#for example. i was looking for a nice short under 5k fic to read

[panevanbuckley]

i cannot explain why but restaurant au fics always hit different

[16woodsequ]

I have three questions about writing fanfiction and you’re the best fanfic writer I’ve seen so I’m going to ask them to you if that‘s alright

1. How do you write a lot in chapters, because I never manage to write more than 1k words about the chapter topic

2. How do you stay motivated for writing a long fic?

3. Do you have any tips about how to deal with a large ensemble of characters?

First of all, I'd like to say how happy and honoured I am for this ask! It made me so happy you thought of me. I'll do my best to answer helpfully.

My response ended up being pretty long, to I'll leave it under the cut.

1.

In general, my chapters are between 3k to 6k. I find 4k-5k is a good range for me. Before I talk about writing more in chapters, I think it is important to say that short chapters are not wrong. Short chapters can be wonderful to read!

If you want to work on writing more, I have a few suggestions. First though, the way my writing style works is I go into a story generally knowing the basic plot points, and I write all the chapters first, before I post them. So keep this in mind, since my techniques might need to be adapted for your style.

When starting a chapter, I have what I call the 'bone and meat' method. To write around 5k words, I find each chapter has enough room to explore 3-5 "events". These are the bones of a chapter.

As an example. I will use chapter five of "Alternatively", because I'm guessing you read that one. (If not you can send another ask with some you've read and I can use those).

The bones of this chapter are:

Prelude/set up to Steve learning about Bucky.

Pierce taking Steve to see Bucky

Steve having a breakdown in the elevator

Steve and Tony talking about it

These are the four main things that needed to happen in this chapter. I don't always start a chapter knowing what will happen at the end, but usually by 500 words in, I've figured out what out of my plot points will be happening in the next 5k of words.

When deciding what will be the bones of a chapter, I find I have two systems. Either I give the reader a satisfying cathartic ending, or I leave them in anticipation.

Chapter five is a good example of a mini-arc within a chapter that ends with a satisfying emotional catharsis. If you think of it along a story plotting graph, the prelude is the exposition, Pierce taking Steve to Bucky is the conflict/rising action, Steve's breakdown is the emotional climax of the chapter, and Tony and Steve's conversation is the falling action/resolution.

The ending event of the chapter feels natural, because while the story isn't finished, the emotions and events of the chapter have been tied together and dealt with for the time being.

An anticipatory ending for a chapter would be more like a cliffhanger, and would probably end near the climax of whatever plot points are happening. (Such as chapter 3 of Alternatively, the emotional climax of the chapter hits right at the end.)

So basically, your overall story has rising action and a climax, but if each chapter is roughly outfitted around that too, then it may be easier to write long chapters.

Once you have the bones of a chapter, all you need to do is add in the meat to fill out whatever word count you are aiming for. If you have written the bones of a chapter, but still aren't at a word count you like, then it is simply a case of adding more depth to what is already happening—showing the emotions of the characters, getting into their head, bringing up past events and relating them to what is currently happening, foreshadowing, describing the scene/senses, etc.

Please know that when I'm writing my chapters, I'm not obsessively planning out the steps of a chapter and thinking of all these things constantly. These are just patterns I've noticed after the fact, so they are not hard and fast rules.

2.

As for how I stay motivated for long stories, the thing that works best for me is writing all the chapters before I post the story. I know this system doesn't work for every author (and believe me, sometimes I really want to post), but I find doing so relieves pressure on me, and I don't feel guilty if I don't write a story for weeks or months because I am working on something else.

That being said, for my large Alternate Timeline series, I didn't have time to write all the chapters ahead of time. By the time I was writing The Alternate Handler, I had about a 10 chapter lead.

Things that helped me stay motivated is finding parts of the story that I really wanted to write. I usually write chronologically, so having moments that I knew where coming and I was excited for helped motivate me to continue.

Also, recognising that I sometimes made things harder for myself. Sometimes I'd be stuck on how to finish a scene, or expressing something, and my writing would slow, until I would realise that sometimes things don't need to be written in exact detail. If you don't know how to get a character to walk out of a room, sometimes you can just end the scene there. Unless something is plot relevant, you can write around it, if it is an issue.

Sometimes, if I'm stuck on a story or a chapter, it helps to take a step back and figure out what the actual blockage is. Often it won't be what I think it is. Sometimes it isn't because I don't know how to write it, or I don't know what to write—sometimes I can't write a scene because I haven't seen the movie in a while, and all I need to do is find the battle on youtube and rewatch it. Sometimes it is because I don't know how an engine works, and I need to either look up the information, or make a note of it and move on to another scene.

And sometimes you just gotta clunk out a scene word after word, because once you do, it will be done, and you can always make it better later. You can't edit what isn't written.

3.

Writing Marvel gives me plenty of opportunity to deal with large casts. Generally what happens is I end up focusing on the relationship between a few main characters, while the other characters have less focus.

In my Alternative Timeline series, the relationships between Steve, Bucky, and Tony are the focus.

Of course, this doesn't mean I want to forget about the other members. You'll notice especially in Bucky and Tony's stories that they have secondary relationships with other people like Natasha, Bruce, Clint, Pepper, Peter, and Nebula. These secondary characters get scenes with the main characters too, kind of on a rotational basis.

So first tip is to trim down how many characters you are focusing on, and how many characters are interacting with each other in each scene.

In fics I will often have Thor be away on Asgard, or Clint and Natasha doing missions, etc, so they don't get underfoot.

That being said, there are times like during group meetings, when you can't avoid having everyone in the same room.

In those times, it is important not to forget who is in the room. I will literally count on my fingers, or write down lists of who is supposed to be at the table, so I can remember.

A good example of this on a small scale is Steve's birthday party in chapter 14 of The Alternate Handler. That one has almost every Avenger but Thor sitting in a circle, playing a game. I had specific moments in mind, so I needed to remember who was sitting by who. I wrote down the names in order so I wouldn't forget, and could properly situate people in my head.

An example on a bigger scale is chapter 26 of The Alternate End. In this chapter, the Avengers have a meeting with practically every other character who was there at the final battle.

Yet again, I pare down the cast a little. T'Challa and Shuri aren't there because they are in Wakanda.

To help keep control of the larger group, I start with a vague idea of where everyone is sitting, and then don't go into deeper detail than I have to.

In the scene, we know the Guardians, Peter, and Thor and Loki are all sitting kind of near each other, but I don't specify who is sitting next to who unless I need to.

