#I usually never post wips because I don't want to 'spoil' anything but this time I need help.

[charmwasjess]

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time?

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

AHHHH! SO fun!!! Thank you, Geode! :D

What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Given my WIP addiction, I'll tell you I'll never write it and then accidentally start writing it next week. :D

But probably Sith Master Sifo-Dyas and Sith Apprentice Dooku AU - I love their fucked up dynamic, but let's be real, this would turn into PWP. Oh, that, or a Tales of the Jedi fix-it, where Dooku actually escapes Sidious with Yaddle, and ends up training Anakin.

Are there any fics from others you reread all the time?

Oh, um, yes, all of them!! :D I'm a compulsive rereader. If there's a fic I've left a comment on, I've probably reread it a few times (and will be going back to reread it a couple times more!) The one that jumps to mind especially right now is @purple-ant's Pray My Mind Be Good to Me - I'm helping with beta translation so I've gotten a lot more of it than is currently posted and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about it both as a reader and as someone who has been privileged enough to beta. I don't want to spoil anything, but it… it is asking some really fucked up, gorgeous questions about love, shame, hate, survival, and... and love. I'm really intensely interested in how the story is playing with those themes.

How much planning do you do before writing?

A lot!!! ….which actually, generally involves a lot of writing. I write out big pieces, usually wildly out of order, and then if the plot is coming together, write out a really incoherent outline/list of notes/scraps of dialogue. And when I say incoherent, I mean… this is an example from a fic I'm working on:

What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

I keep wanting to share a funny line because I think my favorite stuff is actually my dialogue, when Dooku and Sifo-Dyas get going back and forth like they do, but I really like this line from Five Days to Murder Sifo-Dyas because it's kind of my thesis statement for all my fics. It's hard writing hopeful stories about doomed characters who are set in a particularly doomed era - you know, what's the point of loving prequel era characters if they all constantly lose and fail and suffer?

“Sifo-Dyas.” The half-Sith studied him, emotion billowing like volcanic clouds. “You aren’t a fool. Why did you come here if you knew that might happen? Why did you remain my friend for decades of our lives if you always knew that this was a possibility?” His voice rose almost to a shout. “Why are you still being kind to me?!”

The words rang around the huge, empty room, like a challenge that went unanswered.

“I didn’t believe it would happen back then, and I still don’t.” Sifo-Dyas told him, looking down into his mostly-empty bowl. “And even if I did, why would I throw away decades of true friendship just because of a potentially uncertain ending? If you murder me right now, will that go back and erase the times when we were genuinely happy? Stars, remember the day of our Choosing tournament, when you wouldn’t let me lose, and we fought the most absolutely perfect duel?” He still smiled at the memory, even now, all of these years and chapters of sadness later.

“I remember.”

“Life isn’t any less incredible just because there’s death waiting at the end of it, even a bad death. The beauty doesn’t go away because there’s also pain. Even after a great loss, the love lives on.” Sifo-Dyas hadn’t meant to bring up Qui-Gon, but he could sense they were both thinking of him.

When he spoke, Dooku’s voice sounded slightly rough, as if his throat were still bothering him. “I do not think that normal people would see it that way.”

“You and I could not be further from whatever ‘normal people’ are.”

[lusthurts]

Fic Writers Tag

got tagged by @daisyishedwig, thank you :))

and I'll tag @vrt77 and anyone else who wants to do it!

how many works do you have on ao3?

I only have 10 on ao3, I originally started writing on fanfiction.net in like 2011 or something, and no one will ever get that username out of me lol I would've deleted the account but I don't want to be the kind of fic writer that deletes things just because I'm not proud of them anymore.

I used to cross-post everything from ao3 on there because it's the roots of why I enjoy fanficiton, but I don't anymore, mostly because it's a lot of work and I get frustrated with not being able to tag things + having to write super short summaries.

2. what's your ao3 word count?

currently at 345,703 & will be at about 400k when I finish posting my wip

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Glee, and it's surprisingly always been Glee. That's taken different forms over the years, like there were several years where I wasn't posting anything and was just doing some silly little instagram rp with some great friends I made. But Glee is how I discovered fanfiction in the first place, and it's consistently been the one fandom I feel connected enough to write this much about.

I have dabbled in other things over time - wrote a Girl Meets World fic I never finished, got really into some teen shows like Pretty Little Liars, 90210, Gossip Girl, etc. when I was a teenager. But I've pretty consistently only posted glee fics.

