#but i can write a bunch of dialogue for them! i’d love to write a bunch of dialogue for them!

[leonardalphachurch]

there are a lot of stories i want to write but they take a lot of effort and so they’re really hard and then others stories that would take less effort but i also want to write them way less and so they’re also really hard and all that to say i am considering if i should make some of those latter stories into visual novel…

[chlix]

juno

bf! minho x fem! reader: you have baby fever. your boyfriend wants to be with you forever. turns out you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone

genre: fluff, crack, suggestive (MDNI, explicit dialogue)

word count: 3.3k

warnings/tags: pregnancy scare, jokes about a breeding kink, marriage proposal, y/n is a little spoiled i gotta admit, this one is all over the place ya'll

a/n: minho's fic in my album series! this one is based on "juno". y/n is a LOT in this one but i found it way more fun and fitting to the song to write her that way rather than actually being down to earth and reasonable lol

You’re out at a mall with your friend Jia, having a lazy day shopping and eating overpriced food from the shops in the central plaza. It's been a while since you had time to bum around with her, and your boyfriend, Minho, had said he'd drive you there and take care of his own errands while he waited. He'd even handed you his second credit card and told you to get whatever you wanted, much to Jia's amusement. You wish you were more put off by him flaunting his money, but unfortunately you passed that point long ago. It's also due to the fact that his money is much appreciated at this point in your life. Currently, you’re a bit of a NEET; after you had to quit your last job, you’ve been doing little except sitting at home, attempting TikTok recipes, doing housework and fantasizing about having things like hobbies and life goals aside from marrying your boyfriend.

“That’s nothing new for you, though,” your friend Jia says. “You inherited the suburban princess aesthetic from your mother.”

“You say that as if we weren't raised on the same street” you say, words thick around the spoon of froyo in your mouth. “We’re both suburban princesses.”

Your eyes roam around the mall, people watching as you often do. Next to the frozen yogurt place you had just visited, there is a mother with her small toddler at the counter. The mother is stylishly dressed, in cute jeans and a red sweater, and her daughter matches perfectly in a tiny little red turtleneck and a corduroy pinafore press. She’s wearing little charms in her hair and has a backpack with a bunch of dangly charms that jingle as she fidgets. She is eyeing the froyo on the counter with big eyes as she waits for her mother to pay for it, ever so patient and polite. The cashier waves at her and the toddler waves back.

“Stopppp, look at them. Isn’t that girl so cute?”

Jia follows your eyeline to the mother and daughter at the froyo counter.

“She is. I love how her and mom are matching.”

“I can’t wait to have a little mini-me that I can wear matching outfits with.”

“You and I wear matching outfits all the time.”

“Yes, but I want to do it with someone cute.”

Jia’s eyes roll so hard that you know it must’ve hurt.

“Since when do you want kids, y/n?”

“Since always. Or I don’t know. Maybe I just was worried that it would be difficult? Or that I’d never find the right guy? But I think Minho would be a good father, so it’s kind of made me think about it again.”

“He seems like he’d be good with kids.”

“When we babysit my nephew, he’s really good with him. And he’s always been so attentive to me in everything, so I just know he would double down during pregnancy. He’d take bullets for me. He’d protect me, he’d bring me all my favorite foods he’d take care of me-”

“He really should be doing that all the time, not just when you’re pregnant. Like, what kind of cavewoman logic is this? Are you in heat or something?”

You take another bite of your froyo and savor it.

You’ve known Jia forever, and at this point her comments to you about your love life just go in one ear and out the other. She’s the one who introduced you to Minho, actually, so you’d thought maybe she’d spare you the lectures, but she seems to think your impulsivity would overrule Minho’s common sense. This isn’t you being impulsive, though. You’ve actually thought about it an embarrassing amount- the concept of Minho fathering your children. It’s not just some passing fancy.

When you’re thoroughly done enjoying your vanilla-passion fruit swirl, you deign to answer her.

“First of all, shut the fuck up. Second of all, no I’m not in heat. Is it so wrong to dream of motherhood? To yearn for something to care for?”

“You have three cats and seven potted plants.”

“I mean something that can love me back.”

“I’m telling Dori you said that.”

You ignore her, already lost in your little domestic fantasy. You could already imagine it. You could have a little girl who looked exactly like you. Or maybe just like you with Minho’s pretty eyes. You’ll develop all the “mom skills”, like sewing and kissing boo-boos and making baking soda volcanoes. And Minho would be there, giving her piggyback rides and pushing her on swing sets. He’d call both of you his “princesses” and you could take cute family photos for Christmas and mail them all your relatives. A perfect domestic life.

“Hello? Earth to y/n?”

You blink. Jia is looking at you with an exasperated expression.

“I’d ask you what you’re thinking about, but I already know.”

“Oh, really.”

“You only get that stupid expression on your face when you think about Minho.” Jia crumples up her trash and reaches behind her to throw it in a trash can. “Does he know you are having delusions of domesticity?”

“It’s not delusional. We’ve been together for like two years. We’ve talked about the future.”

“So he wants kids?”

“He wants whatever I want,” you say, and you can hear the lovesickness in your voice even before Jia lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“Go ask him to get you pregnant right now then. He seems like the type to think that’s really hot.”

“Everything I do is hot. I’m a catch. I’d look extra hot pregnant. Working so hard even when I’m just sitting around all day.”

“Your favorite activity.”

You wink cheekily. “Of course. You should give it a try sometime.”

“Give what a try?”

A familiar voice from behind you makes you perk up. You whip around to see your boyfriend in the flesh, coming up behind you. He’s finally arrived. His presence improves your mood by approximately one thousand percent. You can sit up straighter and breathe deeper. The sun shines brighter on your face. His pace is so leisurely that it’s driving you mad. You want to stand up and drag him closer to you, so that as much of you is touching you as possible. The meter between you feels like a nautical mile.

Christ, maybe you are in heat. You think it’s possible you’ve been permanently ovulating since you met Minho. Just seeing him coming has you contemplating breaking several civil laws.

Jia rats you out immediately. “We’re talking about pregnancy.”

“Oh.” Minho stops where he is, as if blocked by an invisible wall. “Is someone you know expecting?”

“Not yet,” Jia says.

“Jia,” you hiss.

Jia ignores you, revenge for forcing her to listen to you for the past half hour.

“Y/n thinks that pregnancy suits her lifestyle. She thinks she’d look hot pregnant. What’s your opinion on the topic?”

“Don’t answer that,” you tell him. “Jia, come on.”

Jia shrugs. “I don’t think it’s that crazy of a question. Your boyfriend should think you look hot all the time.”

“And I do,” Minho interjects, smiling slyly. “Especially right now, as you’re staring daggers at me.”

Jia leans up and stage whispers to Minho, eyes still trained on you. “She specifically said ‘extra hot’, just so you know.”

“I struggle to think she could get any hotter,” Minho says in answering stage whisper. “She’d look equally pretty frozen solid, or zombified.”

 “You know the saying is ‘until death do us part?’ You don’t have to keep loving her as a zombie.”

You try to be annoyed but you’re too busy cheesing for it to have any effect. “Okay haha fun’s over. Take me home now.”

Jia boos you as Minho grabs your hand to help you off the bench.

“As you wish,” he says, and kisses your hand with a flourish.

“I’ve gotta get going too. See you later, y/n.” She stands up and grabs her bag, then pauses and turns back. “If you’re pregnant the next time I see you, I will kill you.”

“You seriously give me no credit.”

Jia gives you an absolutely withering look and walks off.

“I shouldn’t have even brought it up,” you say mournfully. “She’s gonna start keeping tabs on me.”

“We’ll lock our doors and windows,” Minho says, and presses a kiss to your hair. “Home?”

Later that night, you’re lying on the couch searching up pictures of baby clothes. You have an entire Pinterest board for your future baby, and today’s scene at the park has inspired you to add to the collection. You scroll through little images of kids in duck outfits and Hello Kitty themed socks, of cute little barrettes to put in their wispy bangs. Your kids are going to be so well-dressed. They’ll make the other toddlers at the daycare jealous, and maybe even the moms too.

That’s good, though. It’s important to learn how to deal with adversity from a young age.

Your daughter is gonna be so well socialized and assertive and thick-skinned, just like her parents. She’ll get such good grades and be very polite. And you’ll get to show up to parent teacher conferences as the hottest mom in the entire class, which will be good for your ego, and then you can pass that confidence down to your child. It’ll be perfect. Your life will be perfect. You can see it in such clear and vivid detail.

Minho passes by you on the way back from the bathroom and glances down at your phone.

“Baby clothes?”

You blink up at him. You’re not embarrassed at being caught, but you are a little annoyed that he’s interrupted your daydreaming with one of his gateway questions.

“Yes. Our future child has to be up on fashion trends.”

“The fashion trends will have changed by the time you have a baby to dress up.”

To your own surprise, your heart actually stutters with the reminder that you are currently not, in fact, with child.

“Don’t remind me,” you whine, rolling over to hide your face in the cushions. “Jia already lectured me today.”

“Lectured?”

You partially roll back over to look up at him. “She says that I’m being delusional for wanting a baby so badly.”

“How is wanting to be a mother delusional?”

“Right? And I told her like what are you talking about, we’ve already talked about the future, and we’re gonna have kids, and she just gave me this look.”

“Jia’s just looking out for you. She doesn’t want you to rush into things.”

“Jia is a cynic and a skeptic. She thinks we’re too young to have a baby.”

“Well, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” Your visions of being a MILF dance through your head. “I think having kids young would be cute.”

Now Minho looks skeptical. “Really? Since when.”

“Since I had a paradigm shift. I always knew I wanted them, in a vague sense. But now I know that I want to have them with you, specifically, so it’s been on my mind a lot more.”

“You want to have my kids?”

You bristle. “Well they’d be my kids, too, y’know.”

“I know that-”

“And who else’s kids would they be? Do you envision us breaking up?”

“Absolutely not,” Minho says. “You’re stuck with me forever.”

“Right. So then eventually I’ll be having your kids. I mean, if that’s okay with you.”

Minho sits down next to you on the couch. “That’s really what you want?”

“Yes?” A single pang of doubt flashes across your chest. “Do you not want that?”

“No, I do, baby. I’d love to have a family with you. I just want to be sure we’re on the same page, and we’ve thought it through.”

“Well, like you said, we’re still young.” Jia’s admonishment of not being married flashes through your mind. “But sometimes I see little kids in public, or on TV, and I think, God, I want a baby so bad. Y’know? I want to be pregnant. I want to glow like that, and everything.”

Something complicated passes over his face. A lightbulb goes off in your head. It’s the same expression that he had when Jia had mentioned to him the topic of your conversation.

“Oh my god. You actually do think I’d look hot pregnant.”

“Didn’t I say that at the mall?”

“No, you were teasing me. But now you’re being for real. You want to knock me up.”

Minho says nothing, but the tips of his ears redden. You shoot upright, delighted at the turn of events.

“Oh my god, you actually want to knock me up!”

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“No! Of course not. I want to be the only girl you want, and I want you to want me in every way.”

“Well you are, and I do,” he says flatly. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations is right,” you say. You’re giddy with energy. “Have you thought about it a bunch? Is that why you wanted me on the pill? So you could cum in me and indulge your breeding kink?”