I also have Tony looking around the table for a few hundred words, seeing each group, and slowly but surely introducing them to the reader. Tony hasn't seen the whole group for a while, so he has a reason to catch the reader up to speed on what has been happening. While he thinks about the life developments of the people around him, the reader starts to get an idea of who is in the room, and their general mood.

A final tip I often use is staggered entrances. If you have a large group, and something Plot Worthy needs to happen when Character A and B talk, then don't have the meeting ready to start right away.

Have some people already sitting, so that your POV character can process them, then have some more people come in, and then some more. (I do this in chapter 19 of The Alternate End, before the time travel jump.)

With a big group, you need time to show what needs to be shown, so give yourself the space to breathe and give the characters the right amount of attention.

I hope these tips and notes were helpful. Feel free to come back with more questions, or details about your own writing style if what I said doesn't work nicely for you!

And remember, these are just tips, not the golden rule.

Have a great day!

[that-crazy-five-foot-two-chick]

Me, at 6am, having stayed up all night writing 5k words: I never want to write again. Or at least not for a couple weeks.

Also me: OMGOSH THIS SONG WOULD BE SO GREAT FOR A PREQUEL FIC

Still me: ಠ∀ಠ

So yeah, I've been simmering this idea for a month or two now. It can be read as a standalone, but is meant as a prequel to my other fic, Blind Trust. The song is Waste It on Me by Steve Aoki ft. BTS and you should totally give it a listen!

Hurt/comfort, 1.1k words

Moving Saeran into the bunker was a deceptively difficult task. Mostly because he had limited possessions, clothes that wouldn't even fill a backpack, and, to top it all off, no bed to sleep in. So, the twins left to go shopping for necessities, leaving Vanderwood and MC to deal with the chaos of the bunker. They tackled various tasks to attempt to clean up the place as best they could, but eventually, there was only so much more that could be done without the items from the shopping trip. Naturally, then, the only thing to do was steal Saeyoung's snacks and collapse on his couch. After munching for a few minutes, Vanderwood broke the silence.

"I've got to ask. How on earth did you deal with all of the insanity—Saeran, the crazy woman, that blue-haired man, even Sev-Saeyoung—without losing your mind entirely?"

MC's face forced itself into a small smile. "Let's just say I have experience dealing with dysfunctional people."

Vanderwood hummed. "I won't ask unless you want to tell me."

She sighed. "It's not like it's not all in the past now. It's just not fun to talk about too much. Long story short, I've had one too many bad exes. One was a liar and a cheater. Another seemed nice until you realized he was a manipulative little snake—actually, that's an insult to snakes. Another expected me to just give up all my career plans to be his good little housewife. You get the idea. So yeah, I figure dealing with the dysfunctional is just a part of my life now, and I haven't dated for a while for good reason. At this point, trying to find 'love', whatever that means, is just a waste of my time."

"Well, first of all, I don't know how no decent men have seen your strength of character or your kindness despite the absolute trainwreck your circumstances seem to keep being."

MC snorted, but Vanderwood held up a finger before she could open her mouth. "Second of all, I know I'm the last person you should ask about love, but I do know this. Real love isn't like that. I hate to use Saeyoung as any sort of example, but I'm going to anyway. He may not have gotten much right, but joining the agency to keep Saeran safe was the real stuff, even if it didn't go as planned. Sacrifice just so that the other could live a better life, finding each other again under absurd circumstances, learning enough about each other to be able to come to a truce, finding ways to compromise. It may not be the same kind of love, but that's what love is, MC. Each giving all for the good of the other."

"Wow," MC finally managed to get out. "I guess it's been a while since that sort of thing even occurred to me. But it's not like it matters anyway, since I'm not likely to find anyone who's even decent to me, much less has that kind of mindset. So like I said, it's just a waste of time."

Vanderwood growled in frustration. "Why is it so hard for you to believe that you deserve good things and that those things aren't unrealistic?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Why do you think it's such a waste of your time if you know what you want and what you don't want and if it could make you happy?"

"Because I've lived over a quarter of a century and not seen it once, Vanderwood!" Her voice broke. "Not once."

He gritted his teeth. "Fine then, MC. Fine. If love is nothing more than just a waste of your time, why not waste it on me?"

His jaw dropped at the realization of the words that had just fallen from his lips. MC's eyes widened.

"Uh—I mean—"

"I don't know what to say. I've just...been single for so long that I don't even know what it feels like to have feelings for someone anymore. But I mean, you're attractive and all that. And quite honestly, you reminded me today of what love even looks like. So I think that's a good place to start."

"I...don't even know how to respond to that. I didn't even plan to ask you out today, much less expect that I'd get a positive response. I have to warn you, though, we won't be on even ground." MC groaned, but Vanderwood continued, "We won't be on even ground because you hadn't even considered dating me until today, whilst I couldn't shake my admiration for you since the moment you first opened your mouth. Believe me, I wanted to. But I couldn't ignore the grace and strength with which you handled the insanity involved in dismantling Mint Eye and the agency, one right after the other. It also didn't help that you were absolutely beautiful, either."

"Vanderwood, you know I can't promise anything serious. I'm willing to try, but you know my history. I have too many trust issues to be able to commit to anyone anytime soon."

"Well, I think that's something that I can match you pretty evenly in. I've been taught never to trust anybody. If I did, I could be a major liability to a mission. Because of this, if you'll excuse the invasion of privacy, I had Saeyoung scour your background in every way I could think of, because there was no way you were as good as you seemed. Yet, you came back clean. Absolutely normal. So while I know it's something I'm going to have to consciously work on, I'm willing to trust you as a person and trust your judgement. You can take whatever time you need, and I will put no pressure on you to commit to anything. But," he looked her in the eye, "don't think for a second that I'll treat you with any less respect and care than you deserve just because you can't promise commitment yet. Do you understand?"

MC's eyes welled up in spite of herself. "Yeah," she sniffed. "I'm. I'm just not used to this, you know? But I won't try to be flaky with you just because we're starting out with a casual relationship, either. I hope you understand where I'm coming from."

He pursed his lips. "I may not understand firsthand what you've gone through, but I've dealt with a lot of seedy men over my career, and I know what they're like. I also know that simply saying I won't be like them won't convince you, but I will do my utmost to prove it to you through my actions."

"Okay."

"Waste it on me?"