4. top 5 fics by kudos

For Real This Time (280), Something More (180), How Bright We Burn (178), slipped away like a bottle of wine (120), and invisible string (102)

5. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Yes, I try to respond to every comment unless it's super short/I have nothing to say. I usually try to avoid spoilers, and I generally like to treat comments more as my opportunity to make friends/chat with readers about the characters/the ship/the plot.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Definitely 11:11, it's a canon compliant one shot about slushy-gate which basically just involves Sebastian and Blaine both independently being angsty about everything that went down and wondering what went wrong in their friendship, and by the time Sebastian comes around and apologizes, it's too late.

Some of my other one shots don't necessary have happy endings, but they do have optimistic endings, so I think 11:11 is the only one that counts as straight up angst.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think Something More - don't wanna spoil it, but I think that's the nature of writing a fic where the characters are a little older and you can just feel that the happy ending is permanent, rather than when they're teenagers and happy endings can be very short lived.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Not really, and I can be kinda sensitive lol so I'm glad I don't.

Most of the time if I do get hate, it's not criticizing me as a writer but rather criticizing the way the characters are behaving (which I guess is a reflection of me as a writer because sometimes it's because they don't like the way I've written characters), but I can move past that pretty easily because I realize everyone has different head canons, especially for characters like Sebastian who get like less than 10 episodes of canon screen time.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Not really? I mean, some of the things I've written toe the line between smut and fade to black (like How Bright We Burn, For Real This Time, & The Way I Loved You, mostly) but I like to think I do so in a way that is way more focused on feelings and emotions than what body part goes where. Even in How Bright We Burn where sex is like a very big part of their arc, most of the way you know what's going on is from Blaine's inner monologue or Sebastian's jokes, not so much from me just like describing the scene.

I mostly don't think I'm great at writing smut, and I've found I really like the style of writing about sex that like Casey McQuiston uses in "Red, White, & Royal Blue" where it's not smut but rather indirectly describing what's going down with a huge focus on the emotions at play. If you've read the book, I feel like you'd understand what I mean, but I don't know how else to describe it.

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've ever written?

I do not, mostly because there's not really a fandom I'm as passionate about as Glee that I feel like could go well together. I do hope some day I find the inspiration to write a Flash/Glee crossover fic, but who knows. Back in like 2011 when I first started writing fanfiction, I would sometimes include like one or two characters from other fandoms, maybe as like a roommate when a character went to college or as some background character, but nowadays I prefer to write OCs for those purposes.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, but who knows honestly. I did have some writing I did on a fandom Instagram at one point + some edits stolen, and it was crazy because they blocked me so that I wouldn't find out but didn't bother to block any of my friends.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

nope :) I feel like someone asked me once if they could, but I never heard anything back from them after I said yes.

13. have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No, but I did some Instagram RP back in the day that felt very much like co-writing. I had this Klaine RP that really helped me develop the way I write Blaine, and I think I had a Blam one too. But I enjoyed writing the friendships a lot more. I was Blaine and really close with someone who played Tina & someone who played Brittany, so those friendships became super important to me.

14. fave all time ship?

I mean,, my favorite to write is Seblaine and I'm obsessed with them. Their relationship is so special to me and I've never enjoyed writing about anyone as much as I do with them. I've been a Glee fan since I was in middle school when it was still on air, but I never really shipped them to this extent until I rewatched for the 800th time during the pandemic. Since then, they've been my OTP. They're both just very dynamic characters with infinite writing potential, and I love that neither of them is perfect, and there's so much from canon left unsaid that I get to explore. I'm also a sucker for friends to lovers and enemies to lovers, and Seblaine has elements of both.

But some other favorite ships include Wolfstar (Harry Potter), firstprince (Red, White, & Royal Blue), Gallavich (Shameless), Shara & Chloe (I Kissed Shara Wheeler), Evelyn & Celia (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), Nick & Jess (New Girl), Barney & Robin (How I Met Your Mother), & Jake & Amy (Brooklyn 99).

15. wip you want to finish but doubt you will?

I honestly don't have many of these, mostly because I tend to write entire projects at a time then move onto something else, at least with fanfiction. But I do have this little spooky halloween one shot au I started like two years ago and haven't felt motivated to finish because I'm just not good at writing spooky things.