“I don’t have a breeding kink.I just love you. There’s a difference.”

“You’ve said at least five times today you think I’d be hot while I’m pregnant,” you remind him. “Seems kind of breeding kink-ish to me.”

“You have spent the entire day fantasizing about having my kids. That’s the definition of a breeding kink.” Minho leans further into your space, and though his words are teasing, his tone is decidedly not. You feel heat start to run through you, and not from embarrassment. You scoot closer to him, pulled by magnetic forces beyond your comprehension.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just life planning. I’m making vision boards.” The lie is so flimsy your lips trip as you try to say it.

“Uh-huh. Right. Because you normally start breathing heavy when you make vision boards.”

“This is unfair. Of course I’ll get turned on when you start talking like this.”

“Like what?” he says, leaning even closer. You can feel his breath on your face, and a shiver goes down your spine.

“Like you’re going to fucking breed me.”

His smile is absolutely feline. “That can be arranged.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Baby, I want whatever you want.”

You grab onto his shoulders, tight. “Then take me to bed, hot stuff.”

His eyes darken. A hand comes up to your face, and he kisses you gently. He grabs you by the hand…

and of course, he gives you what you want.

Your period is a week late.

It’s actually Minho who notices and points it out, which causes you to freak out and call Jia, who freaks out worse than you and demands that you go to the store immediately and buy a test. You get three different brands, and also an entire chocolate cake which will either be for congratulations or for emotional support.

Minho waits outside the bathroom door, an encouraging presence as you try to calm yourself down enough to read the labels.

“Whatever happens, I’m here,” he tells you. You can’t tell whether he wants it to be positive or negative. You aren’t even sure what you want. Yes, you want a baby, yes, babymaking sex is hot and you want to keep having it whether it gets you knocked up or not, but you’re both still young, and he has a career, and your apartment doesn’t have a third bedroom so there’d be nowhere for the nursery that you’ve already meticulously planned out in your mind-

The timer goes off. You open your eyes and look down.

“Negative,” you say, loud enough for Minho to hear outside the door. “All of them.”

Minho doesn’t say anything. You let out a deep breath, tension falling out of you, and open the door. Minho is on the other side, expression cautious.

“Is it bad that I’m a little disappointed?” he says, and his tone is joking but the words stick in your chest because you agree. The relief you expected to feel is nowhere to be found.

“I hope not, because that makes two of us.”

He draws you into a hug, and you sink into him, processing all the events of the last hour.

“And I was all ready to start building a crib.”

You snort. “Picking up carpentry as a hobby?”

“A real father should work with their hands. I need thick, callused hands to hold my baby with, so they feel smaller and daintier by comparison.”

“Wild thing to say, honestly.”

“It works on you.”

You break free and shove him playfully. “You’re ridiculous. You’d be a good father even with your soft city boy hands.”

“You think so?” he says, his tone heavier than before. You don’t even hesitate.

“Yes. Any child would be lucky to have you as a father.” You sigh dramatically. “Unfortunately it seems my uterus didn’t pull through this time.”

Minho is silent for a moment. “Well. We could…try again.”

You stare at him. “Sorry?”

“I mean, you said I’d be a good father. You said you wished the test was positive. I want that too. Just because it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean that-”

“Wait. Wait wait wait wait. Are you serious?” You’re gob smacked. You can’t believe that your usually cautious boyfriend is proposing you have a baby right now.

“I’m serious,” he confirms. “You’d be such a good mom. And I know how much you want this.”

“And you think I’d look hot pregnant.”

“Obviously,” he says, without a hint of jest.

“But I’m- we’re so young, and I’m unemployed, and-”

“Sorry, were you planning on getting a job any time soon?”

Your cheeks heat up. “Oh shut up.”

“No, it’s perfect. You can be a loving stay-at-home mom. I’ll be the breadwinner.”

“Stop it. Stop talking this way. You’re- do you know how pissed my friends would be? What would I tell Jia? She almost bit my head off over the phone earlier, did you hear her? She was so pissed that I was thinking of motherhood instead of marriage-”

“Then let’s get married.”

“Don’t start.”

“Y/n, I’m not joking.”

You actually think you’re going to faint. Your heart is racing and you’re breaking out in a sweat. Is it hot in here? Did you forget to pay the AC bill this month?”

“Are you proposing to me right now?” You’re trying to joke but you’re breathless. “You’re proposing to me as a gimmick to get me to bear your children?”

Minho cringes. “Saying it like that makes me sound manipulative.”

“It’s kinda manipulative.”

“You’re the one who said you wanted to be married before having kids. And I want to do both of those things with you eventually, so why not now?”

Your vision is blurring. For a moment you worry you actually are fainting, but then you realize that you’re crying instead.

“Stop playing with me, Minho, I’m so serious.”

“I’m not playing with you. I actually already bought a ring, but I didn’t know if the timing was right. Like you said, we’re young, and I didn’t know how you felt about getting married so soon. So I thought I’d ask eventually but-”

You lunge forward and kiss him. If you’d felt stressed earlier while taking the test, that’s nothing compared to the depth of emotion you’re feeling now as you hold each other. It’s like joy is filling you up so much that you don’t know where your body behind and ends.

When you finally separate, Minho asks,

“Is that a yes?”

“You’re not proposing to me in our living room,” you tell him. “You have to ask me again. Later. Don’t even show me the ring. Wait, what color is it? You know I only wear gold.”

“You think I’d forget something like that? I’m going to be your husband. I know what jewelry you wear.”

If he wasn’t holding you up, you think you’d actually collapse to the ground from the way you absolutely swoon.

“Propose to me again and I’ll say yes. Right now, I need you to put a baby in me.”

“You want to walk down the aisle pregnant? Your dream wedding dress has a corset.”

“Oh my god, we’ll do it before I start showing, just fuck me, please!”

Minho doesn’t make you ask a third time.

[helle-bored]

A non-exhaustive list of weilan fics I’ve loved, for a truly diverse variety of reasons, in no particular order!

List 2

–

State of Matter by naye (~13k, T)

I am a simple soul who loves a) Shen Wei whump and b) hurt/comfort and c) hypothermia/huddling for warmth tropes and d) survival stories where characters get out of pants-shittingly bad situations via putting one foot in front of the other for way longer than they want to be doing that. This is a great fic for all of those things.

–

All-Consuming by ratbones (~119k, E)

Zombie AU! Everything about this fic is exquisite – the pacing, dialogue, descriptions, characterization – everything. Having already loved both the novel and drama versions of Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei before reading this, I think this fic is my favorite version of them. Also, I know a bunch of us like to good-naturedly poke fun at how baby!Shen Wei’s crush plays out in the drama, but this is a fic that absolutely sells the idea that Shen Wei would fall in love with Zhao Yunlan in basically one night. Fuck, I’d love him too! I kind of do! Feels like watching a very good zombie movie. Has A+ humor, interesting science, a wrenching penultimate chapter. Please read this and come yell at me about it! You can read it fandom-blind. 

–

The Unexpected Legacy by FayJay (~84k, E)

Regency AU! Gorgeously written. One of the most scorching, horniest weilan fics I’ve read in terms of pent-up yearning, and that is a full compliment. I’m also a big fan of the climactic confrontation, which shows how much Zhao Yunlan cares about Shen Wei in a pretty visceral and unpleasant, typical fairytale way, something I enjoy because I am a sadist for that kind of horrifying devotion. One of my favorite Ye Zuns – he’s such a fantastic, complex, loveable brat. No twincest in the main fic, but if that’s your flavor you can also check out the sequels.

–

Not All Those Who Wander by Xparrot (~23k, T) 

This one is a bit hard to describe. It’s like a… post-apocalyptic fairytale AU fix-it?, and the writing is beautiful. I love how it plays with the novel versions of Kunlun and a young Shen Wei. Kind of desolate and bittersweet, but hopeful too. 

–

Day After Day | 日复一日 by hideyseek (~24k, T)

What do you say about a fic where the middle-aged original characters are still in your mind months later? Great timeloop casefic with a slowly unwinding mystery.

– 

Ghost Story by clevermanka (~90k, E)

Haunted house AU! I’m kind of a baby about haunted house stuff, and some parts of it toe the line of being too creepy for me – the slowly building malevolence has great atmosphere and is genuinely unpleasant in parts. Also really enjoyed the bizarre, earnest, kinky ghost sex, which by all accounts really shouldn’t work as well as it does. (Enthusiasm goes a long way when one of you is a ghost.) Has a proper gothic story arc that’s fitting for the fic as a whole. Also features a fantastic Zhu Hong who is saddled with way more bullshit than she deserves. I think about this fic a lot; it has a really strong sense of presence.

–

Rapture by ratbones (~104k, M)

Cyberpunk AU! ratbones does it AGAIN with this fic. damn. This one feels a little less serious than All-Consuming and moves along at a faster pace that suits the glittering cyberpunk theme, but it still manages to cram in body horror and existential angst and just a lot of really lovely ways of looking at what it means to be human, without any of it ever dragging down the plot. I read it all on a 6-hour flight and may or may not have teared up over a robot – not that anything’s new about me crying about robots, but all the robots I’ve ever cried over have also been people, and so is Kunlun. Anyway. This is a fun romp that will probably NOT make anyone cry except for me, and it is another fic with an excellent Ye Zun. 

–

Better, Safe (~5k, E) and Whipped (~3k, E) by clevermanka

I’m listing these together because they go together in my head – clevermanka has a handful of lovely short fics that are either outright kink or kink-leaning, and these two are my faves. I love reading stuff that digs into the easy give and take between the boys as they’re passing the baton of who’s in control back and forth, and what control looks like for both of them, and what ceding it looks like, and how they enjoy each other’s differences, and how courteous and careful they are with each other without it being awkward, like it’s just a built-in part of sex for them. Joyful and hot.

–

Spiders Crawling by tinypinkmouse (~38k, E)

…Spider… AU... Look. Shen Wei is spiders. I have to include this because I have never ever in my life read anything else where the main love interest is spiders, and the mental image of Shen Wei getting so flustered about questions he doesn’t want to answer that he just spontaneously bursts into spiders feels perfectly in-character (and also weirdly adorable). I would not be able to stand this in real life, but Zhao Yunlan has a remarkable ability (canonical) to be cheerfully into some weird shit. Worth clicking on for the what-the-fuck factor, and then reading because you get unironically sucked into the concept of Shen Wei being spiders.

–

The Coherence of Light by Xparrot (~3k, E)

Sometimes (all the time) I just want to read porn that's hot and funny and in-character. I could happily read a hundred fics just like this.

–

Scorched Earth, Deep Ocean by margrave (~35k, E)

Omegaverse palace drama AU! Emperor Kunlun, secretly an omega, performs a series of political maneuvers to cement his position as an omega Emperor – as well as to recognize his new concubine Shen Wei, former general of the enemy kingdom of Dixing and war prize given away by the Dixing Emperor during peace negotiations, as a consort accepted by the court and father of any future legitimate heirs to the throne. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had reading this one, considering the action primarily focuses around court politics. Bonus: Zhu Hong is GREAT. Absolutely love her. 

