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domesticated-feral · 2 years

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2021 Fic Year In Review!!

Thank you @scribeoffate for tagging me in this :D

Total number of completed works: So far 60, but I think it’s going to be 63 or 64 by the time 2022 hits.

Total word count: 85,081 posted ofc, it’s probably a 100k including the things i’ve written in my google docs and notes app and notebooks.

Fandoms written in: Teen Wolf, although I have a few fic wips in my google docs of other shows and stuff.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

Waayyy more than I expected to be honest. This year had been a very busy year with a lot of changes and stuff happening in my life, but I managed to write and post 85k words of me making my fav characters do things I want them to do. It’s hugely insane to me.

What’s your own favorite story of the year?

Hhhhh.. This is like asking me to pick favourites, but you know what, I do have a special spot in my heart for Do I Look Like The Devil To You Now? I really like it. Writing it was a trip, because this idea was conceived, developed, written, edited, and posted less than 24 hours of the whole ordeal.

Did you take any writing risks this year?

I did write one fanfic while at a family gathering. The fanfic in question is An Unexpected Intruder but other than that, I don’t think I took any particular risks other than my usual pantsing habit of fic writing.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?

Not really? I mean, the goal of writing just as much, if not more, is something I set myself, but generally I don’t set any goals for the new year.

Most popular story of the year?

By hits - Sicarius (because this has 16 chapters) - it’s an AU where Stiles is an assassin and Jackson is his target.

By kudos - Fake It ‘til You Make It - Fake relationship AU where Stiles and Jackson are shipped by everyone in the whole office place they work at. They attend parties as an item under a ruse until y’know.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

I have two contenders for this, 1. Do I Look Like The Devil To You Now? And 2. Snorkeling in Hawaii leads to…

The first one just barely hit a 100 hits and has only 12 kudos, which yeah, I get that it isn’t probably for everyone with the blood and gore and the major character death (antagonist) and all.

The second one is severely underrated imo, like, it’s Danny/Isaac and Danny is a mermaid and Isaac is saved when he gets caught in a riptide and feelings are reconnected. Obviously, this is a rarepair, so 70 hits and 4 kudos is a lot but it kinda makes me sad that not a lot of people ship this ship.

Most fun story to write:

I think this goes to In An Empty McDonald’s Parking Lot At 3 AM because I put a spin on the ol’ razzle dazzle of soulmates and soulmarks where Stiles and Jackson are soulmarked to one another BUT soulmarks are evil and looking at your soulmate = pain. However, they find the way to defeat the evil soulmarks.

Most unintentionally telling story:

Hmmm…i’m not so sure because I keep most of my real life things and stuff about me pretty private because I use fanfics to sorta escape all of that? But if I had to pick it’s probably this one wip that I’ve been working on ever since the start of October which has accumulated 5k words and it’s Scackson and just an unholy amount of smut tells that I’m one horny ass motherfu- okay, I’m kidding. Or not? I don’t know. It’s probably going to be posted somewhere in January 2022 :)

Biggest disappointment: Nothing really. I wouldn’t have any disappointments if I didn’t have many expectations to begin with, haha.. The disappointment tho, is that I didn’t fall into a stackson hole any sooner. That was a crime.

Biggest surprise: Falling into a stackson hole. Oh and getting a lot of comments, that was a huge surprise ngl. Actually, every comment I get is a surprise because wow, you read what I wrote and you’re telling me you liked it? I am so honoured! Y’know. But getting really deep into Stackson would be something me at the start of 2021 did not expect because I thought I only had the craving for maybe just a fic and a few moodboards for this ship but nope, Stackson was a very deep pool of water disguised as a puddle and I jumped right into it. No regrets tho, I love this ship so much!

Tagging: @rhyslahey @nacreousgore @scilessweetheart @blue-eyedbeta @inell and anyone who wants to do it, be my guest! No pressure to those tagged ofc ^^

#tag game #this was literally me gushing about my own fics #feral says things

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sammys-carhartt-jacket · 3 years

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Preword: OK???? So i think I did a thing. This started off as me doing a little rant post but somehow now it’s a fanfictio? oops. anyways this is going to be a multichapter fic (I’ve never been able to follow through on this before, so we’ll see how this goes.

also should I make an ao3 account and post there?

——————— So anyways, just thinking once again about how much Sam must have stuck out at like literally any school he went to.

I mean, maybe not so blatantly, but the few that he gets assigned to sit next to in class or some kids that feel like making a friend in him, they get to know him beyond the reserved, smart, friendly but guarded kid they see at school.

In high school, the differences become more prominent.

Sam is invited to an end of school rager his freshman year. He’s new to this type of shit, but when it comes time for the drinking games, he decides to join in.

Sam downs 9 shots straight in a row standing one foot on the barstool the host brought out.

The previous record was 5.

When he’s hopped off and done, impaired only by a slight stumble, the classmates sober enough to process it are looking on in disbelief, a bit of awe mixed in- but as always, he can see if in their eyes.

god, this kid is some kind of freak.

of course, they don’t realize that he’s been drinking on a regular basis since he was eleven.

———————

Four months later in a different town, this time the trio tracking down a potential witch coven, Sam goes to get a drink during lunch period, a group of other sophomores loitering by the water fountains and in a world of their own. Sam had approached their spot to refill his water bottle, and glanced down into the lap of one of the guys’ lap (Cameron, he later found out). He was reading a book on montana history, and happened to be flipped to a page on the beartooth highway. Sam had been there once when he was about eight or so, when dad had taken him and dean scoping out the area for remains of a woman who had slipped off of the edge after a truck had edged her off, and remained to kill similar drivers.

“Hey,” Sam spoke to the guy, and he looked up expectantly at him.

“Uh,” Sam crouched down next to him, hoping this wouldn’t be awkward. “Y’know, what they don’t tell you is that there’s a small grouping of forts in the forest around mile 36.”

Sam should know. He built them.

“It’s pretty cool,” he said, giving an awkward grin. And it was cool. Sam had had a lot of downtime on that hunt, and hey, a kid had to occupy himself somehow.

He’d built them out of spare sticks he found, bark, some old rusted sheets of metal from the past crashes (even though John had told him not to go fucking around back there, lest Sophie-the-spirit decided to make a reappearance), and whatever spare tarp he could grab from bubmbling passerby campers.

They were wobbly and barren, teetering on its weak stick side supports, but for a week, it was Sam’s escape, where he could pretend that he was a normal kid in a normal neighborhood, in a clubhouse that his dad had made for him and his brother to spend time on while their dad was away at his normal, 9 to 5 job. Not a shitty stack of crap he used to escape his dad who was constantly in a foul mood, in the middle of god-knows-fucking-where, Montana.

Meanwhile the guy just looked up, a blink of intrigue in his eyes.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Sam gave another half-smile.

He stood up from the ground, his other girl friend with the dark brown bob and sideswept bangs giving a small wave from the grimy tiled floor.

“I’m Joline,” she greeted, extending a hand.

Sam shook it.

She nudged the girl next to her, who wore athletic shorts, a hoodie, and her thick black hair in a messy bun.

“This is Maria,” bun girl gave a small nod, which said hey, I don’t know you just yet, but I think we’ve got something to work with here.

“I’m Cameron,” floor guy supplied before Joline could beat him to it.

“You new around here? I don’t recall seeing you before.” Cameron asked, brows furrowed and eyes squinted a bit as if that would unlock any memory of meeting Sam before in his brain.

“Yeah,” Sam shrugged. “My dad moves us around a lot. We just got here Saturday.”

“Oh, I guess you’ve seen a lot of different places then.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam said, voice guarded.

Joline ignored the first half of what he said.

“Saturday? Oh jeez, I bet you barley know anything about Burkesville-,”

She was wrong. Researching witches meant a lot of traveling around and interviewing, and gossip, grits, and dirty laundry was often included in that deal.

“-we totally have to take you out and show you around then. Tuesday night work?”

Maria nudged Joline. “I’ve got volleyball practice tomorrow, remember?”

“Oh,” Joline scrunched up her nose. “Damn volleyball. Wednesday then?”

Sam went for the awkward nod and afterthought smile combo. “Sure. Uh, see you guys, I’ve got to get to class.”

Cameron gave a short nod. “See you dude.”

With that, Sam walked to Chemistry.

Two periods later he has Spanish with Maria and she slips him a note telling him to meet at the 7/11 on Marsh street at 6:00.

He pockets the note for later.

————————

Joline scratches her wrist impatiently, shiny green watch band doing nothing helpful except to itch the hell out of her. She needs a new one.

She’s standing underneath the neon 7/11 sign, Cameron beside her, watching the cars go by.

It’s about seven more minutes before Maria finally makes it to the parking lot to sit and wait for the last member of their small little party.

Maria is standing, arms crossed, looking particularly concerned. It was then 6:12, and Sam was still a no-show.

“Listen.” Maria bites her lip and faces towards the two. “My mama is cooking tamales tonight, so if he doesn’t show soon, I think I’ll just go home and eat there. I’m getting tired of waiting and hungry.”

Joline frowns, but nods her head in understanding nonetheless. Prospects aren’t looking great right now. Not even a minute later though, there’s the obnoxious growl of a gas-guzzler car, and Cameron perks his head up to try and catch a glimpse down the road. He lets out an appreciative whistle as he makes out that it’s a Chevy impala, then a soft ‘holy shit’ as the car turns into their parking lot.

“Dude!” He exclaims at Sam as he pops the passenger side door and stands up. “You have a fucking 1967 Chevy Impala and you didn’t tell me?”

Fucking car nerd.

Inside the sleek black vintage, a man, the driver, holds his hand out for a fist bump that

“Not Sammy,” he says, letting out a playboy smirk. “Yours truly, Dean Winchester.”

He’s cocky enough to even wink.

Sam just rolls his eyes in exasperation as he walks around the car and towards Maria and Joline. He mumbles a hey, and apologizes for his tardiness.

“He’s 20 now, but me, my dad, and him are still living out of each other’s pockets. It’s impossible for him to be on time”

Joline smiled politely, but something about what Sam had said made her take a moment and process. The lack of a mother, the nomad lifestyle- it was just a life so far from what she led, she had a hard time wrapping her head about what that would be like.

———————

thanks for sticking around I geuss! This is actually the second spn fanfic I’ve wrote (I guess I can post the other here as well!)

chapter two sometime next week maybe

#My fics #supernatural #spn #early seasons sam #sam Winchester #dean winchester #pre series #pre series spn #Outsider pov #fanfiction #spn fic #supernatural fic #sam winchester is a bamf #Sam Winchester is weird

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katierosefun · 3 years

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so after one really big latte, a muffin, a run which resulted in a near accident with an oncoming car, and a shower in which i contemplated my own mortality, here’s my thoughts on the adorable me & au podcast, because babe wake up new hyperfixation dropped. very spoiler-y, i’m sorry in advance for how f*cking long this is, this might only have like two people reading this but i have many thoughts please listen to this podcast because it’s so cute and i listened to it all in about 2.5 hours?

- firstly: the main character is super relatable. like, scary relatable. meet kate “acunningplan” cunningham, a gal about to enter her senior year of college and just kinda,,,lost. she works as a barista and very confused, very...stuck gal by day, fic writer (and still very stuck gal) by.........not barista hours.

- honestly, i love kate. idk i’m about to enter my senior year of college, and bro i related so hard to her fears of “bro i can’t even think about next week without feeling overwhelmed”. she misses her best friend whitney a lot, who is currently on the other side of the country for an impressive internship. so that can be kinda lonely.

- but fear not, kate has an escape, like so many other fic writers/fandom people: fanfic. this whole story references tumblr without actually naming tumblr (let’s be real....it’s tumblr, from the “notes” to “this stupid app keeps crashing”), and kate follows this tv show about werewolves and supernatural creatures. very gay. only problem is that there’s not a whole ton of people active in the fandom, since this show is relatively new.

- however, in this small fandom, kate meets ella: otherwise known as “hella-enchanted”, who is another fic writer.

- kate is very obsessed with the idea of alternate universes, and for that alone, i love her.

- okay, so even if you’ve never fallen in love with a person online/in fandom circles, i just wanna say that ella and kate’s interactions are still so super relatable. the shooting messages, the starting random conversations and getting a little thrill when you see someone liking your personal post or whatever. it’s very wholesome.

- also, at the end of episode 1, kate goes on about how “yeah, fanfic is kinda odd, but it led me...to you” and it was so soft and gentle you just know your heart is gonna melt huh

- at one point, kate decides to be vulnerable via vent post about something that came up on the show (and oh god yeah i feel...things. kate relates very hard to one character in the tv show she’s following, and tbh,,,yeah. i can’t quite word it right now, but i think anyone who feels kinda.....stuck? would relate.)

- the “EXACTLY ONE PERSON ASKED FOR THIS ESSAY SO HERE IT IS” please

- also oh :’)))) kate talks about ella’s playlists and when i tell you i squeaked a little bit because oh hey--

- anyways lol yes can you relate to like,,,posting a vent post and forgetting to delete it and being mildly horrified (but also mildly touched) when someone actually responds?

- ella’s very sweet, just responds with “seems like one of my favorite fandom people needed a pick-me-up” and :’))) i would die for ella! (i mean, i would die for all the characters)

- okay yes also all the bits where ella and kate scream at each other about fic. very relatable, very real, you can tell that the writers of this podcast really knew this feeling, and i just :’)))

- THE TWO DEBATE OVER TITLES,,,,,kate keeps sending in crack-y titles and also song lyrics, and ella comments on “well,,,i just read this whole wikipedia page, so i think i’ve lost the high ground”, so if y’all KNOW i started laughing at that

- also LMAOOOO the moment when conversation diverts from fic and fandom to slightly more personal things! kate being like “oh,,,,,you have an actual job! like,,,you’re an actual adult and.....how’s that?” and then quickly rambling on via message “actually let me change the topic because that’s probably too personal”...

