#I'm currently outlining a thing and genuinely need to know if there was a canon 'Why?' for Dracula's appearance at the book's start

[wttcsms]

✧ wttcsms works in progress;

a look into what's in my drafts because yes, i do write, thank you very much!!! please feel welcome to scream at me in my askbox and make me tell you more about any of the wips here

last updated apr 19 2023

it always leads to you — sae itoshi x f!reader

most likely a mini multipart series (probably around 4-6 parts, each only about ~6-7k words each). nsfw + plot (porn w plot)

current stage: prologue finished, outline needs to be done

current wc: 4k

current tags: exes to fwb/situationship to strangers with a history to awkward co-parents to lovers (relationship status: it's complicated!), pregnancy, child is part of the plot, angst, character study into sae, timeskip, homesickness, nsfw

started off as a one shot (5 times you can't escape the memory of your ex, sae, + the 1 time he comes back) but while writing it, i realized that the reunion between the two of you opened the doors to a lot more possibilities. originally, i just wanted to have it leave off at him on your doorstep whenever he decided to stay in japan bc he heard of blue lock and wanted to stick around & since he was in the area, he would find himself coming back to you. (he breaks up with you before high school graduation when he decides to go to spain). however, that scene spiraled into you & him reconciling, and eventually, there was an open sort of ending where sae decides that maybe the two of you do have a fighting chance of working out.

HOWEVER, i wanted to explore this dynamic even deeper, so the fic kind of spirals away from the canon timeline + i'm introducing a timeskip. you & sae have this weird ass long distance situationship where the distance feels like too much of an obstacle to overcome, the two of you are always on the brink of a "break up", he ends up visiting, the two of you kiss & make up and have renewed hope that this shitshow of a relationship can still work, and it's just an endless, toxic cycle, really. there's genuine love, but he's too in his head & in an entirely different country — world, really — from you, and things are hard and he's shitty at feelings. at this point, sae is 20 & making his debut into the world of professional international football.

on the same day he's about to sign with a great team, he receives a phone call from you.

you're pregnant.

he hangs up without a word. (asshole behavior but seems p in theme with what we're shown so far abt him)

the next part following that is another timeskip. this time, sae is 27 and moving back home to japan. he's in the middle of recovering from an injury, one so bad that he will never be able to play soccer again, especially at the level he was it. now he's back home, licking his wounds, and having to face everything he's spent so hard trying to run away from.

i think this fic is my first attempt at redeeming a character; i know we don't know much abt sae or his internal thoughts + intentions, but i'm having fun with fleshing him out as a flawed person who actually had good intentions. he fucked up, majorly, and reader isn't keen on taking him back. you're colder to him than you ever were, and you barely want anything to do with him. swapping the dynamic on him is also really fun to do as a writer; sae goes from the one who's out of reach and reader is the one chasing after him but now, reader is the person out of reach & sae is the one doing the chasing.

song inspiration: renegade - big red machine ft. taylor swift, cardigan - taylor swift, betty - taylor swift, exile - taylor swift, best - gracie abrams, i know it won't work - gracie abrams, the last time - taylor swift, tis the damn season - taylor swift, right where you left me - taylor swift

married (with benefits) — rin itoshi x f!reader

most likely a loooong one shot (~13k, hopefully not over 20k) nsfw / porn w plot

current stage: outline in progress

current wc: tbd

current tags: fake marriage/marriage of convenience trope, wag culture, single dad!rin, son's teacher!reader, BREEDING KINK, falling in love, mutual pining, oh no there's only one bed!!!!, jealous!rin, protective&possessive!rin, "don't speak to my wife like that" trope

original post talking abt this can be found here

basically reader is FLAT BROKE LMAO and is given the opportunity of a lifetime bc rin itoshi needs to save face and beat his awful ex-wife in their custody battle for his son.

my heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue — jean kirstein x f!reader

nsfw / porn w plot one shot (~8k)

current stage: first scene that sets up the mood for the fic is completed

current wc: 1k

current tags: fwb to lovers, toxic relationship (not w jean), college/modern au, praise kink, love confessions, jean is just so sweet & so boyfriend ok, idiots in love, mutual pining, insecure!reader, nsfw

this was a request from a follower <3 basically reader originally likes eren and they're in a toxic situationship and reader is crying over eren at a party, you run into jean, he gives you the best dicking down of your LIFE. essentially, u fall in love w ur situationship but get a happy ending this time around lol

[fazedlight]

mel i loved your post about your full timeline of s5 from a character’s perspective and i eagerly await the fic!!! i’ve never actually posted fic or anything but sometimes i kind of quietly write things i don’t think i’d ever post and honestly i both hate the amount of background you need when all you had was a scene in mind but i have to admit i also love it. it’s like this logic puzzle where you’re trying to slot everything in so it makes sense and adheres to a timeline and the headcanon speculation of it is so fun (insert crazy murderboard jpg here) and i would love to hear any of that sort of background stuff that never made it into your fics but that was painstakingly pieced together if you would care to share! i loved when you shared your gender headcanons.

AHHHHH I genuinely freak out when people put things in my inbox, thank you 💗💗 I'm going to answer this in almost-reverse order! Starting with some stuff that never made it into the fics (I forget a lot of them over time, but these are some off the top of my head):

My Crisis rewrite had some headcanons around how people processed time at the Vanishing Point. More "super" people like Sara and Kara processed time more slowly, whereas humans like Lena and Ryan processed time more quickly. This kind of shows up in the writing with how Kara angsts in the background, and how Sara doesn't really sleep, but ultimately I didn't use it.

