#also me: literally takes a snippet from the fic that introduces them to the cast

[lillupon]

Hii I have been reading AEV since the early chapters and just wanted to say its really so well written and carefully considered 😭😭💕 Thank you for writing this fic! And ahh the canon-divergent AU 🙈💕 I'm really bad with words but I'll try to write..

I was just thinking what if.. ww doesnt tell mg that jeongyeon is his.. but mg puts the pieces together himself:

Mg's on his way to ww's apartment to celebrate jy's birthday when he gets a text from ww asking him to pick up some burgers that he ordered from the burger joint along the way. With a bag of burgers in one hand and a box of birthday cake in the other, he arrives at ww's apartment and as soon as the door opens, a wild jy comes barrelling at him, excited that he's here to celebrate her birthday.

Ww sets the table while jy introduces mg to her favourite toys, her plushie friends and her secret hideout behind the curtains (ww feels a gentle warmth in his heart as he watches this scene unfold and wishes that there could be more moments like this in the future... but he keeps this a secret). They start eating their burgers and mg watches fondly as jy munches her burger, making tiny, happy noises beside him. The sunset casts a soft, warm glow on her face and he notes the striking resemblance between her and ww (& ofc he also sneaks glances at ww across the table and ww's so perfect and he's whipped).

"Ha.. I love burgers," she says. "I could eat them everyday".

And mg feels like he has been transported back in time, as he sees ww, happy, satiated and glowing, basking in the spring sun, beside him. He remembers telling ww that he would bring him out for movies and go to a burger joint after for their first date...

He's snapped out of his thoughts as ww lets out a small laugh and says she'll probably be sick of it by the third day.

They do the typical birthday ritual (make a wish, blow out the candles, cut cake, eat cake) and mg offers to clean up, insisting that ww spends time with jy too. Mg watches as jy pulls ww away and he couldn't help but feel slightly thankful that their alpha left them - he wouldn't be here otherwise. But he also couldn't help the hurt tugging at his heart, because he wasn't there for ww during his vulnerable moments, but also how could anyone just leave ww like that :(

The omega that still looked beautiful and perfect, lovely as ever, even after 5 years. He could and would totally have done a better job of providing and taking care of ww and jy. He lets out a huff and unconsciously whimpers like a sad puppy, as he removes the number 5 birthday candle on the cake. Yeah whichever alpha just up and disappeared was missing out, he thinks but also couldn't stop the slight pang of jealousy from rising. The lucky alpha who received ww's love, got a chance to be ww's mate and jy's father... oh how he wished it was him. He unconsciously whimpers again and stares blankly at the candle in his hand. 5 years of yearning for ww, miserably picking up whatever crumbs he could find from his fb profile, wishing ww was single and missing him too, and some alpha just easily leaves his ww alone to fend for himself...

Wait...

5 years...?

He stares at the candle in this hand. Jy is 5 years old....?

What if...? 😮

And I'm done! I'm sorry its so long (its longer than what i expected too) 😭 and I've only ever been reading, this is my first time writing so I'm sorry if some parts felt weird 😓 I think after the "what if" moment, mg probably squeezes his brain juices, works backwards from jy's current birthday and finds out that jy was probably conceived in march... when he was still with ww... and oh yeah ww helped him with his rut during that time right? Ah yes great times...... Oh? 😳

HAHA I hope you liked it! And have a good day as well 💕

EDIT: THERE IS MORE!!! Please click here for the continuation written by a different author.

ANON WE NEED TO TALK! Holy shit, I've had this on my brain ALL MORNING. This was literally the best part of my day because man, let me tell you, this morning was rough lmao. I almost diededed. This is so lovely 🤧 Where do I even begin?

1. WILD AND EXCITABLE JEONGYEON Jesus cries--my heart. She loves Mingyu so much!

2. Mingyu already being a fixture in Wonwoo and Jeongyeon’s lives? COME ON! Wonwoo asking Mingyu to pick up cake and burgers? That’s too domestic argh

3. Jeongyeon loving burgers as much as Wonwoo loves burgers, and Mingyu connecting it to that day he shared with Wonwoo

4. This little snippet of pining, omg: "5 years of yearning for ww, miserably picking up whatever crumbs he could find from his fb profile, wishing ww was single and missing him too, and some alpha just easily leaves his ww alone to fend for himself..."

