#also harry potter was badly written and star wars is good

[shootingstarpilot]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

Thanks for the tag, @merlyn-bane!

1.) How many works do you have on ao3?

Eight!

2.) What's your ao3 word count?

217,911

3.) What fandoms do you write for?

*sobbing* Star Wars, my beloved. The brainrot is real; I am consumed. When I was still on FF.net, though, I had stuff up in Harry Potter and How to Train Your Dragon.

4.) What are your top five fics by kudos?

back then, i was dauntless

how to bring him home

if i don't make it back (from where i've gone)

though some would harm you

like lightning changing hands

5.) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I absolutely do! I feel bad because I know I've gotten some lovely comments on chapters that aren't the most recent one, and those tend to get lost in the inbox, but I promise I'm working on it- if you get a response from a comment you left a year and a half ago, don't hold it against me 😅

I do it because I want so badly to build community here! I love getting comments from people, responding to something with a wee hint of a tease because I'm AWFUL and then getting a keysmash of a response and then exchanging snippets in the comments, truly, it fills me with delight- and I've met some absolutely wonderful people who I got introduced to by responding to comments-

Anyway. Community. That.

6.) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh. Hm. Hm.

I... guess it would have to be though some would harm you? Although I'm not sure if I feel confident in that designation, because it's very much part of a multi-work series. And I'm too much of a sucker for happy endings to write a stand-alone fic that doesn't have one, I think.

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

Oh, neural plasticity, for sure! Short and sweet <3

8.) Do you get hate on fics?

A bit. I can brush off the "actually the Jedi were the real monsters" assholes easily enough, but honestly, the comments that hit the hardest are the ones that clearly come from people who think they're offering ✨constructive criticism.✨ Not only because I didn't ask for it, but also because saying my work is "fatiguing" or "I'm sure there's a decent story here, but it's being buried under what you're trying to do with it-" there's nothing constructive there.

Side note: the person who left that last comment deleted it about half an hour later, because when I went to reply, it had vanished from my inbox. I don't know if they did that because they didn't want me to be able to reply, or if they realized that what they said was unhelpful and mean, but if they ever happen to see this-

I still got the email, prick.

9.) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Write? No, I haven't quite worked up the panache to try. Reading, on the other hand...

10.) Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I do have snippets of one crossover that I actually posted in an anonymous collection, ha- an old BBC Merlin/ Good Omens/ Supernatural fic that I dug out of my old documents. Other than that, no- unless you count the Prequels and the Clone Wars as different enough to qualify as a crossover.

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Also not that I know of- very much open to it, though!

13.) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Since I don't think taking drabbles in tumblr chats to ridiculous lengths counts, I'd have to say no- I'd like to, though!

14.) What's your all time favorite ship?

Codywan. Fiercely, unwaveringly Codywan.

Just to reinforce this- 292 of my bookmarks consist of Cody/Obi-Wan. The next most common romantic pairing (Aziraphale/Crowley) has less than half that, at 121.

I'm a goner, and I can't even bring myself to regret it.

15.) What's a WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

OKAY SO I've written snippets of a modern AU focusing on Helix, Needle and Stitch, and I'm totally gonna take this opportunity to rage about it. I'm probably never gonna finish it, but it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, so, hey- what else is fic for, really, if not for indulging yourself?

At first, it's just Needle and Stitch. It's just been the two of them, for as long as Stitch can remember. Needle's only a few years older than him, but he's raised him, kept him in school, kept a roof over their heads and food on the table-

Food on Stitch's plate, at least.

Then, one night, Needle does not come home.

A hit-and-run, the nurse tells him, although the words will not trickle through until much later. A coma.

He will not, they say patiently, come home for some time.

(There is so much that needs doing.)

Helix, meanwhile, is studying physical therapy at the local community college and working part-time at his brother Ace's bakery.

It's during one of these shifts that a skinny little twerp comes in and hands him a job application.

(Rent and bills and Needle Needle Needle-)

It doesn't take Helix long to realize something is... off.

Ace tells him not to push it, but-

The kid's a good worker. Great, as a matter of fact. He's never late. Stays past closing, too, if they've had a rush. He tells Helix about his brother and nothing else.

(His brother hasn't come to visit.)

Everything that's not sold at the end of the day gets packaged up and given out. They only toss in the dumpster what's really, truly inedible- stuff that got dropped in the kitchen, scraps left over from customers-

He thinks it's raccoons, at first, until he peers in and sees Stitch flatten himself against a heap of bags in the corner.

They package up leftovers for him, after that. A bit more than leftovers, maybe. Ace sets aside sandwiches. Helix buys him a thermos and tells him it's been in the lost and found for over a year. They make sure he eats.

(Needle's getting transferred out of the ICU.)

Stitch is trying. He's doing everything he can, and more besides. But Needle's life is too expensive and he's buckling under the weight.

(He hasn't even grieved. Not really. No room. No time.)

Eventually, something has to give.

He does.

(He hadn't expected someone to be there to catch him.)

Featuring:

Helix stumbling into adopting first one, then two idiot kids

Ace being a supportive brother

Needle finding his way home

Mace Windu as Needle's (unfairly attractive, Helix thinks) neurologist

Obi-Wan as a hospital social worker who gets assigned Needle's file

Cody as Obi-Wan's husband, Helix's cousin, and children's book author (Stitch's favorite)

(listen I am WEAK for author!Cody, truly)

(Helix was totally the one who got them together and he regrets it every day of his life.)

Sheev Palpatine as the epitome of the evil of the American healthcare system

The Melidaan crew running a long-term, non-profit care facility that offers both in-patient and out-patient rehab services

16.) What are your writing strengths?

(I'VE PUT TOO MUCH THOUGHT INTO THIS. SHIT.)

17.) What are your writing weaknesses?

I am, apparently, really good at writing breakdowns. >:3

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

Dialogue does not come easily to me. I have to work a bit to hit my stride. But I think it turns out well enough!

Hm. Coming from a purely technical perspective here, I think the reader should be able to understand everything that's spoken in a fic. If a character says something in another language, then I think the best way to convey that is, "X muttered something Y didn't catch," or, if the listener recognizes that it's at least in another language, "X muttered something in French."

If the reader should understand it, then something along the lines of: "'I knew we shouldn't have trusted him,' X muttered in French."

If the POV character doesn't understand the language, it doesn't make sense to provide the reader with a perfect transliteration of what the other character is saying. The character wouldn't have that knowledge. It can really take me out of the fic when two characters suddenly start conversing in written-out sentences in another language, and I have to scroll all the way down to the footnotes for translations.

19.) First fandom you wrote for?

But then again, that's just my opinion- I'm sure others have their own thoughts on this!

20.) Favorite fic you've ever written?

Harry Potter.

Hell, I have to say like lightning changing hands, if only because whatever fic I'm writing at the moment is my favorite. It's the act of creation that does it for me!

(Also because it's such a good opportunity to explore so many relationship dynamics.)

No-pressure tags for @jedi-enthusiast, @themonopolyhat, @shadow-pixelle, and @foreverchangingfandomsao3!

[sky-kenobye]

Fic Tag Game

Thanks @ineffable-snowman for the tag! :D

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

7 works, 5 of them are my own fics and the other 2 are translations (in french) of other people's fics

2. What's your Ao3 word count?

18,740 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Only Star Wars at the moment. I used to write for Harry Potter but not anymore, and one translation is from a Sherlock fic and I sort of tried to write for that fandom but never managed anything.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Who's having a gay crisis? (424 kudos) (HP)

2. Partenaire Particulier (397 kudos) (HP)

3. Not exactly common (221 kudos) (HP)

4. Happy as a stick bug (132 kudos) (SW)

5. I wish you with me always (99 kudos) (SW)

(I honestly don't think they deserve to be in that order, I would put the entire thing upside down lol. But drarry/hp in general is a much bigger fandom than obikin and they're older fics, so more time to get kudos. And my top one doesn't deal with aroace stuff so it must have helped too.)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to, yes! I might not if it's just a few emojis or a very very short one, and sometimes I just forget, but I like when authors answer my comments so I try to do the same.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

None of them, I'm a fluff writer, I can't handle the unhappy endings 😅 I guess the worst one might be my very first fic, that must still be somewhere on ff.net, it was a pretty angsty/bittersweet fic (and probably very badly written, yikes)

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

All of them? They all end with people cuddling/holding hand/being really sappy 🤷 The one where the characters are the happiest is probably I wish you with me always though, it's the only one where nobody's traumatised one way or another.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven't so far, luckily. But I don't have that many hits either so less people reading it=less likely to get hate (I think?)

9. Do you write smut? What kind?

Nope! No smut for me I'm afraid, I think I'd be pretty bad at it tbh. I'm not ruling it out but being an aroace virgin myself, I think I'd be a bit out of my depth lol. But if I ever do it'll probably be the sappiest most vanilla smut you've ever seen x)

(I enjoy reading way kinkier stuff, but I don't think I have it in me to write it)

10. Do you write cross-overs?

I haven't so far. If we're talking about characters crossover(?)(like, making characters from different media meet) I'm not sure I ever will, I'm definitely not inspired at the moment. If putting characters in another universe counts as a crossover (like, idk a pacific rim au?), then I probably will eventually, yeah.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so, probably not.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I did some translations myself. I'm vaguely thinking about translating my own fics in french though. It's thanks to translations of fics that I started reading in english, and it's thanks to that that I became so good in english, so like, I owe fic translators a lot? And I also feel kinda bad about speaking french but "gatekeeping" my fics by writing them only in english. Idk.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No, I don't think that's for me, too much pressure to write something good and that the other author(s) actually like.

14. What's your all time favourite ship?

Hmm 🤔 I want to say obikin because they're my current absolute fav, and they might rank first in term of investment, and maybe even intensity, but it's a relatively recent ship for me soooo 🤷 My oldest and longest lasting was Harry/Ginny, but I wasn't quite as much into it as other ships. Drarry was a pretty intense one for a while but I went multiple times from being obsessed with it to being almost squicked by it, so I don't think they can go first. Stucky, Dinluke and Johnlock are up there too but idk.

15. What's your WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Idk if it counts but I wanted to write a sequel to Partenaire Particulier. I didnt have anything really planed but I really wanted a sequel and I promised up and down that I would write it, no matter how long it took. And uuuh, now I left the fandom and don't intend on getting back to it 😬 So that's haunting me a little bit.

16. What are your writing strength?

Strength? No strength here sir.

I'm kidding but I really have no idea. Dialogue comes the easiest to me but I'm not sure I'm actually good at it, i tend do make my characters ramble and go on emotional rants.

Or in middle school I wrote a scene description so good that my teacher read it for the whole classroom, so maybe that was my strength back then? I was twelve though.

And I dont know if it's a strength, a weakness or just a fact but almost all my fics so far are about aro/ace/qpr stuff (projecting much? me? naah. 👀)

(If anybody wants to tell me what's good in my writing I'd kiss you on the mouth)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Blending dialogue and not-dialogue (forgor the name). I either write 1k without anyone speaking or 1k straight of dialogue but you don't know what anybody's doing. I try to blend both when I edit but it's haaaard.

Also sometimes I feel like I have the vocabulary of a 5 years old.

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

I think it can be perfectly fine if the pov isn't supposed to understand what's being said, or if it's translated straight away, but when you read a long fic with mando'a every 5 seconds and none of it is translated (or all at the end) it gets pretty annoying and doesnt really add much to the fic. imo if you want a character to speak in a different language you should just write in english, put it in italics, and specify that they speak the other language or something.

The other thing that bother me that I see a lot especially with mando'a in fics, is just putting the word in mando'a in the middle of an English sentence. That's not how being bilingual works!! (at least not that much). Like, I don't call my sister "my soeur", so why do the clones call each other vode in basic? Idk, it doesn't bother me enough to stop reading, it's more of a mild annoyance, but it doesn't really make much sense to me.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter! But Star Wars is the first fandom where I'm actually (somewhat) active and interacting with people instead of lurking and blurting out a fic every once in a while.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

I'll go with I wish you with me always. I think I made a decent job at writing it and qpr are just so important to me. It also made me sooo happy to see so many other people liking it <3

But I think my wedding au will steal the first place if I ever manage to finish it!

I feel like everybody had already done this a while ago, so I'm tagging whoever is reading this and hasnt done it before!

[billyranger]

Book Opinions: Casey McQuiston - Red, White & Royal Blue

This is not a book review, this is just me being absolutely frustrated with this book.

I have been in a bit of a reading slump and I wanted to get back into reading. I have a lot of books that I want to read and where I know I will enjoy them, but some reason I kept reading the same 5 fanfics again and again.

I have wanted to read Red, White & Royal Blue for a while, mostly because I remember the tumblr post that started it all and it did sound cute if a bit fanfic-y. So I thought it was a good transition book from fanfic to actual literature for me.

This book is kinda meh in general and very bad for me specifically.

It was sold to me as enemies-to-lovers romance with the "First Son" of the United States and a british prince. I thought it could be fun. I was wrong. I am not having fun. I am about halfway through this book and I am not having fun with this book.

Let's start with the characters. The main character is an asshole, but the book really, really wants you to like him. He is also very smart and witty, which in this case just means he talks like a Joss Whedon character (post Avengers). The other character just straight up does not have a character. I think he likes Star Wars? The other characters are all very diverse, which is mostly nice, but occasionally feels like a checklist. Especially because they don't seem to have a lot of character otherwise. There are two girls (first sons sister and veeps granddaugther) who are also very prominent in the book and as far as I can tell is that one of them wants to be Nate Silver and the other Ronan Farrow. The British in this book have a very bad case of being written by an American

And now the romance between the two main guys. It's boring. It is so damn boring. They are not "enemies". One of them was slightly rude to the other, so they disliked each other for the first two chapters and then they kiss and their fine. The book also does not know if it wants to be a romance for adults or YA. The sex scenes feel like the author wrote a full on explicit sex scene, but then took out everything too explicit and now half of it is just missing. Which is bad because sex is about all these two do when they meet. So their relationship feels mostly bland.

And here is the shit that was annoying to me personally.

The politics

The fucking politics.