- okay so there’s this bit where ella drops the fact that she’s never read anne of green gables because “listen,,,,you have an ex-girlfriend who sang the anne of green gables musical all the time--” and kate’s “.......ex-girlfriend? you had an ex-girlfriend? girl--” (and BACKSPACING ALL OF THAT because “god i’m such a freak”)

- much gay disaster

- so much gay disaster

- opportunity for kate and ella to meet irl comes up! at a fan convention! in toronto! (and kate lives in bc). kate’s best friend (remember, internship one?) invited kate over to toronto for this thing anyways, and then ella posts something about “heeeey i’m gonna be in the area so if anyone wants to meet up for the fan convention...”

- let me just say......kate chucking her phone across the room because she freaked out about that. again. very cool, very nicely done, very relatable, etc.

- ALSO,,,,i forget if this was one of kate or ella’s fics or if it was the actual tv show, but there’s this tidbit where the characters in the literal fandom has this conversation:

“don’t waste your time.”

“what?”

“don’t waste your time on me.”

and the way that reflects kate’s feelings-but-she’s-not-trying-to-think-about-it for ella please let me just die here

- okay, so kate does decide to message ella about the meet-up, and let me just tell you, kate’s inner monologue about the worst possibilities for ella’s responses:

“1. no response. which is terrible.

2. you find out you’re not wanted after all. :(((((

3. the most terrifying response of all.......” (an enthusiastic “yes i’m so glad we can meet up!!!”)

- well, of course ella responds with #3.

- gay disaster kate not knowing how to acknowledge her feelings for ella...she goes on this “you don’t wanna come across as....y’know because if they suspect that....y’know.....and like, i don’t....y’know--” oh my god kate

- anyways, kate works at a coffeeshop, right? and her co-worker stewart (nonbinary pansexual co-worker! we love to see the rep!!) being like “oh yeah maybe you can bring over your friend!” and kate panicking because “ohhhhh i’m not too sure about that,,,,she’s,,,,,,,,,busy......” (ie. the awkward moment of having to explain that,,,,,,your online friend isn’t exactly someone you’ve met in real life,,,,,,,,and not sure exactly how to explain that so you just,,,,,,“ohhhh uhhh......y’know...............it’s really hard to.......get her out of.....work.....”

- kate and ella video-chatting for the first time is very cute, very gay. very gay.

- they swap “how’d you know you were gay / liked girls” stories :’)))

- “that’s a cute story!” “you’re a cute story” [awkward silence] “please let me hide under the desk now” (have i mentioned that kate’s a disaster? i love her, but you’re a disaster. we need to be best friends.)

- kate.....describing herself as “irl fanfic disaster waiting to happen” and the whole “i didn’t know we were actually dating until she asked if she could kiss me” lmaoooooooooo (but okay yes this is also a mood? like,,,,,,idk something about heteronormative standards so like,,,,,it’s so stupidly hard to figure out if a girl is flirting with you or if they’re just being nice i am glad kate’s such a disaster)

- in other news: kate’s “how tf do i write a kiss scene i don’t like the word lips ughhhhHHHHH” (yeah, mood kate)

- lmao stewart (kate’s co-worker!) just chilling with kate and being like “oh yeah i figured you had a girlfriend? the one you’re talking about? ella?” and kate blanking because “wait you thought ella was my girlfriend? she’s not....uhhh....” and then later drinking with stewart and rambling about ella and panicking because “what if she realizes i can’t talk about anything except this tv show what if she thinks i laugh too loud what if i have horrific body odor what if she realizes i have NOTHING to say what if our meeting goes SO terribly that i need to deactivate and change my name just so i could like her posts at 3 am” and then her small “please forget i said any of that”

- oh kate :((((

- kate :((((((

- k a t e :(((((((((((((((((((

- anyways, kate does go to toronto.

- meets ella.

- very cute.

- ella...........very gay. they go into a coffeeshop and kate doesn’t know what to do.

- okay but what’s hilarious is that ella,,,,,seems so cool and suave and i too would be kind of intimidated by her but then these two idiots really talk about writing kissing scenes and the build-up and ella’s voice gets all,,,,,,suggestive and there’s this.....awkward gay silence between the two oh my GOD they’re both IDIOTS

- also okay yes kate and whitney, a irl friend, having a heart-to-heart. good. we love that. also, whitney being like “I MISSED YOU!!! YOU IDIOT!!!! and i’m glad you have a new friend, and you’re happy, but I MISSED YOU!!! I HATE THIS CITY AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!!!” (whitney is also very relatable. ily whitney.)

- they’re so cute. they hug, and it’s sweet :’)) also, then kate says in a stupidly small voice “i think i’m....kinda in love with [ella]?” and whitney being best supportive friend--

- OKAY so we finally get an episode of ella’s perspective

- listen, you’re gonna think ella’s this cool, suave person who has all her own gayness put together (i mean, she kinda knew since she was 9 or 10 years old? she’s had a girlfriend? she seems like she has her life together? she’s waiting to get into grad school? she has a job? she just seems....cool and knows what she’s doing).

- but then you realize. ella is just as much a pining mess. (her bullet point list/schedule in her head is so relatable. as someone who uses her notes and reminders app religiously, that was just :’)))

- ella: reasons why this is not a date. and then....kate sends a message. (ella: reason why this....might be a date....kate keeps saying stuff like...that.)

- kate rehearsing how to tell ella that she maybe kinda likes her? very cute. (”you know the feeling in your chest when....uh, you know when you feel like you have a frog in your stomach--oh god not the frog NOT the frog”)

- the love confession is very cute, and also very relatable. “i like you a lot” “i like you too!” “no i mean,,,,like i like you. wait. which like do you mean? wait that’s not english. uh. what did you say?”

- kate’s “I HAD A WHOLE DRAMATIC FANFIC CONFESSION PLANNED OUT”

- kate and ella just spilling everything made me :’)))

- “i like how your brain works” “i made so many posts hoping that you would just talk to me” “you always make me laugh” “you just make me feel...better” “you make me smile”

- “this whole summer you’ve been making me smile and i guess it kind of freaked me out? ...i don’t know where my life is going but if i have a choice, i want to go in any direction you’re going because you are cute and smart and amazing and i like you a lot, ella. like that. so yeah. that’s what i was thinking i’d say.”

- i essentially explaine dthe whole plot but

- i love this podcast a lot

- it was very sweet

- and very cute

- very wlw

- i don’t even mind that i almost got hit by a car while i was running and listening to this it was worth it

- idk. just like. anyone who’s ever read or written fic or just like...not necessarily fallen in love with another person? but at least relating to that feeling of “oh god i am not qualified to talk to this person” and “oh god what if they realize i’m actually,,,,a loser” and “oh god wait how to friend” can probably hit a lot of people

- but that said. the romance was very cute, very sweet, makes me :’)))

- okay i’ll stop talking now but i just. it’s very cute, very relatable, i wish we had a season 2 but i think it’s a limited series. (but they’re living rent free in my head! forever!)

#caroline talks #oh god.......oh god #i'm so sorry for how long this is #but in case you couldn't tell i have literally so many feelings #so many feelings #yo @ me and au creators: thank u for making me feel seen and wanting to cry because of it!#it's beautiful #and very gay #and like idk even if you've never fallen in *love* with a fandom friend i think you can still hardcore relate to this?#just because like......bro there's something..........so soft about this #also.....gay disasters #also really saying 'hey everyone's actually super awkward there's no such thing as being cool and suave'#also just......AGH no someone please scream with me about this #i am going to SCREAM about this forever #i also....once again: feel WAY too seen #like.....WAY too seen #anyways #me & au

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khiroptera · 5 years

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I could ask for you to give fic recs all day omg any more?

asfdhja ask and ye shall receive anon!

non-spicy:

You’ve Got Kudos by @detectivessantiago aka curtaincall – i’ve recc’d one of their fics before and now i’m reccing this one too okay, it’s really sweet but also fucking hilarious. aziraphale and crowley write ineffable husbands fanfiction on ao3 but they’re losers and keep it secret from each other. we’re all fanfic nerds and so it’s hilarious seeing their different genres of fic and the comments they leave and omg.

Sweet Is The Night Air by @vulgarweed – one of the first fics i ever read, it’s VERY SHORT (666 words) but i love it so much. the aesthetic of aziraphale and crowley performing eagle mating rituals…. their hands clasped, twirling through the air as they fall through the sky…. i fucking dig it okay

Marriage and Misery by @wyvernquill – it’s a regency and arranged marriage AU and i just. i always love forlorn husbands okay, and this is the most forlorn aziraphale i’ve ever fucking read. and they’re both lovesick idiots and i love them but when you read this you WILL be like “omg you two just fucking talk to each other please.” but you’ll enjoy feeling this way! also i love that it’s a regency fic but full of queerness, and it’s just there, y’know? nobody cares that the arranged marriage is between two men. i like that a lot.

Inevitable, unavoidable by Lilian – something just really fluffy. aziraphale gets discorporated (oops) and when he comes back with a new body, he has temporary amnesia, and assumes crowley is his husband. crowley plays along with this (but doesn’t take advantage, don’t worry). it’s just really cute and soft and wholesome and crowley’s so in love and i’m dead. i died. IT’S SO CUTE

spicyyyyy:

Four-Letter Words by @wholesome-revelry – not like super smutty, but basically crowley’s praise kink but treated more like a humiliation kink. it sounds weird but trust me, it’s real nice. there’s some soft angst, but the story is short and they’re happy and together at the end so it’s all good!!

Lending a Hand by @thescholarlystrumpet – i rec’d a fic where aziraphale gives crowley a hand, now this time it’s crowley giving aziraphale a hand lol. but see then aziraphale returns the favor later, and then they fuuuuuck. so, you know. GOOD SHIT. for some reason i’m a real big fan of “yeah i’ll help you get off but we won’t admit our feelings just yet” fics, idk why (we all know why).

Anything for Science by Magnolia822 – hey you know what i JUST said above? this is basically a LOT more of that. aziraphale’s inexperienced and wants to make an Effort to get off and of COURSE he asks crowley for help and i’m fucking dead just describing this omg. i literally read this all in one go today and i loved all of it. pining and hot steaminess and getting together AND YEAH. good fic!!!

Gluttony by booksblanketsandtea – author said “man i bet aziraphale would eat out like a fucking madman.” nothing i say here can top that. it’s literally 5k words of porn, you guys, most of which is indeed aziraphale going down on crowley for a long ass time. please read this omg.

Born of Frustration by @julietk – how about some angry bookshelf sex? y/y? post-apocalypse, aziraphale is distant and crowley needs him to make a decision already. this gets pretty angsty but as usual it has a happy ending BC I REFUSE TO READ SAD ENDINGS. also it’s hot AF. passionate, desperate, they want so hard. slow lovemaking will never get old for me, but it’s nice to mix it up sometimes! a+++

#good omens #ineffable husbands #fic recs #mail #this has been sitting in my drafts for a while lol #and in the meantime i got more asks for smut fic recs so there will be more for sure #long post

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daydadahlias · 3 years

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JayJay, my babe, may i inquire: 4, 9, 32, 44 for the fanfic writer asks? 😌✨

NikNak, you may inquire and I shall reply to the best of my ability <3

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

Okay, I’m gonna try and mix things up a bit and give out some new ones. I love so many fics though, so I’m not saying these are my absolute top three, but they are very very high ranking. I’m very much into Bottom Ash rn, so please, have three of my favorite Bottom Ash fics (there are so few in the world).

Crawling Back to You Y’all already know how much I adore smut with emotions and this has some killer emotions weaved into the writing. Love, love, love the prose style and have reread many a time.

Let Me Take Care of You ONCE AGAIN. Emotion during smut... there is nothing like it !! Sex can be written as such a wonderful extension of intimacy in fics and I just adore it. This is one of my top fics in the fandom, without a doubt, I just love it to death. It is so beautiful and heartfelt and I honestly need to reread it rn.

Morphine Lover, Make Me Numb The fucking writing on this one... mmmm. Tasty. The balcony scene?? When there’s all the talk about the stars and galaxies and shit??? Fucking delicious. I am so obsessed with very poetry style writing and this fic checks that box for me. Have reread a hundred times, and will continue to do so.

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

I think that there are honestly a lot of writers in this fandom who don’t get enough recognition... I’m going to say @calumthoodshands because of fucking DITS which is a masterpiece, and of course you, dear @valiantnerdtm who deserves a lot more hype for ITNR, and I know Noah only has two fics in the fandom but fuck their writing is unreal so @ladybugnoah but there are so many more. I also think @allsassnoclass deserves more hype for their fic Off-Screen which I am in love with.

32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from?

Fuuuuckkkkk. Okay. Let’s go grab some one-liners. I’m not going to explain why I like them because... to be honest I just don’t want to sound pretentious. So Imma just drop these bad boys and skitter away. ((tried to pick more,,, background lines than usual, like not the obvious one-liners))

He says, quietly to Luke, words that break Luke’s heart harder than a hammer or meaningless touches, “I wish you wouldn’t talk about me like you know me.” ^^ From Tinted Windows

But it gets tiring, having to keep one eye on Luke and one eye on Michael and one eye on Calum when he only has two eyes. ^^ From Lightweight

But soon, he’s too desperate to even wait for night, and he’ll catch Calum off guard when he’s washing dishes in the river at sun-up, or when he’s cooking lunch, or when he’s just sitting and talking about nothing, the way his eyes squint being invitation enough.

^^ From Empty Gut

((sorry abt the formatting on that, ew))

44. Rant about something writing related.

I don’t understand why top/bottom dynamics matter so much to some readers. Like I just don’t get why some people have a preconceived notion in their head that a bottom has to be more submissive and that one person in the pairing has to be The Top. Like, I have listened to so many goddamn people gripe about not wanting to read Bottom Ashton because it doesn’t fit their fantasy and I respect that preference but I just don’t understand it, y’know?? Like gay sex... isn’t just one dominating person and one submissive person — at least, not in most relationships. I just think that pushing that narrative is very fetishistic and it bothers me when people are so heavily inclined either way. Like I’ve read comments on fics that are “sorry, had to skip the smut because I don’t read bottom ash” like dude okay, don’t?? tell the writer??? that??? It’s just the shittiest thing I could ever imagine doing in Fanfic Commenter World. Literally don’t read it then but don’t feel the need to tell the writer you didn’t?? If it’s not your preference, then it’s not your preference, and that’s cool but don’t be such a whiny little bitch baby about it.

