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[dei2dei]

WIP BIG BANG SIGN-UPS ARE LIVE!

The 2024 round of WIP Big Bang is now open for sign-ups! Any fandom is welcome, as long as the fic is 500 completed so far and will be at least 7,500 words upon its finishing. Signing up is easy: just fill out the form linked below after you read the FAQ and take a look at the schedule.

[dei2dei]

Cover reveal!!

Have you been wondering what I'm up to? Along with editing the first three PHU books for publication with Duck Prints Press, I've been preparing the first book in my new Seven Lakes (queer mildly spicy paranormal romance) series for independent publishing!

My cover was created by the wonderful Flore Picard (@florilege-studio) and I am delighted to be able to share it now!

Keep an eye on this space for more information. I'll post when the book is up for pre-sale! It'll be available in ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover editions.

[dei2dei]

Ideas: Gotta Catch 'Em All!

(look, I know one whole Pokemon reference and I'm gonna use it.)

I was tossing around ideas with @calypsid about writing events and coming up with ideas and how to write for big events - in fandom, for the monthlong ones especially, but also if you're someone looking at submitting original fiction to a themed anthology or to a zine, or when you just want to WRITE dammit but the ideas won't come. When the idea hutch is empty and the plotbuns won't come, when the creative spring is trickling or you're at the bottom of the well of inspiration, hope is not lost. We put our heads together and came up with a baker's dozen ways to get ideas and look at prompts to get new inspiration when you need it. So if you want 'em, jump below the cut!

Stop looking at words.

Look at art! Listen to music! Maybe what you need is some song lyrics to get your brain going, or art. Play Sudoku. Go to a coffee shop and watch people. Change your mental or physical environment and see what happens.

Prompt lists

Don’t limit yourself to whatever event you’re writing for! If it’s for a fandom ship week, hit up a themed month prompt list (such as Fluffuary, AUgust, or Whumptober). If you’re trying to think of ideas for a zine pitch, trawl prompt lists from fandom or creative writing websites. Mash the TVTropes random trope button until something clicks.

Tarot spreads

Even if you don’t read tarot on your own, you can find websites where you can do tarot readings. Treat it as a story prompt generator: pick three cards, one that is your protagonist, one that is their goal, one that is their obstacle. Look up the meanings. Go wild! You can use the cards for protagonists, antagonists, story arcs…

Lists

Not prompt lists - but every idea you can think of adjacent to a prompt. Tropes, colors, sayings, characters, types (e.g. species of apple, types of wildflowers, names of cocktails)...

An alphabetical list with an idea for each letter of the alphabet.

A list of 20 ideas, as close or as absolutely wild as you want.

A timed list (write ideas for 5/10/15 minutes). The first chunk may be easy, the last few minutes impossibly hard, but right in the middle where your mind is starting to stretch? That may be perfect.

Once you have a list of any flavor, start looking for patterns: that’s a sign your brain is interested in SOMETHING. What ideas/symbols keep showing up?

Look for unexpected intersections

Ideas or prompts may have unexpected links. Randomize your list! Consider resonances between different prompts; they may seem different in a different order. Pick a not obvious combination of two prompts and follow it to the end - what if you put together “pirate” and “arranged marriage”? Use a wheel spinning picker and see what two things the computer matches up.

You can also take a pair of commonly-associated opposites, pick out their most common stereotypical traits. Now swap them. 

Play with other media

Take characters from one piece of media, the setting from a second (hey look, a fusion/AU!). What resonates between them? Grab a non-fiction book about a topic you’re interested in and read that. Ideas might percolate from a number of unrelated sources into one Super Cool Idea.

Change the setting

Turn a sci-fi show into a fantasy setting, or vice-versa. Add monsters. Add gods; add gods with reality-bending dice; add gods with reality-bending dice who are malicious. Flip your characters' genders. Remove the concept of gender entirely. Send your characters to the dimension next door, where only one thing has changed. Or many things. Or everything. Take the characters out of the plot of your fandom, or replace them with side characters; what changes?

Change your mind

Take the prompt at face value. Or, treat it sarcastically. Subvert the trope - or don't subvert the trope. Write the thing you've always wanted to see, even if you think it won't work. Turn everything about the prompt on its head and look underneath for spare ideas. Come at it from every angle you can think of.