I also have this sort of longfic I worked on for a really long time as a way to deal with something going on in my life, but I doubt I will ever finish it or post any of it because it's lowkey traumatic (deals with like car accidents & the death of a child) and I doubt anyone would be interested in reading something like that. It's Seblaine but involves a lot of Glee characters I haven't written beyond brief scenes in like 10+ years, like Finn, Rachel, Quinn, etc.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I like to think I'm good at writing like anxiety and very detailed internal monologues. I sometimes feel like I include too much of it, but it's always come very naturally to me. I also think I've gotten a lot better in the last year or so at writing funny side characters and dialogue in a group setting.

And I think I've gotten a lot better at writing chemistry and building that chemistry over time instead of skipping to the good part right away - the evolution of that skill to me is very apparent in how I wrote For Real This Time vs. How Bright We Burn.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

lol smut

I also think I tend to not trust myself enough and end up writing exactly what's going on instead of like implying it. I just want readers to understand so bad that I sometimes feel the need to explicitly say what a character is thinking or feeling, which isn't always what you want, especially when it's a character whose POV I'm not writing.

Also I think my sentence structure can be kinda not great. I write really long wordy run-on sentences too often when it should probably be reserved as a narrative device.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I know a lot of French - I took it for five and a half years and keep up with it on Duolingo so I don't forget anything. I wouldn't call myself fluent, but I can generally understand it in reading and writing. That's the only language I'd be comfortable writing in other than English, which is SO convenient because you know who else is fluent in French? Sebastian ;)

19. first fandom you wrote for?

glee! nothing has changed lol

20. fave fic you've written?

How Bright We Burn! It is my nature that whatever I'm working on at that moment is my favorite thing. I'm really proud of the slow burn in that fic and the character development work I've done for Blaine and Sebastian but also for the side characters like Nick, Jeff, etc. and even my OCs like Ethan. But I'm even more excited about the sequel because it's something I've never really attempted to this extent before, and that's the thing that I'm actively working on since How Bright We Burn is done other than some minor editing.

also gonna shout out 11:11 because I think that is the best job I've ever done with writing angst, and it was both challenging and rewarding for me to write

[disdaidal]

🍱, 🍛, 🥮 for this bad boy and 🔪, 📌, ❤️, 🖊 for this one! <3

Ohh, Melia, you are spoiling me tonight! 💜💕

🍱 Do you read your own fics?

Recently, I've been reading my own fics more and found it quite enjoyable (self-indulgent stuff enjoyable? who'd have thunk?), but there was a time I avoided doing it as much as possible. 😅 I didn't want to go through my own stuff just to get to cringe at all the typos and mistakes I'd possibly-and surely-have made. 🙈

🍛 Have any comments, tags or reactions to one of your fics every made you laugh or cry or both?

I haven't gotten that many comments to my fics overall, but a couple of comments were left that made me grin like an idiot. 😁 I miss that feeling.

🥮 Do you have any writing milestones you're working toward?

I was actually supposed to answer this question in this reply, but had apparently mistook the emoji for another. 🙈 Anyway, my current Witcher/Gallahir wip that I've been writing for a while now (and talked plenty of about recently) is probably something akin to that. I've written it a lot, I'm still actively working on it and I can hardly wait to finally post chapter one on ao3- which I hope will be soon. So, yeah. :D I don't know if it's going to be anything special but to me it has been pure joy writing it so far, so I hope it will be that also to those who ship it with me.

🔪 Fuck marry kill 3 tropes (asker’s choice of tropes).

You didn't give me any tropes to fuck marry or kill, soooo~

Soulmate AU - Fuck. I swear I can never get enough of it. Two souls being bound to each other and stuck with each other. Usually comes packaged with Hurt/Comfort, which I absolutely also can never get enough of.

Mutual Pining - Marry. There is a reason why I love bringing this into my own writing. I just love reading about two people having feelings for each other, but they're so dumb and awkward it almost hurts (except it doesnt, it makes me giddy).

Mpreg - Kill. Okay, so, while I have read a few of these actually (:D) and while I do enjoy the omegaverse stuff in general, I usually lose my interest very quickly the point they start bringing kids into the scenery. It's just not for me I guess. D:

📌 If all your fics/WIPs fell off a ship and were drowning (go with it), and you could only save one, which would it be?

