#[[ these are Not all gonna fit in the gdoc.

[neometalmadness]

[[ bunch of random Neo headcanons & some other random stuff for him that i’ve been sitting on for a while. these are under a r/m just bcuz I’m gonna be rambling a bit... i got Neo Metal Sonic on Da Brain

There are absolutely tells to his ‘disguises’ whenever he’s transformed himself into someone else (usually for deceptive purposes); whilst Neo can copy lifeform data, this does not extend to their personalities & memories, meaning often times, his mannerisms will be different to the person he’s shapeshifted into, & he might not be able to answer anywhere near as many questions as the ‘original’ will.

In addition to the last point, another pretty easy way to tell if you can get close enough is... Try lifting him up. Yeah, its stupid, and easily foiled (he doesn’t like being touched), but obviously, Neo is a robot, & a heavily armed one at that. Whilst he has the abilities to be very quick & nimble, as per his abilities... He’s NOT light, whatsoever. Just drop him into a body of water and he’ll sink. (...Don’t do that because when he inevitably climbs out he will certainly kill you)

Neo does not have to be in direct contact with someone to trace/copy their lifeform data (as per Sonic Heroes). There is a sort of perimetre/limit to how far he can copy someone from, though. Copied lifeform data entails; ability to copy someone’s appearance via shapeshifting (like he does with both Sonic & Eggman) & the ability to copy more or less all of their abilities (to reference Heroes again, he’s able to use Chaos Control multiple times during the Overlord fight which is something exclusive to Shadow in the games iirc? I’m gonna assume he can do it in Neo form as well, though I’m pretty sure it does require an emerald which. right now he doesn’t have, lol).

All of the expressions he makes on his visor are entirely conscious decisions. If he doesn’t like you, chances are, he’s going to keep that dead stare & will very rarely emote at all. But if he does, he will make an effort to ‘express’ more in his face (or, well, just the eyes), specifically around organic companions. He understands that emotional tells are more important to organics than to other machines.

Speaking of machines! Neo is far more likely to get off on the right foot with other robots. He’s far, far more conversational with other robots- even enemy ones. He also talks to robots that can’t respond verbally to him (i.e they don’t have a voice chip, or something else)- but that may just be because he likes the sound of his own voice. He does just tend to be more friendly immediately.

He’s currently trying to get one of the Metal Sonic’s that were left behind at the Mystic Ruin’s Eggbase (Final Egg; Neo’s current active location) to become functional again. The other Metal Sonic model is missing, & its pod is smashed; its assumed it was probably stolen before he had arrived there, or may have regained power itself and broke out. Neo doesn’t know, and hasn’t bothered tracking it down. (The Metal Sonic in question; it appears to be part of the Silver Sonic line or maybe a prototype...? idk I haven’t played SA1 in literal years but I am tempted to do something with this)

Also. Neo wants a chao. Neo wants a chao because I want him to have one. No, but for real, he wants one to study. They’re decendants of Chaos after all! Although he stole Chocola & Froggy, one being a descendant of Chaos, and the other having direct contact with them, he thinks there may be more information to gather from them... So. He wants one!

Neo’s base form (which is just normal Metal Sonic) is often only activated upon low charge. Although Neo can go weeks without requiring to recharge, this can also be forcefully activated if he’s sustained significant amounts of damage. It’s a sort of safety killswitch to protect himself and give him enough power to escape a dangerous situation.

Neo, in his current state, is also nowhere near as powerful as his peak. He does talk hot shit, for real. He’s certainly stronger than regular Metal Sonic, but is very much more defeatable than ever & it is something he is keenly aware of. Without direct contact to the Doctor, its a struggle to repair himself. He takes advantage of his stature & reputation to intimidate others out of trying to fight him, and often times he’ll only strike as a warning shot... That is not to say he should be fucked with. He’s very much capable of winning a fight. But he doesn’t go out of his way to do so.

...... Also just found out via Neo’s Sonic wiki page that he also has lightning powers??? Which I initially assumed he didn’t have/had to get it from some kind of source. So. I guess he’s an electrokinesis user too? Idk? Will think about this one a bit more bcuz it kinda took me out of left field HFDJKH

[strawberry-barista]

{I'll fix it later. goes to sleep}

Strawberry-barista has a carrd!

[yorshie]

Hey, Yorshie! Fun fact: I was the one who sent in the original prompt for Raph with the phrase "tell me it was a lie. tell me you're playing with me right now." You did SUCH a great job with it.

After deleting my reply to your other post, I kept thinking about it trying to remember exactly what my reply had been, and then I was like... hm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna write that, actually. So, here's a present for you Yorshie! My first ever reader-insert piece. (Obviously, feel free to delete/not post this if it's too... idk. Anything. I hope this is an okay thing to do.)

Another fun fact: the title in my gdoc is "Yorshie's Gift" lol <3

---

You would recognize the rumble of that motorcycle anywhere.

No one else had realized, yet, just how much danger you were all about to be in. The others were still hauling boxes into the back of the truck. Only you were frozen, hands hovering in the air above the box you’d been reaching for.

You needed to get everyone out of here fast. Most of these new recruits were just kids, barely out of high school. Searching for a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, like you had when you first joined years ago. Every year there were more. Kids who had never believed they even had a chance at a future, kids who got caught up in the pretty lies and promises that the clan used to suck them in. You hated to see it happen, but there was really nothing you could do about it. You had agreed to lead this excursion, hoping at least that you could be there to ensure no one got hurt.

The rumble was getting louder.

You jerked up, hissing out an order to retreat. The others paused in their movements to look at you, surprised, and you felt a wave of frustration and terror constrict your lungs as they stared at you. 

Their hesitation would get them killed.

 “Move your ass!” You shoved the keys of the truck into the hands of the nearest member and pushed them toward the front. “Now!”

Thankfully, they started to scramble. Within seconds the truck peeled away, leaving behind at least half of the goods you had been ordered to secure. You really couldn’t fucking care less. You made sure the recruits who hadn’t been able to fit in the truck were headed toward safety, too, before starting to run.

And then you stopped.

