#bored fic writer asks

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

for the 'bored fanfic writer' ask game

25, 27, 29

Thanks for sending these questions! :) (Link to the ask game)

29) Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

Found this paragraph floating in isolation at the bottom of the doc for a random Sloanshir idea that never really got going. But this random paragraph definitely slaps:

He rolled over and stared at the armchair by the porthole. Empty, but for the pall cast on it by a memory. It was funny how many years of pleasant memories—how many books from Garak he’d read while curled up there, how many lovers in his lap—had been overshadowed by a single interaction. But getting rid of the chair, or even moving it elsewhere, would have meant giving Sloan the power to destroy any part of his life simply by touching it.

25) Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing?

Haha yeah... T_T Usually I'm fine if I know the fic is gonna work out okay (or if I can at least picture a happier potential post-fic future), but if I know that the ending of the fic or projected future is also a big bummer then I run a very high risk of upsetting myself so much that I don't finish the fic lollll.

So, I don't actually upset myself at all while writing horrible creepy sloanshir hurt/no comfort or whatever, because even if the comfort's not in the scope of the fic, I so strongly believe in Garashir ending up together in any given scenario that I just extrapolate in my mind that it'll be fine eventually. XD

The only real problem comes in when I attempt to write Garashir bad endings (for the ship or for either person involved). Like... I REALLY wanted to finish writing my wip about the events of "The Quickening" making Julian slowly go full mad scientist once he's back on the station, but writing it made me too sad because it was important to the concept that it needed to have a devastatingly tragic ending. T_T

27) Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why?

Literally every single fic I've ever written. XD But that's not a helpful answer lol.

I always feel extra nervous posting rarepair fics. With Garashir, there are TONS of canon interactions to model their behavior after, and I've also read soooo much fic about them, which means I have a very good understanding of their dynamic at various points in the timeline of canon, and I know what characterization choices work for me and what doesn't. With Siskarak, there are not that many eps that show the two of them interacting so there's more extrapolation involved in figuring out their dynamic and how to translate that into a sexual relationship, and in terms of fic I have written a solid chunk of what's even out there so I usually put tons of pressure on myself to make sure it's good. And not only good, but like, meshes well with canon and actually follows from what we know about the characters, because I want people to understand how I got from point A to point B.

In addition to that, the longer the fic (or the longer I've spent on the fic), the more nervous I feel when I post. More words, more potential to write something unclear or OOC. XD More time spent, more critical I am of it by the time I post it, because I feel like it should be better than it is given the amount of effort spent. In all honesty drabbles (100 word fics) or other very short ficlets (anything <1000 words) don't make me all that nervous to post anymore, purely due to the time spent writing being so low, which is why I've been posting so many short fics lately lmaooo. If I can bang something out all at once and post without thinking, that's ideal, because then I agonize over it waaaay less beforehand and I don't feel bad if it doesn't get many readers. XD

Posting explicit fics also always makes me a lil nervous, due to the potential embarrassment of what if I've gotten something so wrong that it takes the reader out of the steaminess of the moment.

All that said, my "Second Skin" Siskarak fic, you're a criminal as long as you're mine, recently made me very nervous to post, because it's rarepair smut and it's the second longest thing I've written all year, haha. (Everyone PLEASE go tell me I did a good job, I worked so hard on it.)

[sssammich]

13 and 16 for the ask game:)

thank you very much! mm let's see let's see

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

lmao in fics, aside from various heavy or dark themes, i find writing children is very difficult because so many children end up being So Precocious and i do not jive with that too much. that's also why i don't veer into writing any kid fic or anything of that sort.

as for easy subject matters, idk if there's any one thing that's super easy to write. i basically just handwave my way through explaining stuff and keep it vague. so i guess instead of a subject matter, i just vaguely make my way downtown through the fic. but that's not very satisfying, i reckon. food, maybe??

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

lmaooo oh i'm a dog ear the page kind of person

but i've used an unopened banana before just as a thing to hold my spot in the book haha

ask meme

[weltato]

ok peoples

I want writing prompts

I want character A | character B writing prompts

maybe even add a little of a character C in there somewhere, be dangerous

I want people to give me situations so I can put blorbos in those situations

flood my ask box with things, pls, I'm begging

assignment hell has consumed me for three day, it will drag me back in soon, I want things to escape with when I get out of it finally

[yellowocaballero]

You played the golden deer route!! (I think?) What's been your thoughts so far just like in general but also in comparison to blue lions? Claude and the golden deer are just so fun!!

