Coming Attractions!

Short one again, and technically a day late, ah well.

As always, feel free to check out my writing discord; and I’ll hang out for an Open Question Night if y’all are interested!

I also have a couple of meme/question lists open (one; two; three; four; five); feel free to send me some of those (please specify which list)!

Star Wars Projects:

Precipice!verse: Still not officially on hiatus because I am Determined not to let that happen, lol. I am...admittedly not sure when the next chapter/next Preludes story will come out, but.

SWBB: I am starting to toy with stuff for next year, but I don’t have a concrete idea yet...still leaning towards a BSG crossover because there’s a lot of Interesting Stuff I could do there (especially in PT/TCW era, which has always been my SW home, so to speak).

AtLA Projects:

On hold for the moment...I couldn’t sustain the momentum, alas. But I’m sure sooner or later (probably sooner) something will pop up that will get me to start Actively Working on at least the Avatar Zuko story, and maybe one of the others.

Castlevania Projects:

I swear I really am working on Incinctus XD It’s just this next chapter is being a pain in the ass; I’ve got the like...two or three after it essentially ready but This One.

BSG Projects:

The Other Battlestar is actually coming along! I’m probably just going to go in chronological order, which does mean spending a solid chunk at the beginning introducing four (or possibly five) OCs who are central to the plot (Pegasus SMO Daphne [Last Name Still Needed]; the marine officer formerly known as Rex who needs renamed [as I complained about the other day lol]; Replacement VP [who...also needs a name, lol...]; and then Atia [who does all the Science Stuff]; I am also putting a Four in play because I can, but he might not get introduced until Pegasus happens to that civilian fleet.)

...yeah, there are still some missing names here XD I’m also still not super happy with the title, but I have yet to come up with a better one...and toying with the idea of doing one POV per chapter and having the POV character as the chapter title (like I did with Take a Bond of Fate; or some other internal structure, but that can be settled once I have more text.

But I did have fun earlier today poking at Fleet!Cavil and how some of his gambits are altered. Little taste (rough/unedited/draft-y; not sure I like some of the wording I’m using here, but still):

He could, technically, refer to them as Shelly and Vera, but it felt so...undignified, to think of them as anything other than what they were. They were Cylons, not humans. The names were a convenient fiction while they were completing the genocide.

And now, he supposed, the mop-up after.

Still, a way to distinguish them would be useful, especially since they had gone to such lengths to distinguish themselves. Fine. Six-A would be the buttoned-up librarian, and Six-B would be the clever prostitute.

Anyway, I’m going to keep pushing at this; goal is to work on it a little bit each day and hopefully these holes will fill in as I go. I’m also thinking ahead to NaNo, and how I want to split my time there...but hopefully I’ll have started posting this before we get there, lol.

(As for other BSG projects--various random prompts that have flitted around my brain; Serenissima; pondering a For Sorrow Sung rewrite--those are not a Focus at the moment but are definitely hanging around and might see some movement as well. I also need to get back to my rewatch...)

Other Fanfic Projects:

My PodTogether project went live! It is a Leverage/Nikita crossover, and I had a great time putting it together and working with farkenshnoffingottom (who was my podficcer).

Original Fic:

I do love the summer challenges on Rainbowfic because I always get stuff done there, lol. I think I did some really nice things this time around.

I am vaguely poking at some of the other/more long-term projects (Lady Mordred; one or two alternate history things; that first contact novel I was working on for NaNo one year...) but no actual text has made it down lately. I should get back into those...

...I think that pretty much sums it up!

Author Ask Game

I was tagged by @spell-cleaver​, so here we go!

Author name: shadowsong26, or shadowsong26x. Or just shadowsong, but on my sites/whatever I have some part of the number.

Fandoms you write for: At the moment, primarily Star Wars (as well as some original stuff), but I’m trying to get back into some of my BSG fic. Apart from those two, my prior main fandoms that I did a lot of writing for were Supernatural, ATLA, and HP, but I’ve done bits and pieces for MCU, miscellaneous crossovers with other things, way back when I did some Dragonlance and LOTR and Wheel of Time...

Where you post: At the moment, mostly AO3 for fanfic stuff. And my writing tumblr.

Most popular one shot: Judging purely by hit count on the stuff that’s been crossposted to AO3 (since that’s easiest to track) - for Star Wars, either The Magic of Midwinter or To his family, send him. Which, incidentally, was the first thing I wrote when I came back to this fandom, lol. Uh. Sanctuary also did pretty well, I think. Most of my SPN fic never got that popular, but some of my ATLA one-shots got a fair number of hits, as well.

Most popular multi-chapter: Precipice, by a wide, wide, wide margin, lol. Uh. Leaving that one outlier aside, Distaff is the next most popular, followed by These Three Remain and then Asajj Ventress and Her Tiny Time-Travelling Conscience. For my non-SW stuff, The Promises of Angels did fairly well for a very long genfic about a tertiary character who (at the time I wrote it) had been dead for five seasons...

Favourite story you wrote: GDI. I hate this kind of question, lol. Uh. I’m still fairly proud of Promises, which I mentioned earlier--at the time, it was the longest contiguous story I’d ever written. Precipice has its ups and downs, but I still love it and have no intention of leaving that AU/timeline anytime soon. The Devoted turned out really well, I thought. Looking back at most of the stuff I have out there, there’s bits I would change, to make things more cohesive/coherent/whatever, but I like what I did with a lot of my stuff. ...also, my AU outlines are a blast, I really should update one of them/write another...

Story you were nervous to post: Lord. Uh. Mostly the more niche/self-indulgent things (or...things that I’m concerned will come across as self-indulgent*?) and/or unusual formats--so, crossposting Ventress to AO3; some of the Jedi of Valdemar bits; the portions of Precipice that deal with Lavinia. It’s Like Deja Vu (All Over Again), too. I was waffling about some of the way chapter 2 plays out. Oh, and Sanctuary, mostly because I don’t hang out in the ST corner of the fandom very much so writing Rey was a little weird for me, but I think it turned out okay?

*Because, while I’ve long since decided to stop feeling guilty/ashamed of such things, I like getting good responses when I share my work??? And I don’t like getting bad ones. So putting that kind of stuff up in a place where it’s intended to reach a wider audience can still be a little nervous-making, if that makes sense.

How do you choose your titles: Oh, all kinds of places. Words that sound cool/feel appropriate, various quotations...I think I did a list on some of my title sources at one point...aha, here it is!

Do you outline: Not..really, no, lol. Like, for Precipice, I sort of have a vague idea of the Major Plot Points that happen in most of the arcs, but I don’t really have it written down anywhere. I had a kind of outline for Heaven on Their Minds, I think; and when I’m working on a Big Bang project or something else with a Deadline, sometimes I’ll have placeholder chapter/scene titles in there? (Like, in The Devoted, there was The Heist(tm), and Obi-Wan and Padme Cannot Ethically Seduce Anakin, and Bail is In Trouble, and Dramatic Confession Scene(tm), etc., but nothing like a Formal Outline. ...come to think of it, I do that with Precipice, too. But not usually very far in advance, just when I’m actually sitting down to organize the next two-three chapters/scenes/plot point/whatever. Oh, I do have kind of an outline for Jedi of Valdemar, mostly because it’s an enormous timeline and I wanted to get the order/relative dating/ages straight. But that’s not super detailed.

Complete: Uhm. Well, in SW, mostly my oneshots. These Three Remain is complete. Deja Vu is technically complete, but I might do a sequel at some point? The Devoted, I have more stories to tell in that universe, though the individual fic itself is complete. The Phoenix I actually do plan to write sequels to, and have them vaguely planned out (The Hercinia will be sort of two parallel storylines, one on the planet and one with Luke and Vader; or possibly three, since the two of them will be mostly split up. The Caladrius will bring everything back together, probably, though I haven’t worked all the details out.)

In progress: Precipice, Distaff, Asajj Ventress and Her Tiny Time-Traveling Conscience; in addition to the probably-continued AU worlds mentioned above, Auxiliaries and Jedi of Valdemar universes (Auxiliaries, at the moment, has only been posted to tumblr, not AO3). Some unposted things, such as our faces like a mirror; a few things in other fandoms (Serenissima, for one; I’m considering rewriting For Sorrow Sung and/or actually getting my notes for The Other Battlestar into some kind of postable fic format, but we’ll see.)

Coming soon: Uh. Well, like I said, our faces like a mirror; I’ll do something for next year’s SWBB; more in various established AUs; probably another AU outline at some point...

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: All. Of. Them. <--I’m just gonna leave @spell-cleaver’s answer here because Mood.

Do you accept prompts: Yes! Preferably at my writing tumblr (shadowsong26fic). I do prompt calls every so often (usually for holidays or for Bonus Fics celebrating specific milestones), and I’ll sometimes reblog prompt lists/memes and the like, but I am always open for prompts. It’s just if I haven’t made a specific call or whatever, there’s no promises on when I’ll fill it. I reserve the right to refuse prompts, if it’s something I don’t feel comfortable writing or something I don’t think I can do justice, but you can always feel free to send me an ask if there’s something you’d like to see from me!

Tagging anyone who wants to do it!

Coming Attractions!

I missed last month due to a Variety of IRL shenanigans (some work-related, some car-related), but it is the first Monday of a new month, so here we are!

I do want to make a quick plug for Galactica Big Bang, which I will be running in the second half of this year. Signups will open in July, and there’ll be more details on that in the not-too-distant future. I have set up an event Discord (which can also be a place for other BSG fans/creatives to hang out as far as I’m concerned), so please feel free to check it out!

And, as usual, I’ll go ahead and do an open question night. My askbox is always open, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it to answer questions tonight. Anything I’ve posted about here on tumblr or on AO3 is fair game. I do accept prompts, but no promises on when I’ll actually get around to filling them (I think I still have some floating around either here or on Dreamwidth that are over a year old, oops...)

