INSANE, there was so much shit going on. It was all that, and the kitchen sink. I’ve since pared down my original ambitions considerably—and subsequently came up with new ones—but I’m still looking at a 200k 250k word fic, at least. It’s plot dense.

FEEI = For Each Ecstatic Instant. The actual title! I finally thought of something that resonates with me! Yay!

No, this isn’t posted anywhere, yet. I don’t post WIPs if I can help it. This is just me chatting about my writing process and keeping you all in the loop :)

For those of you who are interested in following along, I’ve been creating a playlist for this story as I’ve written/speculated chapters (each chapter gets one song). You can listen to it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BCGSg4HLWvcPhadFyhywK?si=y9_WwNXRT5GWHhy-c3wcRQ. It’s moody and broody, and I’m enjoying listening to it when I’m out and about, unrelated to this story :)

Another relatively small update today. I’ve essentially worked all week/weekend and finally lapped myself. Of 47 chapters, I’ve fixed up 44. The remaining 3 are part of the ending, and I’m still trying to decide how to overhaul them. There’s still a few things left to tweak overall before proceeding, but I’m on target to resume writing next weekend. I’m not sure how many chapters I actually have left to write from scratch—at least 2. Probably more. It will depend entirely on how Lucifer’s epiphany goes when I actually write it out, and exactly how much denouement my muse demands for all this suffering (both of me, and my poor subjects). Lol.

Having now worked my way through the entire story, refreshing myself on various plot threads and details, I’ve leaned back toward keeping the really dark chapter I previously mentioned. My gut is just screaming at me not to mess with it, that it’s a natural and important step toward the ultimate conclusion of this story. Some of my betas might disagree with me—some of you as readers might disagree, too—but at the end of the day, I also have to think about me, the story I want to tell, and what’s going to make me feel like I did my very best to tell it.

I believe I’ve said a few times that writing this thing has been a massive learning experience for me. I’ve written stories much longer than this before, sure, but I’ve never before tried to tell a story with so many dovetailing but initially disparate plot lines. Usually, I have an A plot full of mythos and action and other crazy stuff, a B plot for romance, and maybe a string of shorter C plots for various reasons. This time, I’ve got:

A: Solving the mystery of Lucifer’s appearance/amnesia/curse. (Multiple subplots: therapy with Linda, the search for Constantine, etc.)

B: Chloe & Lucifer’s relationship/romance.

C: The murder Chloe & Lucifer are solving.

D: Events in Hell, interspersed as flashbacks throughout.

E: Apocalypse-y stuff.

These plots span most if not all of the story. Then there’s all the shorter F plots that come and go for various reasons. And in the end, all of this is actually supposed to tie together (some more than others). I mean, yikes, right? It’s definitely a brain teaser trying to organize this in a way that makes sense and doesn’t feel like a badly juggled clown show. Hopefully, you guys are at least enjoying the front row seat to all my rambling while I solve the puzzle lol.

Anyway.

In the meantime, look at the purty, purty story banner @thewollfgang made me!

I’m so jazzed about it :D

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer fanfiction #deckerstar #aria writes #tssksf

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hobbitunderthemountain · 4 years

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ao3 tag game!

thanks @chibistarlyte!! (i mean you’re pretty much legally obligated to tag me in writing memes at this point xD)

AO3 Name: ladyoakenshields Fandoms: The Hobbit, Star Wars, BNHA! I was a Hobbit only account until last year NO TWO YEARS AGO lmaooooo Number of Fics: 13 (pUBLISHED, who knows how many i have sitting around in drafts lmao)

1. Fic you spent the most time on: Love Me For Eternity (started in September 2014 after HTTYD2 came out that summer LORD and it’s still a WIP. I WILL FINISH AT SOME POINT.)

2. Fic you spent the least time on: Astromech Anxieties and Babysitting Business (1 whole month) mostly bc it was a sequel to my first published Star Wars fic and had a very specific goal in mind (let all the star wars found families bond~)

3. Longest fic: Love Me For Eternity at 235k published (probably about sitting at 250k of stuff total.)

4. Shortest fic: Well Past Breakfast at 1.8k (an excuse to write fluffy old married domestic Bagginshield relaxing AS THEY DESERVE in Rivendell. I love grumpy Thorin.)

5. Most hits: BY FAR Love Me For Eternity only because it’s massive lmao.

6. Most kudos: Again.... Love Me For Eternity.

7. Most comment threads: ....Love Me For Eternity at 127 since it has 25 chapters atm and the longest going fic. Though shout out to Tourist Trap which is also a WIP but shorter at under 100k and only 17 (shorter) chapters and is sitting at 108 thread?? THAT’S PRETTY COOL I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW FCKIN WELL THAT FIC WAS DOING COMMENT-WISE COMPARED TO LMFE.

8. Fave fic you wrote: Again.... Love Me For Eternity just because of how massive it is, I’m proud of it. But AGAIN Tourist Trap comes in close second just because the sheeerr amount of self-indulgence. CRYPTIDS, FLUFF AND ACE RELATIONSHIPS, OH MY.