She smiled. "Yeah."

[five-wow]

Hi, I'm a fellow writer in the fandom and I admire your work. I wanted to ask, as a popular writer, do you get fixated sometimes on the number of kudos/comments/hits etc that your new work gets, and does this impact your motivation/inspiration? I think comparison is the thief of joy, and I really want to get over this feeling when I post my own work, so was wondering if even popular and regular writers such as yourself feel like this to, and if , what's your secret? Thanks!

Hi! 1) You are so sweet, ahh, and 2) YES, I DO. Gosh, yes, I absolutely do get insecure about those kinds of things, and I think that anyone who says they don't ever feel that way is either lying (to themselves, possibly) or maybe just pure magic, like some cross between a writer and a unicorn.

I love ao3 and I love all of its metrics and I love numbers and statistics, but there’s definitely that shadow side where having all of that easily available makes it deceptively easy to compare your own work to other people’s. I do it all the time! It honestly makes it a little hard for me at times to read h50 fic and fully enjoy it, because I keep... looking at it and wondering how my own stacks up against it, unwillingly. That's not a relaxing experience, and sometimes not even a very fun one. (Another part of it is that I just write SO MUCH for h50 and there is SO MUCH I still want to write, and I don’t want to risk reading something that’s very close to an idea I had and then never being quite sure if what I write after that was influenced by the other person’s work or if it’s really still my idea, because I have this (pretty irrational) fear of accidentally stealing someone else’s work even though one of the really great things about fandom is that it’s a very collaborative process as a whole and being inspired by other people’s stuff is usually totally okay, buuuut that’s a different rambly story.)

And I definitely do also get... some cringey feelings, hardcore, around fics I posted that don't do very well numbers-wise. Sometimes it's expected - fic that doesn't follow traditional formats or doesn't feature Steve/Danny, for example, is always something where I KNOW it won't get as much attention because I know how fandom works and that lessens the sting because it doesn't HAVE to hold up to those other fics that perform way better, because I already know it's not really comparable. The truth is, of course, that most fic is not really comparable to other fic, but it’s easy to fall into that trap anyway. If I post something that seems like my average kind of work and it gets less kudos or comments than usual, I do start to doubt the fic and second-guess myself - is something about this weird? Is it too [insert quality x]? Is it bad? Did I unknowingly do something terrible and people are now avoiding me? The answer to all of those is probably no, and going through it a bunch of times has definitely helped, because what usually happens is that I end up somewhat avoiding the fic in question because it makes me a little ashamed and awkward to think about it (a relative failure! oh no! I'm human!) and then, eventually, I return and reread the fic. By that point I have enough distance from it in time that I can look at it a lot more objectively, and it's way easier to see what works and what does not than when I posted it and I had just read it a dozen times in twenty-four hours and the words were burned into my brain. And upon that reread, inevitably, I realize that, holy shit, it was NOT AS BAD as I had made it out to be in my mind! It’s actually kind of fun! Imagine the ego boost of realizing your most cringy recent work is actually pretty okay, haha, and it's silly, but it's a revelation every time. The quality of a fic is not dictated by how many people read it or comment on it or like it, and intellectually I absolutely know that, but it’s hard to remember when it’s about yourself and you’re still in that emotionally vulnerable place of having just shared your work with the world and it feels like the world is not as into it as you thought (or hoped) it’d be. It’s honestly very, very reassuring to have those experiences to fall back on, but sadly the only way I know to get there is to just tough it out and feel super awkward for a while.

When I’m writing, on the other hand, I usually don’t really think about what other people might think of it. I have the advantage that (pretty much) all of my work consists of fairly short stand alone stories, which means I don’t have to struggle with keeping my motivation up for a second chapter of something but I get to start fresh every time, and that’s nice, because I can just lose myself in the joy of throwing words around and making characters do things that make me giggle. That’s not to say I never think of the outside world while writing - I realized, pretty recently, that I occasionally end up constructing paragraphs or pieces of dialogue a certain way mostly so it will make for a good excerpt to put in the eventual fic description, which might give me a sense of accomplishment because it’s nice when things work out and look good, but in all fairness it’s probably far more motivated by attempts to package the finished work attractively so other people will want to click on it than by anything else. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t think so - I don’t feel like it lessens my work and it doesn’t interrupt my enjoyment of it in the moment, which are the key elements for me - but other people might disagree.

But the heart of thing is, just, there are SO MANY factors that influence a fic’s numbers, and not all of them are visible (I’d argue most of them aren’t, in fact), and it always helps me to keep that in mind. It puts things in perspective somewhat and softens the harshness of a black and white kudo count judgment. Numbers can depend on when you post a fic (what day of the week, time of the year, time relative to big fandom moments, whether you’re in the middle of a global pandemic or not), how you pick your title, what you put in the description, how you use the tags, what genres or tropes are popular in your specific fandom, the genre of your fic in general (pwp as a rule tends to get lots of hits and few kudos or comments, for example, making it totally unfair to compare it to G-reated fluff fic with super different ratios), how much you’ve posted before (because if someone likes one of your works, they’re often likely to check if you have more in the same fandom), how many fics other people post around the same time (because yours might be gone from the first page of most recently updated works in a fandom or ship tag very quickly if others push it out), how big your fandom is(!!!) (over two thirds of my works on ao3 are for h50, but h50 only makes it into the top 10 of my most kudo’d works by the skin of its teeth) and definitely also what your fandom’s culture is like (compared to a lot of other fandoms, h50 fans are a-ma-zing when it comes to leaving comments, my gosh, and as a writer I adore all of you), how old your ao3 account is (the longer you’ve been around, the more likely a higher number of people is subscribed to you as an author or has read your previous work or has encountered your name, etc), how long your fic is (under a thousand words in my experience generally does less well than 1-5k, but longer fics might end up with lots of chapters which switches things up because people come back to it when there’s an update, and even if a long work is all in one chapter it will probably stand out for the wordcount and might attract attention that way, etc), whether or not your fic is part of a series (in my experience it will probably get more hits because it’s a chain of fics that leads you to the next one, but the kudos might not go up at the same rate because people might forget a kudo or reread previous works when a new one is added), whether you make a habit of commenting on other people’s fic (I’ve had comments saying MY comment on their work led them to my fic!), if you have social media like Tumblr or Twitter where you can promote your work (it’s advertising, basically), and any of a bunch of random little other factors. Sometimes, I see a sudden little cluster of kudos on an old fic in the daily ao3 kudos email, and I assume someone somewhere maybe recced that fic, but it usually remains a total mystery who or where or even if it happened at all and wasn’t just a weird coincidence to begin with. Sometimes the thing a fic’s popularity depends on is really just whether it clicks with people at that point in time, whatever that means, which is an even more impossible thing to grasp or predict than anything else.