I generally do not mind politics in my romance/media. I enjoy it. Its a good source for conflict. I am also way (WAY) too into american politics and know too much about british politics (and the monarchy. ugh. I wish i could delete that knowledge). This book acts like it wants to say profound stuff about politics, but it is so surface level. It is like the author made the world into a weird rainbow capitalism version of the real world. On the one hand the author references a lot of actual people and events, but on the other hand shit happens, that would not happen in a world where these people and events exist. The world building just does not make sense. It is too close to our real world, which makes everything feel very off.

The mother of the first son is also such a Hillary Clinton character, but it took me so long to figure it out, because they basically took out everything slightly negative about Clinton. So now she is just a slightly high-strung politician. And also a divorced democrat from Texas. Which could have accepted actually. What I am way more angry about is that apparently she was Speaker of the House in circa 2012. That fact is just dropped in a half sentence and I am still obsessing over it.

Also the book was published in 2019 and all of the pop culture references already aged so very badly. Most of them are Harry Potter, Star Wars or MCU.

I have not yet finished the book, but I will try to do that. Though halfway through the book a private email server was mentioned and I threw the book against the wall. So we will see if I can manage that without further damage.

[pyrochordis]

shittiest take ive ever heard: “older people still liking star wars is just like millennials with harry potter”

[armageddon-generation]

Articulating Why His Dark Materials is Badly Written

A long essay-thing with lots of specific examples and explanations of why I feel this way. Hopefully I’ve kept fanboy bitching to a minimum.

This isn’t an attack on fans of the show, nor a personal attack on Jack Thorne. I’m not looking to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the show, I just needed to properly articulate, with examples, why I struggle with it. I read and love the books and that colours my view, but I believe that HDM isn’t just a clumsy, at-best-functional, sometimes incompetent adaptation, it’s a bad TV show separate from its source material. The show is the blandest, least interesting and least engaging version of itself it could be.

His Dark Materials has gorgeous production design and phenomenal visual effects. It's well-acted. The score is great. But my god is it badly written. Jack Thorne writing the entire first season damned the show. There was no-one to balance out his flaws and biases. Thorne is checking off a list of plot-points, so concerned with manoeuvring the audience through the story he forgets to invest us in it. The scripts are mechanical, empty, flat.

Watching HDM feels like an impassioned fan earnestly lecturing you on why the books are so good- (Look! It's got other worlds and religious allegory and this character Lyra is really, really important I swear. Isn't Mrs Coulter crazy? The Gyptians are my favourites.) rather than someone telling the story naturally.

My problems fall into 5 main categories:

Exposition- An unwillingness to meaningfully expand the source material for a visual medium means Thorne tells and doesn't show crucial plot-points. He then repeats the same thing multiple times because he doesn't trust his audience

Pacing- By stretching out the books and not trusting his audience Thorne dedicates entire scenes to one piece of information and repeats himself constantly (see: the Witches' repetition of the prophecy in S2).

Narrative priorities- Thorne prioritises human drama over fantasy. This makes sense budgetarily, but leads to barely-present Daemons, the Gyptians taking up too much screentime, rushed/badly written Witches (superpowers, exposition) and Bears (armourless bear fight), and a Lyra more focused on familial angst than the joy of discovery

Tension and Mystery- because HDM is in such a hurry to set up its endgame it gives you the answers to S1's biggest mysteries immediately- other worlds, Lyra's parents, what happens to the kids etc. This makes the show less engaging and feel like it's playing catch-up to the audience, not the other way around.

Tonal Inconsistency- HDM tries to be a slow-paced, grounded, adult drama, but its blunt, simplistic dialogue and storytelling methods treat the audience like children that need to be lectured.

MYSTERY, SUSPENSE AND INTRIGUE

The show undercuts all the books’ biggest mysteries. Mrs Coulter is set up as a villain before we meet her, other worlds are revealed in 1x2, Lyra's parents by 1x3, what the Magesterium do to kids is spelled out long before Lyra finds Billy (1x2). I understand not wanting to lose new viewers, but neutering every mystery kills momentum and makes the show much less engaging.

This extends to worldbuilding. The text before 1x1 explains both Daemons and Lyra's destiny before we meet her. Instead of encouraging us to engage with the world and ask questions, we're given all the answers up front and told to sit back and let ourselves be spoon-fed. The viewer is never an active participant, never encouraged to theorise or wonder

 Intrigue motivated you to engage with Pullman's philosophical themes and concepts. Without it, HDM feels like a lecture, a theme park ride and not a journey.

The only one of S1's mysteries left undiminished is 'what is Dust?', which won't be properly answered until S3, and that answer is super conceptual and therefore hard to make dramatically satisfying

TONAL INCONSISTENCY

HDM billed itself as a HBO-level drama, and was advertised as a GoT inheritor. It takes itself very seriously- the few attempts at humour are stilted and out of place

The production design is deliberately subdued, most notably choosing a mid-twentieth century aesthetic for Lyra’s world over the late-Victorian of the books or steampunk of the movie. The colour grading would be appropriate for a serious adult drama. 

Reviewers have said this stops the show feeling as fantastical as it should. It also makes Lyra’s world less distinct from our own. 

Most importantly, minimising the wondrous fantasy of S1 neuters its contrast with the escalating thematic darkness of the finale (from 1x5 onwards), and the impact of Roger’s death. Pullman's books are an adult story told through the eyes of a child. Lyra’s innocence and naivety in the first book is the most important journey of the trilogy. Instead, the show starts serious and thematically heavy (we’re told Lyra has world-saving importance before we even meet her) and stays that way.

Contrasting the serious tone, grounded design and poe-faced characters, the dialogue is written to cater to children. It’s horrendously blunt and pulls you out of scenes. Subtext is obliterated at every opportunity. Even in the most recent episode, 2x7, Pan asks Lyra ‘do you think you’re changing because of Will?’

I cannot understate how on the nose this line is, and how much it undercuts the themes of the final book. Instead of even a meaningful shot of Lyra looking at Will, the show treats the audience like complete idiots. 

So, HDM looks and advertises itself like an adult drama and is desperate to be taken seriously by wearing its big themes on its sleeve from the start instead of letting them evolve naturally out of subtext like the books, and dedicating lots of scenes to Mrs Coulter's self-abuse 

At the same time its dialogue and character writing is comparable to the Star Wars prequels, more childish than media aimed at a similar audience - Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Avatar the Last Airbender etc

DAEMONS

The show gives itself a safety net by explaining Daemons in an opening text-crawl, and so spends less time showing the mechanics of the Daemon-human bond. On the HDM subreddit, I’ve seen multiple people get to 1x5 or 6, and then come to reddit asking basic questions like ‘why do only some people have Daemons?’ or ‘Why are Daemons so important?’.

It’s not that the show didn’t answer these questions; it was in the opening text-crawl. It’s just the show thinks telling you is enough and never shows evidence to back that up. Watching a TV show you remember what you’re shown much easier than what you’re told 

The emotional core of Northern Lights is the relationship between Lyra and Pan. The emotional core of HDM S1 is the relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. This wouldn't be bad- it's a fascinating dynamic Ruth plays wonderfully- if it didn't override the Daemons

Daemons are only onscreen when they serve a narrative purpose. Thorne justifies this because the books only describe Daemons when they tell us about their human. On the page your brain fills the Daemons in. This doesn't work on-screen; you cannot suspend your disbelief when their absence is staring you in the face

Thorne clarified the number of Daemons as not just budgetary, but a conscious creative choice to avoid onscreen clutter. This improved in S2 after vocal criticism.

Mrs Coulter/the Golden Monkey and Lee/Hester have well-drawn relationships in S1, but Pan and Lyra hug more in the 2-hour Golden Compass movie than they do in the 8-hour S1 of HDM. There's barely any physical contact with Daemons at all.

They even cut Pan and Lyra's hug after escaping the Cut in Bolvangar. In the book they can't let go of each other. The show skips it completely because Thorne wants to focus on Mrs Coulter and Lyra.

They cut Pan and Lyra testing how far apart they can be. They cut Lyra freeing the Cut Daemons in Bolvangar with the help of Kaisa. We spent extra time with both Roger and Billy Costa, but didn't develop their bonds with their Daemons- the perfect way to make the Cut more impactful

I don't need every single book scene in the show, but notice that all these cut scenes reinforced how important Daemons are. For how plodding the show is. you'd think they could spare time for these moments instead of inventing new conversations that tell us the information they show

Daemons are treated as separate beings and thus come across more like talking pets than part of a character

The show sets the rules of Daemons up poorly. In 1x2, Lyra is terrified by the Monkey being so far from Coulter, but the viewer has nothing to compare it to. We’re retroactively told in that this is unnatural when the show has yet to establish what ‘natural’ is.

The guillotine blueprint in 1x2 (‘Is that a human and his Daemon, Pan? It looks like it.’ / ‘A blade. To cut what?’) is idiotic. It deflates S1’s main mystery and makes the characters look stupid for not figuring out what they aren’t allowed to until they did in the source material, it also interferes with how the audience sees Daemons. In the book, Cutting isn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way in (1x5). By then we’ve spent a lot of time with Daemons, they’ve become a background part of the world, their ‘rules’ have been established, and we’re endeared to them.

By showing the Guillotine and putting Daemons under threat in the second episode, the show never lets us grow attached. This, combined with their selective presence in scenes, draws attention to Daemons as a plot gimmick and not a natural extension of characters. Like Lyra, the show tells us why Daemons are important before we understand them.

Billy Costa's fate falls flat. It's missing the dried fish/ fake Daemon Tony Markos clings to in the book. Thorne said this 'didn't work' on the day, but it worked in the film. Everyone yelling about Billy not having a Daemon is laughable when most of the background extras in the same scene don't have Daemons themselves

WITCHES

The Witches are the most common complaint about the show. Thorne changed Serafina Pekkala in clever, logical ways (her short hair, wrist-knives and cloud pine in the skin)

The problem is how Serafina is written. The Witches are purely exposition machines. We get no impression of their culture, their deep connection to nature, their understanding of the world. We are told it. It is never shown, never incorporated into the dramatic action of the show.

Thorne emphasises Serafina's warrior side, most obviously changing Kaisa from a goose into a gyrfalcon (apparently a goose didn't work on-screen)

Serafina single-handedly slaughtering the Tartars is bad in a few ways. It paints her as bloodthirsty and ruthless. Overpowering the Witches weakens the logic of the world (If they can do that, why do they let the Magesterium bomb them unchallenged in 2x2?). It strips the Witches of their subtlety and ambiguity for the sake of cinematic action.

A side-effect of Serafina not being with her clan at Bolvangar is limiting our exposure to the Witches. Serafina is the only one invested in the main plot, we only hear about them from what she tells us. This poor set-up weakens the Witch subplot in S2

Lyra doesn’t speak to Serafina until 2x6. She laid eyes on her once in S1.

The dialogue in the S2’s Witch subplot is comparable to the Courasant section of The Phantom Menace. 

Two named characters, neither with any depth (Serafina and Coram's dead son developed him far more than her). The costumes look ostentatious and hokey- the opposite of what the Witches should be. They do nothing but repeat the same exposition at each other, even in 2x7.

We feel nothing when the Witches are bombed because the show never invests us in what is being destroyed- with the amount of time wasted on long establishing shots, there’s not one when Lee Scoresby is talking to the Council.

BEARS

Like the Witches; Thorne misunderstands and rushes the fantasy elements of the story. The 2007 movie executed both Iofur's character and the Bear Fight much better than the show- bloodless jaw-swipe and all

Iofur's court was not the parody of human court in the books. He didn't have his fake-Daemon (hi, Billy)

An armourless bear fight is like not including Pan in the cutting scene. After equating Iorek's armour to a Daemon (Lee does this- we don’t even learn how important it is from Iorek himself, and the comparison meant less because of how badly the show set up Daemons) the show then cuts the plotpoint that makes the armour plot-relevant. This diminishes all of Bear society. Like Daemons, we're told Iorek's armour is important but it's never shown to be more than a cool accessory

GYPTIANS

Gyptians suffer from Hermoine syndrome. Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves' favourite character was Hermione, and so Film!Hermoine lost most of Book!Hermoine's flaws and gained several of Book!Ron's best moments. The Gyptians are Jack Thorne's favourite group in HDM and so they got the extra screentime and development that the more complicated groups/concepts like Witches, Bears, and Daemons (which, unlike the Gyptians, carry over to other seasons amd are more important to the overall story) needed

At the same time, he changes them from a private people into an Isle of Misfit Toys. TV!Ma Costa promises they'll ‘make a Gyptian woman out of Lyra yet’, but in the book Ma specifically calls Lyra out for pretending to be Gyptian, and reminds her she never can be.

This small moment indicates how, while trying to make the show more grounded and 'adult', Thorne simultaneously made it more saccharine and sentimental. He neuters the tragedy of the Cut kids when Ma Costa says they’ll become Gyptians. Pullman's books feel like an adult story told through the eyes of a child. The TV show feels like a child's story masquerading as a serious drama.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Let me preface this by saying I genuinely really enjoy the performances in the show. It was shot in the foot by The Golden Compass' perfect casting.

The most contentious/'miscast' actor among readers is LMM. Thorne ditched the books' wise Texan for a budget Han Solo. LMM isn't a great dramatic actor (even in Hamilton he was the weak link performance-wise) but he makes up for it in marketability- lots of people tried the show because of him

Readers dislike that LMM's Lee is a thief and a scoundrel, when book-Lee is so moral he and Hester argue about stealing. Personally, I like the change in concept. Book!Lee's parental love for Lyra just appears. It's sweet, but not tied to a character arc. Done right, Lyra out-hustling Lee at his own game and giving him a noble cause to fight for (thus inspiring the moral compass of the books) is a more compelling arc.

DAFNE KEENE AND LYRA

I thought Dafne would be perfect casting. Her feral energy in Logan seemed a match made in heaven. Then Jack Thorne gave her little to do with it.

Compare how The Golden Compass introduced Lyra, playing Kids and Gobblers with a group of Gyptian kids, including Billy Costa. Lyra and Roger are chased to Jordan by the Gyptians and she makes up a lie about a curse to scare the Gyptians away.