Star Wars:

I ended up dropping out of SWBB as a writer--mostly due to the aforementioned IRL stuff, I ended up falling way further behind than I wanted to be. I might have been able to catch up, but it was just. Yeah. Anyway, I am still participating as a beta/mod/offering podfic for the first time, so that should be fun! (I really do love this event, I’ve been doing it for...this is either my fifth or sixth year, lol. So dropping out was Not Easy, but it was the right call to make so...yeah, there it is.)

I am going to hold on to what I did get written/that concept (which is--Anakin never ended up in the Jedi Order; he and Ahsoka run into each other about halfway through the Clone War and team up for an Adventure) for next year, unless I come up with something I like more in the intervening time. Or I might just finish it outside any event if I really get Inspired, but we’ll see.

I swear I haven’t abandoned Precipice. I know I keep saying that and not actually getting any updates out, but...you know, that fic/AU is important to me and I refuse to let it die, so I want to get it updated At Some Point. That being said, I’ve gotten...like...three separate comments on fics for entirely unrelated fandoms asking me to update it??? Which. Not Cool. Not really getting me enthused for working on it. Why do people do that. (in one case, it was for a project with a co-creator; and in another, that was the only comment i got on the fic in question so i’m. pretty mad about it, lol.)

Let’s see, what else is actively going on here...Obianidala has been one of my ships for the Year of the OTP project. It’s been fun; I’m particularly proud of what I wrote for them in March.

...yeah, I think that’s it for this fandom. There’s other stuff drifting around in the back of my head, as is pretty much always the case, but nothing I’m working on in any concrete sense. our faces like a mirror is definitely still there, for example, especially since Bo-Katan has been in the news lately; crossovers (BSG or going back to Jedi of Valdemar) are always fun...but nothing I’m actively planning to do Actual Work on at the moment.

BSG:

Well, there’s Galactica Big Bang coming up XD I don’t know if I’ll write for it since Running the event will already be a lot; especially since I’m going to offer to pitch in with podfic and/or fanmixes (if I decide to count those as art) if we have enough of a mismatch in terms of numbers there. But a few things have been floating around as possibilities in my head if I do decide to participate--maybe doing something with the Selkie AU I posted for February for the Year of the OTP; maybe something related to the AU I’m going to poke at for this month (which is something I’ve been really looking forward to since I decided to do this event). I’ve also been thinking a lot about Zarek lately; might be interesting to write about him (either the events leading to his original arrest; maybe in parallel with the mutiny and/or his arrest on New Caprica?) Anyway, I’ll see how things go/how many people sign up and what might be feasible.

(I mean, I do at Some point want to get back to the Selkie AU and what I’ve nicknamed the Backup Plans AU at some point, so those will probably pop up again eventually whether or not I write them out for an Event.)

I am also working on The Other Battlestar. Last time I did one of these, I did a brief blurb on some OCs that will be involved for Plot Reasons. I’m...genuinely not sure when I’ll start posting but at This point, my goal is to do that before signups for GBB open in July, so, wish me luck XD

(Seriously, though, is there an actual convention for tagging a Cylon OC who uses their model’s base/shared name?)

Again, crossovers/etc. pretty continuously percolate in the back of my head, but none I’m actively planning to write down. ...not yet, anyway. So those are the main things I’m working at now.

Original Fic:

Well, again, Year of the OTP has me doing three ships from my original stuff, too. I’m glad I decided to do that; it’s gotten me to get more actual text down for my original stuff, and since one of the three couples I’m using I haven’t done much with, it’s a good way to explore the two of them.

Castlevania:

Incinctus is another one I swear isn’t dead, really. I haven’t quite gotten past the wall I hit with the next chapter...maybe if/when I rewatch the series (at some point before Nocturne actually comes out), I’ll get back to it?

AtLA:

My roommate has been rewatching the series again, and since it is my other other forever fandom, that’s brought some of my old fic ideas drifting back to the surface. Not necessarily in an ‘I’m going to actually write this’ kind of way, but also not...really ruling out the possibility? I did have a few I was working on a while ago, but we’ll see how that goes.

Link to my masterpost of Year of the OTP fills, if anyone wants to check those out.

...I think that’s pretty much what’s going on on my end! Like I said, Open Question Night, come hang out with us on the GBB server if you’re into that!

Coming Attractions!

Just a few quick updates, really (it’s been a slow year for me so far, writing-wise, alas).

The usual plug for my writing discord--it’s pretty quiet, but come say hi! Sometimes I brainstorm there, but mostly it’s just intended to be a more interactive version of this tumblr.

And let’s go ahead and do an Open Question Night! My askbox is always open, but tonight I’m around and keeping at least half an eye on it. Questions about writing, or any of the fandoms/etc. I post about on this blog (or on my AO3) are fair game. I also take prompts, but am bad at filling them in a timely manner, lol.

Okay, I think that covers it! Actual updates are behind the cut!

Star Wars:

SWBB gets posted at the end of this month and...while it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed it this year, it’s definitely been like pulling teeth to get the story to actually come out, haha. It’s not my best work, but I love the event and I’m glad I did it. I may not participate as a writer next year, we’ll see how I feel.

Precipice is...I swear I am working on it in the background XD I just haven’t gotten much actually down on paper because...well, the aforementioned stuckness/pulling-teeth on the other SW project which is taking all of my SW brain (except for the part that’s getting distracted by self-indulgent crossover nonsense, lol). Hopefully I’ll get more done once SWBB is through.

I don’t have any Other SW Projects actively under construction right now, but I’m sort of poking at what I might do for next year’s BB, if I do decide to participate...I feel like it won’t be as much of a struggle if I have a more solid plan when I get started? So, anyway, some of the SW/BSG crossovers I mentioned in a post here a couple weeks ago are definitely things I’m considering!

Castlevania:

I think I’m just going to give up on expanding that first scenelet in Incinctus, lol. Just give it a better conclusion, and then I can get started posting, probably later this month. I do like a lot of what I have going there. (Even if it...like, this was supposed to be self-indulgent Alucard whumpfic with a side of dumb jokes and the OT3 finding their way together at the end; it ended up being like 40% about Lisa’s Feelings which I’m not complaining about but I was not??? Expecting????)

After I finish that, depending on how that goes over and if I sustain my interest in this fandom well enough, I do have another prompt/story I might write out...we’ll see!

AtLA:

I do still really want to write fic in this fandom, but I’ve got so many other things floating around in my head, haha. The main one is still the Avatar Zuko prompt, which is still largely lacking in text (I’ve been in a slow period for...a while, I guess...but that aside). No idea on when this will come out.

BSG:

I am definitely pushing forward on The Other Battlestar AU, which is going to be a million words long (even if I do cut off at the end of the Pegasus arc which I probably will, at least for now) and also needs like. An Actual Title. (My brain fed me Bellerophon which I don’t like but I’ve got nothing else XD)

I’m also filling out some of the Supplemental Cast (mostly various Pegasus officers/crew because. like. we know a solid Five People and...we need more than that XD). I was doing some digging into How Aircraft Carriers Work because the senior medical officer/Cottle’s counterpart is going to be a pretty significant player and yeesh there should be a lot more subordinates there...but I will probably handwave that because while I do need More People there, I also need to keep things. Like. Manageable. So, there’s Daphne (the aforementioned Senior Medical Officer), and then a Marine captain who grew up with Baltar on Aerilon (who is an old OC of mine from my last time actively in this fandom but needs to be renamed because his original name was Rex and that just. Will Not Work For Me Anymore), and then probably a few other people.

Also working on sketching out the second of the OCs who will fill in some gaps on the Galactica side of things; I know more or less where I’m going with them, but they’re basically just two bullet points and ‘I don’t necessarily need to actually Show Them but I know how I’m going to introduce them during the miniseries sequence.’

I’ll have more once I do a dedicated rewatch of the first two seasons + Razor (which I’m not allowed to do until I’ve finished SWBB, lol) but I’m having fun already XD

Coming Attractions!

First Monday of the month (and year!) so here we are!

As usual, I’m gonna put a plug for my writing discord--a pretty quiet place, but come hang out! I do some brainstorming occasionally and also link stuff there as well as here/on AO3. It’s mostly intended to be a more interactive extension of this place because Why Not. Also, like, feel free to blather about your own projects there if you want XD I like hearing about other people’s projects!

And we’ll do an Open Question Night as well--the usual rules apply (i.e., anything I’ve talked about here/any fandom I’ve posted on AO3 is fair game; as are general writing questions. I do take prompts, but make no promises on filling them in any kind of timely fashion (I think I’m still sitting on some from. Like. June 2020 lol). My askbox is always open, but I’ll be active/around and keeping an eye on it to chat tonight.)

And now for the actual update (including some Teasers!), behind the cut XD

Star Wars:

Precipice:

I am. So very behind on this, haha. And I don’t know that I’ll get much/anything done over January--I really need to get into gear on my big bang project (see below), and I keep getting distracted by other things...

Anyway, if all goes well and I have the time/brain/etc. for it, I’m hoping to get the next Protectors chapter finally out this month, as well as another Prelude segment.

And because y’all have been so patient, a quick teaser from a...very upcoming chapter (like. This is Arc Fourteen)

“This,” Leia muttered under her breath, “is never going to work.”

“So little faith,” Dad said. Somehow, even through the vocoder on his stolen helmet, his amusement shone through.

“Luke is too short to pass as a stormtrooper,” she pointed out, “and full-face helmets make you claustrophobic.”

“Hey, I’m not saying this is my best plan ever,” he said. “But all it has to do is get us up on that station. And you’re even shorter than Luke, princess, so if he has trouble passing…”

“We’ll be fine,” Luke interrupted, calm as always.