5. YOU DID IT BABY! YOU CONNECTED THE DOTS!! That's my mg 🤧 And the emojis you added to his realisation made it 10x more charming and funny

Smoochie 4 anon ♡ (￣З￣) tysm for sharing!

[jcmorrigan]

How was your element of harmony fic gonna end?

OOH NOW THIS ONE HAS BEEN SUCH A WHILE THAT THIS ACTUALLY SOUNDS FUN TO TALK ABOUT

Context for those unaware: EoH was one of my many attempts at a multicrossover. A predecessor to TBTC. It was my goal at being an EVERYTHING CROSSOVER and taking forever to highlight every little thing that could be explored in the canon of each work used. And I was in a difficult relationship with KH at the time, even though it was obviously a KH derivative, so I didn't want to actually use Sora and co. as the main cast. MLPFIM was a comfort show for me, and I was already used to the br0n135 using the Mane Six in crossovers with everything you could imagine, so I was like, hey, let's do this, Mane Six are now multi-world travelers and Discord is assembling every villain ever to stand in their way. (KH then ended up in the mythos anyway!) This is also where I was playing the infamous Twilight Sparkle/Mozenrath ship that is now very very dead.

To explain exactly what all was going on with the lore and politics of it to make this last bit make sense would take too long, so from there, please just...roll with it. I'm about to detail you THE FINALE ARC

The original idea was actually, at some point, to begin work on the Finale Arc when most of the main players were introduced. Then go back in time and keep editing the middle of the story to go on indefinitely. A bad business plan for many reasons, first of all being that I didn't even get to introduce the players that would've made it possible to begin the arc. That's how long I took to explore EVERY FRICKIN THING.

Over the course of the story, Discord has been interfering on every crossover world you can imagine, to the point of sometimes altering their canons into "fix fic." The story is aware of this. It's kinda like in the Loki series (of which I've only watched episode 1) where there's a "sacred timeline" and Discord's crossover actions are deliberate attempts by him to break it. We learn at some point that paradoxes and timeline changes are what broke the Age of Fairy Tales into the KH worlds we know today. So Discord rounds up his Old Ones (the Lovecraftian monstrosities that are more powerful than gods) and they all band together to strike at all the cracks he's put in the structure of the multiverse, and it all just falls APART. Worlds are destroyed, time has no meaning, suddenly everything is shards floating in void. The main players survive, mostly. Countless civilians die. Some named characters are given tragic deaths.

I've actually written one little snippet from this arc because I wanted to. It details two particular characters, who at the time were side villains I enjoyed and was just digging the vibe of, going down defending a stronghold from the creatures of Darkness (oni, yokai, Heartless, Grimm) that emerged from the void when everything broke. By the way do you want to take a guess who these characters IT WAS ARCHIBALD SNATCHER AND ROMAN TORCHWICK. GOD, THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN THE SIGN RIGHT THEN AND THERE THAT THEY WERE WHO I WANTED TO BE WRITING ABOUT FULL-TIME

But! I had a friend who'd lent me the book "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," and I was REALLY into that book's whole concept of "all stories in existence are threatened to end." So I lifted Khattam-Shud, a personification of The End (and I have since heard is also a political caricature), as the ACTUAL final boss. Discord wanted to blow up the multiverse because of the CHAOS that would ensue! KS, however, wanted to end EVERYTHING. (If I were doing this today, he'd just flat-out be Ansem, Seeker of Darkness instead.) Discord would realize he'd been played as KS makes a bid to line up one more cataclysm that will reduce everything to dust.

Heroes and villains alike, Discord included, find each other across the wastelands and amass into one last survivors' army led by the Mane Six. They approach the final field standing between them and KS and they charge. KS unleashes Dark creatures (Echthroi, as I had it) to gun them down. Pretty much everyone dies in this battle except the Mane Six themselves. (Which should give you a hint as to how this REALLY ends, but let's keep going.) The Mane Six fight their way to KS (and I'm REALLY gonna date myself here - the final line of defense before him was gonna be Paige the freaking Notebook from DHMIS as a personification of creative control). He shatters the Elements and then un-exists the Mane Six, but they don't die.