The rumble was so loud, now, that you could almost feel the vibrations in your chest. He’d be here any second. You should run. You should run. The last words he’d spoken to you, weeks ago, echoed in your mind. 

“I’d better not see you again. If I do, my face is the last thing you’ll ever see, I can promise you that.”

You knew what you would be running from, but… what exactly were you running toward? More listless days with your mind lost in a haze of regret? More nights alone with your chest hollow and aching? Before him, you hadn’t even realized that you were just going through the motions of your life. And then you had found what you were looking for, after all this time. You had found that sense of belonging, that purpose that you had so desperately sought out when you were too young to know any better and you had turned to the foot clan. And when you’d found what you’d been looking for, it hadn’t even been something you found in the foot clan itself. You’d found it in their enemy.

Raphael.

Then you’d lost him. It was your own goddamn fault, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. The weeks since he’d found out had left you feeling untethered. Floating through the days, wondering what the fuck the point was, anyway. You hadn’t realized just how much he had changed your life, just how much he had changed you. And now, without him…

You didn’t want to run anymore.

A strange sense of finality settled over you. It’s what you deserved, anyway, wasn’t it? You were a criminal. No matter what circumstances had led you here, no matter how trapped you had felt… you were still a criminal. And you had still lied to him, for so long. 

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. For his face to be the last one you ever saw.

Tires squealed, pulling you from your thoughts, and then he was there. You watched him leap from his bike, sprinting down the alley straight toward you, and the adrenaline that burst through you reminded you that you should run. You were wearing your full gear, face covered by the mask that had been replaced after he’d crushed your old one in his hand. He didn’t even know it was you. You could still slip away into the shadows, you could still- 

You didn’t move. 

He was fast, faster than most people could even follow, but time seemed to slow as he approached. You could see the determination, the anger in his expression. In the tense set of his shoulders. But beneath that, there was a weary sadness. And despite the fear that was clawing its way up your throat, that sadness that you saw was what solidified your decision. 

An enormous fist, clenched around a sai, barrelled toward you, but you focused instead on Raphael’s face. The last face you’d ever see. So angry and tired and sad, and it looked like that because of you.

Yeah. You deserved this.

And the blow hit.

WWWWOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! OMG YOUR FIRST READER INSERT AND YOU SEND IT TO ME????? *crying* LET’s GO!!!

Wow! Your pacing is very good *trying not to cry* I was totally immersed *tears start falling* and the feeling! The feel- *breaks down sobbing* omg what if raph takes off the mask at the end OR DOESNT WHICH ONE IS WORSE!!!!???

*straight up bawling at this point* im fine! It’s just. It really hit me in the angst corner. Don’t mind me I’m just. Gonna slide along the floor in a little raccoon puddle.

But IT WAS A GOOD READ. IMMA READ IT AGAIN!!

Also! If you ever write for the turtles again, please tag me. I’d love to be in your tag list and I’d love to read it.

[thought-42]

A moment at the beginning of Thrawn and Ezra's space adventures

500 word chunklet that doesn't fit anywhere in my 'Ezra Bridger in theChiss Ascendancy' au, yote out into the void so it leaves my gdoc.

Ezra doesn’t remember as much as he should about the immediate post-Purrgil aftermath. He remembers too much time passing in only a few minutes. Colour he can’t describe in words.

Humans are not made to be that close to hyperspace.

He remembers feeling a lot of people dying. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

He remembers his arm hanging loose off his shoulder like an empty sleeve, remembers thinking very clearly ‘a lightsaber will cauterise an amputation’.

He remembers staring up at a purple sky and hearing someone (Thrawn, he knows in retrospect) throwing up somewhere off to his left. He remembers thinking he was gonna start throwing up in sympathetic reaction. He doesn’t remember if he actually did.

He remembers the hiss of rain on hot metal. He remembers stumbling, grimly determined, towards the shade of trees, feeling like he was breathing water, with his hand held over Thrawn’s eyes. He remembers realizing what moisture and bacteria and scavengers do to dead bodies.

He’s pretty sure Thrawn bit him.

He’s pretty sure he tried to drown himself in a swamp just to get a break from the constant mental replay of bodies that no longer looked like people. His brain has helpfully blurred out a lot of the details, which he appreciates in the interests of remaining a functional person. Thrawn must have dragged him out of the swamp. Or the swamp was a metaphor the whole time, or a fantasy he created to self-soothe.

The first temporally plottable memory he has is watching Thrawn rinse blood out of his hair in the river and realizing:

“Oh hey. Your eyeliner game was really good, I definitely thought that was just. Your eyes.”

Thrawn had rolled said eyes so hard Ezra had started laughing and hadn’t been able to stop for a good five minutes.

Years later, when they’re no longer the only two sentients on the whole planet but long before they’ve made it to somewhere safe, Ezra will say “I’m amazed you didn’t just chuck me in the river right then and there.” “At the time it felt entirely appropriate,” Thrawn will say, flatly. “I tried to strangle a child with my bare hands in front of my own officers after choosing to bomb a civilian target even as I was fully aware my life was likely forfeit as soon as I returned to the capital. It was not, you might say, a high point in my career. To be mocked for my one venture into fashion while I was still actively concussed and alone felt just right.”

“I wasn’t a child,” Ezra says, and then nothing else because the rest of what he is thinking is exceedingly unkind, starting with ‘there’s no way that was your first time attacking civilians’ and going all the way to ‘tell me you were passively suicidal without telling me you were passively suicidal, if our positions were reversed I’d have gone for your throat long before we got to that point.’ Some people grew up with parents and a safe home and it shows.

[crimeronan]

76. Did you have any ideas that didn't make the final cut of the princess AU in general?

from this ask game!

omg. so many. so so So many. the vast majority of my stories go through a lot of revisions and have a lot of outtakes before i decide on the version that i actually like..... so here are some notable things that Didn't happen in the princess AU, which were originally meant to (or could have happened):

in the original oneshot, luz says that belos taught her to do something she'd really rather not know how to do. at the time, that was ambiguously referring both to creating grimwalkers AND to eating palismen. i ended up not exploring the palisman angle in the long luz fic because i decided that i wanted all of the horror to be tightly centered around Grimwalker Bullshit. the palisman thing would have been an interesting extension of the autonomy themes..... but it also would have meant writing a permanently haunted luz, and it would have been very very very sad. probably better that i didn't!!

