#maybe I’ll actually be motivated to finish something if I post snippets

[evil-mage]

Ooh I have so many WIPs that I really should be working on.

🚢

📖

📔

🏰

⛈️

🎡

🧼

👩🏻‍🦳

Tagging anyone else!

WIP Motivation Game!

Choose an emoji to represent each of your WIPs. When someone sends an ask with that emoji, share three sentences from that WIP you’ve already written… and then write three more. Let’s get some writing done!

[eternal-sunflowers]

💭 Steddie-ish WIP Weekend 💭

steddie-ish wip weekend part 2 because i need to get some writing done. inspiration has been a bit lacking, so motivate me with your asks :))

Rules: Send me an emoji in an ask, and I'll write 3-5 sentences and/or paragraphs from that WIP for each emoji! No limits to the amount or kind of emojis you can request.💜 feel free to obliterate my inbox

Options for this weekend (i have so much, enjoy choosing):

🎭 : Apollo's New Muse continuation (prep before the date with nancy; some fluff, some light angst; started here)

🔮 : Bring Me Back to You continuation (steve time travels to save eddie's life -- things happen; angstyyyyy; started here)

🌻 : Untitled (side fic in the Wildflowers universe; steve and el sibling focused; meant to be fluff, some light angst maybe idk; started here)

finished!! thanks for all the asks for this. working on editing now<3 ⏱️ : Untitled (steddie oneshot for microfic may, prompt: delay; mostly done but need to finish; silly fluffy; started here)

🎬 : Untitled Robin Fic (this is in the same world as this fic, but like just barely post s4, so well before that fic; robin tries to help make eddie feel better; vecna may or may not still exist; things might happen; wrote a lot but kind of abandoned it when inspiration dwindled)

Have a snippet of Untitled Robin Fic below the cut ~

Steve enlists her one day to come to Eddie’s with something to help distract the latter, to help bring him some joy.

“Literally, I do not care what you bring over at this point, Robs. He’s–” Steve sighs into the receiver, and Robin feels a pang in her chest.

“Bad day, huh?”

Steve scoffs. “Yeah.” A few silent moments pass, the static of the line scrambling her brain. “They’re all, uh, all–”

“I know.” Robin whispers, closing her eyes and thunking her head back against her headboard. Her heart aches knowing Eddie's dealing with, arguably, one of the worst set of injuries of the lot of them. It’s only been a few weeks, the most of them on mediocre paths to recovery, if not fully recovered. Yet, Eddie still is laid out in bed, thankfully his own at this point, without a clear end date to his recovery. She hates seeing him drained of his usual gusto, more reserved these days, more quiet. They hadn’t even really been close before spring break, but it still fucking hurts because now he's one of them. One of the few who really knows how fucked up this world, and others, could actually be. One of the few who feels that. 

“Robs?”

She blinks, rights herself. “Yeah, Steve?”

“I asked if you could be here soon. Say, hour or so?”

Robin looks at the clock on her desk. 1:47 PM. She gnaws at her thumbnail for a moment. “Yeah, hour. You got food?”

“Plenty. Joyce is on dinner duty tonight, so we’re set.” Steve laughs quietly. 

“Oh, thank fuck. I love you, but your cooking has been shit lately.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know–”

“Bye, dingus!” Robin slams the phone into the receiver, swinging her feet off the bed to hurriedly get dressed. She has a deadline and a plan – a plan to make one Eddie Munson smile again, dammit. 

tagstagstagstagstagsta--

@yesdangerpls @probablyin-bed @daisydayes @sunshine-daydreams0809 @sofadofax @creeper-with-a-heart-of-gold @adverbally @asexualasshat @fkinkindagauche @runninriot

[freelancearsonist]

wip wednesday ✨

thank you so much @wannab-urs for the tag 🥹🖤

Step one: Post snippets of the fics you're working on (can be a summary if there's no snippet)

Step two: put them in a poll and let people vote on which one you should work on, then prioritize the one with the most votes.

Step three: Ask me about my WIPs! I've got lots of lore to share + more snippets, etc.

i’m cheating bc i have WAYYYYY too many to post snippets of each guys my brain just can’t focus on one project at a time help but pls pls pls ask about any of these and i’ll share a lil peek :)

guys this is literally ridiculous i need to be stopped pls motivate me to stop making new wips and actually finish something for once

[tippenfunkaport]

Introducing MAYbe I’ll Make This, the easiest month of prompts you’ve ever participated in happening this May 2023.

It’s a chance to share all those ideas you’ve been toying with that you might draw or write someday with no pressure to actually commit to finishing anything!

Participation can be as little as sharing a few words or a single sentence or as involved as a sketch or plot summary, it’s up to you! 

What’s the point?

To fill our fandom tags with fun new ideas and stimuli to get everyone’s creative juices flowing. For fan creators ourselves, it gives us a chance to talk about our ideas with no pressure to deliver. And who knows, hopefully seeing people excited about our ideas might give us extra inspiration and motivation to maybe even work on them someday!

Here’s how it works:

Throughout May, post anything from a few words to a snippet from an idea you’ve been kicking around that you MAY draw or write someday and tag the related fandoms, if any. (Ideas that you've started, have actively in progress or have even started but abandoned are also welcome!) A few sentences about a fic you might write, a sketch you’re still figuring out, or even a long infodump about the AU of your heart, share as much or as little as you want!. It’s not a commitment to make anything, just a fun excuse to talk about your ideas. 

Don’t have any ideas of your own? No problem! You can still participate by boosting the ideas that others post, asking questions and expressing your excitement about the ideas that appeal to you. 

Anyone from any fandom is welcome to participate as well as original writers so please spread the word!

We’ve got 30 days worth of prompts to get you started that you can interpret anyway you like… or ignore entirely and do your own thing. Do all 30, pick and choose, do them out of order, whatever you want! The point is just to have fun and share your ideas! 

That’s it! Just a super chill, low effort way for us all to celebrate those ideas taking up space in our brains that we aren’t quite ready to commit to making yet (or maybe ever). 

Notes

Participants retain all rights to their ideas and first dibs on the writing / drawing of them.

Want feedback on your ideas? Encourage brainstorming? Happy to let someone else take your idea and write it themselves? Add a note to that effect to your post so people know what kind of interactions are welcome. 

Please be supportive of others' ideas and keep overly negative opinions to yourself (especially if they did not ask for feedback). If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!

You’re welcome to tag your posts with “MAYbe I’ll Make This” or link back to this post to explain the challenge but your host (me) won’t be sharing every post related to this challenge. This is just something I wanted to do for my own purposes to share all the ideas I may never get a chance to write but I’m opening the prompts list to anyone who might like to do the same. 

Questions? Drop me an ask! 

May 2023 Prompts

No Plot Just Vibes

Lives In My Head Rent Free

Sometimes One Must Torture The Blorbos For Enrichment

Completely Self Indulgent

I Just Want Them To Be Happy 😭

Canon Divergent

Inspired By A Movie

Galaxy Brain Of Me, Honestly

No One Wants This But Me

All The Tropes!

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Canon

Idea Fueled By Spite

Shameless Excuse For Hurt / Comfort

Inspired By A TV Show

Slaps Idea: This Baby Can Fit So Much Projection!

Yes, I’m Cringe But I’m Free

One! More! Time! 