–

unmoored by nanimono_da (~43k, M)

Post-canon fix-it! If you want something that dives really really deeply into the bodily experience of living through heavy grief, I actually think this does an uncomfortably good job of showing what that can be like. Reading it feels like treading water in the ocean when it’s raining and you can’t see the shore. Cathartic; draining. HURT/comfort. Has a happy ending. The illustrations are so, so pretty.

–

Echo by Absolutelytrash (~26k, T)

Post-canon AU! Technically unfinished, but it leaves off at a pretty satisfying spot imo. Zhao Yunlan is taken hostage in exchange for the Hallows. I find the psychology around the perpetrator to be absurdly fascinating and very well done. I also enjoyed(?) watching Zhao Yunlan’s disintegration as he’s tortured under circumstances he does not believe he will survive, and the impact that this experience has on him later on.

[sideprince]

Hello hello, love your blog and all the meta! Do you have any thoughts or saved meta on Snape’s accent? I don’t remember us seeing any indications in book-canon about him having an accent that stands out in any way, but I’d imagine that a poor boy growing up in the midlands (or in the north, as we thought before Spinner’s End was revealed to be in Cokeworth), to have a strong regional accent. Since this is an obvious class marker would he have tried to tone it down or hide it as he got older in Hogwarts? Thoughts?

Hello! Thank you, I'm always surprised anyone reads my posts so that's such a nice thing to hear! I've actually been thinking about Snape's accent lately so I love this ask and also get out of my head.

The books seem to show Snape speaking the Queen's English (ie. the dialect spoken primarily in the South of England and considered by some to be "proper" English, those people being dismissive of regional dialects in ways I personally don't agree with). This can be deduced more from seeing how the dialogue of characters like Dobby and Hagrid are written than anything else. Hagrid is written as speaking with a thick West Country accent, with a lot of "yeh" instead of "you" and "ter" instead of "to" etc. You also see similar clearly denoted regional dialects with characters like Mundungus Fletcher (whose accent is Cockney):

“Blimey,” said Mundungus weakly ___ “Keep your ’airnet on!” said Mundungus

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 2

“Well, you’re a bunch of bleedin’ ‘eroes, then, aren’t you, but I never pretended I was up for killing meself -”

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 11

Because we see these characters with their pronunciations clearly written into their dialogue, we're meant to assume the other characters speak the Queen's English, as no specific dialect is otherwise indicated. McGonagall is Scottish but it's never mentioned that her accent might be as well, and her dialogue doesn't indicate it is either. In fact, if you do a quick search on potter-search.com for the word "Scottish" the only instance that comes up in any of the HP books - which are set in the Scottish Highlands with McGonagall as a prominent Scottish character - is at the end of Deathly Hallows when the dragon the trio break out of Gringotts deposits them in the middle of a Scottish loch. It’s the only time the word Scottish is used in the whole series. I think that says a lot about JK Rowling as the writer and what her own biases are when it comes to writing representatively of the places her story - and its characters - inhabit.

I don't think Rowling put that much thought into Snape's accent and where he's from. The underlying message is that the Queen's English is the "default" accent and peppering her books with regional dialect in the dialogue of folksy characters like Hagrid gives them a bit of color, or that giving someone like Mundungus a Cockney accent denotes his being an untrustworthy criminal (and it's not exactly a revelation that she has unchecked internalized biases that show through her writing). But I also think that she wrote Snape with Alan Rickman in mind and that made her vision of him a bit conflicting, ie. she wrote his backstory as growing up in a Midlands slum and yet he speaks like the RADA trained actor she envisioned him as in her mind.

That won't stop me from coming up with meta about Snape's accent, though! I've been thinking about it lately, actually, because I see a lot of posts that talk about how he must have lost his accent at school to fit in with the other Slytherins, since there are, historically, many pure-bloods and Sacred 28 families in that house and he would have had a hard enough time fitting in as it was. I've always thought these theories made sense but lately I've been wondering if there could be an alternate reading of Snape's accent.

We don't really know much about Snape's mother but I've thought about how she might have come from a reasonably well-off wizarding family, or at the very least from a higher class background than she ended up raising her son in. Although most Brits grow up speaking with the accent of their region, some do grow up speaking how they're taught to at home if it diverges from other locals. The example that comes to mind is how John Lennon always had a scouse accent having grown up middle class in Liverpool, while Paul McCartney - also from Liverpool - spoke the Queen's English because his mother insisted on teaching him to speak it at home, despite their family being working class, in order to give him a leg up through the classist confines of British social classes.

So my own meta has lately been to play with the idea that Snape always spoke with the accent we see his adult self speaking with, because his mother wanted him to have a chance to do better in life than what she was able to give him (again, given how classist British society is, and was especially back in the 60s). It may also explain why he had so few friends as a child: if he was raised to speak the Queen's English in a working class slum, the other children may have ostracized him for it and he may have inadvertently alienated them.

The idea that Snape has always spoken with the accent he has as an adult is partly supported by the conversations we see between Snape and Lily as children, where Snape's accent isn't written in the regional dialects we see other characters having. There are a few minor moments where young Snape seems to have a Northern lilt, but it comes off more as something that slips into his speech than characterizes it, when compared to Mundungus or Hagrid (emphases mine):

‘We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,’ he nodded importantly, ‘and they start training you, then you’ve got to go careful.’ ______ ‘They wouldn’t give you to the Dementors for that! Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re too -‘ He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree, had lost her footing. ‘Tuney!’ said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet. ‘Who’s spying now?’ he shouted. ‘What d’you want?’

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

There's a bit of Northern in how he says "you've got to go careful" and shortens "do you" into "d'you" but overall his speech is fairly standard Queen's English. It sounds more like a kid trying to sound cool, the way the Weasley twins and even Ron often do (Ron saying "geroff" to his mum, the twins shouting "oy" to each other or saying "blimey" even though they all grew up in Devon and their speech is generally also written following standard Queen's English).

Young Snape's accent may also have been something that caught Lily's attention or just put her at ease - seeing this skinny, twitchy kid wearing odd looking clothes and looking uncared for and poor but hearing him speak with a more familiar accent and vocabulary would have made it easier for her to connect with him. We see from Petunia's dialogue as an adult that she speaks the Queen's English, so we can assume the two girls grew up speaking it at home. There aren't really any colloquialisms in her speech, and what little (and it's really so, so little) we see of Lily seems to show the same.

Some people claim that Snape’s Northern accent comes out when he's triggered, but I can't find examples of it. At his most triggered in the Shrieking Shack in PoA, he still speaks as he always does:

'SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT!’ Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. ‘Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck, you should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he’d killed you! You’d have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black - now get out of the way, or I will make you. GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 19

Even in HBP when he's fleeing and Harry triggers him, his speech is consistent with hiw it’s written through the rest of the series:

'No, Potter!’ screamed Snape. There was a loud BANG and Harry was soaring backwards, hitting the ground hard again, and this time his wand flew out of his hand. He could hear Hagrid yelling and Fang howling as Snape closed in and looked down on him where he lay, wandless and defenceless as Dumbledore had been. Snape’s pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore. ‘You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them - I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you’d turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don’t think so … no!’ Harry had dived for his wand; Snape shot a hex at it and it flew feet away into the darkness and out of sight. ‘Kill me, then,’ panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. ‘Kill me like you killed him, you coward -‘ ‘DON’T -‘ screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them, ‘- CALL ME COWARD!'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 28

There isn't really much in these moments to suggest a Northern accent coming out. So in a radical departure from the fandom, I've been mulling over the meta that Snape always had the accent we see him with. It's not as unlikely as people think, and certainly not impossible.

[peachhcs]

being oblivious | the wonder years

hughes!sister x will smith au (samy + will)

the guys find out will knows samy & demand to meet her!

word count: 1.9k

i’m writing this as if they were 16 so that’s why the dialogue might be kind of silly, but anyways. i imagine them being very fan girly about meeting samy & also excited so here’s their origin story :) p.s. i’d love any prompts or ideas for little blurbs or imagines for them so if you have any send them my way :)

au masterlist

the boys agreed to a slow and lazy sunday with the first day of ntdp practice tomorrow and no one wanted to be too bent out of shape. drew and aram's voices were the only ones filling the living room as they argued over mario kart together while everyone else just tuned them out. will was splayed across one of the chairs mindlessly scrolling through his phone when someone nudged his leg.

the blonde's gaze found ryan's whose eyes were wide with disbelief. "what?" will mumbled as ryan flipped his phone so his friend could see what made him look so surprised.

his screen was a photo of will and samy hughes standing next to one another at the beach with wide smiles. not understanding ryan's shock, will raised his eyebrow in confusion.

"you know samy hughes?" ryan finally got out. his words caught the attention of the rest of the guys sitting around them. their heads spun in will and ryan's direction, waiting for a response.

"uh..yeah? you guys didn't know that?" will wondered, gazing at everyone else.

"no? how do you know her? do you know luke, jack, and quinn too?" ryan continued, excitement now in his voice.

"we're family friends. we grew up together. i grew up skating with her brothers," will had to laugh. he for sure thought it was common knowledge that their families were close and spent every summer together since they were babies.

"you're lying," ryan countered, disbelief on all of his features.

"no, i'm not. you see the picture. that's obviously me," the blonde chuckled while the rest of the guys started crowding around to see the other pictures ryan had dug up from mrs. smith's facebook account.

"why on earth would you keep this information from us?" aram muttered.

"i didn't know you guys didn't know. i dunno. it's not that big of a deal," will shrugged some, falling back into his chair.

"not a big deal? are you serious? you're family friends with some of the best hockey players in this country," ryan exasperated.

this was quite amusing to will. sure, he knew how popular the hughes family was, but it never really mattered to him and he never really thought about it until now. he's always just hung out with them every summer and that was so normal for will that he didn't realize it was a big deal to other people.

"wait, ann arbor is like..thirty minutes from here. do you think we'll ever run into samy?" drew exclaimed after the realization. a few of the other guy's faces lit up too and they all looked to will for an answer.

"uh..i don't know? maybe?" the boy shrugged. he didn't really know what samy did during the school year besides go to school and play soccer.

"wait. do you think we can meet her because you know her?" ryan's head popped back up.

"erm..i don't know. maybe?" will mumbled.

"what do you mean maybe?" gabe raised his eyebrow and suddenly will felt like some teacher with kids surrounding him waiting for answers like the guys were surrounding him with wide eyes at the idea of meeting samy hughes.

"i mean..we're close, but not that close. she hung around with grace a lot, so i don't really know how she'd feel about a bunch of guys wanting to hang out with her," will shrugged again.

"dude, you know samy hughes and grew up with her and you're telling us she doesn't wanna hang out with you?" aram deadpanned.

the blonde rolled his eyes and huffed out a sigh, “okay, i’ll ask, chill out.” the guys grinned, pumping their fists at the idea of meeting samy.

will immediately got a response after sending a brief text samy’s way. she was very much up to the idea and agreed to talk to her mom about letting them drive down to ann arbor for the day. after some more final arrangements, will, gabe, ryan, drew, and aram were all stuffed into a car together driving the 30 minutes to samy’s house.

the entire car was filled with excitement and chatter as they discussed samy and her brothers. will just kept to himself, still thinking how amusing all of this was and how much these guys were simping over samy.

they rolled into the driveway and will spun around in the driver’s seat, “just don’t be too weird, okay? don’t make her uncomfortable.”