Big Bang:

I have. More or less figured out what I’m going to do? There’s still a lot of white space in my planning, though. But it is going to be an ‘Anakin is presumed dead during ROTS’ AU, where everyone reunites seven years later. I’m differentiating it from woven thread in a couple ways--first of all, fewer satellite characters (it is established OT3; Obi-Wan and Padme did go into hiding together with the twins and are in loose contact with Sabe and the Larses and a few other people; Ahsoka and Anakin are both more or less on their own). Second, the longer timeframe (seven years vs. four). Third, I’m doing a lot less with the time spent on their own probably? And mostly focusing on the actual reunion rather than building up to it, but I’m not sure that’s going to work as well as I think it does in my head right now. We’ll see.

I’m having some issues with it, though. Both in terms of ‘how dark/angsty do I really want to go here’ and finding a focus/cohesive thread for the actual storyline. I’ve got bits and pieces of scenes in my head, and a general ‘what brings them all to this place’ because I don’t think any of them know the others are alive until they actually connect.

(Also, still haven’t figured out exactly how/why Anakin disappeared XD I do know there’s gonna be some self-indulgent Anakin whump in the background, both as backstory and when he turns up to the party in the Main Plot because honestly what is the point of fic if not to indulge myself a little bit lol)

Ah, well. I did sign up for a beta early and have been communicating with them, so hopefully that’ll help iron out some of these difficulties? Mostly I just. Need to sit down and start spitting out actual text, and hopefully it’ll start coming together from there. A lot of my projects work that way.

I need at least 6k or a cohesive outline (which is not something I usually do lol) by the 18th, so I’m going to really buckle down and get stuff done this month, and then hopefully these doubts will start to go away. I know that happened with woven thread, after I’d written big chunks of the Downer Beginning and was second-guessing whether or not I actually wanted to do it XD I’m hoping for a similar experience here once I get some momentum going.

So that’s where things stand there!

Other SW Fanfics:

I have approximately zero concrete plans at this point, but vague Hopes that things will start materializing at some point? Maybe get a bit farther on OFLAM so I can use it for next year’s BB (it is outside the scope of the challenge unless I do a lot more prework than I have, I think; despite having noodled at it for two years...) I haven’t seen Book of Boba Fett yet, but maybe that or next season of Mandalorian or the Ahsoka show (or, hell, even the Kenobi show, depending on how much Satine is referenced) might kick something into gear?

Other than that, I’m just gonna take things as they come. There might be other stuff coming out, in established ‘verses or new ideas (I’ve got some crossover concepts that might be worth playing out in an actual fic as opposed to self-indulgent nonsense casual RPs with myself and/or my roommate lol), among other things. So, we’ll see.

AtLA:

The only really solid thing I have going here is the Avatar Zuko fic I keep promising but haven’t gotten enough done on XD Again, this probably won’t happen this month (since I’m focusing on SWBB and a fic for an unrelated fandom, more on that later), but in the not-too-distant future. I’ve got actually a lot of it sketched out in my head, at least up until partway through Book 1 where Zuko and his companions (Toph and an OC of mine named Kirana) connect with Aang, Sokka, and Katara, but actually writing it out has been slow. Plus, figuring out when that intersect point is, whether that’s when Zuko reveals himself or that comes later...

I have a few other things at least partially planned, too, but yeah. It’s just a matter of actually doing the thing.

Unrelated to the above project, but the Lu Ten R&J-style story is also going to happen at some point? But it’s definitely a lower priority than the other one. Maybe if/when I see the West Side Story remake it’ll start flowing because there are. Definitely songs from that show on the soundtrack to this fic XD

Castlevania:

Yeah, so I fell into this fandom and fell hard. I have one fic about half-finished, to a point where I’d be confident in starting to post it and giving myself a Schedule to stick to...except the opening scene is nowhere close to done XD It even has a title! Titles are hard and this fic already has one! (Incinctus; which is a Latin word I learned while double-checking that I was remembering an archaic term for pregnant correctly and then went down an etymology rabbit hole XD)

I am still going back and forth on exactly how I want the ending to work--the darling I’m probably going to have to kill that I posted here a while back was a draft of my original intentions, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to resolve things? But I’ve got some time to figure it out.

Also working out how to integrate the buildup to the OT3 finally getting their act together, six months post-series XD I’ve got a couple flashback scenes that I need to work in somehow (maybe as interludes somewhere?) and it’s. Definitely a case of everyone trying to be a Responsible Adult and Respect Each Other’s Boundaries For Once but everyone is completely misreading what those boundaries are because I love these idiots so much.

Anyway, even with the gaps I still have, I can say with cautious confidence that that will start posting sometime this month, so watch this space XD

And have a teaser, why not:

“...bit late to be wandering the roads,” he called, from a relatively safe distance.

She jumped a little, and turned to face him. She was maybe sixty or so, at his best guess; her grey hair was half-braided and framed a face that had probably been beautiful when she was young. The dog, hackles raised, got in between them and growled; which meant the damn horse shied away a little, but he had a firm grip on the reins and she didn’t bolt again. There was something weirdly familiar about the dog’s markings, but Trevor couldn’t place it.

“It is,” she admitted, burying one hand in the thick ruff of fur around her dog’s neck. “But I was fairly sure there was a town close, and I thought it would be rather silly to set up a camp when just a couple hours away there was the prospect of real shelter.”

“...I suppose that makes sense,” he said. And it did, although there was something about the two of them… “You have a name?”

“Lucy,” she said, and he was probably imagining that breath of hesitation before she said it. The dog stopped growling for a minute to look up at her--funny, Trevor never would have thought a dog could look exasperated before. Especially not one as big and angry-looking as her pet.

“Lucy,” he said, taking a few cautious steps closer. Which got the dog’s attention again; he immediately resumed glaring and growling at Trevor. “And the dog?”

“As you said--or, well, hinted--the roads aren’t always safe, especially for a woman alone,” Lucy said. “And I’m not as young as I once was. I am sorry about all the growling, he’s a little...wary of strangers. But he has always been good to me. He is my dearest friend.”

Which...also made a lot of sense, and some people got weirdly attached to their pets. Especially if they didn’t have a lot of people in their lives. “Does he have a name?”

“Drugh,” she said.

“Huh,” he said. “Lucy’s not a Russian name.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not. I’m not Russian. But I encountered Drugh. In Moscow. Years ago.”

The dog--Drugh--stared up at her with that same are-you-serious type expression, which would probably be a lot funnier once Trevor made up his mind as to how much of a threat they were.

I’ve also got another plot sort of building in my head? Which concept is, essentially, shifting Sumi and Taka’s storyline by six weeks (meaning, the night they decide to do the thing everything gets derailed because Greta’s messenger shows up). Which will be mostly compliant with S4 canon (apart from the obvious), except I think Trevor will land much closer to the castle because, especially since there’s still gonna be some shit going down with Sumi and Taka (just...in a different form than in canon), anything else would be way too mean to Sypha. But that one I’m not going to start actively working on until Incinctus has started going up. I might look for a big bang or something, if there is one in the fandom (I joined a discord server and I know they do some challenges, but mostly exchanges, it looks like?) but we’ll see.

Other Fandoms:

So BSG is back in my head in a fairly big way XD I have no idea if I’ll ride this wave to actually producing things again, but largely due to some self-indulgent nonsense going on in the background, a lot of things are flooding back--headcanons, miscellaneous OCs (apart from Atia who never really left), storylines of varying levels of self-indulgence...including the Earth’s Children crossover which I don’t plan to actually indulge in except maybe as an AU Outline. So, uh, I guess watch this space and see what happens? Lol.

Original Fic:

As always, I’m hoping to do a bit more this year. Both with my established verses on rainbowfic and actually buckling down and working on some of the non-RF projects I have going on (whether it’s picking up Untitled First Contact Novel; getting back into the research for the Judas project; starting in on the Arthuriana story; that one Alternate History novel about Mary and Elizabeth Tudor...) Some of that may happen this month, depending on time/brainspace, especially because RF has some helpful challenges usually. But we’ll see.

Last year I did Goals/Resolutions. I don’t think I met any of them XD But I’ll at least go over what I had last year and maybe set a few for the coming year? But maybe five instead of ten. Be a little more realistic.

2021 goals:

1. Post Arcs 8 and 9 in Precipice!Verse as well as at least half of the Preludes stories.           ...well, I started Arc Eight and posted one Prelude? Lol... 2. Write at least 10k of origfic content.           I was just shy of this at about 9800 words. 3. Start posting OFLAM.           Nope. 4. Revive a semi-hiatused fic; preferably Distaff; but Auxiliaries or Phoenix!verse or one of the BSG fics would also count (Serenissima, Other Battlestar, For Sorrow Sung rewrite…)           Nope 5. Start posting at least one AtLA fulltext fic.           Nope 6. Finish updating Lux and Farglass Cycle archives; keep them updated through the end of the year as new content gets added.           Nope. 7. Find a title and set up an archive for Untitled Intrigues Story           Nope 8. At least four AU outline installments of some kind, preferably including a continuation of Ventress and Her Tiny Time-Travelling Conscience           Nope. 9. Complete BB submission and keep an eye out for other challenges/exchanges.           I did do this! I also participated in pod_together which was a lot of fun! I’m not sure I’ll repeat the experience, but I’m glad I did it at least once. 10. Write at least one holiday fic (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s, etc.) and post on the appropriate day.           Also a no.

2022 goals:

1. Post arcs 8 and 9 in Precipice!Verse as well as at least half of the Preludes stories 2. Write at least 10k of origfic content. 3. Complete SWBB and participate in at least one other challenge/exchange 4. Post (or at least begin posting) at least three other fic projects (i.e., Precipice!verse, BB, and challenge/exchange projects don’t count), including Incinctus and ideally Avatar Zuko 5. Write at least one holiday fic (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s, etc.) and post on the appropriate day.