In one scene the movie set up: 1) the Gobblers (the first we hear of them in the show is in retrospect, Roger worrying AFTER Billy is taken) 2) Lyra’s pre-existing relationship with the Gyptians (not in the show), 3) Friendship with Billy Costa (not in the book or show) 4) Lyra’s ability to befriend and lead groups of people, especially kids, and 5) Lyra’s ability to lie impressively

By comparison, it takes until midway through 1x2 for TV!Lyra to tell her first lie, and even then it’s a paper-thin attempt. 

The show made Roger Lyra’s only friend. This artificially heightens the impact of Roger's death, but strips Lyra of her leadership qualities and ability to befriend anyone. 

Harry Potter fans talk about how Book!Harry is funnier and smarter than Film!Harry. They cut his best lines ('There's no need to call me sir, Professor') and made him blander and more passive. The same happened to Lyra.

Most importantly, Lyra is not allowed to lie for fun. She can't do anything 'naughty' without being scolded. This colours the few times Lyra does lie (e.g. to Mrs Coulter in 1x2) negatively and thus makes Lyra out to be more of a brat than a hero.

This is a problem with telling Northern Lights from an outside, 'adult' perspective- to most adults Lyra is a brat. Because we’re introduced to her from inside her head, we think she's great. It's only when we meet her through Will's eyes in The Subtle Knife and she's filthy, rude and half-starved that we realise Lyra bluffs her way through life and is actually pretty non-functional

Thorne prioritises grounded human drama over fantasy, and so his Lyra has her love of bears and witches swapped for familial angst. (and, in S2. angst over Roger). By exposing Mrs Coulter as her mother early, Thorne distracts TV!Lyra from Book!Lyra’s love of the North. The contrast between wonder and reality made NL's ending a definitive threshold between innocence and knowledge. Thorne showed his hand too early.

Similarly, TV!Lyra doesn’t have anywhere near as strong an admiration for Lord Asriel. She calls him out in 1x8 (‘call yourself a Father’), which Book!Lyra never would because she’s proud to be his child. From her perspective, at this point Asriel is the good parent.

TV!Lyra’s critique of Asriel feels like Thorne using her as a mouthpiece to voice his own, adult perspective on the situation. Because Lyra is already disappointed in Asriel, his betrayal in the finale isn’t as effective. Pullman saves the ‘you’re a terrible Father’ call-out for the 3rd book for a reason; Lyra’s naive hero-worship of Asriel in Northern Lights makes the fall from Innocence into Knowledge that Roger’s death represents more effective.  

So, on TV Lyra is tamer, angstier, more introverted, less intelligent, less fun and more serious. We're just constantly told she's important, even before we meet her.

MRS COULTER (AND LORD ASRIEL)

Mrs Coulter is the main character of the show. Not Lyra. Mrs Coulter was cast first, and Lyra was cast based on a chemistry test with Ruth Wilson. Coulter’s character is given lots of extra development, where the show actively strips Lyra of her layers.

To be clear, I have no problem with developing Mrs Coulter. She is a great character Ruth Wilson plays phenomenally. I do have a problem with the show fixating on her at the expense of other characters.

Lyra's feral-ness is given to her parents. Wilson and McAvoy are more passionate than in the books. This is fun to watch, but strips them of subtlety- you never get Book!Coulter's hypnotic allure from Wilson, she's openly nasty, even to random strangers (in 2x3 her dismissal of the woman at the hotel desk felt like a Disney villain). 

Compare how The Golden Compass (2007) introduced Mrs Coulter through Lyra’s eyes, with light, twinkling music and a sparkling dress. By contrast, before the show introduces Coulter it tells us she’s associated with the evil Magisterium plotting Asriel’s death- “Not a word to any of our mutual friends. Including her.” Then she’s introduced striding down a corridor to imposing ‘Bad Guy’ strings.

Making Mrs Coulter’s villainy so obvious so early makes Lyra look dumber for falling for it. It also wastes an interesting phase of her character arc. Coulter is rushed into being a ’conflicted evil mother’ in 2 episodes, and stays in that phase for the rest of the show so far. Character progression is minimised because she circles the same place.

It makes her one-note. It's a good note (so much of the positive online chatter is saphiccs worshiping Ruth Wilson) but the show also worships her to the point of hindrance- e.g. take a shot every time Coulter walks slow-motion down a corridor in 2x2

The problem isn’t the performances, but how prematurely they give the game away. Just like the mysteries around Bolvangar and Lyra’s parentage. Neither Coulter or Asriel have much chance to use their 'public' faces. 

This is part of a bigger pacing problem- instead of rolling plot points out gradually, Thorne will stick the solution in front of you early and then stall for time until it becomes relevant. Instead of building tension this builds frustration and makes the show feel like it's catching up to the audience. This also makes the characters less engaging. You've already shown Mrs Coulter is evil/Boreal is in our world/Asriel wants Roger. Why are you taking so long getting to the point?

PACING AND EDITING

This show takes forever to make its point badly.

Scenes in HDM tend to operate on one level- either 'Character Building,' 'Exposition,' or 'Plot Progression'.

E.g. Mary's introduction in 2x2. Book!Mary only listens to Lyra because she’s sleep and caffeine-deprived and desperate because her funding is being cut. But the show stripped that subtext out and created an extra scene of a colleague talking to Mary about funding. They removed emotional subtext to focus on exposition, and so the scene felt empty and flat.

In later episodes characters Mary’s sister and colleagues do treat her like a sleep-deprived wreck. But, just like Lyra’s lying, the show doesn’t establish these characteristics in her debut episode. It waits until later to retroactively tell us they were there. Mary’s colleague saying ‘What we’re dealing with here is the fact that you haven’t slept in weeks’ is as flimsy as Pan joking not lying to Mary will be hard for Lyra.

Rarely does a scene work on multiple levels, and if it does it's clunky- see the exposition dump about Daemon Separation in the middle of 2x2's Witch Trial.

He also splits plot progression into tiny doses, which destroys pacing. It's more satisfying to focus on one subplot advancing multiple stages than all of them shuffling forward half a step each episode.

Subplots would be more effective if all the scenes played in sequence. As it is, plotlines can’t build momentum and literal minutes are wasted using the same establishing shots every time we switch location.

The best-structured episodes of S1 are 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8. This is because they have the fewest subplots (incidentally these episodes have least Boreal in them) and so the main plot isn’t diluted by constantly cutting away to Mrs Coulter sniffing Lyra’s coat or Will watching a man in a car through his window, before cutting back again. 

The best-written episode so far is 2x5. The Scholar. Tellingly, it’s the only episode Thorne doesn’t have even a co-writing credit on. 2x5 is well-paced, its dialogue is more naturalistic, it’s more focused, it even has time for moments of whimsy (Monkey with a seatbelt, Mrs Coulter with jeans, Lyra and Will whispering) that don’t detract from the story.

Structurally, 2x5  works because A) it benches Lee’s plotline. B) The Witches and Magisterium are relegated to a scene each. And C) the Coulter/Boreal and Lyra/Will subplots move towards the same goal. Not only that, but when we check in on Mary’s subplot it’s through Mrs Coulter’s eyes and directly dovetails into the  main action of the episode.

2x5 has a lovely sense of narrative cohesion because it has the confidence to sit with one set of characters for longer than two scenes at a time.

HDM also does this thing where it will have a scene with plot A where characters do or talk about something, cut away to plot B for a scene, then cut back to plot A where the characters talk about what happened in their last scene and painstakingly explain how they feel about it and why

Example: Pan talking to Will in 2x7 while Lyra pretends to be asleep. This scene is from the 3rd book, and is left to breathe for many chapters before Lyra brings it up. In the show after the Will/Pan scene they cut away to another scene, then cut back and Lyra instantly talks about it.

There’s the same problem in 2x5: After escaping Mrs Coulter, Lyra spells out how she feels about acting like her

The show never leaves room for implication, never lets us draw our own conclusions before explaining what it meant and how the characters feel about it immediately afterwards. The audience are made passive in their engagement with the characters as well as the world    

LORD BOREAL, JOHN PARRY AND DIMINISHING RETURNS

At first, Boreal’s subplot in S1 felt bold and inspired. The twist of his identity in The Subtle Knife would've been hard to pull off onscreen anyway. As a kid I struggled to get past Will's opening chapter of TSK and I have friends who were the same. Introducing Will in S1 and developing him alongside Lyra was a great idea.

I loved developing Elaine Parry and Boreal into present, active characters. But the subplot was introduced too early and moved too slowly, bogging down the season.

In 1x2 Boreal crosses. In 1x3 we learn who he's looking for. In 1x5 we meet Will. In 1x7 the burglary. 1 episode worth of plot is chopped up and fed to us piecemeal across many. Boreal literally stalls for two episodes before the burglary- there are random 30 second shots of him sitting in a car watching John Parry on YouTube (videos we’d already seen) completely isolated from any other scenes in the episode

By the time we get to S2 we've had 2 seasons of extended material building up Boreal, so when he just dies like in the books it's anticlimactic. The show frontloads his subplot with meaning without expanding on its payoff, so the whole thing fizzles out. 

Giving Boreal, the secondary villain in literally every episode, the same death as a background character in about 5 scenes in the novels feels cheap. It doesn’t help that, after 2x5 built the tension between Coulter and Boreal so well, as soon as Thorne is passed the baton in 2x6 he does little to maintain that momentum. Again, because the subplot is crosscut with everything else the characters hang in limbo until Coulter decides to kill him.

I’ve been watching non-book readers react to the show, and several were underwhelmed by Boreal’s quick, unceremonious end. 

Similarly, the show builds up John Parry from 1x3 instead of just the second book. Book!John’s death is an anticlimax but feels narratively justified. In the show, we’ve spent so much extra time talking about him and then being with him (without developing his character beyond what’s in the novels- Pullman even outlined John’s backstory in The Subtle Knife’s appendix. How hard would it be to add a flashback or two?) that when John does nothing in the show and then dies (he doesn’t even heal Will’s fingers like in the book- only tell him to find Asriel, which the angels Baruch and Balthamos do anyway) it doesn’t feel like a clever, tragic subversion of our expectations, it feels like a waste that actively cheapens the audience’s investment.

TL;DR giving supporting characters way more screentime than they need only, to give their deaths the same weight the books did after far less build up makes huge chunks of the show feel less important than they were presented to be. 

FRUSTRATINGLY LIMITED EXPANSION AND NOVELLISTIC STORYTELLING

Thorne is unwilling to meaningfully develop or expand characters and subplots to fit a visual medium. He introduces a plot-point, invents unnecessary padding around it, circles it for an hour, then moves on.

Pullman’s books are driven by internal monologue and big, complex theological concepts like Daemons and Dust. Instead of finding engaging, dynamic ways to dramatise these concepts through the actions of characters or additions to the plot, Thorne turns Pullman’s internal monologue into dialogue and has the characters explain them to the audience

The novels’ perspective on its characters is narrow, first because Northern Lights is told only from Lyra’s POV, and second because Pullman’s writing is plot-driven, not character-driven. Characters are vessels for the plot and themes he wants to explore.

This is a fine way of writing novels. When adapting the books into a longform drama, Thorne decentralised Lyra’s perspective from the start, and HDM S1 uses the same multi-perspective structure that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass do, following not only Lyra but the Gyptians, Mrs Coulter, Boreal, Will and Elaine etc

However, these other perspectives are limited. We never get any impression of backstory or motivation beyond the present moment. Many times I’ve seen non-book readers confused or frustrated by vague or non-existent character motivations.

For example, S1 spends a lot of time focused on Ma Costa’s grief over Billy’s disappearance, but we never see why she’s sad, because we never saw her interact with Billy.

Compare this to another show about a frantic mother and older brother looking for a missing boy. Stranger Things uses only two flashbacks to show us Will Byers’ relationships with his family: 1) When Joyce Byers looks in his Fort she remembers visiting Will there. 2) The Clash playing on the radio reminds Jonathan Byers of introducing Will to the song.

In His Dark Materials we never see the Costas as a happy family- 1x1’s Gyptian ceremony focuses on Tony and Daemon-exposition. Billy never speaks to his mum or brother in the show 

Instead we have Ma Costa’s empty grief. The audience has to do the work (the bad kind) imagining what she’s lost. Instead of seeing Billy, it’s just repeated again and again that they will get the children back.

If we’re being derivative, HDM had the chance to segway into a Billy flashback when John Faa brings one of his belongings back from a Gobbler safehouse in 1x2. This is a perfect The Clash/Fort Byers-type trigger. It doesn’t have to be long- the Clash flashback lasted 1:27, the Fort Byers one 55 seconds. Just do something.

1x3 beats into us that Mrs Coulter is nuts without explaining why. Lots of build-up for a single plot-point. Then we're told Mrs Coulter's origin, not shown. This is a TV show. Swap Boreal's scenes for flashbacks of Coulter and Asriel's affair. Then, when Ma Costa tells Lyra the truth, show the fight between Edward Coulter and Asriel.

To be clear, Thorne's additions aren’t fundamentally bad. For example, Will boxing sets up his struggle with violence. But it's wasted. The burglary/murder in 1x7 fell flat because of bad editing, but the show never uses its visual medium to show Will's 'violent side'- no change in camera angle, focus, or sound design, nothing. It’s just a thing that’s there, unsupported by the visual language of the show

The Magisterium scenes in 2x2 were interesting. We just didn't need 5 of them; their point could be made far more succinctly.

In 2x6 there is a minute-long scene of Mary reading the I Ching. Later, there is another scene of Angelica watching Mary sitting somewhere different, doing the SAME THING, and she sees an Angel. Why split these up? It’s not like either the I Ching or the Angels are being introduced here. Give the scene multiple layers.

Thorne either takes good character moments from the books (Lyra/Will in 2x1) or uses heavy-handed exposition that reiterates the same point multiple times. This hobbles the Witches (their dialogue in 2x1, 2 and 3 literally rephrases the same sentiment about protecting Lyra without doing anything). Even character development- see Lee monologuing his and Mrs Coulter's childhood trauma in specific detail in 2x3

This is another example of Thorne adding something, but instead of integrating it into the dramatic action and showing us, it’s just talked about. What’s the point of adding big plot points if you don’t dramatise them in your dramatic, visual medium? In 2x8, Lee offhandedly mentions playing Alamo Gulch as a kid.