“roger that, smitty,” ryan teased making everyone snicker but will. the five boys clamored out of the car and followed their friend up to the front porch, letting will do the honors of knocking.

some footsteps could be heard until the front door swung open and a very smiley samy stood before the five boys. all of them but will suddenly became shy under the girl’s bright smile. “will!” the girl exclaimed and immediately pulled the blonde into a tight hug.

“hey hughesy,” will chuckled as he squeezed her back. the two embracing missed the looks that came from will’s friends as they watched the interaction unfold.

“come on in. jeez, i can’t believe you’re gonna be in michigan for the next two years with me,” samy continued talking as she led everyone into the foyer.

“i bet you wish it was grace instead,” the blonde teased making samy roll her eyes. “whatever. it’s so cool to meet some of you guys. i guess you already know who i am,” the brunette chuckled as she turned her attention to will’s friends who still stood silently and awkwardly behind them.

“it’s nice to meet you. i’m ryan, that’s gabe, drew, and aram. we kind of begged smitty to meet you,” ryan spoke up, sticking his hand out. samy giggled as she happily shook ryan’s hand.

“wow, i’ve never had fans before. it’s always been my brothers,” the girl smiled.

“don’t let the ten year old girls hear you say that,” will mumbled. samy flushed before ignoring his comment.

“is that will?” a new voice came into the mix. the boys looked up and saw mrs. hughes walking towards them with a large smile on her face. the older woman tugged her arms around will’s frame, squeezing the boy tightly much like samy did.

“hey mama el, it’s good to see you again. thanks for letting us come over,” will chuckled.

“of course, anytime. you know you’re always welcome here now that you live 30 minutes away. i know i’ll be expecting a lot of visits from you. all of you, actually. our home is your home. my boys have all been through the dev program, so we know what it’s like,” ellen smiled towards the other guys.

“i’m sure that’s the only reason why they came over is to see quinn, jack, and luke’s baby photos,” samy giggled in a teasing tone. some of their faces flushed in response.

“come on, i’ll show you guys around,” the girl started further into the house leaving the boys no other option but to follow her.

after the extensive grand tour of the hughes family home, the six sat around the deck enjoying the remaining bits of summer weather. “what are you guys most excited about for the dev program?” samy wondered, trying to get to know everyone else some more.

“probably just getting to hang with these guys all the time. we’ve all gotten pretty close already,” aram chuckled as he reached over to tussle up drew’s hair. the other boy squirmed away, quickly fixing his hair.

“new people, new place, new coaches. lots of things to start learning,” ryan added in.

“is it weird being away from home? my brothers never had to go far since we already lived here when they all did it,” samy wondered and most of the guys nodded.

“for sure, but it’ll be a good experience, you know?” ryan said and samy nodded.

“well, at least you guys have one more friendly face around here. you’re all welcome to come to my soccer games this season too,” the girl quickly beamed.

“right, i forgot you switched sides,” drew said.

“if you guys ever play with her, you better hope she’s on your team,” will cut in making samy flush and the other guys chuckled.

“uh oh, she better than you at soccer?” gabe snickered, pushing at will’s shoulder.

“she’s better at me in everything,” will nodded.

“remember that time i scored 3 goals on you and luke on the ice? ugh, i still think about that day and how you two had to pay me each $10,” samy laughed.

“don’t remind me. you cheated anyway,” the blonde crossed his arms, eyeing the girl beside him.

“i did not! you guys were just mad a girl was better than you at your own sport,” samy quickly defended herself.

“whatever. we’ll get our redemption this year,” will huffed. the girl just rolled her eyes and the two once again missed the looks from everyone else.

the entire time they’d been there it was nonstop flirting from both samy and will. they expected the two to be close, but they didn’t expect the amount of teasing and very painfully obvious to everyone but them flirting. will’s cheeks reddened anytime samy poked fun at him and they saw the way samy’s gaze lingered on the blonde when he wasn’t paying attention anymore.

no one said anything until they were back in plymouth that night. all of them kept glancing at the blonde, wondering if he’d say anything, but nothing came from him as he stretched out on the couch and started scrolling through his phone.

ryan eyes bounced from gabe’s to aram’s and then to drew’s. will didn’t realize the silence until he noticed the guys lingering by the entryway occasionally glancing at him.

“what?” the boy laughed, confused by their behavior.

“you and samy are a lot closer than you led on,” ryan started causally as he leaned down on the couch.

“i guess. she’s like a sister,” the blonde chuckled, clearly not understanding the deeper implication trying to be made. the family zone. it definitely did not look like a sibling relationship to the guys.

“a sister? you flirt with her like she isn’t,” aram finally got to the point, a teasing, shit-eating grin on his lips as he took one of the chairs.

“flirt with her? what the hell are you on about?” will grew confused.

“dude, be so serious right now. there’s no way you don’t see it,” ryan laughed.

“see what?” now will was getting frustrated with the laughter coming from his friends.

“you guys were literally flirting with one another the entire time, it was disgusting. there’s no way you haven’t had feelings for her or some shit,” aram cut in again.

“for samy? no way. we’re friends. we always have been. i could never see her like that,” the idea even made will shudder. all he had ever seen her as was another sister to get annoyed at and bother him whenever he was doing something.

“mhm,” gabe mumbled.

“jesus, you guys are so annoying. i kind of regret bringing you along,” the blonde rolled his eyes, refocusing his attention on his phone.

“you say that, but i give it a year at the most and then you’ll realize what we’ve been saying was right all along,” ryan snickered with another annoying grin. the other guys nodded in agreement.

the only thing will could do was ignore their comments because none of them were true. him and samy were like brother and sister. there were no feelings nor would there ever be.

[jusst-you-race]

Hey lovely,

do you have any tips for writing a chat fic? I began one and I feel like it's so boring and everything I make them type is forced like hell and super random 🙈

(maybe that's because I'm shit at communication lol)

hello angel!

okay so I actually had to think long and hard about how to verbalise all of this… hopefully this is somewhat helpful!

not every message/conversation has to be funny! I feel like chat fics can sometimes have humour that feels a little forced because people think they have to be funny at all times, but i think the humour always hits better when there are plenty of parts that aren’t funny to balance it out!

don’t overthink the humour! everyone is funny i genuinely believe this, and if you’re making yourself laugh while writing then I can guarantee you’ll be making someone else laugh when they’re reading it. I just try to entertain myself with my jokes because it helps to not overthink like “oh is this funny???”… I laughed so therefore it is funny!

if you’re struggling with writing someone’s “voice” then just watch a bunch of interviews with them before sitting down to write… idk if that’s universally helpful advice but it helps me so maybe it’ll help others

treat it like you’re having a conversation with friends! sometimes to get the conversation flowing you can think of like “what might someone reply to this message” and you can decide who the someone is later once you know what the response is

if you’ve ever ‘practiced’ conversations in your head or been like “this is what I would have said in this moment” then that’s a great mindset to be in when writing chat fics… you are just constructing a conversation the exact same way as that!

steal conversations. do it. you had a funny conversation with your friend? yoink. that’s in the fic now.

I dunno if I’m saying the obvious with any of this, or if this is helpful advice or anything… to be perfectly transparent writing dialogue has always been the thing I find easiest to do, so a chat fic is kind of the perfect formula for me

overall I’d just sort of say try not to get too bogged down in the details of it all… thinking “what would this person say here” isn’t helpful, it’s good to just get the flow of A conversation happening. If you have to go back and change the wording (or spelling) so that it feels more like something a specific person would say that’s fine! I do that too! yeah just… talk to yourself I guess lmao…

[jellazticious]

“You can’t rush art”

I think everybody can recall the quote from Toy Story 2. From the most satisfying part of the movie where we see a montage of Woody getting restored by a toy maker. It’s one of my favourites too, I absolutely loved looking at the different procedures used to fix a single toy. The toymaker’s precision and care were found mesmerizing by everyone. As a multi-hatted artist, one that can draw, sculpt, animate, and write, I can say that it’s spot on that there’s so much to do for a single piece of work. HOOO boy, you should see how me and Beefy are organizing Cursed to Charm, there’s so much.

For the upcoming webcomic, we design characters, give each and every one of them their stand-alone story, design different clothes, create the map, draw renders and posters, polish scripts for the episodes, plan to program the comic’s own website, make the backgrounds eventually, etc. To people who aren’t artists or take art for granted, to them, art is stroking a paper using a pen and BAM instant masterpiece. No no, it’s more than that.

Another thing I’d like to say about the comic is that the progress is very slow yet very fruitful because of the time taken. Me and my co-author came up with the idea at late November, which makes the comic four months old now. However, with all that time passed, we have already finalized the list of nine episodes of season one. We have also written seven out of nine summaries from that season before actually writing the dialogue in detail. We have a rough four seasons worth of story progression in the span of four months. Nyeh, excuse the little ramble about CtC, I’m just giving insight of how much should be done for the production of anything which leads us to the next point.

Art production in general.

Movies, animation, shows, video games, books, comics etc etc

All of these are part of art, some people would deny because it isn’t sophisticated like they’re lead to believe art is supposed to be. Art is literally just creation man, can’t get any simpler than that 😩 if you made something, then you made something woohoo! Congratulations you made art, cooking included. It came free with your fucking humanity.

Anyway, just like the webcomic, every single one of these listed also have a set of different procedures that will piece together the final output.

Let’s take Disney movies as a specific example, I want to talk about something real quick.

So one time, I was watching Tarzan with my parents and we stuck around for the end credits. My mom pointed out the animators are divided into sections and there’s so much names on them. There are different teams of animators for each character and these teams are divided in two for the storyboarders and the clean up artists. When the credits rolled a bit more, it showed that the background artists and colorists also have their own sections too. There’s so much people working on different body parts of a movie. I got the habit of reading end credits of every movie I watch, animated or live action, then I would compare the credits of old and new movies. Boy, let me tell you that the work space on old movies are FILLED compared to newer movies. One thing I noticed about Disney movies although, is that the old movies have more sections compared to new ones. The major difference of old Disney and new Disney are the length of the credits and the time gap of the movies. I’m really not trusting the way new movies have way shorter end credits while the publish time of new movies are getting narrower and narrower. Before the 2000s, movies usually come out twice a year and sometimes there’s a two-year hiatus before the next batch of movies are published. Now there’s at least two or three movies that publish yearly while also releasing a bunch of shows in the middle of it. I really don’t understand business talk with the way it sacrifices quality over quantity. Like I get having money is great and all but what’s the use of hoarding it? Especially when there’s so much news of people about to be in poverty and mass layoffs. Why should companies earn money if they’re not going to redistribute it back to the economy at all? This is a little off topic but I want to point it out that people in the 80s used to buy whole houses by being a janitor but nowadays people could barely afford a one room apartment even with three jobs. The Simpsons is an example of this because it was set in the 90s and the family is constantly reminded of how “poor” they are. They even created an episode that talks about the same job that supported people’s fathers will no longer support you nowadays (Poorhouse Rock ep22 s33). It’s fishy and I’m salty about it especially because I hear so much people complaining about how they’re not being given a chance to work. Anywho! Let’s go back to art.