Or you can look at things from a totally different angle and not try to make yourself care less about numbers, but just accept that you do because you’re human and we all crave validation, and instead try to roll with that. A brain hack: when I do start getting down about numbers, it also helps me to focus on one work and just... try to visualise what those kudo (or hit or bookmark or comment) counts mean, if you were to translate them to the real world. While it can be super helpful to remember that there’s a LOT going on that you can’t see and that’s virtually impossible to really explain, it’s also nice to somewhat do the opposite and try to make things as concrete as possible instead. I like measuring in school classes (~25-30 heads, I’d say) and “my fic only has fifty kudos but this other person’s has ten times as many” could easily make anyone sad and demotivated, but “my fic has fifty kudos and that’s TWO WHOLE CLASSROOMS packed full of people that all read my work and liked it so much they wanted to give me a little thumbs up for it” is actually pretty cool and encouraging, I think. Or you could measure in sports teams (I don’t know sports, but soccer has 11 players on the field per team, so as soon as your fic has 33 kudos that’s three teams which means you’ve got yourself a little beginning league! how exciting!) or in DnD campaigns (variable of course, but most of mine have had around four players plus a DM, so if you have twenty kudos? that’s FOUR WHOLE DnD campaigns that enjoyed reading your fic, and it’s fully up to you how many half-orcs that includes). You could apply this method using literally any other measurement that works for you, too. If you have a hard time painting a mental image of numbers, you could even open up a Paint doc or get a piece of paper and start counting out little dots or copy-pasted images of a person, or get a big bag of physically present M&Ms and count them out, or take a good look at your dog and then go around the neighborhood and collect forty-nine more dogs and pile them all into your home and be slightly frightened by the utter delighted fluffy chaos that ensues in your living room. That’s how many people liked your fic! That’s a heck of a lot of wagging tails! Who knew a kudo could bark this loudly!

Disclaimer: maybe keep the dog thing as your very last resort, because your neighbors might not be super into their pet getting dognapped for the purpose of visualizing fanfiction stats. The point is really just to remember that there’s an actual person behind every kudo you get, no matter what the cumulative number is, and even if you have seven or five or three kudos, that’s seven or five or three very real people that hit that button. That’s pretty damn awesome. Also keep in mind how you feel if you read a fic, and take some time to realize that every single person that left you a kudo went through that same process of spending time reading words (the words you wrote!) and experiencing that story and THAT’S why they left that kudo. It’s a real person’s real investment.

This ended up very long and rambly, so tl;dr: You are in no way alone in feeling that way, it's okay and normal and so very very human to feel like that, but you still shouldn't let it get you down, because numbers fake being meaningful very well but are deep down just little squiggles on your screen and they’re more scared of you than you are of them, while at the same time there are real individuals that enjoy your work even if you usually never see them. Your fic is worth posting. That’s the one factor in all of this that’s a constant, not a variable.

(And as a very important sidenote, just be kind to yourself, always. Does it truly stress you out? Are you feeling really bad about it today? Does it make your anxiety spike? Then give yourself room to take a little step back and allow yourself some time away from it. Go watch something you enjoy, or read something nice, or do something else that makes you feel good. Fic is something that should add to your life, not subtract from it. You don’t owe anyone anything, not even yourself in this context, and I used to push myself occasionally to get something finished TODAY, and eventually I started realizing, well, why? Why not instead of reading it over again just get some sleep or watch an episode of something I want to watch, especially if I literally just finished the fic and I feel a little unsure about it and it might actually be beneficial to me and my own feelings about it if I just give it a day or even a week and let it rest and then look at it again and THEN post it, if I want to, whether that’s with some changes beforehand or not? Who set me that deadline that’s apparently looming over me? I did, and it’s fake, and it’s there for absolutely no good reason. Breathe. Put yourself first. Be really really really selfish about your own fic writing experience, even, because it’s supposed to be something you enjoy (that’s what a hobby is!), and the rest is secondary.)

[jilliancares]

Yo I was looking through all the fics I've read and I wanted to re-read 'The King's Quest' but I realised it was a patreon reward and was never posted. I was wondering if there is anywhere that I can find it?

I finally went and looked through my documents and found it! I’ll post it here!

The King’s Quest - 5k - a short, original wlw fiction story wherein the main character sets off to find the king’s missing crown, seeing as the one who accomplishes this task gets to marry the princess

“I don’t know why I go along with your plans,” Milo complained, hiking the (second) bag on his back higher. He’d offered to carry Jaz’s bag a mile back and had decided their mission was doomed ever since.

“Because you have nothing better to do,” Jaz answered honestly, and Milo made a sound in the back of his throat that was half agreement and half offense. It was true, though. Summer had come to their kingdom and without jobs or the responsibility of school, they had all the free time in the world.

They came from a small town — one small enough that there weren’t very many other kids their age — so if Milo had decided to stay while Jaz went on this adventure on her own, he would’ve been very much bored and alone for the summer. As it was, he tended to follow in Jaz’s footsteps, which led to grand adventures like this one (and less grand adventures, like their too frequent visits to the principal’s office). It wasn’t that Jaz liked making and getting in trouble, it was that she had grand plans for life, and not much could get in the way of her plans.

Examples of these grand plans included stealing Old Man Johnson’s pig, convincing Milo to shave his head, and marrying Princess Amelia. It wasn’t her fault that her plans tended to occasionally have disastrous results. Sure, Old Man Johnson had tried to have them arrested, and sure, Milo was still recovering from that stint with a pair of scissors, but what really mattered was that they’d had fun. Or at least, Jaz had.

Still, Jaz could admit this adventure was turning out to be less fun than she’d been anticipating. When the King had put out the royal order announcing that the first person to retrieve his royal (but stolen) crown would be able to marry his daughter, Jaz had jumped to attention with the beginnings of an adventure swirling through her brain. She’d imagined daring stakes and dangerous terrains and dueling masked strangers, and so far all she’d gotten was a long trek up a longer hill with a best friend who wouldn’t stop complaining.