Instead, they end up in a sort of...white realm, inspired by the development rooms in The Stanley Parable (I was into even weirder fandoms back then than I am now apparently?). At one point it was gonna be "inside the author's laptop" and they could see doors to other timelines (i.e. crossover fanfics my friends were doing). They can also see all the files here for all the worlds they visited on their way and all the friends they made. Y'know, everything that's now DEAD.

The memories of everyone and everything they loved, however, allows them to forge one (1) new Element stone. This is...wait for it...THE ELEMENT OF HARMONY. Its surface shimmers with a rainbow of all colors! But wait! When it's flipped over, there's another side to the same gem, with colors dissonantly swirled around in an ugly way. Our heroines realize that the Element of Harmony also serves a dual purpose as the Element of Chaos, since you can't have one without the other!

The Mane Six find a way back to KS' battlefield, where he's about to finally UN-EXIST EVERYTHING. Twilight gets to say the one and only "FUCK" she's allowed to say in the whole story (I really...want to use this same joke on Mozenrath in TBTC...I know I've said he curses inaudibly to keep him IC but just imagine in the finale arc he gets the one and only FUCK he's ever allowed in his life). The six huddle around their Element of Harmony and activate its magic, casting a rainbow aura that begins to heal the broken multiverse. KS then tells them there's no way that will ever work because he and the other Old Ones caused so many paradoxes that it'll fall back apart again. To build a multiverse that's stable under these conditions would make no sense. And Twilight goes "WHAT FUN IS THERE IN MAKING SENSE" and flips the Element over to the Chaos side! Now the Chaos energy basically...fixes all the plot holes and physical impossibilities of the multiverse, allowing it to rebuild everything that had broken without a single issue!

Discord petrifies Khattam-Shud and it was fairly badass but I can't remember exactly what one-liner I gave him to end it.

Lights up on a rebuilt multiverse. Everyone's alive again and nothing's broken! YAY! And everyone in the survivor army (though they're not "survivors" anymore since EVERYONE is alive again) has come to Equestria to give the Mane Six a celebration for saving literally everything! AND THEY'RE ALL PONIES OR OTHERWISE MAGICAL CREATURES BECAUSE OF MY RULES OF FORM CHANGING IN THAT FIC. HAHAHAHAHA IT WAS A VERY COMICAL MENTAL IMAGE AND STILL IS.

The Six get their ships (Twilight/Mozenrath, Pinkie Pie/Megavolt, Fluttershy/Sakuya from Okami, Rarity/Stork, Rainbow Dash/I would really rather not say this one because it was taboo in a way I don't wanna touch again, Applejack/I don't even know anymore because it was gonna be Emma Swan and then it wasn't and then I just got confused). And everyone just has a good time.

The Six then take off in the ship again for THE ADVENTURE CONTINUING, EVEN THOUGH AFTER THIS I WOULD JUST GO WRITE ETERNAL ADVENTURE LEADING UP TO THIS MOMENT

Also I heard the song "We Come Running" by Youngblood Hawke on the radio once and I was like "This would go great over a credits sequence" so I used it for a while as my inspo for a KH-style "credits montage" where you see each of the most major worlds and the factions that live on them, and an early concept for the WHAM ARMY was one of these factions and this cracks me up so much because they graduated from a shot in the KH montage to WE ARE THE PROTAGS OF THE NEXT FIC

And that's pretty much it!

[therightprometheanfire]

A Soundtrack For Your WIP

@dont-offend-the-bees tagged me in this the other day and I am for once getting something I was tagged in done in a sensible amount of time!! The shock!! The astonishment!! Thank you for the tag, lovely, this was fun! :)

As for other people to tag, I’m tagging @lavellington, @farah-adrienne-black, and @elijahwoodnot! Do it if you feel like it/have time/what have ye.

A snippet of your work in progress

The theme song for your WIP

The theme song for your protagonist

The theme song for your antagonist

The theme song for your protagonist’s love interest (if they have one)

The theme song for the main pairing of your WIP

The theme song for the opening chapter (if it’s a long fic)

Song for the current chapter/page (if it’s a long fic)

Any other songs you’d like to mention and why:

For this tag, I’m doing the much discussed Priestverse that @princessparadoxical and I have going! Answers + links under the cut.