Totally OOC But Hear Me Out… 

Role Swap

Inspired By Someone Else’s Au

I Hurt Myself With This Idea

Old Tropes, New Tricks

Pretend I’m Good Enough To Pull This Off

It’s Really Just All About This One Scene… 

Crack Treated Seriously 

Seriousness Treated Like Crack 

I’ve Actually Started Working On This

Yes It’s Been Done But Not By Me So

More Of What You’d Call A Character Study

Casually Slides in My OC

Inspired By A Book

[moodybluemood]

Hello and welcome!

In all honesty, I don’t know how much I’ll post on this account but I wanted a place to post random writing thoughts and maybe snippets of things I don’t want to post on AO3. I’ve had previous blogs in the past but I wanted a fresh start, all shiny and new, and I wanted a writing space that wasn’t so unmeshed with personal posts. This is all in the pursuit of keeping a happy headspace.

Anyway, if you’re here from AO3 and you probably are because I haven’t linked this anywhere else, let me answer a few things.

Are you still writing your fics?

The answer is yes, largely. Have I updated any of them in the past year? No. I’ll get to that in a bit. But am I working on them? Death Is Not The End has several chapters I’m currently writing at once and There Is A Town is actively being continued. I don’t have any intentions on stopping, even if I sometimes crawl to a halt. As for other JJBA fics, I am very slowly finishing most of them. The only one I’ve discarded for certain is a post-breakup Promaggio fic because I wound up taking them in a vastly different direction and I actually yanked a lot of my prior Prosciutto characterization for Bruno. La Squadra Special Mission is on hiatus for the foreseeable future but I won’t say it’s abandoned just yet. I no longer have Word and it’s a pain writing it on other platforms. More importantly, I honestly have not been in the brainspace to write something like that for a long time and I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get that back. It might be a relic of an older sense of humor, I don’t know. I haven’t read it in a long time and I don’t know if it’d reflect something I’d write today.

Do you plan on interacting with the fandom much?

I don’t know. We’ll see. I got into Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures as a distraction from something terrible in my life, I started writing JJBA fic in a bizarre attempt to cope with something that might be obvious if you’ve ever read 90% of my work, and I latched too hard emotionally on aspects of the fandom despite interacting very little with it. It wasn’t the healthiest. It got to the point that I was angry and stressed all the time and it got to the point where it triggered mild paranoia. There were other reasons too. It killed most of my motivation to write. I had to take a step back and reevaluate how I interact or don’t interact with the Internet. I am making active attempts to form social connections but I am also making active attempts to not poke around too much with fandom as a general concept. Fandom in general is a refuge for people who might be experiencing hard times in their life but it’s also something that can easily become unhealthy.

Why did your fic updates slow down so much?

I started writing fic in late 2018 and then I started posting the bulk of my fic in earnest in 2019. Most of my work revolves around death and grieving. Both are ultimately tied up in the reasons why I write; to a certain extent, I have really only written when I’ve been grieving something, even if it wasn’t a death.

So then, 2020. You know the drill. Some people I spoke to suddenly vanished and I don’t have closure there. I suddenly worked strange hours all by myself and then I was thrust back into working in an office full-time way before I should’ve been back. Coworkers I could previously tolerate became radicalized and I listened to a nonstop brigade of general dumbassery about the virus and blatant homophobia & transphobia. When you’re stressed and upset all the time, the very act of writing frustrates you.

2021. My mom got sick. She’s better now, though she just got over her second bout of covid and she might not ever be where she was at before, but it’s the sort of thing that really punches you in the gut. A month or so later, I went to a doctor’s appointment for an ear infection and came out with the idea that I might have a thyroid issue. This somehow turned into an entire year of what seemed like nonstop medical appointments. Last year, I had:

A thyroid ultrasound

A heart ultrasound

An ultrasound of my carotid artery

A leg ultrasound for reasons I don’t even know, honestly

A CT scan

A visit to an endocrinologist who dismissed me in three minutes while barely looking at my records

Two breast ultrasounds

Two mammograms

God knows how many vials of blood drawn

Some other embarrassing things

And some stuff I’m probably forgetting

I spent a good chunk of the past year thinking I probably had cancer. The end diagnosis? A tumor that probably isn’t cancer, a heart that pumps blood a little weird, and as for anyone else, all my other weird findings were literally never following up on. It was a lot of money spent and a lot of stress.

I think you can see why I didn’t want to write about death.

The good thing is that I finally started medication for some things that have been ruining my life. I take an anti-anxiety medicine that helps with my ADHD and anxiety. I can talk to people now. I don’t constantly think about all the embarrassing things in my life anymore. I’ve finally been able to take initiative to leave bad situations and move towards things I want in life. I still have a lot of issues and maladaptive behavior I’m trying to unlearn, but I’m doing okay now. Life is a lot better. I moved in with my SO, I’m a dog step-parent, and I’m happier than I ever been.

I think I feel okay to write fic now. I’m not writing it for the same reasons. I’m writing it for the fun of it now.

What’s the deal with Blixa Bagna?

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you what the people really want to know. He was never supposed to be in any of my fics except for a few mentions here or there. However, someone was a dick to me once about putting an OC in my fic, so I decided that any time someone complained about Blixa or I saw a post complaining about OCs, I would simply put him in the fic more. Blixa’s not my self-insert actually because if he was my self-insert, he’d be with Tomoko instead of Risotto. He’s just a goth joke that got wildly out of hand and now he’s a blorbo from my head whose characterization changes a ton over the course of writing.

Anything else to share?

One of these days, I’m going to make an alternate account. It will have no ties to my main writing account. I will post the most batshit fic ever and leave. You’ll never know.

Anyway, there you go. Might wind up posting on this a lot, might only post a little. We’ll see.

[billowypantss]

WIP Tag Title

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips.

thank you for the tag @shywhitemoose !!!

babies (short obikin)

me or the galaxy (long obikin that i loved but probably will not have the motivation to write)

cow eyes (short tomgreg that i feel a little lost on. i had a plan but once i started writing everything changed but u know how it is! the characters just take over)

tom has a daughter + goes to prison arc (long tomgreg that i started literally yesterday but i actually love it)

probably the only one i’ll finish maybe is the tom has a daughter and goes to prison one and i PROMISE it’s more interesting than it sounds 😭😭 like i hate OCs and children as characters generally speaking but listen. listen it’s not really about the daughter. she’s there but it’s.,, it’s about so much more. and i’m going to make her the least annoying child ever i swear it

ps none of my obikins are like romantic obikin lol i just use that term to refer to their relationship in general! i don’t tend to write explicit romance ? i prefer the subtleties and such

okay this was fun!! tagging @nintenderniere @lowkeyanakin @kcat92 @lucasfilmz @calltomuster @i-dreamed-i-had-a-son ik that’s more than four but i feel like i haven’t interacted with a lot of my sw mutuals in a hot minute so hi guys! sorry i’m still on my succession shit! maybe when obi wan comes out i’ll be renewed lmao

[4thbrighteststar]

ok. second to last one. I feel strange doing this because I'm not even sure if I'll ever finish these, but I guess I have nothing to lose (and maybe this will even give me some motivation!), so:

@bandsanitizer and @cakes-curls tagged me for a WIP game!

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous

Send me an ask with the title that intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet or tell you something about it!

