#Thanks meikuree :)

[meikuree]

Abelia, jasmine, and taro please!

abelia ⇢ do you have a particular piece of jewelry you always wear or can’t part with?

probably my flower-shaped earrings and engagement ring! I used to have sword earrings which fit this but those got lost in the Great Pandemic Move of 2020

jasmine ⇢ do you have a movie or book you loved but will never watch/read again?

oh this is hard! I have a high tolerance for Bad Things happening in fiction so that if I never watch/read something it's more often due to not having the chance to. maybe Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (dir. Park Chan-wook), which contains every content warning under the sun, though it still belongs to the former camp. and Farewell My Concubine/霸王别姬 (dir. Chen Kaige), not because it's horrifying but because it has a very sad ending.

taro ⇢ if someone called you right now to catch up, what’re the things you’d tell them about?

rental market woes, visa bureaucracy, thesis writing, job-hunting, my quest to hopefully get to foster kittens, figuring out why Brits dont ever wear sunscreen outdoors. this makes me sound like a huge normie 😅

[science-and-defiance]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE HANGE 🎉🎉

I WROTE A FIC

In the Flesh

Archive-locked so log in to read

Features Eren & Hange

Relevant tags include: Scientist Zoe Hange, Body Horror, PTSD & Flashbacks, Canon Compliant, Partial Epistolary, Titan Shift Biology, Titan Physiology, Early in Canon, Worldbuilding, She/Her Pronouns for Zoe Hange

Swallowed – he’d been swallowed. He was back in the stomach, he’d never left. Still drifting in the blood-hot, stew-thick boil of the titan’s belly, and he could hear again the other soldier, the stranger swallowed before him, crying out Mommy!! But he’d gone away from himself – been out of it. They must be dead by now, right? Right?? That was all that waited for him too. The freedom granted by a slow death. Or: Eren wakes up in a titan again. The second verse is not the same as the first.

With copious and loving thanks to @meikuree, @bothzangetsus, @transversely, and a friend who prefers to remain anonymous for their many rounds of feedback on this fic 💖

[chocochipbiscuit]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I was tagged by @anneapocalypse, thank you Anne! <3

And I would like to tag @replicafatale. @formlessvoidbeast, @bittylildragon, and @meikuree if you are so inclined!

Blank questions for your convenience! My answers are below the cut.

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

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

8. do you get hate on fics?

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

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

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship?

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

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

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written?

1. how many works do you have on ao3? 178, over almost 10 years! Though I suspect if I actually went back to tally them, the vast majority would be skewed towards my early years, back when I’d crank out a fic or two every week for the kink meme then post with minimal editing. Ah, youth.

2. what’s your total ao3 word count? 910,453! Again, I strongly suspect they’re skewed towards the beginning.

3. what fandoms do you write for? I started out pretty intensely monofandom for Fallout, but I write a lot of Dragon Age these days. Which is ironic because I don’t consider myself ‘that’ big a Dragon Age fan, but the fandom exchanges are fun and I’m familiar enough with the setting and characters that I don’t mind picking up pinch hits or writing impulsive ‘what if’ fics.

In general, I almost exclusively write for video game fandoms. (with a few books thrown in…)

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

The Vashoth and The Qunari (Dragon Age, The Iron Bull/F!Qunari Inquisitor, rated E)

Belief (Fallout 4, Cait/F!Sole Survivor, rated G)

A Dream of Red (Dragon Age, Leliana/Morrigan, rated E)

And They Say Size Doesn’t Matter (Fallout 3, Fawkes/F!Lone Wanderer, rated E)

Data Collection (Fallout 4, Cait/F!Sole Survivor, rated E)

Basically: they’re all older fics, mostly smut, and mostly written while the fandoms were still new (or new-ish) and popular. The Vashoth and the Qunari was written before Inquisition even came out, and was written mostly from frenetic fandom speculation. I wouldn’t call it my best fic, just one that happened to strike while the hype machine was still active.

And They Say Size Doesn’t Matter has the questionable distinction of being the longest mutie smut fic on AO3, mostly because each chapter was written for various kink meme fills and then put somewhat in order. It makes me cringe a bit to reread it (I could do it so much better now! I could write with so much more nuance! I would have made less questionable decisions about characterization and description, or at least different questionable decisions!) but I still look back fondly on it.

5. do you respond to comments? Absolutely, though I’m rather late to respond sometimes! The only ones I don’t respond to (and usually just delete) are comments that make demands without any other attempt at interaction. (Ex: “next time write X/Y with New Kink” or “tag your trans characters” when there’s a perfectly nice author’s note at the beginning if you feel shocked or scandalized by the existence of trans characters in a fic that doesn’t focus on being trans and where the trans characters are minor or background!)

…anyways, mild aside: I consider tagging to be both warning (“please don’t read if X, Y, or Z bothers you, or at least prepare yourself”) and advertisement (“please do read if Tropes A, B, or C are appealing to you!”) rather than simple description. If I went out of my way to describe everything that might be relevant in a fic, including every single minor character who gets a single line of mention, then my tags bloat beyond what I consider useable. I try to include notes at the beginning to clarify or mention content that I don’t think needs to be warned/advertised for. Which is part of why I find it weird and borderline hostile to have specific identity tags demanded without explanation.

(And that said, I tag myself biracial bisexual….nah.)

6. what’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I don’t write a lot of angst, but I do have a story that ends ‘unhappily for now’!

Schroedinger’s Pussy (The Locked Tomb, Gideon/Harrow, rated E) is a fic about yes, pussy spanking, but also denial of feelings and ends with an unresolved sex thing that Harrow refuses to talk about, and Gideon in an empty room. In my head they’ll work through it (eventually) but obviously, not in this fic!

The weirdest dark fic I’ve written was an older kink meme fill, and it’s something that I promised from the beginning would only end in pain.

Pain (Fallout: New Vegas, Vulpes Inculta/Rose of Sharon Cassidy/Boone Craig, rated E) is morally dubious not-actually-a-love-triangle fic with under negotiated BDSM and an ambiguous ending that most likely ended with Vulpes’ off-screen death at Cass and Boone’s hands. It’s a fic I still think about sometimes, not because I think it was the best, but because I feel like it shows when I was more willing to be weird and experimental around fraught topics and messy dynamics. I don’t write that sort of thing now simply because I don’t enjoy it, but I’m still glad I had the experience of experimenting. 

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I love happy endings, but don’t often enjoy fluff! By which I mean: I want a happy ending to feel earned. I prefer desserts that have a little salt or bitterness to cut through the sweet and add balance. I want a fic to feel the same way.

That said: I think most of my fics have happy endings, if not always fluffy one.

That also said, I think never gonna say I’m sorry (Borderlands 3, Amara/Tyreen Calypso, rated E) fits the bill because it’s both a fix-it fic and villainous decay arc and I love that for Tyreen, the emotional journey and character growth she goes on from wanting to destroy the world to being willing to destroy herself in order to save it, and ultimately being pulled back to be told no, sometimes you gotta live even when it feels so much harder.