I’m just spitballing my thoughts here but somehow they’re connecting either way. All I’m trying to say is that for the people who care so much about the quality of art, it’s noticeable that they get downgraded, not just by the look but by the way they’re written.

Example.

Clone High.

Jesus Christ, the new show is a nightmare and an insult to the original Clone High. The difference is clear with this one. The original Clone High was heavy satire of every single high school trope used in shows and movies. Every single character was meant to have one personality and that personality is the butt of the joke. The original did not care about making the characters appealing because the appeal is found in the way they interact, they clash so much and a lot of them are idiots. The writing is funny because the dialogue flows so easily unlike the renewal. The renewed Clone High takes itself too seriously and it tries too hard to be relevant. It’s funny to me that fans can draw the original’s art style more accurately than the animators hired. What’s even more frustrating is that concept art was released from the art head and the concept art looked way better than what they decided on the final designs. Other than the art style that tries to be marketable, the writing is insufferable with the way they try to be “relatable” without understanding why the original jokes were funny to begin with.

Now we’re all familiar with this cheap tactic of using the title of successful franchises to grab clicks and views. It’s every live action Disney film, it happened to Scooby Doo, Marvel shows, FNAF, some Cartoon Network shows, Megamind, and now even Kung Fu Panda. Basically MILKING. It would have been better if the productions TRIED to understand the original’s intentions which they forgot about. They ended up being disappointing at best and soulless at worst. I won’t be explaining much cuz I’ve already reached the minimum word count lmao. I’m just rambling here, I better not see anyone interrogate me in asks or replies. ANYWAY, I’m gonna get to the point real quick.

Back to the quote at the start of the post, people tend to forget that. Art is a skill, not a button people press and it gives you pretty pictures or videos. Art is a job and an effort. While art is subjective and it differs from person to person, one thing for certain is that art that is made ingenuinely will never be better than art that is made because the artist loves art. This is why the Tom & Jerry reboots with the lineless art style even if they had a storyboard artist who understood the cartoon wackiness (which were discarded for a “cleaner” and faster style). This is why it’s so frustrating to see concept art of movies which have more appeal than the final 3d models. This is why FNAF Security Breach was nearly unplayable.

Because they all rushed art.

They rushed in favour of what is marketable, no matter how unappealing it is. Everything could have been better, some final products are good, but all of them could have been better. As good as what were released pre 2010s when production had a passion. You can’t spell heart without art.

I’m just really passionate about art in any form since it’s everything that created me too. I will not be here at this point in time if it weren’t for me learning that there’s so much beauty in the world if you could just squint and appreciate why that’s so. I’m defined by my works and it only hurts and infuriates me that people who have the ability and accessibility to create better art than I do waste it for their personal gain or selfish intentions. Everyone could be a better person because of art just as it did to me. Again, it came to us the moment we’re born, art isn’t just a pretty picture, it’s everything we create out of love, passion, time, and effort.

But really, to the wise words of Chef Saltbaker, “like any good bake, heart and soul is the secret ingredient”

You can’t rush art.

[0viraptoraskblog]

I really lovr ur writing and i'd also love to hear abt ur writing process if thats alr :3

Absolutely! Thank you ^^

My process isn’t super professional or anything. I’ll use First Time for Everything (my main work) as an example.

First, I just come up with a general idea of what I want the story to be about. A lot of it was ‘write what you want to see’, and I wanted a full story of Ren and Strade that was close to canon. So I used Gato’s ask answers and official art as inspiration, and built off of them to make a story.

Then I make notes. Usually on my phone, in another document, because they can be moved and added to whenever I want. These act as a kind of script for the whole story. It’s a bunch of chapter summaries, in order of when they happen. Like, I knew I wanted a chapter of Ren and Strade outside together, but it would only make sense later on in the story— so I put it at the end of the notes, knowing that it would come later. Then, as I get more ideas that come sooner, I’d put them above that chapter until the timeline falls into place.

This note becomes a list, in order, of the chapters and what happens in them.

This way, I have about 10 chapters planned ahead at any given time, so I can use foreshadowing accordingly or make sure the characters develop the way I want.

The notes start out with a general idea. I’m sure that one was once “Ren is let outside for the first time”, but as it got closer, I added details I wanted to put in, bits of dialogue, and shaped the ‘feel’ of the chapter more. I also move them around if I need to adjust the timeline— really just going with my instinct of what feels right.

For actually writing, I just start. The first draft is never perfect, but you just need to start writing with the knowledge that you can go back and change it later. I write a first copy over time (I don’t have a schedule, for fear I’d get burnt out. I’d rather the story be good than released fast.) then I go through and edit little bits and pieces, just a few sentences or paragraphs at a time to make it flow better. Sometimes this happens repeatedly, until it seems good enough. This is usually the slowest step because I need the creative juices to flow, and sometimes they don’t want to XD

But I just go little by little. If there’s a word or sentence that doesn’t sound right, I underline it. That’s a note to myself to come back and change it when I edit.

Once I have something I’m okay with, I have one final editing session. I sit down and go through the chapter all at once, fixing any words I need and making final changes. I like doing this all at once so I can tell if it reads well in one sitting— which is how the reader will see it. (Like, did I use a certain word too many times? Or did I write about the same thing twice? Catching little mistakes.) I’ve seen it a thousand times, but I skip around, so this helps set things in stone, from beginning to end.

This last edit usually takes 2-4 hours depending on how long the chapter is, but that’s because I’m picky with vocabulary lol. I can also write slowly at times. Everyone’s process can look different, this is just what I like.

I’m not sure how easy that was to understand.. I hope I made sense :)

[soulemnity]

I need help,

I have SO SO So much ideas to write but I just can't every time I open my notebook or my phone notes I just can't write, nothing comes out right literally WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO I WANNA CRY

hey i get that feeling all the time !! that’s exactly how i felt before my most recent fic, and it’s honestly kind of how i feel now

i’m not sure if what helped me will help u, but don’t go, you’re half of me now was originally supposed to be a short writing exercise with a minimum of 500 words inspired by a simple prompt (a shoe and a child). i found that, upon starting, i just kept getting ideas and the writing flowed a little bit easier. the website i used is called chaotic shiny, which has a bunch of different tools to help writers ! i used the writing exercise generator

anyway, it could help to slap down the barebones ideas of the things u have in mind. it’s helped me a few times to “plan out” what i want to write and where, but don’t think it’s a permanent solution, because i still find myself a little lost sometimes lol. my “planning out” is just bulleted lists organized by separated scenes, as seen here:

these are examples from three different wips. sometimes notes mean a simple idea for the scene, or a piece of dialogue, or an entire paragraph u may want to use. i highlight the things i’ve used in yellow so i don’t forget

sometimes, like i said earlier, even just having a barebones idea slapped down can help:

i also recommend looking at muffinlance’s outlining post, it’s very informative !

now, this isn’t a cure-all. everybody gets into slumps—i’d been in a heavy one since october, and it’s possible i may just fall right into another one ! if ur struggling with getting ur ideas out, i’ve found it may help to go to a friend and express it with them; they could help flesh them out, or u could even collab. i am also open—i love to see people’s ideas !! i’d be happy to help if u ever need it !

i may have just said all this only for it to do nothing, but i hope u find at least one thing to be interesting ! :)

[lunarriviera]

the year in fic: 2024

So every January, @programmedradly and I go through the @ficwip list of year in review questions and pick 5 we want to answer, and 5 for the other person. This saves us having to answer all of them, and saves you having to read it! You’re welcome! Plus it’s more fun.

This year she picked these for me:

8. What fic meant the most to you to write? 9. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on? 16. What’s your favorite title of the year? 23. If you had to choose one, what was the most satisfying writing moment of your year? 30. What would you like to write next year?

And I picked these for myself:

5. What ships captured your heart? 11. What fic was the most difficult to write? 19. Share your favorite piece of dialogue. 20. Share your funniest line. 21. What’s something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

Without further ado! Endless palaver behind the cut!

5. What ships captured your heart?

Oh my god [swoons a little bit]. Since I read Mo Du I’ve been absolutely shattered about Luo Wenzhou/Fei Du and I’m starting to think that’s never going to change. The grumpy one and the sunshine one? Red oni/blue oni? The lion and the raven? Oh please, spare me. Try “the one with the unwavering moral compass who will throw himself unhesitatingly into the line of fire for you, even though you’re a lying liar who lies and you’re constantly yanking his chain but you have his whole heart anyway,” paired with “the one for whom it’s still sort of up in the air whether he's a sociopath or just traumatized to the point of insanity, but he's also clearly a genius and has been crafting this plan his entire life so I guess his new cop boyfriend will help him carry it out, oh and by the way guess what he's now falling in love with the cop's innate compassion and goodness, haha you didn’t see that coming did you Fei Du, SURPRISE.”

Honestly I’ve never read anything else like it.

In raw word count I wrote the most for Du Cheng/Shen Yi (something that also feels like it will never change, because they’re so similar to Zhoudu). But I got truly blindsided by Ruan Nanzhu/Lin Qiushi, who took me out at the knees—I’d never read infinite flow before and I had no idea Nanzhu would break my heart (thanks in large part to Xia Zhiguang and his stupid eyes). Finally, at the end of the year Zheng Bei/Gu Yiran burst through the door and said, hey we’re also deeply fucked up and perfect for each other, will you write a bunch of fics for us, and after I was done crying I said, sure I guess. Why the fuck not.

Basically it’s been a solid twelve months of clutching my chest and whispering weakly, they’re in love, so, you know. Like that. (Having said this, Guardian is forever. I got wobbly about pingxie all over again when Tibetan Sea Flower aired—plus all I have to do is see a gifset of Ji Chen and Ji Xiaobing to be racked with heihua feelings. Do these things ever go away? I keep thinking of lines by Adrienne Rich: "We who were loved will never / unlive that crippling fever.")

8. What fic meant the most to you to write?

This will surprise exactly no one, but “asylum.” It’s been five years since I wrote anything much longer than 20-30k, and that experience (100k, a very made-up crossover) had been so fraught and left me so mind-wiped that I was scared to try again. And yet. I couldn’t stop thinking how 1) UTS still has no English fic longer than about 30k, 2) Chinese procedurals won't admit corruption exists even though it’s rampant, and 3) UTS repeatedly teases us with Shen Yi’s Dark Past but refuses to divulge anything more than the tiniest glimpses. Anyway it wouldn’t leave me alone so now it’s posting, sorry everyone for putting the entire cast plus all of us through the fucking wringer. The good news is there’s a ton of fluff and crack and smut and gen for this pairing (an alarming amount of which @elenothar and I have written), so you can always find solace there after I’m done heartlessly torturing the detectives of Beijiang.

9. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

There were two: “what are you doing to me now” (the Du Cheng amnesia fic, which was supposed to be purely cracky and wound up being unexpectedly kind of poignant) and “middle of the night (and you’re not here” (aka “Gu Yiran has a problem.”)—I think they made me happy because they were both so relatively easy? They came together early on in my head as visual scenes unfolding, and once I can picture a scene it’s mercifully straightforward just to write it out.