I have not finished yet! Yes I am like 5/6ths done with the Golden Deer fic. I did something that I really shouldn't do, which is like consume 1/4th of the media and go "okay I could make a fanfic out of this" and then write a long-ass fic just based off initial impressions (this is how Theater of the Absurd happened - if you're wondering why everybody was so drastically out of character, that's why). I'm still only mostly done with the Academy phase, so no spoilers!

Thoughts so far? Claude is so funny. I am genuinely so, so fascinated by him. He's one of those characters who clearly has an entire existence and situation and insanity and you're just barely privy to the surface of it. Our C support is me walking into his room (why did I do that?) as he concocts poisons. He's a mad scientist. He wants to dissect his friends like they're insects. He's incredibly self-absorbed. He's convinced he's the smartest person in the room. He's on his gap year and he's taking a vacation with the white people and the country he leads is not his biggest priority. He wakes up in the morning, looks at himself in the mirror, and says "I'm a SCHEMER I'm a TRICKSTER I'm IMPENETRABLE I'm NOT LONELY". He has a biracial narrative and it's left him with a superiority complex because the alternative is to always be inferior. He'd be a better leader if he cared more.

I love Hilda also. She's so cunning but so kind, and her competence is underlined by her severe self-esteem issues. I haven't really connected with most of the Golden Deer - their ensemble narrative is not NEARLY as strong as the Blue Lions or Ashen Wolves. They aren't all part of the same story, I feel like. I'm still working on their supports (which are mostly C and some B right now...I kinda substituted most of them on the battlefield for the AW...sorry I have faves). Most of them are either a little annoying or uninteresting...Lysithea baby girl...Lorenz is actually deeply Felix coded in that he's kinda the sanest. He cares about all of the actually important things that nobody else cares about when they really should, and a lot of unimportant things,

I didn't expect this to happen, but Claude as your BFF actually deeply underscores how 1) Dimitri is insanely in love with you, and 2) Dimitri's bugfuck. Claude's so normal about everything. Makes me go "Wow Dimitri was normal about fucking nothing".

I'm looking forward to the War Phase and seeing how things change. These kids are fucking disasters in their lives and to each other, which mirrors their disaster country. Right now Claude's the most fascinating aspect to me. I'm not plugged into the fandom, but from what I can see his complexity and depth is kind of slept on - he has a comic relief role in dynamics, but I can already tell it's pretty constructed. Writing him as a jokester is like writing Dimitri as a preppy, perfect, adorably awkward nerd. Yes, that is a major part of how they present themselves to the public. I can't entirely call it a lie. But if you think that those performances are genuine, then you're buying what they're selling. Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard are liars, and if you stay surface level in your depiction you're scrubbing out what makes them good characters. Also, especially in Dima's case, The Point

[bsaka7]

dude am i crazy or is it not just good ettiquete to keep ur fic out of the main tags like idc if it's x reader rpf ocs anything why are you tagging it with the dudes full name

[k4pp4-8]

Do you write and do you have a future au Ok. ko fic?

Sadly no ^^' I never wrote anything so I wouldn't even know where to begin, it's much easier for me to show my ideas through drawings!<3 But I am planning on making a post that explains my future au a little more in detail !

[kiwiana-writes]

I’m Bored and Anxious So I Slapped Together a List of Fan Fic Writer Asks

6,11,24 😊

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

Oh my god, SO MANY. I'm a FAST reader (I just went over 4 million words of fic read for 2024 and that doesn't include currently-unpublished stuff I'm betaing lmao) so like... I reread a lot when I run out of new stuff haha. I like... legit don't even know where I'd start with a list lol, I have nearly 400 RWRB bookmarks and all of those would be reread every couple of months at LEAST.

11. Do you have specific playlists for writing fics?

Answered here!