In It's a Metallo Life, the team briefly heads to MIT - I have a lot of headcanons around Lena's time at MIT (I went there myself), including certain unauthorized activities she may have participated in. Ultimately, I didn't find a good excuse to include much of that in the fic, but let's just say as a student she spent a lot of time in strange places and setting things on fire.

For Even Though You're Kryptonian, I actually have a separate science summary post that you might enjoy. I really thought a lot about the science there, but it didn't make it into the fic itself.

I love the logic puzzle aspect!! Putting together the outline of the story is the part of writing that really feels like storycrafting to me. When I finally have that working outline, it gives me the same high as engineering a working piece of code.

Last year, I went into posting my very first chapter thinking "What am I even doing? I'm not a writer" - but it ended up unlocking this part of me that I had hidden away, becoming a really worthwhile experience. So I hear you on being shy to post, and I know it's a vulnerable feeling, so no pressure. But if you're feeling that inkling to give it a try, I'd encourage you to ❤️

As for the fic I was posting about... funny thing, it's not supercorp (except as background characters), and it doesn't really need the timeline at all (I just needed to know how much I was going to break canon). Maybe you'll enjoy it anyway, or maybe not.

If not, I have 3 other supercorp fics (after my current WIP) that I plan to release into the world too. So more stories will be coming regardless 💕

Thank you so much for the ask, I hope you have a marvelous day!

[veggiesforpresident]

8 and 13 for fanfic writer asks if you'd like to!!

I would like too, thanks!!

8. What project(s) are you currently working on?

Oh way too many. My biggest project is my Zukaang fic that follows Zuko + Aang's relationship development in the years after the war. It's going to wind up my longest fic to date - it's about halfway done at 60K and I finally have the brainpower to write it again! I'm really looking forward to getting back into it because I genuinely think it's gonna turn out to be a really good fic. (like. i think its good already but i'm not considering it anything until its done yanno? until the Vision has been Fully Realized.)

Otherwise, well, I've had a ton of time to lie in bed and think lately thanks to my fatigue, so I have a million and one fic ideas floating around. As for ones I'm actually motivated to write tho, I have a Fruits Basket Uo/Hana fic where they get closer after Tohru starts hanging out with the Sohma's more, and an Outsiders Johnny/Dally fic where they get into a fight right before the events of canon happen. Oh and also a Code Lyoko Yumi + Jeremie (platonic) fake dating fic.

13. How much planning do you do before writing?

Oh I always need at least a rough outline. With my longer fics I usually have the overall plot arc planned out first, as well as a general idea of where each chapter is going to go. Like, with my Zukaang fic right now I have a general outline for the rest of the fic and I've divided it into chapters, the only thing left is actually writing it and filling in the details.

With shorter fics I usually have the general concept and I let the story flow from there. Like in my Dead Poets Society fic, I started with the idea of "Charlie knows Todd is really messed up over Neil's death in a way Charlie isn't and Charlie doesn't understand why at first." and just kinda... Went from there? Like logically I knew the next steps were "he needs to figure it out" and then "he needs to do something about it" and I just filled in the details as I went.

[see-arcane]

Why was Count Dracula Old at the Start?

Hello, Dracula enthusiasts, I have a question for you. I’ve read it before, so feel free to give spoilers in the tags/replies, but I cannot be bothered to skim ahead and double-check, SO:

Does anyone in this book club know exactly why Dracula was an old white-haired dude when Jonathan showed up and only bothered with his bloody spa treatment when he was about to leave? I honestly don’t remember if this was explained in the book or not. Until it’s disproven, my only guesses for now are

1. He wanted to appear elderly and benign to Jonathan, so he fasted to look old. (But then how do all the Brides look fresh despite their stints between kid meals? I don’t see Drac keeping them fed and not himself, even for a ruse. The guy is just a touch self-centered. That big blood buffet in Jonathan’s last castle entry suggests he gorged himself like a tick, though—out of necessity or celebration or just because he couldn’t bear to leave without finally taking a draught from Jonathan? I’m 50/50 on it.)

2. While it’s speculated that he was Vlad the Impaler pre-vampirehood, it’s not quite stated outright if he is. Or, more importantly, just what his hocus pocus was to do some self-made monster transformation. All it mentions is vague sorceries and alchemies and such, but that would imply he A) Was not Vlad at all, but one of the myriad Dark Ages warriors who went by Dracula or a variation, B) Might have been Vlad, and the historic guy who was killed on the battlefield was a stand-in mistaken for him, or C) Either way, Dracula was an old man when he did his magic and that elderly state is actually his default look when not indulging regularly. If the whole blood diet thing is a twofer deal of eternal life/regained youth, maybe it was performed in the first place to return to his prime.

3. Transformation is kind of a big thing with Dracula. Not just age wise, but with bats, wolves, assorted beasties in general. He could have willed himself to seem older. Again, to seem like a kooky old man to Jonathan on arrival and get his guard down. But it seems a little superfluous.

4. A combination. One that ties into his desire to pull up stakes—ha ha—and sink his teeth into—HA HA—England, the beating heart—HA—of Colonization Station. We see him giddy in his longwinded diatribe to Jonathan about the glorious era(s) of war, bloodshed, and conquering. We see him ‘take care of’ (and chide) his implied harem of Brides who he doesn’t interact with more than twice. And there’s that comment about ‘Never loving’ from the girls, which Dracula huffs about, looking to Jonathan and them as he insists he has and can love. All of which is while Dracula is already in full teaboo mode. All England, All the Time, Love Me Some London.