11. What fic was the most difficult to write?

Obviously “asylum,” simply because it has so many moving parts; but unexpectedly, also my fic for Yuletide, “which could mean nothing.” It was supposed to be a couple thousand words, ballooned into 12k, I panicked and nearly gave up on it and was saved at the last moment by @programmedradly and @sangcurcumasvp, who persuaded me to finish. I fervently wish I would write in sections, episodically; leave more to the reader’s imagination, summarize more. And yet I seem doomed to writing in-scene. I don’t know why. It’s exhausting.

16. What’s your favorite title of the year?

Honestly they were mostly so dumb—“undercover” and “the vacation” both stand out to me as exceptionally stupid. I guess I don’t mind “the branch, my mouth, your sword,” with its echoes from both hanahaki and Beijing opera; and “to hope your son becomes a dragon” isn’t bad either, coming as it does from an idiom, 望子成龙.

19. Share your favorite piece of dialogue.

I admit I love a lot of the dialogue in “what are you doing to me now” just because I'd finally cracked the elliptical yet blunt way that Du Cheng and Shen Yi speak to each other. It’s terse because neither of them is given to saying much, yet it’s also iceberg-like, with unspoken volumes submerged beneath each utterance, and it’s taken me a while to get that rhythm. This comes after Du Cheng has recovered his memory, in that handwavy way people do in fic:

They have some arguments. The arguments aren’t about anything recent, but Du Cheng having just remembered certain events all over again, he feels freshly aggrieved about them. “You just stood there, and you let him stab you.” “He stabbed the painting.” “It was a good painting! And you were on the other side of it.” “You and Jiang Feng were right behind me.” “But what if we hadn’t been?” “Then I wouldn’t have just stood there.” “Goddammit,” says Du Cheng, because he’s lost this one too. “Don’t, okay? Next time?” Shen Yi compresses his very pretty mouth into an unyielding line, and doesn’t promise anything, because he’s still a pain in Du Cheng’s ass.

20. Share your funniest line.

People seemed to like vastly different bits this year, e.g. @omaenanimonoda was amused by people “dancing like sweaty pickles in a jar.” But a few readers commented on this text exchange between Du Cheng and He Rongyue, initiated by a nervous Du Cheng about to go on a first date with Shen Yi. This is from “still have to change,” in which Shen Yi keeps interrupting all of Du Cheng’s blind dates—when, that is, they're not interrupted by major crimes.

何溶月: what’s up 杜城: nothing 杜城: i meet shen yi in an hour 杜城: at that place you suggested 何溶月: du cheng, it’s fine. it’ll be fine 杜城: what if he hates it 何溶月: he likes you, not a restaurant 杜城: how do you know 何溶月: he literally interrupted an autopsy 何溶月: to ask me why you keep going on dates 何溶月: with people who aren't him 杜城: what did you say 何溶月: i told him it was because you were an idiot

21. What’s something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

I’m a terrible pantser so that always happens, characters are always rearing up and opening their mouths and saying the most outrageous shit, and then I have to scramble to accommodate them. This happened again and again in “asylum” but it also came out of the woodwork in “held you close and breathed your name,” one of the year’s two DMBJ fics. Bai Ma really did just keep up and saying/doing stuff and then I would have to figure out how to jam that into her and Xiaoge’s story somehow. Again, I wish I were different, and would plot everything out beforehand, but I seem compelled to subject myself to characters just popping their heads up like prairie dogs and announcing their goddamn preferences.

23. If you had to choose one, what was the most satisfying writing moment of your year?

I really loved writing “when you hold me (it holds me together)” for Fei Du’s birthday. I was honestly starting to wonder if I’d ever be able to write for that pairing, because needless to say Priest is a pretty fucking tough act to follow. And then it happened, and now I’m working on a new story for them, too. It’s such a knee-weakening feeling of relief when you’re able to do something terrifying that you wanted so desperately, but really doubted you could ever pull off.

30. What would you like to write next year?

I already have a list and here it is. I realize I am thus tempting the gods and now probably none of this will get written but instead I’ll write two dozen random fics for some miserable machine-translated drama no one has ever seen. Because that’s how these things work.

• little uts2 fic about [redacted] i’m writing with [person] • finish posting uts longfic (edit chs 6-21 without unaliving) • “gu yiran gets roofied” (sorry to this man) • wang yang rpf ft. some twink crying, not sure whomst yet • post-canon ptsd zhoudu ft. messed-up [redacted] roleplay • turn someone into a cat (shen yi again probably?) • lose omegaverse virginity (kod? rnz already gave lqs a claiming bite) • beach episode part 2? (nanqiu get drunk in tahiti bar, hijinks ensue) • Very Secret Project I Will Not Be Discussing Ever So Don’t Ask • something serious about uts s2 but I don’t know what yet (though I do now have two I hope shorter fics outlined, working titles “fang kaiyi gets out of prison” and “du cheng solves a tricky case”)

Thanks for reading, darlings; your ongoing presence—baffling, astounding, salvific—honestly keeps me from walking into the sea. Happy 2025, and I hope you enjoy everything you write.

[year2000electronics]

do you have any tips or suggestions for someone wanting to make their own oc story? your ocs and their stories are so insanely cool but i have no idea where i’d even begin to make one!

also happy y2kvr-versary ! late i know but it was still the ask blog that caused me to follow you and i’ve just stuck around for your other content after. :)

HMMMM lemme just spill a bunch of my thoughts all at once, this is just some stuff i personally like doing with my own oc stories! by no means is this a comprehensive list and i am not a professional!

1. accept the fact that you’re probably going to need minor/side characters. of course that isn’t always the case, there are story types that only focus on a handful of characters, but let’s use the reckoning as an example: even though i love all the characters there dearly, it’s about sinclair and his donning and subsequent subverting of the “mythological hero��� mantle by taking on the vices’ challenge. montez and duncan, the other two archangels, are there to serve as a secondary antagonist in holy orders and bring some more life to the story’s world respectively, and That’s Okay. recognizing that not all your characters are gonna be the most specialest boys is a great place to start with structuring an oc story imo!

2. KEEP AT IT. the reckoning as it exists now didn’t truly come together until 2020, which is when the ask blog was made. cardine (the city the vices reside in) is such a key, important concept that drives the story along and the reckoning wouldn’t be nearly as good without it, and that only got introduced in one of the final drafts pre-ask blog!! reworks, practice with laying out the events, thinking and re-thinking of stuff and spending years with it is really good. it’s healthy. i mean a lot of great films and tv get ‘saved’ at the last minute from being terrible by one terrible concept being scrapped so revising and not being afraid to change things is your best friend

3. learn some rules. i’m of the firm belief that storytelling should be an all-access hobby for everyone, so you don’t have to read all of save the cat and then write out a full script or anything, but like. turn on a movie you like, or read a book you love. think about what they’re doing to convey primary themes to you. pick out the themes, actually, that’s good too. being able to pick up on themes that aren’t just being stated to you as if it’s dialogue from sonic heroes is a great teacher on how to subtly weave those themes into your story

4. don’t be afraid to break those rules! a lot of that stuff is great to pick up but at the same time they’re YOUR characters, and if you find yourself getting bored by playing too “by the book”, nobody said you can’t change how things work. for example, a lot of my oc stories have “villain protagonists” because i just really connect with the way ‘villains’ present themselves in media. if you find yourself fixating on a side character and brushing your main character aside? screw it! you can just make the story about them! what if a 7/11 clerk went on an adventure instead of the main guy!!

5. INSPIRATION IS YOUR FRIEND. WEAR IT ON YOUR SLEEVE. i don’t mean you have to publicly disclose every single thing you were inspired by, but the amazing digital circus is REALLY big right now, and gooseworx has told people IHNMAIMS and the raggedy ann movie were big inspos and she clearly loves those things because they uplift the work higher! (plus it gave people a new appreciation for those things) and, imo, understanding what inspires you and celebrating it is a lot better of a mindset than going into something out of sheer spite (like you’ll see a lot of people online making very inflammatory “i alone could fix a piece of media that had to go through an entire writer’s room as well as corporate mandates, gosh why doesn’t everyone just Make Things Good?” type posts on social media, and i find myself straying more and more away from that). best example i can think of are all those very ill-fated “original alien stories” that su criticals made back in the day that were even more confusing than the gems and everyone had to pretend that “of course it makes more sense for the aliens to be flowers, gosh, why didn’t rebecca sugar think of this? we’re so smart”. my point is hate and shame can fizzle out quickly but creativity is forever

6. and of course, always make sure you’re actually having a good experience with the process. fun, catharsis, importance, etc. if it sucks, you can literally hit the bricks. i say that with experience because before my original superhero story existed (iris of the storm), there was another (problem students). it was dormant as a story for a really long time because i had accidentally made a superhero story without any of the superhero tropes i loved, but i couldn’t just… delete it all! OH WAIT. YES I COULD. i started it all over and got rid of ocs that i was glad i made but don’t need anymore, and i’ve never been happier cos iris of the storm is actually fun for me.

BUT YEAH THATS IT. thumbs up

[sing-in-me-oh-muse]

Writer Highlight - KPG/Cardiac_Agreste

Each month on Sanctuary, a Discord server that nurtures writers of all kinds, highlights a writer and asks them questions about their writing process. November 2024's writer highlight was KPG/@cardiac-agreste!

@cardiac-agreste

Ao3 Profile: KPG

Works:

A Small but Stubborn Fire – What is it like to see your teenage daughter falling apart and have no idea why?

Stopping by Hideout on a Snowy Evening – In the midst of a frigid akuma attack, Adrien recalls a winter trip he shared with his mother.

Long Haul Trucker AU – Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a long haul trucker known on CB radio as Ladybug, and one day she and a new driver named Chat Noir meet over the airwaves. (Marinette speaks in the author's native dialect.)

What is your writing process? How do you approach a fic or original work? (e.g. Are you a Pantser? Plotter? Do you focus on dialogue before description? etc.)

I’m actually changing things up this year for the Big Bang, so I can straddle different answers! For shorter works, total pantser. I’ll often just write, and if some interesting idea flies through my head, I’ll follow the idea to see where it takes me. I get to be surprised, and then I fall in love with the ideas I didn’t know I had. The Sanctuary September 2024 prompt is a good example, and my piece is forthcoming on AO3. You asked us to write a 500+ word story about our OTP meeting up at school. I had no agenda and began with LB swinging into François Dupont, ostensibly to meet up with Chat Noir. I had no idea beyond that, but, before I knew it, I had a 1000+ word setup for a Christmas Carol AU that is laced with mature themes. On the other hand, A Small but Stubborn Fire—a novel-length fic—taught me I need to plot, at least in the rough. I ran into problems where my characters were behaving inconsistently because I was pantsing too much. So for my BB24, I’m writing a rough plot, then adding details, and then will add more details. Like an artist beginning with rough applications of oil or charcoal followed by working in the details. The idea is to go from a couple paragraphs describing the chapter to 2000-ish word chapters with no thought put toward word-smithing, images, metaphors, and then touch them up with those things during a later pass. The story feels less out-of control that way. We’ll know in January whether this approach worked for me!

What was your first story and why did you finally decide to write?