24. Share a moodboard for (one of) your current WIP(s).

As mentioned here, I'm a fundamentally non-visual person so moodboards just aren't something I create. However, like the last time I was asked this one, what I will share instead is the tumblr graphic I made instead of writing 🤣 This time for introspective rimming which will ONE DAY actually be completed:

[Bored and anxious fic writer asks]

[jmflowers]

Ok I got a little carried away so you can choose all of these or just like one or two. For the Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

🍓 🔪 🏜️ 🦴

Thank you!!

You absolutely did not get carried away! Thank you, this was fun. I don’t usually do this on my phone, but I’m too tired to get up so please bear with me. (Is it bear or bare? I argued with my grade 11 English teacher about this and I still don’t actually know the right answer…)

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

I started writing fan fiction when I was probably about 12 or 13? I literally did not have any reference point to the concept - I just loved TV and creating things and writing was an important hobby. I think I was frustrated with a topic not being given the attention I wanted in the show Ghost Whisperer (I was obsessed) so I just wrote it myself. The only way I knew to connect with fandom was through YouTube, as I’d been making fan montages for a while. I edited my story, chapter by chapter, into videos and posted it there. I didn’t end up finding fandom spaces for writing and community until I was about 18, when I joined tumblr and started reading on livejournal and fanfiction.net. I discovered screenwriting around that time, too, and fell in love with the idea of combining these things to make a career. (Only took me another decade to finally bite the bullet and dive in.) I’ve been writing and telling stories literally my entire life, and have studied the art form profusely throughout my education, but I definitely think I’ve seen the most growth in my work through the act of writing fan fiction - it fuels so much discipline while still giving you the space to experiment.

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I looooove to research. I spend a lot of my time looking up words in other languages and reading articles about child development. For Vofreude I read a lot about the history surrounding the clitoris and its accurate portrayal in diagrams. I think the weirdest thing I dove deep into was how to hotwire a car, for Epithet.

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Anything. I get really overwhelmed by long comments and freak out on how to respond, even though they mean so much. (I worry that people think that means I don’t care about those ones.) I love when people make jokes or compliment in a way that’s silly. Also a huge fan of bookmark notes - I go and read those a lot. I die when someone mentions that they loved something else I wrote for a different fandom and that they’re happy to find me again in a new fandom - that feels pretty life changing. In real life, anytime I can create something that makes my mom cry is an absolute win in my books - she doesn’t cry often, but I’ve gotten her with a few specific things through the years.

I will say, I find it easier to respond to comments in the first few days after a piece is posted. I adore getting comments later - that email notification is one hell of a dopamine boost - but I get anxious about answering. And then I get anxious about there being a comment I haven’t responded to. And then I get anxious about how much time has passed since the comment was posted and I’m not sure if it’s too late to answer. Vicious game.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Music. Everything I create always leads back to music. It’s how I yank myself out of blocks, usually. When I listen to music, I start to visualize how things might look or feel and then I try to emulate that in whatever I’m working on. It’s easiest for editing videos, as I picture the scenes that will match up to things. For writing, I just go with the vibes. Most of my stories have an accompanying playlist that I listen to when I’m writing in that universe.

[spilledstars1234]

so i was working on my link click wip (titled 'golden hour') but got writer's block. then i unearthed some old fic wips of mine from several other fandoms that have been left unfinished for months now, and seeing those fics unfinished didnt exactly help me get motivation. (will i ever finish those? who knows...but rn Link Click is my priority) Then, to get some inspiration or smtg (idek atp help), i went to ao3 to view a LC oneshot i had published over a month ago - which i had proofread a good thirty times before publishing it- only to end up finding like twenty errors (that realistically no one would notice but here i am) and was hitting "edit chapter" a good ten times and...yeah. to sum it up, that didn't exactly help, either.

anyways i've currently been staring at a blank google doc page for a good while now, and i'm kind of in a "brain dead" mood rn haha, so if you want, send me an ask of whatever you feel like (doesnt have to be only related to writing it can literally be about anything lol), and i'll see if i can respond to something!

[quinnylouhughesx43]

I am off work today. Someone please give me something to write about.

[seancamerons]

eeeeeeeeee just finished writing quite a tense scene. i'll post a few new chapters tomorrow (later) or thursday at the latest.

