pipermca

[pipermca]

Writing Update - April 2025

Holy shit that month went fast!

Ok, work is still dumb, weather is getting better, I've got seeds started for tomatoes and basil, yada yada.

I did writing! Lots of short things, which was nice. Two of them were pieces for the /r/fanfiction Discord's Drabble Night, while another one was a concept for a fic that I've been wanting to write for a long time, and finally figured out how to make it happen. I also finished posting the last three stories that were in the collection I'd pulled down to rewrite/repost, so I can scratch that off of my To Do list! Huzzah!

I also got a bit done on The King and the Bounty Hunter. I'm hoping (?) that I can start posting that in May, but we'll see. I want to get over this very strange speedbump I've run into with the story; once I have that done I think things will flow more smoothly.

In April, I wrote a total of 4374 words, most of them for King and Bounty Hunter. I'm calling that respectable.

Posted

Maintenance Instructions for Plasma Vent Filters. 2900 words. I have been incredibly pleased with how well this very strange story has done. It's an experimental fic with a very non-traditional structure, but people seemed to dig it and enjoy it.

In Pieces. 100 words. The first drabble for the event, filling in a "missing scene" from the ROTB movie.

Digital Dreams. 100 words. The second drabble for the event. This one is a Pacific Rim fic, sort of a though poem.

Play Time. 1000 words. This fic was reposted/rewritten. It was backdated to its original posting date (October 11, 2018) so it didn’t appear on AO3’s “front page.”

Phantoms. 1600 words. This fic was reposted/rewritten. It was backdated to its original posting date (October 6, 2018) so it didn’t appear on AO3’s “front page.”

The Great Decepticon Cook Off. 890 words. This fic was reposted/rewritten. It was backdated to its original posting date (October 31, 2018) so it didn’t appear on AO3’s “front page.”

WIPs

The King and the Bounty Hunter. 17,500 words. This is coming along. I'm not sure why I stalled on this scene, but I think I figured out how the dialogue needs to flow. Hopefully that gets me kickstarted again.

[pipermca]

I read a post on /r/fanfiction from an author who got one of these spam comments, and they were just devastated to be accused of using AI. They talked about how hard they'd worked on the fic, and wondered if it was because they used big words. They mentioned how they love comments and was so excited to see that they'd received one, only to have it be that. They ran their fic through an AI checker and it came back with a very low chance of being AI. They were horrified they were getting "blacklisted." They were crushed and confused.

And guys... I can't know for sure why these bots exist. But I think that's what the spammers want: they want to demoralize writers. They want you to think there's no difference between your writing and an AI. They want to plant the seed in your head that if you can't tell the difference between your writing and AI, then you might as well use AI. They want to break you.

Fuck them.

You provide something that an AI could never do: actual imagination, rather than a machine guessing what the next word should be. AI will never produce anything new. AI will never come up with that really fucked up scene between those two characters. AI could never come up with THAT twist in your story.

If you get one of these comments, understand that it's a bot. Report it as spam. Then go on to finish writing that crazy thing that's in your head, because a plagiarism machine could never. 💗

So today I got this comment:

This is objectively both the worst and the funniest fic of mine that this spam comment could possibly have been left on.

The story consists of nothing but a list of instructions, which gradually get edited as users leave comments. There is no melodrama. There are no scenes! It's just a list of instructions that repeat over and over and over.

Bad bot. May the shame of this blatantly incorrect comment reflect upon you and your descendants, from now until your bytes are lost in a server failure.

(And yes, I reported it as spam.)

[pipermca]

So today I got this comment:

This is objectively both the worst and the funniest fic of mine that this spam comment could possibly have been left on.

The story consists of nothing but a list of instructions, which gradually get edited as users leave comments. There is no melodrama. There are no scenes! It's just a list of instructions that repeat over and over and over.

Bad bot. May the shame of this blatantly incorrect comment reflect upon you and your descendants, from now until your bytes are lost in a server failure.

(And yes, I reported it as spam.)

[pipermca]

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

[pipermca]

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[pipermca]

This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any fandom / Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote.

[pipermca]

Title: The Great Decepticon Cook Off

Rating: General

Continuity: G1

Characters: Skywarp, Thundercracker, Scrapper, Mixmaster, Blitzwing, Soundwave, Autobot Command Staff

Tags: Cooking, Humour, Implied Jazz/Prowl, Backdated rewrite

Wordcount: 890

Summary: The Decepticons decide to settle the question of who is the best chef amongst them, once and for all.

[pipermca]

Still doing these tonight! ✨ Ask me anything!

Open Mic Night

So with all the spam happening I think I'm going to shut off anon asks (not that I got many anyway 😅).

But before I do that, I'll leave it open for tonight! Ask away, anything you want about things I've written, things I'm working on, things I WANT to write, things I won't ever write, or what I'm growing in my garden this year. :)

[pipermca]

Title: Phantoms

Rating: General

Continuity: G1

Relationship: Bluestreak/Hound

Tags: PTSD, Backdated rewrite

Wordcount: 1600

Summary: Bluestreak is still haunted by the ghosts of his past, even when he's on vacation.