Granted, he was carrying her bag, but he’d offered to do that. It wasn’t her fault that he had some misguided sense of chivalry. It’d been days since they’d left their hometown and Jaz had had a fine time of carrying her own bag all that time, but the moment they’d reached the base of the mountain Milo had puffed up his chest and claimed it was his pride on the line.

“Just give me my bag back,” Jaz insisted, turning around and walking up the path backwards, arm extended and fingers wiggling in Milo’s direction. She could see the want in his eyes, the desire to rid himself of the extra weight and make this unbearable climb slightly more bearable.

“No,” he ended up saying, hands coming up to cling to the straps on his shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re —” Jaz cut herself off. Or, more accurately, the knife pressed against her throat, held by the person who Jaz currently had her back pressed against, cut her off. It was common instinct to shut the fuck up when an armed stranger had your life in their hands. Pretty hands, at that. Were those fingers manicured?

“Let’s all just calm down!” Milo shouted, eyes wide with panic as he flung his arms in the air in the universal sign of, I mean you no harm, please don’t slit my best friend’s throat. Unfortunately, the momentum of his arms flying into the air combined with the weight of two bags situated on his back overbalanced him, and he fell backwards and started tumbling down the mountain.

“Milo!” Jaz shouted, because even with a knife at your throat there was something scary about watching your best friend tumble head over feet down a steep and rocky slope. He slowed a few yards down from them, sliding sideways down the path, and let out a loud groan that assured Jaz his pride was hurt more than his body.

“Wow, I totally didn’t need to threaten you guys,” the potential-murderer said, and she released Jaz, spinning her dagger in her hand and tucking it into her belt. Milo was climbing back to his feed, slumping back up to where Jaz and the yet-to-be-a-murderer stood.

“Oh, good,” he panted, smiling weakly at the two of them. “You’ve worked out your differences.”

With Milo back at her side and a knife no longer at her throat, Jaz felt secure enough to examine her would-be murderer. Her nails were manicured, though that was hardly the only put-together thing about her. Her long hair was pinned up into an elegant bun atop her head, and her traveling clothes didn’t appear to have even a speck of dirt on them; meanwhile Jaz and Milo were covered from head to toe in dust. (Milo more-so, having just tumbled down the mountain.)

“Do you try to kill every traveler you see or was just there something special about us?” Jaz questioned. She couldn’t decide whether this girl was still a threat. Sure, her knife was put away, but how could anyone look so refined under a midday summer’s sun?

“I heard you two arguing,” the girl said with a shrug. “I assumed you’d be a couple more idiots on the King’s Quest.”

“And you think we’re not because…?” Milo said unhelpfully. If this girl only attacked idiots on the Quest then they’d better pretend they were a couple idiots on an afternoon hike!

“Well, you’re clearly not up to the task,” the girl laughed. “Sorry for having mistaken you.”

And, okay, this was probably why Jaz got in trouble all the time. She had a couple issues with things such as ‘holding her tongue’ and ‘keeping her temper,’ so it was with an indignant scoff that she responded to the girl, “What makes you think that?”

The girl blinked, surprised. Then she waved a hand at them, gesturing to them in general. Even Milo made an offended sound.

“I’ll have you know that we are on the King’s Quest!” Jaz snapped, leaning forward to get into the girl’s face. Probably not the best idea, considering she had a knife and possibly the devil on her side, seeing as she must’ve sold her soul to be looking like this in the middle of nowhere. “And we’re gonna find the crown first and I’m gonna marry the Princess!”

With that, Jaz stomped past the girl and further up the path, Milo scurrying along behind her, the weight of the bags forgotten. It made sense that this girl, some sort of soul-selling, mountain-guarding asshole, would’ve found a lot of people on the King’s Quest by hiding up in this mountain. It was the one path that crossed from the eastern half of the kingdom to the western half, and the town on the other side was home to a colony of secret-sellers. Anyone could learn anything there, so long as they had something the secret-keepers would want. It was this town that was Jaz’s current destination. There, she would barter for the last known location of the crown, and then she’d be off again, one step closer to marrying the princess.

“Wait!” the girl yelled, and it was instinct that made Jaz grab Milo’s wrist and start booking it up the last stretch of the mountain. In her mind’s eye, the girl was chasing after them, her knife held out and ready to stab their retreating backs.

“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die —” Milo was panting. Jaz glanced over at him to see that his eyes were squinched shut.

“Open your eyes!” she yelled at him.

“I don’t want to!” he burst out, all in one breath, and Jaz groaned, cursing her best friend and chancing a glance over her shoulder, possibly one of the last over-the-shoulder-glances she would ever have.

She was right in that the girl was chasing them, except she wasn’t carrying her knife, and her hair had escaped it’s updo and was falling around her red face as she chased after them. It was this (the hair, not the absense of the knife) that finally persuaded Jaz to stop. This girl was human after all.

“Why are we stopping?!” Milo demanded, because Jaz was still holding onto his wrist and he’d stumbled to a stop immediately after she had.

“I don’t think we’re about to get murdered,” Jaz said.“Famous last words,” Milo said darkly, moments before the girl caught up to them and bent over her knees, breathing heavily.

“God,” she said, her voice thin and breathless. “Never make me run up a mountain again.” And then, once she’d caught her breath and stood up straight, she smiled. “I want to join you,” she said.

Jaz considered it. “No.”

“Wha — why not!?”

Counting off her fingers, Jaz said, “You held a knife to my throat, said we ‘weren’t up to the task,’ and I’m going to marry the Princess.”

“What does that last one have to do with me?”

“If you find the crown first, you could try to steal my future wife. I can’t risk that,” Jaz scoffed, her tone obvious. Milo was nodding importantly.

“What about him?” the girl said, gesturing to Milo.

“Uh-uh,” Milo said loudly, shaking his head. “I want nothing to do with the Princess. I’m just here as moral support.”

“Well, I want nothing to do with the Princess either,” the girl said haughtily. “After you marry her, you could give me some gold or something. That’ll be my compensation.”

Jaz considered it again. This girl did have a knife, which she seemed pretty skilled with, and maybe she’d sold enough of her soul for Jaz to look even half as clean as she did. “Fine,” Jaz said, still eyeing the stranger carefully. “You can come with us.” She extended her hand. “I’m Jaz. Short for Jasmine.”

“Nice to meet you, Jasmine,” said the girl.

“No,” Jaz said. “Short for Jasmine. I’m Jaz.”