Why? The obvious reason is that the Count has recognized that land as the chokehold country it is, having its fingers in all kinds of global network/colony pies. A great place to start drumming up his own empirical hold. Fun. But again, why bother, Dracula? You’re Dracula! You’re immortal and supernaturally gifted and rolling in ye olde gold and can snatch up any pretty young thing you want! Why bother throwing yourself into Conquering and Bloodshed II: Transylvanian Boogaloo?

I think the frank answer is: purpose. Call it a hobby, call it a passion, call it a fixation, call it some big demoniacal imperative to (suddenly) put vast swaths of new blood in his thrall..!

But at the bottom, it’s just a reason to climb out of the coffin again.

Because I think Old Man Dracula has been letting himself age—or imposing that form on himself by will alone—for a very lo-o-ong time. He isn’t really ‘old’ after all; he’s ancient. An Alexander the Great who conquered death itself and has existed long enough to see the shine come off all the wonders he’s won for himself. Wealth and blood and beauties and power and enough generations of terrified locals under his thumb for them to Know Not to Fuck with That. And that…gets dull. A century, maybe two, maybe three into the King of Vampires game, it all just runs together, doesn’t it? No plans to make. No goals to fulfill. No flavor of terror or ecstasy or, hell, simple interaction to engage his brain and guile.

So he stews and stews, imposing the guise of the weary old man on himself, only bothering with his collection of vampire companions as a matter of routine. And isn’t that something in itself? As monstrous sexual predator-coded bogeymen go, only taking three babes for keeps seems an awfully low number. Almost as if he couldn’t be bothered to gather more. Not when they and everything else bored him. Even blood bores him; he takes an odd sip here and there, but what’s the point in putting effort into the game? He lets himself fade on the outside, even as his power keeps on ticking within. I bet he sighed every time he bothered to jump some hapless traveler and exsanguinate them, sans relish.

But then it occurs to him—Well, you won’t break out of this funk rotting in your castle, Count. Get back out there! See how the world’s progressed! See new places, eat new people! Start planning a conqueror’s holiday. You deserve it, champ.

Which is why I think Jonathan met the most young-blooded geriatric giant in the world when he got to Castle Dracula. The Count was on the brink of returning to his young-old self because now there would be a reason to get dressed up and devilish again. He even got to get all the rust out of his mentally menacing muscles with his good friend, Mr. Jonathan Harker, a fresh face from the land he meant to pounce on, totally, gloriously unprepared and unaware of what he was dealing with.

In short, I think Old Man Dracula only happened because he was also Depressed Immortal Bastard up until that point and had, counter to his ladies’ verve and diet, been very listless until he decided to dust himself off and go drink in England. But again, if anyone else knows for sure why he seemed that way at the start, please feel free to point out what section to look at. Hell, maybe it was somewhere in Jonathan’s early entries and I just missed/misread it.

Of course, it could just be the secret 5th reason, ‘Bram Stoker wanted a visual representation of blood making the Count younger and the age-down via blood drinking was an easy display,’ but I want to hope/know it’s a more nuanced reason Just Because

[janus-stanus]

Hi there! I'm the commenter on your fic These Good Lies who wanted to know what happened to Thomas that Janus is keeping under wraps. Do you wanna tell me here, after all?

Hi! I come with the answers you seek. I'll even post it publically since some of my followers might be interested in how this factors into my general Janus takes - because, while I can't imagine this ever being canon, it is, to some extent, canon to me.

First, for context, is the bit in Those Good Lies for those who haven't read it: Thomas asks Janus why he hid himself from him, then whether they ever talked before that point. Janus tells him not to press the issue, but Thomas does, and he experiences a vision of a memory where teenage Janus is trying and failing to convince him of something, but then there's some kind of magic blast hurtling towards them,

And Janus sees it. He turns to see it, then turns back to Thomas, and then he- He-

That's where the vision cuts off. The full scene is the... midpoint, I suppose, of a multi-chapter backstory fic I have half-outlined but will likely never finish, titled would you leave yourself alone (when everything goes dark), or goodbye dark sides as a joking shorter alternative.

If you want to know what actually happened and some of the context, you'll find the spoilers below the read more. I'll warn you now, it's long, and melodramatic, but hopefully enjoyably so.

When the fic begins, Thomas is a preteen, and the sides aren't officially split between the light / core and the dark / others. However, Remus is already a pariah, and there is something of a rift between the sides who are friends with him, and the sides who, at best, tolerate him. All of the sides have stopped appearing to Thomas and conversing directly like they used to as kids, and Janus is tasked with keeping Remus in particular from having much influence at all... though Janus keeps him on a looser leash than, say, Patton might prefer.

The moment which gets referenced in Those Good Lies starts with Remus, who with Janus's limited permission has been trying to reach out to and bond with Thomas in his dreams, pulling Thomas into the Imagination while he's supposed to be paying attention in English class. Virgil finds out and tries to intervene, but, long story short, it backfires. He loses control over Thomas's fears, and suddenly there's a monster on the loose.

The other sides show up soon enough (minus Logan, who's trying to keep things on lockdown from the outside). They try to make Thomas snap out of it (thus ejecting him from the Imagination), but his fear has him rooted in place. So, while the others deal with the monster, Janus is tasked with protecting Thomas.

Keeping one eye on the monster fight, Janus continues trying to convince Thomas that none of this is real, concerned that, if he's genuinely scared of this product of his own mind, then it could genuinely hurt him. He's using something of a prototype for his comforting lies voice - hence the line in Good Lies, "He [Thomas] knows the voice; he knows how it’s supposed to make him feel."

But Thomas won't believe him. It isn't helped by the fact Janus's scales had only started coming in after the point where the sides stopped appearing to Thomas, or at least hadn't been as bad as they now are (which is more than in current canon). A bit harder to trust the words coming from a face like that.