SOME NOTES ABOUT THE VERSE FIRST

So this verse is essentially a giant roadtrip AU we started I think literally the day Alan Tudyk was announced as being cast for Mr. Priest where Todd, Farah, Amanda, Ken, and Vogel bust their folk out of Blackwing. They then split off into teams and start fleeing across the country from Mr. Priest and Friedkin, who are pursuing them in an effort to drag the subjects back to Blackwing. Priest and Friedkin develop a laser focus on Todd and Dirk because they keep evading them and it becomes a matter of personal pride for them.

When I say over the course of this post “the verse proper” or “the fic proper”, that’s because we envision the bulk of the verse as being that long road trip and then there’ll be stories afterwards, so “the verse/fic proper” means “the road trip”.

A snippet of your work

(this is in the middle of a chunk where Todd comes down with the flu not too long before they get together while they’re on the road which pushes at his inhibitions at physical contact from most folk and his hangups about experiencing it even when he wants to)

When Todd wakes up, he feels not really better, but his head feels a little clearer. He recognizes this at the same time he recognizes that his face is resting against Dirk’s collarbone. His hand is drifting up and down Todd’s arm, chin tucked on top of his head. Todd thinks about pressing closer. Then something occurs to him and he blinks, leaning back.

“Oh no,” he mumbles.

“What?” Dirk moves next to him. “What’s wrong?”

“I shouldn’t be…” he sits up quickly, intending to rise to his feet. It would probably be better if he didn’t get very abruptly dizzy, his vision getting a little foggy. “Oh god.”

“Whoa, don’t do that.” Dirk immediately steadies him. Todd blinks and sees his concerned face. He’s got a little bit of bedhead. It’s cute. “What is it, do you feel worse?”

“No, I can’t… I can’t be…” Todd blinks hazily. “I’ll get you sick.”

Dirk’s anxious face immediately lapses into eyerolling and maybe a little annoyance. “Oh, for the love of god, Todd.”

“Don’t-“

“Don’t don’t me, just sit back down.”

“But-“

Dirk gives him a severe look. “Todd. It is too late and you are too sick to worry about cross contamination.”

“I don’t wanna-“

Dirk leans over to the nightstand and grabs a small Gatorade bottle. “Hush, you’re going to overexert yourself and then I’m going to be cross.”

Maybe Dirk’ll let him at least put a little space between the two of them. It’d kill Todd, a little bit, he thinks, but maybe Dirk would fare better. “Can I just-“

“Probably not. Now drink this, and stay still. Your fever’s a little better but I’m still getting a new cloth for your forehead.” Dirk peels the cloth off gently. “And yes, you do need one, on account of the fact that the black plague has returned, and it has set its sights on its first victim.”

Todd grumbles but he settles back into the bed, drinking from the Gatorade bottle. It does manage to make his throat, which has ripped into flames, feel a little better, at least. Dirk returns with a cool cloth. His forehead feels a little better almost immediately.

“You’re really good at this,” Todd mumbles.

“Yes, well. Took a lot of trial and error. I mostly figured out how to take care of myself when I was sick by myself when I was sick.”

“You’re still good at it. S’nice.”

Dirk smiles a little fondly at him as he takes the Gatorade bottle from him and tosses it off the bed. Todd’s a little confused until he realizes he finished it. “I seem to recall one currently very ill individual telling me once upon a time that I was surprisingly incapable.”

“They sound like they’d probably be regretting that statement right about now.” Todd yawns wide. “You’re very capable. Sort of. You still eat like a child.” He’s starting to feel drifty and sleepy again. He motions for Dirk. “If you’re gonna insist on me getting you sick, then come back here.” He sneezes. Dirk grabs a tissue box as he settles back next to him. “Jesus, you’re so prepared.”