Tag as many people as you have WIP

the WIPs in question:

what am i doing liteally what am i doing (yes, no r. I didn't notice it. mind ur business)

this part is up to you right nowwwww

golden boy (nostalgia version)

hands

can't fuckin believe i'm doing this

okay! go wild! I'm not sure if any of us have the emotional energy to talk about writing in the midst of this barrage of content, but I'd actually love to see this circle again so let me tag: @daydadahlias, @calumthoodshands, @allsassnoclass, @clumsyclifford, @burstingsunrise if you wanna!

[mira--mira]

Question from an aspiring writer:

How do you stay motivated on one project for such a long time?

I personally have the attention span of a goldfish, and whenever I have an idea I either have to write down everything my brain can spew immediately or have it be lost in the void for eternity.

Never mind going back and turning my outline into a fic or gasp editing.

Do you have any tips and/or tricks you use?

Ok, I got completely carried away with this just fyi, but hopefully I ended up answering your actual question 😂 tl;dr at the bottom.

To be honest, staying motivated is a tricky thing, one that I feel I'm still learning how to do even now and varies a bit between shortfics/oneshots and multi-chaptered fics/longfics. For a bit of background, I've been writing fanfic for about a year and a half, but I've been writing original fiction since I was seven, over a decade and a half, and I still wrestle with it. It's definitely a learning process.

One thing I wish someone would have told me when I was starting out was the power of ~scenes~ in either multi-chapters or one-shots. All writing is ultimately made up of scenes, but if you're struggling to put things together, focusing on an individual scene, or multiple short scenes, might help you focus on getting something completed, and it's something that eventually can be applied to longer works as well. Writing has been a snowball process for me and once I started getting anything completed, I felt more secure in knowing what I could write comfortably and what was out of my comfort zone, eventually getting to the point where I felt comfortable tackling bigger and longer projects and knowing I could stay with them.

OoT's interlude chapters and the snippet series are both good examples of scenes because I wrote them with that intention...even if most of them are actually two or three scenes combined. "Gai meets Hashirama and Madara", "Hashirama gets revenge on Kakashi", "Tatsuki and Hashirama pick flowers for Madara, then give them to him" etc. were all my starting points.

If you're first starting out and feel comfortable with outlines of some sort before you start writing I would encourage you to try and write down a bullet point list of your scene(s) and what you know you want to happen in it.

"Gai meets Hashirama and Madara"

* Hashirama meets Gai first, mistakes him for Lee.

* Madara is shopping for a gift for Hashirama

* Madara finds Gai and Hashirama, they spar, Gai kicks his ass, both of them love him.

This is how my initial outline looked for the first interlude chapter, technically each one of these "points" are their own scenes stuck together. Outlining is different for everyone, some people like super specific points, others even less detail than this. For me this is a nice middle that gives me a roadmap for the chapter, but allows plenty of room to naturally diverge and add detail. Play around with outlines and see what you're comfortable with/what gives you the best results.

I'm not sure of your individual situation, but if you're struggling to put together fics in general something like this might help. Doing this process again and again personally helps me stay on track and gives me a sense of progress.

This sense of progress is ultimately key and why I think motivation differs slightly between one-shots/short fics and longfics. If you confine the individual scene to a one-shot, that might give you the motivation to complete it. Even if you start writing and you get interrupted/can't finish having in one setting, bullet points sometimes help inspire me to finish because I'm not starting from scratch when I return to writing. The whole "eat an elephant one piece at a time" thing was difficult for me to learn, but ultimately proved true. Learning to chip away at something bit by bit is going to be the only (healthy) way to write longer projects you can't complete in one sitting.

For longer projects, it's a similar beast just on bigger levels and with an added dimension. I would actually suggest something similar to OoT for a starting project because it is ultimately broken up into arcs that you know and can reference, instead of making a lot of og content for a fan setting. Maybe not go into it thinking, 'I'll do a complete rewrite' but once you feel like you're ready for a longer project 30K+ or so, the rough outline method and the ability to follow arcs was what got me started when I eventually decided to make the fic multi-chaptered. Try writing one arc and keep yourself contained in that. Now the added dimension aspect in general for longfics is that you eventually want to plot individual chapters in a multi-chaptered longfic and individual arcs (character, plot, etc). This comes with practice. I honestly don't think there's a way to get around that. It's something that I'm still trying to work on and I can look back at my early work and see how I've improved, how I can recognize where things didn't go well in certain places, and how I would change them if I was writing today. That's a good thing to be able to do, it means you've grown! The other thing I find that helps with staying motivated week after week for longer projects is to roughly know where you're going and to try to be excited about a plot point/scene/chapter/etc that you're going to write. Really try to hype yourself up. For me, it's a moment that comes at the very end of the chunin arc and I start grinning even thinking about it because I know it's going to be awesome. It's always what gets me through the rough days, imagining the moment I'll get to actually write that scene in its entirety (it's definitely already outlined and I mentally play it out at least twice a week lol) and is a big motivating drive.

So far I think this is pretty standard stuff if you're an outliner and you've been writing for a few years, but the other thing motivational-wise for me is having a schedule. From reading this message alone, I would not suggest it for you right away. Get comfortable finishing small things and feeling confident that if you let an idea sit for a week or two, you can pick it back up and continue. But if you eventually dip your toes into longfics (and don't plan to pre-write everything before you publish) that routine and rhythm really helps keep me going. I've made a commitment, I've posted it online, I'm going to stick to it. No one is going to jump down my throat if I fail to keep it (this is still a hobby and having fun is the most important thing) but in my mind I should commit to it unless something irl prevents me from doing so. Don't put a tight deadline on yourself, I'd start with once a month or if you write shorter chapters every three weeks. This also would help you build up and get a readership, interaction being another big motivational key.

Also, it's important to accept that sometimes you bite off more than you can chew, and when you feel completely demotivated from a fanfic project...it's okay to drop it. It's okay to take a step back and work on something else. Maybe you'll come back to it, maybe you won't. If you can, try to pinpoint what it was about that project that made you demotivated, were you pushing yourself too much and you got burnt out, was it an ongoing series and your interest for canon lagged and so did the fic, was it just too stressful to keep juggling plotpoints, etc. and keep that in mind moving forward. Every experience can be a learning one and eventually make you a better writer that can eventually tackle those bigger projects. Don't be afraid to take on big aspirational projects, but don't walk into them blind either. Above all, and this is repeated a lot because it's true, enjoy what you write. Some days you might not. That's true with anything, but any project you take on the good should outweigh the bad.

This is my wrap up of the motivational section but I also wanted to throw my two-cents in about editing because "oh no editing" is a perspective I've seen from a lot of writers, and used to have myself, but I think is going to stifle your progress in the long run.

Here's the thing: you need to look forward to editing.

You don't have to be jumping for joy, but editing, imo, should be a positive thing. You have all these great ideas, you made it into a fic, something you wrote, and now you get to go back and make it even better! This is a tough attitude to adopt. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It took me a long time to unlearn the negative attitude and even then sometimes I still wish the editing was already done once I type in the last period. But I've learned to at least appreciate what editing does and I try to think to myself as I'm going through and making changes things like "wow, this suddenly became so much better. X plot point that I thought of ten pages from now is suddenly being hinted at and doesn't come out of left field. The transition points are a lot cleaner, it's not so jarring anymore. I bet the readers are going to love this little detail. Here's some foreshadowing that I hope someone picks up bc it's going to come back in like 5 chapters from now" it's hard, especially when you start, but this is something you made, and now are actively making better and that's something to celebrate.