2. in my original plan, luz's killing of belos was premeditated. i ended up scrapping that because i couldn't imagine that belos would drop an "i'm gonna kill hunter" bomb & then leave her alone long enough to premeditate a murder, AND i wanted the higher stakes. a luz doing premeditated murder still has some control over her circumstances. i wrote powerlessness instead because it was scarier, more compelling, and it made more sense for luz as a character. (she would not have been NEARLY as traumatized by what happened if she'd been able to simply premeditate belos's death.)

3. there are outtakes of luz meeting the collector. originally, the collector was the one to tell her that the grimwalkers didn't get sick & that belos killed them all for fun. this was a big part of why she planned a premeditated murder. now my working canon is that belos didn't find the collector because luz wasn't there to help him 400 years ago. (poor kid. someone go help them right now)

4. i ended up semi-regretting locking myself into hunter's storyline because i had to maneuver luz's around it. if i HADN'T done that, then hunter definitely would have gotten almost-murdered by belos. luz also would have tried to send him away before things came to a head, and that would have been a WAY more vicious and heartshattering fight than any they've had in the AU canon.

5. i have tons of outtakes of eda and raine having various arguments with each other. these are gonna be edited into something smoother but please know that there are versions of them in my gdocs that are so WILDLY, INSANELY DIVORCED.

6. i have an outtake of darius and hunter fighting about luz but i don't think it fits anywhere in the timeline now. sad :'( the thing about me wanting darius to be hunter's dad is that it's Required that they shout at each other first.

[freeuselandonorris]

hello freeuselandonorris! i’ve asked you for writing advice/ideas a couple of times (POV decisions and something in Nov, can’t remember exactly what it was), and i find your advice so helpful (/srs) so i hope it’s not annoying i’m asking again lol.

i find i can only write when i have extreme motivation, like an idea literally possesses my brain and the words almost write themselves - gonna out myself here, the last thing i wrote was the water inflation fic i appropriated from you; it just took over my mind and i wrote/edited it in like two days (though the speed is for sure because the entire plot was essentially your idea lol).

basically, i have lots of ideas but it’s hard for me to actually think of scenes in specific, and then i just end up not writing at all. do you have a method for coming up with a progression of a specific scene?

i am doing a horrible job of explaining my q lol so for example, my current wip involves interview panels/youtube collabs etc, but i’m finding it hard to write those because it’s so different from anything i’ve tried writing before. what do you do in those kinds of cases?

sorry for the ramble and if this makes no sense, love u 😭

hiiii lovely anon (or semi-anon lmao) you are not annoying in the SLIGHTEST, i love talking about stuff like this and it makes me really fucking happy to know that my self-indulgent rambling about writing is occasionally helpful to read ❤️

SO. i have two pieces of advice on this one, speaking from my own experience because for a very long time i was also like this and would write in fits and starts and felt very like i had to ~wait for the muses to bless me~. it’s actually something i was taught at a writing course i took years ago now and it sounds so blah and obvious when you first read it but if you stick with it, it works. BRIEF DAILY SESSIONS.

aka, you write a tiny little bit every day. if you can’t commit to every day, say five days a week (but every day is better). i do NOT mean write 1000 words a day or spend three hours doing it or freak yourself out or beat yourself up or abandon your social life or your responsibilities! the idea is you just pick a time that feels feasible (i started off with 15 minutes a day and i think this works well) and you commit to doing that every day. it doesn’t have to be anything good. it can be 15 minutes of you describing lando’s eyelashes in minute detail. it can be 15 minutes of notes for a plotline. it can be 15 minutes of dialogue you KNOW is shit and wooden and will be getting deleted the minute you get to the edit stage. doesn’t matter. just do your 15 minutes.

what this does is it breaks the hold your brain has on this idea of “oh no i have to be INSPIRED before i can possibly think of writing”. at my course they compared it to musicians practising scales, or athletes doing training. we could think of it like drivers doing their sim runs. they don’t just turn up on a race weekend and expect to be great, they have to keep their eye in.

side note: it’ll feel horrible at first, you’ll hate it and resent it and everything you write will feel awful. stick with it. if you miss a day, it doesn’t matter, you haven’t failed, just start again tomorrow. if you miss a week, you haven’t failed, start again tomorrow.

this is more of a long-term thing, so for your specific piece and the issue you mention about progressing a scene, the way i get around this is to start by writing the bit(s) i CAN imagine. so for instance here, you’d write one interview scene, or one youtube collab scene. even if it’s just a little bit of dialogue, or a couple of paragraphs of like, oh i can see oscar rolling his eyes and lando sees it and gets annoyed but he can’t say anything because there are cameras on them… or whatever. just write that bit. then leave a blank space in the gdoc and write the next bit. don’t worry about the order or anything.

once you’ve written all the little bits you can think of, read them through and you might be able to see links between them, like — oh that bit could follow on from this bit up here, or these two bits could kind of go together. reorganise stuff a bit, chop it up, get rid of anything that doesn’t work (copy it into another document called ‘cutting room floor’ if you don’t want to fully get rid).

THEN write yourself some notes. go through your bits and bobs and in between them, just write stuff like [SOMEHOW THEY GET FROM THE FILMING TO THE HOTEL ROOM???]. don’t just write [SOMETHING HAPPENS HERE], you need to give yourself little breadcrumbs to follow. so like there you go, okay, so they need to be in a car or a lift or some sort of transitional space (you see these crop up a lot in my fics — lifts, hallways in hotels, the backs of taxis). or if they’ve started off talking about one thing and you want them talking about this other thing by the end of the scene, write [THEY CONTINUE TALKING ABOUT LUNCH UNTIL IT GETS AWKWARD AND THEN THEY SOMEHOW END UP TALKING ABOUT OSCAR’S CHILDHOOD]. okay, so it got awkward. how did it get awkward? write that bit. what happens after it’s awkward? does lando double down or try to gloss over it? write that bit. how does oscar react to that? write that bit. etc.

in essence, don’t try to see the entire thing at once because you’ll paralyse yourself. give yourself a direction to aim in, and a place to start, and then just focus on the next bit until you get from A to B.

and if all else fails, find a nice pithy line to end the scene on, use an asterisk scene break and start again somewhere else 🤷

SORRY THIS IS SO LONG i really hope i didn’t bore the hell out of everyone afkjeskfjkldsj but yes THANK YOU AGAIN and i hope this is useful in some way!! you can do it i know ittttt

[neixins]

this fic is gonna have to come with a separate gdoc containing all the footnotes bc i don’t think they’re gonna fit in the endnotes <3

[ossidae-passeridae]

🛒🎶🛠🏆 and ✨✨ i saw you dodging the other one >:(

Oh yeah mid here with the technical questions this'll be a fun one :3

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

*cracks knuckles* alright everyone settle in we're gonna be here a while.