Fun fact: this fic has two endings, one in which Tyreen murders her brother (because just because she’s trying to be a good guy doesn’t mean she’s actually a good guy yet!) and one in which she tries the harder and messier path of not murdering him. I originally wrote the murder chapter because I didn’t think Tyreen would be at the point of being willing to forgive her own brother for attempting to kill her, but @bittylildragon made a note that essentially Troy was being punished for twink crimes, so I decided what the hey, I’ll try an alternate ending. And now I think that’s actually my favorite!

8. do you get hate on fics? Not on AO3. Some on Tumblr before I closed my inbox to anons. A couple on the old kink meme, back when it was self-destructing from the weirdly polarizing “Gay Wasteland” vs “the icky hets” arguments.

Funnily enough, I don't think I ever received a homophobic comment from a straight person! (Straight hate?). But I sure got comments accusing me of being ‘secretly het’ or a ‘proghet’ or ‘trying to trick lesbians into reading Big Dude/Smol Lady’ fic! Because fandom forbid being a bi woman who prefers to read and write fic that centers women! Even if that means that sometimes this means reading, writing, or recommending F/M fic instead of M/M!

Anyways. My AO3 bookmarks and works list are free for anyone to peruse, in case you want a statistical breakdown of my preferences for F/F >>> F/M > M/M so you can yell at me about not prioritizing M/M. /sarcasm

(And as always: I do read, write, and enjoy fics that feature nonbinary characters. I always feel weird including that as an aside, because there’s so little nonbinary rep in general that it feels weird trying to analyze anything from that, and ‘nonbinary’ is a big enough umbrella that even as someone who sometimes prefers they/them, I don’t necessary resonate with or feel represented by all nonbinary characters in fiction. Which is fine! When there’s so few examples, it feels even more fraught because no single character or person can Be All The Rep, and it feels like a weird sort of pressure to presume that they are, can be, or should be. Sometimes a character should just be allowed to exist, be interesting, and be nonbinary, without going ‘oh they’re such a good role model!’)

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind? I cut my teeth on a kink meme, of course I write smut! As for what kind…whatever catches my interest, really? Which means mostly F/F, if there are dudes involved at all they’re usually Real Big Dudes. There’s usually loving attention to oral sex. Often size kink. I also like including bondage and anal sex.

I’ve been writing a lot less smut in recent years. (I’ve also been writing a lot less in general, or at least posting a lot less, for various reasons. Mostly because now that I’m no longer working graveyard shifts and am out of a time-consuming bad relationship, I have more time for non-fandom hobbies!) Partly it’s because…well, repetition. When I first started writing for kink memes, my purpose was just to write; pick a prompt, bang something out, post. It was the exhilaration of writing, of starting something new.

Now: if I’m going to write, I want to do it in a way that feels new or fresh to me, whether that means in terms of prose, emotional depth, or characterization. There’s also, admittedly, some self-consciousness: I’m no longer ‘just’ writing for prompts on a kink meme, I have the (gasp) terrible responsibility of admitting that I wrote a thing just because I like it, or think it’s interesting! It’s the tension between realizing that nah, I haven’t written anything that truly makes me blush in ages, and then the mortification of going “but who else is gonna be interested in this weird goofy playful fic where Piper sits on a birthday cake???”

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you’ve written? I’m not usually a fan of crossovers; I prefer looking at a character in their ‘home’ story and setting and how their environment shaped them. Some crossovers can be interesting if they add a new depth or layer to the existing canon (which I think is one of the reasons that Pacific Rim AUs were so popular for a while; drift-compatibility is an interesting way to explore characterization and relationships!) but I don’t often write them myself.

That said, ‘often’ doesn’t mean ‘never.’ I’ve written some AUs (unfinished Cassandra/Leliana werewolf fic, the moody cannibal mermaid AU with Aveline/Isabela) but full on crossovers are a different entity.

The closest to a crossover that I currently have is the still untitled Fallout Necromancy AU, in which I merge some of The Locked Tomb’s approach to necromancy with Fallout 4 for some incredibly unhealthy cav/necro codependencies for necromancer Hancock and cavalier Danse. It’s more true to Fallout’s canon than TLT, and still unfinished. Alas.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen? I’ve had some of my fics scraped and posted to shady publishing sites (“only $5 for all the stories you want!”) and submitted takedown requests. No in-fandom stealing that I’m aware of.

12. have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! Here is a Russian translation of what we don’t talk about (Mass Effect, Zaeed Massani/Karin Chakwas), which I was absolutely tickled pink to receive!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before? Technically, yes. The fic has been subsequently deleted and I have abolished all ties to that person, so that might be a warning. /tongue in cheek

More seriously: I don’t think I can. I’m idiosyncratic and particular about my process, and I just don’t think I’m very good at co-writing with someone. I can take an idea and feedback and process that into my fic, sometimes very heavily, and I can work off someone else’s outline or prompt, but to the level of co-writing, assuming we’re taking equal claim and responsibility for the work? It feels profanely intimate in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable, which unfortunately probably says more about me than anyone else!

That said: I have been fortunate enough to have truly excellent friends who have also played cheerleader and beta for me, sometimes offering me substantial notes that meant I had to fundamentally rewrite portions of a story. Does this make them co-writers? I don’t think so, but it’s definitely a more intense collaboration than I usually request, and it’s something I reserve for only a few people.

14. what’s your all-time favorite ship? How dare you ask this of a multi-shipper!!!!

I don’t know that I have a real answer for this. In my head, I try to split it by fandoms (but wait! Would I consider Dragon Age Origins, Awakening, DA2, and Inquisition to all have different fandoms?), but some fandoms are only occasional urges and others are more consuming passions, so….

I’ll leave it at this: if I’ve written it, I probably ship it on some level. And not all ships are “oh I think they’re gonna live happily ever after,” some ships are “hm, that could be interesting” or “oh, they could be so bad for each other in such compelling ways,” and others are “they’re good for each other at this point in time, but maybe not beyond that,” etc etc.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? If I want to finish it, I assume I eventually will. ‘Eventually’ may take a while. Life is short, love is long, and I do love stories.

16. what are your writing strengths? *hour-long fart noise* Strengths? Idk. I always feel strange talking about my strengths to begin with, and this year has been particularly rough for that because I’ve been taking more deliberate time doing writing exercises and reading different books about writing. It makes me more critical of my own work.

But if I must: sensory immersion. Character interiority. Basically, I try my best to love a character—or at least find something I can love about them, something that evokes care and pity if not admiration—and let that shape how I write them, even if they don’t love themselves. If that makes my authorial bias a bit kinder, then so be it. I feel like the world needs a little more kindness.

17. what are your writing weaknesses? *hour-long fart noise* What about my love of obscure words? If I had a nickel for every time I tried to sneak ‘palimpsest’ into my prose and been called out by a beta, I’d have two nickels! Which isn’t that often, but weird that it happened twice! (Other amazing words I often fight over including or not: phosphenes, mordant, triptych, chiaroscuro, bellicose, gelid. I get a daily word of the day from Merriam-Webster and I don’t know if it’s actually improved my vocabulary or only made me more insufferable!)

I fully admit that sometimes I get overly compelled to write something ‘pretty’ and linguistically clever than fully in the character’s voice. I jump around with sentence fragments and don’t link my scenes; sometimes it works (choppy, disjointed prose for characters who themselves are extremely angry or disconnected from their environment in some way) and more often it doesn’t.