Dirk’s face does something funny as Todd blows his nose. “I… may have panicked a little bit at the pharmacy and… overloaded. On the bright side, we are very ready for a disease based apocalypse.”

the theme song of your WIP

ahhhhh fuck. We have so many songs accumulated for titles for chapters/stories in this verse it’s wild. The name of the entire verse (the proper name, not Priestverse as shorthand) is “but i will love you constantly (there’s precious little else to me)” from Hot Gates by Mumford & Sons, and that song is a little more bitter about the other person in the relationship than the verse is when it comes to the two of them. Probably The Deepest of Sighs, The Frankest Shadows by Gang of Youths, a song that Hannah introduced me to (“I will stand in the darkness and laugh with my heel on its throat” is a very Priestverse line), and I think there’s a lot of When You Were Young by The Killers in there (“we’re burning down the highway skyline/on the back of a hurricane that started turning when you were young” is also a very Priestverse line). Honestly, the thing is so huge at this point that I don’t know if there’s one song that can fit the whole span of it.

the theme song of your protagonist

almost the entirety of this verse proper is just Dirk and Todd rattling around the country and getting closer in a succession of cars and a variety of motel rooms, so to pick one of them out as a particular protagonist is hard, but it’s from Todd’s POV. Again, this verse is vast, and Todd undergoes significant character development throughout the course of it. The guy gets better at handling and processing and expressing his feelings and it’s this whole rocky kinda road, so finding one song for him is tricky. But Kamikaze by Walk the Moon is probably a decent shot, as well as Warning Call by CHVRCHES and The Cave by Mumford & Sons.

the theme song of your antagonist

the two main antagonists are Friedkin and Priest. Wilson is ostensibly the chief villain, but I’m not sure we ever actually see her in the verse, now that I think about it. She sets Priest and Friedkin on the two of them and I don’t think we really see her, she’s just pulling the strings. I don’t know if the lyrics fit super accurately, but reading this question, the very first thing I thought of for Priest was the cover of Bad Moon Rising by Mourning Ritual, cause it’s real slow and menacing. As for Friedkin, I’m not 100% sure (something scary but also kinda manic) but seeing as it only says antagonist singular and not plural, I’m grabbing that and running with it cause I got Priest down.

the theme song for your protagonist’s love interest (if they have one)

fuck me, I’m not sure. Dirk is a bundle of insecurities, self doubt, and self loathing (although it manifests differently to Todd’s self loathing, something I’m actually intending to touch on in a bit for the verse I’m working on in a couple days), but also a bundle of extreme determination and love. He also goes through significant character development over the course of the work (better grasping his self worth as well as better conveying his emotions similarly to how Todd does). Grah, this would be so much easier if I picked a smaller verse. I think The Last of the Real Ones by Fall Out Boy is a pretty Dirk song for this verse, and that’s probably the closest off the top of my head, but I’m sure there’s loads more.

the theme song of the main pairing of your WIP

actually two rise to mind for this, and one of them makes sense and the other doesn’t entirely. The first is Everlasting Light by The Black Keys, which is a song about love and relying on each other, which fits. The second song is Old College Try by The Mountain Goats, which as anyone who follows me knows is one of my all time favorite songs in the history of music, but is also about a couple facing the end of their marriage but resolving to face it together. However, seeing as in the song it is not depicted as specifically the end of their marriage but the end of the two of them, a lot of the lyrics are pretty fitting (“I will walk down to the end with you/if you will come all the way down with me” is pretty damn Priestverse), so I’m counting it.

the theme song for the opening chapter if it’s a long WIP

The way Hannah and I are currently discussing structuring this verse is not as a story with a boatload of chapters, but a series on AO3 with a boatload of stories, some of which may have chapters. We have a prologue-y kinda story set for the verse, but seeing as it has not yet been written (or even mapped out very much), I’m gonna go with the first chapter of the first story of the verse proper, which opens with Todd, Farah, Amanda, Ken, and Vogel busting into Blackwing to break out their people. The song I’ve been thinking about a lot is, predictably, Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy.

the theme song for the current chapter/page (if it’s a long fic)

I’m actually working on a few different chunks of the fic right now, from Todd’s first pararibulitis attack in front of Dirk to the two of them discussing feelings on a park bench not too long after they actually get together to the two of them wandering through an IKEA closer to the end of the fic. I’m gonna pick out C’mon by Panic! at the Disco and Fun. for that last one, which is not a perfect fit, but the lyric “with everything falling down around me/I’d like to believe in all the possibilities” is integral to the whole theme of that chapter/story/whatever it ends up being and really towards their state of mind towards the end of the fic.

any other songs you’d like to mention and why

This is what my word program currently looks like. The first bit tab there is a doc where I type out all the chunks of all our various verses as I work on them. The third tab is what I sent Hannah a few weeks ago that was all the chunks of the Priestverse organized as you may be able to guess chronologically. The fourth tab is the actual rough draft doc for the entire verse, where I’m putting everything in chronologically and separating the story chunks out as I’m thinking they’re going to have to be published, to be sent to Hannah once it’s in a sizable/coherent state. In the fourth tab I have a list of lyrics/quotes to be used as chapter or story titles, and it goes on two full pages. This sounds like I’m being irritable or bitchy, but honestly, I’m so fucking excited to share this with y’all, so it’s me being thorough and not cranky.