Themes: loss of control, the interplay between fear and desire, situations which cannot be borne but must be, love as a partial deconstruction/destruction of the self, fear as a vehicle for self destruction, pain as catharsis, alienation from one's own body/status/existence... The strength of community working together?

Feels: Catharsis. It's all about catharsis in my works, all the other feels are simply vehicles to get us there.

Scenes: Standing over a sink full of blood and teeth (I literally have two WIPs with this right now), being trapped in a room with no way to escape, spiraling so far into one's mind that the physical world ceases to exist... My scenes tend towards night, and grime, and dim lighting, and the reflection of neon lights in puddled water on the pavement.

Imagery: water, the ocean, black holes, the vastness of empty space, sucking darkness, water drip drip dripping as a metaphor for slow decay, opulence as alienation. Food as a metaphor for love. Also that.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

This is highly dependent on what I'm writing! Sometimes it's integral I listen to music, other times I must have Total Silence(tm). Some fics I've written listening to one song on repeat include:

Pretty Waste (WIP): same titled song by Bones UK

broken pieces of the day: Delirium Tremens (Falling Down a Hole.) by A Burning Century

Rōnin: which continues to be written while listening to the same-titled album by Zack Hemsey

Overall I write a lot listening to She Wants Revenge and Crüxshadows, which I think tells you a lot about me!

Six Months in a Leaky Boat was written in a furious haze, and I'm sure that I did listen to a lot of music throughout it (there's no way I'd be able to put together the musical interludes otherwise), but I cannot for the life of me remember any specifics.

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

This one depends a bit on the scope of the work. For most things, I use gdocs because I swap between devices as my brain throws various hissy fits. For longer and more invested works which requires pages of planning and worldbuilding, I prefer Scrivener.

For gdocs, I also use a plugin called Draftback, which lets me look over my document edit history (with graphs!). I find that I can use these to pick out when I'm floundering on a fic and need new eyes on them - my graphs go from nice straight lines to horrible spotty messes.

🏆 What’s your most popular fic?

Hands down it's gotta be 'sometimes the feeling is right' ahahaha. What can I say, everyone loves medical accuracy bordering on medfet I guess??? It's my most viewed, most kudosed, and most bookmarked work!

Eternal thanks to @canonical-transformation who betaed it for me when I was yelling into a pillow about it not working with me 💖💖💖 You are, in fact, the best

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

*loudly grumbles*

dae's writing is almost as cool as mid and aspires to their level of excellence 😤 HAPPY NOW

[riallasheng]

1 (thunderbirds), 7 (tracy boys), 24 for the ask game?

Canon I outright reject John being the middle born XD He is the second born gosh darn it all XD Can't really think of another bit of canon I outright reject off the top of my head, although I'm certain there are a few 'I reject your reality and substitute my own' points ^^

This is gonna get long, so under the readmore!! ^^

=======================

7. Age, height, weight headcanons Because I am a MASSIVE OLD GEEKWOMAN I actually have this in my gDocs and legit just need to pull it up XD -Scott Chuck Tracy: 30 years old in 2065 (born 2035, April 4th) 6'3" (just using the canon here) 216 lbs (Scott is drawn as being cruiserweight to heavyweight in the comics, and described as 'powerfully built' in the books, so I gave him the weight class that is on the high end of his height and the border between cruiser and heavyweight rather than the lanky nearly to beanpole of TaG ^^)

-John Yuri Tracy: 28 years old in 2065 (born 2037, October 8th) 6'4" (again, just using canon) 190 lbs (John is drawn lean, but not a beanpole in the comics and is described as 'lithe' in the novels, so I've got him above the low end for a 6'4" man, but not in the upper end of 225lbs)

-Virgil Buzz Tracy 25 in 2065 (born 2040, August 15th) 6' (I used Tyler Hoechlin for his face-claim as his face shape is well-nigh perfect for him and thus gave Virgil Tyler's height and build, rather than the 5'10" that is, I think, canon. Hoechlin's build is Virgil's canon build however. About cruiserweight to maybe heavyweight ... yes in the comics/novels Scott is actually buffer than Virgil XD ) 172lbs

-Gordon Jim Tracy 22 in 2065 (born 2043, February 14th) 5'10" (gordon's puppet is the shortest of the brothers, then Virgil's, then Alan's, then Scott's, then John's. Virgil got a bit of a 'growth spurt' due his face claim, but Gordon stayed the shortest XD) 170lbs (I looked up weights of professional olympic swimmers in the Gordon's height range and used the average for Gordon's weight. I figure he's build like a professional swimmer, even after the accident)

-Alan Neil Tracy 19 in 2065 (born 2046, March 12th) 5'10.5" (he is VERY proud of that half in he's got on Gordon XD ) 181lbs (Alan is actually the heaviest in build of the brother's, a bit more powerful / buffer than Scott - it's a build he inheritated from / shares with Jeff. Both Jeff and alan are drawn buff, nearly stout, in the comics. Which fits with the fact that alan is shown to be capable of a one punch KO in the TV show

=========================

24. Most Annoying Habit hmmmmm... Not sure off the top of my head ^^;; I'll see if I can think of something and do a reblog / addition to this later

[clotpolesonly]

Fanfic author game #4: what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread?