I would save my current Roommates AU. :P I've written so much of it already, why would I suddenly want it to drown??? I'm willing to sacrifice everything else to save it. *cries*

❤️ Who is your favorite character to write for and why?

With ST, Billy has been my obvious choice because I relate to his anger issues, being an older sibling etc. Writing him just felt so natural at times, it almost felt scary.

With Gallahir, I seem to keep switching sides because I guess I find both characters a little relatable in their own ways. Or then I just project a lot onto them, heh.

And since I remember last writing Valeveira (RE3) before these two (again I didn't publish shit), I found Jill quite relatable as well. She's very focused and goal-oriented to the point of neglecting everything else in her life (relatable), and she can be also a sarcastic hard ass, which I also found quite relatable, haha, so yeah.

[bi-bats]

💫 🦋 and 💌 for the fic writer asks?

hey bestie!!!!! I thought I'd see you in here 😂 thank you for reblogging the same post so I could ask you a few too!!! 💖 okay here we go:

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

I have a very specific favorite comment format and it's so fucking needy of me so no pressure to anyone reading to comment like this!!! but my favorite kind of comment is 1000000% when it's formatted like this:

["Snippet of something I wrote"] the commenter's reaction to that specific bit

Sincerely, I've said it before and I'll say it again: in the least creepy way possible, I would watch everyone react to every line of my fic if I could. Sometimes I just write a line I'm really proud of and I want it to be the line that makes someone laugh or shout or tear up and I love when people tell me what parts made them feel things!!! Also sometimes people point out lines that I didn't think twice about, ones that just came naturally, but they still make people lose it and I love that just as much!!

a close second favorite kind of comment is just when people leave me a really, really long comment about the things they loved in the chapter. Seriously, every time I get a comment that's an essay it makes me want to never stop writing 😂 Basically, much like my Jason, I'm a sucker for praise.

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

Oh noooooooo I have to be vulnerable??? Fuck. Okay, fine.

I'm usually the most insecure about the way the tone of the scenes flow together. I'm a bit of a freak about the plotline? And when I say 'a bit of a freak', I mean I have a full-size corkboard with all of the plotpoints of Know Yourself on it. Like I'm Charlie in that one gif from It's Always Sunny with the insane red string conspiracy theory board. Below is the Evidence in case you thought I was joking (I blurred out everything that was a spoiler, don't worry. Or sorry):

...Yeah. It's a lot. Sometimes I just really struggle with feeling like the moods/tone flows from scene to scene. If they're mad at each other, I need it not to feel like they're forgiving each other too easily. If they have a huge argument, they can't just go back to exactly how it was before (looking at you, chapter 7 of Know Yourself, which is giving me an absurd amount of trouble). Thus, the corkboard. It lets me quickly look at everything I've already written (without reading all *squints* 50k words I've posted, jesus fucking christ) and figure out if everything I'm working on makes sense with what came before that.

And yeah, it is a lot of work and dedication for the silly little fanfics I write, but it's sort of like a puzzle to me? It's satisfying to untie all the tangled ideas I have and make them into something pretty.

That said, TimKon never gives me as much trouble as JayTim. I should really post some of my TimKon stuff lol

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

Oh my god, this was cruel. You may not have known this was cruel, but this was cruel. Because the last time you sent me an ask, I knew I had a ton of ideas and I teased like two of them, but since then, the JayTimWeek prompts went up. And I promised myself I wasn't going to write something for every day, but then I blinked and I had ideas for every single day.

So, what to do? Do I post a snippet from one of my JayTim week WIPs? Do I post a minor spoiler for Know Yourself that you asked about in one of your comments? Do I drop all 6k words of chapter 1 of a long TimKon fic that's been sitting in my drafts for months? Do I tease an idea that I'm submitting for a zine? Do these questions count as an answer to the prompt, because I can't decide which I'm the most excited about?

No, I'm not that mean 😂 Here are two of the lines I'm most proud of from the next chapter of Know Yourself, which are in the same scene but not next to each other and don't spoil anything:

Jason was the one who had overreacted in the first place, filing Tim’s teeth to a sharp point in the hopes that he’d bite.

But then he fucked it all up. He’d done what he did best: tried to freeze over his white-hot anger, and still managed to be surprised when the ice cracked and steam shot out.