Other people

Talk to people about the prompt. Read Reddit or Tumblr conversations, even ones only vaguely associated with the prompt. Let your mind go in new and interesting directions. 

Cool words

Have you run across an awesome word you wish you could use in a story, or a turn of phrase? Write a story around that. Or if you have a list of cool words you keep anyway, flip back to it, see if there are any that might come together in a story.

Titles

If you have a title you've always wanted to use, let the title inspire the fic instead of the other way around. 

First Sentences

Just start writing first sentences, whatever ones come to mind. Don’t be precious about them; the goal isn’t perfect sentences, the goal is something to get your brain moving. Don’t worry about continuing the story yet! Try and get a bunch down without writing any more of the story. If one speaks to you and demands to be written, go back to it after you’ve got your list down.

Deconstruct a story you love and then rebuild it!

Retell a favorite story (or a hated story you thought you could do better). How did they do X? Why did you love (or hate) something so much? Can you do that with some of your ideas? Take out the main character and their sidekick; how does the story read with just the secondary characters? What if you add someone new? How would the story look different as a documentary, a chatfic, an epistolary collection?

Some Links:

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (https://sf-encyclopedia.com/) - includes almost 15,000 entries for words associated with sci-fi. Scroll through, pick (3, 5, 7…) and shove them into a story. Or learn about new tropes/concepts/ideas.

Deep Water Prompts (https://deepwaterwritingprompts.tumblr.com/) - some Weird Prompts (several hundred) you can twist and interpret to your heart’s desire.

Kathleen Jennings’ short story “Some Ways to Retell a Fairy Tale” (https://www.tor.com/2023/11/08/some-ways-to-retell-a-fairy-tale-kathleen-jennings) is also a great list of ideas for ways to, well, retell any story.

[dei2dei]

[dei2dei]

can you draw kung jin and whoever you ship him with? if you don’t have a ship for him then maybe him and the kombat kids😚

Ngl had fun with this lol

I honestly didn’t want to draw them just standing so eh why not on grass

thx for the request! :3

[dei2dei]

I feel bad for everyone who has had bad experience or experienced harassment with f/f. I don’t think any of the behaviour is unique or even significantly more common with femslash though tbh. I’ve heard the voltron horror stories M/M fandom is not immune to any of this

--

Yup. And the battiness of hetshippers, especially those who wanted their ship to go canon, is legendary. Of course, even f/f and m/m have that type of wank these days when it's less unthinkable that they could go canon.

BTW, for people wondering where their ask went, I'm holding back some of the more repetitive femslash asks even when the individual asks are fine. There aren't enough other topics to alternate with, and it's getting boring.

[dei2dei]

“Come, let us be a family!” 🫶

(read left to right 👉)

I’m happy Mileena and Kitana are sisters in MK1. The only thing Mileena ever wanted was a family and it’s sweet to imagine if the timelines were to collide again, she would finally get that sisterly love from Kitana 🥹

[dei2dei]

CageBlade 2024 Info!

[image credits to @asweetlovesong - thank you again, so much, for doing the banner!]

Here for ROUND THREE!

Event Info

Dates: 17-23 June (Mon-Sun)

All forms of fanworks will be accepted - fanfic, fanart, gifset, playlist whatever it may be! 

If we somehow missed your post after the end of the event, let us know so we can reblog it! We might be a little slow on the day-to-day but we don’t want to miss anything. The only things we won’t be reblogging are NSFW with minors and explicit noncon. We will reblog late posts.

Make sure to tag your posts with #cagebladeweek (within the first 5 tags, thanks algorithm) and/or @ this blog so we can find and reblog everything.

Participate one day or every day - it doesn’t matter! If you post on an external site (AO3, FFN, DeviantArt) please at least drop a link here so we can reblog it and promote it. There will be an AO3 Collection started closer to the date.

Prompts:

Day 1: reunion / answers

Day 2: challenge / night and day

Day 3: clothing / hourglass

Day 4: growth / storm

Day 5: celebration / survival

Day 6: disaster / an AU of your choice

Day 7: Free Day!

You may interpret these prompts as strictly or as loosely as your heart desires. You can stick as close or as wide from the prompts as you want. Want to combine two? Go for it! Want to have some other characters cameo or tell a more ensemble tale? Sure - as long as it has Sonya and Johnny at the heart of it.

If you have any questions about prompts and submissions, send us an ask here! We look forward to seeing all the wonderful contributions!