4. what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread?

oh god, that's a good question......... i gotta dig out my old Fics To Write gdoc, gimme a minute well, i guess it depends on if i interpret it to mean plot bunnies that i still carry because i still have hope of writing them someday, or just the oldest idea that i remember wanting to write. cuz for the latter, it was definitely a fantasy story set in a world called Minunaia. i did a bunch of worldbuilding for it, i drew a map, i used so many place-name-generators online 😂 all of the characters were based off of me and my friends and i made them all read it as i wrote. i got like 30 pages into the story without anything actually HAPPENING cuz i had very little actual plot in mind, lmao, i was only interested in playing in the sandbox i'd set up. which i feel like is very on par for a future career in fanfiction 😂 as for fics, gosh, i'm honestly not sure, my gdoc is not in chronological order akldfjgh, i arranged it by ship lol. so i'll put out a random one that i remember being from at least 9 years ago. "Jailbreak AU – Gen modern AU. Escaped convict!Merlin tries to hijack Arthur’s car. Accused of sorcery and murdering his best friend, needs to clear his name and find the real killer." so the concept was that Nimueh had a gang, a badass magical gang, and she wanted to be the most powerful magic user in the tri-state area or whatever. Merlin was not in the gang, but for whatever reason, Will had gotten sucked into it. Nimueh found out that Merlin was super powerful, strong enough to rival her and threaten her dominance, and she wanted him gone even though he didn't have any designs on her operation. i think Will wanted to defect? or he found something out and was going to turn states witness or whatever, and Nimueh figured that the smartest thing to do would be take out two birds with one stone -- kill the traitor and frame the rival. so Will is dead and Merlin is blamed for it. he's arrested and no one is listening to him as he tries to tell them that Nimueh is responsible, so he escapes, determined to find the evidence himself even if he won't survive it in the end or it means he goes back to jail forever. he needs to get justice for Will. he ends up jumping in the back of Arthur's car like "do what i say or i'll kill you!!!" except he's, ya know, Merlin and he's not super threatening. and Arthur is, ya know, Arthur and he's not very intimidated. he is, however, a person with a very strong sense of justice and honor, so when Merlin tells him what his goal is, he can't get past the possibility that maybe Merlin is telling the truth. he can't in good conscience allow an innocent man to go to jail and a killer to walk free, so in a fit of rare noble impulsivity, he is convinced to hide Merlin and help him in his quest. i never really got past the set up 😂 but i had a very vivid image in my mind of Arthur taking Merlin to some pub he had the keys to or whatever, to hide out, and watching as Merlin overloaded the magic-suppressing restraints he was put in, literally melting them off his wrists, and being like "oh. oh wow." in both a scared and a horny kind of way, and then tending to the resulting burns. because i have always been a slut for hurt/comfort. bonus answer: babe, i experience existential dread over SO MANY of the concepts i have shoved in the back of my closet. i have dozens of ideas half-formed and lurking and gathering dust, and i used to think i was gonna write them all someday, but now it's been years and years and i'm forced to acknowledge that i'm probably not and that's a sucky realization 😅 but sometimes the stars simply do not align. the time wasn't right and now the moment has passed for those ideas. maybe someday the stars will cycle through and come back into the right position and i'll get an enormous burst of inspiration and motivation and discipline, and words will end up on the page that i never expected to actually write!! cross your fingers for that mythical day.

.

send me writer asks!

[kaizsche]

WIP List Game

You know the drill: create a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP file 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.

thank u so MUCH for the tag, @katherineholmes!!!

(i was in bed after finishing the movie taken (lmao) when i saw this and i immediately stood up my bed JFHIAHDIAUGDIA - and thought of reblogging but i just have so many darn wips... so get ready)

The Vampire Diaries/The Originals:

and from your lips she drew the hallelujah

superposition

untitled original fam + jeremy trip (trip to nola crack fic)

untitled princess hours au (a kdrama)

1992

i hope you're happy, but don't be happier

isn't it strange?

about you

i wish we had more time (not the final title, lol.)

it's only natural

driver's license

by the gods (not the final title)

your disaster is heavy on my tongue

untitled viking au

untitled princess diaries au

keeping up with the mikaelsons

untitled guardians of the lamb au (a manhwa)

windchimes and kifton suits

untitled klena theatre au

if we make it through december

untitled elejah pregnancy fic

untitled elejah sirebond thing

untitled elejah modern pregnancy fic

untitled the gentlemen au fic

untitled time travel fic

untitled time travel pregnancy fic thing

untitled klaus in wolf form crack fic

untitled wolf mate thing fic au?? idk

time will warp what is mine

elena x mikaelsons (#trying to fit all the tvd characters in this godforsaken fic)

untitled elena + mikaelson family crack fic

Star Wars

don't blame me, love made me crazy (an anon req i havent touched in forever)

ashes on the ground

untitled anakin x reader fic

in my dreams you love me back

rocket man (i think it's gonna be a long, long time)

Genshin Impact

to taste a winner

catching feelings

eyepatches

Wednesday

untitled - addams family kidnaps tyler lol

untitled pride and prejudice au

into the devil's jaws

i'd probably still adore you with your thighs around my neck (draft)

untitled wyler torture scene

Wednesday x The Vampire Diaries/The Originals

untitled enid as klaroline's daughter fic

untitled wyler trip to nola

Star Wars x The Vampire Diaries

happier than ever

NCT

the five stages of separation

hey mama!

Empress Ki

untitled fic

Haikyu!!

krinos

kenma x idol au one shot

Mob Psycho 100

untitled smut fic

Shadow and Bone

the hero

Teen Wolf

till the ends of the earth with you (discontinued)

The Eternals

untitled ikaris fic (discontinued)

The Batman

untitled fic (discontinued bc my friend thought the way i wrote selina kyle was ooc)

ITS A LONG LIST ISNT IT IM CACKLING - pls feel free to ask ANYTHING OR EVERYTHING 😏😏😏😏😏

(didn't include one fic in my gdocs cause it for a gift heh)

tagging: @sunless-garden @itsmejaji and anybody else interested!