I have mild synesthesia and an idiosyncratic interpretation of certain stimuli, and often need to revise to ensure it makes sense to anyone else. Or if I can tweak it just enough to sound refreshing and vivid. (Example: low musical notes feel ‘blue’ to me, and often bitter. Higher notes can be sharp-sweet or acidic, but usually don’t have a color association. Yellow is rancid. This only becomes a problem when I’m sleep-deprived or highly-caffeinated, as when I once had to stop my playlist because the rapid taste/sound/smell combos were making me nauseous.)

I often want to write characters as softer, kinder, or gentler than they are in canon. Does that sand out their complexity? Yes. Is it because I want them to have a kinder, softer, or gentler future than what their story gave them? Also yes.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? OH BOY DO I HAVE THOUGHTS.

Okay, so! First of all, I need to foreground this: as a Chinese-American living in the US, I find it extremely off putting when I read a story and the mere choice of capitalization and italics make it clear who the author thinks their intended audience is, and who is ‘other.’ If an author bothers capitalizing or italicizing “Pad Thai,” “Sushi,” or “Shu Mai,” (as in: “I ordered some Shu Mai.”) but not, say “Pizza,” “Burrito,” or “Croissant,” there are some pretty big assumptions going on already that make me feel alienated from the text. (As always, there’s some room to play with: if the author is intentionally writing their POV character as having those particular biases, that’s one thing. When it’s a completely unexamined bias, that’s another.)

Translated text doesn’t need to be italicized or marked as other, unless again, there’s a specific reason that the POV character might see it as ‘other.’ Most people won’t interpret their home language or heart languages as ‘other.’ A dialogue tag like ‘said in Cantonese’ or ‘said in Spanish’ is sufficient, I’ll trust in the reader to pick it up!

I am a first-generation Chinese-American who can’t read the Chinese syllabary. (And what little I speak is Cantonese, not Mandarin. The loss or use of heritage languages across the diaspora is an entire topic by itself, so please understand that this is one person’s view and experience.) Some Chinese writers prefer to write with hanzi; I prefer to write Romanized versions but what goes in a fic will depend on the POV character’s relationship to the language and how intelligible (or not) it’s meant to be to the reader. I generally include context or a note if it’s meant to be clear; if it’s something that the POV character won’t understand, I often prefer to leave it as “speaks in another language” or “said something in another language.”

In general, I find most fictional languages to be intellectual masturbation (there, I said it! :P) and am less interested in those than in how real-world languages are depicted in fiction, especially when read by people who may or may not be familiar with those actual languages and the people who speak them.

19. first fandom you wrote for? While the first fandom I ever posted for was Fallout…very technically I suppose the first fandom I ever wrote for was Pokemon. Because back when I was 9 or 10, I was very invested in Misty and Jesse because they were the only two girls who got a lot of screen time in the anime, and I just really wanted them to be friends!

In hindsight…I don’t think I was consciously thinking of it as shipping terms or romantic interest, but I thought it sucked that the only two girls who really showed up couldn’t at least be friends. So I wrote a lil’ story in which they got trapped in a cave…and obviously they had to camp together…and save each other as they looked for a way out…

Scandalous!!!!

20. favorite fic you’ve ever written? I try to love every fic at least a little before I share it with the world! But this one’s my newest baby:

(love is) the suture and the wound (Dragon Age, Leliana/Morrigan, rated E)

Thank you for reading this far! Now please drink some water and get up and stretch. :P

[liesmyth]

Your recs are ON FIRe and I was wondering if you have any more Harryanthe recs (any POV)?

Harryanthe my beloved! I'm a multishipping mess these days but THIS is actually the ship I got back into fandom for

Harrow/Ianthe

A Little of You, A Lot of Bloodletting by monochrome_agalma; rated E, HtN era

Horrors pile upon horrors when Harrow walks in on Ianthe masturbating and finds her unwilling to stop.

Burned Out from a Joyride by @theriverbeyond; rated E, HtN era

“Or,” she said lightly, folding her long legs up to sit in front of you, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating off her skin. “I can show you how very grateful I am for your assistance, and we can fuck each other until we both forget what a horrible place this nightmare station is.”

or: Ianthe tries to thank Harrow after The Bone Arm scene. It's complicated for both of them.

docile, unkind, fraught by @meikuree; rated T

By the time you returned to Ianthe’s room from another practice session for Ortus the First’s ill-advised murder, it was late, or the Mithraeum’s moorless definition of late.

Or: Ianthe invents intricate rituals to touch Harrow. Harrow has a twisty time about it.

gallery walls by goldentwin; rated E, violence

Ianthe is very fond of the nude portraits that decorate her room aboard the Mithraeum. Harrowhark vehemently is not.

Some rough and horny Harryanthe content for art history enjoyers who want to wax poetic about iconography and religious ecstasy in your Lyctor porn.

Glory and Gore go Hand in Hand by quiriusblack, rated E

Harrow makes Ianthe a new arm. Then she fucks her about it.

thought that love was a kind of emptiness by @banrions; rated E, soulmate AU

The first time that Ianthe sees Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of Drearburh and Heir to the House of Ninth, she seems like an unremarkable little twit with some idiotic face paint.

to settle in a kingdom made of sugar by rosedamask; rated M, HtN era

Ianthe the First crashes a party in the River.

Repeat recs! I've recced these before but they're GOOD

a never feeling pleased when pleased by peacockbutchboy; Ianthe/Harrow + Ianthe & Corona, rated E, up to HtN

Despite wagging tongues claiming the contrary, Ianthe is capable of waiting patiently for her spoils. She and Harrow are caught in each other’s orbit for good, and there is no need to rush. She has an eternity at her disposal to capture her heart, and an eternity more to keep it for herself.

the cellar door is an open throat by 2wisheslikeafool; Ianthe/Harrow, rated E, HtN era

Ianthe experiences human emotions and tastes Harrow’s blood, only one of which is pleasant.

Harrow/Ianthe-ish

(Fics that aren't ONLY Harrow/Ianthe but I would rec specificially to Harryanthe fans)

(bad, bad news) one of us is gonna lose by valancytrinit; rated E, modern AU with powers

"You're not actually going to send Ianthe nudes, are you?" says the Body, in a tone that suggests she sincerely disapproves. Harrow never entertained what she thought the Body's views on pornography might be. She certainly never considered they might be quite conservative views.

Harrow sends the picture anyway.

[This is a modern AU with necromancy where Ianthe and Harrow sext. Also Gideon's ghost is there AND so is Alecto's ghost and they both have horny vibes with Harrow. This is just as weird and even better than I'm making it sound]

Lies Found Favor In Heaven by monochrome_agalma; rated T

God looked at you and saw everything wrong with the world he had wrought. It was painfully clear. So, when he asked about you and Harrow, you told him a lot of hot bullshit.

Or: what if John tried to talk safe sex with Ianthe too?

real love is a heart attack by @augustmourn; rated E, canon-setting AU (incest CW)

Harrow arranges a political marriage. Ianthe chafes under Ninth customs. Babs has a bad time. Corona will always come first.