FAQs:

1) Do I have to write in English?: No, you do not! This is a multi-language-friendly event. Post in your language of choice and users can machine translate if neededl. If you choose to write in one language and later post translations to English, those translations can also be added to the AO3 collection.

2) Can I write an OT3 fic?: The mods support polyamorous shipping, this week is for CageBlade specifically. We'd like that contributions focus on Sonya & Johnny's relationship.

3) Well, what if I write a breakup fic and have them hook up with other people? It's still CageBlade, right?: Not for this event. This week is a celebration of CageBlade and how awesome they are together. Want to give us some hurt/comfort, breakup & reconciliation, sure! Whump? Go wild! But we want to see them coming together and realizing how great they are as a couple.

4) What if I don’t like any of the prompts and have ideas of my own?: Then go ahead and write them! Want to explore their friendship before they hooked up? Want to write all AUs? Do you have some art ideas you’re just itching for an excuse to post and draw? Go wild.

Reblogs welcome. If you want to share it off tumblr, we have a Notion site now that we'll be updating with links to the collection, etc. as well as here.

[dei2dei]

"AO3 doesn't need a "dislike" button"

Um, actually, it already has one. Depending on your specs, it might look a little different but over all it looks kinda like this:

You can find it at the corner of your screen, which corner is dependent on your layout.

Anyway, if you dislike a fic, you can hit this Dislike Button until the fic goes away. It really is pretty amazing actually.

[dei2dei]

I will add to this the @effinbirds image:

[image description: a white egret? leaning over, the phrase 'motherfucker try to stop me' in text next to it, art by @effinbirds ]

I wish I had the turkey vulture "powered by spite" one, but I have that as a tee shirt and it's my spite-write shirt.

[dei2dei]

lesbians!!!!

[dei2dei]

KOMBAT KIDS⚔

[dei2dei]

How stoked are you all for May Trope Mayhem 2024? Because I know I am.

I've yet to finish all of a trope list from the event, but it's been a blast thinking how to apply each trope on my writing process, so I don't mind. It's been a great way to explore tropes I haven't been familiar with and it's challenged the way I think of future projects.

Basically, to sum it up, thank you for hosting the event. Now and in the future.

AH I AM SO EXCITED BY THIS ASK ANON! This is such a delight to read, thank you so much! <3 I love that it helps you. <3

I am personally also very stoked. The 2024 list is already made, the graphic set, at least one typo corrected - this year, it was made by asking our writers and artists for their favorite tropes! So it's got some overlap with past years, but a lot of new stuff too.

I expect to post the full list to our Patreon in about a week, and I'll debut the list publicly on the 30th of April!

[dei2dei]

I’ve watched this 6 times

[dei2dei]

the notes on that last poll are insane there was someone who said they separate fics into "porn" and "story" and they didnt stop for a second to think that sex in and of itself might be a story??? the way some of you people trivialize sex and explicit art is fucking bonkers to me. you sound like a christian when you act like sex cheapens art or like art focusing on sex is a completely separate category from non-sexual art. explicit fics, yes even pwp (which i believe is a misnomer anyways), are telling stories and they're stories worth telling because sex is normal and healthy and deeply important to many of us. just because something gets you off doesn't mean it's cheap or meaningless. i'd argue that things that engage the viewer sexually are very meaningful because human sexuality is complex and beautiful and worth sharing and exploring. Grow up and read about the guys you like sucking eachother off

[dei2dei]

Realized I have a naked rat and a small piano

Here's Harry banging out the tunes, April 13th 2023

[dei2dei]

not to be That Person but when people are like “why isn’t there a big fandom culture anymore?” umm…

maybe this is why???? That an author can spend hours (if not days or weeks or months) on something, have 1,800 people read it, and only have THREE people willing to take a few extra seconds out of their day to comment. Not even something as simple as “thanks for sharing” or “second kudos” or “❤️”

I’m not the internet police. You decide what you do with your time. Just don’t be surprised if the result is that creators leave your fandoms. I’m not writing to scream into the void. If that’s what I wanted, I wouldn’t bother posting. Fandom is a community. It’s an exchange of enthusiasm over this thing we all love. And who’s gonna keep showing up at your house with a goodie basket if all you do is take the basket, slam the door, and leave them outside to watch through the window while you eat?