The first story I started was A Small but Stubborn Fire. I’d had a bunch of ideas for Miraculous before that, but writing something just seemed like the kind of thing other people did. But there was a combination of events that got me writing. First, I made a comment on a story by Talik_Sanis where he responded saying it was funny and asked if I ever thought about writing, because I had a kind of flair to my comments. That was a huge compliment! Then I saw mentions of the Miraculous Big Bang 2023. I vaguely knew what it was because some talk on the Miraculous Fanfiction subreddit had alluded to the event as a source of immense creativity in the fandom. And finally, my wife had to rush my kid to the hospital, and as I sat at home with my other kid worrying—with no updates—I got to thinking what Sabine would feel if she knew it was Marinette on TV getting shot at by an akuma, sitting up at night, not knowing whether her daughter was going to pull through (my kid was perfectly fine). This idea gripped me like nothing ever had. I needed to write this. So I signed up for the BB, got in, and made friends with a few people who encouraged and helped me. “Dragging my carcass across the finish line,” as I described it at the time.

Where is your favorite place/time/conditions to write?

I like writing in the middle of the day when my kids are at school. I really like sitting in my home office, but there’s a café near my kids’ school I have done a lot of writing at. The place has an energy, has an industrial design to the place, and lots of windows and excellent sunlight. I often sit at the bar and write and make conversation with the baristi (pedant alert, wee woo wee woo).

What is your favorite pairing, platonic or romantic, and why?

Adrien and Marinette in whichever combination of civilian/hero form. I don’t care. I don’t make a distinction between Ladynoir and Marichat. They’re the same people to me. I don’t long for Marichat over Ladrien. It’s all Marinette and Adrien with different clothes on as far as I’m concerned. Kagaminette is my favorite non-canon ship. I just freaking love how vulnerable they can be with each other, but also how much they can (hehe) mask as well. Kagami is my autistic queen and I love her so much. I just want her to be happy! After that, probably Rankane. This is the Ranma/Akane ship from the 80s/90s manga and anime, Ranma 1/2, about a pair of teenage martial artists whose fathers arranged their marriage before they were born. The twist is that Ranma turns into a girl when splashed with cold water, and back to a boy with hot water. There’s a remake that just started being released this month. Check it out! That ship is what got me into fanfiction about...thirty years ago? Maybe it’s arrested development, and I just wanna see teenagers be happy with some vicarious ish? :)

Do you have any thematic elements you’re interested in or that consistently show up in your writing?

LANGUAGE. Everyone in my household speaks a combination of English, Japanese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Spanish, and German. We’re all polyglots. I love language and culture. I have had Sabine and Wang Fu talking in Mandarin. I’ve had Rolland apologize to Sabine in Shanghainese. I’ve had a Chinese fan scream at Adrien. I’ve had Marinette muse about how sexy it is to hear Adrien speak Mandarin to her even if she doesn’t understand it. I’ve had Sabine and Chat Noir speak Mandarin with each other. I’ve had Gina speaking Italian (thank you to JuliaFC for help there!). I’ve had Sabine and her sister code switch between English, French, and Shanghainese. Unrelated, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami alludes to jazz a lot in his stories. I think I learned from this, because I like alluding to literature and art in a similar way. In ASBSF, I have Sabine thinking about a recent sculpture, Medusa with the Head of Perseus, and jumping off that to think about Ladybug defeating Hawkmoth, and about feminism in general. I also like writing about “woke shit.” No better way to put it. I am pretty open about the fact my household looks a lot like Marinette’s, so I see my family in hers, and that makes me connect our issues with the Dupain Cheng household’s, even if canon barely talks about it.

I’ve written about xenophobia, the immigrant experience, racism, feminism, toxic masculinity, colonization, etc. But I try to ground the issues in the personal. It’s not just “xenophobia bad.” It’s specifically how Tom, as a native Frenchman, takes comfort and success as a right, while Sabine has been through a traumatic experience (immigrating) and will always have a scar, a fear that her life might be upended again, so you have to prepare. It’s no fun to lecture a reader. But I like showing people things they might not have considered before. Imagine what it’s like to abandon your whole culture, language, etc. and then when you have children, they aren’t even interested in where you’re from. I’m so fascinated by that, and fortunately have experience in my own life and in my family’s life to draw on. I have a partially-written Loveybug story that begins with her swinging by, and she hears someone on the ground call her “slut” (because she threw herself at Chat Noir and then Cat Walker). In the story, she goes home devastated and her mother gives her a mom talk about it. And finally, I love love love just putting characters together to talk about big ideas (which is a superset of what I mentioned above). I’m writing something about that right now. I can’t get into specifics, but come December… :)

How do you deal with writer's block?

I focus on a scene or chapter I need to write and then I go for a run. First ten minutes or so, I keep my headphones playing music, and then I stop the music and keep running. My brain will often solve the problem of the chapter. I’ll get an idea or something that fascinates me, and I’ll be ready to write it when I get home (usually after a shower!) Lately I’ve been pulling my phone out of my pocket—even on a run—to dictate notes to myself. For example, today I was trying my best not to drop my phone on the road as I talked about Miss Hound and Ladybug having different opinions about law and order given the confrontation between Sabrina’s dad and Marinette’s mom in Qilin.

What do you do if you have too many ideas?

I will dump them on Tumblr or Discord as a prompt and hope someone else writes them. Sometimes I will create a new doc in Scrivener (my writing app of choice) with the title and a blurb and hope to come back to it. I have a doc exactly like this called Felix: The Other F Word that has no text, just a title. I have a couple one-shots I’ve treated seriously but haven’t finished. They’re waiting for a few pending scenes. I have one with a few paragraphs written called Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act, and it began with the realization that Gabriel knew he was dying, knew he could stop it, but stared at this girl he’d hated for a year and decided he could trust her to take care of his son. What was that like in his head, to feel the elation of winning, the sadness about your wife, and the fear of what would happen to your senti-son (whom he loves in his own twisted way) if you handed him over to your mortal enemy?

When writing Sabine in A Small But Stubborn Fire, how did you manage your emotions around parenting when channeling hers in the tough situations the fic presented? Did writing the fic teach you anything about parenting or change how you parent?

How did I manage my emotions? By crying a tonnnnn at that café I mentioned in one of my previous answers! I also looked for quiet moments with my kids where I was profoundly happy and worked those into my story. The epilogue has Sabine flash back to a time when younger Marinette was snuggled up against her chest, asleep in front of the TV. I wrote that bit less than twenty-four hours after it had happened to me with my eldest. There’s so much that is frustrating about being a parent, having to mold another human being into someone resilient enough to survive in the world without you. None of my kids are teenagers yet, so I don’t have the exact same experience as Sabine in ASBSF, but my oldest is already entering that mode in school where she’s taking regular tests and I can’t be there to make sure she’s focusing and being methodical. Since Sabine is canonically a martial artist, I figure once she knows Marinette is Ladybug, she’d have a similar feeling. Marinette is “taking an exam” and Sabine can’t be present to remind her to be careful and not make mistakes. Regarding what I learned about parenting, two things:

my parents read my “private” stuff, so I had no concept of “parents shouldn’t read their kid’s diary.” So when I wrote Sabine considering reading Marinette’s diary, there was this groundswell of “good for her that she didn’t; it would be bad if she had read it” type of comments from readers. Plus my friends who beta read the story had given similar feedback. I was like “wow, so yeah, I’m totally not gonna read my kids’ diaries then!” It’s not that I was planning on it, but I think the threshold for when I’d consider breaching that trust was a lot lower than it is now.

I had never thought of that as a bad thing. It’s their private thoughts, yeah, but—I mean—I’ve literally wiped poop off their butts and cleaned their private parts. Surely that kind of implies permission to read a diary about crushes and stuff in order to make sure there aren’t pages of abuse and self-harm scribbled in there, right?

Apparently: wrong! So I think I learned to be a better parent, to escape some bad things my own parents might’ve done, by paying attention to my beta readers and “normal” readers. I have to thank them for that. My wife has always pointed out that my parents weren’t the best, but I always chalked it up to her being from a different part of the world and her not being tolerant of that. But my experience with ASBSF gave me the chance to see how many others agree with my wife, and how I was often just ignorant of my own trauma (which I hate calling “my own trauma” since I turned out pretty okay and it feels like it downplays other people’s trauma).

I have refrained from name dropping “innocent bystanders” so far, but I have to mention Kasienda here. Before I started writing, I’d read a few of her stories, and I always found them so… emotionally insightful? Emotionally instructive. I’ve always felt like I learned valuable things about relationships by reading her stories.

So when she started commenting on ASBSF, I paid attention, because I felt like her reactions would be informed by the kind of experience and maturity that I value but might not always be equipped to exhibit. Despite my long-windedness, I don’t think I’m a very good communicator of my own emotions. Anyway, there was a chapter where she commented that she didn’t like Sabine anymore (or maybe it was “right now”). It didn’t change the arc of the story, but I did elaborate on some of Sabine’s mindset in the next two chapters because I had a very strong sense of right and wrong about her. It was kind of a “challenge accepted” moment for me. “I will make you love her again!” I think a “real world” parent in Sabine’s situation would do everything she could to stop her 14yo from being a superhero. But—as an example of breaking free (hat tip to UpTooLateArt’s spectacular series by that name!) of how my parents treated me—I learned by reading her comments that maybe it’s not just about being right or wrong, but about communicating. So communicate and give kids space. I knew it already, but I didn’t know it. I hope I can keep remembering it going forward. I have only daughters, and to call back to my mention of “woke shit” above, it’s important to me to raise them right so they aren’t cowed by ThE paTRIarChY. That means it’s incumbent upon me as a father to model good behavior so they have high expectations for boys in the future.

Thank you for your insightful answers, KPG!

Join Sanctuary today and sign up to be highlighted on Tumblr and the server!

[k2ntwo]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

A bunch of writers that I follow have already been tagged and responded @helloliriels @khorazir @7-percent @discordantwords @totallysilvergirl to name just a few. Now I have a few new things to read that I somehow missed the first time around as well as a bunch of old favorites to go and re-read. So much good fic is out there by so many talented writers!

In the spirit of adding to folk’s ever growing MFL list I’ll just pile onto the bandwagon with my answers as well.

 1.  How many works to you have on AO3?

56 although there are several collections of snippets that technically could be counted separately. On AO3 I'm KtwoNtwo.

2.  What’s your total AO3 word count?

496,860

3.  What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily Sherlock Holmes (most all iterations from ACD to Sherlock) and James Bond.  However, I dabble in a good number of other fandoms upon occasion.

4.  What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Metamorphosis

Conversations from Q-Branch

50 Reasons (The Q-Branch Edition)

A Rare Breed

Brothers Three

5.  Do you respond to comments?

Yes, even if its just a “I’m glad you liked it.”  The only ones I don’t respond to are the generic solicitations to join some random contest or fic publishing website.  Those get blocked and reported.

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

Well, I don’t really write major angst but The Four Riders has got a bit as does the poem Gun in the Drawer though they both end on a hopeful note.

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

Most of my fics have happy endings but probably A Toast to the Science of Deduction resolves the happiest of the lot.

8.  Do you get hate on fics.

Nope.  Only got one anonymous troll alleging trademark infringement due to a title.  I fired back a factual rebuttal: basically "there is no book by that name by that author, there is no lawyer by that name, you didn’t provide contact information and btw trademark doesn’t work the way you allege" then added a set of quotation marks to the title.  Never heard anything more about it.

9.  Do you write smut?

I have but I’m not terribly good at it.  Most of the time the characters look at me then politely, or not so politely, shut the bedroom door in my face.