I’m literally screaming, Jack, why the flying fuck wasn’t there a flashback of young Lee and Hester playing Alamo Gulch and being stopped by his abusive dad? It’s not like you care about pacing with the amount of dead air in these episodes, even when S2’s run 10 minutes shorter than S1’s. Lee was even asleep at the beginning of 2x3, Jack! He could’ve woken from a nightmare about his childhood! It’s a little lazy, but better than nothing.

There’s a similar missed opportunity making Dr Lanselius a Witchling. If this idea had been introduced with the character in 1x4, it would’ve opened up so many storytelling possibilities. Linking to Fader Coram’s own dead witchling son. It could’ve given us that much-needed perspective on Witch culture. Imagine Lanselius’ bittersweet meeting with his ageless mother, who gave him up when he reached manhood. Then, when the Magisterium bombs the Witches in 2x2, Lanselius’ mother dies so it means something.

Instead it’s only used to facilitate an awkward exposition dump in the middle of a trial.

The point of this fanfic-y ramble is to illustrate my frustration with the additions; If Thorne had committed and meaningfully expanded and interwoven them with the source material, they could’ve strengthened its weakest aspect (the characters). But instead he stays committed to novelistic storytelling techniques of monologue and two people standing in a room talking at each other

(Seriously, count the number of scenes that are just two people standing in a room or corridor talking to each other. No interesting staging, the characters aren’t doing anything else while talking. They. Just. Stand.) 

SEASON 2 IMPROVEMENTS

S2 improved some things- Lyra's characterisation was more book-accurate, her dynamic with Will was wonderful. Citigazze looked incredible. LMM won lots of book fans over as Lee. Mary was brilliantly cast. Now there are less Daemons, they're better characterised- Pan gets way more to do now and Hester had some lovely moments. 

I genuinely believe 2x1, 2x3, 2x4 and 2x5 are the best HDM has been. 

But new problems arose. The Subtle Knife lost the central, easy to understand drive of Northern Lights (finding the missing kids) for lots of smaller quests. As a result, everyone spends the first two episodes of S2 waiting for the plot to arrive. The big inciting incident of Lyra’s plotline is the theft of the alethiometer, which doesn’t happen until 2x3. Similarly, Lee doesn’t search for John until 2x3. Mrs Coulter doesn’t go looking for Lyra until 2x3. 

On top of missing a unifying dramatic drive, the characters now being split across 3 worlds, instead of the 1+a bit of ours in S1, means the pacing/crosscutting problems (long establishing shots, repetition of information, undercutting momentum) are even worse. The narrative feels scattered and incohesive.   

These flaws are inherent to the source  material and are not the show’s fault, but neither does it do much to counterbalance or address them, and the flaws of the show combine with the difficulties of TSK as source material and make each other worse.

A lot of this has been entitled fanboy bitching, but you can't deny the show is in a bad place ratings-wise. It’s gone from the most watched new British show in 5 years to the S2 premiere having a smaller audience than the lowest-rated episode of Doctor Who Series 12. For comparison, DW's current cast and showrunner are the most unpopular since the 80s, some are actively boycotting it, it took a year-long break between series 11 and 12, had its second-worst average ratings since 2005, and costs a fifth of what HDM does to make. And it's still being watched by more people.

Critical consensus fluctuates wildly. Most laymen call the show slow and boring. The show is simultaneously too niche and self-absorbed to attract a wide audience and gets just enough wrong to aggravate lots of fans.

I’m honestly unsure if S3 will get the same budget. I want it to, if only because of my investment in the books. Considering S2 started filming immediately after S1 aired, I think they've had a lot more time to process and apply critique for S3. On the plus side, there's so much plot in The Amber Spyglass it would be hard to have the same pacing problems. But also so many new concepts that I dread the exposition dumps.

[sassysnowperson]

writer's meme - TY to @r0b0tb0y for the tag!

How many works do you have on AO3?

168 - oh man that's more than I'd realized. I passed 150 and didn't even notice!

What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,133,901

So many.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Since r0b0tb0y and I were just talking about this, I conveniently have a list of all 20 ranked by number of works

134 - Star Wars 7 - Original Works 7 - Marvel 2 - Pirates of The Carribean 2 - The Old Guard 2 - Discworld 1 - Good Omens 1 - Leverage 1 - The Good Place 1 - Avatar: The Last Airbender 1 - Ocean’s 11 1 - Harry Potter 1 - The Goblin Emperor 1 - Gundam Wing 1 - Star Trek: TNG 1 - Hades (Videogame) 1 - Sailor Moon 1 - Russian Doll 1 - Mummy/Wonder Woman crossover

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Lol, looking at my top five - it falls into two categories

1. Fics I wrote right at the height of a fandom's popularity that got a massive reader boost because it was the Hot Thing Right Then

2. Star Wars Fix-Its

~

A Series of Better Decisions - A Padme/Obi-Wan/Anakin SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it where Anakin talks to Obi-Wan and spends Revenge of the Sith in a stressed-out bisexual panic instead of becoming a Space Fascist. He winds up fake-poly-dating Obi-Wan to try to bring down Palpatine, and eventually winds up in a better place due to the power of Quitting Your Job and becoming a househusband.

Galactic Response Time - Captain Marvel - an at the time MCU canon-compliant gen fic that ran the universe forward and explained how Carol really TRIED to show up for all those other crises that happened, but it turns out most of the major MCU disasters only lasted like three days and space is real big, y'all. Featuring Nick Fury cathartically bitching with his Space Bestie.

New Lands for the Living - Fix-it where the sequel trilogy ends Even Worse, Poe goes back in time to mercy-kill the timeline, and much to his dismay winds up married to just-before-Original-Trilogy Luke Skywalker. He has an existential crisis about his own existence, meets some competent women, and starts fixing things.

Life's Little Pleasures - The Good Omens fic where I put all my ace feelings, featuring metaphysical bonding and good scotch.

Flustered - Another Padme/Anakin/Obi-Wan SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it, where Order 66 never happens. Anakin gets some therapy and Padme gets a horrible crush on Obi-Wan.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! I love getting to talk to people about fics, and I so appreciate people making the effort to comment I want to spend some time with them! It's so much easier not to comment, I know.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm this is not my normal wheelhouse. I usually go angst that gets resolved by the end. Let me look to see what the options are.

Okay, I think we've got two contendors: In Waystation an exhausted Poe Dameron crash-lands in a station where a Bodhi Rook that lived and then hid now lives with Baze and Chirrut. There is a little epilgue that implies they're going to meet again, but the bulk of the fic does end with Poe making the decision to go back to the Resistance, and leaving Bodhi behind. Still, I think it's more wistful, rather than angsty.

Time Enough for Mourning takes it though, I think. Davits Draven/Antoc Merrick, that is entirely about Draven mourning the fact that Antoc has died. The end is still, I think, more cathartic than angsty, but it is overall probably the strongest "break out the waterworks" of my fics.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I do occasionally, usually when someone prompts me and I find something in there that makes my brain go!!! I think the strangest is probably The Face Underneath. It's a Cassian Andor/Elim Garak fic where I drag Garak into the Star Wars Universe for a triple drabble series where he is an old mentor of Cassian's.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Mmm, not proper hate. Realtalk, the most devastating one for me was when I posted a fic that the only comment was a spelling critique.

And yes, there was a spelling error, but still, very crushing to have that be the only feedback. (It has since found a few readers that said nice things, very healing :D)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes! Uh - consensual, between adults, often M/M adults, tho I have written explicit femslash, hetfic, and poly piles. It's usually affectionate, often plays with power dynamics even if it doesn't go into full dom/sub.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that anyone has made me aware of, I've never looked.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Had a request or two, but never been linked the result - so not sure if it didn't happen or if I just didn't get linked. I welcome it!

I have had several fics podficced, and I LOVE that. What a joy! Making a blanket permission statement that allowed podfic is one of the best decisions I've made as a fic author. Suddenly, Podfic!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Once or twice! I like the idea of doing it, but follow-through is hard. Hoping to do some co-writing soon though, so we will see!

What’s your all time favourite ship?

Sorry, unrepentant multi-shipper here. I like possibilities, and finding the story that will bring people together, more than one specific thing.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I don't have ANYTHING I've given up on, but there are a few fics in my unpublished drafts that were beautiful ideas, and really struggled to become contained stories. They all want to be sprawling things, and I have not felt sprawling-thing-writing passionate about those ideas. But, you never know! Inspiration may strike.

What are your writing strengths?

I'd say character voice, along with that, dialogue. Also humor moments that still have real weight and don't undercut the story, as well as straight comedy writing.

What are your writing weaknesses?

You see, I, uh, do this thing where I don't really end a sentence - I think about ending it, I even assume, at some point while I'm writing that I have ended it; I have not and it meanders, persistently, until I have constructed a whole paragraph made out of one chain of words and a hodgepodge of punctuation.

Also the thing where I accidentally use an unusual word five times in one paragraph because my brain has grabbed onto it like an excited puppy and keeps offering it up as the Perfect Word.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I love having multilingual characters. When writing, I tend to keep all the words in English and use dialogue tags to denote language shift - unless I am inventing the language, or have a speaker of that language willing to beta the bits to make sure I don't mess them up too badly.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Actually wrote and posted? Rogue One.

Fandom of my heart my younger self spun out stories in my imagination about? Where if I had my own computer and easy access to a fic archive they almost certainly would have become spectacularly earnest fics?

ReBoot and Sailor Moon. The Sailor Moon was an AU that took place on the sun and they all had kick-ass horses. Baby Sass knew what was up.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

Nope, sorry, can't pick, love them all in different ways for different reasons.

Tagging: @semisweetshadow, @anamelesstraveler, @jules-of-the-crown - and generally if you follow me and want to do it, do so and tag me in it!

[fulcrumstardust]

writing tag game

thanks @andorerso <3

20 questions, writer’s edition:

How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently 17, which are solely SW fandom

What’s your total AO3 word count?

592 056 words

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Listen, I’m not gonna list all my fandoms because a girl needs a bit of mystery but here are some:

Harry Potter

Star Wars / Rogue One

Fullmetal Alchemist

Vampire Academy

Black Sails

(most of it is not online anymore, but it existed at some point.)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

war dogs

1653 days without luck

the girl with the stardust eyes

transient stars

bring me home

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! Or at least I try hard to, sometimes it takes me an embarrassing amount of time and sometimes I simply don't because /mental health issues/ but then I try to make it up on the next update. I think it’s nice to reply to people to let them know that I appreciate their support and without them I would stop updating, but also understand that sometimes I put all my energy into writing the update and there’s nothing left of me. It’s about mutual respect!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

It’s actually unpublished, it’s a rebelcaptain fic that involves major character death when a rescue mission goes wrong and one of them sacrifices themselves to save the other. Very angsty indeed. Sometimes I just need to ugly cry, ok. I don’t know if I have the guts to put it out there.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

basically everything else, I guess ? I don’t know, 1653 days is pretty happy considering they’re married with a child and seeing the end of the war together, but is it proportional to the angst during the way ?

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

No, I don’t think I ever will (unless it’s a crossover with my own OCs lol)

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I remember getting some mean comments on a HP fic saying it was just badly written but I was 16, what did you expect my dude

I also get some nasty comments on a reylo fic from time to time that I just delete because I don’t have time for dipshits. It’s very rare though so /dabs/ (special mention when it starts with “I would love it BUT”, it’s ok babe, I love you too <3)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

When am I not writing smut is the better question. I love erotica, I love good one if you catch my drift. That’s actually what got me into fanfics because there’s no porn with a female gaze outside of fandom spaces. I love to write the kind of smut I think should be more out there, I’m on a personal vendetta against bad sex dynamics in mainstream media (and YA specifically but that's for another day). Killing patriarchy one orgasm at a time. It’s all about empowerment and a safe place to explore oneself.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I didn’t make it to that level of stardom lol

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, a couple with @halflingmerry and @briamarie38, it was awesome! It reminded me of my old days on RPG plateforms, I love the cooperation aspect. Lots of fun! I’m a slow writer so it takes the right kind of partner to work w/ me but I was lucky each time to have great co-authors to pull me through it. I’m looking forward to doing it again when I have some time.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Eh… Rebelcaptain, probably. They really have that thing I love.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

This one fic, Seelonce Mayday. Quick recap: Jyn is an Imperial hostage and convinces Cassian to get her out after they had a one-night stand while he was undercover. Once she’s free, Cassian goes on about his rebel spy life and they part ways. They stay in contact through all his missions and form a strong bond (comlink chatter only, hey see the title?) but she doesn’t tell him she’s pregnant until months later and it all kinda blows up in their face with bad timing. I talked about it before, it’s all about forming an attachment backward and developing a love that’s primarily familial… sort of “that’s my pack”, “I would die for you now even if we’re still strangers at the core” kind of shit. Anyway, first chapters still unpublished because I don’t know if I can write the whole thing but… it’s there. *sigh*

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogues and action scenes, I'd say.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions! Vocabulary, in-between scenes, sometimes I also struggle with balancing what I know and what the reader needs to know. I hate to spell things out but I can underexplain things, I think. I don’t know, you tell me if you’re a reader of mine! I always accept concrit.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I love it, I’ve always done it one way or another. Being multilingual is a part of me that I tend to write into all my characters. I love coming across another language in fics but it has to feel organic and that’s a tricky thing to pull off. I prefer when there’s no translation, so either I look it up myself or I don’t (always assume the reader won’t), but if another character is going to translate then just don’t use another language, what’s the point. I think it works best if the reply lets you guess what was said, or if it’s something meaningful that comes back later.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

It has to be Harry Potter, I think? Or maybe….. DBZ (hey, I said I won’t disclose my full legacy lol)

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Noooooooo, that’s so hard! *sad noises*

At the moment, probably stardust eyes because I really love to feel my heart being ripped off my chest by all that angst (knowing full well how I will resolve everything in a big clash of emotions). And bc I love to write military settings in general, in case you're new here haha

Well, that was fun! Tossing the ball to @briamarie38 @halflingmerry @incognitajones @imsfire2 💌

[bedlamsbard]

Writing tag game -- tagged by @lessattitudemorealtitude

how many works do you have on Ao3?

Discounting podfic on which I’m listed as a co-author, 24.  My concept writing doesn’t go to AO3 and the vast majority of my Narnia fic was never cross-posted there.  (Or reposted there, actually, I think most of it pre-dates the AO3.)

what’s your total Ao3 word count?