At this point, I'm going to copy-paste from my Google Docs (which is written in past tense).

Janus realized that there was no convincing Thomas, not with words alone. He needed to experience something; a shock that would trigger the subconscious to force boot him from his own head. And it was at that moment that he sensed the projectile heading straight for them.

What happened in Janus’s mind in the next few seconds was something like a conversation.

Move, said the part of him that was self-preservation. Don’t, said the part of him that was Thomas’s self-preservation.

Move, said the part of Janus that knew (or believed, in this moment, enough (hopefully) to make it true) that Thomas would not really be hurt by this. Don’t, said the part of him that couldn’t swallow it, out of disbelief or apathy.

Move. Some hurt is unavoidable. Some hurt is necessary.

Don’t. I got him into this, I can’t let myself Don’t. I’m here to look out for him, I can’t

Let him get hit. This is the only way to end this nightmare; if we don’t terminate it now, things will only get worse, until we won’t have a choice in the matter.

You don’t know that. We don’t know that. What if... What if seeing me get hit would be enough t-

He won’t care. Move.

That voice was the one in his head when time ran out. So that’s what he did.

...

Good news, it works. And no one else saw that Janus let Thomas get hit.

Bad news:

Things got so crazy in there that Logan wasn't able to keep Thomas from vocally expressing some of his thoughts/feelings during the crisis. In the middle of class.

Janus proceeds to have an existential crisis over this choice he made and seriously questions, between this and the whole arc of the fic leading up to this where he (and Remus) were working to shape Thomas into a less "good" person purportedly for the sake of fitting in with his middle school peers and helping him "grow up", whether he's actually good for Thomas. Janus has such a breakdown over this, in fact, that it causes the first instance of him splitting in his room.

Long story short, Thomas's sense of self is in a precarious place, debatably even more so than at the start of the fic. All he knows is that he wants to be good.

And if Janus is self-preservation and denial, and Thomas wants to believe he's good... then he'll make it possible for him to believe that. He'll save Thomas from the worst of himself.

And hopefully, in doing so, he'll make it possible for him to trust himself again.

...Which is why Janus would really rather Thomas not start unearthing those memories in Those Good Lies, at a point where a) he's currently going through a similar personal crisis (if on a longer timeline and with less immediate stakes), and b) Janus has only just begun cultivating his trust.

There's a lot more going on in this fic, with the main arc I mentioned, how Remus is affected by the fallout of the monster attack, and stuff with the other sides, but I'm forcing myself not to give too much away. Perhaps I'd be willing to divulge more if people ask? Not tonight though, I'm tired.

I hope these ramblings were enjoyable! I love thinking about the contradiction of how Janus is the embodiment of selfishness, but the distance between him and Thomas means that he's selfless in the pursuit of "someone else's" selfishness, and this whole little scene is really just a crystallization of that. Plus the monster representing- well. I can't say. Not yet. :)

[dandelion-wings]

what about jean & kaeya - deeper and through? I've spent like 15 minutes trying to guess what it could be, no idea. I'm intrigued!

That one's part of a project I've been taking swings at since... December of last year, looking at the dates of the first old abandoned stuff for it, in which I first started trying to tackle the whole Eroch narrative through the lens of a Jean-and-Kaeya friendship. After throwing out about 30k of false starts I decided I needed it in chunks instead of one long thing, and broke it up into what felt like the three parts I was most invested in: the immediate aftermath of Kaeya and Diluc's fight (which turned into One Day Longer), the actual Eroch-tackling (in that list as 'the enemy's gate is down'), and some solidifying-loyalties stuff for the two of them that I was vague about the specifics of but is currently lumped into 'deeper in and through'.

...And then I went and wrote a 100k AU that hits a lot of the same points, whoops. Such is the inconstancy of man!

In any case, the major concept of 'deeper in and through' is Jean coming to terms with Kaeya being kind of... rabid in his personal loyalties? Because I feel like canon gives us definite hints of the 'dangerous person who has abdicated their moral compass to someone else' and 'person who gets their hands dirty so someone they love can keep theirs clean' dynamics with them, and I love both so I'm definitely seizing and running with them whether it's canon or not. >> It and 'enemy's gate' are currently tangled up in me trying to rework timelines and outlines, unfortunately, so all I have written of this one at the moment is Kaeya's eighteenth birthday.

I also, uh, don't like a lot of my prose in what I have so far (it's definitely a rough first draft), but for a snippet:

So much for Windrise. Heading upstairs, Jean looks around, past the cheerful evening diners, to a corner booth half-hidden back behind the chimney. Kaeya's dark features and preferred dark clothing seem to cloak him in shadow, hiding his face until she's nearly at the booth. He's sprawled out along the bench on one side, playing with a half-full glass of grape juice. There's three empty wine bottles lined up neatly along the back edge of the table where it meets the wall.

He'd been a wreck after two, six months ago. This time, Jean can't stop the wince. She hopes he's at least paced himself better.

"Jean," Kaeya says, looking up at her only as she drops down into the seat across from him, setting her basket down beside her. He smiles at her, crooked and sad, but with a genuine warmth behind it. "Unless it's supposed to be 'Captain' right now?"

"It's your day off, and I'm off-duty," Jean assures him, smiling back as sincerely as she can, though she knows her worry must show in it. "Jean is fine."

"Jean- *Jeanie*," Kaeya says again, though she certainly hadn't approved that, sing-song and excited as if he's just discovered a new toy. "What brings you here? It's my birthday, you know. I'm eighteen now. I'm allowed to drink."

"I know," Jean says, amused despite the cheerful violence he's doing to her name. "I was hoping to celebrate it with you. But I'm afraid I couldn't get off in good time. I should have said something to you earlier, I suppose."