[bagheerita]

Twenty Questions For Fic Writers

Thank you for the tags @lord-aldhelm and @anonmadsci and @chaniis-atlantis !! 💖💖💖

1. how many works do you have on AO3? Currently 93. I've finished transferring (almost) all of my old fics from FFN and AFF (for archival purposes, as most of them are not very good)

2. what's your total AO3 word count? 1,678,494

3. what fandoms do you write for? Formerly, 28 fandoms listed on A03. Currently, Stargate Atlantis (though I'm hoping to get some of my SGU ideas wrangled into actual fics soon)

4. top five fics by kudos: "Nemo" (SGA) "Nykteridalatry" (SGA) "One and One and One is Three" (MCU) "Regina Donum" (SGA) and "Written in Your Skin" (SGA) has (I believe recently) edged out "Your Prison is Walking Through this World all Alone" (MCU) for 5th ❤

5. do you respond to comments? Oh yeah! I've had some great comment conversations especially on "Nemo" and the earlier fics in that series, and I still try to reply to all comments.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Gonna say "Lie Still" (Angel/BTVS). It deals with a canon character death, sort of me exploring why I felt like this ending fit the character, though it's so personal to my own feelings that I feel like it's difficult for other readers to parse.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? This is difficult to say, as I much prefer to write happy endings so there are many!! I might say "Harbored" or "A Dram of Sweet is Worth a Pound of Sorrow" (both SGA), as they both deal with the main character overcoming painful histories to find happiness.

8. do you get hate on fics? Nothing I would call hate, though sometimes I get odd comments.

9. do you write smut? Lots.

10. craziest crossover? I adore crossovers. I'm gonna interpret this question slightly differently than I have in the past and say "One and One and One is Three" (MCU). Technically this isn't a "crossover" in the sense of different properties, but in the sense of the multiverse and 5 universes of people running around and seeing what their-self is up to in another universe.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of.

12. have you ever had a fic translated? No.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but technically Eos and I are co-authors on "Aubade," as she contributed gorgeous illustrations!!

14. all time favorite ship? I have so many fandoms and characters I love that I tend to ship whatever characters' vibes works for me in that moment. Recently, I do tend toward vaguely evil/unbelievable snark as a ship dynamic, which has manifested in me writing over 100,000 words each for inussess, frostiron, and jodd

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? At the moment I'm fighting the pull of garashir. I do NOT need to get pulled into another fandom, especially one where I need to learn a whole new writing vocabulary that I haven't been paying that much attention to as I (re)watch the show. But I have a very specific vibe I'm searching for that I want to read and I haven't found a fic to fill that vibe yet, so I've opened a Gdoc to store some notes, and so I guess it counts as a WIP though I want it to exist as much as I do not want to write it.

16. what are your writing strengths? I haven't been writing much lately so at the moment I'm not really feeling that I'm good at anything lol.

17. what are your writing weaknesses? currently I'm gonna go with summer. it's too hot and i have no energy.

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language? Do whatever makes you happy, but if I needed to know what that said for the plot you better provide a translation.

19. first fandom you wrote in? OT Star Wars

20. favorite fic you've written? Whew, this one is hard to answer. My favorite moments that I envisioned in my head tend to not end up translating as well as I want them to onto the page, but "With Autumn Closing In" (MCU), "Oh Talk Not to Me Of a Name Great in Story" (SGA), and "Ivory Fanged" (Kiesha'ra) are probably some of my favorites.

Edit: was tired and forgot to tag people so @_yournamehere_ if you want to participate ❤

[hideyseek]

6. 10, 11? For ur ao3 wrapped? Mehabs?

(im on mobile if something is weird. No it isnt)

bro ,,,,, im so sorry to report something was weird, i only saw this guy come in today he was not in my inbox before. apology for delay. but hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii yes thank you for the ask!!!!! of course i will answer i love to fucking TALK hehe :3

ao3 wrapped asks

6. Favorite title you used?

mmmm hehe. i'm gonna answer this based purely on title vibes as opposed to like "how well the title fits the fic" bc i wrote a bunch of shorter (to me) fics without a lot of internal thematic happenings that a title could reflect and so i don't really think of anything i published that a title is doing very much work.

i think my favorite title of anything published this year is i wish you the wind just because ah ... what a phrase! no idea what this means but it sounds so damn romantic to me! really has a flavor of like ... bittersweet farewell!

10. What work was the quickest to write?

mmm, haha. well, two answers to this i suppose. on one hand, there was keep me here which unfortunately i wrote in about one day from nothing (and therefore had approximately 12 minutes to revise) because i was determined to post SOMETHING for that day of kaze week 2023. but the first fic that came to mind (and perhaps the most accurate answer, time-wise) was my drabble from week 2 of inception wicked which came together in about three hours total drafting, but there was a span of several days (and truthfully several days that felt like several weeks lol) between me initially having the idea and sitting down to draft. but like, to be fair, it is about 400 words so revising goes exponentially quicker. truly this shocked even me, though i guess really what this means is i already was primed with a bunch of subconscious thoughts about the dynamic in this fic lol. (you can read it here on the gdoc with the other fics from that week! bc i haven't gotten around to posting on ao3 yet lol. content warnings for: semi-explicit sexual content, fantasizing about a married couple, voyeurism)

11. What work took you the longest to write?

hmm ... i don't know if there's a winner for anything i published, tbh. most of the rest of the kaze week fics from january kind of came together in a span of 3-5 days depending on the fic, and most of the other drabbles for both events came together in about the alotted week. so instead i'm going to gleefully misinterpret this question so i can talk about my beloved unpublished nemesis project, narrative!fic :3

i hate that guy! (<- said extremely lovingly) i probably earnestly worked on this fic for ... 4 or 5 months of this year? had a nice breakthrough for some story logic in august / september ish, outlined from that through october, and wrote pretty diligently for most of november. (i did tell my roommate fully two years ago, "hey you need to watch kazetsuyo so i can make you betaread this fic i'm writing at the end of the year, i'll watch star trek with you in exchange". that was literally 2021 lmao. they have not yet seen a draft bc there has not been a draft worth having anybody else look at yet.)