[Ianthe marries Harrow and moves to the Ninth; this is primarily a Ianthe-centric fic and there's Corona/Ianthe alongside Harrow/Ianthe but I'm reccing it for the STEAMING HOT smut scene of Harrow punishing Ianthe in sexy ways.]

The Emperor's Daughter by @naryrising; rated T, Divine Highness AU

"Does anyone here actually want to marry the Emperor's daughter?" Harrow asked.

"That's a great question," said Palamedes. "I assume someone must. Lady Dulcinea Septimus says she's, and I quote, 'stacked.'"

[Harrow and Ianthe both try to flirt with God's daughter. They're competitive about it]

there is only one thing by @slashmarks; rated E, HtN AU

Resurrection Beast Seven stays on the original timeline, and Harrow's plan unravels anyway.

[This is Gideon/Harrow/Ianthe in a Gideon&Harrow bodysharing situation, but I'm reccing it here because the Harrow/Ianthe content is A+ Two words: sewn tongue]

[bothzangetsus]

20 questions for fic writers tagged by @meikuree :3 thank you!!

the only people who I know who haven't done this AND who for sure are fic writers are @dissociatingdumbass / @sunflowersandcherryblossoms, @mondengel, and @bleachbleachbleach, I think. but if you see this & want to do it -- say you were tagged by me!

template:

how many works do you have on ao3? | 2. what's your total ao3 word count? | 3. what fandoms do you write for? | 4. what are your top five fics by kudos? | 5. do you respond to comments? | 6. what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? | 7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? | 8. do you get hate on fics? | 9. do you write smut? if so, what kind? | 10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written? | 11. have you ever had a fic stolen? | 12. have you ever had a fic translated? | 13. have you ever co-written a fic before? | 14. what's your all-time favorite ship? | 15. what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? | 16. what are your writing strengths? | 17. what are your writing weaknesses? | 18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? | 19. first fandom you wrote for? | 20. favorite fic you've ever written?

how many works do you have on ao3?

including as of yet unrevealed works + ones in anon collection? 67.

what's your total ao3 word count?

92.832 -- which is actually more than I thought! considering I'm shortficliker69!

what fandoms do you write for?

Oh jesus christ. ok. I'm just going to copy what the dash says, I don't have the patience to format this:

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Bleach (Anime & Manga) The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller Do Revenge (2022) DCU (Comics) SK8 the Infinity (Anime) Avatar: The Last Airbender Wednesday (TV 2022) Psycho-Pass Yellowjackets (TV) Pacific Rim (Movies) One Piece (Live Action TV 2023) Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater Midnighter (Comics) The Wilds (TV 2020) Kingdom of Three - Joan He Chainsaw Man (Manga) Teen Wolf (TV) 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs Dare Me (TV 2019) 魔尊与圣女 | The Demonic Lord and the Virtuous Cultivator (Short Film) 憂国のモリアーティ | Yuukoku no Moriarty | Moriarty the Patriot (Manga) Patito Feo (TV) Hunter X Hunter LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon) No. 6 (Anime & Manga)

+ on the RPF side, C-Pop and krump (dancing) RPF.

what are your top five fics by kudos?

a fluffy sickfic (Avatar: The Last Airbender)- F/F, G rating

murdery fun (Do Revenge (2022)) - F/F, M rating

modern soulmate au (The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller) - M/M, T rating

reincarnation au (The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller) - M/M, G rating

outsider pov on a pair (憂国のモリアーティ | Yuukoku no Moriarty | Moriarty the Patriot (Manga) - M/M, T rating

(a bleach fic is so close to making it! it's sixth place, only one kudos lower than yuumori fic. one! detergent account with no detergent fic talk... - anyway, it'd be m/m, T rating)

I find this list hilarious because it's expected, but also mostly not indicative of my tastes... fic 1 was the first fic the account has & it's boring as hell. modern aus put me to sleep. the reincarnation fic is exactly 300 words so does it even count.... the other two I enjoyed writing at least!

do you respond to comments?

I TRY TO... In practice it mostly happens 6 months later. Sometimes I give up on entire fics because I don't want to only respond to some comments, and if someone comments on more than one fic I don't wanna spam them! T___T so I want to reply to only one of theirs. but this again makes it look like I'm only replying to some ~> endless loop of stress omfg... my heavens this is a science

what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

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

grouping these together because I have no idea. so much of my writing is for others so I doubt anything truly angsty is in there, since people rarely like it. and EYE hate super happy endings, so that probably hasn't happened either.

do you get hate on fics?

no, because I'm perfect. (I don't think I've written for any fandom that's prone to leaving hate comments.)

do you write smut? if so, what kind?

sure! but only 11 of the 67 fics have an M or E rating for sexual content, so not often. As for what kind... I don't know? I'll try anything once! The closest thing to a real answer I have is that I find F/F smut easier to write than M/M & I'm NGL, I'll take any opportunity to write (imply) stone tops, because it's something I always wish there was more of.

do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written?

Only once! It's actually the one thing I feel too embarrassed to write... alienselffucking is okay, but I draw the line at making people aware I like my faves meeting my other faves!

have you ever had a fic stolen?

have you ever had a fic translated?

Grouping these together because my answer is the same: not to my knowledge.

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Does paragraph-style roleplay count? I did that for a few years!

what's your all-time favorite ship?

WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THIS. I am on the floor. I'm a multishipper for a reason!!! I can't have fave ships!

The only ship that has ever made me monofannish for a little bit though was Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood from Shadowhunters TV show, which at the time felt very random (that is NOT a high quality tv show), but now it does kind of make sense

they're on opposite sides & both are high ranking (avoiding fealty kink yesssss. I am so tired of fantasy ships with fealty kink.)

there's internalised homophobia

MONSTERS. I love WEAPONRY and FIGHTING

they have a breakup arc that stems from the opposite sides-ing

there are honest mistakes & fucking up

I love things that leave open the possibility of immortality

Not enough cannibalism and vore and stabbing each other going on there for me to continue being monofannish, but it was a pretty big accomplishment!

what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I only write oneshots.

what are your writing strengths?

I HATE THIS QUESTION. I don't know! I think I'm solid in many areas & not yet exceptional in any (but I believe in me! One day!)

Prose economy is the thing I pride myself most in, I guess. Running on implication rather than explanation. I also like to think I'm good at understanding lots of different character motivations.

what are your writing weaknesses?

My heavens x100. Can't write anything long. The prose economy thing bites me in the ass often -- paragraphs read clunkier than they should & there are some things that DO need explaining. The fact that I have an ego the size of Jupiter and believe that nothing will stay a weakness, even if it takes me 30 years to fix it. I can't write humour. I can't write tropey, "fun" fic. I'm slow, like VERY slow. Like 200 words an hour slow. I can't write "iddy" fic. I can't write without having an ending in mind. I can't write if I don't have a point in mind. I can't write if I don't read at least 20 pages of prose I enjoy beforehand. I don't think my dialogue sucks but I don't think it's good either.

thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If the character mixes languages, I'm in favour! I don't much like it when the words are italicised or have their first letter capitalised, though -- I'm always against anything that marks a word or culture as "the other". Also sometimes the sentences end up profoundly unserious, a la "Today I joined my Abuela to go to the Mercado to buy some Berenjenas."

first fandom you wrote for?