"I would have waited on the drinking," Kaeya says more solemnly, leaning forward and propping his chin on his hand. "I know you're not a fan. But I thought I was celebrating alone, and I... didn't want to think about that too much."

[him-e]

Hi, I'm the anon who wrote the 5 asks about the Dany plotline and GRRM. I'd like to apologize to u for lashing out, it was uncalled for and u have every right to state those opinions regardless of what I (or anyone else) think. Feeling hurt by the show wrt Dany's story made me react badly to the idea that it was actually acceptable, especially coming from someone whose ideas I appreciate so much and have spent hours invested on. You can answer them, delete them, idk, I just wanted to say sorry.

No need to apologize, anon! I’m currently on semi-to-full hiatus and that’s why I’m being so slow at answering messages—and yeah, I understand the frustration completely, and I don’t blame you for it. ;))

I’m going to answer your ask anyway. Long reply after the cut:

I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive or confrontational bc that’s not the point, I’ve enjoyed reading your ASOIAF/GoT and TB metas for years and would not reply to them if I weren’t invested on them. That said, I’d like to ask why do you insist on 1) arguing that Dany’s dark turn was reasonable if you don’t hate her and 2) defending D&D and blaming GRRM for what happened on the show. When it comes to 1), sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented (in that she had the choice to not kill anyone but did). You argue that that direction was valid of because of the recurring theme of how power corrupts, but then I’d argue, what if it were Sansa, another character very much involved in the world of politics? Would you be ok if people argued that it’d make sense for her to give up her ideals and become just as power-hungry and cynic and bitter as Littlefinger? Probably not; what’s the point if those characters become their worst possible selves? Dany was made a villain, was implied to be mad and was called “your satanic majesty”. I really can’t see how you could call those writing decisions valid. When it comes to 2), I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

The reason why I maintain that the show’s ending is a (badly written) version of GRRM’s ending is that I can 100% see Martin’s blueprint in the climax+anticlimax structure of the season. The way it twists the audience’s expectations and delves into what happens AFTER the final battle is won, the way it subverts the most reliable narrative conventions and, instead of building up in a crescendo towards a final spectacle where the heroes would sacrifice their lives to save the world in a blaze of glory, it shifts gears almost unpleasantly, slows down to show what happens to them once their heroic purpose is fulfilled and zooms in on their identity crisis, their depression and isolation and sudden lack of purpose… it’s all too deliberate, and IN MY PERSONAL OPINION it’s done with a vision in mind—something I don’t believe d&d would spontaneously put any effort in, especially not if GRRM had already served them a perfectly fine, crowd-pleasing endgame involving Dany’s heroic sacrifice against the Others.

I understand my stance might come across as “defending d&d and blaming GRRM”, but I’m really not? I’ve often repeated how I believe d&d messed things up and that GRRM’s version will make infinitely more sense and be infinitely better written, and I’m sure he will avoid the pitfalls of cynical, circular storytelling, because he’s ultimately a better writer and someone who believes in idealism and true heroism even as he deconstructs it. How can the overall narrative remain uplifting & give a message of hope and faith for humanity while still telling a story that ends with Dany’s descent into “true villainy” (but haven’t we repeated ad nauseam that heroes and villains are too reductive categories for asoiaf?), I don’t know, but it’s not my job to figure it out, and I ultimately trust & respect Martin’s vision and ability to tell the story HE wants.

sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented

1) I’ve always conceded that, while I think the gist of the storyline is Martin’s, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the battle of King’s Landing will go as we’ve seen in the show, or even happen at the same point of the story (for one thing, Young Griff & JonCon will probably be involved, and that seems more likely to happen before, and not after, the war for the dawn);

2) That said, what I’m relatively confident of, at this point, is that Dany will NOT die in the WftD as a self sacrificial hero (this is entirely FANON SPECULATION, and people treating it like a fixed point in the universe, something the narrative is “inevitably” building towards, is one of the reasons the fandom seems unable to critically analyze show!Dany’s evolution without going hysterical about it and resorting to no true scotsman arguments. I’ve often complained about the dangers of elevating fan theories to canon status, and trust me I never wanted to go full cassandra about this, but here we are). The details and plot points leading up to this might be wildly different from the show’s version, but I think Dany will survive the WftD, which will leave her directionless and purposeless and doubting the truth of her heroic destiny for the first time in her life after she hatched the dragons, and that she’ll cross the ultimate moral horizon in a hail mary to restore that sense of self, that sense of purpose, completing her parabola from princess in rags, to breaker of chains, to conqueror, to savior of humanity, to conqueror again, to TRAGIC HERO. How can this be a valid writing decision, you asked—well, why shouldn’t it? Is something only valid as long as it pleases the audience? What screams tragic hero more than the hero turning into the very thing she swore to eradicate, and realizing it only when it’s too late? There’s something genuinely chilly in Dany’s “if I look back, I’m lost” refrain. This is the mantra of someone who thinks the only way to stay alive is to cross one threshold after the other. So far this coping mechanism has brought her higher, and higher, and higher. But what if it will be her downfall? “I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell”, indeed;

3) Dany’s burning KL *accidentally* is like Stannis burning Shireen “but only if the circumstances are dire enough / the stakes are high enough”. No offense, but this is typical stan logic: you admit the possibility that your faves might go through a dark phase but you don’t want to have to unstan them, so you want them to do bad things for good reasons, or because there’s no other choice, or because “they didn’t know”. That’s understandable, but I don’t think Martin is the type of writer to give his character free passes or soften the blow of their moral crucibles like that. This is NOT to say that the show did Dany’s dark turn WELL, because it DIDN’T—her motivations were all over the place, the turning point (the bells) wasn’t believable because it lacked connection to her character arc, the narrative backed away from showing the attack from her pov which betrays the writers’ inability to make sense of this psychological downfall from HER perspective, etc. But to say “Dany will NEVER! BURN! INNOCENTS! ON PURPOSE!” sounds very, very premature to me.