1,050,810.  oh, huh, I didn’t actually realize I’d passed the one million word mark (probably with Crown).

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

all of these ended up being Star Wars, which is not a huge surprise.  Morning will probably reach Dirt in the next couple of updates, I’d guess.

Immutable, or, Five Times Obi-Wan Kenobi Compromised His Jedi Ethics for Anakin Skywalker -- this is not the oldest Star Wars fic on there, but I think it’s the second oldest. people just really like 5 times fic.

Wake the Storm - did you know that when I started Wake I assumed it was a very niche trope in what was, at the time, a pretty dead fandom? the kudos count on Wake actually outnumbers Gambit by more than 1600 kudos, so the number of people who go from Wake to Gambit is a lot lower than you might think.

Queen's Gambit - a significantly lower kudos count than Wake or Immutable.  Gambit’s such a weirdo of a story, tbh, I can’t be surprised by anything about Gambit anymore.

On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone - about 600 kudos less than Gambit, so less difference between Gambit and Backbone than between Wake and Gambit.

Dirt in the Machine - another older fic.  I’d rewrite this one if I cared enough to do so, because it’s not at my current standards (Immutable isn’t either, for that matter) and I kind of wince every time I get comments on it.  this is the first one of the top five to have below 1K kudos.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I’ll usually respond to direct questions, but I very, very seldom respond to comments in general.  This is an old standing policy of mine that’s now more than a decade old -- it used to be I’d wait twenty-four hours before responding, then I’d respond right before the next chapter went up, and for a while I’d only respond to comments on the first few chapters of a story.  Now I just mostly do not.  The reasons for this are: (1) many, many years ago, I lost my temper pretty badly at a comment on a fic of mine (this was pre-AO3, this was back in my LJ days), and after that I moved to the “wait twenty-four hours” response so I didn’t say anything without thinking about it, (2) I do go back and reread comments but I hate rereading my own responses, (3) I prefer to know the comments numbers on my fic are all from actual comments and not from me saying “thanks for reading!”, (4) I can’t take that kind of responsibility for answering every single comment, man.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Of stuff I’ve written in the past ten years? (I can’t really remember before that.)  Maybe Backbone, because it ends on that pretty upbeat “yay team we’re going to be rebels now!” note.  or Devil’s in the Details (other side part 1), though I don’t really want to consider it a finished fic even though it’s technically finished; it has another “yay team we’re back together (minus Ezra)” ending.  I tend to end on complicated and reasonably open endings, not like...happy endings.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably Gambit for the “everything is super fucked up” factor and also the fact that I never wrote the sequel. plus it ended with the entire Wake trio split up in a whole new universe, plus back in the Gambitverse Amidala not able to go back to Naboo, Ahsoka shunned, Palpatine’s new empire, Rex trapped in the Gambitverse, etc.

do you write crossovers?

I did in my Narnia days. I don’t anymore. Working in widespread fandoms like Star Wars or the MCU is basically like writing crossover fic within the same universe, anyway.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

*hysterical laughter*

...yes. yes I have. it’s the reason every time I get a comment notification on Gambit or Wake I freeze in absolute terror. people HATE Wake and Gambit.  I hate to say never, but I will probably never write those characters or in that series again.

do you write smut? if so, what kind?

not really?  I’ve done relatively non-explicit sex but it’s not something I’m super comfortable writing, especially in recent years. I’m much more likely to do a fade to black.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think Gambit got scraped once when it was still in progress and my response was something along the lines of “good luck, bro,” given the whole “still in progress” thing.

have you ever had a fic translated?

I’ve gotten a couple of translation requests but I can’t recall if anything’s ever been translated.  (Or if I responded to them...I know a few I forgot to respond.)

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back in my Narnia days.  Some SW concept writing and that ended so badly that I’ll never co-write again.

what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Kanan/Hera, of course!

what’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

gods, Dust in the Air, my Narnia Last Battle AU.  Back when I started it in 2008 or so I didn’t have the self-control or discipline I do now, even if I had a lot of the worldbuilding ability and the ability to conceive of if not execute long plot arcs, and I broke off more than I could chew.  If I ever went back to it I’d probably have to do a complete rewrite and it has the unique problem among my WIPs of being the last major fic I wrote in present tense -- I now write exclusively in past tense.  The bones of the story are good, I’d just have to go back to the bones and not just pick up where I left off.

what are your writing strengths?

Plot, worldbuilding/environment, action.  I also do genuinely think I’m very good at characterization too, but I think they’re all inter-related.  (Except the action, that’s me alone.  I love writing action and I generally get a lot of compliments on my action scenes.)  look, I know it’s conceited, but I’m good and I know I’m good, and I’m good in a pretty well-rounded way for the genre I write.

what are your writing weaknesses?

brevity. can’t do it.

honestly, there are others, but I don’t write stories where they’d come up.  I think I have a tendency to get to bogged down in dialogue in a way that I’ve never quite solved.  I also let my emotions take over too much and not in the good fannish way, in the “I’m having a fucked up relationship with canon or fandom and it’s affecting my ability to work” way.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

please stop having your Asgardians speak Latin for magic, man, that’s my feeling on it.

okay, my feelings on it for me -- I’ve sprinkled bits and pieces of Huttese, Twi’leki, and tee-tiny bits of other stuff here and there in fic.  I’d not be comfortable doing more than that because the only other language that I really feel comfortable doing anything significant in is Latin, and even then I’d hesitate. also, like, Latin! not a language that comes up in the fandoms I write in.  even then, like -- any extended dialogue should be intelligible to the audience, and I don’t expect my audience to be able read anything other than English; I’d rather just say “they switched to Twi’leki to say” or something similar.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

like, online? Harry Potter. for things that I didn’t post online because I didn’t know what fic was yet? probably either The 10th Kingdom or The Mummy.

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone.  I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s the most tightly plotted, I think it’s got the best worldbuilding, I think it’s remarkably consistent thematically, and it was, at the time, a fic that I was very devoted to finishing or dying trying, because I was going through it at the time and some of it was connected to the fic.

I don’t tag people, but please go for if you want!

[ginnyzero]

Publishing vs. Marketing Category

Okay, so book and writing community on twitter tends to have these flare ups of convos about books being shelved wrong and authors pointing out reasons such as their gender, or race, or even the content of their books being say, fantasy for them being placed on the wrong shelves in libraries and bookstores. Now, there is a human bias element to this. There are librarians and book buyers for stores who do see a female fantasy author and assume they must be YA no matter the content. Plus, everyone and their mother tagging things incorrectly on twitter or shelving badly on Goodreads.

Let’s dive into the INDUSTRY side of this though. The industry has two different and at times clashing categorizations of books, there are the publishing categories and there are the marketing categories. And while some, specifically some age targets and genres the marketing and the publishing categories will align, there are others that the age target and marketing target may be under the same “name” technically and then their aims completely clash.

Yes, I’m mostly talking about YA. (Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance can fall in here too.)

So, the publishing category of Young Adult, is pretty much what you’d expect. Young Adult should have protagonists of the age groups of 12 to 18, and most likely dealing with “coming of age” themes and “finding their place in the world” and quite possibly “being the chosen one.” I personally find theme categorization for age groups to be really limiting. But I read Brian Jacques from third grade on... so. .. yay fighting mice. (And I was into Star Wars at grade 7, like Timothy Zahn Star Wars. I am not the typical reader.) It’s just something to be aware of if you are querying agents because agents deal with publishing categories and not marketing categories. (And agents have biases too. Like, come on, Unicorns should not be limited to MG. How dull. Agents though will look for anything to clear stuff out of their slush pile, I guess.)

Young Adult publishing category books range between 40K words on the low end and 80K words on the high end. I’d aim for 50K words depending on age group. Remember, YA readers especially read upwards in age groups. So you’re 12 year old is going to be reading about 15 year olds and your later YA readers will have aged out into the adult category of books (supposedly. This is where MARKETING categories become a thing. More in a second.)

New Adult is not a thing. Until it gets a spot in bookstores. It is officially not a thing. Querying New Adult will get you nowhere. Don’t bother.

So, you’ve written your MS and it hits what you think are all the Adult markers, from age of the protag, to theme, to having ‘adult’ content such as sex, drugs, and violence. (Violence is so weird b/c we’ve normalized violence while keeping sex taboo. So, if your book has sex, it might be considered Adult, more than if your book has violence. Even then... marketing categories.) You’ve queried it as adult. You’ve got it through an editor and it’s been pitched to a publisher and they’ve picked it up and your marketing materials come out. And they, meaning the cover, and the blurb, all read Young Adult in their style and tone.

And this may be confusing because you wrote an adult book, why are they marketing it to YA? Like A Crown of Thorns and Roses? (Fae court romance is... err, dead on arrival btw.)

It’s because YA is also a marketing category which no longer equals the age group category. And there are some very popular book series you can thank for this, Twilight, Hunger Games, Vampire Academy, and Divergent are among them. These books were not only popular among teens. They were popular among their mothers. So, publishing quickly pivoted from YA being this age group category with certain things, to a marketing strategy to try and keep the attention of the moms of the teenagers with sex, and love triangles, and I dunno, forbidden romance. By the time ACOTAR came out, publishing decided maybe they should try for this college age, New Adult category so they could market these “sexy fantasy” type books to older readers and get the sex out of YA. So, they used ACOTAR to try and make New Adult happen as a marketing category for book buyers. It didn’t work. Because no one, like with Harry Potter, wants to split a book series across 2 sections. (And lo and behold Young Adult was kind of born because they didn’t want to keep the later HP books in the children’s section.)

And because it didn’t work, YA is now a mess. Because they still don’t want to give up those sweet, sweet, mommy dollars.

There is one very large aspect of publishing the author has no control over. Their marketing. Especially, their covert marketing done by the publisher. Covert marketing is the type of marketing indies salivate over, b/c covert marketing is basically the publishing house deciding where on the bestseller list this book is going to be, how much advertising it gets, does it get a fancy book launch, what is the advance of the author, when is it going to be published and will it have competitors in its genre that same month, who among the reviewers gets to read it, the style of the book cover, and more importantly, what, where, and how much book shelf space it gets in stores. Is the cover turned out? Is it at the front of the store? Does it get it’s own display? Or is it in the “new releases display?” Which book buyer at the chains gets to see it. How do Librarians get a hold of it and which ones? Because the buyer of say, romance, is not the buyer of young adult. The Adult scifi/fantasy book buyer is going to be different than say, mysteries. Same for librarians! There are more than one librarian in your system choosing your books! It is very important who your book gets to be put in front of, what they think of it to how it is going to be received and pushed on bookshelves. There was a very infamous romance buyer of a major chain store who refused to buy POC romances because she thought they didn’t sell.

If your book chain buyer, refuses to buy fantasy books or scifi books by female authors b/c they think they won’t SELL. Then, the publisher feels like in order to get your book to sell, they have to put it into a marketing category where it will sell, Young Adult. Because what do most of those “Young Adult” books have in common, women writers. (Urban Fantasy was almost an exception to the rule on SFF gendered authors. Then... UF became dead on arrival as they thought the market was glutted and yeah. Good luck on getting an UF published, you’d be better off writing paranormal romance. Same type of setting, different genre rules.) It’s not about the content of your book, or the age of your protag, or the theme of your book at that point, it is “What will make this book sell.” Publishing is an industry where profit is not a dirty word. Their job is to make your book sell and if they think it will sell better as YA, they will pitch it as YA.

Even if the book is written for, uses language appropriate for, and has content really intended for adults.

Be aware that Young Adult scifi is a very, very rare buyers market. For some reason, publishers don’t think they can market it? Dystopian yes. Scifi... no. So, if your YA is scifi, like either rewrite for adult or keep your eye open for that very rare time they’re willing to TRY and publishing YA scifi. Or, publish indie. (Dystopian is also I think DOA.)

Is this confusing? Absolutely! Because there are plenty of readers out there who are in the adult category, who don’t keep up with publishing trends, and don’t realize if they want vibrant fantasy books, they may have to look in the YA section of their bookstore. They’re adults. They want vibrant fantasy adult books. And I say fantasy because you see this happening MOSTLY with fantasy. It happens with other genres too, but it is a huge problem in fantasy due to, well, the combination of publishing trends (white, older, male) and the human bias. So, many times, if you want that cool marketed as adult fantasy book not written by a white older male, you are going to have to order it through the ‘zon because you aren’t going to find it most likely on your bookstore shelves. (Science Fiction is another kettle of fish. Outside of some very established authors, it’s not really publishing. It’s a very small category outside of indie. Like, Military SF was a thing for a bit in indie! Just... yeah. Sigh.)

Conclusion: Publishing category does not always equal marketing category. Even if the publishing category and marketing category are named the same thing. And it’s probably not going to change until something major happens that the big four are FORCED to change their current publishing and marketing methods. (Yeah, big FOUR now. Scary.) It’s a complicated system with the author having the most at stake and the least amount of control (and often the least amount of pay outside of agents.) I mean, when Disney of all corporations, doesn’t want to pay Alan Dean Foster his legal royalties for a book they acquired when they got Star Wars, there is a PROBLEM in the system.

Just be aware if you are going into this publishing game. I cover this and more in my FREE PDF “I Finished a Book, Now What? A Tongue in Cheek Guide to What Happens Next.”  Everything from editing types to querying to social media for authors.

It’s available for download on my website. https://ginny0.wordpress.com/books/

[mandaloriandy]

Fic Writer Interview

I suppose I should... actually get around to doing this.

I was tagged by @maderilien, @stormwarnings, and @willowcrowned! (that’s what I get for putting off doing this, I get ganged up on.) (I’m just joking, I am very touched that you all thought of me)

How many works do you have on AO3?

49

What's your total AO3 word count?