Bonus Goal: The origfic archives (and also DW archive of this tumblr). They really need some love. Bonus Goal #2: AU Outlines are super fun and we should do one.

Of Other Suns

Author: shadowsong26

Reader/Podficcer: Akaihyou

Rating: G

Fandom: AtLA, Star Wars

Characters: Padme, Ahsoka, Aang, Sokka, Katara, Toph, Iroh, Zuko, Ty Lee; also featuring brief appearances from Mai and Azula

Warnings: War/canon-typical violence.

Summary: During the latter half of the Clone Wars, Padme and Ahsoka run into some trouble and crash on a strange, uncharted planet. While repairing their ship, they run into a couple of Force-sensitive locals, a melee a trois, and some unexpected new abilities...

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of their respective creators.

Notes: This was written for pod_together 2021, which was a whole lot of fun! I had a great time working with my partner/reader on this project, both in the brainstorming stage and then in the editing/recording stage. Akaihyou did an awesome job with the podfic and you should definitely listen to it!

(I also definitely have further headcanons for this crossover, which I may or may not return to at some point, depending on how much time/brain other projects take up!)

Find it here (both text and podfic) on Ao3!

Coming Attractions!

A day late, but ah well...

As usual, we’ll go ahead and do an Open Question Night. Which basically means that, while my ask box is always open, tonight I’ll be keeping an eye on it and answering things as they come in. Any fandom or work I’ve talked about here (or posted on AO3) is fair game, as are general questions about writing, etc. I do accept prompts, but I am. Not very good at filling them in a timely manner unless they Immediately spark something, lol.

So, yeah, what’s on your mind?

Also, since I don’t think I have for a couple months, plug for my Discord server! It’s pretty quiet, mostly intended to be a slightly more interactive extension of this space, but you’re welcome to check it out!

Anyway, the usual Coming Attractions details are behind the cut!

PodTogether 2021:

I participated in this challenge for the first time this year, and it was a whole lot of fun! Of Other Suns is a SW/AtLA crossover, and I think it turned out pretty well! My reader/podficcer and I worked pretty closely together during the initial brainstorming process, working out what we wanted to do, and also bounced off one another during the whole editing/finalizing process. There’s a lot that I didn’t end up putting into the fic (because time and length; I am a. Uh. Very wordy writer; the aim was for 6-12k words, we ended up with nearly 15k as it is...), so I might poke more at this specific AU, or crossovers linking up at a different time (either a different point in the SW canon, or in the AtLA canon, or both). I...definitely have extensive headcanons for SW characters as benders of various elements (or nonbenders), and there are at least two Force-sensitive AtLA characters who were outside the scope of the crossover.

Anyway, if you want to check it out...click this link XD (and definitely listen to the podfic too!!! It’s really great)

Precipice:

So, between the final push on PodTogether and some origfic stuff I got done, I...did not get anything finished and posted for this, alas. But! I am saying it here in the hopes that doing so publicly will for once get me to actually stick to a deadline, which is that I will get either the first Protectors chapter or the next Preludes one-shot (or both!) up by this Sunday, September 12. The Protectors chapter will be mostly scene-setting, establishing where various characters are when we open, six years after we last saw our heroes. The Preludes segment will involved Hondo contacting Obi-Wan (and Anakin, who’s with him when he gets the call) about something Relevant To Their Interests.

I will for sure get that Prelude out this month, and hopefully at least two Protectors chapters, but we’ll see how things go at work and how much brain that takes, which is always a factor...anyway, with any luck, I’ll start establishing a Rhythm. I don’t think I’ll be doing weekly updates, the way I did for the first few arcs of Precipice (in part because there are some other longform projects I intend to start putting out and if I am going to do Weekly Fic Posts, I’ll probably alternate), but we’ll see how things go.

AtLA Fic:

Again, I didn’t finish what I wanted to (other than the aforementioned crossover for PodTogether), but I have been working on stuff in the background and, while I’m not going to commit to a Specific Deadline like I am for Precipice, I do plan to post at least the opening chapter of the still-untitled Avatar Zuko AU I’ve been working on this month, so watch this space!

Other Fic Projects:

I’m poking around at what to do for next years SWBB (if only because my wordcounts have been Steadily Increasing and I’d like to get a head start in anticipation of that happening again this year, lol). Still considering exactly what to do, whether I pour all my focus into OFLAM, like I consider every year, or see if I can work up Bail Unfucks the Timeline or another half-plotted AU I have in the back of my head, or go with a different prompt/storyline that occurs to me at some point between now and then, but I’m starting to Actively Ponder things.

I do have that BSG1 crossover outline in the works, I swear XD I’ve got...uh...maybe half to two thirds of the first third of the overall storyline written up? XD It’s a. Uh. Long one. I might go ahead and release it in three parts, just for length/convenience, and because it does more or less have three distinct sections (the initial contact/New Caprica fallout and establishment of the Haven settlement which makes sense in context; the second contact/algae planet; and then an adventure on a resurrection ship to retrieve a Specific Boxed Five and possibly walk away with Ellen because that would just ruin Cavil’s day and I do so love to ruin Cavil’s day, lol). ...I’m going to go ahead and post a preview snippet at the bottom of this post, as Motivation XD

I think that’s all the fanfic stuff I have specific updates for. There’s generally always stuff noodling around in my brain (lately, for Star Wars, AtLA, BSG, or some combination of the three), it’s just how much of it materializes, lol.

At some point, I plan to revisit some BSG epics I had going on (Serenissima; rewriting For Sorrow Sung or doing a slightly different storlyine with the same concept; The Other Battlestar; a few others), but no concrete plans as of yet.

I also kind of want to explore a far-past AtLA setting I designed for a challenge community way back? But I’m not sure if that would work better as an original work with the serial numbers filed off, if I could figure out how I wanted to do that (I have done it before, as I’ll talk about below, but this concept, while not directly involving any characters from Avatar canon as it’s set 2000 years prior to Sozin’s reign, does to an extent lean on the Avatar specifically as a concept, in a way that the other fic I did this with did not).

Original Fic:

Due to a challenge on rainbowfic, I actually got. Quite a bit written? Most of it was not super plot-relevant, but I dropped some Hints about a character in Lux and I got to play in some heads I don’t very often. I might go back to the Regency AU at some point, and there’s a specific reveal I want to write up for a secondary character in The Farglass Cycle, but I haven’t quite figured out how to structure that one, so we’ll see how it goes.

Had an interesting discussion the other day about the way original fiction sometimes starts as fanfic with the serial  numbers filed off and...well, a lot of my original stuff starts that way? Or has some roots there, anyway.

Lux doesn’t quite as much, but I definitely ported in at least two characters who started as fanfic characters (leaving aside that this is, y’know, The Apocalypse IN SPACE so, like. Various fandoms that deal with that probably influenced things, plus several key players are Public Domain Characters sooooo), plus some of the way the world is constructed draws on the Native Tongue trilogy and I flat-out stole a concept from Queen of the Damned, though the way it works in this world is different (also, to be fair, I think I’ve seen it in other places, too; but I personally got the idea from there).

The Farglass Cycle and Untitled Intrigues Story, however, straight-up started as fanfic concepts. And I don’t think it’s obvious unless I point out what the source materials were? Farglass, in particular (it’s the AtLA fic I mentioned earlier), because it started as an alternate future and then the map and magic system got reworked, plus the Avatar themself wasn’t even super involved in the original fic context, and while certain characters are very loosely based on AtLA characters, by now they’ve been so altered by the setting that it’s...I used the same archetypes, if that makes sense?

And then Untitled Intrigues Story started as a fusion between two wildly different fandoms, and while one character is a pretty clear expy if you know where he comes from, and another character kept the same actress in my head, I don’t think it’s very clear other than that.

...anyway, not sure where I’m going with that, other than it’s been in my head lately, lol.

...I think that about covers it! What about you guys? What are you all working on? Slash any questions, etc.?

Teaser for BSG1 AU outline, as promised:

So, anyway, SG-1 is prepared for rain and mud and a survivable-but-kinda-unpleasant environment. They’re also prepared for the usual shenanigans--Goa’uld, cranky local politics, weird alien tech that Daniel really should know better than to touch but sends him into another dimension anyway...

Just. Y’know. A normal mission.

They’re...not quite prepared for what they actually find when they step through.

Which is a very tense and now slightly Confused crowd of people, and a firing squad made up of very large killer robots, with a teenage girl as their target.

(One of the large killer robots is. Uh. Well. Half a large killer robot now; that particular Centurion was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got kawooshed in the face. As one does.)

(Said Centurion absolutely wins the ‘Weirdest Death’ pool for the week in Download City, because that is clearly a thing that exists because it entertains me)

There’s a beat where everyone just stares at everyone else, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The wormhole disengages.

Daniel takes half a step forward, opens his mouth to start the ‘we are peaceful explorers from Earth and y’all seem to be having a Moment here, sorry for interrupting, but, uh...’

And then the moment end and absolute chaos erupts.

Coming Attractions!

Which I definitely forgot to do last month, ah well.

As per usual, this is also an Open Question Night post! Aka, while my askbox is always open, tonight I’ll be keeping an eye on it and around to answer in a semi-reasonable timeframe. Feel free to ask about anything in the post, or anything I’ve talked about here on tumblr, or posted on AO3, etc. ...I don’t recall if I have any active memes or anything, it’s been a while since I’ve been super on tumblr...but anyway, ask away!

I do also take prompts, but no promises on when I’ll get around to filling them. I still have a few sitting around from. Uh. Last year........