From Fanfic Writer Asks Game

#cornflower #lapis #this is just like #a rant now #and this is too long #but it's fine #its for nik #nik knows me

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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What are your takes or opinions on Mr. Haley? He knew abou the court of owls didn't he? I honestly can't remember

He did. I know a lot of people don’t like that aspect of the Court of Owls retcon because they prefer Dick to still have that kindly uncle/grandfather kind of figure from his childhood to remain untarnished by that association. But its better than it like, having been his parents in the know, and I do feel like it just wouldn’t work narratively to have the Court have this association with the circus stretching back several generations into Dick’s family, without ANYONE from Dick’s childhood having any idea. Not only does it strain suspension of disbelief purely on a logistical front, it kinda....wastes the narrative opportunity of a personal betrayal/revision of a character’s understanding of their own history, that’s kinda....the POINT of doing a story like that in the first place.

So I’m fine with Mr. Haley having known and being a reluctant/intimidated functionary of the Court who knew what Dick’s fate was intended to be, because frankly, someone had to be and it might as well be him. He’s more of a cipher/plot vehicle than a character most of the time anyway.....the point of him is the impact/role he has in Dick’s life, and again, when personal betrayal is the point of the story, like....someone’s gotta take the fall.

But then, I know a lot of people don’t like the Court of Owls retcon in the first place, because of the way it makes it Dick’s destiny to always become embroiled in violence or the superhero/villain fight one way or another. That it further angsts up his backstory, etc, etc.

First off, my opinion on that last part will always be: bah humbug. Dick’s backstory is the tragic loss of his parents and everything familiar to him. Its already angsty as fuck, and if you think that adding the Court of Owls makes it extensively MORE angsty, its likely you weren’t giving his original trauma/angst as much deference as it was due all on its own, and unconsciously or not, you’re still just leaning into the idea of Trauma Olympics in general, the idea that there even CAN be rankings to trauma on this scale, or at least, that there’s any practical reason for TRYING to rank things in that matter.

So that, much as with the juvie origin, I say is irrelevant.

Now in terms of how it makes Dick’s future ‘destined’ to be painful even without the loss of his parents, if the night of their murder hadn’t happened......I mean, I can kinda understand that a little more, but I don’t really agree with that notion because like.....the point is, in everything other than random AUs.....Dick’s parents DID die that night. We already KNOW his fate. The POINT of his character is that happened, and this is how it shaped him.....so the fact that he was already ‘destined’ for more hardship and tragedy isn’t really a deterrent to adding this retcon because.....he already ended up with more hardship and tragedy anyway, so ‘avoiding’ taking an alternate route to hardship and tragedy doesn’t really....actually avoid anything or add or keep anything in Dick’s premise or narrative.

But then there’s the argument that it diminishes the power of Dick’s choice to be a superhero, if he was always going to be destined to end up in this conflict one way or another....that he’s not really an everyman who voluntarily takes up the fight if the fight was always inevitable for him. That’s a bit more of a compelling argument for me, since y’know I’m always about the power of choice and yada yada yada.

But the sticking point here is that.....Dick’s archetype and narrative have NEVER been him as an everyman who could choose an ordinary life for himself but instead is a hero. Like, to me that’s just a very superficial reading of the fact that he’s not actually superhuman. But in no other way has Dick ever been an everyman. Pre-his parents’ murder he was a professional acrobat and showman from early childhood, of international renown. Post-his parents’ murder he was raised by a bona fide superhero who moonlights as a ditzy billionaire playboy by day.

Nothing about Dick Grayson’s skills or life was EVER that of an ‘everyman.’

Additionally, I think this notion also only comes from comparing him directly to Bruce, and focusing on the similarities in their backstories and the common bond of their parents’ murders, and the fact that he’s more of an everyman in comparison to Bruce because of how Bruce sticks out as a billionaire from birth, accomplished at everything, a master of all trades by the time we ever really MEET Bruce on the page, with his own origins largely told in flashbacks and backstory.

But, this is also why personally, I focus on the differences in their backstories....on using that shared experience they have as the BASIS for their relationship, like the reason Bruce sees him as especially standing out as a victim he has empathy for given that it brings to mind his own past trauma and hurt......but not like....using it to juxtapose Dick and Bruce directly, as I think that really doesn’t work.

Because Dick’s archetype, all of his narratives, IMO, are those of the fish out of water.

The culture clash, I’ve always maintained, is every bit as much a trauma as his parents’ murder, because it was like living one life until he’s eight or ten or whatever, and then just being told all in one day, or one week, hey, all of that is over now. This is your new life, even if it has NOTHING in common with your old one, and you just have to suck it up and make your peace with the fact that everything you knew is gone and you have to start over from scratch. New city, new routines, new family, new future, new everything. Even how you act around other people and expect or take as a given they’ll act with you is going to be different from now on.

None of that is anything that Bruce can relate to, because its not Bruce’s archetype. Those aren’t his narratives. And I think there’s a tendency to focus overmuch on Dick and Bruce’s similarities at the expense of acknowledging that Dick Grayson is no more a knock-off of Bruce Wayne than Robin is a derivative of Batman. Robin’s Batman’s junior partner or protege or sidekick or whatever you want to call it....but Robin has never stood in anyone’s mind as “Batman-lite” because he’s ENTIRELY different from Batman even just on a CONCEPTUAL level. They’re linked, but they’re not the same. Robin follows where Batman leads, but Robin does not derive from Batman directly.

Same with Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne. They’re similar in places, they’re linked by shared experiences and stories, but Dick’s no more Bruce-lite than he is as Robin. And I think focusing on him in terms of who his character is SEPARATE from Bruce, like....goes a long way towards making him distinct in his own right, even when standing right next to Bruce.

So I’ve always felt that whether in canon or fanfics, the key to developing Dick as his own character in his own right, not dependent or derivative of anyone else, is to determine what his core archetype is regardless of all else around him, and lean into THAT.

And for me, that archetype is the fish out of water, so my inclination is always going to LEAN INTO the fact that like....the point of his character, his entire character premise, is and always was going to be that of the guy who was plucked from one life and dropped into another entirely, and had to find a way to adapt to that, survive and even learn to thrive despite all the obstacles this presented, and the inherent tragedy of him having to do it at all.

So that means acknowledging the culture clash, building on it, emphasizing the class distinctions between his origin and Bruce’s, just focusing on the fact that he was NEVER Bruce-lite....because he always arrived on the scene, came into the picture, with his own entirely separate and distinct backstory, origin, and beginnings, just with his narrative journey then merging with Bruce’s at that point of OVERLAP, that shared experience where they both lost their parents in similar ways.

So coming at the character from that direction - the Court of Owls retcon doesn’t really change any of that for me at all. Because when the premise of Dick’s character is that he had to learn how to survive and overcome being forced into situations and a life that he wasn’t prepared for and didn’t even want in the first place.....well, then, the parallel path of him being taken from the circus by the Court of Owls instead, again....doesn’t actually force anything new on his character or take anything away from his character. It just....presents an alternative course for the same essential narrative journey.

So despite me not being a fan of Talon fics because of all the reasons I’ve mentioned before (plus the fact that it bothers me that so many people feel a need to make Dick literally superhuman but in no other way operating on a different level from his family’s general capabilities when.....his character has never required being superhuman to do anything on that level before, HMM. Or if people do focus on making him different, its usually just in terms of showcasing his healing, which...kinda tends to end up turning him into a human pincushion every other scene, with an additional decrease to how much other characters even notice this or wonder if he’s hurting because oh well, he’ll be fine again in a paragraph. Which again I say, I Object)....despite that, lol, I have no problem with the Court of Owls retcon even though it nominally takes away some of Dick’s choices to say that he never really had a choice in getting involved in these larger than life conflicts.

*Shrugs* Because it only does that in theory. In practice, we’re all reading the adventures of Dick Grayson as Robin and Nightwing and Batman. Not the daily life of Dick Grayson, adult circus acrobat with a nice, happy life.

Instead, the Court of Owls retcon IMO actually just adds directly to Dick’s premise as I see it....both with the fish out of water archetype AND as the fact that like....his core struggle throughout all of his stories is that he’s the guy determined to chart his own destiny no matter how much circumstances or society or even his own loved ones try to force him down specific paths or pigeon hole him in specific boxes. Limit him or take away his options or force him to act or make choices from a place of having less avenues he can go.

Like, that’s who he is to me, so the Court and his ‘destiny’ as the Gray Son just.....if anything, bring that into even sharper focus.

If anything, my biggest issue with the Court of Owls retcon is that it didn’t go FAR enough.

It was basically the first major story of the Batfamily in the New 52, when we were introduced to these familiar characters in different ways, so I would have taken that and run with it, and in the process opened up a LOT more doors.

What I mean is....instead of this having been a revelation to Dick ALONGSIDE the rest of his family and readers when it occurred in the present day....I would have had the present day storyline reveal this as the secret history of Batman and Robin, and build on the idea that the Court had already made a move to claim Dick as the Gray Son right after or soon after his parents’ death, and Bruce had rescued him/defeated them, and then they’d kinda just buried this ever since.

First off....it cleans things up logistically. Having them seize upon an already existing tragedy and capitalize it, either by taking him directly then or maybe being the cause of him going to juvie/a bad foster home and using that to present themselves as his saviors when they introduce themselves to him, or anything similar to that.....its always going to make a lot more sense than the idea of a secret society pulling the strings of the city like....having no option to prevent an infamously irresponsible young bachelor from taking in this traumatized boy, and then just waiting a decade or more while their target becomes more and more ingrained in the public eye and consciousness before trying to....disappear him. Umm. No. Make it make sense.

Secondly, it goes a long way towards addressing the problems in child superheroes/sidekicks at all....which is definitely something DC already had on the brain when they rebooted their universe. Given that they....tried to claim Dick was like sixteen when he met Bruce, and that the other Robins since then all came and went in a span of like, a year each. Endless sigh of endlessness. Hey, DC, if your big priority is keeping the ages of your more famous characters down, is the best move condensing the timeline and simultaneously aging UP many of those same characters before they even debut? Umm. No. Make it make sense.

However. Keep Dick the same age he was when he and Bruce met pre-boot (which, lbr, most fics and even canon stories ended up doing anyway).....and suddenly, you get a lot more options.

Because say you’re Bruce Wayne, and you just took down the Gotham chapter of this globe-spanning shadow organization and rescued a traumatized boy you empathize and relate to, who had been taken by this organization with the specific intention of raising him up to be a merciless killing machine they then made an immortal, obedient weapon out of. And you know that other chapters of this organization are still out there, they still want this kid because they literally believe they own him and his destiny, and no other foster home or group home or placement is ever going to be able to understand what this kid has already been through and might have to face again if they ever try and take him again?

And on top of that, this kid has already like...imprinted on you from saving him from this fate, trusts you despite having major and understandable trust issues up the wazoo now, and probably will NEVER open up to anyone the way he might to you? And oh yeah, he also wants to learn to do all the stuff you can do so he, like you, can MAKE something of his tragedy, find a way to give it reason or purpose he can use to hopefully move on someday, he wants to defy the people who viewed him as nothing more than an inevitable killer by learning how to be a protector and defender instead, by CHOICE?

What do you do in THAT case?

You take that kid in. You train him, teach him everything he needs to know to be able to defeat them the way you defeated them, if they come back for him in the future. You keep him by your side, not to control him, but to protect him, or at least make him feel that he’s protected, that he has someone who WANTS to protect him, be there for him, WITH him, that despite having his own life, wants to be just one grapple swing away and the first person able to do something about it if the threat always lurking just around the corner someday reappears.

You introduce him to the others in the hero community, maybe even build connections where you previously stayed aloof, so that he’s PART of something, feels connected to something other than the fate tied to him by a bloodline he can’t shake or do anything about, that he has family and friends that aren’t just his much hated Great-Grandpa Billy Cobb Thornton. You make sure he has people who will be there for him even if you can’t be someday, if that Court tries to take him again, you won’t be the only cavalry riding to his rescue.

You probably don’t advertise any of this, at least not beyond a few trusted friends like Diana and Clark. Even as others start to emulate you, training proteges of their own and assuming they know your reasons, you still respond to people criticizing your debut of a young, child partner, no matter his skill level, by brusquely telling them its none of their business. Because there’s really no other way to justify it without telling the truth, and the truth is not something you want to hide not just to keep secrets or because you don’t trust others, but purely for HIS sake. You take it and lock it away and bury it as deeply as you can for no other reason than because it HURTS him. Because the truth is PAINFUL.

Its inherently connected to a time and a space and a part of Dick’s personal history that will never be anything other than a trauma whose shadow he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to break free of no matter what you do. But at least what you can do is minimize the number of times and places and people which require he face it all over again. That bring it all bubbling back up to the surface to confront and shove back down each and every time someone might feel like reminding him his own ancestor wanted nothing more for him than to be someone else’s obedient weapon, so why should they care anymore than that about his opinion, or plans, or viewpoint. You bury this secret not because its shameful, but because you know people will try and use it to shame him anyway, and you can’t banish the shadows looming in his past, but you can help him stand in a spotlight of his own choosing, where people can’t easily see those shadows amid the glare of his own highlighted role and mantle and self.

And its not always easy, raising this kid, because you WANT that blight on his personal history to be gone, for HIS sake, so you focus maybe more than you should on the stuff you CAN relate to, even though its not always the reason for his latest nightmare. And sometimes he’s bound to resent that, he’s going to want to yell because you’re saying you understand and you honestly don’t, you truly never will, and you’re going to fight about that and its going to hurt but its not because there’s anything wrong with either of you, or either of you are bad people.

And you’re bound to be overprotective, almost paranoid about his safety, always looking for the monster lurking in the dark for him, because that monster is REAL, you’ve already met it, you know its name, and its not paranoia when you know exactly what it is you’re afraid of and why. And he’s going to bristle at this, and its going to chafe, because you taught him well, you prepared him just as well as you prepared yourself, and he’s as ready as he’ll ever be to face that monster when it comes back, but that doesn’t mean you’re any less afraid of what that will do to him no matter how ready he is, not when you were the one to see what it did to him, what it wanted to do to him, that first time.