I hope this helps anon! I know it's a lot and I'm by no means an expert but I've been doing this for more than a decade because I love it and I want to help others get into writing to! I have no problem answering any writing questions you may have if you find this helpful!

tl;dr

-motivation is slightly different between short/long fics.

-starting out, learn to outline by scenes and focus on finishing small projects and getting to a point where you feel like you can put something down and come back and pick it up again in a week. Completion is key and will help you feel satisfied/know your limits.

-long projects also can work on the scene-to-scene outline but now with individual chapters and individual arcs. It's tough to balance both but comes with practice. Bit-by-bit is key, as is having 'one moment you can't wait to write', possibly a schedule if it works for you, and reader feedback are all huge long-term motivational points.

-editing is tough but learn to look forward to it instead of dreading it.

edited: added a bit more/few typos fixed

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

A day late, but ah well...

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

So, yeah, what’s on your mind?

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

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

PodTogether 2021:

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

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

Precipice:

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

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

AtLA Fic:

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

Other Fic Projects:

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

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

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

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

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

Original Fic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaser for BSG1 AU outline, as promised:

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

Just. Y’know. A normal mission.

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

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

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

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

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

The wormhole disengages.

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

And then the moment end and absolute chaos erupts.

[azzie-1129]

Answering Questions

1. Favorite place to write.

In my room or outside (Fall/Spring weather)

2. Favorite part of writing.

The things that make me laugh, the love I feel for the characters as I write.

3. Least favorite part of writing.

The time it takes, but I know “quality over quantity” is key, and the better quality my things are, it doesn’t matter how fast or how much I post.

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

I like to take a deep breath before I write, and I also like to think about what I’m going to write, think, and listen to music while doing so.

5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most.

There are tons of Wattpad users, especially the created of “The Marauders” series years 1-7, and beyond.

6. Favorite character you ever created.

My current OC Valorine, even though she’s the only one I’ve ever created. But they’ll always be my favorite because they’re my first.

7. Favorite author.

That’s a hard one… I would say JKR but… ya know. So I’d say any author that writes/has written fantasy’s about other realities.

8. Favorite trope to write.

Any Marauders Headcanon ever!!

9. Least favorite trope to write.

Any SHIP that is TOXIC ; (ex. Snily, Hermione/Snape)

10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about.

Oh goodness… I’d love to write a book with Stephen King! That would be so awesome! I’d think we’d write about a whole other fantasy, and create new creatures with weird names. Something “out of this world”.

11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

It all starts with an idea, that idea branches off as you gather background, more things to go off of, relationships you want to build, when properties you want in your book, heroes, villains, bystanders, etc. Those branches have leaves that go even further into detail, and reach that plot even further! Those leaves fall off one by one, symbolizing those leaves coming together with other leaves from other trees, intertwining other ideas.

In the end, the ideas from this plot are what bring the characters together, and set the story I stone.

12. How do you deal with self-doubts?

I read… yeah sounds stupid, but reading other stories helps me get ideas on how to make mine better, and how I get more and more ideas for my own writings.

13. How do you deal with writers block?

I write, I get an idea in my head, and just write on a separate platform, that gets me going. Pushing myself through a block helps me get past it because I know if I don’t, I’ll never get back into writing.

14. What’s the most research you ever put into a book?

Pft… my first and only one obvi. I’ve done research for names, animal meanings, how to ACTUALLY describe things, all of it.

15. Where does your inspiration come from?

Harry Potter books, Wattpad, anything that had headcanons, etc.

16. Where do you take your motivation from?

I take my motivation from others writing. Seeing the different pictures and scenes in my head gets my creative juices flowing.

17. On avarage, how much writing do you get done in a day?

It really depends on the day. Some days I can get a whole 2,000 - 6,000 words in, others I don’t get any. It just depends on how I’m feeling, and the ideas I have.

18. What’s your revision or rewriting process like?

Reading my own chapters myself. Seeing if it makes sense in my head, and seeing if I can maybe reword my phrasing, or even come up with different synonyms for words.

19. First line of a WIP you’re working on.

“‘Val! Lily! Are you girls almost ready?’ Mrs. Evans says from the kitchen.”

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

"No, of course not, it was you who didn't read that the Nettle doesn't like the same trick twice in a row. It knew what you were doing." Valorine replied for Mary. Everyone turned to her, and looked amazed. "What? I read a little further in the book. Just wanted to make sure before we all got a turn." Valorine explained.

21. Post the last sentence you wrote in one of your WIP’s.

HEY! That’s enough spoilers 😂

22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you?

… well… um… moving on

23. Single or multi POV, and why?

… no… I like to do my stories in 3rd Person Omniscient. Meaning that the “Narrator” knows everything. Meaning that it doesn’t matter if I’m writing for one group, or the other, I write almost what everyone is doing / what they know.

24. Poetry or prose, and why?

Prose. Although I do love good poetry, it can be hard to read sometimes.

25. Linear or non-linear, and why?

Linear… I get unorganized with non.

26. Standalone or series, and why?

It really depends on what the book is. I love a good series, but I would also be fine with just a stand-alone.

27. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished?

I personally like to wait until I have them all polished. And start posting on a regularly schedule, that way people don’t have to wait for the next part for months, because I know that I hate that.

28. And who do you share them with?

No… heh

29. Who do you write for?

Myself, but also for the purpose of others LIKE me.

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

… not sure yet…

31. Hardest character to write.

OC’a for sure

32. Easiest character to write.

Sirius Black and James Potter… but at the same time not

33. Do you listen to music when you’re writing?

Sometimes. Sometimes it’s a show I watch, sometimes it’s a movie… whatever I feel like. Heh…

34. Handwritten notes or typed notes?

Yes…

35. Tell some backstory details about one of your characters in your story ________.

My OC… they have a silver eye, and a brown eye. They also have a scar, going from their left eyebrow, down towards their left cheek. Right through the eye. They have some vision, but not a lot…

36. A spoiler for story _________.

… hehe… redemption… hard core… redemption.

37. Most inspirational quote you’ve ever read or heard that’s still important to you.

Not sure yet

38. Have you shared your outline of your story ________ with someone? If so, what did they think of it?

No actually… none of my friends are interested in what I have to write. They just aren’t into the same things I am.

39. Do you base your characters of real people or not? If so, tell us about one.

Yeah… one of my OC’s are based personality wise off of me.

40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why?

Fan-fiction. I love to see how others portray certain characters

41. How many stories do you work on at one time?

1…

42. How do you figure out your characters looks, personality, etc.

… videos… reading… myself… people I see at school.

43. Are you an avid reader?

Eh?

44. Best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.

How to fix my comma problem… my English 1 Teacher in 8th grade gave me a sheet… (I’m a Junior now 😂 (11th)).

45. Worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.

None… yet

46. What would your story _______ look like as a tv show or movie?

I’m not sure…

47. Do you start with characters or plot when working on a new story?

Characters… but also the plot… they kind-of come to me as I start working on one thing. But I can’t get an idea if I do t have inspiration.