339,898

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

oh fuck there's so many. uhhhh 32 apparently. big yikes. I'm just gonna copy-paste the list over, that'll be easiest. A lot of these are overlaps but alas such is life

1. Star Wars - All Media Types (24) 2. Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (18) 3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types (7) 4. TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms (4) 5. Homestuck (4) 6. Doctor Who & Related Fandoms (3) 7. Avatar: Legend of Korra (3) 8. Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (3) 9. Marvel Cinematic Universe (2) 10. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV) (2) 11. The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types (2) 12. Doctor Who (2) 13. Ender Series - Orson Scott Card (1) 14. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) (1) 15. Iron Man (Movies) (1) 16. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (1) 17. Original Work (1) 18. Sherlock (TV) (1) 19. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) (1) 20. Big Hero 6 (2014) (1) 21. Emelan - Tamora Pierce (1) 22. The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 23. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga (1) 24. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien (1) 25. Captain America (Movies) (1) 26. Paranatural (Webcomic) (1) 27. Torchwood (1) 28. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica (1) 29. Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types (1) 30. Star Wars: Rebels (1) 31. Doctor Who (2005) (1) 32. The Hobbit - All Media Types (1)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

To nobody's surprise, my top 5 fics by kudos are (in order) the first 5 parts to the Jedi Shmi AU.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Oof. I used to. But I ended up spiralling pretty badly uhhhh a couple years ago and had to stop. I feel like I should reply to comments, especially those wonderful long ones, but even though I do this whole writing thing, I always have a really hard time, like, knowing what to say to them? Like "akjsdfk;jf thank you" always feels inadequate, but writing a well thought-out reply takes a stupidly large amount of brainpower, and I'll leave them marked as unread if I want to reply to them and then they just accumulate in my inbox and I end up spiralling again, since it just continues to exist as a mental load of something I have to do and the avoidance just gets bigger and bigger the longer I put it off and–

look, I just get into my own head too much about it. I respond to questions, usually. I love all the comments but I can't let myself overthink it, and the easiest way to do that is to not let myself reply.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I guess Obi-Wan’s Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Life doesn’t count because it... doesn’t have an ending yet? and I don’t know how angsty that ending is going to be. Even Composing Hallelujah doesn’t count because it ends happier than in canon, even though it’s... y’know, not exactly happy-ending.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Hahaha I don't do crossovers often, but I have done them, and the craziest one I've actually written is probably my Sailor Moon/Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic. It’s especially crazy because I’ve only seen a few episodes of sailor moon lol

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

lmao YEP

There's this one, like Ender's Game/Doctor Who fic I wrote and posted on FFN back in middle school. And it got a ton of hate, as far as I can tell mostly from the same person, talking about like, how bad and non-canonical and whatever it was. And when I migrated over to AO3, I reposted it there too. This was in like 2012. The migration, at least, the fic was written in... idk, 2010?

And then. In 20-fucking-19.

I got a comment saying "Terrible. Makes zero sense. It’s like the author threw canon out the window and took a shit on it." like lmao what??????

(for reference: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361723?show_comments=true#comments and https://www.fanfiction.net/r/7621672/)

(like what the actual fuck was this person on)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Not any that I've been brave enough to post. And… also… nothing that I've actually written more than a few paragraphs on… I keep chickening out. I did recently make a deal with a friend, though, so… we'll see. If I do, it’s probably going to be quite dark, because that’s the kind of smut I like to read.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I sincerely hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! See how the blackbird walks into russian and just recently In all your wanderings into french!!!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've tried. It's never gone… especially well? I don't think any of them ever actually ended up complete, they all just petered out after a while.

What's your all time favorite ship?

I don't really have an "all-time favorite" anything, let alone a ship. I'm a horrible multishipper and I'm going to cause problems on purpose

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Sigh. Probably my intricate, 30-something-k unpublished Silmarillion Helcaraxë fic. It has so many moving pieces. I know where most of them end up but it's going to take so much effort to get there

What are your writing strengths?

writing

What are your writing weaknesses?

writing

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Hm. Given that I mostly write fic for SF/F, I don't run into the "real life languages" problem a lot. I end up working with conlangs of various complexity, for the most part, and for those… I'll sprinkle in a word or two if it makes sense, especially swear words and stuff. But for most of those conlangs, grammar is… less well-determined than vocabulary, so I almost never do phrases, let alone full sentences. I'll just put it in italics (if the POV character understands it) or say "and they said something unintelligible in [x language]" or the like.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I think………. let me check the dates on this. I think the actual first fanfiction I wrote was sometime in fifth or sixth grade, for this "Zenda" book series I read?? Either that or Harry Potter.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

A big shout-out goes to The Lichtenberg Figure, which I can’t believe is the only Tamora Pierce fanwork I’ve published, but for my favorite... it's gotta be Messenger. Like, looking back, there is a bunch about it that I am very not happy with, and a lot of things I think didn't come across the way I wanted, and things I would not write the same way now, years down the line, as I have very differently balanced understandings of… well, a lot of these same characters. But, fuck, I just can't let go of Mandalorian!Beru.

No pressure tags!! @apaladinagain @determamfidd @faeymouse @lumateranlibrarian (apologies if you’ve already done this one and I haven’t seen it!)

[voidfishersong]

tagged by @bastetsbard!!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 10, but one’s a podfic, so really 9.

What’s your total AO3 word count? 22k.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Fire Emblem (Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn), the Grishaverse (specifically Six of Crows), and Noragami. Then we have my deleted Harry Potter works, and the Star Wars fics I haven’t published (yet). I have to really hyperfixate on a series to write fanfic for it.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Put Up With the Rain, Lighthouse, The Only Heaven I’ll Be Sent To, A Thousand Words, and From Apocalypse to Zenith. Watching my kudos count skyrocket when I started writing for the much larger Grishaverse fandom was quite the experience.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I usually reply to the first few comments, then later ones that are longer/inspire conversation. I trail off replying to comments because I feel like I’ve exhausted the five-ish ways to say “thank you for reading”, and also because I tend to yeet a fic out and there and then forget about it in a few weeks. I LOVE all comments though 🥰

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? I honestly don’t have an angsty-ending fic? I like angst with a happy ending.

However, if you look at Apocalypse to Zenith right now, I left off  (notabandonedisweari’mcomingbacktoiteventually) in the middle, so it’s quite angsty. That fic is supposed to have a happy ending, though. 😅

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

no. nothing against them, but they’re not my writing style. I love fusions, though (putting characters from one series into the universe of another, but without the original characters of that ‘verse).

Have you ever received hate on a fic? thankfully no, i would probably just cry

Do you write smut? If so what kind? wkeljlkdfsl yes, but badly. it’s mostly just kinky foreplay. none has been published, but i’ve written some Reybarn (Fire Emblem), Kanej (Grishaverse), and Zoyalai (Grishaverse).

Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don’t write enough to have stuff stolen. I’d come for them with fire, though.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes, but we’ve never published. I’ve started... three collabs? One trailed off due to lack of interest on my part, one trailed off because of ~interpersonal drama~ (rip, it was such a cool idea), and one trailed off due to lack of interest on my partner’s part.

What’s your all time favourite ship? honestly Kanej (Grishaverse). I lose my fucking mind every time I think about them. I’m a pretty deep Star Wars shipper too, especially with ObiAniDala.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don��t think you ever will? I really, really don’t want to say Apocalypse to Zenith, because I think I will eventually come back and finish it. I have too many partially abandoned WIPs for this question... I can't even choose one 🤣

What are your writing strengths? canon compliance and characterization. I do write AUs, but I have a very specific brand of canon pedantry that comes through in my fics 😂

also, poetic prose. I’m great at capturing those vibes.

What are your writing weaknesses? finishing anything longer than 3k. my inability to pace is a huge contributor to this.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? Like whole sentences? No, you’re alienating your readers, unless there’s an immediate translation within the narrative. Words and phrases? Yes. I honestly don’t understand why this is a question, I feel like there’s some discourse I’m unaware of...

What was the first fandom you wrote for? sweet lord, don’t make me remember this. it was supernatural. it was like 2013. i published it on ff.net. i don’t remember my ff.net account. this is a good thing

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? Lighthouse. It’s a pretty recent one, but I’m really proud of it. I think I got the relationship down perfectly, and I had a lot of fun with it, too.

Also, it’s not a semi-abandoned fic, so that’s huge points in my book.

tagging @electrick-indigo, @hux-aireaire, @being-of-rain, and anyone else who wants to do it!

[snarkwrites]

-- about my writing --

I’m currently taking requests / asks for headcanons [ can be either NSFW or just in general or a specific idea ] or fluff/filth Alphabet letters. These are the only requests I plan on taking. If you send me prompts / one shot ideas.. I won’t do them, sorry.

To see what the questions are for the fluff / filth alphabet, see [this post]

[ To my thots anon whomst I love with every cell in my body... Your thots are all going to fall under NSFW headcanons so please.. By all means.. Feel free to send me all the thots you want because I really really really really really enjoy writing them!!! Also, you can find the thots you’ve sent me on my nsfw masterlist, they’re not going anywhere. They were so good I had to add them to a masterlist somehow, I couldn’t resist. At everyone else out there, the same applies to you guys.]

So.. Here’s the thing.. I’ve decided that I’m going to be taking 3 kinds of requests. Those are as follows: Headcanons { filthy, fluffy or themed specifically at your choosing }, fluffy alphabet and filthy alphabet letters. These are the only kinds of request I answer so don’t send me prompts / one shot requests or ideas unless I specifically say otherwise.

Bearing the above in mind, I have some guidelines.

I’m only accepting headcanons (nsfw / fluff / specific theme &/or reader), fluffy or filthy alphabet letters. If you send me one shot ideas or prompts, I’m going to delete them because I don’t do one-shots.

One character per ask. I don’t care how many asks you send. But I ask that you only send one character per ask because that makes things a lot more simple for me.

You can send up to 4 letters in each ask if you’re asking for either version of the alphabet. Be sure to let me know whether you want filth or fluff or a mix of both. IE, you could send me something like this; character name - a, b {filth} & j v {fluff}. I’m not saying your ask has to look exactly like this but it does need to clearly state which version you’re asking for. The format I just did above was just the easiest way that came to mind for me.

The more precise you are with the headcanon requests you send, the better I can tailor them to you. If you just want an overall NSFW headcanon or overall fluff, that’s totally fine. But if you want a specific scenario ( friends to lovers, date night, weddings, the sky is the limit here) you need to tell me that. The same goes for if you want a specific reader (POC, plus size, sick, shy, virgin, imprint, etc) then I need to know that. It’s like I said.. The more specifics you give me, that’s more I have to work from.

As far as headcanons go, the things I won’t write are rape, incest / huge age gaps between reader / character. I’ll only write abuse if someone is getting their just desserts at the hands of character on readers behalf. Any asks containing rape / incest / huge age gaps are going to be deleted.

All asks must come to my inbox. I don’t take requests through DM or in comments on a post. If it helps, my anon is on, so you can request to your hearts content.

If the ask box is closed, this means I’m currently not taking headcanon or fluff/filth alphabet requests. This will also be noted on my blog bio and possibly a post stating why/for how long. Anything sent in after the ask box is closed will either be gotten to the next go around or it’ll be deleted, depending on the situation.

First of all... My content is meant strictly for adults. I do write some things that people underage can safely  read, but that is not always the case. I realize that I can’t stop minors from reading my work, but I can tell you outright that I’d rather you skip over it if you’re underage and it clearly states that it’s not written for anyone underage. Again.. I can’t do anything to stop minors from reading my NSFW content beyond just choosing never to post writing on the internet. And I don’t plan on stopping, so.. yeah.

I put warnings on everything. Reading those will definitely save you time and upset. If you keep reading something I’ve written and it upsets you in any way, I’m sorry but I can’t help. I warned you. You chose to take the risk -and most likely, you chose to skip the warning I gave before the post even started... It’s strictly on you now. It’s out of my hands. Any complaints or things of that nature are gonna be laughed at and deleted out of my inbox because I’m not here to argue or censor myself. I’m not your parents, just a peer. If you as a minor choose to look at me, an adult adjacent person, as an authority figure of any sort... First of all, why? Ya’ll.. no.. please don’t. I’m a hot mess, okay? To look at me like any trust worthy authority figure is... A huge error on your own part. Secondly, please don’t. I’m here to enjoy my favorite fandoms / post content for them. I’m not here to please people / censor myself and my content to make everyone else happy... Let me repeat. I put warnings on everything I post. If you keep reading and you read something you’re not supposed to this is now solely your own problem. Sorry, I guess?

I’ve seen other adults saying that they block minors on here. While I’m not gonna do that.. I will not tag minors in my NSFW content knowingly. If I find out you’re a minor and I’m posting something NSFW for a fandom you’ve asked to be tagged in, I will not be tagging you. Sorry. As much as I say I’m not here to parent you and I’m just your peer and you need to think of me like that instead, I’m also not willing to risk anything, either. I’m truly sorry in advance.

While I’m talking about tagging people / my taglist...If you want me to tag you in my writing, you need to be on my taglist. The taglist can be found [ here ] or you can dm / send an ask telling me you want to be added and I will be more than happy to do so. Don’t be afraid to ask me. I don’t mind at all! 

Every now and then, I’ll tag my friends in things I write. If I tag you in something and you don’t want me to, let me know. I won’t do it anymore. I’m not here to overwhelm or annoy anyone and I don’t want to come off as pushy, either. SO.. if you’re getting tagged or whatever and you want me to stop tagging you, all you have to do is let me know.

If you’re not on my tag list (or I don’t know you well enough to know whether you’d potentially want to read something) I will not be tagging you. If you’re a minor and I know for sure/think  you are and it’s smut, I will definitely not be tagging you.

Content I’m not willing to write or  you probably won’t find here: Incest and Rape. Those are my hard no’s. Just the thought of writing something like that makes me feel gross. I’m also not going to be writing huge age gaps in romantic stories either. (the closest I’ll come is like.. 18/19 and up to 24...) I mean absolutely no offense against people who can and do write things like this, I just can’t? 

American Horror Story; tate langdon, ben harmon, kit walker, kyle, dandy mott, jimmy darling, james patrick march, michael langdon, xavier plympton and night stalker.

Arrowverse; oliver queen, john diggle, slade wilson/deathstsroke, barry allen, cisco ramon, ray palmer, mick rory.

Bands / Celebrities; ask before sending because I haven’t done many of these and I’m still adjusting… Off the top of my head I’ve written for / feel comfortable with Nick Groff (ghost adventures), Jon Bernthal.. There are lots of others but alas, I’d stretch this out so badly if I added too many more names.