Thanks for the ask!!! I love doing these so thank you for making me answer and giving me an excuse to rest from writing (although @lovetimdrake is going to send me a meme in like 3 hours bullying me (rightfully) about how I'm supposed to be betaing their fic lol)

[mcrmadness]

Guys, I have this one pencil WIP I need a bit help with...

It’s still a WIP as I said but I wanted to ask: what’s wrong with Bela’s face? I can’t see it properly anymore. Does it even look like Bela yet? The reference photo is not the best one and believe me or not - Bela’s eye is the most difficult part in this whole thing. Here’s the reference photo and of course it’s easy to tell from this it’s Bela because why wouldn’t it be him, but it’s super difficult to draw right when this is the original:

The 21-years-old me really was a genius while choosing this photo to draw. Not.

Based on the eyes of the photobombing Rod (lol), I think also Bela’s eye do the same red-eye thing (how is it called in English? In Finnish it’s just red-eye...) and I tried to draw this without such effect but idk how to draw eyes from that angle. I googled for reference photos but it’s still so small that it’s hard to really draw that way with a pencil (the iris/pupil thing literally the size of the tip of the pencil). Also Bela’s head is slightly tilted and my hand is so good at drawing straight lines even without rulers that it feels almost impossible to draw anything that is even slightly tilted. I sometimes try to tilt the reference photos as well as the paper so that I could still draw not-tilted images but I just struggle at figuring out which way to turn the paper to make it look tilted on the paper, and tilted on the right direction too. I think there’s also something about the shape of Bela’s skull that I need to fix, I’m just not entirely sure what is it... move his forehead forward or make the back of his head bigger? I’m not entirely sure yet.

I also have to point out that this is actually a very old WIP originally. I started it in 2012 (yes I’m old, yes I turned 21 that year...) and I left it as a lineart that I thought I’d never continue, but I did in 2019 but wasn’t happy with the faces which is why I never posted it anywhere but also never used fixative on. (The old scans are under the cut for the first time ever to see.) So, almost everything that you see in today’s WIP is original (at least from the 2019 version) but just blended because I got a bit too much into blending so that I just needed to try that out with this one too and see if they (the eyeshadow applicators mainly) still work like little magic wands. And oh yes, they do indeed.

What I have drawn again or fixed are: the heads, Bela’s right hand (aka the one at Farin’s side), the side/back line of Farin’s jacket and his left leg (right one in the drawing). I might still need to do something about Bela’s legs because they look a bit weird for some reason but as you can see, the background in the reference photo is black so I have had to improvise there a little. That’s also the reason for why the end of the guitar looks really bad - it gets cropped out in the photo, but I might still try to fix that one too eventually.

Talking of the other things wrong in the drawing and what I’m still gonna fix one way or another - Farin’s mouth is too big (woooow). I haven’t had the courage to resize it because I’m afraid it would never look as nice as it does now but I’m afraid I have to do that anyway if I want to make it look correct. His whole head actually ended up being way too big and I have managed to narrow everything else down so far but not the mouth because I haven’t wanted to, yet. Also I have given him this cunning grin instead of just a smile so I need to move his lower jaw backwards a little, I see.

So my question is the same as in the beginning: does Bela look like Bela yet? Or does he at least look like he does in that photo? Is there something in particular that is still way too off that I should fix since I can’t see that? I do have this photo turned into black and white to make it easier to draw, and I’m still going to soften some lines in the final piece but atm I’m just trying to get Bela’s face look correct, as well as Farin’s mouth, and I will be going through everything else in this drawing later on to see if there’s anything else with proportions and such to fix (plus just cleaning up the highlights etc.) before I can call it finished.

Feel free to point out also if there’s something you see that I didn’t mention. Chances are that I either a) haven’t see it myself yet or b) just forgot to mention it.

Here’s the lineart WIP from 2012:

This is how it looked like in 2019 - I redrew almost everything in that original WIP actually:

I somehow had completely forgotten about blending because I hadn’t drawn anything in YEARS. So after my previous really successfull attempt with blending, I decided to try with this one again and it alone made already a huge impact on the drawing.