On the account? ATLA. On the internet in general? Peaky Blinders.

favorite fic you've ever written?

AH. I don't know. So few of my fics reflect my tastes! I'll settle on saying a currently unrevealed one.

[hideyseek]

3, 9, 30? :) -meikuree

hehe hiii @meikuree mwah thank you for the ask !!! some of these are doubled up but never fear i am the strongest at talking about myself so i will simply, answer those again, differently (hopefully that's ok!!)

ao3 wrapped

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

ok so in the other ask i talked about a drabble i wrote (actually the most recent thing i finished) but from early this year (january) i would say the fic i'm proudest of is bet on losing dogs, which is a kakeru/haiji underground fighting au. i was reaaally captivated by a verse in mitski's "i bet on losing dogs" and wanted to transpose the dogfighting part more literally into a fic. i'd also done a lot of reading of grimier, shall we say, fic toward the end of last year and the start of this year. this was the first thing i wrote that captured some of my interest!! (it still did not really end up particularly violent despite the premise, but it got me started, hehe.)

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year?

ahahahaha. when i was reading over this list after reblogging it, i was like, oh probably kakehai. i shake those two guys in a jar so much. but actually it's arthurcobb from inception!!!! i was surprised at how much i gravitated toward writing the dynamics of what i imagine their pre-canon relationship to be in the two drabble competitions i did this year, and i'm extremely extremely pleased with some of the core emotional aspects and events that i unearthed that way!!

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

hohoho i wrote about the discoveries from learning to write smut already but another big surprise this year is that drafting doesn't have to be like ... i sit and bang my head against my laptop keyboard for an hour and emerge bloodied, exhausted, etc.

i've started to do this thing where i'll be faced with like, an outline of a scene or the vague idea of a scene without the actual words of it. and i'll sit down and write a set of 3 approach to it, with a 3-min timer for each. my personal rule is i can go past the timer but i can't stop beforehand. i borrowed it from this post!

sometimes each version highlights a different aspect of something that's important to me in the scene that i only knew subconsciously before, sometimes the first version hits it all and i move on to the next bit of the scene for the second 3-min timer, sometimes the first approach is so wrong i can rule it out. but for me the key thing is i'm only throwing away 3 minutes of work, if that last case happens, and but this has made drafting SO unbelievably faster for me that i no longer actively dread it. BIG yippee!!

[frumpkinspocketdimension]

3, 6, 29? -meikuree

3: Work I'm Most Proud Of Don't Disappoint is the only piece I put on my associated ao3 account and I'm REALLY happy with it. I was very inspired by a different fic that had a premise of a cop infiltrating a gang to try and take down a gambling ring and going way in over her head and that "make it or break it" scene REALLY inspired me for this, and I think I got some very similar vibes while getting to flesh out some characters I really got to fall in love with in early 2023 and put my own spin on the story. Writing for new characters is also always a bit of a scary thing and to do it well is such a confidence booster.

6: Favourite Title I Used I didn't use very many interesting titles this year, but on my other ao3 account (one I don't readily associate with this tumblr for privacy reasons given how personal some of the stories are) I have a series that uses different lines from the song Lovers in the Night by Seori. It's really fun and each line represents each stage of the story really well, even when it's with a totally different set of characters in the same world.

29: Favorite line/passage I wrote this year: "A typical Thursday evening for Jane looks like this: after the last of a set of tiresome meetings with overseas investors—all grown men sporting all the charm of a petulant toddler—involving tedium that would give a lesser person a splitting headache and too many stimulant-glazed wandering eyes, Jane will allow the echoing click of her heels along the long hallway floor to act as raised hackles; sending ample warning to her staff to leave wide berth to their austere chief executive in her taciturn hour.  The blunt cut of her hair backlit white by the brilliant glow of letters running down the length of the tower one hundred and twenty storeys above the fetor of diesel, grease, and sweat of the city, Jane will run her fingers over her tablet, their chrome-plated tips glittering and clacking on contact, swiping idly through sheaves of quarterly earning reports and nettlesome emails. Pushing past the placid greetings of her assistant perched prettily by her desk outside her office, the doors will whisper open to reveal a floor-to-ceiling view of the expanse of the city’s dense neon sprawl framed by smooth white walls. Jane will reach for the glass decanter and pour herself two fingers of amber liquor, swirl it in her glass as she pivots the plush office chair from her desk, and sits, kicking off her heels and crossing her legs at the ankles to watch the living city breathe below her feet. She will trace the smear of headlights from a snaking train as its rails wind through the spires of steel and glass sprouting from the choking undergrowth of concrete and smog, indulging herself in imagining what a skewer of greasy reconstituted synthetic fishballs might taste like from a cart manned by an old woman parked in the alleyways of unregistered cybernetic repair shops, and the unblemished night sky; a privilege reserved only for those who live at the top. And when her cup is empty, she will leave the endlessly milling denizens of Metro Angeles to their perpetual dance, slipping a chalky tab under her tongue to chase her ambitions and the sleep from her eyes, and alight upon the undertakings of her umbral affairs."

Love a good ambiance-setting passage.

Thanks for the questions!!

[bathtubdefenseattorney]

😮📈😍 for ao3 wrapped -meikuree

thank you Mei!

😮 What surprised you this year? Was it reception to a certain fic? A direction change in one of your stories? I was surprised I finished writing and revising 1943 and an anatomy of pining. I pushed really hard for it. 📈 Were there any recurring trends in your writing? Common themes, tropes, etc. I dug deeper into Mikannie's enemies to lovers. Anatomy has them hating each other as work colleagues. 1943 is straight up opposite ends of the war you-killed-my-friends enemies who want to kill each other. 😍 What’s one of your favorite lines or exchanges you wrote this year?

The end of chapter four of anatomy. "Alone in this dark sickroom, with the scent of flowers and sweat and illness surrounding her, Annie came."

ao3 wrapped

[trash-side-of-nox]

fic writer interview

tagged by @meikuree, thanks for having me in mind! It’s been a while since I did one of these. 

name: NoxCounterspell

fandoms: Currently writing for Kakegurui and Shingeki no Kyojin.

two-shot: The Beginning and the End (or Knocking on Heaven's door), a Kirasaya (KKG) Fic. This was intended to be a one-shot, however ended up being posted in two chapters because it was too long (insert here cynical laughter when I'm currently posting 14k chapters). The project was conceived by a very creative mind and acquaintance that came to me with a very fucking good outline. Together, we managed to create a very immersing post-canon AU, even if I say so myself. This touched a lot of different subjects, everything revolving around the concepts of family and freedom, right versus wrong, the lack of understanding, psychological projection. One of my favorite parts is the tag Meeting the Parents, and how that can play in how the story is perceived.