48. Favorite genre to write in.

Fantasy / Magical

49. What do you find the hardest to write in a story, the beginning, the middle or the end?

Beginning, because you have to introduce everyone. You never know who could be reading, so you want to make sure they feel like an insider, not an outsider.

50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.

… uhh… I have no idea.

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words.

A whole bunch of chaos

52. How did writing change you?

… I got more creative with my life. Helps me see the different aspects, and helped me realize what’s outside my house.

53. What does writing mean to you?

Means it’s a place to escape. I can’t be in my own little world for hours on end.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Share what you have out there. It may not go viral at first. But it will get there. Never give up on your writing, and it will help you achieve what you want in life.

[quijotesca]

I sometimes wonder if I should post this weird NWS Samurai Jack fanfic I started a while ago that was based on an overly detailed dream I had. Looking at the project, it's a bit more fragmented and rough than I remember it being. I'm not sure I'll ever do anything with it. I was having fun taking the wonky dream logic shit at face value so maybe someday?

Post got rambly.I t’s about boring worldbuilding more than anything NWS. Sorry!

If I were ever to finish it, it’d probably be the best fucking fanfic about Jack ending up in a polyamorous relationship with some people he met in an underground city and that’s all it fucking is. I actually liked the characters a lot, but the whole thing wasn’t amazing enough that I’d ever work it into original fiction.

There was worldbuilding, albeit nothing super complicated. In fact, that was the fucking point: Because of dream shit, the people in the city practiced what’s essentially some weird form of folk Catholicism involving science. (???) Kinda fun, but it meant that I had to at least attempt to explain why Catholicism existed. So he core idea was that Aku was more motivated by petty grudges (such as the one kicking off the story) than a desire for actual conquest. I am not even going to speculate as to if Jesus actually existed because it doesn’t fucking matter. The point is, Aku apparently didn’t have enough of a beef with the Pope to shut  Catholicism down immediately. He might’ve at some point because I’m pretty sure I implied that there wasn’t a central Catholic church anymore. It’s hard to say because it’s also the distant future, so a number of things could’ve happened.

The world building was a tiny bit more complicated than that, so I might .cannibalize aspects for other projects. (No weird Catholic stuff) Unfortunately, I had to rediscover a snippet of something that i thought was really good so...yup, I guess I haven’t given up on that yet. Fuck.

[masonscig]

fic author commentary

thanks for the tag @hartfeld! i’m honestly really flattered to get asked considering i’m absolutely not a consistent writer for this fandom KSDJGHDSKSD sorry in advance that this is long! i talk a lot LMAO

so to preface, the series i started months ago (attached series) is on hiatus until i stop hating everything i’m writing SKDFKSD i do have the general stuff mapped out and a choose your own ending planned so i’ll get to it eventually but anyways, to the questions!

i was fascinated with the love triangle route, but i’d never played it – i got to thinking, what if there was something similar but for the other stark opposites in the group, mason and felix? they’re both near and dear to me for completely different reasons, and tbh before i created my second detective, mentally i was trying to force sofía to choose so the idea just came out of my own inner conflict LMAO

so, there’s a line of dialogue that i haven’t posted yet that i’ve been saving for something special, like The Moment that sofía reveals her feelings to mason, and it kinda haunts me ngl SJKDFKSFD i’m going to include it, because... truth be told i’m not quite sure if i’ll ever finish the attached series and if i do, it’ll be a while from now:

“You just chew me up and spit me out every time you fuck me, like you don’t know my heart doesn’t fucking break every time I wake up and you’re not there.” (sofía to mason)

i actually wrote a snippet of an argument from part two – the part where she calls mason out for being jealous – and then kinda built that part around it! honestly i write pretty linearly, as in if i get to a part that stumps me i literally can’t maneuver around it which can be really frustrating when you have SO many ideas but can’t complete them SKDFJKSDF

an image i can’t get out of my mind is a little nsfw LMAO i just can’t stop thinking about the boinking that’ll ensue after everything’s cleared up – i get to write two endings and best believe i’m excited to have some parallels :-)

oh yeah i had the idea and then told some of my friends about it, they said “DO IT” and... yea here we are LMFAOOO

honestly the root of attached was the idea that i’ve always wanted sofía to deviate a bit from canon in her relationship with mason – she thinks she can handle casual sex, but she ends up catching feelings and has to end it with him despite how much she’s grown to like him. and he knows he feels something for her too, but instead he shoves it down and is nonchalant about the “break up” (which can i just pat myself on the back for predicting some mason bakery scene behaviors? ok nice nice patting myself rn SKJDFJKSDF). in canon she’s just gonna be sad and cope on her own, but in attached i explore the idea that felix is there to pick up the pieces! anyways i just like the idea of being able to shift routes despite being a bit farther in (bc we can’t do that in canon) anyways!!! sorry to ramble LMFAO i’m done i promise!!!

tagging:

@raleighcarrera for backflip

@masonsfangs for t-shirt weather

@crackerdumortain for echoes in the forest

[i’m sorry if i’ve missed people!!! i kinda blank when it comes to tagging people]

the questions:

recently I have become really fascinated with fanfic authors and what exactly was rumbling around in their brain that inspired a fic?

was it a line of dialogue you couldn’t get out of your head?

a scene you wrote WAY in advance and then crafted the whole story around?

an image in your mind?

inspiration from another form of media?

maybe someone suggested something to you and it just TOOK off from there?

what is the root of your fic? the cornerstone -what is it all built around? the idea that started it all?

tag an author & their fic. let’s hear about what sparked your story. what exactly got your booty movin’ shakin’ motivated and writin’

[miharou]

'aight, here we go~ I take 3, 9, 10, 14, 24, 29, 44 please. Wanted to ask so many, but narrowed it down to this LOL

Oh boyy, some of these are really hard to answer! :D Thanks for asking!

3. Favourite AU?

College AU, Cafe/Flower shop AU. And Mafia Au!

9. Favourite fanfiction author?

I used to read TONS of fics before, but like for the past three years I’ve read very little... Right now I really don’t have any fav authors, when I read something these days I just wish it’s good. I’m sad I can’t answer this :(

10. Origin of your username?

When I was a teenager and got into Japan stuff, I wanted to have a “Japanese version of my name” and it was Miharu by some name generator, but it was taken on many sites so I tried Miharo, but that too was also taken on many sites, so that then turned into Miharou. This was like...15 years ago, oh my god, I am old. But since then Miharo(u) has kinda sticked with me on many sites.

14. What's your most 'underrated' work? 

I will say “A life with you”. I’m actually very fond of it, and it was the first TianShan fic I released, but somehow it seems like people don’t mind it that much, it’s gotten a bit more attention lately but for the longest of time it was my least read fic which I was very sad for. I was very into in the idea of TianShan Mafia AU at the time and wanted to write about it.

24. How many unfinished works are in your drafts?

Zero! Why? About a year ago my old laptop broke down, and for some unknown reason I hadn’t saved my files for over 1,5year anywhere else than my laptop, so I think I lost like..2 or 3 wips back them. But tbh, I really hated all of them, I would have never finished them, so I don’t really care that I lost them. I had actually written “want me more” chapter 2 back then already, and it was very, very different. I hadn’t released it because it wasn’t finished and because I really disliked, but I didn’t have any motivation to re-write it. So I was kinda relevied it was gone, so I could start the 2nd chapter from a blank canvas, and the new version turned out so much better! I do have some outlines writter for Want me more 4th chapter, but that’s about it.

29. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Music, lyrics, paragraphs that I see somewhere, art, nature, other people’s fics also give me some inspiration... and let’s not forget comments!

44. Share a snippet of your current WIP? 

No wips ;-;

I’ll answer these on the same post as it was commented on the post! Thank you!

handsomechickendick

@miharou

2,4,8,25 ☺️ please?

2. Favourite character?

Hmmmm, this is hard. If I think about the characters I write, then Guan Shan, because writing him comes easily.

4. Favourite pairing?

TianShan, 2B/9S, KiddxLaw, PromptoxCindy, those four are my main favs for a long time. I do love ZhanYi as well, and at times I particularly want to read only about them!

8. Favourite fic from another author?

Like I answered on question 9, I haven’t read a lot lately, and I haven’t really taken good use of favs in AO3 at all (it’s empty in there ;-;), and I only joined there when I started writing my own fics. It’s too bad you can’t see anywhere where you’ve commented yourself on AO3 so maybe then I’d have some recs easily to find... ^^;

25. A neglected work you wished you would finish?

Want me more!!

[clansayeed]

Hey Jack! I wanted to know what your thoughts are on Rheya. Was she really a villain to you? Were her motives justifiable? Was she a good villain? Did you think she deserved to have a redemption arc in chapter 16? What could have been written to make her have a better character story? Any thoughts at all about Rheya!

FOREWARNING: Anon... I accidentally wrote you a 2500 word essay. I shit you not this thing is 2,528 words long. So... I don’t know whether to say you’re welcome or I’m sorry. Just letting you know in advance.

ADD-ON POST-POSTING: I’m fully aware this is an app game. A three book series written with sexying vampires in mind. Where the medium is limited both size and content-wise, where you can’t go into much detail because they can only have so many panels in a chapter, etc. Still thinking what I think though. And if you get paid to create content professionally the least you can do for your own paycheck is go back and double-check your work.

Actually this ask came at a good time since I have to work on some character motivations for her for my series... and I always break down the in-canon versions before working on my own. So anon, let’s talk... are you a mind reader?

Kidding! mostly

So. Rheya.

I actually just finished my first replay of book 2 and at the moment I’ve only ever played book 3 the once. I played it as it was releasing so there were some memory gaps in some places and needed-refreshers in others. But on a whole I have similar thoughts about Rheya as I do Xenocrates, and you can find those thoughts here.

Overall she was a solid setup, good design and potential, and PB pretty much wasted her execution.

I wanna start with a genuine question to the fandom since I’ve never actually been able to ask this... but y’all like... totally saw the Bloodkeeper being related to her coming, right? Like I was so convinced of it that when it was revealed in some big dramatic point at the end I was like “yeah... they told us this...?” and it turns out they fuckin didn’t??? Like I could not understand the people who were like super into her sprite like yes she looks good but here I was thinking she was our ancestor from the get-go so I was... confused to say the least.

Not gonna lie when they started pushing in snippets of Rheya’s past trauma in book 2 (things like her yelling “you know what they did to me/took from me” which is paraphrased but you know what I mean) I really hoped they weren’t gonna do what they did. So of course they did it.

But I wish they’d like... just given her the kid. Just give her Iola and leave the weird suddenly random husband out of it. At this point we know Gaius has an unhealthy idolatry for her, we know Xenocrates adored her in his own way in his youth... but we know fuckall about Demetrius up to and including his existence until literally book 3. Sloppy, IMO. They took something not being mentioned and used it to put in a plot device when the omission should have been strategical.

TBH I thought the whole “you know what they did to me” was gonna get hella dark RE: Rheya and King Kaelisus’ obsession with her. That’s as far as I’ll go there.

But you have a Priestess, a known Priestess, who was definitely faithful enough not to stray even when she thought she was walking to her own death. It’s pretty easy to assume (as I did ngl) that she would be completely devoted to Phampira, including romantically/sexually. It would have been a good setup to explain why she never gave Gaius the goods if anything.

And there’s nothing wrong with having said Priestess have her own family while still being devoted. I just wish PB would have used some fucking forethought and hinted at that earlier on than they did. Because they didn’t hint. They dropped this random fisherman-something husband on us and told us she cared enough about his opinion to make him part of her advisory board but not... to like... mention him in any of her conversations in any of the flashbacks... including those in which he would have been alive.

On that note the whole timeline there is really messy, they obviously threw him and Iola in later on after some things were established/couldn’t be taken back. I’ve studied this shit extensively and it’s really muddled exactly how long Rheya ruled, when shit went down with her family, how much time had passed when Xenocrates staked her, etc.

I would have loved for Iola’s father not to have been there. Give me a strong woman, a strong single mother, who would burn the world for the loss of her daughter. Doesn’t matter who did the deed, Iola was hers and the Sons/Order took that from her and the world would have to pay the price.

If I had been given that I would end all of my complaints right here. I would, genuinely. Because then her descent into madness, her paranoia, her megalomania would all have been explained. And they still technically are but -- maybe it’s just me -- there’s something about her having to factor in Demetrius that just... takes me out of it. IDK.

I didn’t mind the guy... though him being a talking tree of doom was a little much for me... though by that point I had accepted the plot was off the goddamn rails and just kept nodding and going with it. But his presence made the story okay when his absence could have made the story impactful and powerful and emotional. That’s just my thoughts. Which you asked for. You did this.

No takesies-backsies.

Was she a villain? Hells to the yes.

It’s a classic case of obtaining ultimate power and abusing it; of crossing the line between justice and vengeance. Not that she wasn’t justified in her freak-out over the death of her family. But everything after up to and including her fatal feeding schedule was totally unnecessary. For a villain, yes necessary. 

For a vampire goddess who could have easily used Gaius’ influence over the vampires of the modern world to form a cult following around herself with an open dialogue about her big ass appetite and probably would have ended up with swaths of willing adorers ready to lend their blood to her cause thus eliminating the need for secrecy and subsequent feeling of betrayal...

You tell me.

I feel like she was definitely more than a little hyped up though. Not even going into my whole-ass issue with the entire Unchained plot and thus the first like 4-5 chapters of book 3, she was hyped up in myth and kind of a let down in person. She could FLY. Walk in the SUN. Heal the DYING. She’s vampire JESUS.

*ADDED IN LATER: She took out THE ENTIRE ORDER OF THE DAWN, WHO HAVE RAVAGED THE VAMPIRE POPULATION FOR LITERALLY 3000 YEARS since they were around in her time after all IN LIKE A THREE-MOVE COMBO BREAK. ALL THIS SHIT THEY HYPED WITH THE ORDER and their entire ERADICATION isn’t even an ON-SCREEN THING. Unless you pay.

Dude if they had kept Xenocrates and the Order and used the two of them against each other; the Order’s long-standing influence on the modern world versus the new world Rheya wanted to create with the human populations not knowing the history behind their hatred, where like the first half of the book is Rheya and MC and gang taking out the Order and Xenocrates only to find out in the middle point that she’s been doing it for selfish reasons and they were on the wrong team the whole time and THEN Rheya becomes the big bad... I would have enjoyed the shit out of that.