Boondock Saints movie; Connor Macmanus Murphy Macmanus & Rocco.

Breakfast Club movie; John Bender.

Castle Rock tv series; Dennis Zalewski, The Kid.

Criminal Minds; Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid, Hotch, Tobias Hankel & Adam/Amanda.

Crybaby Movie; wade walker.

CSI tv series; Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes, Warrick Brown, Gil Grissom, Tim Speedle, Ryan Wolfe, Eric Delko, Danny Messer, Don Flack, Mack Taylor.

Dazed & Confused movie; Randal Pink Floyd, Mike Newhouse, Ron Slater, Fred O’Bannion and Kevin Pickford.

DC Cinematic; Digger Harkness.

Detroit Rock City movie; Tripp, Lex, Hawk and Jam.

Fast & The Furious series; Dom Toretto, Han.

Four Brothers movie; Angel, Jack or Bobby Mercer

Friday Night Lights tv series; Tim Riggins, ,Matt Saracen, Landry Clarke, Bobby Riggins, Vince.

General Hospital tv series; Sonny Corinthos, Jason Morgan, Johnny Zacarra, Dante Falconeri, several other of the guys on here…

Ghostbusters 80′s version movie; Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler , Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore.

Gotham tv series; Jerome Valeska, Jim Gordon, Joker, Riddler.

Harry Potter movies; Sirius Black, Severus Snape, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Neville Longbottom.

Horror movies various; Billy Loomis/Scream, Charlie Walker/Scre4m, Wade/ House of Wax, Tom Hanninger/My Bloody Valentine + others. Trust me, there are... So many others. I just didn’t have the brain power to think of them all at the moment.

Law & Order tv series; Barba, Carisi, Stabler.

Lucifer tv series; Lucifer Morningstar.

Luke Cage; Luke Cage, Shades Alvarez.

Marvel Cinematic; Bruce Banner/hulk, Captain america/steve rogers, bucky barnes/winter soldier, eric killmonger, hawkeye/clintbarton, thor, loki, pietro maximoff, venom/eddie brock, starlord/peter quill, ironman/tony stark, wolverine.. I’m a marvel ho.

Mayans MC tv series; Angel Reyes and Ez Reyes.

NCIS tv series; Anthony Dinozzo, Timothy McGee, Marty Deeks, Greg Callen.

On My Block tv series; Spooky Diaz.

Punisher tv series; Billy Russo, Frank Castle.

Riverdale tv series; Jughead Jones, FP Jones, Reggie Mantle, Sweetpea, Archie Andrews.

Shameless tv series; Lip Gallagher.

Sons of Anarchy tv series; Jax Teller, Chibs Telford, Clay Morrow, Juice Ortiz, Opie Winston.

Stranger Things tv series; Jonathan Byers, Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington, Jim Hopper.

Star Wars movie series; Han Solo, Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, Poe Dameron, Finn.

Supernatural tv series; Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Crowley, Benny Lafitte, Kevin Tran.

Teen Wolf tv series; Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall, Derek Hale.

The Crow movie series; Eric Draven and Jimmy Quervo/Wicked Prayer.

The Lost Boys movie series; Edgar Frog, Allen Frog, David, Michael Emmerson, Sam Emmerson.

The Outsiders book/movie; Two Bit Matthews, Dally Winston, Darry Curtis, Soda Pop Curtis, Johnny Cade, Steve Randle.

The Walking Dead tv series; Daryl Dixon, Shane walsh, Rick Grimes, Negan, Glenn Rhee.

The Vampire Diaries tv series; Klaus Mikaelson, Kai Parker, Kol Mikaelson, Jeremy Gilbert, Damon Salvatore.

Twelve Rounds 3 movie; Detective John Shaw.

Twilight movies/books; Jasper Hale, Emmett Cullen, Jacob Black, Paul Lahote, Embry Call.

I’m gonna be honest here. I post on my own time, at my own pace. Some days I post constantly, sometimes it’s days or even weeks, and occasionally, a month before I post anything. So.. Now ya know.

If I’m not on and posting, odds are I’m busy, taking a break or whatever. But I’ll come back! I always do. 

Basically, what I’m saying here is I have no set posting schedule. At all. I post what I want when I’m in the mood to do so. Just something to keep in mind when you’re asking for headcanons / nsfw alphabet letters with characters.

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!

[rainhalydia]

D, I, K, J, Q, R, W? :D

Thanks, darling!

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

For Les Mis, I can’t like any other ships involving Enjolras and Grantaire except for Enjolras x Grantaire. I wish I liked them even a little bit because it would really enjoy the range of fic I’d like to read, but alas, their journeys are too connected for me to want anything else.

For Teen Wolf, I wish I liked Alison x Lydia more. I liked their friendship, and Lydia certainly cared deeply about Alison, but it irked me that Alison never bothered to warn Lydia about the third season treat.

For Asoiaf, Thramsay, because the crowd seems super chill and the fics seem amazing, but I just know I won’t really enjoy them even if they’re high quality. Also any Robb ship that’s not Throbb.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

No, because as soon as I get in a fandom and start looking for content, I also block anyone that has even the slightest annoying opinion. I’m not in fandom to hear how my faves are terrible, thank you very much. Even so, thanks to tumblr I’m never watching Star Wars.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

For Les Mis, Grantaire. I love that he’s allowed to fail so badly even if we never hear about the repercussions. That’s an essential part of his arc, and it’s also one of the things that make me remember that Hugo was a professional writer, you know?

For Teen Wolf, Lydia. She has always had hidden depths, but with the actors coming and going from the show, her story grew and I liked where it went by the end. I especially liked how her relationship with Jackson was handled.

For Asoiaf, Theon. Best arc in the series, best words GRRM has ever written.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

The Untamed, Good Omens, The Witches, The Magnus Archive... I’m only interested in watching one of them right now, but I feel I’ve learned most of them by osmosis anyway.

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

I no longer care about Harry Potter. Thankfully it happened before all the JKR drama, and I’m including from her TERFdom to her amazing takes on twitter such as students pooping on the floor even though there are canonical bathroom in the school here, though one is more serious than the other. I simply wasn’t that impressed with the last book, I think I was outgrowing even her writing style looking back, but it didn’t help that my favorite characters were killed off. Also, the epilogue was deeply frustrating, not for the usual reasons fandom doesn’t like it...

That said, sometimes my brain gives me some random headcanons and opinions still, such as: Ron would be the popular one in a world where Voldemort didn’t exist.

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Les Mis: Grantaire, Joly and Bossuet. That Grantaire rant where he lists Bossuet’s baldness as one of the causes for his hopelessness with the world is amazing. As are Joly’s and Bossuet’s reactions of just letting him rant to his heart’s satisfaction and then just changing the subject. Also love that part where Bossuet finds time to make a little joke about Grantaire sleeping on duty during barricade times.

Teen Wolf: My favorite friendship was Liam and Mason. It was just refreshing. They’re both highly underrated characters, actually, probably due to debuting when the show was alread past it’s prime, so to say.

Asoiaf: from what we actually see playing out instead of mostly being told, I think number 1 is Jon and Sam. I also ship them, but I love their friendship as well. Sam just brings out the best in Jon, which in turn explains why Sam thinks so highly of him and why he’s so shocked at the baby swap. Honorable mention to Arya, who will make friends with a rock if given the chance, though most of the time her “friends” don’t deserve her - the exception being Gendry, who’s her love interest anyway, and the sex workers in Braavos.

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

I’ll read basically anything, but I’ve yet to find a fake relationship fic that I like. No, I lie, I liked @janiedean‘s fic where Throbb pretend to be engaged to rent a place. But that is a good reason to fake a relationship! Which is the secre to make this trope work! In fact, a list of good reasons to fake a relationship with the person you’re secretly in love with features things like:

- renting a place (like in the fic mentione above);

- getting a visa;

- getting a tax discount;

- pretending to be a couple to spy on people or countries;

- getting discounts on stupid things;

- adopting a kid that needs adopting asap.

Those are all things I’d love to read about! And I’m sure there are more reasons if we start to think about it, but you know what reason most fics I’ve seen on the topic pick?

- To get overbearing parents off the character’ back.

Now, that is a good idea in one specific situaton: when a gay character needs a beard. But somehow that’s never how it goes, so we’re left with people getting into fake relationships with their crushes even though the most obvious solution is to tell the parents to take care of their own damn lives!

Another thing that irritates me in this trope when authors pick the overbearing parent route: the whole thing is usually played for laughs. I hate that. If your relationship with yout parent is so bad that you’d rather fake a relationship rather than just make up a boyfriend/girlfriend, then this parent has to be a nightmare of a person! But most authors have no idea what it’s like to have an overbearing parent and it shows. So we end up with well-meaning, caring parents who would absolutely respect their offspring’s privacy and boundaries should they be stated. In short, not the kind of parents that give reason to fake an entire relationship.

I also dislike high school AUs on principle.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Theater vs. Books

One thing that has routinely shocked me in the Downton Abbey fandom is how little people seem to know about how TV works, particularly when compared to written fiction.

Examined logically, this should probably not be surprising. I’ve been involved off and on in school plays, church plays, acting camps, etc. for as long as I can remember. I actually went into university on an acting ticket, only to switch when I realized I’d get ulcers if I tried to make a living at it. Between writing classes and Dad going “Honey! The Vacation Bible School skit scripts are terrible again this year! Can you fix them?” I have way more scripting know how than I realize, not to mention directing since I then directed all the skits. I took a few combined study classes in college that involved film and, of course, my BA is creative writing, which does not make me the be all and end all of writing knowledge (there are people who haven’t taken a writing class in their lives who can out write me), but does mean that I have more idea what the different parts of a story are and how they fit together than someone who just took high school English.

However, one of my personal neurosis is that I know the education system I went through is substandard and that I am bad at research, therefore I expect the entire world to know more than I do. From a logical stand point this is rubbish, but try telling my psyche that when someone talks about how bad an actor is and then holds up a badly directed piece with a lousy script. (Guy in high school who insisted Nicole Kidman couldn’t act because Batman Forever, I am so looking at you.)

I mean, really. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve done or how much I know. If I am the only person on the planet who did not, at age five, win an academy award for my first screen play, which I also produced, directed, and starred it, everyone else should know more than me.

Don’t think I can’t see that trophy you’re hiding behind your back.

So for the sake of spreading awareness of what education I do have and helping my neurotic little mind cope with the reality that I’m not the least education person on earth, I’d like to make a few points on theater - both stage and film - versus the written word.

- Theater is an incredibly limited art form. Unlike prose where your narrator can spend pages taking you deep into a character’s psyche, most theater is restricted to communicating entirely thorough what can be seen and said in dialogue or monologue. Some theatrical pieces do use a narrator, but a lot of disadvantages to this in an acted piece (it creates pacing issues, people find it off putting, etc.), so it’s not common.  Now, since people perceive emotions differently based on their personal experience, getting an entire audience on board with a nuanced performance is basically impossible. Take sarcastic characters, for example. In a book, you can say that a character made a sarcastic joke that wasn’t meant to be malicious, but that people got offended anyway. Different people will read it different ways - some people will insist it was malicious despite the explicit statement it wasn’t, etc. - but the story has told you the impression you’re intended to get. In theater, your actor has to be sarcastic, the other actors react poorly, and even if you write in, “I was only joking, geeze”, it’s up to the audience to decide whether that was true or not.

So no matter how good your actors, directors, and writers are, it will always be tricky to nail down the intended authorial intent of any one scene or character.

- Theater requires a large budget. Writing does not. Seriously, these days technology is all about multitasking. It’s pretty much gotten to the point that you can buy a toaster and write a story on it. The most expensive books to write I know of are the early Harry Potter novels because JKR wrote in notebooks with pens. Oh yeah, and she bought coffee to drink while she did it. Now, you can argue that computers still cost a fair amount of money, but they’re pretty much a one time expenditure (unless you insist on upgrading or you break it or something basically not-inherent to computer owning).

Every time an actor walks on a stage or screen, they earn money. Every time a character changes clothes, that costs money. Every time there’s a scene (mostly stage) or location (mostly film) change, that costs money. Every time something catches fire, that costs money. Every rehearsal costs money. Theater is one, big shopping list.

- Theater has time limits. Books do not. One of the things in the budget for a theatrical production is space for that production to be seen. It’s a stage or a park or a movie theater or TV air time. All of that costs money and how much you can buy depends not only on how much money you have, but how much time the owners of the theater, park, TV station, etc. are willing to give you.

This means unlike book editors and publishers who can look at a work so stinking long no one would pay for it or want to hold it up long enough to read and go “Sorry, Mr. Tolkien, but we’re going to have to break this into three parts,” the people writing scripts need to try and meet a strict time limit - not shorter, not longer  - and if they go over, the editors have to actually take stuff out.

The closest thing writing really has to this is things like drabble challenges where you have to tell a story in an exact number of words. When these first hit Live Journal they were popular because they were a challenge. When they started losing favor, it was because 90% of the time you wound up sacrificing good writing for word count.

Theater, thankfully, is generally a bit more forgiving, but still. Telling a segment of story in a one hour time slot - or a full story in two hours - is not a walk in the park.

- Theater is not a one pony show. There are so many times I have seen people criticize an actor or director or script writer for something that is blatantly not their fault (see above), that I can’t even begin to count them. Theater is a group effort. If someone blows their lines, it’s not the script writer’s fault. If a director insists that an actor ham it up, that is not a reflection of the actor’s skills. There are times when directors actively screw up the action and the script writer doesn’t get a chance to fix it. An example of this is Downton Abbey, season two, where Anna and Ethel were supposed to be fluffing the couch cushions - the part you sit on - by dropping them. This was filmed as them dropping the throw pillows, which made no sense, and by the time Julian Fellows got to see the rushes, there wasn’t time (or money) to redo the scene. So we’re stuck with two maids who apparently don’t know how to fluff pillows and, if you do know how to fluff pillows and have not read the scripts with authors commentary, an audience who assumes that the writer was the person who got it wrong.

- In theater, especially film, mistakes are forever. This is more or less true in traditionally published writing as well, but it’s amendable. If an author makes a typo or gets off in their timeline or forgets where Dr. Watson’s war wound was in the last story, it’s set in stone for the already printed edition, but can, if the author so chooses, be corrected in later printings. Similarly, in stage theater a gaffed line is gaffed and there’s no un-gaffing it, but you can get it right in the next show.