9. Fic you want to rewrite/expand on:

like literally all of them

Love Me For Eternity - I have a sequel planned which I still want to do whether or not i’m 80 years old and there’s only .3 people left in the fandom

Tourist Trap I already have an epilogue oneshots planned

More in the Of Parenthood and Rebellions series because I haven’t written enough Rogue One Family with my Rebels/Skywalker family bonding.

Double Date Verse bc @chibistarlyte and i have like at least 5 more ficlets in this verse planned out

10. Share a bit of a WIP or share a story idea you’re planning:

Well I know not many people who follow me here are into bnha, but writing this bnha fic has taken over my life, so enjoy a snippet from my untitled krbk adoption fic where krbk end up adopting a little girl that Bakugou saved/didn’t have any family left?? this is before they make the decision and right after said incident (follow me @sunshineijirou for more bnha content lol)

“Koharu-chan, you have visitors,” Matsuda called. The girl looked up and smiled seeing Katsuki.

“Hey, Koharu,” Katsuki smiled softly as he stepped forward to greet her.

“Kats!” Koharu exclaimed, hurrying towards him and wrapped her arms around his leg. “You came back.”

“I told you I would,” Katsuki chuckled. Koharu spotted Eijirou and shied away from him, hiding behind Katsuki.

“Hey you’re okay,” Katsuki promised. “Eijirou was there when I saved you too, yeah?” Katsuki kneeled down. He reached around her and picked her up, resting her on his hip.

“Hi Koharu,” Eijirou said softly. “It’s okay, I’m a friend of Katsuki’s.”

“Shut up, Ei.” Bakugou rolled his eyes before turning to Koharu. “He’s not just a friend, he’s the love of my life.”

“Dude, is that really what’s important right now?” Eijirou snorted. Koharu giggled to herself.

“Well, I’m certainly not gonna lie to her,” Katsuki argued. “I mean of course you’re a friend but you’re not just a friend.”

“Kats! I have more drawings for you!” Koharu interrupted them.

“What? Okay, show me,” Katsuki let her down and she guided them both over to the table she was working. They both kneeled at the table as she began to talk Katsuki through her latest masterpieces. Once she had finished, she got out a new sheet of paper and handed it to Katsuki and then found another sheet to hand to Eijirou.

“You want us to draw?” Eijirou asked as he took the paper from Koharu. She nodded.

“I’m not nearly as good as you are, though,” Katsuki told Koharu, chuckling to himself as he picked the right shade of orange from the crayons spread out on the table in front of him.

“I have no artistic skill whatsoever,” Eijirou added, reaching for a red crayon. Katsuki snorted at Eijirou obvious choice in color. After coloring for a while Katsuki looked over to see what Eijirou was drawing.

“Dude, what is that?” Katsuki laughed

“Crimson Riot, of course!” Eijirou replied. Katsuki squinted at the drawing, trying to find the discernable features on the hero his boyfriend admired the most. “What did you draw?” Eijirou asked.

“Me, blowing up some villains,” Katsuki grinned. “What do you think, Koharu?” He held the paper up for her to see with a proud smile.

“I like it! It could use more explosions here,” Koharu reached over Katsuki to draw on top of his drawing. Katsuki shifted and reached over to pull Koharu into his lap, barely breaking her concentration on her drawing. Eijirou looked over at them and smiled as Katsuki pointed out areas that needed more explosions and Koharu continued to add her scribbles to the pictures.

Eventually, one of the caretakers came over and informed them that it was time for dinner and to wrap up their play time.

“We should probably head out,” Katsuki sighed as Koharu began working on another drawing.

“No, you should stay!” Koharu exclaimed “We’re not done drawing.”

“Sorry, little dude,” Eijirou apologized. “We gotta get out of here.”

“We’ll come visit again soon, okay?” Katsuki promised.

“Okay,” Koharu nodded. She handed Katsuki his drawing he had done.

“No, this one's for you. You drew me a picture last time. This time I drew you a picture, okay?” Katsuki told her.

“Okay!” Koharu beamed, holding onto the piece of paper. “I’ll see you next time Katsuki!” Koharu smiled up at him. Katsuki smiled softly.

“Are you gonna say goodbye to Eijirou?” Katsuki asked.

“Mhm,” Koharu hummed. “Bye, Eijirou-san!”

“It was really nice to meet you, Koharu,” Eijirou smiled in return.

anddd i’m tagging...

@lesbiankiliel, @lovelylilpup, @hoomhum, @emsiecat, @sarkastically AND ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO DO THIS~

#and whoops its 1am i promise i was not planning on doing this tonight but boy howdy i do not feel tired at all #WRITING ADRENALINE #long post #long post for ts #chibistarlyte #dude talking about all my bagginshield fics.....makes me really want to write more bagginshield #fuckgdnfsdnf #NOT AT 1AM ON A WEEKNIGHT THO LOL I'M GOING TO BED NOW

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