Anyway. “She’s vampire JESUS...” and her big evil plan is to... suck face on national television? IDK. It didn’t play the mood right for me. I can see from a writer’s perspective how they kind of played out all of their options and went with a quick and easy solution... but it didn’t work for me. That’s a no from me dawg.

Do I think she deserved a redemption arc? I don’t think anybody deserved a god damn redemption arc, unless they are done with extreme care and attention to detail before/during/after said arc they go horribly, and overall tend to be the plot device pick of lazy writers.

And I take nothing back. No like I think I might have gone into how much I fucking hated Gaius’ “reDEmPtiON aRc” before or at least I have somewhere and to someone. Probably Sofia... no most definitely Sofia. But anyway. They spend TWO GOD DAMN BOOKS hyping Gaius as this ultimately irredeemable bad guy. 

OMG I was literally playing the book 2 finale and got a quote hold on... HERE. Adrian literally says about Gaius in 2.16 “It’s like there’s no humanity left.” And that’s just one actual example of the tons of times they make him out to be devoted to Rheya of his own volition, the ultimate example of the line between believing in something and being blinded to everything by it, etc. Like a huge chunk of Kamilah’s and Adrian’s arcs RE: Gaius are about how he was definitely a monster, he turns the people around him into monsters, and while they have worked their asses off to be good and right their wrongs he has not, will not, and would not ever do such a thing.

Then suddenly he’s brainwashed, tried to turn Rheya down and was made into a loony toon because of it, and everything he made MC’s loved ones do that they blamed themselves for but needed to blame him for is suddenly Rheya’s fault and now we should blame her for.

Mmmmmkay sweetie. I’m good, thanks.

But really -- that was the last straw for me when it came to both Gaius and Rheya. There’s a difference between giving the villain something they see as a just cause (ex. Rheya avenging her family) and giving the villain a cop-out that absolves them of guilt (ex. Gaius and... everything about him). Like yes I know MC didn’t have to forgive him, I know Kamilah didn’t really forgive him, but it’s pretty fuckin obvious from how it was put out into the world story that the writers were trying to lean you towards blaming Rheya and letting Gaius off the hook.

I mean... making him save Lula for real when Rheya saved her for fake earlier on in the book, using Lula as a stand-in metaphor for her own child daughter that she finds out she was the cause of her death for, etc? That symbolism is so transparent I could put it in the asset database.

And I’ll only briefly touch on this since I could write a whole other essay on the matter RE: PB and their fucking constant repetition of this, but “let’s give both bad guys similar moral quandaries but suddenly reveal it was a consent issue and the woman is wholly to blame and now gets the man’s crimes piled on with her own” is super common in fiction and hella. fucking. sexist.

But that isn’t to say all of this is necessarily bad.

When done right, everything I’ve complained about above can be a part of a really good story. What “done right” means is different for everyone, everyone has a different example and different thoughts on it. These are mine. I think the better term would be done well. It was not done WELL.

But given things like PB’s weird obsession with redeeming the attractive (apparently) bad guy, PB’s history with narrowing a woman down to one trait or part of her (ex. Rheya’s power corruption centered around her role as a wife and mother and not... a super all powerful vampire goddess...), their obvious lack of attention to detail and overall lack of vision when it comes to the big picture* and more, I personally don’t think they knew what the fuck they wanted by book 3 and were already well into transitioning into whatever adultery-obsessed lingerie shenanery they’re fixated on now; so much so that it’s almost a disservice to the writing done in earlier book 1 and a decent chunk of book 2 when calling it a whole series.

*I keep bringing this up only because it means I can back up stuff like this with real examples of theirs: these guys did not write the plot of this series as a cohesive story. I get that, as a writer writing a big series myself I get the fuck out of that. But you have to solidify some things early on in the development process in order to avoid writing yourself into a hole or, like with this, having to result in trope-y plot devices that work in theory but on paper don’t give the story the full-circle fulfillment it deserves. 

Their timelines are out of whack, they contradict themselves in quite a few places, constantly wishy-washy their own lore, and definitely didn’t go back and double check if they’d said something already... and that’s not including where they focused on the details of one unimportant thing and left another more important thing to just be “and this is the way it is moving on.”

I literally have no way/idea how to summarize any of this bullshittery going on in this ask. Did I like Rheya? The character personality, design, and overall idea as this big ass badass power/hungry goddess demanding fealty was pretty cool. Did I like Rheya when they narrowed her story down to her grief over her family (which, again, is valid, but just seemed really disjointed and rushed when compared to everything else they had given about her/shown of her by the beginning of book 3)? Not... as much.

I think they wanted her to seem like she could be redeemed. I mean FFS in the “big battle” she literally just stands there and lets you do the thing. 3000 years imprisoned and however many centuries before that spent taking the power that she was denied all because some bad dudes in masks killed the mortal husband and daughter you would have eventually lost to old age anyway...? And she just stands there??? 

Even knowing she was really behind Iola’s death they could have stuck with the “madness consumed” plotline and had her be like well... what’s done is done back to taking over now thank you.

But sometimes a bad guy just has to be a bad guy. Rourke from ES, mister capitalism -- can’t remember them trying to redeem him. If they had I don’t think I would have liked it so much. Who else... UGH. Thomas in NB. Crazy zombie man wants all monsters dead because one killed his family (can we stop using dead families for grief porn please and thanks...) another example of a useless villain. Hence why I removed him from my NB rewrite don’t even get me going...

What’s his face in TCATF! Luther! You join up with him and he still tries to kill you in the end! Now that was fucking classic. Hex, who suddenly is forgiven for the literal enslavement of a race of people and the thoughtless murder of a civilization that didn’t agree with her.. and all because she was ‘like a mother’ to the kid genius? Not so much.

I could go on and on and go search out tons of examples but in the end the one thing you can say PB does well is that they stay consistent in their ideas of redemption, of who deserves it and who isn’t, and just how far they’re willing to stretch the fucking story to forgive a character if 1. the sprite is hot or 2. the sprite had a little sprite family somewhere in there.

legit just talk to me about bb/nb

[asilentguardian]

nobody tagged me but I'm doing it anyways.

rules: post the file names of all the files in your wip folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous the name. send me an ask with the title that intrigues you the most and i’ll post a little snippet or tell you something about it! tag as many people as you have wips.

autistic bruce

?????

clark kent is a meddler

Hal go grrr

old wounds

truth

some of these have been in my wip folder for like two months. maybe this will motivate me to actually finish them.

(obligatory I don't want to tag anyone so pretend I tagged you if you want to do this)

[fieryanmitsu]

Intertwined Roots | ch. 8 - “laughter” | A3! AU

Ahhhhh!! It’s been almost a month since I last updated “Intertwined Roots” and I’m so glad to be back!! I still have to finish up my Rare Pair Week entries, but I really wanted to come back to my babies, so decided to squeeze in an update here first!

We’ve finally reached the chapter where all four kiddos meet!! This was a moment I was greatly anticipating, so I hope you’ll enjoy this chapter!

Tag list: @azamitmg​

“Intertwined Roots” is an A3! alternate universe series where Izumi, Itaru, Tsumugi and Tasuku grow up as childhood friends.

For the summary, background and notes about the “Intertwined Roots” universe, along with more chapters, please refer to the “Intertwined Roots” Masterpost.