(re: Sansa, hasn’t power corrupted her too, to an extent? Hasn’t she lied, schemed, manipulated, spilled secrets, in order to restore & secure the Stark hold on the North? Isn’t she queen, in part, because the rest of her family was scattered at the four corners of the known world? I’m not particularly happy with the way she was written this season, and I think some of her choices were questionable; but at the same time I reject the idea that a character ending up more flawed, or morally ambiguous, or less likeable than they were at the beginning must necessarily be bad storytelling)

I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

Martin is not responsible of the show’s writing, but he is responsible of the outline he gave to the showrunners, and right now I have no reason to believe they didn’t follow it, at least for the most part. For years I’ve been told that “the show is not the books”, and while that’s certainly true, I can’t, and won’t, separate the show from the books when it comes to book speculation, because the show is still for all intents and purposes an ADAPTATION of the book series, and while it’s irresponsible to expect it to be a 1:1 transcription of what will happen in TWOW and ADOS, it’s also equally (imo) irresponsible to act like the two canons have nothing to do with each other and that it’s stupid to use the show as a resource for book speculation. If people want to pretend the show never happened, good for them, but that’s not the way I think, personally. I don’t blame GRRM for the show’s faults, and my reservations are actually 90% about the EXECUTION of the plot which is ENTIRELY on d&d, but there’s a 10% of my concerns that is about the IDEA in itself, regardless of context and execution—the idea of the story ending with a bittersweet anticlimax involving the death/downfall of the MOST PROMINENT FEMALE HERO OF THE SERIES, who is also the carrier of the most subversive anti-establishment political message in the story.

tldr: I’m not criticizing GRRM for what he hasn’t written yet, but I can certainly criticize him for what I think is a (however botched) adaptation of his outline, if the main selling points of said outline are questionable in themselves. No one can convince me that GRRM told d&d that Jon and Dany would die heroically to save the world and they ARBITRARILY decided to fuck it up for shock value or whatever, and just accidentally stumbled onto a more subversive and provocative ending than what Martin HIMSELF was planning. (that would make them two geniuses, even if the execution sucked, lol)

and if i’m wrong about it, well:

but until then…

[yenneferw]

1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 27, 28, 30, 36, 39, 40, 42,46, 50, 51, 54 (sorry for all the questions 😓😓I'm just really curios about your writing!

woot no it’s okay i love talking about it!! also thank you so much!!!!! :-)

also i’ll just skip past the ones i’ve already answered 

1. Favorite place to write? 

this is a lame boring answer but just my desk. i’m very comfortable at it as long as my dog isn’t asking to be in my lap bc then i can’t focus

3. Least favorite part of writing?

the writing,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but no probably writer’s block. like even when i’ve done other productive things i don’t feel productive unless i’ve written so i hate being writer’s block

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals? 

when i’m really really really stuck i’ll try to talk to my friend ash about the parts i’m most excited about to get myself pumped back up for it 

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

i’m sure there are some bc i’m so easily influenced but i can’t pick them out necessarily. probably partly the song of achilles bc i loved that book so much and i loved the style but i can’t tell for sure

8. Favorite trope to write?

idk power couple? i love having natalia and rosie from my novel be equally badass together. also heterobaiting bc for a hot second i made it seem like it was gonna be natalia and their friend elias but haha nope. i don’t know tropes well enough to say for certain but these are some of the things i like about my own novel

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

madeline miller and i are gonna write some more killer gay greek rewriters like a love story between icarus and apollo or some shit

12. How do you deal with self-doubts? 

i reread my favorite parts sometimes and i’m like wow,,,, goddamn,,, did i write that for real?? or i just say “fuck it fuck it FUCK IT i’ll rewrite it later” and try to power through 

15. Where does your inspiration come from?

it depends on what i’m writing. for things like fanfic it comes from the fact that i love hearing back from people like everybody does but genuinely i just love hearing that someone else’s day was made bc they read my work. i love hearing that they think i got the characterization of something right. it makes me so happy. for my novel i’m working on rn, it at first came from the fact that i love 3 things a lot: queer rep, magic, and knights. so i put all that in a book and rolled with it. now it’s because rosalind is my heart and soul and i love writing about her so much that i just wanna keep going

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

i already did this but fuck it i’ll do more of this one. i wanted to do a fic but i don’t have anything started on my fic sdjfsljdfl 

Rosalind woke up to Natalia crawling into her bed and planting herself on top of her legs, and then saying, “Rosieeeeeeeeeeee,” until Rosalind found the energy to swat at her. Her curtains were already drawn, and when she lifted her head to look around, she saw that breakfast was waiting for her at her table. She wondered where Jenna was and why she hadn’t woken her up. Natalia started her whining again, so she groaned and shoved her off of her legs. “Finally!”

“Where is Jenna?” she asked instead of answering Natalia’s impatience. “Why are you waking me up?”

“Why can’t I just wake up my best friend on this fine morning?” Natalia said, with no small amount of grandeur in a gesture toward the window. “The birds are singing, the sun is shining, there is a gentle breeze.”

(followed later by:)

She was holding her head up high like she knew what it was that she was doing out here, but really she was just desperate and scared. But the birds were singing, the sun was shining, and there was a gentle breeze. And above all else, Natalia was a spark of life all around her.

anyway i just love showcasing how much rosalind loves natalia

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

it really depends on the case but i share rough drafts sometimes

28. Who do you share them with?

well currently i have my doc shared with @the-voice-of-night-vale and @kiss-my-asthma-bitch

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written?