(the tab that’s open now is where I’m typing all this out so I don’t lose it if tumblr glitches out and the second tab is a separate fic I’m working on that’s essentially an amnesia fic set in a pocket dimension where you can absolutely tell that I loved Waiting for Godot in high school)

So there’s a lot of songs and a lot of them as you may have guessed by now are Mumford & Sons. But the ones I would personally throw in there (that haven’t already been mentioned) are:

-Coloring Outside the Lines by MisterWives because there is a lot of angst in this verse, but there’s also a lot of light and joy, and I think this fits the silver lining of the verse nicely

-Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford & Sons, almost entirely because I picture the whole “stars, hide your fires/these are my desires” part of the song as being Dirk’s feelings about being his own person with himself and with Todd

-Bury It by CHVRCHES ft. Hayley Williams and I can’t state all the ways this song is applicable at this current time but trust me it is

-Press Restart by Walk the Moon because the lyrics “I am not the subject/I am the experiment/I am mad scientist/invent my way out of this” has always felt very Dirk to me and I think I actually mentioned in one of the two layouts for this verse I have with Hannah that I think Dirk eventually gets a “I am not the subject/I am the experiment” tattoo at one point.

I’m gonna end with those because I could go on for a while. Hannah and I are pushing hard to get this thing done in the next few months so we can show it to y’all, and I can’t wait till you get to see it! Hannah, any thoughts?

[manicalicorn-art]

2017 Writing Round-Up

source: https://trey.dreamwidth.org/584.html

Total year-long word count: 16,200

Word count by fandom: 

BnHA: 12858

Assassin’s Creed: 2562

Original: 780

Fics completed: 3 oneshots

Works-in-progress: 2

This year I wrote and posted:

He Woke to Fire chapter 2

Rocket

What Goes Around chapters 1 thru 4

Wind

Slut Shaming

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

Way, way more. I only started on He Woke To Fire last year, expecting it to be a short two-shot. Now not only has it evolved into a 4+ chapter fic, I also got into BnHA and have been inundated with new fic ideas and have actually, for the first time in my life, started organising and planning my fics in earnest. I only expected to write one (1) short little chapter for HWtF this year, and like. Look at that.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

Fandom: BnHA!! I actually got into it because I saw an artist that I followed from another fandom drawing tododeku fanart and I was like ???? I’ve seen the split-hair guy around what show is this? and that was the first actual post that I saw having the title of the anime on it. I didn’t expect to fall as in love with it as I did, because I’ve been getting tired of shounen tropes, but BnHA has some really fresh takes on ideas and is quite self-aware/genre-savvy/trope-subverting on many fronts so I enjoyed it immensely.

Pairing: TodoBaku. I haven’t actually posted any todobakus, but I have been writing quite a few snippets here and there.    As mentioned above I got into BnHA fully prepared to ship tododeku.    Bakugou was introduced and I was like “Hah rival character I’m sure there’s BakuDekus out there” and I was right, and I did like it, because I like rivalships, so that was expected.    Then while browsing BakuDekus I found KiriBakus and read a few and I was like “cute but why” so I went on watching the anime and reading the manga expecting to start shipping the KiriBakus any day now but I was,,,, still not shipping both tododeku and kiribaku.    On the other hand, the Sports Fest happened and I had a sudden ‘oh hey imagine todobaku lol’ and then immediately after went ‘!!!oh hEY IMAGINE TODOBAKU!!!’ and here we are lmao.

I wrote fluff. I’m not kidding, this was the weirdest direction I’ve ever taken my writing. I’ve been a consummate angst slut ever since I fuckin knew how to read, and while I do read the Simple Fluff stories every now and again, they’ve never been things that truly made me happy as a reader. So the fact that I’m writing what’s basically a pure-hearted friendship fic is... mind-boggling to me, both as a reader and a writer.