most popular multi-chapter: To you, the girls lost in Hell (SnK, Mikannie). An absolute whim of mine, taking Yams story and twisting it and shaping it into a narrative that fits snippets of my own imagination, regarding Annie and Mikasa's relationship (this is basically going to be an enemies, to lovers, to enemies, to friends, to lovers). Really, this is a fic entirely about them, for them and how their basic symbiotic relationship: clashing and attraction impacted everything happening on SnK. This is an excuse to study two characters in canon-verse, getting and providing a humble glimpse of how these characters, in the context they are being written, work. Vomiting a heck ton of my own headcanons, I'm trying to add angst, action, psychology and others to the table, following the overall outline Yams created, but redrawing the entire canvas. Honestly, I'm deeply surprised by how well received the story has been. This will try to keep up the intensity, overall, the outline is designed to play with emotions for the whole ride: we know where we begin and where we are going, but the how it's the sting.

actual worst part of writing: Writer's block. Obsessively researching something to realize it just won't fit the story. Self-doubt. Isolating oneself while writing non-stop. The built-in expectations one may have about their writing that might not be met by the end result.

how you choose your titles: One of my favorite parts of writing it's designing titles. Most of them respond to the question of what does the fic need, how can I guide the reader as to why this has been written? So say, To you, the girls lost in Hell is a direct nod to SnK's first manga chapter and the Light Novel: Lost Girls. This story is for Annie and Mikasa, two girls/women left to their own devices, surviving, searching, trying. A message I hope gets delivered. The Time series (Kirasaya, Meariri, Kakegurui) needs definition. Words are concepts we never really stop to decipher, as much as we ignore human behavior. Defining an entire character study by just one word, the context is easily guided: perhaps Fall is the clearest one, how can a character fall and break without them meaning to? I can rant for days as to what's the process I prefer for title creation, but I can summarize in: how can a whole story be told from the very beginning?

do you outline: Yes. My outlines give me an overall idea of how to get from A to Z, without closing the doors to letters from other alphabets. Pretty much every story I start comes from a dialog that won't leave my mind or a very vivid scene I pictured. Building around it - how the narrative goes and comes, rises and falls - is what outlining comes to do in my case. I outline in two stages: overall skeleton (indents, phrases), then, general paragraphs describing each scene. To this, add specific dialogs and phrases that are non negotiable. If I can’t fit them in, then the scene is not working. I like highlighting bits and pieces of the prose. Phrases that will get stuck with the reader and myself. 

ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: PACIFIC RIM MIKANNIE. There, I said it. This has been running around my mind for a while but I think it's mostly for the lols and for how much of a nerd I am. I don't think I would write it but there are snippets in my head of what that might look like. There is also an ExMilitary!Annie and Cop!Mikasa Modern AU running around in my head, with them getting into a relationship with twists and turns to pertain to what they've lived, boundaries, psychological walls, PTSD... etc.  For Kakegurui: BLADE RUNNER + ALTERED CARBON AU.  Yes, I like SciFi. I have a heck ton of wips, some might see the light, some might not. We'll see.

callouts @ me: I don’t know what a omniscient, general narrator is. For the love of Dio I can’t wrap myself around how to narrate something without siding with a character. I’ve read examples, designed scenes... and still there is always one character I get introspective with or predominates in the scene and everything, then, sides with them. So I’m faulty of jumping from POV to POV by scenes. Or I write an entire fic based in once character’s perspective. In both instances, I always hope it’s not confusing.  Long sentences without breaks or very stuffy wording is another fault of mine. Probably from the fact that I like to write from thoughts and actions in depth than leaving things to the reader’s imagination. I want readers to see what I see, to feel what I feel. I try to write from a place of empathy, channeling the character and their psyche, and the impact that creates is what I want to reflect. So overdetailing is a dear friend of mine. A very talented fellow fic writer told me that I build until people can’t escape what I wrote. I think that’s both good and bad, as I’m taking the freedom people get when picturing their own version.

best writing traits: Based on comments, narrative and characterization. Again, I try to write from a place of empathy, and I undust my psychology classes each time I’m trying to write a character. I like character studies, dissecting something until it’s raw, how can I make or break a persona that’s already been written, that already has a defined mind/soul. That’s why I love angst and currently, thriller/horror.  I’m, also, obsessive with details. Everything has to be accurate and clock work. Does anyone care if the bus I’m describing actually exists? Not really, but I need to have a model in mind. Is it really necessary to open google maps and calculate how long it would take X character to walk from Tokyo’s University to a fictional apartment building? Certainly not. However I need to know in order to sell it. If it makes sense to me, then I’m comfortable enough to write it. It’s not practical, but allows to create tangible actions/places.

spicy tangential opinion: Very snob of me... but mind your text’s visual presentation. If the text is unappealing to the eye, it can be uncomfortable to read. I like fics (and books as well) that are mindful of the aesthetic in lines of words. Having adequate spacing in between paragraphs, balancing length of sentences, using defined styles for dialogs... Gives a very professional feel to it. I’m all for AUs and canon divergence, but fanfiction has a very fragile requirement that is to respect the character. Do with them whatever you like, have them tap dance or bungee jump, alter their canon-verse or send them to Hogwarts, but keep the essence. How and why is a character acting the way they do is key while writing fanfiction. I’ve read great stories that would have worked best as original fiction, because I can’t feel the characters. Again, a very snob thought. 

tagging (no pressure): @ladyjay1616 @askboxangel @blankiebandit and anyone else that may want to join

[whiteasy]

last sentence of your WIP game

Thank you @meikuree for tagging me! 

“Reiner, you OK?” Bertholdt’s concerned voice jostled him from his tormenting thoughts. Reiner looked down at the soaked napkin clutched in his hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He mumbled.  

I had to cheat a little, making it a teaser for AFO’s next chapter haha

I tag @chubbystoutpenguin @ackermom @hellkaiserfox @lost-opium @botaniia  @dreameater1988 no pressure of course! 

[meikuree]

4, 10, 30, 37, and 45 for the writers' questions!

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

answered!

10. How do you decide what to write?

I used to reliably write one fic per month, and that was decided by whatever idea nugget had captivated my brain most recently.

ever since I’ve broken into the landscape of ao3 exchanges, it’s decided by recent exchanges I might’ve signed up for or exquisite requests that have caught my eye.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

glib answer: fluff is out of my comfort zone. anything calling for an unqualified uncomplicated happy ending… leads to me gnashing the end of an imaginary pencil going “but why is this so hard???” there’s no honour with fluff and no lessons learned, I just bounce at the earliest opportunity back to gestating dark wretched bonbons.

realistic answer: m/m. I used to have a disease called “I can only write fic from women or non-binary people or men of colour’s povs” (I don’t relate to people who think writing women is revulsively political because MEN who are the default in their societies fill that role for me instead and women are my comfort zone) and m/m was a huge leap… but it’ll get easier with practice, is what I tell myself! it has gotten easier.