Masterpost for my other fanfiction: here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu!

INTERTWINED ROOTS – ch. 8

“laughter” | spring | Tsumugi (age 5), Tasuku (age 5), Itaru (age 5) & Izumi (age 4)

Itaru’s stomach was in knots. He had never been more nervous in his life.

“I-Izumi… Wh-What if they don’t like me?” Itaru asked quietly, his hands wringing the edge of his shirt.

“Course they’ll like you!” Izumi declared. “They’re my bestest friends, and you’re my bestest friend now, too! So, we’re all friends!”

“Umm, I… I don’t think… that’s how it works,” the brown-haired boy murmured, confused by her logic.

It had only been a few days since he’d met Izumi, but it had been a life-changing experience for the bespectacled boy. No matter how awkward or quiet he was, the energetic girl never seemed to mind – rather, she somehow continued the conversation even without his responses. She also didn’t laugh at how bad he was at climbing the jungle gym – always cheering him on instead of leaving him behind. Even when he won all of their games, rather than getting upset at his constant victories, she’d challenge him to another round with even more determination than before.

And, now that he had a taste of what it was like to have a friend, he feared losing her.

Izumi often talked about her two other friends, Tsumu and Tachan. She said that they were her best friends and that they were lots of fun – even though Tachan was a baldie butthead sometimes. The girl had been ecstatic to introduce him to them once they returned from their Golden Week visit to some out-of-town family members.

However, rather than feeling anticipation at meeting them, Itaru only felt dread. If Tsumu and Tachan didn’t like him, just like most of the other kids he’d met, would that mean he couldn’t play with Izumi anymore? The thought made his throat tighten.

“Oh, look! They’re here!” Izumi exclaimed, waving both of her arms above her head at three oncoming figures.

“Izuuuumiiii!!” a blue-haired boy yelled back. Beside him, a taller boy with hair shaved short to his head waved an arm back. Trailing behind them was an older boy with dark hair.

Itaru wished he could prepare himself better, but, before he knew it, the two younger boys were running towards them.

Izumi immediately threw herself at the blue-haired boy, hugging him tight.

“I missed you, Tsumu!”

“Me, too!” Tsumugi replied with a giggle.

“Hey, how come I don’t get anything!” Tasuku demanded.

Izumi turned her head towards Tasuku and stuck her tongue out at him. Itaru could see the taller boy’s eyebrows raise and, a second later, Tasuku smirked and jabbed Izumi in the ribs with his fingers. Izumi squealed and lunged at him, trying to jab him back, but the boy just danced away. With a yell of protest, Izumi chased after his retreating figure.

Itaru’s head was spinning and he dropped his gaze to look at his feet. He thought he might be feeling sick.

Then, suddenly, his vision was filled with yellow.

“This is for you!” a soft voice chirped.

Itaru looked up from the small bouquet of big, yellow daisies and came face-to-face with Tsumugi.

“F-For me?” Itaru asked uncertainly.

“Yeah! My grandma grew them! She said that the yellow ones are for friends!” the boy chattered excitedly. “So, umm, my name’s Tsumugi! Will you please be my friend?”

Itaru was thunderstruck. His gaze flickered down from Tsumugi’s shy smile to the flowers clutched in his hand, not quite believing that a second person – in the span of less than a week – was asking to be his friend.

After a long second, Itaru finally reached out and slowly took the bright yellow flowers from Tsumugi’s unwavering hand. He gentle fingered one of the petals – they were velvety and soft.

“Yay! Let’s play together lots, okay, Itaru?” Tsumugi said with a bright smile.

“H-How did you know my name?” Itaru asked, surprised.

“Izumi talked lots about you when we played yesterday,” Tsumugi responded.

Then, a whirlwind of brown hair flew past them and Izumi was suddenly behind Itaru, clutching onto his shoulders.

“You’re so mean, Tachan – my hair’s all messy now!” Izumi exclaimed with a pout. “You better not be mean to Itaru or I’ll beat you up!”

Itaru’s eyes flickered up to stare at Tasuku, who had come to stand beside Tsumugi.

“So, you’re Itaru, right?” the taller boy asked. “I’m Tasuku.”

Maybe it was because Itaru was taken aback by Tasuku’s size – being much bigger than Tsumugi and himself – but, instead of saying ‘nice to meet you’, like he had been taught by his parents, Itaru blurted something out instead.

“There’s no way you can beat him up, Izumi. He’s huge.”

“Wh-What?! I-I so can!” Izumi protested, stomping her feet. “Just watch!”

The girl then launched herself at Tasuku and headbutted him in the stomach. The movement took the taller boy by surprise and he yelped as he was knocked onto his behind. Izumi, unable to stop her momentum, promptly toppled over him.

A part of Itaru was alarmed at what had just happened, but another part of him found the entire situation – a tiny girl barrelling into someone a full head taller than her – so absurd that it was hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that a laugh ripped itself out of Itaru’s throat and he was practically doubled over as giggles wracked his body.

“H-Hey! You’re laughing!” Izumi gasped.

Realizing that he was being called out, Itaru calmed himself immediately, nudging his glasses up to wipe his eyes with one hand.

“S-Sorry,” he apologized, suddenly nervous that maybe he shouldn’t have laughed. Was she mad?

“B-But…” Izumi’s eyebrows furrowed, and her cheeks puffed out. “You didn’t even laugh at my funny faces yesterday!!”

Itaru distinctly remembered the ‘funny faces’ she was talking about. He wasn’t sure how to tell her that they hadn’t been funny.

“Here, try again!! I’ll definitely make you laugh this time!”

Izumi then squished her face between her hands and puckered out her lips while rolling her eyes.

From beside him, Tsumugi burst into giggles. Itaru, on the other hand, could only tilt his head. It looked weird, but not quite funny.

“You look like a demon,” Tasuku remarked dryly.

Itaru clapped his hand over his mouth as he let out a snort.

“HEY!”

And there we have it!! Our babies are all together now!! I didn’t originally imagine that I would keep things chronological for so long, but I ended up really wanting to set up the foundation of how they all met before I jumped around! I’ve got one more chronological chapter left after this one to “wrap up” what I’d consider their first meetings, so to say.

After that, I plan to post non-chronological snippets from various times of their lives in no particular order. I’ll note that, timeline-wise, this fic series will only cover their “childhood” (i.e. up until Izumi and Itaru’s high school graduation).

I already have a pool of ideas, but I don’t actually have a preference for the order in which to write them. SO… I’d like to ask all of you awesome readers for opinions! Hearing everyone’s feedback on the chapters so far has been so motivating for me and I’m so happy that there’s people out there who love this series that I’ve put together! As my way of giving back, I’d like to open “requests” for the upcoming chapters!

How it’ll work is that you can request any “set” of characters (any combination of two, three or all four of our main characters) and then just let me know which age range you’d like to see (preschool/elementary age, middle school age or high school age). So, if there’s any particular interaction/combination of characters you’d like to see, please drop a comment/ask (anon asks are enabled!) with something like “Itaru and Tasuku, high school age” and I’ll write the next chapters in order of requests that I receive!

When I run out of requests to line up, I may open them up again, or do something different to decide what comes out next!!

Thanks so much for your support so far and I look forward to hearing from all of you!! As usual, if you enjoyed reading, please consider reblogging to help me out!!

-Anmitsu