And you’ll be so preoccupied focusing on the monster, the Big Threat, the DANGER, that you forget sometimes about the other ways you and he are different. About all the other things he’s lost or had taken from him and that the monster isn’t the only one whose ever tried to put him in a box or confine him to the limits of someone else’s choices. So sometimes you fuck up, you think he’s being unreasonable or reckless when really he’s just trying to say its worth it to risk it all sometimes just to have a CHOICE, because the very act of having that choice, even the freedom to make the WRONG choice, is so much more precious and valuable to him than will ever make sense to someone who has had so many more choices respected and allowed and allotted in life.

But as long as you remember to rein yourself in after these times, as long as you never try and shirk the burden and responsibility you willingly took on when you willingly took him in, you never forget that that was YOUR choice, and that means the onus will always be on you to stop, take a breath, and try and see things from his shoes, be the one to try and bridge the gap in your life experiences and reach across the aisle instead of impatiently waiting for him to adapt and change and stretch himself to accommodate you and the choices and life and expectations you’re used to....as long as you do that, he’ll be able to look at THAT. And see that its not because you’ve just stopped caring what he wants at some point, so he’ll forgive you even when his friends don’t understand it, can’t make sense of why he puts up with stuff they never would, because they’ve never had that monster hiding in their shadow and don’t see it in his because he’s not quite ready to point it out to them yet, draw their attention to it yet. He’s still trying to become HIMSELF clearly enough that he can face it head on and look at it and then look back at himself and see without a doubt that the two are not the same.

And when you take in more kids eventually, for other reasons that are different but no less important, there are going to be problems here too. Maybe some of them think you favor your eldest, care more about him or are more worried about him when its really just that there’s something specifically TO be worried about, to keep an eye out for and always be wary might be lurking in the dark. Maybe when the truth finally comes to light, there are hurt feelings and resentment because you’re supposed to be a family, you should have trusted them with this, and it’ll take time to impress upon them that it was never that you WEREN’T a family, never that they weren’t trusted or confided in by their brother because they didn’t matter, but rather it was just because part of this monster in his past is ALSO his family, whether he wants it to be or not, and that’s CONFUSING and its hard to face and not something he WANTS to face and so maybe it just was easier, HAPPIER, to try and pretend it wasn’t there or didn’t matter for as long as he could because deep down he always knew it’d come back and there’d be an After that he had to adapt to all over again anyway, so at least he wanted to try and make the most of the Before. And maybe that’ll be a mistake, and maybe it won’t be, but what it will be is HUMAN. RELATABLE. REAL.

And 100% not anything that anyone in this family is to blame for, or unreasonable for, or because anyone loves or cherishes anyone else more than the rest.

And bing, bang, boom, you’ve just cleaned up a WHOLE mess of junk, strengthened and clarified several core premises and characterizations and seeded entire fields of potential conflict of all types, interpersonal and story-wise and everything in between.

All with ONE. SINGLE. STORY.

And no brain cells had to be harmed in the reading of it.

But nah.

*looks at how it played out in canon*

Sure.

That’s much better.

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t4t-lumpygrab · 4 years

Text

Fanfic Friday 3: Bmo Character spotlight

Woop! It’s Friday again and you know what that means!

Now with Distant Lands coming out in less than a week on June 15th- I think now’s a good time to look at what Bmo fics there are. As there’s probably going to be a whole lot of them in a few weeks.

For character spotlights I’m going to start off with what I think is the best fanfic currently out there about this character, which will get a detailed review, and then I’ll recommend some other pieces of writing.

With that imo the best Bmo fic currently out there is: Flowers for Bmo, King of Ooo by Princeofonesingledomain on Ao3

So first off this fic is about something I personally find really interesting: Ooo 1000 years later, the world Shermey and Beth inhabit. That part of the finale was absolutely heart wrenching and the perfect way to end a series about accepting change and letting things grow. Everything in Ooo ultimately stayed just as we left it, everything stayed but it still changed.

This fic is three chapters long and opens on a strong, well written and enjoyable chapter about Shermey and Beth deciding to visit Bmo. The dialogue between these two is really good and distinctly Adventure Timely, especially in the way sadder aspects are handled.

Also the jokes are really funny! Which is perfect for a duo at the start of their adventure- Shermey and Beth are at the same point of their story as early seasons Finn and Jake were. And the humor reflects that with jokes I can imagine being in a season 1 or 2 episode.

Other little tidbits that tie nicely into the show are the little snippets we get of old Ooo - like Beth humming the food chain song as she looks for something to give Bmo, or the duo casually discussing Peppermint Butler who by the way HAS BECOME GUARDIAN OF A NIGHTOSPHERE PORTAL! There’s no boring exposition in the way we get this information, these things are just seamlessly placed in the narrative like references to old Ooo were in the episode Come Along With Me. So this fic feels like a good sequel to that episode from the get go and the second chapter only builds on this.

The second chapter focuses on Bmo and is much more melancholy, starting with Bmo sitting and staring at the clouds, thinking about how the way they change their shapes reminds them of someone? Jack? Jake? Or was it Phil? Which is a really nice example of character based description- the sort I love to see in a fanfic!

This really draws you into Bmo’s centuries old mind. It’s peaceful, but still playful. Bmo has stayed the same, but also changed.

This is also reflected in how superbly Bmo is written. Bmo is still charming and childish, they still mess around with their reflection friend football, but there’s an... age to Bmo now. A tiredness, a weariness and sense of loss that wasn’t there before. Which contrasts really well against Shermey and Beth who’s adventure is just beginning.

In general this fic made me really emotional and is a really good dive into Bmo’s character, it also features a lovely song written by Marceline for Bmo that I can totally imagine being in the show and an absolute gut punch of an ending.

I say ending in reference to the second chapter because that was originally when the fic was supposed to end, but the author graciously added an epilogue that brings together all the characters mentioned and has Bmo finally find his place in this new world, finally moving on from the past to be the friend to Shermey and Beth, a returned Bonnie and Marcy, a grown up Peppermint Butler and characters yet unmet that he was to Finn and Jake.

Staying the same, yet changing.

...You think the author’s done after writing the best Bmo fic I’ve ever read? Nope! Just as things couldn’t get any better, you find out this is part of a series and has not one, but TWO sequels! These are focused on other characters so I’m not going to review them, just list the summaries and encourage you to check them out:

Autumn Leaves - Caught in a conflict between Sweet P. and a great returning evil, Shermy tumbles down a mountainside and meets someone who seems to know him, even though he's never seen her before. Could this be the Huntress Wizard BMO told him about?

A Grey Winter’s Bloom - How did Marceline get her wrinkles and grey hair? What happened to Simon? A night that starts as an attempted romantic evening for her and Bonnie ends up being more than Marceline ever bargained for. In BMO's house of many memories, Marceline finds Simon's glasses lying on a shelf. They remind her of a time that seems too long past to be real, but too personal to be far from her heart. Shermy, Beth and the others listen to her recount the first time she'd noticed Simon was growing old, and that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

With that another really good Bmo fic is Disk Check Error by Skyeel also on ao3.

-the super good writing of Bmo. Every line feels like it’s said by them.

This fic is a homage to Bmo’s memory storage, which by now stores some of the addest, happiest, tensest and funniest moments of Ooo’s history.

The first two memories we see are a cute Bubline fluff piece post “What Was Missing” which is Bmo at their cutest and most baby! The writing of them is in character and each piece of dialogue feels like it was taken from an actual show script. The bubbline in this is also adorable.

The second memory is equally cute- focusing on Bmo making a videogame for Finn as a birthday gift only for the Ice King to show up and for them to sort of.... collaborate? Either way it’s very sweet, Bmo is their usual childish self and the Ice King’s weird personality goes really well with theirs, meaning we get to see a sweet and playful side to Simon just as we do Bmo.

Meanwhile, the beginning and end of each segment listing Bmo’s memory storage ties them all together. This seemingly related piece of data is revealed to be the size of another memory, which Bmo has had to rip out of their hard drive to make way for new memories. And the third memory- which is actually Bmo’s present 1000 years later deals with just this special data.

Like in the first fic Bmo 1000 years later is slightly different, older than the Bmo we grew up with, something that this fic makes all the more poignant because we saw Bmo as they used to be right at the start. Bmo has two guests over and tells them a story.

Now I’m not going to spoil the emotional core of this story but I am going to tell you what I really enjoyed about the final memory.

It’s very rare for a fanfic to take full advantage of the written word as a medium and this one takes advantage of typographical features (fancy words for stuff in a text that’s visual e.g. font, punctuation etc) in a way that not only tells the story but is emotional.

All in all, like the first fanfic this one links to the core theme of Adventure Time: that even if things change, from Simon and the Ice King to Marceline throughout the seasons to the land of Ooo itself, what truly matters about these things will always stay the same. Especially when that’s love.

Some other lil Bmo fics I found enjoyable are:

A Real Boy- 7 very short 2-4 paragraph chapters detailing how Bmo wishes on an artefact Finn and Jake find to be a real boy, and ends up zapped into a parallel reality.

This has some really cool moments as well as general Bmo cuteness- plus there’s some cannon x OC ship stuff that’s always nice to see. I love fan OCs and think they’re great fun if you can’t tell by my fankid horde. This has a cute ending too. It’s very short and can easily be finished in 10 minutes.

Bmo’s Greatest Adventure - this one’s a lot longer and I haven’t fully finished it, though from what I’ve read so far it’s pretty nostalgic for early seasons Adventure Time as well as early 2010s Fanfiction. The characters are in character, Bmo is their plucky self and other than that this fic is what it says on the tin so here’s the author summary:

In the land of Ooo, before the Mushroom Wars, there was an ancient yellow computer chip held precious information about all of the secrets about rebuilding & maintain the society that was once e story was told that there will be a great computer mind to help translate and rebuild Ooo, but the chip was hidden away & So BMO's greatest adventure began.

The Treasure of two Robots - I’m a bit hesitant about reccommdending this as it’s written for the Bmo x NEPTR pairing and in it Bmo is referred to with she/her exclusively and just generally gendered as female.

While Bmo is generally interpreted to be a genderfluid character, this comes off as a little erasing of all the times they’ve used he/him and seems like the writer is trying to avoid writing, y’know, gays. Though Bmo canonnically has no sex and is referred to with a variety of gendered forms throughout the show, including he, she, m’lady and others. None of which Bmo corrects or seems uncomfortable with/has preference for, so we can assume she/her is technically fine.

So as such I can’t fault people for writing Bmo to be leaning femininely in their fics if that’s how they see the character though it does come off as straightwashing of what should be an lgbt pairing - a male and a genderfluid person’s relationship isn’t straight. But like I said, this is just my suspicions based on the year this fic were written in. It could simply be author interpretation. There’s nothing in this fic to suggest Neptr doesn’t also love Bmo when they’re a boy, and that Bmo isn’t genderfluid.

That said this is a very cute fic featuring human versions of Bmo and NEPTR that shows what NEPTR and Bmo get up to when Finn and Jake aren’t around, and Bmo’s playful nature contrasts well against NEPTR’s more reserved and meek personality so they end up working well together. Bmo encourages NEPTR to get stuck in and enjoy himself while NEPTR acts as a much needed voice of reason. It’s nice to read about Bmo having carefree fun after, y’know

this.

So that’s that! I may do another one about Bmo if Distant Lands gives us as many fics as I’m hoping it will... hopefully...

See you all next week!

#adventure time #adventure time fanfiction #bmo #distant lands #atime #atimers #fanfiction #reviews #fanfic friday

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kangaracha · 4 years

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1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13 :)

de1: of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?

not counting my fics that aren’t zombies, if only we knew. I often feel like I lose the thread of my themes and stuff while writing my like longish stuff, but on this it all just sort of....came together and Worked. also I really challenged myself with the themes of this, and I’ve continued challenging myself with the themes of the sequel, and the chasm grows and I’m really happy I stuck to my guns with it because I think it came out really nicely.

also that one prompt I did for you where zed lowkey killed addison? yeah I’m pretty proud of myself for that. (but really, I turned that out in thirty minutes total, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever had something that feels so complete finished ever, and I was so happy with the twist and the clues I worked in there and it’s probably the only short thing I’ve ever written that doesn’t feel like the pacing is weird or rushed)

4: what are some themes you love writing about?

hmmmmmmmm. I think friendship is my like, go-to, I love building/exploring relationships between characters and generally I latch on to friendships over romantic relationships. death is always a good one, I enjoyed exploring that in if only. I don’t like coming of age or the ‘chosen one’ sort of plots, but I do like strong characters and taking them on a journey of discovery/leadership/growth into being a hero. My one true love is apocalypse stories, and all the things that come with them - the loss of hope, the losing or finding of humanity, the state of the world/humans, corruption, rebellion, the choice of whether to be good or bad, the ability to question if there is a point at which it isn’t worth it to live in a world like that anymore.........there are just endless, really deep and solemn themes to explore there and the added bonus of these twisted and sometimes unrecognisable worlds.

5: what inspires you to write?

in the day-to-day, music is a huge help in just...setting my mind to writing, getting in the right headspace, and it’s a great source of ideas sometimes too. I have a playlist for everything that takes more than a couple of days to write, so when I need to settle into the vibe of a piece or I want to spend some time thinking about what I’m doing with it, I’ll throw on the playlist and spend an hour or so like...sinking into it.

otherwise, my fanfic ideas mostly come just from lines or things I see in the source material - identity came from that scene when they return from zombie containment, zed’s explanation of containment and eliza’s spiel. the beginning of if only came from your prompt fill but the rest of it sprouted entirely from the line ‘we die. we be nothing.’ and you will run and run and run came to me during eliza’s verse in ‘my year’.

my favourite place to come up with fantastic scene ideas and/or plot twists is in the shower, or while driving. on my way to work is a particularly good time, because it’s just so early and my brain is still half-asleep and doesn’t care about plot holes.