I can’t remember but I really fucking like “She had gone to everything that she had never thought of before except in passing, with a tightness in her chest and a voice screaming, Do not break this. Do not break something so priceless as us.”

36. A spoiler for story: 

well for my novel a spoiler is that rosalind defects from her country later on although no one but ash and sarah will get that

a spoiler for the fic i’m gonna write is idfk bc i haven’t planned it yet someone needs to hold me accountable for this shit asjdklfjd

39. Do you base your characters off real people or not? 

I don’t think I do really. I might because I’m like that but I don’t notice it if I do

40. Original fiction or fanfiction, and why?

a month ago i would have only said original fiction but i’ve gotten back into fanfiction recently. both have their perks i mean original fiction is completely mine and i can do with it what i want without worrying about canon or aus or characterization and i can be proud of every single aspect since it’s all original, but fanfiction is a lot more interactive and gives validation a lot easier and quicker, which i like lol but also it’s easier to get around to people and i like to see how my writing affects other people so that’s important to me

42. How do you figure out your character’s looks, personality, etc?

looks: i base them off of real people sort of bc i fucking suck at appearances (rosalind looks like janelle monae). personality: i fucking wing it. i do a skeleton of the character and let them figure out who they are themselves as i write it

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

my novel would be hella fucking cool, it would look probably a bit like merlin bc it’s a castle with magic but it would be very colorful and a lot more diverse and everything is very aesthetic hopefully and janelle monae herself is my girl rosalind,,,,,,,,,,,, in a perfect world at least

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story __ in five sentences.

my novel is: pink flowers. bright flames. the top of a castle against a cloudy sky. the way brown eyes look golden in the sunshine. a sword surrounded by vines. 

that sounds really fucking extra but that’s how i think of it at least. with emphasis on the pink flowers bc that’s for rosalind and she’s the mc 

54. Any writing advice?

love your main character. whatever you do, fall in love with them. that’s what’s gotten me through. also OUTLINE!!!! but even with an outline, if you don’t love your main character i don’t think you can keep going. if they’re not a good person, love the idea of them. love writing them. i wouldn’t be able to keep writing if i didn’t have all these emotions about rosalind. and know them. even i, who is the shittiest character builder in the world, have found that writing is so much easier when i can spend hours pacing up and down my room thinking about who rosalind is on the inside, and what she would be in modern times (she’d own a lesbian blog, 10% bc she likes lesbian positivity and 90% bc she likes to gush about natalia) 

thank you for all these!!!! this is fun

send me sleepvoer asks?/asks to keep me motivated?

[anghraine]

Having been wowed by your fanfic ("wandering inside this night" holds a special place in my RO heart), I'm curious: what is your writing/editing process like?

Oh, thank you!

My writing process really varies depending on what I’m doing, but I can explain it in terms of wandering inside this night.

It’s long and rambly, so you can scroll down for a very concise tl;dr version of The Process.

1. Eureka!

I pretty much always start out with 1) a vague sense of something I want to write about, and I sort of mentally fish around until I land on an idea, or 2) an idea pops into my head, or 3) some combination of both.

The last two are the most common for me—I have more ideas than I could ever write. With wandering, it was definitely that way. 

I was hollering into my tags about the Cassian-Leia parallels pretty early, which … Jyn-Han is obvious, but I felt like the Cassian-Leia ones went relatively unnoticed but were probably more profound. And as spies in the ragtag ANH-era Rebellion, it’s more than possible that they’d know each other; I’d made babbling posts, but I really wanted to do something with it. So I sketched out a backstory in until the last chance is spent, but I still wanted more, and also to get into Han-Jyn at the same time, and also just—have something fun! And suddenly (I was actually at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, lol) the idea popped into my head of jumping to the Han/Leia meltdown of 1980 with established relationship Jyn/Cassian.

2. Percolation

This is particularly important for longer fic (or any long-form writing, really), but it helps with shorter things, too. It’s where you’re not actively working to figure out details or more ideas, much less writing, just passively letting your mind wander. It’s best if you’re actually doing something else—something that doesn’t take much attention, but enough that you can’t completely focus on your thoughts, like showering or washing dishes or something.

When something does come to mind, I scribble it down (or stick it in a doc in some form that will hopefully make sense to me later). Sometimes it’ll be scraps of dialogue, or a phrase I want to make sure gets in somewhere, or a plot-point, just anything that pops up. Ideally, though, I don’t write anything beyond that—just note down anything I might forget and let my ideas develop freely. 

Normally, I’d only do so much of that with something like wandering (fairly short, fairly light). But I ended up snowed in with my extended family, where I was both bored and unable to sit down and write. So I’m sitting there entertaining myself by imagining Jyn and Han, drinking buddies, and how that’d work with the Cassian-Leia brotp of ruthless idealism (Han would be jealous!), and just having that percolating in my head while I read fic and let stray thoughts pass through my mind. (‘Okay but Cassian would fucking hate Han’ being uppermost among them, lol)

3. Brainstorming/Outline

At this point, I try to pin down the free-floating ideas and/or organize what scraps I have into something coherent. With something longer, like ad astra, I generally do a pretty traditional outline—decide what the story is specifically going to cover, and where the things I’ve actually written fit with that, and what’s going to go in the spaces between.