“Right, right. And I’m Millie.” The girl — Millie — nodded her head as she said this, shaking Jaz’s hand.

“Milo,” Milo interrupted, turning their handshake into a hand pile, which he then shook up and down.

With introductions finished and knives still yet to be buried in anyone’s skin, they were off. Having run up the mountain, a good amount of the climb was behind them, and before they knew it they were cresting the peak, able to see the town below.

“So what’s our plan?” Millie asked. It was strange, how quickly they became a ‘we’ instead of an ‘us and the scary girl with the knife.’

“We go there,” Jaz explained, pointing to the town below them. “We’re gonna barter for information of the crown’s whereabouts.”

“All right, all right, yeah. Good plan. Except I already know where the crown is.”

Both Jaz and Milo turned to look at Millie in shock. For what probably shouldn’t have been the first time, Jaz wondered, who is this girl?

“Um,” said Milo. “How?”

“I already bartered for it,” she said, gesturing towards the town with a jerk of her head. “Real stingey, the secret-keepers. I almost thought I wouldn’t have anything they’d want.”

“What’d you give them?” Jaz asked incredulously. She was aware that she didn’t have much to offer herself, but she’d already been coming up with plans in her mind as to how she might buy a secret anyway. She was thinking of promising them gold if — (when) — she found the crown and married the Princess, or something like offering to be their servant for a year otherwise. It wasn’t ideal, but she was desperate and information was scarce. And yet in swoops Millie, the immaculate Fixer of All Problems. How the hell does that happen?

“Oh — just, you know. Some jewelry,” Millie answered unhelpfully. Jaz squinted at her distrustfully. Milo cheered.

“One less step for us!” he said excitedly, immediately throwing both his and Jaz’s bags to the ground. “I vote we take a break.” Before Jaz could protest, could claim that they should head off now if they really wanted to be the first ones to find the crown, Millie joined Milo on the ground.

“Perfect,” she said, sitting prim and proper and folding her hands in her lap. “I was starting to get a cramp.”

Very quickly, Jaz was learning that Millie was not the best travel companion. Unlike Milo, who always let Jaz be the leader of their little duo, she challenged Jaz’s directions and made suggestions of her own. Granted, sometimes these suggestions turned out to be better than Jaz’s ideas in the first place, but she still didn’t much like the feeling of being challenged.

Not to mention the fact that Millie was so secretive. Every night when they built a fire and gathered around it and ate whatever provisions they had for dinner, they talked. Conversation strayed and laughter rung freely, but whenever any kind of personal question was directed Millie’s way she closed right up. She didn’t seem to want to talk about her past or her home or herself. It was starting to get old, in Jaz’s opinion. She hated the way their conversations stuttered to an awkward stop, right at Millie’s feet.

Possibly the worst thing about her, though, was the fact that she thought the King’s Quest was stupid. And they were on the King’s Quest!

“I just think it’s derogatory,” Millie went on pompously. They’d left the terrain of the mountain and everything neighboring it days ago. Now, they were stomping through a forest in what was supposedly the fastest way towards the crown. Except the forest was giving way to swampland and Jaz could feel her feet sinking and squelching with every step. Her mood was already low enough, what with this horrible and uncomfortable part of their journey, and she certainly didn’t need Millie going on about how the King’s Quest was derogatory. Especially not when she never seemed to sink into the mud herself, picking her way across the land on somehow only the parts that didn’t sink.

“I think you’re derogatory,” Jaz muttered under her breath, but Millie didn’t hear her. Milo was some yards ahead of them, covered in mud up to his knees.

“I think the ground’s getting more stable over here!” he called back excitedly, waving as if they weren’t able to see him as easily as he could see them. He then took another step forward and sank up to his waist. “Mmm, just kidding!”

Millie continued on as if none of this had happened. “I mean, think about it. Everyone’s just trying to marry the Princess without knowing anything about her. They just want gold or jewels or power, Jasmine.”

“It’s Jaz,” Jaz bit out. Scratch everything she’d said before — the worst thing about Millie was the fact that she couldn’t seem to get Jaz’s name right. “And you’re the one who wanted compensation in gold,” Jaz pointed out. “I want her undying love and affection.”

Millie rolled her eyes, which Jaz didn’t fail to see. She pointed a finger at Millie. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Sure, I bet some people are just in it for the money or whatever, but that doesn’t mean everyone is. Some of us have been waiting all our lives to meet the Princess. Some of us have read every single one of her interviews. Some of us have even donated to all the charities she’s founded.”

Millie raised an eyebrow. “Well now you’re just talking about yourself, aren’t you?”

Jaz blushed. “She’s a great person,” she enthused. “We’re soulmates — which she’ll realize the second she meets me.” With a sigh, Jaz let her mind wander, imagining carrying the crown up the castle’s steps, the King weeping gratefully at her feet, Princess Amelia crying my hero! when she saw her.

“Well let’s just hope you are the one to find it,” Millie said with a huff. “Otherwise some creep might end up marrying the Princess.”

Jaz glared at the other girl. “I will fight any and all creeps that try to get in the way of me and the Princess.”

Milo, still stuck in the mud up to his waist, finally called out for help.

It took another good hour of slumming through the swamp until they were finally on solid ground again, and practically the rest of the afternoon of trudging through yet more forest before they were emerging into another unimpressive field. Honestly, Jaz had been expecting this journey to the crown to be a bit more exciting. They’d yet to pass through a single town, all their travels being through useless, obscure places.

“Where did you say this crown was again?” Jaz demanded, arms crossed as she surveyed the disgusting amount of endless field before them. She was tired of walking. She was tired of there not being any paths. She was tired of not having the crown in her hands.

“Oh it’s — in that direction,” Millie said, pointing her finger across the field.

“Yeah, but what’s this place called?”

“It’s… too hard to pronounce,” Millie said, avoiding eye contact, and Jaz grit her teeth in anger. She was suddenly and viciously confident that Millie was lying to her. Every time they’d asked her where they were going, she’d avoided answering in the way Jaz wanted, avoiding giving this place they were apparently going to a name.

“Spell it out, I’m great at pronouncing things,” Milo suggested happily.

“I don’t know how to spell it,” Millie answered, and Jaz was sure. This girl was a liar. Jaz had been an idiot to trust her, a random person squatting in the mountains and threatening adventurers with knives.