8: is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why?

well I mean, right now I am l i v i n g for that Wyatt-centric fic. he’s a character that’s calm and thoughtful and leaves a lot of room to fit in contemplations and explain plot elements and leave space between dialogue without it feeling out of character like it might for a character that is more hot-headed and faster-paced. I really like Eliza for similar reasons, even though she’s a much sharper character - where Wyatt is slower, a mediator who evaluates options, she is clever and cunning, still a character who is always thinking and who can be used in that way, but for a different sort of outcome (which I desperately hope to explore in run and run one day)

my least favourite is Willa; I took a pass at her in hunters (it’s do or die, to everyone who isn’t keeps xD), and while I really like writing her as a secondary character, I find it really hard to get into her brain while maintaining that ruthless, ruled-by-pride version of her that I’ve built up without accidentally softening her. I just find that she stands up a lot better when I am writing from another point of view looking at her, rather than trying to get inside her head, and the way that I’m going towards breaking her down in a current wip is the only way I’m really interested in doing it - I don’t think I’d ever be interested in writing anything like if only we knew with Willa as the focus.

9: a passage from a wip

this one is just mean because you know that the only wip I have enough to show you of is and the chasm grows, and you know that you’ve seen everything I want to show you and that I’ll want to show you something new because I like it when you yell at me xD

“I don’t need your help, Wyatt,” Wila insists, unaware of the way such a cold sentiment splinters his heart into a million pieces.

“You always need my help,” he replies, his voice rising and rising. “You asked for my help just a few days ago!”

“And then you went and caught a fever, walking around out in the rain!” Her words are hot and angry, but for the first time, it is not directed at him. “I haven’t needed you all week, Wyatt! And I don’t need you when you’re half dead!”

13: who are your favourite writers?

s h i t.

out of the zombies fandom, you and @fist-it-out, although I’ve tried to read all the stuff from you guys in the discord and everyone seems to have their own little niche (even my tumblr friends who aren’t in the discord have their own corner of the fandom, everyone is rocking it, I’m just over here trying to carve out my own piece of paradise). i have nothing to say to you and sarah because I tell you all the time that you’re amazing so I’m just gonna name everyone else I talk to on a regular basis.

@rainfallingfromthesky is honestly the mvp like if I’ve read anything of yours then I don’t remember but you’re a godsend for editing and you’re the only thing holding river cold together and you fix my words when I don’t know what to put there so you’re one of my favourite writers even if you’ve never given me anything to read.

@kokinu09 and @gayce-ventura over here in fluff city keeping the balance on the relevant fanfiction sites between my everyone dies nobody’s happy bullshit and y’know, actual good fic. I don’t get like, pms bugging me to read your stuff so I think I miss it sometimes or I’m like ‘oh I’ll sit down and read that later’ and then I’m busy for four days and that’s honestly pretty shit of me but I’m still reading and I still love your shit, I promise xD

@gogoseabrook i mean..............weather warning. that’s....that’s all.

I didn’t think you’d be writing shit like that brooke like I think I still have whiplash. you’re over here telling me I intimidate you and then you just quietly put the link to that in the discord. like........holy shit

#about roo #asks

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ciestess · 5 years

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Ye Olde Tag Game

Tagged by @jaywrites101. (OK, if you’ve read any of these, you probably know the drill by now: “read” and “book” can and will be substituted with “watch/play” and “story.” Because I don’t actually read all-that-many books, but I consume mountains of stories in other formats.)

1: What book have you read a million times and would read a million times more? And why?

I will never get tired of watching Durarara!! I LOVE the characters, their dynamics, the twisty plot that just keeps building on itself -- and I never seem to stop noticing little character quirks or hidden details!

2: Which OC of your current wip did you come up with first?

Not many OCs going on at the moment. And by that I mean, I have none that I can actually TELL you about right now. Try again in a few months, lol!

3: What piece of world-building gave or is giving you the most trouble?

Believe it or not, the freaking Marauders’ Map was a headache-and-a-half to figure out workable mechanics that didn’t give Danny away. Thankfully, JK gave us little enough to go on for how it works that I could more-or-less make it up.

(If you’re interested in how I decided the Map works in PM: The Map shows the Hogwarts’ ghosts because they are “tied” to the Grounds, but it would not show a non-tied ghost if one was to appear. It DOES NOT show dementors because, while they are tangible and sentient beings, they do not have names. Phantasm physiology is closer to that of a dementor than a ghost, but in this case, the ectoplasmic/non-corporeal nature of his body wins out. In this case, the Map treats him like a “non-tied ghost,” rather than a “named dementor.”

I decided on these mechanics for plot reasons because we aren’t told about the Map showing unnamed animals OR dementors in the books.)

4: What type of scene is your favorite to write? Why?

I love writing scenes with lots of suspense and moving parts! Any scene that I can see playing out in my head like a movie, I absolutely LOVE putting on a page. (Such as the opening fight scenes in PM, the biting/kissing part of the OSW “Chocolate Blood,” or Hiyori’s temper-tantrum in OSW “Petty Irreplaceable”)

5: (Stealing this one) What chapter of your main wip is your favorite? Why?

Ah! Finally a question I can (kind of) answer using Crossroad of Infinity!

My favorite chapter WILL (probably) be the final chapter of the book. ... Y’know, actually... My favorite chapters of longer WIPs almost always ARE the last (or second-to-last, in the case of PM) chapters. Huh...

6: If your OCs the characters in your WIP were transplanted into another genre (say, fantasy to sci-fi or sci-fi to horror), what would their new occupations be?

Well, we’ve lived through just about everything... Yo, Noctu! You answer this one. I’m running on empty here.

(Seriously? No crazy color fonts on PC? It’s Pride Month, you losers! Come fix this!) “Occupations” huh? Heh. Tess once was a barma-

AAAAAANNNNDDD that was a mistake. I really should’ve known better. Noctu has been bored out of their mind in this dimension.

Can you really blame me? There’s NOTHING interesting or different about this world’s physics! I’ve seen all of this a million times. ... LITERALLY!!!

7: How well would you survive if you were dropped into the world of your main wip?

We HAVE lived them! CofI is LITERALLY OUR LI-

If you’re going to be a grumpy-butt, then go back to studying the Crossroad and stop yelling at the readers.

8: Which of your OCs is the scariest, or if none are scary, which is the sweetest? Why?

[ (<< ) Wait for Noctu to lose intereeeessst.... Aaaand GONE!] You wouldn’t know it by how they’ve been acting recently, but Noctu is basically “the Mom/Dad.” They get attached SUPER easily, and once they do, they go straight into “protecc-mode!” As for scary, that’d be me. ...We go to great pains sometimes to keep me from getting “hungry.”

9: What would you say was the one thing that sparked the idea for your main wip?

For Phantasma Magica, I didn’t actually come up with it -- I adopted the fic from Atrieisan YEARS ago. But the main PLOT TWIST/cliffhanger was all me. The idea for THAT occurred when I was rewatching the Prisoner of Azkaban movie one day and wondered “So what would happen if-”(you can fill this in after PM is over)

10: Describe the space you write in like you’re telling a story.

I wait for the noise to disappear from the house. A last call of “Goodnight” hits my ears through the door -- and I emerge. All is quiet and dark. I make my way by memory to the lamp, and the room is lit with a soft glow. I can see the driveway through the large window taking up half the wall. There’s a soft woosh as the occasional car passes by. I set the lap-tray down on the couch and fetch my snack: some beef jerky, an orange, a cup of water, and maybe some coffee and some crackers. I sit and place the blanket over my feet, move the tray over me lap, grab the laptop from the table beside me -- and my night begins.

Perhaps I’ll start with some episodes of Tsubasa. I need to eat first to think clearly anyway, so I might as well continue the series. I want to fulfill that OSW request, after all...

11: What is the first thing you remember reading and thinking ‘This inspires me to write’?

The very first fanfic I ever wrote was a Danny Phantom one on the nickelodeon website. (It has long since been deleted by the people in charge of the forum for lack of interaction with or updates on the post.) This was almost a decade ago, though, so I don’t remember much about it. It was an OC-insert and there was something about Ember’s sister also being a music-themed ghost, but preferring acoustic/country...?

Tagging whoever. Feel free to do this if you want!

#ask Ciestess #ask noctu #ask the Keeper of the Crossroad

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ladyofpurple · 6 years

Note

GIRL ITS BEEN MONTHS SINCE YOU UPDATED TPOY!! please tell me you haven’t given up on it )-:

I KNOW IM REALLY SORRY OMG

This took a bit longer to answer than it should have because I was trying to figure out how to reply, I guess?? The short answer is basically that writing bits of fic during my exams when I didn’t actually have the time to was super productive, mainly because I Didn’t Want To Do The Thing but my entire future hinged on Doing The Thing and anxiety-driven avoidance is excellent creative fuel, apparently. The problem is, of course, that once I finished and started getting my results back and actually had time to breathe again my brain kinda fizzled out and I never wanted to look at a Word document ever again in my life. Writing is really hard right now, for some reason. And not just TPoy — everything I try to write either gives me a headache, makes every idea I’ve ever had go flying out the window like magic, or looks like absolute garbage to me. (I’ve been trying, though, I promise!!!) There is more TPoY, though!! I swear to God!! It’s just coming along a little slower than anticipated.

The long answer is... a little more complicated and probably more than you’re interested in, and the main reason is the short one anyway. But I’ll put a long answer under a cut just in case (aka the entire history of TPoY lol), since I’ve lowkey wanted to post about it for a while now but didn’t quite know how to? May get a little very personal, I suppose.

Basically, TPoY is and always has been a garbage fic. I don’t say that to disparage my own writing or attempt to elicit praise from anyone: I have always considered it a glorious dumpster fire of experimentation, a ridiculous Frankenstein’s monster of all my favorite ML tropes as a practice run, since it had been so long since attempting to write anything at all. I’m thrilled that people like it, of course! Whenever people send me asks about it my answers always involve a lot of exclamation points and variations on “I AM CURRENTLY SOBBING ON THE FLOOR IN GRATITUDE” because I honestly have no idea how to express how genuinely teary-eyed I get when someone tells me how much they like it, or post a comment. That being said, it was always intended for my own amusement and/or therapy, and that it’s gotten so many bookmarks and kudos and comments is incredibly surreal, even after a whole year.

When I started writing it, I was working through a lot of stuff. My first boyfriend had broken up with me, and as we lived together in his hometown I was stuck there on my own for another year before I could move back home. 2016 was filled with a lot of horrifying shit that kept happening one after the other and I eventually almost had to drop out of school because I couldn’t handle it all. The relationship was pretty toxic but all I knew at the time was that I was scared and alone and heartbroken.

When I started writing, it was after 8 months of the worst bout of depression I’ve ever experienced, and I still wasn’t well, but I functioned passably enough to start hyperfocusing on things. I had an idea about a fic I suddenly wanted to write, and it would have a happy ending and all, but I could work through my feelings in a way I hadn’t tried to since before my ex and I got together. I pulled a lot of the start of the fic (the rejection, the miscommunication, the avoidance) from my recent breakup, yes, but also from my first rejection, aka the only other boy I’d liked enough to confess my feelings to. We were 17, and he admitted that he knew, and then suddenly we weren’t friends anymore. A year and a half later, I got together with my ex, and suddenly after three years of dedicating my life to “us” on his whims he was ghosting me without explanation.

I see a lot of myself in Marinette at that age. The awkwardness, the enthusiasm, the incredibly obvious lovesick obsession with a cute boy who’s nice to you. I wondered if maybe she would react the same, if put into similar circumstances as I had been. Focus on the self-doubt that would follow, based on insecurities she’s already shown in the show — coupled with your standard teenage hormone-fest —and you’d have a fabulous starter for angstfic and a free therapy session all in one.

The problem with that is nobody knows this backstory but me. People focusing on Marinette’s insecurities is nothing new. Other people are annoyed it’s such a popular trope. And the fact that I’ve chosen to focus on certain aspects of the main characters’ identities for the purposes of a story I started on a whim has been making me insecure for a long time because people in the fandom are tired of those characterizations. I’ve never gotten hate comments —I don’t even remember ever getting constructive criticism on TPoY. But I’m well aware that the plot is far from original and definitely lacking in certain places, and as the comments roll in and the hits go up my anxiety mounts because oh my God I’m that guy in the fandom.

I always intended on focusing on different aspects of their characterizations in different fics to suit the plot, y’know? Not ignoring parts of their personalities, but just... emphasizing other parts. But TPoY is the one most people have read. I have a couple one-shots where I tried to do something like that, with different aspects of their characters, but short one-shots can’t really compare to a 100,000+ word WIP, even if they even slightly compared in popularity (they don’t). So my only notable contribution to the fandom is TPoY. And that makes me anxious.

Then there’s the Frankenstein-like obsession with adding every trope I’ve ever wanted to write in a fic like this. I’ve mentioned before that the original plan for this was, like, 10-15 chapters at most. But every chapter I write I’m like, “But what if I did this???” Like I said, I never intended it to be even remotely popular. The only other fandoms I’ve written for are microscopic in comparison. I had no frame of reference for a pairing this big — all my previous experience was from Fanfiction.net, for Christ’s sake. I assumed I wouldn’t finish it, and even getting to chapter 6 was a surprise. But that hyperfocus somehow held on for dear life and I was banging out chapters like nobody’s business. And people were responding to it. And I think that kind of went to my head a little? Not like in an “I deserve all this attention” kind of way, but more like a “People like?? This thing I’m doing??? I cannot squander this opportunity, I must give them m o r e” kind of way. It was the best I’d felt since the breakup and I didn’t really think I deserved it, so I kind of wanted to... prove I did, I guess, by writing everything I’d ever wanted in a lovesquare fic in hopes that people would keep liking it and me and I’d keep feeling nice. (I mean, I’d planned to add in a ridiculous amount of tropes anyway, I just ended up adding a lot more than I’d planned.)

On the one hand, people go nuts for that shit. On the other, it’s getting harder and harder to justify cramming all this shit into the same fic. This compulsion keeps fucking me over by giving me spur-of-the-moment ideas for sub-plots I never wanted and certainly didn’t properly think through before posting the foreshadowing or setup for — yet at the same time they’re usually thought of and integrated several chapters in advance so I can’t just... leave them out? And part of me kind of doesn’t want to?? And I’m trying with every fiber in my being not to rewrite just the first 3 chapters, let alone the entire fic. A side-effect of my FF.net history at 13 was Never Edit Anything. Yeah, I’ll do some spell-check. Maybe some rewording here and there. Sometimes I’ll post a chapter and come back sporadically over the next few days to change out some punctuation or whatever. But if I don’t like a section after writing for a while? Throw the Whole Ass Chapter out. After it’s posted? This Is Your Life Now.

let’s not talk about how everything after chapter 27 was supposed to go very differently

Never mind that, after writing a hundred thousand goddamn words in a year, one’s writing skill tends to evolve and increase over time. Not just in regards to vocabulary, but with consistency and pacing and structure. This means, of course, that I can’t ever reread my own writing without the Evil Writing Goblin in my brain telling me to start the whole thing over from scratch. It’s fine.