i think the thing that has made the process of drafting narrative!fic so long is really just that, for the last two-ish years, narrative!fic wasn't actually a story to me, so much as it was a project into which i dumped all my post-college facing-the-future feelings and loosely tied up with a string called "i'm sure i can make haiji go through this as well". but then, due to various life events in april of this year, suddenly i came back to the draft and it was like: oh. ohhh, okay. i can see how this can be a story, actually. this is about haiji, as a character, as opposed to haiji, as a semi-direct proxy for myself. and then over the next few months i cut out a ton of stuff and reworked his main arc and now it's like ... a story, instead of just a bunch of feelings and events. which, truly, is only my personal marker for what i was looking for from the project. like, i personally want a separation of my own experiences from what is in my fic, i want to be thinking about developments in the fic as narrative choices the story requires rather than as alternatives to how my own life could have gone. (which ultimately may well be the same thing but its the headspace im in, for me).

and i think the other part is just -- i didn't know how to write! i mean, obviously i know how to string words into a sentence lol. but a LOT of i guess the first two years of drafting and then setting all the drafted stuff aside to start again from scratch like four times over, was me learning to like, figure out my own longfic writing process. (big sobbing emoji, lmao. i remember in my youth reading about maggie stiefvater having 200k of unused draft material for one of the trc books and i was like, how??? and now i am like: yeah. unfortunately i get it. not that my tossed-out drafter material is of that specific magnitude. but there is a lot of it, goddamn.) and now that i've got at least an initial / foundational sense of it, the hardest part is only actually sitting down and writing. (i say as if this is not also, extremely challenging for me lol). so uh, i guess i'll say here "maybe this time next year i'll really have a full draft of narrative!fic", and. we'll see how that goes :3

[dracwife]

never again. | bo

ship: my delilah → bo/heidi

word count: 1270

summary: heidi gets hurt, and bo’s sent into a fit of rage. i titled this ‘copium’ in my gdocs and that’s all this is. but yall said i should just post it anyways, so. here

cw for violence & blood, implications of (past)abuse

He feels his knuckles crack with every hit. Every connect of flesh to bone he feels himself bleed more, bruise and ache overpowers his every nerve and though it stings the adrenaline rushes through his veins and again and again he strikes his fist down, searing fire in his eyes burns as bright as the moon above, casting only a glow across the sidewalk which he's kneeled. 

Reflective is that glow, that against his skin shines the calloused hands and scarcely healed skin rounding his wrists. Blood drips, and he tastes metallic crimson and he swallows, creature of the night he might as well have been sitting like that; kneeled over the body of what could have been nothing but prey, tilting his head back to howl not at the moon but a strangled roar rips through his throat all the same as he falls back finally. Panting, beat for breath he gasps for air and with every exhale that drip that runs down his face falters for a moment. 

Violence is a part of him, inherent as the blood that runs through him and across his face and around him now, his heart beats as well as his hands may and he's learned to bury the things that bothered him not within but in the ground more often than not, and it's times like this he wonders just how that panicked voice behind him that approaches even stays. Inside himself he knows that even with the way he's battered before and again, he'd raise his voice but never a hand to that same one that falls around him now, hands tearing his own away from the body below him and begging. 

When he's ripped away and forced to stand on shaking legs, he's lit a cigarette with marred fingers that's quickly ripped from his teeth by that same shouting form and tossed to the ground, where Bo stomps it out with the same fury that he's atoned the body on the ground with. 

Gentle hands take his own, cracked skin that's stained black from oil and blue from injury, and drag him begging away, pleading to stop. 

He blinks away that rage that's still built within him, and allows himself to be pulled further, if only a few feet but his gaze trains on the figure on the ground still, waiting, hoping it moves again so that he'd get another chance to relieve them of that very breath. Were his knuckles not shone deep the color of cardinal, they'd have been white with the way his fists ball and his nails dig deep into his skin as he tries so desperately to rip himself away from the residual anger that reverberates through him. 

He's not a good man. He knows this. But he sure as hell knows he's a damn better man than the one that's there on the ground now. But it's the finer soul of them all that takes his hurt hands and cries, that buries their face into his chest and sobs, not out of anguish but of fear. 

"You don't gotta look," his fingers that sear with agony cradle their head to him, and he turns away from the scene splayed across the splattered pavement. 

"I wanna go home."

"We are. We are," he drawls, though he takes no steps as they hold tighter to his shirt and tremble in his touch. He can feel the water that will wash his hands of the blood already stinging and winces at the thought, but just as every kill before, he knows the same pain, the pain of knowing that the life that his hands take will never fade. And it's not that he minds, but fears that same reason he kills now will fade instead, would fear him, shy from his grasp when he hurts already. He's tired, and it's fucking with his brain, he tells himself this, but even then he's compelled to reassure --

"Nothing's gonna hurt you. You know that? Never again. I swear on my life. Nothing, ever again. Fuck."

"I just want to go home. Please." 

"You're hurt. You're hurt and it's all my fault --" 

The blood he's smeared into their hair now shines in the light and they don't seem to care, but he does. That blood that ties them together, spilt but binding and it's only when they take his wrist and press a gentle kiss there and plead, chanting their apologies that he brushes their cheek -- oh, but how soft their skin was next to his.

"Lester'll take care of it. C'mon," he pulls them away and down the path home. 

Their hand brushes delicate against their cheek, pale porcelain that glistens in the night, so careful do they raise their touch, "I didn't even notice."

He cuts them off with a grunt, and the flick of his lighter again he's inhaling that smoke that curls in his lungs and curdles in heat the same way his blood boils when he notices the cut that lines their jaw. He wipes their blood away, with his own taking its place and sighs. 

"He got you good there."

"I did." His words are muffled by the smoke that he mumbles out and the tobacco that ashes as he scarcely verbalizes those two simple words. 

"You'll be okay, right?"

So innocent is their questioning, so determined but concerned, their grip on his arm tightens and though he's walking next to them, they claw almost desperately at the fabric of his flannel in wonder. Afraid to lose him. Afraid to be left alone so soon. Afraid to be vulnerable again. He's angry again. Annoyed. At himself, for leaving them even just for that moment he ran into the station. He knew there was someone else there somewhere. He knew it, and he still left. Stupid, stupid man he was. His heart aches, and everything hurts and his mind is clouded with exhaustion as the adrenaline wears off, but he still trudges on down that road holding Heidi close. 