“Oh, well,” Jaz said lightly, uncharacteristically dropping it. “We’ll get there when we get there, whatever this place is.” Millie smiled gratefully, agreeing, and Jaz plastered the biggest and fakest smile onto her face in return.

She spent that whole evening stewing in her anger. She made idle chit-chat during dinner and helped set up their camp afterwards, spreading their sleeping bags out in the field. Except she didn’t sleep. She laid there, letting time pass her by as Milo and Millie dropped off, their breaths evening and becoming slow and steady around her. And then she made her move.

Jaz climbed out of her sleeping bag, cringing with every crinkle of the material and crunch of the leaves and grasses around her, and tiptoed to Millie’s bag. It was a nice bag, much nicer than Jaz and Milo’s, and it was with apprehension that Jaz opened it. She had no idea what she would find inside, but she was kind of imagining an array of weapons or a severed head or something.

Instead, she found clothes, a few bags of nuts and berries, and a crown. Jaz’s thought process was something like, yep, yep, okay, sure. A crown. Nice.

And then her heart was shooting up into her throat, surely beating loudly enough to wake both Milo and Millie, because WHAT? Millie had the crown?! She’d had it all along?! What the hell was going on?

Jaz was a mix of emotions, all tangled and confusing inside her. Anger and betrayal warred in her stomach. Despite everything, she’d actually grown to like Millie. She’d started to consider her a friend, had even enjoyed her company when she wasn’t being annoying, and now she felt betrayed. Millie was up to something. Maybe something evil.

Part of Jaz — a huge part, to be honest — wanted to grab the crown, wake Milo, and book it. It was the kind of betrayal Millie deserved, after leading them on whatever wild goose chase this was. But the rest of Jaz wanted answers. She wanted to know why. And it was because of this part of her — curse her stubborn love for dramatics! — that she yanked the crown out of the bag, stood upright, and demanded, “What the hell, Millie?!”

Millie woke up immediately. As did Milo, with an unrefined, “Wha — !?”

It was obvious to see Millie’s panic as her gaze shot from the crown to Jaz’s face and back again.

“Oh my God!” Milo suddenly burst out. “You found the crown!” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Am I dreaming?”

“No, Milo, you’re not dreaming,” Jaz said shortly. “Millie tricked us. She had the crown all along.”

“It’s not what you think,” Millie said immediately, pleadingly, and Jaz scoffed.

“What was the point of all this?” she asked. “Why even get Milo and me to come with you in the first place? Where were you even taking us?”

“To the castle!” Millie said, sounding desperate now. She gestured into the distance, the same direction they’d been headed, but Jaz wasn’t sure she believed her. It wasn’t like she knew the kingdom very well, especially on the ground instead of looking down at a map.

“A likely story,” Jaz scoffed. “And just what —” she was interrupted by the sound of people crashing through the forest, only a small ways from where their camp was set up.

“Get down!” Millie suddenly said, her voice a whisper-shout. Jaz didn’t feel very inclined to listen to a liar, but Millie shot to her feet and pulled Jaz to the ground just in time, hiding the two of them in the midst of all the tall grasses of the field.

Milo was only a little ways from them, but his eyes were wide and he looked worried. Millie gestured for him to stay where he was, before putting a finger to her lips. She was a liar. She’d had the crown all along. But still, Jaz couldn’t help but trust her in that moment, when the far-off voices were becoming less far-off, growing louder and angrier the closer they got.

“I heard voices, I swear!” one person — a man, it sounded like — growled.

“Then where are they?” another person asked.

“Probably in the field somewhere,” another answered.

Then came the sounds of three pairs of footsteps stomping through the field. And with the sound of their footsteps, the unmistakable clink of — armor? But who would wear armor other than the King’s Guard?

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one man sang. Jaz could hear their footsteps getting louder. Millie looked frightened.

When the men got so close Jaz was afraid they were in danger of getting stepped on, Millie seemed to brace herself before standing straight up. Jaz, despite her earlier anger at Millie, followed, jumping up and stepping in front of her, for some reason. Probably because she was brave. Super brave.

Milo, because he’d always been a good follower, followed. He, too, jumped to his feet, and he fought and struggled through weeds clinging to his feet to stand beside Jaz, also in front of Millie.

And Jaz wasn’t afraid to say that she was kind of in shock. Before her were three, fully outfitted members of the King’s Guard, equipped with armor and swords and the whole shebang. Just what was going on?

“Step away from the Princess,” one man said, glowering at them, and all the thoughts dropped out of Jaz’s head. For a second, she thought incredulously, who?

And then: “Stand down.” It was Millie who said it, and for some weird reason, the guards listened to her. They stepped back and stopped looking quite so terrifying.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” Milo said, but Jaz refused to let him come to the realization before she did. It was because of this that she turned around, gaping at Millie.

“You’re the Princess?!” she spluttered, and Millie — Princess Amelia — smiled a guilty little smile.

“Surprise?”

“You’re to return to the castle at once, Princess,” one of the guards spoke up. “Your father orders it.”

Millie crossed her arms. “They’re coming with me,” she said, gesturing to Jaz and Milo. Oh, great, Jaz thought. We’re getting arrested.

“Princess —”

“They found the crown,” Millie said sternly.

“You stole the crown!” one of the guards burst out angrily. Millie just stuck her nose up, looking off to the side.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Jaz, who was in a state of shock so severe she was considering sitting down, looked at Milo. He appeared to be feeling similarly, and as she watched, he continually mouthed the word ‘Princess?’ to himself.

Jaz became aware of the voices still talking somewhere around her and had to force herself to tune back in. “— found the crown fair and square, so it’ll be her that I marry. That is, if she agrees?”

Millie was looking at Jaz expectantly and Jaz scrambled to keep up, to remember what they were talking about, and — oh. OH.

“Oh! Yeah, yeah I agree, um. Yeah.” Jaz couldn’t help remembering how she’d ranted to Millie — the Princess! — about how great the Princess was. God, this was twisted. And embarrassing. She was never going to live this down.

Then, past the layers of embarrassment and confusion and general slow, jelly-like thoughts, Jaz realized her heart was pounding away with excitement. She was marrying the Princess. Sure, it’s what she’d set out to do, but so rarely did her plans go anything other than awry.

And Jaz, because she never admitted to her mistakes if she could help it, turned to Milo with a smirk. “I told you this plan was a great one.”