It’s not classroom-style brainstorming; I usually brainstorm ideas by trying to put together an outline. I’ll be “okay, I want to start with something like that shot of Jyn on the platform with an Imperial ship at the end, but it’s Bodhi” and “they get sucked into the Death Star and Jyn exploits Cassian’s injuries to get in” and then I sit down and figure out how I’m going to get from one to the other. “Okay, so—there’s no way they can actually get Kaytoo, but maybe something—yeah, she just up and grabs his dismembered head l o l, okay, and there’s the jump into the ship which rattles Cassian further, and she’d try to treat him with whatever supplies are available, and we’d have Bodhi trying to get out without being shot down, and maybe I can work in the your father would have been proud of you line, and Jyn goes to check on Bodhi and they see the Death Star and…”

Also, it helps a ton to actually talk ideas over with someone else. With me, it’s generally @steinbecks​—not some strict ‘this, then this, then this, tell me what you think’, but ‘I had this idea’ and ‘OK BUT IMAGINE IF’ and ‘haha yeah exactly’ and ‘shit you’re right they do change outfits’ etc. 

4) Drafting (The Big One)

Ideally, I only get to this after nailing down an outline or at least getting a lot figured out in chats/notes to myself. That’s what I did for pretty much all my most successful longfics—First Impressions (f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth), Season of Courtship (Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement), we get dark, only to shine (AU of The Borgias that moves the canon pairing getting together from S3 to S1), and now ad astra. It helps a TON if you have trouble with discipline and direction, as I do, because you can always go back to it and figure out where you need to be headed when you’re muddled/uninspired, even if some details change along the way. (They always do, for me.)

I did some of that with wandering, but … I was snowed-in, lol, and finally everyone had gone to sleep and my head was full of ideas. So I laid down with my laptop and just dove right in with the only clear line I had in mind: 

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

That was where I planned it to begin! The actual beginning came later, because I very quickly ran into a problem—the sentence worked to jump into exposition, not an actual scene. And with the exposition, I needed to introduce 1) Cassian’s hatred of Han, 2) Han’s lesser but firm dislike, 3) Cassian and Leia’s history together as spies, 4) Han’s brief and half-hearted attempt to suck up, 5) Jyn and Cassian being married, 6) Han’s friendship with Jyn, 7) Han’s jealousy as contrasted to Cassian and Jyn’s mutual trust, etc. Yikes.

So I kept getting mired down in explanations and flashbacks (I actually wrote the scene where Jyn drunkenly complains about finding something for Cassian’s birthday, lol) that slowed it down. And I wasn’t really happy with anything—I constantly niggled at sentences and moved things around and rephrased and it just didn’t work right. I actually have the document I worked in (I didn’t have Internet at the time), so you can see this sort of intermediate stage:

I niggled with it for the rest of the vacation, then it hit me that the issue was that starting a fic with exposition was the real problem. Starting with ESB-era Han just being ESB-era Han could let me work the exposition section in, and without the pressure of it being the opening section I could keep it to a tangential aside and move the jealousy around and so forth. And from there I could just leap to the canon scene with bonus Cassian-Leia shared indignation, and impulsively I added Kaytoo at the end. 

Moral of the story: if you keep trying to make something work and it just won’t, there’s probably something deeper going on. Take a step back and figure out why it’s not working, and often you’ll be able to correct course. Once I tacked in that little ‘Han sulks’ section at the beginning, it all fell together easily. 

5) Revising!

You can probably guess from #4 that I do a lot of this as I write rather than after I write. That’s true, to an extent.

It can be a very … I wouldn’t say discouraging, but sluggish way to write, because you end up struggling over phrases you might not even keep in the end. I genuinely think it’s best to at least try to restrain the impulse to polish everything, but at the same time, there are some of us who genuinely can’t keep going if the current section isn’t working (again, see #4!). So I allow myself a certain amount of freedom in polishing-as-I-go, while restraining the impulse to do anything more substantial. The single best way of doing this is sprinting—writing in short, timed bursts with little to no editing, ideally with a partner that you check in with. (Again, I generally do this with @steinbecks​.)

However, even if you edit as you go and turn out pretty clean drafts, you should still revise at the end. What I generally do is, first of all, just quickly re-read. The writing process is a lot slower than the reading one, and it’s easy to get so focused on particular passages or sections that you lose sight of how it’s working as a whole. So that quick read-through is a way to back up and see how it’s holding together. It’s best if you give yourself a break before you do this—a day or two at least, to get your mind out of the writing mode and look at it with relatively fresh eyes. 

(I will say that I almost never wait. But I do pretty much always end up editing chapters yet again in the first couple of days after I’ve posted them. Sometimes it’s contuinity, sometimes a passage that isn’t working quite the way I thought, whatever. There’s always something. It’s why the chapters I post at Dreamwidth are generally cleaner than the ones at Tumblr, which are cleaner than the first versions posted at AO3.)

However you do that read-through, the most important for me is the next one. At this point, I read the whole fic/chapter/essay/whatever from start to finish—out loud. In fact, if it’s possible, I’ll do a full-on dramatic reading. By reading aloud, you can catch things like typos that your mind silently corrects for your eyes, but also it’s easier to notice sentence-level problems like repeated words/phrases and unvaried sentence structure. If something makes me cringe when I read it aloud, I cut it or rewrite. If saying it aloud makes it sound wrong for the character, it probably is wrong for the character. Sometimes I do the dramatic reading revision two or three times.

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

1) I get an idea, 2) I let the ideas develop without thinking too hard about them, 3) I nail down and think up specific ideas, mostly through chat and/or outlines, 4) I plow through a draft, rearranging/adding material if things just aren’t working, and 5) I revise, once with a quick re-read of the whole thing, and then again by slowly reading it aloud to myself to catch problems with (primarily) mechanics, voice, and word choice.