But anyway, what’s on your mind?

Precipice:

The first Preludes story went up this past weekend! Somewhat later than I’d planned, but there was another project that ended up eating a lot of my writing time/brain, alas. This one features Lavinia, Mara Jade, Kallus, a Legends cameo, and the introduction of another recurring OC. The next one will...proooooobably be Hondo, Kanan, Ezra, Obi-Wan, and Anakin? Assuming that’s the next one I finish.

There will be seven in total, and the other five will involve whatever’s going to go down with Maul; Hera and her contact in this AU; Sidious’s Fifth Titled Apprentice; and...I’m still considering the last two, lol. Maybe something to do with Mandalore; probably something more Senate-focused...I’ll work it out.

As I mentioned in the tumblr post and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, I’m going to continue posting these alongside the first arc or two of Protectors, which should debut...sometime in the next couple weeks, lol.

Most of these, as you may have guessed, are shoehorning Rebels content and characters into an AU that wasn’t designed with them in mind. The gist of it is, S1 of Rebels goes more or less in canon, and then...S2 probably went differently just because of where Certain Key Players were, but I’m handwaving most of the details unless they’re interesting enough to show explicitly (probably in the Maul Prelude, if nothing else). But for the most part (even though this doesn’t, uh, entirely make sense necessarily XD) anything that doesn’t directly involve Vader/Ahsoka/Rex/Force Woo probably happened similarly. Most notably, The Honorable Ones and all plot points following directly on that happen essentially as in canon. The Mandalore plotlines are also essentially the same. ...oh, I probably should address Thrawn, since I need him in a slightly different position a few years later for spoiler reasons...

Leaving that aside...as I said, Protectors will start coming out soon, I’m just finishing up what I want for the first chapter or two, and waffling on how I want to tag some things. There is a...possible major character death in arc 14, but I’m going back and forth on whether or not I actually want to do it, which changes what tags/warnings I include...

But I’ll work that out and get it out before too much longer!

Other Star Wars Projects:

I have a Thing coming out at the end of this month or early next month, for pod_together. I’m pretty excited about it, I’ve listened to my podficcer’s first draft and am making minor edits/etc., but I think we’re in pretty good shape ^_^

Other than that, I don’t have any concrete plans for new SW fic in the near future. I’m going to buckle down and really get some momentum with Protectors and Preludes for the most part, maybe start poking at some ideas/concepts for next year’s SWBB.

Maybe also crossposting some tumblr-exclusive oneshots like I started doing last winter, or picking up with one of the AU outlines that I keep meaning to continue (Ventress + Luke, Let’s Go Steal a Crossover) but...well, we’ll see how time/brain works out this month.

Other Fanfic Projects:

I will have some standalone/fulltext AtLA fic out later this month, I promise XD It’ll be an Avatar Zuko AU, I’m putting the text together and figuring out how I want to structure it, etc.

I’m also genuinely working on a BSG/SG-1 crossover AU outline. It’s. Already quite long and I haven’t even gotten to most of the meat of the crossover yet, lol. But at least the first chunk of that will probably be up sometime later this month, too. Fingers crossed. That’s the plan, anyway.

Original Work:

I haven’t done much in the last month or two, but I’m hoping to get back into this. Both for extant ‘verses and really diving into Arthuriana research because I want to write that one story, maybe really working it up to Publishable??? We’ll see how it goes...

...I think that about covers it! Like I said at the beginning of the post, we’ll also do an Open Question Night, and I’d love to hear about what you guys are working on! What’s on your mind?

Coming Attractions!

Yes, I know it’s Friday, not Monday. <.< ANYWAY.

Before we get started, plugging my Discord server (which is p. quiet lately but it’s there if you want to talk somewhere other than here!); and also we’ll do another Open Question Night because Why Not!

As I said last month, while my askbox is always open, tonight I’ll be actively around to answer questions--about writing in general, anything I’ve posted about here on tumblr; anything on my AO3...let me know what’s on your mind!

Star Wars:

SWBB:

Take a Bond of Fate is officially up! (Previously referred to as just SWBB 2021 or the Dragonshifters AU because I literally titled it less than twelve hours before posting <.<) Well, the first 20k are up, anyway. I will be updating throughout the month and the fic will be complete by the end of the month, per the event rules. (I originally planned to do updates on Tuesdays and Fridays; tonight’s update will be delayed and who knows how well I’ll actually stick to it after tonight but it Will be posted in full by the end of May, I can say that much for sure XD)

As always, I think there are a few things I could’ve handled better/that feel a little rushed, but I think it turned out pretty good! There are some upcoming scenes I’m particularly fond of, but we’ll see if everyone else agrees. The core of this actually ended up being Bo and Padme? Which I was not expecting--I was expecting it to lean hard on the Bo and Anakin parallels, but here we are.

Anyway, there’s some fun bits to come!

Precipice:

No solid update ATM. Uh. Various Life things got bonkers over the past month or two, so TaBoF took pretty much all of my fic brain. However, since that project is essentially finished other than finalizing/polishing each update chunk as I post, I should be able to turn my attention here this month. Which means, fingers crossed, we’ll have a start date sometime in June for Protectors. I’ll post the first Preludes segment at the same time; it will involve Kallus, Lavinia, and Mara Jade, set just before Kallus is reassigned to Lothal.

(Others that I have planned will involve: 1) some combination of Kanan, Ezra, Hondo, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Anakin; 2) Hera and whoever her contact is in this AU, as Ahsoka is otherwise occupied; 3) Whatever Maul is up to in this timeline; 4) Something to do with Palpatine’s fifth apprentice; and two more I haven’t decided on. I am taking suggestions! The purpose of Preludes is to patch some holes now that I’ve decided to write Rebels into the canon, which was not part of my original plan as I hadn’t yet seen it when I started planning/posting this AU. So these are more plot-relevant than the things that turn up in Bonus Content, which is why they’re in a separate fic, but not really enough to make a full arc between Milestones and Escalation, so, there it is.)

our faces like a mirror:

I’m now leaning towards sitting on this and using it for next year’s Big Bang? Because then maybe I’ll finally finish it, lol...anyway, I’m also going to see how people respond to stuff in TaBoF, because that will either Boost my enthusiasm for the project or, uh, the opposite, depending on how people respond to how I write Bo-Katan. So that may change, and I may finally get it out this year instead of next. We’ll see how that goes XD

Other SW Projects:

One of the SW discords I’m on has revived a prompt game we did last summer. I pulled my first prompt but haven’t actually, uh, done anything with it yet. <.< I’ll do that at some point.

As for various outlines or extant AUs I haven’t updated in forever...well, like I said, what little fic brain hasn’t been on BB the past month or two has been drifting back towards Precipice or occasionally co-opted by OFLAM so...yeah, nothing serious to report on that front, lol.

AtLA Projects:

I’m semi-planning/hoping to start posting At Least one of the two longfics I’ve been poking at sometime this summer. I’ve mentioned them here before, but one is long and tragic and focuses on Lu Ten; the other is an Avatar Zuko AU. Not sure which will draw my focus and get up first, but I do plan to write both of them! And possibly more. Because this fandom just Does That to me, lol.

Also, as I’ve mentioned in various times and places--I am pathologically incapable of not creating a bunch of OCs when I seriously fall into a fandom, and my AtLA work, in particular, will probably reflect that. I don’t super plan to write anything really centered on any OCs (I mean, apart from characters who Exist but have very little Canon Characterization (i.e., Lu Ten himself for that one fic, lol); and Lu Ten’s love interest because that’s an important part of the story), but they will be There and Prominent Characters. This is mostly mentioned because I know OCs aren’t for everyone, so that might put you off of my AtLA fic and I figured it was fair to give you a head’s up.

(...although actually I think none of my old fic that I crossposted to AO3 had significant OC involvement except for Glory...but then again that’s all oneshots and a little different.)

Other Fandoms:

BSG/SG-1 (BSG1?) crossover AU is still coming; I keep getting sidetracked from actually finishing it <.< I haven’t even finished the New Caprica and Haven section, I still have to get to the algae planet and then the Resurrection ship and...maybe I’ll end up posting this in chunks...

Uh, nothing else super planned, but as I mentioned last month, this outline might draw me back into BSG fandom a little more actively because it’s another forever fandom of mine.

Original Fiction:

I’m actually really proud of the Regency AU I wrote for a challenge last month, based on my Apocalypse In SPACE ‘verse Lux.

I need to update the Lux and Farglass Cycle archives still, and will hopefully be posting at least one other thing to RF this month, but we’ll see how that goes. I also might or might not be diving into Arthuriana in all its weirdness and glory this summer to prep for actually writing that Lady Mordred idea I had. And there are always other projects on the back burner, but that’s where things stand here.

...I think that pretty much covers it! Not all that much of an update, but as I said, Life got all...Lifey at me, plus BB had a hard deadline, so that’s where the most detail is.

But what about you guys? What are you working on/what do you have in the pipeline? Like I said, it’s an Open Question Night, and I’d love to hear what’s on your mind!

Coming Attractions/Open Question Night!

A day late, ah well...

Also I feel like an Open Question Night so, why not! Basically, anything I’ve talked about here or have posted on AO3 is up for grabs; general writing/whatever questions. I do also take prompts, but make no promises for how quickly I’ll fill them.

(Technically, my ask box is always open but I’m, like, Around at the moment and keeping an eye on it/answering in semi-realtime)

I don’t have a whole lot to say this month--I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped to last month, so it’s mostly a repeat of what I said last month, lol. Uh, anyway, highlights!