I suppose I could get a beta, but I’m very bad at taking critique and as I’m even worse at talking to people than I am at posting on time I don’t think that would work out very well.

The point of this goddamn novel is that TPoY means a lot to me, probably a lot more than people realize. It’s kinda dumb and very cheesy and absurdly long, but it was the first real thing I did for myself after my whole life fell apart. I will finish it!!

But it’s hard to write it right now. I’m trying— I’m writing four chapters at the same time right now (a bit less than 10,000 words combined at current count). I don’t want to try to rewrite the whole fic or keep “mischaracterizing” the characters or lose the suspense I’ve tried to build (or, God forbid, try to keep interest so hard it hurts the rest of the fic) and risk alienating readers. I can’t stress enough how much these supportive comments mean to me, even on something as silly as a fanfic. But I also don’t want to force myself to write it or write something just because other people might or might not like it and risk alienating me. So I’m stuck at a kind of anxiety-induced impasse with myself that’s just made worse by the fact that I’m having trouble writing anything at all at the moment.

Jesus Christ this was longer than I meant it to be. Please don’t take this as a pity-party or anything. I don’t want sympathy or, I don’t know, reassurance or anything, I just wanted everything to be Out There because it really is the most in-depth response I could give and y’all deserve an honest answer. Some of you guys have been reading since the beginning and I can’t express how much that means to me. I feel really bad when I haven’t updated in a long time, because I know my fic makes some people really happy!

And PLEASE don’t take this as a “STOP ASKING ME ABOUT TPOY GODDAMMIT” because this is the opposite of that. I FUCKING LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME ABOUT TPOY. I L I V E FOR IT. But it sucks when the only answer I have is “I don’t know when it’ll be up, sorry :( ”

I mean, that’ll probably still be the answer I give, unless I by some miraculous (heh) stroke of luck) start hyperfocusing on writing again.

But at least y’all kinda know why now.

#did someone call for Too Much Information??#BUT THANK YOU FOR YOUR MESSAGE I LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOU #I HOPE THAT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION #[SEVERAL HEART EMOJIS]#tpoy fic #anon good nurse #Lady answers stuff

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jemariel · 6 years

Text

Baby’s First Fic Rec List

Well Hello There! Somehow I made it to 366 followers!! I intended to do this celebration for 350 but, y’know, life, holidays.... So here it is now!

I haven’t been around this fandom very long, but I have never felt so at home and welcomed by a fandom. I’ve also spent the last year or so reading Destiel fic like it was my calling, my passion, my civic duty. Fun fact: when you dive into a fandom with 12 years of accumulated fanfic, there’s a deep deep well to draw from.....

And so, in honor of 350(ish) followers and my first year(ish) with this fandom, I present to you this list of recommendations! Just some faves and things I enjoyed reading . All are Destiel. Most are smutty. Mix of canonverse and AU, fluff and grit, plot and silliness. Some preference given to fics with fewer hits/kudos/comments than I think they deserve.

Happy reading!

....The Non-Smut....

mistletoe & peppermint cocoa by navylights Rated T 5.5k Summary: Cas and Dean are on a mission: to pick up the perfect Christmas tree for their first Christmas with everyone alive and well.And while Cas and Dean are out shopping, and buying cocoa on a snowy afternoon, a certain meddling younger brother is putting up mistletoe in the bunker.(Or, the absurdly fluffy Christmas carols/cocoa/mistletoe/tree decorating/Christmas lights fic of your dreams)

Dean Winchester’s Secret (Angel) Boyfriend by reluctantabandon, Winter_of_our_Discontent Rated T 11.2k Summary: Dean Winchester isn't exactly a team player. So when he starts mentioning a new Hunting partner, Ellen and Jo Harvelle aren't sure whether they should be worried or relieved.But they're starting to get the feeling there's something important Dean's not telling them about Cas... (Reccer’s note: It’s kind of rare to see really excellent extended-cast ensemble work in fanfic. But this? This is that.)

Raisin D’etre by starsinursa Rated G 1.1k Summary: Apparently, Castiel hates raisins. (Reccer’s note: THIS IS THE CUTEST THING ON TWO LEGS.)

....Absolute Faves.....

Our Bodies, Possessed By Light by obstinatrix Rated E 40k Summary: Purged of all his souls, Castiel is a changed being, stronger than an angel and too powerful for Jimmy's body to contain. Happily, there's an archangel's vessel on hand, and he could use fixing, too. Dean isn't too happy about the idea of his brother acting as a vessel for Castiel, and Sam can guess why, but it isn't until Castiel gets inside his head and they learn to share the vessel -- and their thoughts -- that Sam realises Cas is as in love with Dean as Dean is with him. It's unfortunate that there's nothing much to be done about it now, but Castiel will get another vessel soon. The Winchesters will make damn sure of that. In the meantime, it's up to the three of them to establish their own strange accord, and Dean realises more fully than ever that it's Castiel, and not his vessel, that he loves. (Reccer’s note: Don’t let the premise squick you. This is very CLEARLY a Destiel story, in spite of Sam’s front row seat. I love all the relationships in this fic, Sam and Dean’s brotherly antagonizing/affection, Sam and Cas’s growing friendship, Cas and Dean’s straining, passionate adoration. All three of them are superbly written, but Cas especially. This also has some of the most scorchingly hot not-quite-sex ever written. Seriously. How can something be so fucking hot when everyone’s wearing two layers of clothing? Beats me.)

Rock ‘n’ Roll Queer Bar (series) by ChasingRabbits Rated E 126.7k Summary: Ellen and Jo Harvelle run Harvelle's Roadhouse, a bar that unintentionally becomes a beacon for wayward queer souls. Her employees: Dean, the smartass runaway with a big heart and bigger mouth; Castiel, the college drop-out turned hippie; his (surprisingly heterosexual) trouble-making brother Gabriel; and Charlie, who has been told several times that the back room is not to be used for after-hours Dungeons & Dragons games. But there's a lot of love in this place, and a new family for anyone who may otherwise be without. (Reccer’s note: The description doesn’t really do this series justice. This is the most realistic and beautifully and believably written long-term relationship I have ever read. They go through so much together, and they do it all TOGETHER. It’s beautiful. I devoured this in a day and a half, then went right back to the beginning and read it all over again. It’s Just. That. Good.)

Lots more under the cut!

....Shorts....

Angel-Mine by reluctant Rated E 4.3k Summary: Cas exhaled. "When an angel's wings are injured," he said to his feet, "the healing process can be augmented by… grooming, I suppose, would be the most accurate word. Removal of the maimed feathers to allow growth of healthy ones. Otherwise, they're left to fall out alone." He tilted his head towards the nightstand. "As you see." Dean stared at him. "So… that's why I can't help?" he said slowly. "'Cause I can't, y'know… see 'em? Or touch 'em?" "Yes," Cas said, slightly too quickly, and Dean snorted. "You're still a shitty liar, Cas," he informed him. "What ain't you tellin' me?"

Casturbatus Interruptus by smallhorizons Rated E 6.1k Summary: post-9.01, in a slight AU wherein Cas comes to live with the Winchesters at the Bunker. Written before 9.03. Crossposting from Tumblr. Written for a prompt from hightopsandsharpies: "Okay, so Cas is a virgin, and has no idea what pleasure is and Dean decides to show him and Cas gets all cuddly and needy afterwards." Dean walks in on Cas masturbating. He’s doing it all wrong, but when you’re a bazillion-year-old virgin, that’s to be expected. Dean decides to lend him a hand in a totally platonic, non-romantic way. Things get a little out of control.

Angelus Domini by xylodemon Rated E 3.2k Summary: "You're a fucking dick," Dean says, right to God's face. (Reccer’s note: In which Dean and Sam gain some heavenly grace and Dean and Cas don’t waste any time at all.)

we can watch the white doves go by xylodemon Rated E 2.7k Summary: "Wait," Dean says, just as the door snicks closed. It comes out as barely whisper; he clears his throat and tries again, a little louder this time. "Cas, I -- wait."

Oh! Darling! by castielsdemons Rated M 6.6k Summary: Now that Castiel has fallen, Dean wants to let him know how much he cares about him. And if it takes two or three (or eight) tries to get it right, then so be it. Or, the seven times Dean tried to tell Cas he loves him and the one time he actually got it right.

....Mid-length....

The Curious Case of Dean’s Missing Libido by thejabberwock Rated E 7k Summary: It’s been weeks since Castiel told Dean he loves him. Weeks since Dean answered him with a kiss. It’s been weeks, and they haven’t had sex.

Pronoun yourself out of this one, Dean by zation Rated E 11k Summary: When Dean gets hit by a gender-swapping witch spell it not so fun for anyone, until it’s kinda fun. Or, The one where Dean gets to discover a whole lot of new things. Like what nice hands Cas has, for instance.

Freckles by 2spooky4u Rated E 7k Summary: "I had to draw all them perfectly," Cas insists, and Dean suddenly can't get rid of the image of Cas, clutching on to a Crayola washable marker, jamming it into his skin forcefully like a little kid mashes his markers on the paper in a vehement attempt to make the color deeper. "And now you're insulted 'cause I don't appreciate 'em?" Dean asks, bewildered. "No," Cas lies petulantly. "Huh." The stubborn child version of Cas Dean has painted in his mind is now clutching his paper possessively, shielding it from scrutiny.They drive in silence for a while. "Thank you for making my freckles," Dean grouses finally, knowing that it's the only way Cas will forgive him. ((((OR, IN WHICH CAS LIKES DEAN AND HIS FRECKLES, AND DEAN IS STUBBORNLY HETEROSEXUAL))))

Sam Accidentally Sees the Whole Picture by almaasi Rated E 10.4k Summary: Sam's been through a lot lately, what with tonight's hunt rendering his skin an aching shade of purple and all. He can deal with Dean being overly concerned about Cas' broken finger, and - God help him - he puts up with the sound of their preposterously soppy love confessions and first kisses on the adjacent bed. But he cannot be expected to remain silent and feign sleep throughout the entire duration of their first-ever lovemaking session. He just can't. Especially not, because it seems apparent that Cas is more intent on deflowering himself than letting Dean do it.

The Things We Did (But Never Spoke Of) (series) by BadassCompany Rated E 17.9k Summary: Now and then, when there is quiet from the bloodshed and chaos of the world, I think of Dean Winchester. About the things we did; beautiful, glorious, rough skin and wet lips; but never spoke of. He didn't want to talk, only to feel, and I didn't know what to say. ~A partially complete series of canon compliant smutty oneshots.~

worthy by jad Rated E 14.8k Summary: "... you wanna what, now?" Dean asks, because he definitely didn't hear that right.Castiel tilts his head, a leftover tick from his angel days that Dean would be lying if he claimed to find anything but idiotically endearing. He knows this is his own fault, owing to that rather memorable moment a week ago when Cas wandered into this very same kitchen with a (fairly) legitimate question and Dean just didn't know when to shut up.

The Adventures of Real Anal Sex (Starring Dean and Castiel) by tiptoe39 Rated E 9.7k Summary: This is how it really happened. Because this is how it really happens. Thanks for the tweet, Astroglide -- product placement is now yours! (Reccer’s note: Adding some of the relevant tags: Awkward Sexual Situations, yes people go to the bathroom in this fic. Butt stuff ain’t always Harlequin Romance perfect, but honestly? It’s better that way.)

Go with the Flow by starsinursa Rated E 7.6k Summary: The smug bastard obviously think he’s won this argument, because there’s no way Dean is following him into a yoga class. The day Dean starts saluting the sun and humming ‘om’ under his breath like he’s part of some creepy hive mind like the Borg Collective, well, he might as well just start making his own potpourri and frequenting vegan bakeries, too. Not gonna happen.So yeah, Cas is right, damn him. There’s no way in hell Dean is following him into a yoga class. There’s no way. There’s no way –- ahhh, fuck. Fuck it all.

....Novellas/Novels....

Oxymora by thejabberwock Rated E 27.6k Summary: Good things don’t happen to Dean, so he’s not even surprised when Cas tells him he misunderstood the I love you. (Reccer’s note: This hurts so good. The payoff is worth the pain. Warning for Dean/others.)

riptides by sharkfish (waitforspring) Rated E 39.9k, WIP Summary: “I’m going to kiss you now.” Cas pauses, giving Dean a chance to back out, but Dean just licks his lips and waits. Cas’s mouth is up against Dean’s for a couple seconds before Dean responds, and then it’s Cas that’s being kissed senseless, because kissing is definitely not something Dean does tentatively. Dean reaches up to cup Cas’s jaw in his hand, tilting his head for a better angle, mouth plush, tasting like whiskey. Cas tries to remember what it was like the first time he kissed a man. All-encompassing, the world jerking off its axis, the feel of stubble under his fingers intense in a way it never really is with women, as much as he loves them.

Cabin Fever by Dangerousnotbroken Rated E 35k Summary: Due to a romantic-comedy level booking blunder, grumpy stress-case Dean and reclusive writer Castiel end up shuttled off to the same remote cabin for two weeks, and nobody seems to care that neither of them wants to be there. But since they’re stuck in the same cabin for the duration of their vacation, they might as well play nice and make the best of it right? Wrong. Dean’s so stressed out he can’t sit still, Cas can’t boil water without setting the place on fire, and they’re so on each other’s nerves it’ll be a miracle if either of them survives until their rides home arrive. At least the tension is just social, and not sexual, right? Right?

traveling light by sharkfish (waitforspring) Rated E 42.8k Summary: Cas is, impossibly, far more gorgeous in person, and he’s taller than Dean expected, and he moves with this casual grace that makes Dean’s brain short circuit.So Dean thinks he probably looks a little like a deer in the headlights when Cas catches his eyes from the door of the restaurant. He breaks out into a smile, the full, wide one that never came out in his pictures, and Dean actually goes weak in the knees. “Cas,” Dean says.“Hello, Dean,” Cas says. (Reccer’s note: Cas is FtM trans in this story and it gives me... so many feels.)