"Will you?"

They sniffle, wipe their face and though they're shaking still they lean against Bo's arm. It hurts, but the pain is worth the comfort if he's able; it's not something he can offer frequently, and he figures that if anything it's all he can do in that moment. So he lets them, and he blinks away the warm tears that threaten to rise when he feels his face heat. 

"Yeah. I…I think so," they whisper, grounding themselves with the touch of mangled scar, he wonders how that's ever easing but lets them anyway and brushes his fingertips as calmly as he can against their hands that are locked around him. His feet fall against the asphalt and distantly he can hear the dog barking. They're almost home now, four walls of safety, and he relaxes tensed muscles he hadn't even noticed were stiff before. Everything aches. But even so, he takes the cigarette from between his bruised lips, and taps at it gently as he watches the cindering flakes fall slow to the ground. A blaze that could mirror his own passionate hatred that even in that moment ghosted his mind and sank in his stomach. That soft touch brings him back, and as he glances at them he places the Red back in his mouth, tongue flicking at the paper for a moment as his eyes scan the other besides him for any other visible injury. When he finds none, he pulls his arm from their grasp against his side and wraps that same one around their shoulder to hold them closer. 

"Then I'll be alright, too."

[maryellencarter]

It's not quite done, but the last big scene that needs written is gonna be @camshaft22 's work, which means I can shift gears and turn into my original form: a beta reader.

With a fic this long (over 20k words and counting), one big part of the editing process for us is breaking the story up into chapters. It helps us get more focused on any pacing and story structure problems that might have shown up while we were hammering out the first draft.

(We write ridiculously clean first drafts these days. That's mostly experience after almost four years together, and partly because we're still neck-deep in rewrites on our first two novels, from when we hadn't built this process up yet, so now I make damn sure we do any minor edits as they come along. We write almost everything as RP, so we work in Gdocs both for maximum fluidity -- writing OT4 when only two of the characters are strictly "assigned" is great practice -- and so that I can ride herd on POV changes as they happen. Also so we don't have to strip out formatting from Discord or wherever when turning an RP into a fic, that's a pain in the ass.)

(I have the skill, apparently rare, of writing RP from the "external" POV, of the opposite character to the one I'm actually playing. Didn't really realize that was so unusual until I joined a fandom that's not just half a dozen people and a bag of chips. Don't know *why* I didn't realize, because I had to work hard to get the sense of POVs that I have, including a whole lot of cussing at the exercises in Ursula K. LeGuin's incomparable book on writing, "Steering the Craft". Probably something to do with not valuing the skillset you have.)

Aaaanyway. I think I was trying to say something.

Right: chapters! In past longfics, our chapters have landed in the 3k-5k range. These are pretty much 1500-2500 words each, which seems like it should feel really short, and maybe it will, but it also feels like the right fit for the way the pacing flows. I don't know if it's just that Jigen is *that* fucking much more laconic than Wes Janson or what. O_O

(Hell, my Jigen isn't even that laconic! Every Thursday, which is when the new episodes of the Green Jacket dub have been dropping, I find my Jigen voice changing drastically, because the rest of the week I've been marathoning the last of subtitled Red Jacket, so it's all Kobayashi-san and the wildly varying quality of the subtitles on VRV/Crunchyroll. Which apparently means that my default Jigen voice uses *way* more fifty-cent words, and way more words in general, than Epcar Jigen. I'm definitely gonna have to do an extra editing pass just to make sure I have a consistent character voice, which is *not* a problem I've had as Wes since the D&D campaign followed by the 50k novel.)

Granted, this is also the fic where I wrote maybe half of it so far by my lonesome (on request), so the usual reason our partnered fics run long, aka bantering endlessly, is mostly not present. Even the Jigen&Zenigata scenes got a solo rewrite afterwards to tighten them up and keep us from repeating information. This thing is a *lot* more plotty than most of the fics we've managed to publish so far. Well, plotty, actiony, somewhere in that range. Not consisting mainly of banter and porn or banter and angst, is my point.

Fuck. Anyway. I was just trying to post a brief update on this monster and it turned into an essay on our writing/editing process. Maybe I should write one of those on purpose someday. It's evolved.

[gentlemancrow]

4 and/ or 10

[Answering asks from here!]

4. what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread? OH MAN OK >> So I got this idea for a post Mag 200 fic like almost IMMEDIATELY after finishing TMA and I literally have an outline in my Gdocs but I haven't touched it yet! So basically it was inspired by Wandavision and how she was processing her trauma and grief through magical TV tropes and I thought WOW WHAT IF... In the midst of the cosmos somewhere, Jon doesn't wake up somewhere else, but he wakes up in some horrible darkly comical farcical fear crafted trope and without Martin? Then he has to run the torment gauntlet through various VERY entity touched cliches/tropes, like hospital shows, sci fi shows, cop procedurals, sweeping fantasy epics etc, desperately searching for Martin, the REAL Martin anyway >> and a way to get them out of there. And I was gonna have all the people they lost play all these roles in each of the "TV Shows" to sort of symbolically deconstruct all their relationships and various failings and missed opportunities and ruined relationships and bad choices through the show and WHEW YEAH. That is PRECISELY why it is not written I'm not sure I have the writing chops to pull that off so YES... Yes I experience deep existential dread about it because could it absolutely SLAP? OH YES. IN MY CLUMSY DOOFY FANTASY/COMEDY WRITING WINGS EEEEH I DUNNO ABOUT THAT LOL

10. at what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you?

URGGGH TITLES MY BELOATHED. I HATE coming up with titles akjshfkaj Newer followers won't know this, but In Scientia, Magicae was originally titled "The Fussbudget and the Archivist" as a nod to the beauty and the beast inspiration and I changed it after like chapter 7 haha! It just didn't fit anymore! I am SO FICKLE with titles and usually I'm sitting there with a complete fic, staring at the AO3 submit page going shitshitshitshit uhhhhh... SHRUG? SOMETIMES I get a good idea right off the bat, but that's super rare usually I struggle IMMENSELY lol

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE ASK X3 <3