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

I don’t think it’s underrated when you put the fandom into context, but I’m going to discuss the lightness of a foreign sky a second time [drumroll], specifically epigraphs/poetry, because I like the choice of poem I picked and more broadly the poet I looked up:

while looking for epigraphs/poems to crib titles from I rediscovered Alfian sa’at’s poetry. The Merlion, which the fic title is paraphrased from, is a nice wry ode to the diffusion of identity and rootlessness that doesn't side with the subject of that (privileged) rootlessness, exactly, but does do a nod to loss from the unsaid weathering of their sense of self. all of which I thought was somewhat fitting considering the OG book's subject matter, and so decided to put into conversation with it through my fic.

that aside, it's just a poem that manages to be irreverent and thoughtfully witty (the contemporary Chernobyl reference!) while staying lyrical:

"I wish it had paws," you said, "It's quite grotesque the way it is, you know, limbless; can you imagine it writhing in the water, like some post-Chernobyl nightmare? I mean, how does it move? Like a torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself against the currents, gnashing with frustration, its furious mane bleached the colour of a drowned sun? [...] What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx. What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed with self-knowledge and how its own jaws clamp open in self-doubt, still surprised after all these years."

the common online consensus among singaporeans (that I've observed, anyway) is that Crazy Rich Asians has gotten mixed receptions given its wild embellishments and setting inaccuracies (wrt the everyday lives of most of the singaporean populace, lol, not counting expat enclaves) -- and i think something like Alfian Sa'at's Void Deck is a great antidote to CRA's fictive luxury:

And old folks sit like sages To deploy chess pieces with ancient strategies. In a corner, a caged bird bursts With the song of its master's pride And wrinkled women breathe, through Tai-chi-tuned windpipes, the operatic melody of the air… All a wanton fantasy. Eyes reveal a meeting-point For loners and loiterers: A sense of things reduced- Conversations that trickle through Brief noddings at lift landings, Teenage rhetoric scrawled, in liquid paper, On the stone-table chessboard, (Where the king used to sit) The grandiose house-selling dreams of residents Compacted in anonymous letterboxes;

so: if I like something about this fic, I hope it's some sort of groundedness in... emotion, setting texture, and all that jazz.

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

answered—but I like to think (hope) that I’m better at writing lines that feel like an emotional gut punch or sharp insight, and including them in every other paragraph in fic so that the reader feels either like they’ve been walloped or sanctified (or left thinking "wtf? I'm never going to trust this person again") by the end.

(fic writer asks)

[todustagain]

ask me about a wip

Tagged by @meikuree Thank you!

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of  how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that  most intrigues you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you  something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs

I don’t have folks to tag so I’m gonna take this as an opportunity to sort through my wip files and see what I’ve got in there. I’m mainly only writing Shingeki stuff and this is a Shingeki sideblog so I’ll list those:

From my Pieck/Annie canon divergent au: 

- military dinner party 

- Pieck dealing with dissociation/derealisation aka me projecting

- the two of them interacting with Udo & Zofia

- them reaching the end of their terms (yes i’m doing it and yes it’s making my own heart hurt)

- Annie, Bertl and Pieck talking about life and love and shit

Some canon universe stuff:

- Pieck & Zeke during those 4 years

- Porco & Colt talking about brothers

- Pieck & Reiner at a gay bar talking about Bertl

- Pieck talking to Ymir on Paradis

- Pieck/Yelena whump with more religious musing than originally intended

- Pieck/Yelena sex scene (that I’m writing as a challenge ‘cause I am very sex repulsed irl sdfghj)

- Porco’s first time on the battlefield

- Liberio attack aftermath from Magath’s pov

[chocochipbiscuit]

No pressure tag game!

I was tagged by @razrogue! Thank you for thinking of me!

Last song: Well hello my name is Loca... :')

Favorite color: It's too hard to choose!!! I'll say pink though. Magenta specifically, because it was the color I dyed my hair the most last year. :')

Last TV show: A League of Their Own

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Sweet! Though I do love my spice and savories.

Relationship status: Nope!

Last Google: I use DuckDuckGo, but it was '[name of local restaurant] menu'

Current obsession: Trying to write some smutty smut smut as a possible Smutquisition treat 😈

I tag @meishuu, @bittylildragon, @anneapocalypse, @meikuree, and @psykopsy if you want to play!

[meikuree]

3, 4, 5, 14, 34, 41, 42, 45? for the questions for fic writers meme 😘

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

already answered! but to this I'll add some other silly examples of micro-wordplay

like a fatal - fated - flaw

they have haunted-hunted-looks every time they visit the Taylors […]

4. What detail in a map of the broken world are you really proud of?

I like the lore I invented for how Callie from yellowjackets got her name:

Calliope: revered muse of poetry, and verse, and separately truth-telling, the one deity who had power over the shape of stories and fiction. Mom always had an appetite for Greek tragedies in her small inventory of literary references, next to Virginia Woolf and Thomas Pynchon, from the chthonic to The Bacchae, and Dad had let her choose Callie’s name at the hospital.

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

already answered!

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

off the top of my head, I don't usually seek out setting-change or mundane AUs myself, especially high school/college AUs (though gritty grad school AUs that spotlight structures of precarity in higher education are my jam 👍), or fic revolving around raising children, marriage (written as an uncomplicated phenomenon), and pregnancy -- the latter three form my trifecta of personal squicks around conventional romantic milestones -- so those! also not such a fan of (conventional) saccharine domestic fluff writing, despite my best efforts. but I'm also willing to read anything once!

the real answer i'm forgetting is that a lot of m/f tropes played straight would fall into this -- but I once read an m/f captivity trope subversion fic by a friend that would've ordinarily squicked me to hell and back and yet was well-written, and ENJOYED it, which is the one notable example I can remember!

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

THIS IS A QUESTION i'm curious about the answer for as well, if there is such a thing as ~a settled answer... I don't think of myself as the kind of person who tries to project anything onto characters or use them as conduits to work out psychological issues (not consciously, anyway, ignoring freudian slips of my subconscious that everyone can see through in 10s flat). though I heartily respect anyone who does it and think they should be proud of and own it. that makes sense to me; real life influences are often indirect and come through via your 'metaphorical constellation', as rebecca mcclanahan puts it in word painting: what metaphors haunt your writing?

to be a less coy, though, I think themes of grief/mourning, (the impossibility of) atonement, historical memory, and the costs of perfection (+ perfectionism, not as an individual problem -- I dislike most 'gifted child' discourse -- but related to wider environments and ecologies of society, class, biopolitical regimes, etc.) form the fretwork of interests that hang over my writing. very cheerful, I know!!

on a more literal level, in real life i have a casual interest in... makeup and fashion (osmosed from an ex-model sibling), geology, critical theory, ecology, and birds, so any time you see gratuitous details around that in fic, that's my self-indulgence talking.

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

oh, where do I begin. I feel this way about any fic from the MANY TALENTS I’ve had the good fortune of crossing paths with, whether as a reader or writer-I-admire-turned-friend. instead of linking fic i'm just going to throw their names out here. 100% non-exhaustive list: i read montparnasse’s fic at an impressionable age and her influence tracks a long subtle path over my writing — her ability to pack in metaphors that mix the beauty, cruelty, and raw pain that comes from a willingness to chafe yourself at the edges of human experience, risk and reward included, was formative for me. she's also refreshingly agnostic/indifferent to the usual constellation of "writing rules" that I see haunt new writers and which, in my grumpy opinion, sometimes hold back creativity

I’m an unabashed cordial (fka cordialcount) fan and I will forever rec her fic to anyone who shares fandoms/pairings with her. her prose has all the 3B’s: brutal, brilliant, and beautiful.

lionpyh

suitablyskippy

scioscribe

transversely

Senri

bloodmoney

rosedamask

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

i've been the lucky recipient of SO many great comments! I can't possibly pick, what a cruel heartless question!! on a serious note, I treasure everything I get, but I think the ones that stand out are the ones I get on undernoticed fic that otherwise would have 0 - 1 comments and 0.0001 kudos, like the fiercest calm. I got three separate comments praising how bleak and yet desperately emotional it was, which was exactly what I was aiming for.