10.  Do you write crossovers?

Oh God Yes!  Technically I think I write fusions, where both fandoms end up in the same universe, as opposed to crossovers but I’m rather unclear on the difference between same so I tend to just call 'em crossovers and leave it at that. 

11.  Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I could find or prove.  I did have a couple of strange search results pop up with my use name and some fic titles attached but the websites all seem to be defunct now.

12.  Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

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

No.

14.  What’s your favorite ship?

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

15.  What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There’s a fic based on a song by Abney Park that I’ve got an outline for but it never seems to go anywhere.

16.  What are your writing strengths?

I can merge and/or crossover all sorts of different fandoms. 

17.  What are your writing weaknesses?

Typos and punctuation.  Being slightly dyslexic I can’t spot the former and I never know if I’m using commas correctly or not.

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

I actively avoid doing so because I’d butcher it badly.

19.  First fandom you wrote for?

Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker.  I will admit that I wrote in my head, but never got around to put on paper, a number of Star Trek stories when I was significantly younger.

20.  Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

I like all of them for different reasons.  The one I’m most proud of however is The Emerald Falls my Study in Emerald inspired ACD Fic.

I'd love to have some of the artists/podcasters respond to this with whatever modifications are necessary to fit the medium involved. Hours of podcast or number of artworks as opposed to number of words for example. @podfixx @bluebellofbakerstreet if you haven't responded to this thing already and I just missed it.

[bratbarzal]

Do you have any advice for writing longer fics? Or even multi-part fics?

I read through your entire masterlist after I was recommended LIH/TSOU and On Your Side ended up being one of my favorite fics of all time! (I can't wait to read it all in one when it's finished -- no rush 😅) I've always wanted to write a full fic like that but I feel like I run out of ideas in the middle and lose track of where it is that I want to go 😕 Or I end up going down the AU route and just write smaller blurbs around one topic.

first of all ily and thank you for loving my first born child, she's very precious to me (as much as I don't show it)

there are probably much better people to give you advice on like ~one shot fics bc I have a real condensing/editing problem hahaha my fics often end up so long because I just try to cram every idea in there (and I feel lucky sometimes that people respond well to that, but I do acknowledge it's intense for a lot of people to see such a high wc) I'll put this all under a read more anyway bc it's honestly just me being no help and rambling lmaooo

I think my main advice in general is just to be patient with it and don't rush yourself!! OYS came to me really easily in the beginning, and I was delusional enough to think I'd have the entire thing finished in october of last year, and then I just got shot down by life and it sort of impacted my ability to write it a little bit - but I still very much enjoy the process when I get into it and I know the end product will be worth it

but yeah, ideas come and go, and inspiration will come and go, so just allow yourself the time to process and piece it all together!! ignore any pressure to rush it, the only person placing a deadline on you is yourself!!

a lot of my fics start off in my notes app, and I'll just keep adding little bullet pointed ideas or just dialogue until I can build around them and order them and expand on them, I’d actually recommend giving yourself time to come up with a bunch of little ideas rather than just sitting straight down and jumping straight into writing - so I guess that's another bit of advice, is don't push yourself to make an idea complete as soon as it comes to your head, you'll get around to that part eventually!! try to make a note of all the thoughts that come to you, even if it's a single line, or a random idea

I'll include a sc of what I mean here bc it might help - but when I was writing LIH, I knew I wanted to cross it over with OYS just for fun, so I made a little note of dialogue around the crochet giraffe, and then I saved it in my oys notes until I got to a point where I could use it, and then I wrote it into the next chapter as a full thing:

an earlier example too

and I guess for multi-chapter, I'd just say try and make yourself a structure or a plan to follow!! in the beginning of oys, I made a doc that outlined a big event in each chapter, so like:

prologue: introduce characters and conflict

chapter one: ~resolve conflict

chapter two: push characters closer

chapter three: pull them apart again bc it will make the next chapter better hahaha

chapter four: they fuckin!!

obviously it’s gonna depend a lot on your plot, I always knew it was gonna be accidental pregnancy and I always knew I wanted them to have a reason they weren’t together, so I needed a lot of build up and my actual outline is a lot more in depth but I followed it for the most part!! I think more ideas ended up coming so what was planned as a 10 part fic is going to end up as 13 chapters, but keeping that plan in mind helped me a lot!!

and also a big one for me is try to always have the end in mind!! You don’t have to have it straight away but try and figure it out as early as you can!! it probably doesn't work for everyone but I find it a lot easier knowing how I want something to end because I'm not then stuck for ideas, and it's all about working up to that point!! and then I can go back and add little foreshadowing and clues throughout the fic lmao

[roscolate]

Hi, Riley! I wanted to send you an ask for the fanfic writer game too, and I'm glad that I can do it as I've finally read one of your stories!! 😄 But... I won't say which one yet, hehe 🤭 Maybe these emojis will give you a hint? 😜🥰

💌💖 (I know I've only read one of your fics so far but I've absolutely FALLEN for your writing) 🎀🧠🌺🩰⭐️🍀🧶💎🍆🪀🔮💣🎬🎱

In any case I'll be sure to leave feedback as soon as I can, so you'll eventually find out, hehe 🥰 I really can't wait to continue reading you, my friend!! 💖💖💖

Me opening up my ask box to a bunch of emojis like ⬇️

Zahraaaaa, I’m so happy to see you in my asks! I’m already overwhelmed (in a good way) by all the emojis you sent! You’re so sweet 🥺🥰 And OMG you just read one of my fics?! I am over the moon! 🥺🥹 I know how much you’ve been wanting to read my fics, and I’m so happy for you that you finally got to do that! And oh boy, it’s a surprise too? Me likey a surprise! 😁 Well, without further ado, let’s dive into this emoji pile! 😁

💌 love your answers to other people's asks about your stories

Awww, thank you! I do my best to articulate my gratitude with words. But, a lot of times, reaction meme pics are my most effective go-to in accurately conveying my reactions 😁😂

💖 adore literally everything you write

Wow, the first fic you read gave you that good of a first impression of my writing?! 🥺🥺 That’s so great to hear! Makes me all the more excited to read the comment you plan to leave! 😁

🎀 you describe tender, soft intimacy wonderfully

🧠 love how your brain works and how you solve plots

🌺 you make me root for your heroes every time

🩰 have been waiting for a writer like you all my life

Awww, thank you so much! I absolutely love writing platonic intimacy, which is something I know you love too 😁 And I appreciate your brain and plot-solving compliment! It is such a privilege to use this outlet as a way to exercise the creative side of my mind, let my ideas run free and maybe surprise myself along the way. And you…y-you’ve been waiting for a writer like me? First, vulpixfairy, and now you? Oh, I could melt right now 🥹🥹 Dear friend, I’m so honored to be able to inspire and move you with my writing, just as you have me with yours ❤️

⭐️ everything you write draws me in immediately

Ahhh, I’m so happy to hear that! I truly hope you’ll enjoy my other fics whenever you get the chance to read them! No rush on that, of course! 😊

🍀 you can describe emotions and feelings perfectly

🧶 your dialogues are as if real people were talking to each other

💎 you perfectly portray the mind and thoughts of your characters

Thank you so much! I receive great enjoyment out of going inside a character’s mind and portraying the bros’ dynamic through what they say and how they react to certain scenarios. I’d say it’s one of my fav parts about writing! 😁

🍆 love the way you write male characters

🪀 your stories are very easy, quick and enjoyable to read

🔮 when I think that nothing will surprise me anymore, you do it

Awww, thank you! I’m honestly a little surprised by how many people who’ve sent me these asks say my fics are quick to read. My fics which are well over 5k-10k words per chapter 😅 All the more reason why I’m so lucky to have a speed-running, patient and committed audience! 😁 Zahra, I similarly continue to be blown away by your writing and the ideas you come up with. It comes to show how extraordinary you and your writing skills are. And it fills me with joy to know that you see the same potential in me ❤️

💣 you can build tension in your stories incredibly well

🎬 love to imagine your stories as if I was watching a movie

🎱 you write very satisfying, non-obvious endings

I’m really glad you admire the way I write tension! Hmm, I’m getting some “Safe and Sound” vibes from this emoji and compliment, as that’s my most intense fic thus far. I could be wrong on that guess tho! I’ll just leave it to you to surprise me on which one you read 😁 And I also very much appreciate your movie and ending compliment! I’ve come to realize that I visualize and write my stories very much like movies, which comes to show how much they’ve influenced me since childhood 😁

Zahra, it was so wonderful learning your thoughts on my writing as a first-time reader! Thank you SO much for this ask, and thank you SO much for your support 🥰❤️

[sinsandsweetness]

t’s 1k celebration !

It’s a little insane to me that I have 1.1k of you following me and reading all my silly little stories. You’re all so kind and encouraging and so so patient and I love each and every one of u. Sooooo since I go back to school next week, I’m sure I’ll be a little slower in my writing and I wanted to spend this week just basking in the limited freedom of summer I have left. I was going to write a bunch anyway but I thought it might be fun for you guys if I did a little celebration. They can be a lot of fun and I always love interacting with you guys. So if you’d like, go ahead and choose from one of the options below, and send me an ask! Anons are welcome as always, though I ask that minors do not interact for the smutty stuff.

Here are your options:

💿 -> send me a character (or two) and a situation, and I’ll write a short blurb of how I think it would go (for example: reader brings a cat home but is scared what Rick/Daryl will think)

🫧-> send me an nsfw link and a character and I’ll write a short blurb about it.

⭐️ -> send me the title of something that I’ve written, and I’ll respond with a mini moodboard for it.

✉️ -> send me your own daydreams. I had this one anon send me the hottest little blurb, and I LOVED IT. So I’m hoping that anyone who wants to, will send a similar kind of smutty (or fluffy) blurb of their own in, for me and all my loves to read and swoon over.

💡-> send me a headcanon about any character and I’ll tell you my thoughts/add on to it.

🍌-> fmk! Send me three twd characters (or three eras of a specific character) and I’ll tell you who I’d fuck, who I’d marry and who I’d kill.

🪩 -> Q&A- send me any questions you like! As fun and flirty or as deep and personal as you want. Ask games linked here , here , and (nsfw) here if anyone wants <3

🍸-> send me an unpopular opinion (about twd, fanfics, or writing in general) and I will tell you my thoughts on it.

*Any of the submissions can be sfw or nsfw! I love either. Characters I will write for for this celebration are Rick, Daryl, Shane, and Rosita, and then Negan and Merle (selectively lol)

* i will still be writing and working on the prompts and requests I’ve already recieved. My inbox is nice and full but I am working on them, I promise. I might not write every submission, if it isn’t really my thing or simply can’t come up with a dialogue for it, but please know you are very appreciated nonetheless. Nothing personal:) Please look at my rules before sending anything in, but other then that… let’s get daydreaming!*

- this celebration will go on for one week, from august 30th, until september 6th.

tagging some mutuals: @ricksswhore @virtualreader @writella @catt-leya @murdadixon @olive3oil @colt-python @grimesthinker @ankhmutes @murder-jacket @sickyrat @megangovier20 @devnmon @darylsdix0nn @taylormarieee

(If you would prefer not to be tagged in the future, please let me know<3)