SWBB 2021:

I’m behind where I hoped to be by this point, but I have a fairly solid Plan to keep pushing forward and get at least the baseline draft necessary by the end of the month. I’ve...kind of figured out what the endgame plan is? Still poking at exactly what goes down in the second part/movement, but I’m probably gonna kill Pre Viszla because who doesn’t like killing Pre Viszla. ((And also Bo-Katan’s storyline should also be impacted, the same way Anakin and Padme’s are. Still contemplating how Korkie and Satine should get involved, because there probably should...anyway, I’ve got some time to fill in those gaps, lol.))

Precipice:

Didn’t get much done this month, still figuring out the Preludes stories. Goal is still an April start, but it may get pushed to May depending on how SWBB goes.

I’ll also put out a teaser chapter sometime this month, I think? (Not a full chapter, but a Scene, anyway).

Other SW fic projects:

Didn’t get much done, other than crossposting a one-shot I wrote a while back--I’ve got a few more I want to do, including That One Fic that got me threatened with Promethean violence because Suffer With Me.

Still hoping to get OFLAM and/or Distaff/Auxiliaries/Devoted!verse/something up at some point this year, but that’s definitely back-burner.

AtLA Projects:

Also a bit of a slow month for getting actual Text down on these, lol. I’m shooting to start getting something up around the same time I start the next set of Precipice arcs; maybe alternating weeks between the two and putting up Preludes fics as and when I complete them? I mean, schedules are Hard but I did manage to stick to one almost the entire first year of Precipice, so...hopeful!

That’s...more or less what I’m actively working on at the moment! Other than off and on original stuff because that’s how I tend to approach that. Hopefully this month will be more productive than last month was; especially since March gets super busy at work. But we shall see!

Coming Attractions!

I know I usually do this on the first Monday of the month, but given that this month starts on a Tuesday, I don’t feel like waiting that long.

As always, feel free to comment/let me know what y’all are up to, what you did last month, what you plan on doing this month, we can do an Open Question Night, etc.

Also, plugging my Discord server, as I have done in the past--again, this is basically just a (theoretically) more interactive extension of this blog. It’s pretty chill/quiet for the most part, but I’m happy to talk there if you want.

All right, here we go!

So, you may have noticed that my NaNo posts...didn’t happen. That’s because I basically did not meet any of my goals last month--I got a pretty strong start, and then between some IRL/personal life things that happened, plus missing a couple days and not getting back on the horse, so to speak...yeah.

I did get one piece done--a Zuko-centric Avatar: the Last Airbender AU Outline, with the point of divergence being the stampede during the Ba Sing Se arc. Check it out, let me know your thoughts!

Anyway, that was last month, and now it is a new month, and I have Plans and High Hopes for actually Accomplishing things!

Precipice:

I absolutely genuinely for real this time plan to get the last chapter (or two) out in the next week or two. There’s a fairly long section with Bail and Ahsoka and Moonshot (Rex and Leia joining them towards the end); and then a scene with Palpatine and Lavinia; and then a final wrap-up scene from Padme’s POV.

After that, as I’ve mentioned before, things will work a little differently. I’m going to start posting Arc Eight: Escalation alongside Arc Seven Point Five: Preludes. Preludes will be in a separate fic, and will be seven stand-alone short stories taking place during the six-year timeskip between arcs Seven and Eight. They may or may not be presented in chronological order, and they’re a bit more plot-relevant than the stuff that turns up in Bonus Content. A lot of them deal with integrating Rebels content (the first one I have planned takes place two years after Arc Seven and will focus on Kallus); and I’ll probably deal with Maul and Infernalis’ successor. I’m still finalizing all the details for what I have planned here (especially since it can’t mirror Rebels entirely, partly because season 2 alone will be...wildly AU; but also because I have Plans for Thrawn that involve him not being kidnapped by space whales, lol). If there are any specific things you think I should touch on in one of these seven stories, let me know! But bear in mind that it will be limited to seven stories, so I may not do it or I may make a simpler/condensed version for Bonus Content instead.

Anyway, if you’ve been counting the years, you might be able to guess what the titular Escalation in arc eight is :D

That being said, I don’t expect to get any of this out until sometime in January at the very earliest.. I’d like to get a bit of a backlog worked up (so I stop having, multi-month hiatuses between chapters <.< ), and given other things I have planned (see below) it may take a bit of time until I’m ready to post. I’ll put out an update post with a planned schedule/etc. somewhat closer to when things are actually going to get going.

SWBB:

I have picked the story I’m going to do for this, hurray! ...I’m still kind of. Like. Searching for the actual Plot involved, but I know what I’m writing about, so we’ll see where it goes :D It is not OFLAM, which I do intend to keep working on/get out there at some point (which I know I’ve been promising for literal years now but shhhhh).

Anyway, for the story in question, I might already have the minimum wordcount for the first checkin on January 10, (I haven’t counted, but I’m probably close, if I count all the fulltext I have; I doubt all of it will make it into the final story, but we shall see), but I’m hoping to be a bit more solid than I am right now by then.

AtLA:

Apart from the outline I mentioned above, I have a couple projects in the pipeline, now that I’m back in this fandom. I’m hoping to have some significant text done on at least one of them to start posting next year.

My primary focus is probably going to be an Avatar Zuko storyline I’ve been poking at for a few months, but I also have a long epic tragic romance starring Lu Ten that will hopefully materialize at some point.

Additional AU outlines are also a possibility! They’re a lot of fun, whatever the fandom I’m doing them in XD

Original:

Hoping to get some done this month, as always; I didn’t get anything put together last month, but--again, life intervened.

Also, would you guys be interested in seeing some of my original stuff here? I know I’ve linked The Phoenix before, which is a crossover between Star Wars and one of my two primary origfic worlds (and also...pretty much the only time I’ve actively written Vader as Vader, lol...), but I have A Lot more. There should be links in my index post to the archives (which...I need to update...), but I’m always happy to share more!

And...I think that pretty much wraps it up! Focus this month is probably going to be on SWBB and the AtLA stuff, once I finish Precipice, but I’ll probably bounce into the upcoming arcs in Precipice!verse as well, and some original things. Maybe fill some long-overdue prompts/asks...

But, as I mentioned at the top of the post, I also like to hear about what you guys are doing! What have y’all been up to? And/or Open Question Night?

Coming Attractions!

First Monday of the month, which means Coming Attractions Post!

(Especially since I skipped last month, whoops…)

Before we get into it, as I always do in these things, plug for my Discord server--it’s pretty quiet, but basically a slightly more interactive version of this tumblr. Sometimes I talk a little more about origfic or other stuff than I do here, too.

Also, this is not my only hobby! As some of you may know, one of my others is lacework, and I now have a sideblog for that. I have pictures of my completed projects up there, and will probably have more stuff as I start…well…making more stuff.

Anyway. On to the actual writing stuff aka why most of you are here (also a few requests for feedback/Opinions behind the cut).

So, I didn’t get much done over the month until, like…the last few days. In part because work got super bonkers for reasons I’m still Cranky at but that is a vent for my personal blog, lol.

Precipice:

I have threeish scenes left, which I’m probably going to do as one more chapter (unless they end up Super Long, then I might split it into two). That’ll close out Arc Seven, and the first big chunk of this fic. As I’ve said before, I’ll split off into a sequel fic (working title Protectors) at that point, along with doing a sort of…interquel, working title Preludes, that mostly deals with integrating Rebels content. Also probably Maul.

Right now, I’m tentatively planning six installments to Preludes? Mostly because six feels like a nice number to work with, lol. These will be one-shots that aren’t super interconnected, all taking place during the six-year timeskip. These are the ones I’m thinking about doing as of right now (subject to change, and I welcome suggestions!):

one involving Kallus on Coruscant, shortly before he gets reassigned to Lothal;

one involving Hera and whoever her contact is in this AU (since Ahsoka’s doing something different from the Fulcrum stuff);

one where Kanan and Ezra connect with Obi-Wan et al. (probably through Hondo);

one with Luke, probably similar to that one episode where Leia turns up in Rebels canon;

I really do need to figure out what the heck is going on with Maul, don’t I.

…something else????

The only ones I’m 100% sure about including are the one with Kallus and the one where the various Jedi link up because those are necessary and/or plot-relevant, though I’m still working out specifics (especially on the Jedi one). I may also include something with Thrawn, since I’m doing something different with him than canon did. Like I said, I welcome thoughts/suggestions/etc.

Protectors will then pick up six years after the end of Arc Seven, with Arc Eight. And, as a treat, the working titles for Arcs Eight and Nine are Escalation and Watershed. In theory, I’m planning to post Preludes alongside arcs eight and nine, but we’ll see.

…anyway, uh, what I forgot to mention earlier is that my plan is to wrap up arc seven/the first fic in this series this month. Hopefully I will actually pull that off XD. And then we move on to the other stuff.

Other SW Fic Projects:

Big Bang is coming up again! I think signups will be next month? I’m considering three different plotlines as of right now, though that’s assuming I don’t come up with something new and exciting and/or another ObiAniDala plotline, which is what I seem to do every year…which one I end up doing probably depends at least partly on how S2 of the Mandalorian goes, since two of the three ideas heavily feature Bo-Katan. Of course, one of those lacks a plot and the other is pretty episodic/involves a lot of blank space I still need to fill in…

Anyway, we’ll see how that goes after the show airs and I get more event information, especially since it’s going to be structured differently/teaming up writers and betas much earlier in the process, which will be nice and possibly help chronically-undecided me actually pick something so I’m not scrambling to finish at the last minute but given that it’s me I probably will be anyway XD

As for other SW projects…I still owe a few meme fills from, like, April…but otherwise, extant projects are mostly back-burnered for now.

AtLA Projects:

Aka, the reason why SW projects other than Precipice and SWBB (and any one-shots/prompt fills that occur to me) are back-burnered, lol.

I am working on an AU outline, set to come out this month. There’s a couple of fulltext fics I’m playing with. I haven’t gotten any actual text written down yet, but I know where I’m going with them, at least to start.