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

already answered!

(fic writer asks)

[meikuree]

the lightness of a foreign sky by meikuree

Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/F, Gen Relationship: Jessamyn Teoh Min/Sharanya, Jessamyn Teoh Min & Her Parents Additional Tags: Post-Canon

Summary: After her business in Penang with the Black Water Sister was settled, Jess set off for the skyscrapers and new vistas of Singapore.

wrote this for bethefirst, a challenge to create the first fanwork for a fandom. this wound up as a chance to write some setting porn. thank you to @bothzangetsus and @pretty-rage-machine for the kind beta!

black water sister is, paraphrasing wikipedia, a diaspora fantasy novel about a malaysian chinese lesbian who gets tied up in supernatural hijinks involving her grandmother.

[chocochipbiscuit]

Fanfic Author Self-Recs!

@ziskandra tagged me to rec five of my own fanfics, and I am utterly delighted! Thank you, friendo!

I’m tagging @meikuree, @deacons-wig, @anneapocalypse, @fireferns and @bittylildragon if you are so inclined!

Fallout is my first fandom and will forever have a piece of my heart, but Dragon Age has made a good showing as well. Mostly due to exchanges. :D I find that I don’t really have a huge monofandom intensity anymore (....or maybe just not for now? *awkward laugh*) so I’m going to fan my interests like a peacock’s tail!

1) The Knit of Flesh and Bone (Cait/Curie) - Fallout 4 - This is top of my mind lately because I was fortunate enough to get some very nice comments about it! It’s very much a love letter for Cait and what I think her companion quest should have been, as well as exploring Cait and Curie’s dynamics as friends and lovers. Plus reading it again reminds me of how much I’ve consciously shifted my style over time; trying to vary word patterns and cadence, as well as balance between lyricism and something that felt authentic and true to the characters.

I’m a softie at heart; I crave romance and happy endings, but don’t often enjoy fluff because I want the characters to have some hurt first, to balance out the promised sweetness. It's healing and optimistic and about recovering from trauma and finding the trust to build new relationships.

2) breath (and all the ways of holding) (Leliana/Morrigan) - Dragon Age - This is one of my faves because not only did I get to write one of my very first Dragon Age ships, but it was also the first fic that I had the pleasure of being thoroughly critiqued by @fireferns!!! It was daunting and terrifying and at some point I will screw up my courage to ask for another beta, I’m sure! ;)

It’s also one of the few fics I can remember exactly where I was, when I was writing the first draft: sick in bed from a nasty flu, right after moving with my partner at the time. I called sick from work for a week, was feverish and sweating in bed but unable to sleep during the middle of the day, and scribbling in a battered notebook in paragraphs at a time. It was incredibly disjointed, moving more on ~vibes~ and images as they came to me, and it wasn’t until after I recovered and starting typing it out (and basically reshuffling a lot of the scenes) that I really got the structure down. Writing that first draft was weird and dreamy and disconnected, almost like another person wrote it; revisions, on the other hand, were completely and 100% my own, especially with @fireferns offering sharp feedback that made me question a lot of my narrative and stylistic choices and pushing me to grow as a writer. Without her, it would have been twice as long and half as good. <3

One of the things I love about the Leliana/Morrigan dynamic is their entanglement; they are hardly friends in Origins, but by Inquisition they’ve had three games (ten years) worth of history between them, and have both shifted and grown over that time. Leliana is much more sweetly deceptive in Origins than she first lets on, and Morrigan is much more raw and inexperienced than she likes to admit, and part of their journey is learning where they hold similarities. They’re one of each other’s few constants in a world that’s constantly changing.

3) never gonna say I’m sorry (Amara/Tyreen) - Borderlands 3 - This was my first foray into writing villain fic!!! Tyreen is an unrepentant gremlin and it’s not intended as a redemption arc, but I wanted to write something where Tyreen could join the Raiders, smooch Amara, and stay somewhat in-character to the game. I love women, both heroes and villains, and I love the inherent tension of an enemies to lovers arc.

Plus I love a story that explicitly points out that death (or martyrdom) is not the same as redemption, and that it can be harder to make amends and live with the consequences of your actions. The two different endings (one where Tyreen kills Troy, one where she spares him) are really about Tyreen making different choices in her emotional journey. I originally conceived of it ending with her killing Troy, then utterly disappointed that killing him didn’t give her immediate catharsis or any kind of emotional revelation. It was meant to show that despite the fact she had been offered a second chance, she wasn’t ready to offer that same second chance to someone else.

But then talking with @bittylildragon about how Troy could just as easily have been the hero of this fic (if Tyreen had abandoned him instead, then Troy could have had a similar growth arc) made me think about if Troy didn’t die, if Tyreen decided to spare him and show that yes, she’s trying to become a better person…and is still disappointed that there’s no emotional closure, that she doesn’t actually feel like a good person and he still flinches away from her when she reaches out.

Still. After much thought (and keeping in mind that I’m a softie who wants happy endings for everyone), I have decided that I actually prefer the ending where Tyreen spares Troy. They’re still utterly dysfunctional, but at least they have a chance at fixing things between them.

4) soap, spit, and sweetness (Avad/Erend) - Horizon Zero Dawn - This was an extremely simple outline (5+1 things!) but I am very proud of it because I love this tiny rarepair and also it was really fun to try and write through Erend’s POV, balancing between lyricism (and just how ~pretty~ or poetic I want things to sound) and his own way of viewing the world. This meant doing some minor worldbuilding and looking at metaphors or similes rooted in smithing and metalwork, like so many of their figures of speech.

I am also realizing that this is my only non-F/F fic rec on the list, so take it as you will. :’)

5) Fireflies (Maru/Penny) - Stardew Valley - This is a tender and achey and meant to wrap people up in a warm bubblebath of feels, just the way the game itself makes me feel. I realize that the game itself is pretty limited when it comes to showing the history and friendships between the townspeople, but…Maru and Penny are canonically friends! And I love a good friends to lovers arc!

I adore this ship and love the fanon of Penny being trans, so it made sense to write Penny as being trans. @bittylildragon was an incredible help, both by being an amazing beta (catching my garbled sentences and maladroit phrases!) and with pushing me to consider Penny being trans with more than a ‘yes, Penny is trans’ disclaimer and a few references. I didn’t want to write too much about experiences that weren’t really mine to write about, but in doing so, it also created a different type of erasure, one that was bland and inauthentic.

I love women, and that includes trans women. So I want to get better at writing trans women. This isn’t the first fic I’ve written with a trans female character, and it won’t be the last. So I need to keep getting better.

If you’ve read this far: hopefully some of my rambling was interesting!