What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?

   Oh... this one’s hard, but I guess He Woke to Fire wins that spot. For one, it’s angst, and I’m an angst whore.    For another, it’s a canon-divergence centred around the death of the main character before the story even began, which has seriously been fascinating (and it also gave me a long existential crisis at one point) to contemplate.    Further, the substitute main character is a canon character who got like, two speaking lines and half a minute of screentime before dying unceremoniously, so it’s really given me a real mental workout trying to flesh out his character.    Lastly, there’s a lot of psychological, ideological, and philosophical themes in original canon that by necessity needed to be addressed and recontextualised in order to suit this new AU, and I think I handled it fairly well so I’m really proud of that!

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Writing fluff. As mentioned, I have literally never touched fluff ever in my (admittedly sparse) writing history. It has posed an interesting challenge in the form of needing to really think about ways to throw complications in the plot and resolving them without emotionally or physically traumatising the characters in any significant measure.

Character voice switching and a large cast. Really getting into multiple characters’ heads, understanding their personalities, strengths and weaknesses, asking myself ‘why is this character taking up this narrative role and not this other one?’ and trying to overcome biases for my faves. It’s not really an epic, and the background characters remain in the background even if they do do things, but I think I’ve gotten a little better at a more holistic approach to writing multiple characters.

Your best story of this year: hhHHHH He Woke to Fire. Makes me so happy.

Your most popular story of this year: (Based on AO3 stat numbers) that would be What Goes Around with 271 Kudos, 33 comment threads, 54 bookmarks, 112 subscriptions, and 2053 hits. I am... speechless. Thank you all so much.

Story of yours most under-appreciated by the universe, in your opinion:

Rocket. C’mon guys. Why have the parallels between Uraraka’s anti-gravity powers and Bakugou’s blasting powers and outer space travel never been talked about? Bakugou’s a literal human rocketship; why would he ever be afraid of Uraraka’s Quirk????

Most fun story to write:

... I had to resist the urge to simply answer this with ‘writing is not fun’ because I get writer’s block really really quickly. I second-guess every plot point as soon as I put it down and I struggle through every line. I write because I want need these stories to exist, not because I enjoy the process of writing. BUT I won’t be a cop-out so I’ll make an actual selection here: Rocket, because fight scenes are fun to imagine. Even if the point of this fight scene was that it wasn’t much of a fight.

Story with the single sexiest moment: The legend of Altaïr’s soul and the djinn beneath the waves in He Woke to Fire. I don’t care if ‘sexiest’ here was meant to refer to literal sexual themes I’m just taking it as ‘moment that made me the happiest’. The invention of this single legend allowed me to talk about a lot of aspects of Altaïr (his immense combat prowess, his cold personality, his fear of water, his death by suffocation) in metaphorical and mythical ways throughout the story and I’m very happy I came up with it by myself.

Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: Thing is, I am well aware of how fucking messed up my imagination can get, so there’s literally nothing I can come up with that would surprise me or anyone who knows me. He Woke to Fire is the most thematically heavy and graphic one I have published I guess.

Story that shifted your own perceptions of the characters: HWtF again.    Like I said, it actually gave me an existential crisis that lasted practically a whole year because I realised halfway through that I was writing the story as though Kadar was just a cuter Altaïr, which he is obviously not.    So I had to go back and replan the entire fic again which then made me introduce Maria as a major character, then I had another crisis because I actually hate the way Maria has been portrayed and treated in canon (and a lot of fanon too for that matter). So I had to really sit down and think about a way to reinvent her in a satisfactory manner for this fic.    I’m still not entirely sure that I’ve got it, for either of them, but goddamn have I had to try.

Hardest story to write: HWtF, see above.

Biggest disappointment: The third chapter of What Goes Around. The writing there feels so stilted and forced, and a lot of the rhythm/word flows/pacing is very repetitive. Despite knowing exactly what I wanted to have happen, I struggled through the entire chapter and it shows.