[spookierdeer]

spike redesign!! full post, i posted the wip a few days ago. more info under the cut!

sorry if what follows seems a little haphazard, i'm still working on fully forming my thoughts so the notes might be written out messily. still all canon until i say otherwise, though!

spike's actual species of dragon is unknown, twilight recieved his egg by mistake during a school project. the eggs were supposed to be under a stasis spell to keep the mysterious species of bird from hatching while under the young ponies' care, but those type of spells don't work on dragon eggs. i may write about how she actually came to receive this egg one day, but today i want to focus on spike!

i'm not confident my sketch of freshly hatched spike really shows him at the size i wanted to go for, as i imagine dragons are curled up inside the eggs completely and there isn't much space inside there once the dragon has fully formed and is close to hatching. so, spike is a pretty chunky baby and while teenage twilight can cradle him, he's still pretty stout.

in my au, dragons don't all eat crystals or minerals! it's actually pretty rare and most species of dragons enjoy full diets not including rocks or gems at all. however the dragons that do eat minerals often have the flashiest and stunning scale patters (crystals and gems) or the most rough to the touch (usually minerals found in lava beds and other highly sulfuric areas). this isn't mutually exclusive! spike has a bright color palette and pretty smooth scaling, but a mineral eating dragon could have just as bright of colors but feel like harsh sandpaper or a rough, rough cliff face. since spike is raised by ponies and quite enjoys minerals, he's gotten used to soft and silky textures and, though he isn't fully aware of how much his preferences and diet shape his scale texture, prefers his sleek scales to the rougher dragons he's seen.

if a dragon has unwanted roughness or is having trouble shedding scales, they may rub their bodies against harsh stone! for generations, before ponies and dragons new more of each other, there were smoothed out stones found in forests and other areas with low populations. they were considered magical by earth ponies and sometimes sacred! turns out, it was just where a dragon had buffed out some rough scales before the ponies found the place.

if spike were to eat magnetized minerals, would his scales become magnetic? probably if he ate enough! decorate your fridge with his yearly shed scales?

in the image i mention that land born dragon eggs are rough and water born dragon eggs are smooth. yes! that is a thing in my au. will i describe spikes egg here? no <3

twilight is basically a teen mom in my au, though by the time my au takes place spike rarely calls her anything other than her actual name. mostly because he thought his best friend being his mom was weird so his solution was to just call her by her real name instead! briliant, obviously. spike does still have a crush on rarity in his younger years, but it's definitely not anything serious. just a kid who thinks his mom's close friend is very nice and pretty! she's basically an aunt to him (the rest of the mane 6 generally act as his aunts, even rainbow who's married to his adoptive mom) and showed him the wonders of spa days and self care. her and fluttershy would take turns babysitting him when he was too young to follow twilight to school or when she was busy doing work for celestia and she couldn't keep an eye on him. after twilight and rainbow started dating, spike basically had this internalized debate of "ok. twilight is my mom. i love her. rainbow is like family. i love her too. it's still kind of weird that they're dating. why??" and basically came to the conclusion that it is ok to not call rainbow dash "mom" after all. he very bravely confronted rainbow about it when they were alone and she was like "it's ok lil dude" but internally was like "god hes precious" and was never worried about what spike called her anyway.

when rigel wisp comes along spike is basically that meme of "i've only known them for 5 minutes, but if anything happened to them i'd kill everthing in the room and then myself" as soon as he gets to hold them for the first time. he's a little bigger than pictured here, but never gets bigger than 5ft head to tail. he's a great older brother and spoils them rotten! he's not quite as close to the other foals of the mane 6+family, but he does try to help out with babysitting and keeping the foals distracted when needed. he's great at keeping them entertained and if the parents sneak him some extra gems when no ones looking, he's definitely not complaining.

i'm still working on a concrete timeline, but i know for sure spike is around 4 years older than flurry heart. timeline for that is twilight hatches spike's egg, shining armor completes training, eventually gets assigned to princess cadence's protection detail, they fall in love and almost immediately have a love boom that produces flurry heart. not sure if cadence knew twilights family when they were all kids or not, i kind of like it better as a love at first sight thing for her and shining armor. her whole thing is love after all! plus, she's the crown princess of the crystal kingdom and twilights parents are just unicorn astronomers. not sure how they'd meet for play dates, being from two separate kingdoms lmao

i'll probably think of more later, maybe i'll eventually write a fanfic like my friends keep telling me to. maybe i'll just keep adding to my obscenely large family tree of the mane 6 instead!