The AU outline will be a canon-divergent thing set during the Ba Sing Se arc, and will be hopefully out Soon.

Fulltext fic #1 is…basically, the premise is, Lu Ten had a lover during the Siege, the soundtrack to this fic involves a lot of West Side Story, he left her with someone to remember him by, and then there’s some mindbending and complicated politics after his death. I think I talked a little more about this in a previous post? Anyway, one of the things I’m considering is whether to just tell this story linearly, or to start several years later, and go into the whole star-crossed lovers backstory as she regains her memories of what actually happened. The advantage to the first option is that it’s easier to work with shifting POV, which I prefer; and also involves more canon characters more quickly. The advantage to the second is that I think it would work really well for this particular storyline? Assuming I could get people invested in her and/or Ba Sing Se Politics/Worldbuilding that fast …y’know, when I think about it like that, maybe linear is the best option, lol…

Fulltext fic #2 is an Avatar Zuko AU, where he figures it out at age thirteen, and at that point decides he has roughly three and a half years until the comet, aka three and a half years to figure out how to make all this work (not to mention at least starting to learn air, water, and earth), and hopefully by then he’ll know what he should be doing with it? Whether it’s to resurface and Prove His Worth by defending the Fire Nation during the leadup to the comet, or something else (though Something Else doesn’t quite occur to him until he starts doing the other stuff). This will heavily feature at least one of my old OCs, and probably a few others (and likely one or two new ones), especially during the first two years. I’ve got things more or less worked out up until Aang resurfaces and Zuko’s plans have to shift/he has to cut his earthbending year short (much to Toph’s annoyance). Because once Aang is awake, everyone thinks he’s the Avatar (he’s not; there’s another explanation for how he iceberg’d for a century), and that fact just escalates All Of The Things.

((I’ve mentioned before that I am Pathologically Incapable of not creating a bunch of OCs and AtLA is a particularly strong example of that, so...yeah, that’ll be a Thing in pretty much anything I write in this fandom))

…anyway, this should be fun, once I actually get actual text down XD

Original Fic:

I did write one thing last month! Which was nice. Hopefully, I’ll get a bit done this month, too. For those of you who don’t know, most of my original stuff is posted on rainbowfic, which is a great community and if you guys do original stuff you post online, you should come join.

I’ve also started poking at a couple of new concepts, because that is how my brain do. Including one Arthuriana story despite the fact that I’m not super into Arthuriana but then my brain was like “what if Mordred was a girl?” and welp. Here I am.

NaNo:

I’m proooooooobably going to do a similar setup to what I had the past couple years--set myself a wordcount goal, but not bind myself to any single project. Depending on how things go this month, either with Precipice!verse or SWBB or my AtLA stuff, or if that Mordred thing catches on, I might try to prioritize one or more things (like, have my goal be 20k on X project, and 30k on other stuff), but I’ll decide that closer to the date.

…I think that’s everything! What are you guys up to lately? Does anyone have NaNo plans? Any thoughts on stuff I mentioned on my docket, so to speak? What’s on your mind?

Some Stuff

Not a proper Coming Attractions post, that’ll come out on the first Monday of the month as always, but...a more general update on some projects (and also possibly looking for input?)

Basically, I’ve accepted the inevitable, that I’ve fallen back into ATLA in a big way. I haven’t actually rewatched the series yet, because my roommate was doing so and I kept popping in and out and I didn’t want to confuse myself by trying to do a straight rewatch while she was doing hers, but I have reread a bunch of old fanfic/RP logs, and have some plots I kind of want to work with again? Either as fulltext or as an AU Outline. Behind the cut are some more details, as well as seeking Opinions on which, if any, I should actually work on.

I am also Determined to not fall out of SW as this is going on, lol. More details about that behind the cut, as well.

(Also, I’ve talked about some of the stuff listed here on my writing discord, which feel free to come stop by and hang out! It’s basically an extension of this tumblr, only a little more interactive. Find us here!)

Star Wars Stuff:

I plan to take next weekend to bang out at minimum the next Precipice chapter, and possibly the next two (though I’ll stagger posting if I do manage to get both done). And then try and give myself a more active schedule to get the next parts of the series out.

I’m also working on a dragonshifters AU, which I’m enjoying a lot. I think OFLAM may be relegated to the back burner for a while, though I’ll probably kick it up again if I end up doing it for SWBB next year (unless I tease out enough of a Plot for dragonshifters to do that instead, lol). I’ve talked about some of the worldbuilding on my writing discord, too.

I also still owe some meme responses from way back, which I do intend to get to at some point I promise <.<

And I haven’t forgotten some other extant projects--Devoted!verse, the Ventress outline, Bail Unfucks the Timeline, Distaff, etc.--but they’re pretty back-burnered for the time being. If something Sparks in any of those, I’ll probably dive into it, but for now I’m not actively working on them in the way I am on dragonshifters and Precipice.

AtLA Stuff:

So, there’s sort of...four or five projects spinning around in my head right now, lol. One of which, if I do it, would not work as an outline so it would be fulltext. It’s canon-compliant, for the most part.

...well, I should interrupt myself here to say the following: I haven’t read a lot of the comics or tie-in novels, and my familiarity with more recent Word of God is limited. I’m basically operating out of canon defined as “it’s in the original show or WoG I’m specifically aware of, drawing in stuff from other sources as it appeals to me but otherwise ignoring it.” Where WoG contradicts itself (i.e., the timeline for Lu Ten’s death),I go with whatever answer I prefer.

In terms of worldbuilding details added in Korra--ehhhhh, it’s sort of held a little higher than the comics, etc. (in that, if I remember it, unless it Josses something I really, really liked/was foundational to something I’m doing, I’ll probably include it); but most likely whatever I’m doing will go AU enough during the first series for a lot of the other detail work/character-specific stuff to not matter.

Anyway! Back to the fun stuff.

There’s one story I’m playing with that’s not going to work as an AU outline. Depending on exactly what I focus on, there’s a couple different fulltext fics buried in it, and I’m not sure which I’d work on (or if I’d braid the two of them together). Basically, it deals with the siege of Ba Sing Se and Lu Ten’s death, and some of the fallout from that, focusing on an OC of mine and her daughter. I found a short fic I wrote for a challenge back in the day that ties into this concept, which is at the very end of this post. If I work on this, I’d probably change the names of the two relevant OCs and possibly how she gets her memory back (it was written specifically for a “what happened in the rest of the world when Zhao captured Tui” challenge; guess how many of them were Hama-related), but. Anyway, building on either the Siege portion of the story (which has a lot of West Side Story on its soundtrack in my head lol), or focusing on what she does after she remembers him. Or both! Both is also good.

The rest of the options are mostly Zuko-centric canon-divergence fics.

First option, Airbender!Zuko. This occurs because The Spirits Said So; he’s gotten very good at fake firebending using airbending. Probably to the point where he’s so deep in denial that he can’t even see the pyramids anymore, to stretch that analogy to the breaking point, lol. Basically, not much changes until the north pole, but there’s some ways for it to go from there...

Second option, Avatar Zuko. This one has been floating around in my head more lately. Reading old RP logs, my partner and I played through a bunch of different variants on how this all worked, but the one in my head right now is basically--a few months before he’s banished, they’re at Ember Island or something and he’s out on the ocean/fishing or something. Sudden storm, he stops the boat from capsizing through panicked waterbending. No other witnesses, for whatever reason. He initially decides he imagined it, something else must have happened. Except then, when he’s in the palace infirmary after getting his face melted, he does it again. At that point, he basically decides that his options here are “get turned into a weapon and kill A Lot of people, or get disappeared into some dark hole somewhere where I can’t cause any problems.” Neither of those is particularly attractive, so he decides to run away. He doesn’t know what his long-term plan is at this moment--if he’ll use the comet to regain favor/save his nation based on the context he’s operating under right now, or do something else. But he has about three and a half years before then. He figures he’ll spend a year at the Western Air Temple, looking for texts/mosaics/something to get him at least vaguely airbending; then go to the North Pole to learn waterbending for a year, then spend a year in the Earth Kingdom to learn earthbending. Planning, for the last two, to present himself as mixed and while he has a lot of his Fire Nation father’s features, he inherited bending from his other parent (or grandparent, when he goes to the North Pole). For those of you familiar with my original fic, this will also include the first iteration of a prominent secondary character from Feredar/The Farglass Cycle. Mostly so Zuko has someone to talk to at the WAT XD. 

Third and fourth options are a bit more nebulous, and both break off during the Ba Sing Se arc. First option, Zuko gets injured during the stampede when Aang moves the zoo (this will probably draw in at least one of my BSS OCs because I am pathologically incapable of not creating OCs, lol). Second option, Zuko leaves his mask behind in Lake Laogai, which means Aang will know he’s in the city. Not sure where either of those would go from that point but there’s some Significant Differences there, lol.

...anyway, that’s where things stand now. Which, if any, are y’all interested in seeing?

As promised, the clip from the Lu Ten story, originally written for a challenge back in...yeesh 2010 XD. Again, this is canon-compliant at least up until Iroh and Zuko arrive in BSS, and I’d possibly change the names and/or how she gets her memories back.