[pipermca]

Title: Play Time

Rating: Mature

Continuity: G1

Relationship: Sideswipe/Sunstreaker

Tags: Master/Pet, Puppy Play, Gently implied twincest, Implied exhibitionism

Wordcount: 1000

Summary: Sunstreaker has finally found a way to make Sideswipe be a Good Boy.

[pipermca]

Do you have any songs you associate with Hound? Or Hound and Bluestreak?

I don't have any specific songs for Hound and Bluestreak, because the song would really depend on the AU in which I've thrown them together. (For example, the song for them in The Spark Remembers would be very different than the song for them in The Renegade and the Hound or in the humanformers AU.)

For most of my versions of Bluestreak, though, I think the song I associate most closely with him is Angel with a Shotgun. I first heard the song in an AMV about TFP Smokescreen (video below) and immediately thought "Oh, that's Bluestreak's song." ^.^ (I was also writing The Renegade and the Hound when I first saw this video, and the lyrics fit SO WELL with that version of Blue that I think it's just coloured my perception of the song forever.)

[pipermca]

tell us of a thing you will never write :)c

There are ships that I don't ever see myself writing, mostly because I cannot bring myself to care about them. But that's not a fun answer. XD

If I'd been asked this - oh, five or six years ago, I would have said I could never see myself writing a coffee shop AU.

But guess what I'm currently poking at in my humanformers verse? Guess how Blue and Hound first met? 😅

So now my answer is going to be any sort of "woobified" Bluestreak. I don't think it's any secret that I like my Blue to be mature and competent and able to hold his own in a fight, even if he's sometimes scared or reluctant.

Thank you for the question! :)

[pipermca]

Open Mic Night

So with all the spam happening I think I'm going to shut off anon asks (not that I got many anyway 😅).

But before I do that, I'll leave it open for tonight! Ask away, anything you want about things I've written, things I'm working on, things I WANT to write, things I won't ever write, or what I'm growing in my garden this year. :)

[pipermca]

(via @ao3commentoftheday)

There was a hopeful softness around Streetwise's optics that pulled at Smokescreen's spark. He remembered the hopeful look that Halfsteel had given him, so long ago, when Smokescreen figured out how to keep the noble out of the Temple-directed bond that he had been dreading being forced into. "I don't know," Smokescreen admitted. "But I'll think of something. In the meantime, let's keep up a regular schedule of these little chats and lunches, to give the appearance that I am still considering asking you to be my Consort."

Streetwise's wings quivered behind him, and he bowed his head. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

[pipermca]

I was THIS 🤏 close to starting to post the next instalment of my Alt Modes and Alchemy series, when I realized I had a gaping logic hole.

I'd established in A Bonding, a Coronation, and a Funeral that Smokey really was expected to bond to another noble, for political reasons. Even though he's eliminated the Temple's horrible breeding program (designed to create the "Chosen one," who we've discovered already exists and fulfilled his destiny), that doesn't remove the political realities of needing to make alliances with other houses.

That stalled me for a bit. Fortunately I had an absolutely soul-crushing meeting today that was boring as hell, so I was able to completely zone out and work out a way I can fix this plot problem.

The downside is that now I need to go back and do surgery to plant the seeds for what needs to happen in later chapters. It'll also add a bit of length to the fic to resolve this issue in a satisfying way.

Ah well. And that explains why I don't like starting to post longer stories until I'm very confident about how things are gonna go. 😅

[pipermca]

In Pieces

Rating: G

Continuity: Rise of the Beasts

Characters: Noah Diaz, Wheeljack, Mirage

Tags: Canon compliant, Drabble

Wordcount: 100

Summary: It was like losing a part of himself, each time a piece of Mirage was removed from his body.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64673344

Notes: This was written for the /r/Fanfiction Discord April 2025 Drabble event, using the prompt "shed."

****

It was like losing a part of himself, each time a piece of Mirage was removed from his body.

As Wheeljack worked each piece loose, carefully widening seams and separating metal from flesh, Noah could feel the steady beat of energy flowing through the armor. And as each piece fell free and was placed reverently aside, Noah felt that energy fade.

"Can he be fixed?" Noah asked as Wheeljack removed a shoulder piece. "He's still in there... Right?"

"He will need a lot of work but... Sí. He's still in there," Wheeljack said.

Relief settled on Noah like a blanket.

[pipermca]

Digital Dreams

Rating: G

Fandom: Pacific Rim

Tags: Dreams, Drabble

Wordcount: 100

Summary: The pilots knew a jaeger could dream.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64673467

Notes: This was written for the /r/Fanfiction Discord April 2025 Drabble event, using the prompts "photograph," "dream," and two photo prompts (one of a duck landing in misty water, and the other of a cliff "door" with sunlight streaming through it.)

****

The pilots knew a jaeger could dream.

The engineers and scientists and data architects disputed this, of course. A jaeger was metal and cable, computers and code. It could not dream. The only sentience bestowed on it came from the two brains and two hearts that made it fight.

But the pilots knew, and experienced, those dreams painted like over-processed HDR photos. They saw the sketches of birds against sky, and sun shining through rocks and mist on the ocean. They felt fights that had never happened, and celebrated in victories against kaiju that had never existed.

Jaegers could dream.