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Anon Asks ! (+one NSFW one below)

1. Awe, you're not selfish. I completely understand why you feel left out. Unfortunately, people already read my SFW stuff at such a lower rate that I'm afraid a SFW Series would totally bomb. Unless I was extremely motivated, I don't see myself being able to do it.

Do me a favor and send me another Anon about SFW Series recommendations. I just asked my Discord, but I want to give them some time to respond!

2. You are so wonderful. Thank you for sending me such a lovely message not once, but twice. I appreciate you taking your time to read my work and then go even further and tell me about it.

I hope you have the best day ever 😭

3. They've been friends since they were teenagers! Las Vegas is a surprisingly small place, all things considered. They promised him back then they would let him direct a music video if they ever made it big. It's very cute.

4. Who, me? Naaah, I'm just a worm 😉 (does anyone recognize this reference? or do I just look silly?)

5. I'm assuming this is about Quid Pro Quo (although it could also be about Fuzzy Pants, lol), and I'm so happy you think so! I was worried it'd be a bit too niche, but it's great to see people enjoying it 🤗

6. I don't think I'll be able to swing a whole series of that, but I do have a couple Virgin Post-Prison Spencer WIPs. I also plan on writing a Virgin Spencer mini-series after TB&TB (called Centerfold), but it takes place when he's in graduate school/ten years later.

7. Ah, you are so sweet. And yes, I have been writing quite a lot of that lanky fucker, huh... The truth is, my answer is very simple and can be summed up in a very funny way. How do I keep writing him?

✨ a u t i s m ✨

I can honestly say I have never, ever bored myself out of anything. Other things just became more interesting for a little while. Matthew was one of my first ever special interests as a young teen. I cycle through mine for periods of a couple years at a time (I popped in here hot off my Naruto re-emergence).

Whereas a lot of people go through interests in much shorter bursts (especially those with ADHD), autistic people have a tendency to fixate for much, much longer periods. There is nothing wrong with you, we are just different ☺️

I use the "Other" MGG characters to grant myself the freedom to do other things. I honestly really wanted this to be a multi-fandom blog, but I was immediately inundated with Spencer requests that never stopped.

Maybe one day I'll introduce another obsession, but I don't see it in my immediate future. I usually have a pretty good warning that I'm slipping out of the fandom. Right now I'm mostly just sad people are leaving. I'm still going strong though, lmao!

8. I'm a firm believer in the idea that Laziness Does Not Exist, but I totally understand. You're actually describing something experienced by ALL writers, although having ADHD will no doubt exacerbate the problems. I do not have ADHD, but the good news is that ADHD has a large number of treatment options (both pharmaceutical and otherwise).

I think you can talk to a trusted adult about it if you'd like. I know very little about the diagnostic process of ADHD, but I do know that it's significantly more straightforward than most autistic testing. A number of my friends got a diagnosis in less than a month (granted, they are all adults, and their parents were willing to cooperate).

A diagnosis won't make your parents (or anyone else) believe you, though. It's just one of those things you have to learn to deal with. But with the case of ADHD specifically, because there are pharmaceutical treatments, it might be worth it. I personally absolutely abhor stimulants (and am also medically contraindicated). But I'm autistic, so they don't help me, lol!

As for being more motivated generally, I think a lot of it is literally just forcing yourself to do it. You have to get over this idea of writing it perfect and just start writing SOMETHING, even if it's garbage. You can always edit it.

Fanfiction is so much easier with this because it doesn't have to be perfect, or even good (lol). It's just for fun! It's not an easy thing to do, but it is so rewarding. I know a lot of people in my Discord like utilizing our Writer Bot to have writing "sprints" where you are timed and see how many words you can write in short bursts.

Not how I function, but it works for some people! We are all different, and that's what makes us wonderful 🥰

9. Awwwe, I have so many Hozier songs on their playlist! I listen to him whenever I need general inspiration. Like most basic white bitches, I do love me some Hozier. Also, I am honored.

NSFW WARNING, MINORS DNI

Hahah, good news is I have a number of fics about that premise! H2M, Different Kind of Daddy, Big Bad Wolf, Protege, sections of the NSFW Alphabet, Thimble of Honey, aaand... Spoiled. I think that's most of them.

It will come up VERY briefly in TB&TB. I'm positive I have other Spencer WIPs that include it, but I couldn't tell you which ones. It's requested of me very often 😅 which is fine, it is a kink I have IRL!

I agree, though. It makes me feel things.