[rotisseries]

no bc coming up with ideas is SO hard its not talked abt enough. I find the writing moderately easy but with a lot of my fics it takes me so long to flesh out ideas for the actual story instead of one big idea.. ti's a curse

literally like I actually burned through that zelink fic I wrote cause I just for once actually knew the whole time what was going to happen like putting down a bunch of bullshit and going back to fix the bullshit later and make it not bullshit is actually remarkably easy for me if there's anything I can do it's ramble but coming up with ideas for the specific bullshit??? well brother you can just die

[pokimoko]

🍒 🍊 🍍 n 🥝!

Thank you for the fruit, my fruit. 💜

🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

Platonic for sure! Anything found family is my jam, and I particularly love writing sibling dynamics, blood-related or otherwise. I also like writing F/M friendships because I enjoy them and I think they should be normalised more, honestly (though, truthfully, those always end up falling in the sibling dynamic category as well). I also like writing QPRs, though I haven't really had the opportunity to write many, but they hold a special place in my heart.

🍊 Who’s a character you don’t write for that often, but keep meaning to write for more?

Bucky Barnes, definitely; sure, I wrote one fairly long fic about him, but that was one fic; I was obsessed with the guy long and hard enough that there should be at least a few more. But nope. I did plan out a whole sequel to said long fic as well as prequels but those never really came into fruition unfortunately. Not sure if I'll write for him anyone soon but god I've had so many plot ideas about the guy over the years that I just never wrote. Still fond of the 'Bucky bonds with Cosmo the Space Dog' idea I came up with back in 2021. I wrote a post it note but nothing more. Ah. Maybe one day.

Aside from him, I'd say Jake Lockley. I definitely need to write more of him and I want to. He can be a bit hard to pin down character-wise because we were given nothing more than crumbs, but I also enjoy the freedom that offers too. He definitively hasn't been getting enough love from me. But hopefully that will change soon.

🍍 What kind of AUs do you like? Are there any AUs you hate or just generally have beef with?

I generally avoid AUs; in fact, I exclude most of the more popular ones (Collage, High School, Coffee Shop, etc) from my searches because I'm really not fussed about reading them. I just find writers often strip the characters of any distinguishabilty to the point of them being basically a different character (not their fault, really; changing the setting and origin changes the character's experiences and dynamics, which fundamentally changes them, and that can be a difficult thing to wrangle). Some people, though, absolutely excel at using the AU and the worldbuilding therein to explore deeper into the character, their dynamics and motivations from a viewpoint that is different yet still feels like it aligns with what's been established in canon, and I love when it's done right. So I don't avoid AUs completely. Just really picky about them.

As for the ones I like, I like Alternative Universes in the most classic sense of term, where universes are defined by a path not chosen, a mistake not made. That is to say, I really like Canon Divergence and What If? scenarios. Anything that keeps the characters and world somewhat familiar but their dynamics and/or motivations altered. (Also love when alternate selves—or even selves from different points of the same timeline—meet and get to see the verion of themself they could have been if things had been different and/or interact with who they were before that Great Terrible Thing changed them.) For more extreme alterations, I'm not against a well written Fantasy/Sci-fi AU or Fusion AUs (so long as it's not an all-out crossover and the fusion is not all-consuming).

I am not a fan of No Powers/No Magic/Human AUs (or Modern Setting AUs if the original setting isn't modern). That's Just Some Guy in a Just Some Guy world now (which always looks suspiciously like our own). And powers/non-humaness is generally tied up a lot with the character themself, so stripping that from them removes a lot of who they are, in my opinion. And as we established, I'm really picky about characterisation. I don't much care for Soulmate AUs either, but that's a whole amatonormativity essay I won't get into.

Also I wouldn't say I have beef with Coffee Shop AUs, I just will never understand them, and I don't mean in a "urgh why is this so popular" kind of way, I mean I literally don't understand. I don't drink coffee and I've been inside Starbucks maybe once (mostly to gawk because I rarely come across them, even in the city), so words like venti and frappe and just coffee culture in general flies over my head, and I do not care enough about coffee to learn. It is simply a fic space I am not meant to inhabit. I have made my peace with that.

🥝 What’s your favorite trope/AO3 tag to write?