What Once Was Sacred by saltandbyrne Rated E 55.8k Summary: Los Angeles detective Dean Winchester works tirelessly to atone for the sins of his father one case at a time. When his best friend Charlie drags him to visit Sam at his new job, Dean stumbles onto a bizarre string of deaths that brings him uncomfortably close to his past.Dean can't stop thinking about Castiel, an enigmatic DJ who plays the sexiest music Dean's ever heard. A chance encounter at Castiel's house reveals that Castiel is an incubus, and Dean must face the lies and the reality of his childhood as a hunter. Dean comes to see that he and Castiel have more in common than he thought, and that guilt can be the hardest thing to cast aside.

the taste of gravel in the mouth by beenghosting Rated E 22.4k Summary: This is what Cas gave up Heaven for: greasy diner food, shitty motel rooms with even shittier cable, long car rides spent in complete silence except for the same six tapes playing over and over again, and a burnt-out husk of a man who can barely hold a conversation anymore. (Reccer’s note: Warning for angst.)

PWP: Pie Without Plot by MajorEnglishEsquire, orange_crushed Rated M 82.5k Summary: he is in the kitchen with flour on his hands and an apron and there is flour on his forehead and cas leans across the counter and wipes it off with his thumb and dean says "thank you" and cas says "you’re welcome" very seriously and later dean makes apple turnovers and he only ruins them a little and sam realizes it’s not a real hunt like four days into it and he lets dean stay undercover for like a week and a half or longer maybe way longer because he is such a good everything (Reccer’s note: Warning for fluff.)

Strangers on a Bus by Terene Rated E 59.7k Summary: Castiel is flummoxed. This is a social situation he is not equipped to handle. What is the protocol when the stranger sitting next to you on a bus, whom you incidentally find very attractive, falls asleep with his head on your shoulder?

And now, a Shameless Self Endorsement. Hope you stop by. ^__^

I’ve tagged a few authors here whose tumblrs I’m familiar with so @starsinursa @thejabberwock @xylodemon @reallyelegantsharkfish you’re in there! Many hearts to you, thanks for sharing your talents.

Others who might appreciate: @magnificent-winged-beast @daughter-of-the-rain-and-snow @saawek @sactownbrowns3 @rosemoonweaver @woahthisguy @suckerfordeansfreckles @rosemoonweaver @cas-essence @yourspecialeyes @yeneffersalamander @naruhearts @bae-in-a-trenchcoat @bend-me-shape-me @babyinthetrench @gneisscastiel @deaneatscake @silvie111 @jhoomwrites @tankewinchester @paperwhitenarcissus @thedogsled @helianthus21 @weathergirl83 @ltleflrt

#fic recs #destiel fanfic #fanfiction #destiel fic rec #other people's fanfiction #to read #want to read #follower celebration #fanfic rec list #destiel fanfiction #destiel fic

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haljathefangirlcat · 3 years

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still thinking about that “we Have To Talk about how quips are ruining fandom by destroying meta and turning all fic into shitposts” post @ms-demeanor wrote a great rebuttal to, and about the other posts she wrote about it and about the You’re Doing Fandom Wrong attitude in it, and about the notes on those posts. not gonna reblog or reply to any of those because my thoughts are admittedly kind of random and jumping from place to place and probably OT to the point of the discussion, but you know. still thinking.

so, uh. not trying to start wank or anything but enjoy the ranting that got way out of hand under the cut.

so, like... that one “we can’t just block everyone who quips and shitposts because some of these people also write actual meta but then they unfortunately go back to Not Engaging With Canon by writing quippy shitpost-y stuff” line, or however it was actually phrased? besides the blatant entitlement with the “you have to fandom ONLY in ways I like, I can’t just engage with the part of the content you create that I’m interested in and scroll past the rest” thing (which kinda reminds me of the whole “you can’t CNTW on some of your fics, I should be able to read ALL of your fics” thing, in a way) and the ”I refuse to curate my fandom experience and I’ll make it some stranger’s problem” thing (which... reminds me of a few other things, but tbf it has probably been around since the very first days of fandom), what if someone doesn’t even see meta and quips/shitposts as fundamentally different and mutually exclusive approaches to fandom? what if they see them as just two ways to be interested in a specific fandom and interact with it, and maybe even closely linked together, so going from one to another is actually very, very easy for them? hell, what if they (gasp!) even mix quips and meta together sometimes?

I have a few posts about what I think Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese might have been doing with mythological references and themes in Dark, and about what I got from the series finale. some are meme-like, phrased in a joking tone, probably even shitpost-y? another one is literally just a gifset plus me having intense Feels in the tags, and the last one is an edit of the kind I’ve seen people complain about as “those cringey unoriginal tumblr aesthetics that all look the same” in at least a couple of occasions. does that automatically mean I only wanted to “win” at fandom (with my hard-earned prize being... a handful of notes in a fandom that’s not even that big compared to others) and that I haven’t actually spent probably way too much time thinking about the significance of Martha’s Ariadne play as a commentary on character interactions/plot/narrative themes (and honestly still do from time to time), or that I don’t occasionally read the captions under other people’s gifsets and suddenly feel very much enlightened about why the Ariadne play mentions the myth of the Flood of all things? that I didn’t start reading posts and comments and reviews and theories about the series finale as soon as I finished watching it? that, just because I didn’t write 10K+ words of Perfectly Serious Seriousness about all that stuff, I simply refused to Engage With The Text?

... and if I said that I feel a little irrationally self-conscious at the idea of writing down all of my (often rambling, sometimes jumbled) thoughts about a series that to me actually does feel very deep and complex, so adding memes and humor to that or finding different means to put my ideas out there makes me feel more comfortable expressing myself while also taking off the (admittedly made-up) pressure of having to write a whole coherent essay where I have to find a clear and explicit way to explain where every single thought comes from and how it leads to the next like I’m gonna get graded on it? or that a lot of those thoughts stem from memories of spending five years of high school translating and analysing ancient Greek poetry and reading and watching and discussing every available interpretation and reinterpretation of it from Nietzsche to Vernant to Dürrenmatt to Christa Wolf to Pasolini to a lot of others and from certain things in Dark violently hurtling me back to those times without even asking for permission, so a part of my self-consciousness is actually “I probably don’t actually know/remember enough about this to base a whole in-depth analysis on it even though I do think there’s something there” and another part is “shit I’m too lazy to dig through all of my old textbooks and homework and additional readings to hunt for the thing I feel the desperate need to reference or figure out who might have said it, so no extended explanation here either”? I guess in the end it would all boil down to “there’s an amount of effort and physical and mental energy I’m willing to put into fandom but I also have limits to stop something that makes me feel happy from becoming a chore”, which. considering the whole “you have to put all your resources into constantly pouring out 100% serious meta and nothing else because that’s what I like, no deviations allowed” thing? yeah, I can see saying stuff like that would still make me a blight upon fandom. and/or Not Engaging.

which, I realize, it’s a thing I keep coming back to. but that’s because I really, really, really hate it? seriously, what even counts as Engaging With The Text correctly? not shitposts, and not quips either, apparently. Regardless of the fact that humor and crack have existed in fandom since forever and that it’s actually not uncommon AT ALL for them to be born out of looking at canon from different angles, pointing out whatever the fan in question finds surreal/strange/implausible/convoluted/awkward/just kinda funny about it.

also, not canon divergence/what if fics motivated not by a desire to “fix” something that made us feel bad when it happened in canon but by a desire to actually fix what we felt was objectively a poor writing choice from the author, because we shouldn’t Engage by analysing the text to criticize it or to think over how and why certain aspects of it don’t work for us or how we think the structure of the text itself could be modified or even improved, we should Engage by... writing meta and/or writing canon-compliant fics with perhaps a little allowance for slightly-to-the-left-of-canon-compliant missing moments fics, I guess?

from what I’ve gathered from reading other fandom discussion some time ago, AUs are also out, especially Modern/No Powers AUs, because those are always just an excuse to slap your fave’s name on your OC/disguise your original fiction as fanfic to get comments/ignore all that’s interesting about canon to write yet another dumb syrupy high school or coffee shop AU, even if I’m honestly not sure what kind of AUs people are even reading to never get to the “there’s no supernatural threat so let’s focus entirely on the fucked-up family dynamics and blatant mental issues in a world where you can’t just ignore them by marrying off your daughter or sending your son to be someone’s squire” AUs or the “this is pretty much what happens in canon but adding new dimensions and different outlooks on the themes by moving everything to a new context” AUs. seriously, I could rec you a pretty great “this guy would be a horrible father and treat his children horribly in any world, it’s not just the feudal society around him, it’s him as a person” AU and that’s literally just the first thing that came to my mind. but, hey, maybe Engaging is only engaging with the canon plot and setting and nothing else, what do I know.

... fuck, thinking about it, I’m not even sure if by “not shitpost and not quips” I should even mean humor/crack? because it’s not like the OP was clear about it in any way? maybe it’s just all that’s weird and tropey and not-canon-compliant? I can see the “everybody gathers in the main character’s stuff to smoke weed and weird shit happens” fic I got a chuckle out of some time ago being one of the dreaded tumblr-born shitpost fics that are supposedly ruining fandom by ensuring that fans stop thinking (?), but what about the “everything is the same but this one character is a catboy, not for any particular reason but just because” fic I’m currently following and loving? people have been joking and shitposting about catboys a lot on tumblr lately (I distinctly remember that the last catboy joke to pop up on my dash was the “I’m your catboy gf and I’m stuck in a wall” one...) and finding an always-a-catboy!AU initially got an amused smile out of me, so is the mere premise enough to make the fic just a joke/just taking a trope and running off with it/just part of a shallow trend? even when the author literally goes “oh shit just realized this is all a metaphor for neuodivergence and masking” in the story notes? unless writing a character who’s never explicitly stated to be neurodivergent in canon as a being literally or metaphorically neurodivergent in your fic is always shallow projecting or posturing issuefic... instead of, y’know, looking closely at the text and Engaging with it by interpreting it that way....

I feel all this ranting/venting might end up plunging into Why We Slash discussion territory now, so I better stop here.

anyway, in short, good to know I’ve been in fandom for years yet I’ve always been just a Fake Fan who Can’t Think and is constantly Doing It Wrong (by Not Being Transformative Enough, possibly). gonna do my best to stay exactly like that in the future <3

#... see THIS is why i don't write meta #fic is so much easier be it crack or not #ugh i feel i should probably delete this to avoid a giant headache but let's give it a try

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cartoonishlullaby · 6 years

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A Midwinter’s Night

Hey guys Im writing a Winter Snow fanfic, it was originally gonna be a oneshot but now I’m thinking I might continue it.

Also before you read this, I’d suggest reading this headcanon post first if you haven't already, it provides some important backstory to this fic.

From the day they met, it was destiny. The chilly and sweet-talking snow sprite who carried out winter storms from his ice castle somewhere in the north, and the once terrifying, cold-hearted warlock who was now quite a kind and agreeable creature. They were kindred spirits, I’ve heard people say. And it all started one cold midwinter’s night.

Never did Winter know that one day someone would let light back into his life, that someone being Kris Kringle himself. He remembered feeling years of darkness fall away with a single act of kindness. It was only a toy, a small gift, but to have someone actually think of him? Someone who still saw the good in him when even he had stopped believing in it himself? He hadn’t known how to feel. But he felt the warmth in his heart melting away the icy curse he had placed upon himself all those years ago. Maybe it really was time to change.

But he was far from healed. His heart may have thawed, but it was still scarred. No magic in the world could change that. He kept it well hidden, but ever since his reformation he began to remember things.

One night while he was lying asleep in his bed, he saw it once more. That night, that horrible night, when they came after him. He was only trying to help, he was only trying to save them, they didn’t listen, they didn’t listen, nobody would help him—

He woke up sobbing, burying his face in his pillow. He was too old for this, he knew it. But the last time he had a working heart he was practically a child. He had a lot of feeling to catch up on.

Owning a heart certainly had its burdens.

One day Kris, or, Santa Claus, as he was now called, had invited Winter over to his house. Upon arrival, Kris told him, “Mr. Warlock, there’s someone we’d like you to meet.”

“Winter, please.” He said, but he knew at this point his old friend was never going to learn.

Kris continued, “My friend, the Snow Miser is coming to visit us today, er, by any chance have you heard of him?”

“No, I can’t say I have. Who is he?”

“Oh he’s a real magic man, that one. He controls all the weather up here!”

“Well I think I do a fine job making it snow on my own.”

“Well sure you do, Mr. Warlock, but wouldn’t it be nice to have some help?”

Winter didn’t get a chance to respond. Suddenly the loud BANG of someone kicking the door open rang out through the house. “Good heavens Snowy!” shouted Mrs. Claus, as she headed over to greet their newest guest. A tall man with icy white hair, a long pointy nose and kind, sparkling eyes entered the room. “Pardon me, I do like to make an entrance,” he chuckled, then bowed to kiss Mrs. Claus’ hand. Then, catching sight of Winter he exclaimed, “And who is this! You must be someone new, I never forget a face.” He went to shake Winter’s hand.

“I’m known as the Winter Warlock, but please, call me Winter.”

“Winter! Got it! Nice name!” And he smiled. He had a winning smile, the kind that gave you a certain confidence in yourself, that you didn’t get from other people.

“Thank you!”

“So tell me about yourself, Winter? What brings you here?”

“Well, Santa and the Missus wanted me to meet you.”

“Oh, I’m flattered! I just love meeting new people.”

Kris turns to Mrs. Claus at this. “They seem to be hitting it off well,” he smirked.

Snow Miser at this point had retired to a nearby couch, and was prompting Winter to sit down beside him. Winter obliged.

“So what is it you do, Winter?” Snow Miser asked.

“Well, I’m sort of a magician, you see.”