An error in film is set in stone until someone decides to do a remake.

- In no institutionalized story telling medium is the audience comprised of one person. Unless someone is telling you a bedtime story, the story is not meant to cater solely to you. In fanfiction, which is amateur by definition, you can appeal to as niche a group as you like. In professional story telling, you need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible if you want to be successful. In theater, with it’s time constraints, this means every time spent on one plot line is time that can’t be spent on another plot line. In order to please the fans of character A, you have to take story time away from the fans of character B and vice versa. It’s a balancing act where you try to please everyone, and pleasing everyone is impossible. And everyone I’ve seen say “We really didn’t see enough of (x) in this show! We were robbed!” has a plot (y) that “served no purpose” that could have been sacrificed for their satisfaction, but guess what? Someone loved plot (y), wanted to see more of it, and thinks (x) could have been cut out to make that happen. The reason the creator gave us a little bit of both instead of a lot of one and nothing of the other is not because the don’t care about the fans of (x) or (y), but because they care equally about both of them.

They have to.

It’s their job.

[wanderingthroughwonder]

Miranda’s Fic Recs

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while because I just have a lot of fics in different fandoms that I truly enjoy. These are mostly long fics because that’s what I read the most. Fandoms included: Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, MCU, Star Trek, Kingsman, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Find them below! (Some fanfic spoilers ahead)

So I’m starting with completed fics and then I have a few not completed fics at the end that I’m just really liking.

Embers by Vathara

Rating: Not Rated, Word Count: 704,200 Fandom: A:TLA

Dragon’s fire is not so easily extinguished; when Zuko rediscovers a lost firebending technique, shifting flames can shift the world....

This is an Avatar: The Last Airbender rewrite. It’s Zuko centric and it splits off while Zuko and Uncle Iroh are on the run and Zuko learns of healing firebending. The world building is so good and interesting and the whole fic does a great job of reimagining the A:TLA world. You meet a lot of new characters that are super well written and fit the world nicely.

The Debt of Time by ShayaLonnie

Rating: E, Word Count: 715,940, Fandom: Harry Potter, Ship: Hermione/Sirius

When Hermione finds a way to bring Sirius back from the veil, her actions change the rest of the war. Little does she know her spell restoring him to life provokes magic she doesn’t understand and sets her on a path that ends with a Time-Turner.

This fic is so good and I’ve reread it before. I love Hermione centric fics and this is definitely one. When she goes back in time she goes through school again with the Marauders and it’s so good you guys. I think the fic does such a good job of showing her grow with these new people. The relationships in this fic are so intense and I love them.

Hook, Yarn, Sinker by pprfaith

Rating: Not Rated, Word Count: 65,675, Fandom: Teen Wolf, Ship: Stiles/Peter

Stiles is happy with his store, his hobbies, his friends. Peter’s just trying to figure out how to raise his nieces and nephews without fucking them up too badly.

Paths cross.

This is the first in a series of fics. It’s a Human AU with aged up Stiles and friends but with little kids Derek, Laura, and Cora. This fic is a good time and sweet and honestly low stakes which is so nice to have these days. I think a lot of Steter fics are more intense and I enjoy them but this is such a nice change of pace where you really get to know the characters in these fairly different circumstances. The whole series word count is 161,859.

A Sequence That You Never Learned by AnnaTaylor

Rating: E, Word Count: 64,624, Fandom: Star Trek: AOS, Ship: James T. Kirk/Spock 

“Spock,” Jim breathes out, completely overwhelmed by the gesture—not quite believing that Spock knows him so well, that he’s already started researching, that he trusts Jim with a member of his own endangered species.

When Jim gets it in his head to adopt an eight-year-old Vulcan, Spock presents a logical solution to the issue of Jim’s of humanity: marriage to a Vulcan citizen.

This was one of my first Spirk fics and I honestly love kid fics. Vulcan kids are so different from Jim, but I love the idea that Vulcans still love him anyway. This is such a great Fake Marriage fic.

If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out by mia6363

Rating: E, Word Count: 13,232, Fandom: Teen Wolf, Ship: Stiles centric but technically Stiles/Peter 

Commander Stilinski looks like he fell out of a propaganda video, his armor still smoking as he pulled off his helmet and handed it off to First Officer Argent. He had a few bruises down his neck but his smile was bright.

“Glad to see you safe and sound, Mr. Hale. I’d hate for Derek to lose a member of his family.”

“I told you,” Derek snapped at his superior, “he’s not worth this, Commander.”

This is the shortest fic on my list but I love this take. It’s got a Star Trek vibe and I LOVE how everyone is made into these different aliens. Stiles being human here is so interesting and it reminds me of those “humans are the craziest of the aliens” posts. It’s got multiple POVs and I think they’re written really well and do a great job of coming together.

Where Thou Art, That is Home by ShanaStoryteller 

Rating: Various, Word Count: 94,108, Fandom: Teen Wolf, Ship: Stiles/Derek 

Stiles is 10 when he saves the Hales from their burning home and Derek from a wolfsbane bullet, and this establishes a pattern that seems to continue indefinitely.

“Then he’s facing a burning home, and he wraps the hood of his sweatshirt around his mouth before he pushes the door open and steps inside. There’s Mr. Hale asleep - he hope asleep - on the couch, next to - Stiles thinks that’s his brother but there are so many Hales, who can keep track. He rushes over and starts shaking him, can see the rise and fall of the man’s chest so he knows he’s alive, but he’s not waking up. He shoves away his hood so he can shout, “Mr. Hale! You have to get up, there’s a fire! Mr. Hale, get up!” Nothing, he’s not even twitching, both of them taking in deep even breathes like they’re having the most peaceful of rest, and Stiles is going to cry. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

There’s a moment where all Stiles can here is the blood rushing in his ears and not the roar of the flames or the creak of wood, then with a violent, silent pop it’s all back and both men are gasping awake, eyes open and jumping to their feet.”

This is another series! It creates a Hales Survive AU and it’s got BAMF!Stiles. The Hales in this fic are so interesting and it’s an expanded family from what we see in canon. Magic!Stiles is written so well in this fic and things get intense but it’s so good.

Counterpart by sara_holmes

Rating: M, Word Count: 217,400, Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ship: Steve/Tony 

coun•ter•part [koun-ter-pahrt] [noun] 1. a person or thing closely resembling another, especially in function. 2. a copy; duplicate. 3. one of two parts that fit, complete, or complement one another. 

Just because Hydra used the DNA of a Captain America from another dimension to create a lab-grown, six-year-old super-soldier, it doesn't mean that said six-year old super-soldier is biologically Steve's, right? 

(Where Steve wants to ban Clint from bringing things home from alternative dimensions, until he doesn't.)

This is an amazing kid fic. Things are so messed up because of how the kids was raised up to the point they find him.I love Tony so much in this fic but also you sympathize a bit with Steve. The kid whose name I will leave out is my absolute favorite. This is also a series!

Fallout by Whisper91 kingsman

Rating: E, Word Count: 164,971, Fandom: Kingsman, Ship: Eggsy/Harry/Merlin 

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin is a registered Dominant. It's on his driver's licence. It's on his National Insurance card. Hell, it's even on his bloomin' GCSE certificates. And the fact that it's all a load of bollocks is a secret Eggsy had intended to take to his grave. 

Course, he hadn't been expectin' a bloody sub-drop to sweep in and knock him on his arse in the wake of the Valentine Massacre. Turns out grief and adrenaline ain't a good combination.

I really enjoy the dynamics between the three of them. D/s fics are always so amazingly well built and I love fics like this where they’re hiding their dynamic. I think this fic does a great job of going further with the D/S world and giving it more biologically. I just reread this fic recently because I love how it’s done. 

It’s Insanity But... by rosepetals42

Rating: M, Word Count: 71,477, Fandom: Teen Wolf, Ship: Stiles/Derek 

The doorbell interrupts what had turned out to be quite the epic shoe hunt but, really, he’s grateful for the break. Or at least, he is until he heads down the stairs to grab the door, trips over a stuffed animal of some kind, bashes his head on the wall and barely manages to catch himself from falling down the entire flight of stairs. As with all things, Stiles would like to state, for the record, that this is Scott’s fault. 

Or: Scott and Stiles are raising seven children. Derek is the entertainer they hire for a birthday party (not a clown though, he’s very specific on that fact.)

This fic is such a good time! I love two bro’s raising kids together. It’s a hilarious setup and also just so good for the Stiles and Scott dynamic. Each chapter is like a slice of life. Some chapters are more about the kids and some are about Stiles and Derek. It’s just a fun fic and I love that it’s still got werewolves because I think a lot of fics that focus more on regular stuff go full on human AU. Keeping werewolves is much more fun and it’s so well handled here!

So Wise We Grow by Deastar 

Rating: M, Word Count: 81,248, Fandom: Star Trek, Ship: James T. Kirk/Spock 

”Commander Spock, we have located your son,” the Vulcan lady on the screen says, which would be great, except Jim can tell by the look on Spock’s face that he’s never heard of this kid before in his life. “If it is expedient, the child will be sent to join you on the Enterprise within the week.”

This fic is two long chapters. Again, I love kid fic and this one does such a great job. We’ve got pining and hurt/comfort and all kinds of good feels here. There’s one line about t’hy’la that is just *chefs kiss* so good and hits you hard.

Play It Again by metisket 

Rating: T, Word Count: 63,206, Fandom: Teen Wolf, Ship: Stiles/Derek 

In which Stiles goes along with one of Derek’s plans and ends up in an alternate universe as a result. He should’ve known better. He did know better, actually, and that means he has no one to blame but himself. “Laura wants to lure the kid in with food and kindness and make a pet of him, like a feral cat. Derek wants to have him arrested for stalking. They’re at an impasse. (And the rest of the family is staying emphatically out of it in a way that suggest bets have been placed.)”

This is fairly Stiles centric. It really looks into the emotions of jumping universes. The alive Hale family is so good and it’s magic!Stiles which is always interesting. What I think makes it extra good is that in a lot of universe jump or time travel fics it’s more about adjusting to how things will be now. But this fic does that while also having the new universe with its own problems. It’s just fun to see Stiles deal with all these things.

Happy Lights by LadyShadowDrake

Rating: E, Word Count: 108,237, Fandom: MCU, Ship: Mixed 

An interdimensional portal opens over New York and drops a tentacled alien in the middle of Central Park. The Avengers are called out to investigate, and hopefully return the visitor home. Steve has been brushing up on his diplomacy, but he never expected to be a liaison to an alien in such an intimate capacity, or that the alien would be so friendly, and the unusual visit turns into the world's best team-building exercise.

This is a series that is so much fun. The alien (aka the colony) is so interesting and sweet in the long run. I love seeing the team grow and as you go through the series you really get to see more of them coming together. This is just a playful fic that you can have a good time reading.

Magpie by waldorph

Rating: E, Word Count: 57,648, Fandom: Star Trek: AOS, Ship: James T. Kirk/Spock

Spock met Jim when he was 7 and Jim was 6. It has since been generally agreed that this was a mistake (or: the one where they grew up together and things are simultaneously better and worse for it).

This is such a deep dive of both Spock and Jim. It’s them growing up together and it splits off some as far as events that happen in canon. It ends before they become Starfleet. I think this fic creates such an interesting bond between Spock and Jim. I also really love where it goes as far as Spock not having grown up alone on Vulcan.

These are the unfinished fics. The first two are in progress and the last one seems to be abandoned.

Survival is a Talent by ShanaStoryteller 

Rating: T, Word Count: 353,015, Fandom: Harry Potter, Ship: Harry/Draco 

In the middle of their second year, Draco and Harry discover they're soulmates and do their best to keep it a secret from everyone. 

Their best isn't perfect. 

~ 

“Are you trying to get killed, Potter?” Malfoy drawls, stalking forward. Quick as a serpent himself, he reaches out and grabs the snake just below the head. It thrashes in his grip, but is no longer able to bite anyone. “This is a poisonous snake, and I doubt anyone brought a bezoar with them.” 

Harry glares. He opens his mouth, and feels the beginning the snake’s language pass his lips, and this isn’t what he wants, what’s the point of insulting Malfoy if he can’t understand him – 

Malfoy’s eyes widen. He slaps his hand over Harry’s mouth, “Potter, what the hell–”

This fic is in progress updated within 2020. It’s a rewrite of the Harry Potter series where Harry and Draco are soulmates. As you can imagine, that changes some things. I love this so much, I’ve read it like 3 or 4 times now. The characterization is amazing and I love the differences we see. Harry is Indian in this fic and the way it ties in is so good. You really get to see the difference in culture as well between muggleborns and blood traitor families and the purebloods.   

You great unfinished symphony (you sent for me) by ketchupcrisp

Rating: E, Word Count: 227,792, Fandom: MCU, Ship: Steve/Tony and also the whole Team 

The last thing Steve Rogers ever expected to see on a Wednesday afternoon was his (their) dead submissive tumbling out of a portal and practically into Phil’s lap, very much alive and frantic about Soul Stones and timelines and some other version of the team.

This is an AU but like literally. Tony comes from the universe we know into a D/S universe. The worldbuilding here - again like I think a lot of D/s fics excel at - is so good. It starts with everything a mess and things are intense. There’s multiple POVs which I think is really helpful in a fic like this where the relationships are so tangled. 

Born From the Earth by venusm 

Rating: E, Word Count: 277,602, Fandom: MCU, Ship: Tony Centric, Steve/Tony 

Tony Stark's born an omega in a world where that means he's supposed to follow certain social rules. He becomes Iron Man anyway: Fuck biology.

If only his biology (and the world) would quit fucking him back.

To start off, some warnings: this fic gets a bit messed up. It’s an Omega verse in the worst possible way at certain points. It’s not a fluffy fic. It also doesn’t get that far into the Stony stuff because it’s unfinished. Honestly I’m worried this writer has died and I’ve gone through the comments and looked for them online to see if they’re out there and just not writing but I haven’t found any proof of that. BUT ANYWAYS. This fic is intense but it’s such an interesting take on Omega fics. It gets pretty dark but that darkness is pre-Steve and I’m hopeful that one day it might get finished so I can see where it was going to go.