Character Studies are my happy place, my life blood if you will. Is it obvious yet I'm obsessed with exploring characters and their dynamics with others? Because I am. I am nothing more than a clockmaker taking these characters apart to see what makes them tick, and how the gears of the world and those around them fit into it all. Other tags and tropes I'm fond of are and that show up a lot in my writing include: angst (duh), unreliable narrators, memory loss/amnesia (guilty pleasure), dream sequences/unreality, hey! let me patch up your wounded hand, forehead kisses, extended metaphors, horror as a metaphor because I'm pretentious and was fundamentally changed as a person by being taught Gothic and Romantic Literature in my senior school years, and finally mind control/posession (guiltier pleasure).

---

Always a blast getting to answer questions like these, thank you! :D. There's more fruits/questions here if anyone else wants to send some in.

[non-un-topo]

At the crossroads between wondering if it's worth it to basically completely rewrite all my WIPs or just take a break from writing for the rest of the summer

[tackytigerfic]

~ But Harry had never had enough of anything, growing up, and privately he thought that a bit much sounded like just right. ~

And also ~not if it’s you~ and well, the whole fic😭

(And all your writing in general but that wasn’t the ask😌🤍)

Well hello there Foxy El! Thank you so much for sending this, during a tricky week this has made me 🥺🥺🥺

This one is from Through the Window, Clear Skies, which was actually originally a response to a tumblr prompt, one of only about two times I've ever managed to actually write something fast and short like that 😫

This one is v special to me as (in my head anyway haha) it marks a shift in my writing. I had been writing for about a year and (having come to writing v late) was still finding my feet stylistically. And in my earlier fics I had very much been attempting to write fics like the ones I had read and loved when I joined the fandom (classic case fics, plotty fics, all the tropes, heavily descriptive, lots of smut - let's face it those fics are classics for a reason and I absolutely gobbled them up for about two years before I ever started writing myself so probably had an idea of what a fic should be and was trying to fit my work into that). But for this little ficlet I remember very consciously (and self-consciously 😅) thinking about exactly how I wanted to write and what I wanted to show with the story. Also of course once I joined the fandom community (rather than just started reading drarry rated by bookmarks/kudos) and saw the wide range of styles, themes, and topics people write about, that really helped me to see that I could experiment and explore with my own writing.

I still remember this fic as the first I looked over and felt a sort of chime with. Like, yes this is me.

Also it has such beautiful art which was such an exciting moment.

[bitegore]

1 9 and 14 for dedication? @megatronismegagone

Fic link: Dedication

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

>.> ... okay so i read about half of a fic where Tarn and Pharma had a kid, because I thought that sounded like a goddamn train wreck. But unfortunately Tarn and Pharma are both characters I am deeply attached to and have a lot of opinions about, and no one (in my opinion) understands EITHER of them [hissing and biting etc] and I had to quit out of the fic after a near-fatal dose of "he would not fucking say/do that" poisoning. And unfortunately for all of us this got FULLY stuck in my head. I don't like to be the Fun Police and I don't want to be a person who is like "if you write a fic I don't like I'll steal your ideas and do it better" (especially because my version is, aside from a few superficial similarities, VERY DIFFERENT and a hell of a lot darker) but something something two cakes, right? I don't wish anything ill on the other author and I'm not gonna tell you who they were.

besides, frankly, their writing for both characters was very much in the like "fanon vein" and mine is outside it. if you think pharma is a coward and tarn is an incel then, like, more power to you but mine aren't. and i like my takes better and will refuse to read ones that are too far from them, which is my prerogative and you cannot stop me.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Not unless you're counting the one that spawned this, which I'm not.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

write pharma and tarn better or die by my sword /j

Uh, but, like, no. I wanted to get the idea out of my head. All else, here, at least, is pretty much secondary.

...maybe "don't neglect your kids"? or "don't take your kids to help murder people with you after killing their primary caretaker in front of them"? But if my audience needs to learn these things I don't know why they're here, these are kind of basic obvious things. Tarn and Pharma are both pretty far to the ends of what is "bad things to do to children", this is not a normal "my parents were just kind of shitty" situation lmfao.

possibly 'if you treat your kids bad enough and also give them guns eventually they will kill you' but that's also not a lesson, it's a power fantasy.

No idea, really. Probably not.

questions can be found here uwu