An Wei sat by the window, holding her little girl and watching the sky. Today had been one of Huai's bad days, so An Wei had her hand resting lightly on her daughter's neck, counting her heartbeats. The doctors had told her, back when Huai was a baby and they'd figured out what was wrong with her, to hope for seven years--but only to hope, not to count on them. So An Wei took special care to always, always watch. She never regretted her child, no. Occasionally, she wished she had never met Huai's father, but...well, she couldn't remember much about him, other than the kind golden eyes (false kindness?) that had taken her in so completely during the Siege. She didn't think about him very much. It was too painful--and dangerous. Above and beyond the dangers in thinking about the War That Was No War, her own father had... Well, he hadn't been pleased. She didn't remember the argument, but her uncle wouldn't have brought her to the Lower Ring midwife who had cared for her during her pregnancy if she hadn't needed to hide. Despite all of her vigilance, it was her own heart that skipped a beat when the moonlight filtering in through her window turned an eerie, dull red. She gasped and clutched her daughter a little tighter, praying that Huai would sleep until this went away, so it wouldn't frighten her. That is, assuming it would go away. She shivered and shifted Huai so the little girl was facing away from the window and watched in horror as the bloody moon failed to return to normal. "Please..." she whispered. "Please be normal when she wakes..." As if in response to her desperate pleading, the moon flared silver again after a half hour. But she barely had a moment to relax before it winked out completely. An Wei jumped and stifled a scream. "Don't be afraid of the dark, this'll light your way home." She jumped again. There was no one here in the room with her and Huai, but she could have sworn... The moon blinked back into existence and a pretty girl with long white hair rode in on one of its beams. An Wei stared up at her, still frightened, pulling her daughter away from the girl as best she could. The moon-girl bent down and kissed An Wei's forehead. "Remember now," she murmured, then faded out of sight. ** "Don't be afraid of the dark." He smiles and makes a little light in his palm, carefully transferring it to a bundle of sticks. "This will light your way home." ** She studies the hairpiece he wears in his topknot, turning it over and over in her hands. "There's something you should know about me, too. About my family." ** "We can make this work, Itsu." He's determined, hopeful, his golden eyes shining. "We'll talk to my father. He'll understand. We'll make it work. Meet me here, at the usual time." "I trust you." ** She waits and waits and waits, until long past dark, but he doesn't come. ** She hates speaking with her guardian, but she's scared and has nowhere else to go. "Please, help me," she finishes quietly. He nods. "I'll keep you safe, Highness. You and your child. I promise." ** The light spins around and around and around, and she forgets her name, forgets her lover, and in her place is An Wei, a young woman trained as a scribe, seduced by a nameless Fire soldier, rather than... ** Itsu let out a little sobbing breath. Huai shifted in her arms. "Mommy?" she whispered, still half-asleep. "It's okay, baby, everything's okay. Go back to sleep." "'Kay." Huai closed her golden eyes again and her breathing evened out as much as it ever did. Itsu held her daughter close. Twice over a princess, at the worst possible time, born with a broken heart. No wonder Long Feng hid us so deep.

[to clarify--Itsu is Kuei’s sister. I forget how I set the relative ages, but assuming, as seems to be the case in flashbacks, that Lu Ten is about 10 years older than Zuko, he’d be somewhere between twenty and twenty-two when he died, depending on which date you believe; Kuei is around the same age (possibly a year or two younger?) and Itsu within two years of them.]

What I was Planning to do today:

Finish and posted the next Precipice chapter it’s been almost six months self WTF

Start actual work, not just daydreaming, on either:

The AtLA AU Outline I plan on posting next

One of the two fulltext AtLA fics I’m planning on working on 

Dragonshifters AU

OFLAM

etc.

Finish the lace bracelet I have going (now that I’ve actually gotten it started, it won’t take long once I sit down and actually do it, since it’s just straight rose ground all the way through)

What I Actually Did today:

None of that.

...but I did make bread and turn what was left of the roast chicken into broth?

.......and some daydreaming on the aforementioned AtLA stuff as well as some semi-related self-indulgent crossover stuff <.<

...I swear, the stuff listed under the Planning will happen in the near future XD...

NaNo Check-In #1

So, it’s been five days, and I’m actually doing pretty well? I’m...just over 500 words below where I wanted to be in terms of overall wordcount, but that’s not bad! We’ll see how well I keep it up...

Most of what I’ve written has been on an Avatar AU Outline which will be up in the next few days.

I also did a little bit on my dragonshifters AU, and the late Precipice chapter. After I finish the outline, I’m gonna try to shift more focus to those two projects and at least get the Precipice chapter finished and posted before I move on to some of the shiny new AtLA fulltext fics I’ve been working on.

I haven’t done any original stuff yet, but hopefully in the next five days, I’ll do something? We shall see...

Anyway, how have you guys been doing? At par, above, below? What are y’all working on?

And, as I’ve done in past years, behind the cut is a little snippet that I wrote within the last couple days!

His hand moved, and she drew in a breath as it slid across her scales, the sensation running through her like an electric current; he followed it, moving to the side of the bed, to kneel next to it.

“...Ani?”

He closed his eyes, and his skin--rippled a little; a flash of red and gold creeping up, just visible through his half-undone collar.

It took her a second to realize what he was showing her.

He’s--there’s another--has there ever been…?

She reached out with one trembling hand, resting her fingers against Anakin’s scales, just like he had touched hers.

He whispered her name, and she bent forward to kiss him, again and again and again.

It didn’t change a thing.

And at the same time, it changed everything.

On OC Creation

[Disclaimer: I’m not super interested in Discourse about Mary Sues and/or the concept of OCs in general. Just...starting this whole thing with a foundational premise that OCs are Fun and Not A Bad Thing.]

So, I’ve been thinking some about OC creation (because, as I’ve mentioned before, I am pathologically incapable of not creating a stable of OCs when I’m in a fandom for more than five minutes lol; also I’ve been falling back into AtLA and I have...A Lot of OCs there XD).

...anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, and...I’m curious, those of you out there who have OCs, how do you create them? Mine tend to kind of fall into four groups.

Group 1: Core OCs, or OCs that are Concepts I want to play with and/or have plots of their own (for fanfic, for RP, for just messing around in my own brain). So, like...Atia from BSG, or Addie from MCU, or Lavinia from SW, or Haku from AtLA (...as far as I remember, he fell into this category? A lot of my AtLA OCs I don’t quite remember where they started, lol...but I’m including him because I plan on using him for an upcoming AU outline project), or arguably Judas from SPN, or Des from Dresden Files...

Group 2: Satellite OCs, or OCs that basically (at least initially) serve to flesh out the backstories/etc. of Core OCs (and/or canon characters in come cases). So, like...Melanie is one of Atia’s satellites; ...Addie doesn’t actually have any until we start getting into Crossovers ETA: lol i forgot Caroline i’m dumb; Vedric Greer is one of Lavinia’s; Wei and Nuying are Haku’s; Hermes and Hathor were Judas’s (though also kind of Gabriel’s); Hamlet and Azriel and Ben were Des’s...

Group 3: Plot-Relevant OCs, or OCs that are built to serve a specific plot-related purpose and aren’t intended to have stories or backgrounds or satellites of their own. So, like...Ileana from BSG; ...I don’t actually have any from MCU; Specter and Infernalis from SW; arguably, the...I forget her name, but the woman I designed to be Iroh’s wife/Lu Ten’s mother from AtLA; Eremiel from SPN; and...I don’t recall any from DF but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Group 4: One-shot OCs, or OCs that are designed for a specific RP prompt/context. Most of these are also Plot-Relevant or Satellite OCs but I guess I think about them differently, since they’re mostly RP-based? Anyway, as some examples--Khuyen I believe I created because I needed an earthbender willing to train someone Fire-born without too much Drama, etc.; Indree was created to give Roslin some local backup/cultural advice in the Epic Crossover RP of DOOM; Addie has a Love Interest who was created for the same RP; there were quite a few from one of the two DF RPs I was involved in for a while...

Of course, while I say they’re just supposed to be Support and/or For This One Thing, OCs from Groups 2-4 often stick around, and start developing satellites and/or plotlines of their own. Like, as an SW example, I built a sister for Kallus. Then she had three sons, so I needed to name them and give them at least vague personalities (to be fair, some of this was also related to OCs created by me and a friend of mine, respectively, to be Kallus and Zeb’s kids). Then they had partners and children of their own. Eremiel (SPN) was supposed to have one specific infodumpy scene and then disappear. She ended up with a backstory related to characters who wouldn’t appear for two more seasons and the Book of Raziel. Ileana was supposed to be a sounding board for a tertiary canon character who was vital to that fic’s plot and ended up being a million times more Interesting than he was and leaking some crucial information to the press later in the story. And on and on it goes.

Sometimes, they start migrating to other ‘verses (sometimes my original stuff, like Kirana moved from AtLA to Feredar, though she left her AtLA family and some of her personality traits behind). I have one OC who was originally built for a wildly AU Dresden Files RP who then migrated to a more canon verse and then to AtLA. Judas has bounced around in at least three universes I’ve played in, excluding one-shot RPs...at least one character I originally designed for AtLA jumped generations and wound up having a plotline in LoK.

And sometimes, OCs that didn’t initially start out as connected start turning out to be. For example, Iroh’s wife, who I mentioned above (I really need to either remember what name I had for her or just rename her, lol), ended up being connected to a long-standing Plot-Relevant OC I had built as the head of the infirmary in the Fire palace (they served together in the Navy, among other things), as well as a Core OC who was...very concepty and will probably not be revived without some significant revision (IW was this character’s aunt).

Anyway, tl;dr: I create OCs based on either specific concepts/storylines I’m interested in, or as supplements to said characters, or to fill in a specific plot-necessary role. And then they start fractaling out, the same way I work in AUs. This is why I am pathologically incapable of not doing this, lol.

What about you guys? Any of you create OCs? How do you go about doing it?

...as long as we’re here, why not do an Open Question Night? Priority to questions related to OCs, given the topic of this post, but otherwise the usual rules apply. Any fandom/work I’ve discussed here or have posted on my AO3 is fair game.

What’s on your minds?

no i am not procrastinating writing the next chapter of precipice or the other things i have in the pipeline why would you say such a thing