Biggest surprise: Second chapter of WGA, that I wrote in the same sitting as the first chapter, that I wrote in the same sitting as the second chapter of HWtF. It was the easiest time of writing that I have ever had in my life ever and I didn’t even have to think - except for like, once, when I forgot to mention a detail I thought I had already written but I hadn’t actually so I had to backtrack a couple lines. And usually when I write that fast and fluidly, I’ll come back and read it later and find holes and logic errors and sections of senselessness but nope. It’s completely coherent. I have never written like that before or since.

Most unintentionally telling story: Probably What Goes Around.    I generally try to mention every single student of 1A at least once, and Todoroki’s part in the story was supposed to be limited to that single incident with Tsuyu and then he was done. But he’s kept popping back in in subsequent chapters like a creepy stalker because my ridiculous TodoBaku-shipping heart just wants them to interact more goddamnit.    Now I’ve just accepted that in the WGA canon, Todoroki has a crush on Bakugou and is actually following him around like a lovesick puppy and Bakugou just hasn’t really noticed.

Favorite opening line(s): From Wind: A wind. There’s a wind that blows across the land, a soft sigh on the bright sand.

Favorite closing line(s): From He Woke to Fire: “You’re not real,” Malik says with heartbreak in his voice. “I’m not,” the vision of Altaïr says with Altaïr’s voice, sounding surprised Malik could tell. Then with eyes glowing gold, reaches out a hand to caress Malik’s face, “but you could be happy here with me.” Tears slip down Malik’s cheek as he leans forward to catch ‘Altaïr’s lips in a kiss. “I couldn’t,” he says, voice breaking, arms wrapped bone-crushingly tight around ‘Altaïr’, “but by Allah I wish I could.”

Favorite 5 line(s) from anywhere: From What Goes Around: Katsuki took his food seriously. His old man had what his mum called the ‘art student diet’ where he, if left to his own devices, would just eat four boxes of chicken nuggets at three AM in the morning and completely forgo lunch and dinner, and it pissed her off to no end. So she had Katsuki trained to cook as well as she could (if not better) so that he could force his dumbass dad to eat a decent meal every once in a while whenever she had to go out for a shoot. Sixteen years of life and nearly ten whole years of (violent) culinary training later, Katsuki figured he knew his way around food. Whatever this… stuff was? Not food. He had to close the fridge door and spend a few minutes just breathing because no. Just. Holy shit, no.

This one’s my favourite because it’s me calling myself (and several other people I know *cough*) out for our garbage ‘art student diet’ while also talking about the BakuParents.

Top 5 scenes from anywhere you would choose to have illustrated:

He Woke to Fire:  Altaïr gasping and dying in the sealed cavern, desperately trying to claw his way out till his fingernails are bloody, then scratched off, the dying firelight and the scattered corpses around him.

He Woke to Fire: Kadar clinging gracelessly like a worm to a rafter, looking over at Altaïr in the high narrow room, and seeing birds in cages.

He Woke to Fire: A badass Kadar with hardened eyes, wielding the eagle-pommel sword - Altaïr’s sword.

What Goes Around: Bakugou, so sleepy he can barely keep himself upright, exhausted and rumpled from hard work, giving a jittery Kaminari a one-armed hug until he calms down and feels comfortable in his own skin again.

Rocket: I would love to see this entire ‘fight’ animated but in particular, the part where Bakugou is just grumpily drifting along in the air waiting to be declared the winner.

Fic-writing goals for next year:

Finish HWtF and WGA. They’re my first proper multi-chapters and I do actually kind of know how they’re supposed to end as well as sort of how to get there, so I really want to see them through (as well as not being a dick and leaving my readers hanging)

bktd week. I actually have all the lore and outlines ready, and the outlines have (almost) all the dialogue already written. So hopefully I can actually see it through, and on time for the week.

Start working through my Endless Prompt List which is mostly self-prompts. I’ve taken screenshots of my yelling in great detail about many many ideas and filed them neatly away in the hopes that I actually get around to writing them. My final year in university starts in the second half of 2018, and I’ll be busy with my graduation projection and other important school work, and preparing my animation portfolios and showreels for future employment, and I’ll hopefully be able to get an internship which will be really taxing... So I don’t have very high hopes in terms of my writing for the next two years. Writing’s only a hobby that’s just simply neither important nor urgent in the grand scheme of my life so it’ll have to take a backseat.