Snow Miser’s eyes widened. “What a coincidence! Me too! I thought I sensed it in you! Y’know, I can turn things to snow with the touch of my hand!” (upon overhearing this, Jessica had her fingers crossed that he wouldn't sing the song) “And I have a great, magical ice castle back home, with the equipment to do all kinds of neat stuff, I can send out a blizzard to anywhere in the world in no time!”

Winter sighed. “That’s fascinating, really, but does it ever get lonely, being all alone in that castle all day?”

Snow Miser paused. And for a moment, the fast talking entertainer was gone, and someone far more realistic, more vulnerable was sitting there on the couch. “Well I have my minions, but.. yes, I suppose it does get lonely. Sometimes I wish I had someone to share it with.”

Then he perked up. “But sometime you should come visit! It’s a wonderful place, really!”

“I’d love to,” said Winter.

“Great!”

Soon Mrs. Claus called them into the kitchen, because dinner was ready. At the table, Winter and Snow Miser continued to talk, telling stories of the adventures they’d had, Winter narrowly skirting the story of his past, back when his heart was frozen. He said one day he just decided to move to live on the mountain, which was partly true, but he never told why. Santa and Mrs. Claus exchanged looks at this, but said nothing. A man’s past is his business, they supposed.

Soon it was time for them to leave, but home was an awfully long way away on Snow Miser’s part, and the weather was terrible. While neither Snow Miser nor Winter would have minded the cold at all, it was also pitch black and snow was blowing like nobody’s business, if the cold didn’t bother them, it wouldn’t matter, they’d get lost in the dark.

The Clauses insisted they spend the night, and Mrs. Claus showed them to the guest room. “There’s only one bed I’m afraid, I hope you two don’t mind, you could probably put a pillow in between yourselves if that would make you more comfortable.”

Snow Miser brushed it off. “Oh Sugarplum, we’re adults, there’ll be no problem here!” he said, but then he turned to Winter, a look of concern on his face. “You’re not uncomfortable with this are you? If you are I’m sure I could sleep on the couch…”

“No! It’s no problem at all! And thank you, Jessica, for letting us stay the night.”

“Yes, thanks a bunch, sugarplum.”

“It’s the least I could do. Now sleep well boys.” She said, and closed the door.

Winter yawned. “Well, we should probably get some sleep.” He crawled into bed. “Goodnight Snowy, it was really nice getting to know you today, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Snow Miser’s face lit up. “Hey, you called me Snowy! I like that. Did you get that from Jessica?”

“Oh, well I suppose I might’ve picked it up from her tonight.”

“...It’s cute, coming from you.”

Winter froze. Snow Miser just smiled at him, then turned away to go to sleep, so he did the same.

But it wouldn’t last. The awful thing about dreams is that you can’t decide when to have them, what they’re about, or who is there when you have them. Oh how Winter had hoped for only pleasant dreams that night, or even a dreamless sleep, but that simply was not to be.

And he was seventeen again, in his old hometown again, and they were chasing him again, and they were dragging him through the streets, and he wanted them to let go, he was fighting them, and begging them to listen,, and then—

And then he was at the front porch of a house. He knew exactly what house too. It had been his last hope. This time he didn’t want to go to the door, he wanted to run away, he couldn’t take it again, but the dream wouldn’t let him, it had to play out every memory.

He saw his fists banging at the door. He heard his voice cry out to one particular resident of the house. “Joseph! Joseph it’s me! Open the door!”

Joseph answered the door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and gazed right past the frantic mess on his front step in horror at the oncoming mob. He then looked Winter straight in the eyes, who at this point pleaded to be let inside, for Joseph to take him away somewhere, to please protect him, he was scared, more scared than he’d ever been before, but Joseph just shoved him backwards into the snow.

“Joseph?”

“Get away from me. My god, what have you done now?”

“I was only trying to save them, they won’t listen, please let’s run away now. We can start over!”

“There’s no way I’ll do that! They’ve already seen me! They’ll have me dead by morning! And it’s all because of you! For your own good, you should get out of my sight. You’ve gone too far this time.”

“Joseph please, listen, the whole town is about to be attacked!”

“You sent someone to attack our town? You really are a mean and despicable creature, aren’t you.”

“No!! No... I didn’t... I’m trying to stop them, I—“

And then he was on his feet, running through empty streets with the mob on his tail, tears streaming down his cheeks, in air so cold he was sure they’d freeze to his face. Joseph didn’t care about him, nobody did, he should’ve known, he was so stupid, he was… he was…

He felt someone shaking him frantically.

“Winter?”

He opened his eyes. He was back in bed, a worried Snow Miser leaning over him, the room glowing a pale red from the shade of the wallpaper.

“Oh, you’re okay, when you started screaming I was so worried!”

“Was I screaming?”

“You sure were. It didn’t make any sense, but it sounded like something terrible was happening to you.” He paused. “Have a bad dream?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I have a lot of bad dreams these days.” Winter responded, sitting up, his eyes cast down to the blankets.

“Mind telling me about it? You don’t have to, but you know, sometimes it helps to talk it out.”

And there was something so much more intimate in that room, in the silent hum of nighttime. Finally, it seemed, the storm outside had let up, and it was just the two of them. While Winter hadn’t felt comfortable sharing at the dinner table, he felt now things were different. He trusted Snowy, even though they had only just met, and Snowy put on an air around most people, he knew deep down he was more than all that. After all he was the first person Winter ever met who called him by the name he wanted to be called. That said a lot about someone, he thought.

So he told him everything. About his childhood, about learning magic in secret, about Joseph, about being lied to, about the night everything went wrong, about being betrayed by his entire town and the one he loved most. By the end of it, he was crying again, and Snowy hugged him tight, and didn’t let go.

He then spoke in hushed tones. “Oh, Winter, sugarplum, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of that, you hear me? In fact, your good-for-nothing hometown never deserved someone as wonderful as you.”

It felt so nice just to be held. He didn’t realize how much he had missed this. “Well it was my fault for being dumb enough to trust him.”

“Don’t you believe that for a second. I think we should live in a world where people who love each other can trust one another, don’t you think?”

“I do think that, but the world isn’t like that, Snowy.”

“Maybe we can make it like that, then.”

Winter turned his head, a little confused by the implications of that statement. “What do you mean by that?” He asked.

“Oh… nothing, I suppose.”

And perhaps they fell asleep like that, because when Kris peeked in the door to check on them that morning, they were still cradled in each others arms. Kris chuckled to himself. He thought about telling Jessica, but he figured, he’d let all this play out in it’s own time.

And for now, they were awfully cute together.

#winter snow #snow miser #winter warlock #the year without a santa claus #rankin bass #santa claus is coming to town #my writing #fanfic #I CANT BELIEVE I DID THIS FOR U GUYS I NEVER WRITE #now that I’ve posted this I think I can go die now

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dontcallmecarrie · 7 years

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Things That Nearly Happened [TWiFFON]

So.

It’s been a while since I started TWiFFON, and for those of you who’ve seen the outline-fic-idea-thing that kick-started this entire mess, you’ve probably seen the deviations from what I’d initially planned, even now.

Some of the bigger changes were because as I went along, and time passed, I couldn’t help but feel that the early draft was overly vindictive. This is meant to be self-indulgent, yes, but as it is I’m herding cats and dogs to keep everything on track, and just bashing for no reason sounds exhausting on a level I’m trying to not think too hard about [cough emotions cough].

So, a bit of a roll-call as to what’s changed since I posted the first chapter, and up to now. Plus some commentary on the process, because why not. Under the cut, because it got pretty damn long [you guys know how I roll].

The War is Far From Over Now was initially meant to be much, much darker.

I try to tag for everything I feel applies, and try to keep changes minimal. If you’ve seen my Doctor Who fanfics on AO3, you’ve probably noticed it’s a thing with me, because I want to make sure everyone knows what they’re signing up for. [I ended up updating them, because things got so far off-track.]

While playing with the basic premises of TWiFFON, the main one was ‘everyone keeps calling him a villain. Be careful what you wish for: what if Tony Stark had been evil?’ and looking at his capacity for damage.

I don’t read the comics, but just in the MCU since the first movie, I couldn’t help but think he’s got a better villain origin story than most villains, if he ever chose to go that route. Add to that my taste in music, and the lyrics of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man came to mind when I saw the thread that started it all: specifically, one of the last verses:

“Now the time is here,

for Iron Man to spread fear.

Vengeance from the grave,

kill the people he once saved!”

Aaand the outline just kept coming, because this is a spitefic and you guys can thank each and every anti-Tony post out there for me getting into this mess. They want to call him a villain? Fine. They’ll get one.

That was my mindset at the time.

Except, that wasn’t the end of it, because I kept going back to that post and thinking ‘but this doesn’t do what I had in mind justice, what should I do?’ and then ‘uh-oh shit brain no don’t do it, you’re already struggling with one fanfic as is! C’mon brain!’ ...and the rest is history.

Except for the way it isn’t, because TWiFFON was slated to be like 5 chapters long but then I noticed that the more I typed, the more I realized that the groundwork needed to be expanded on and that’s how the CA2 fallout arc even exists and why the AoU arc’s like three times its intended size.

Along the way, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to stomach writing the bashing I’d done in the original outline, and because of how stressful life was, and my knee-jerk reaction featuring writing cracky ideas. Tony was meant to be a lot darker, technically, but I couldn’t find a rational way to approach it that was also in character and also bearable to write. Contrast this with JARVIS: I keep mentioning how he’s a lot darker than canon. His character, I didn’t change from what was originally drafted as much, and even then I watered down his moral ambiguity when a prime opportunity came up.

tl;dr: TWiFFON’s lighter than what I’d originally meant it to be.

Because writing with sustained anger is exhausting and I’ll let the theme song communicate my wrath while I relax and have a good time writing a passive-aggressive +56k long ‘fuck you’ to everyone who thinks Team Cap were the heroes.

This fic was also meant to be a lot, lot shorter.

As mentioned before, it was meant to be like 5 chapters, and I’d severely underestimated the scope of this undertaking. That is the only way I can explain how 405 words of my outline ballooned into roughly half the fic because dammit the AoU arc hates me. [Over 20k words. fml]

Some continuity issues that I’ll have to correct when I’m done, like how Accounting’s an SI branch yet Finance is what shows up in the memos. Also, because of the unreliable narrator thing, a lot’s going on behind the scenes, and is the main reason I’m working on a sidefic for it.

...now onto the more specific things that got scrapped/added in.

The memos:

that format was me screwing around and remembering the classic ‘show, don’t tell’ thing any kid who’s had a writing lesson knows. Plus I’d found a few fanfics with that premise that I adored, and went ‘hey now there’s an idea!’ and it was a bigger hit than expected.

Maria Hill’s presence:

was meant to be a cameo only, but then a commenter brought her up and inspired me to have her show up more, except then it snowballed and I blame/thank them because I got the opportunity to explore some things I hadn’t gotten the chance to, before. Specifically, her thoughts on Steve Rogers’ defending the twins’ volunteering.

Nick Fury’s appearance:

I’d originally wanted him to show up as a janitor, because I love tropes and the Almighty Janitor is a personal favorite. And it would’ve had Tony facepalming and going ‘you know what? Screw it, I’m out, how the fuck is this my life’ when he found out that the janitor for the night shift on the R&D floor was none other than the badass of badasses, and nobody noticed because he’s just that good at going undercover. SWORD membership would’ve been a thing, too, and he would’ve been one of the ones snarking in the memos about that one op in Mogadishu and Decker, chill, seriously, no need for melodrama when it comes to naming this thing [coming from the dude who faked his death, so bonus irony].

Got scrapped because it would’ve taken even more effort than leaving him out, and this way you guys can imagine him just sitting in front of a laptop at a Starbucks and laughing at Tony whenever a headline about his robot army and SWORD comes up because no paperwork, not his problem.

Also got scrapped when I realized I needed Fury to have That One Conversation during the AoU arc, and for him to see what’s coming means he didn’t know what was happening earlier and for that to have happened means he was out of the loop beforehand.

Just— I like his character. Badass and been in the business long enough to get jaded and yet so optimistic about humanity [...doesn’t that sound familiar] despite it all. Plus there’s some headcanons I’ve got about how he’s a little like an uncle to Tony, if only in a vaguely distant way, what with seeing him grow up and all.

The alien invasion versus the robot uprising:

originally, I’d planned on sticking with canon, as per the outline. The closer I got to the AoU arc, though, the more I realized it would be a m e s s to go through with it, because it would’ve added so many issues as to how we’d get to the end goal of accidental world domination.

Like, I could’ve gone through with it, but I can guarantee that if I had then the PR department would’ve just thrown the Avengers under the bus, full stop.

Rich protocols nothing; it would’ve been full-on AIM-level ‘you’re dead, you just don’t know it yet’ hellfire mode, because these assholes are blaming the dude who’s the biggest name in AI for this epic screwup, and not the new addition who coincidentally triggered the only guy on the team who’s been the textbook case of PTSD for years now? Fuck no.

Plus, everyone keeps saying Ultron was Tony’s fault, in canon, despite the menacing alien magic staff thing just sitting unattended and flickering ominously. Or, y’know, even Wanda’s mindtrip, not five minutes beforehand.

Sure, Ultron is Tony’s fault. Riiight. [cough bullshit cough] It’s like everyone forgot this is the same damn thing that had the entire room about to brawl in under 5 minutes, back in the first Avengers movie.

tl;dr: I decided to just cut out the middle man. Magic Staff Thing of Evil that was given to Loki by Thanos, yes it’s an evil artifact and a plot device, let’s get on with the story already. [Might’ve been lazy writing, but I’m a broke student and time’s not always on my side so tough.]

Plus, the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how similar the two Avengers movies were in plot, except where the first one was executed brilliantly the second was...not. If anything, it felt like an inversion of the first, which is brilliant if that’s what they were going for but I highly doubt it. [I’m also ignoring the forced-feeling romance in the latter because when the fuck did Bruce and Natasha even get together? Canon or no, that’s just...no.]

...there’s probably more to it, and with how the story’s progressing more divergences from the outline too, but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

#behind the scenes #writer's commentary #The War is Far From Over Now #Deleted Scenes #kinda #meta #Naught rambles

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