Milo scoffed, throwing his hands into the air. “You didn’t even find the crown! It found you!” he protested, but Jaz wasn’t listening. She was too busy thinking of the future, of long afternoons spent in the castle’s gardens and even longer nights spent dragging Millie through the city’s streets in search of a real adventure.

[kiruuuuu]

Ignorance is Blitz

Dearest @magehir​, I wish you a happy birthday and all the best 💖💖 May this next year bring all that you need. Thank you for existing, putting up with me and infecting me with the worst kinds of ideas :) This is a first part to the long-promised Wikihow fic, though it functions just as well as a standalone, and I hope you enjoy it! (hints for Blitz/Rook, Rating T, humour/fluff, ~5k words)

.

“How to give passive-aggressive gifts for Christmas”, Mute murmurs.

Rook’s brain shuts off mid-sentence. He supposes this is one of the situations where people claim to be thinking of a million possible responses when his thoughts have instead come to a screeching halt and the last syllable died on his tongue, never to be accompanied by its brethren which would’ve formed the rest of the term best describing the all you can eat buffet he went to recently: culinary extravaganza.

“How to find hot people to be friends with on Facebook”, Mute adds just as quietly as before, apparently oblivious to the sudden silence as his two friends merely stare at him in vague disturbance. “How to act like a modern vampire.”

“What the fuck”, Rook addresses him and attempts to catch a glimpse of his screen, now thoroughly concerned. “I hope to god this isn’t your google search history you’re reading right now or else we’ll have to start carrying around garlic soon.”

Mute, now having finally noticed their attention, is grinning down at his phone and announces: “How to hide an erection.”

“I could’ve used advice on that in school”, Glaz states drily, startling Rook into a laugh.

“How to be okay with having a communist friend.”

“Are those actual – what the hell are you reading?”

It’s yet another one of their lazy days, meaning they’re draped over various pieces of furniture, dying of boredom and hoping fate plops anything exciting into their laps. Their standards keep dropping with every passing second and it’s happened before that a small caterpillar became the highlight of one of their afternoons – they spent more than an hour simply feeding it and watching it eat and Glaz ended up almost crying when Sledge threw it outside to motivate them for kitchen duty. At this point, Rook would give his left arm for a balloon or a piece of string, though he keeps dismissing Mute’s claims about the internet harbouring enough entertainment to last several lifetimes. Maybe he just doesn’t know where to look, however.

“How to trick people into thinking you’re possessed.”

“Step one: be Mark Chandar on too many energy drinks.” Mute throws the Frenchman a glare and earns an innocent smile in return. “Seriously though, pretending to be possessed by a demon must be hilarious around Maestro, he’d probably cry.”

“He’d cry for you”, Mute informs him. “With me, he’d offer to put me down before even thinking twice about an exorcism. Do you think we should pick one of these stupid articles and actually do what it says? It could be entertaining.”

“Are there any remotely nice ones?”, Glaz wants to know hopefully. “Like ‘how to break into somebody’s room and clean it without their knowledge’?”

“Oh, here’s one for Jules – ‘how to love’.”

Before Rook can even threaten bodily harm, Glaz sighs and mumbles: “That one I definitely don’t need to read.”

Fighting down the urge to just hug him and never let him go so no one can ever hurt him again, Rook suggests: “They probably have stupid suggestions for really normal things too, don’t they? Like really detailed descriptions of how to shower for example, we can take those and exaggerate them a bit. How does that sound?”

“In that case I’ve got the perfect example”, Mute replies excitedly. “How to date. Short and sweet but the very first point is setting yourself up for success, so this should be good. If we follow this like a recipe, we’ll be dating left and right no problem.”

“Somehow, I doubt that”, Glaz sighs. “Who do you even want to date?”

“What do you mean, ‘you’? Shouldn’t you be the one to do it?”

“I’ll do it”, Rook volunteers to gloss over the fact that the last time Glaz asked anyone out on a date was likely ten years ago whereas he himself flirts with everything that moves, therefore making an unsuccessful attempt sting less. “So, how do I trick myself into being successful?”

“Define your expectations”, Mute quotes the article with a grin. “Are you looking for a lifetime commitment?”

“Sorry, mystery guy, but I’m already in a committed relationship with -”

“- yourself”, Glaz butts in, making Mute snort and break out into immature giggling as soon as he notices Rook’s indignant expression.

“… I was going to say my bed and food, but I guess that works. Thank you for the vote of confidence, in any case. Am I that self-absorbed? I don’t think I am, I’m a good listener, right? And it’s not like I talk over people or ignore them, or as if I’m lacking awareness of talking too much about myself. You wouldn’t call me egocentric, would you? I definitely don’t fit all of the criteria, after all I’m not -”

“Decide how you want to date”, Mute interrupts him quite rudely, Rook finds. “You’re absolutely not going to snag anyone on the internet, we may be out for a laugh but you’re not catfishing anyone.”

“Why would I catfish?! The only fitting part of that is the fish, since I’m a real catch”, Rook protests and causes the other two to groan.

“Yeah, no, I’m not letting you on the internet because you’d need a likeable personality for it. Oh, one of the options is having a friend set you up. I like that – Glaz, who should he try to date?”

“Craig”, the Russian deadpans immediately. Concerned silence follows as the other two attempt to assess whether he’s joking or not. “You can go watch a film with him and get kicked out when he won’t stop talking loudly.”

“I’d say Seamus but -”

“- there’s no way I can compete with Italian sausage”, Rook chimes in and feels a grim satisfaction at Mute’s grimace. He really reacts as if they were talking about his real parents. “Have you seen his bruises? The worst I’ve done is accidentally slap someone in the face.”

Glaz is horrified. “How do you… accidentally?”

“Listen, I was drunk, the guy kept getting louder and louder about wanting me to spank him but I at that point didn’t know how it’s done, so I just…”

“Maybe this was a mistake”, Mute grumbles and rubs his temple. “I would have you date Seamus now just out of spite but he’d chuck you out the nearest window as soon as you started babbling nonsense or acting weird. We need someone who’s more lenient, ideally someone nice so they don’t hold a grudge when we tell them it was all for shits and giggles, maybe shy because then your chances are better, and someone who doesn’t dislike you. So Fuze is out.”

“What, why?”

“Are you telling me you’d like to date Fuze?”

“No, I mean – why doesn’t he like me? He never talks to me, but he never talks to anyone.”

“It could be the fact that you helped Dom dye his teeth blue while he slept. Not only is it fucking creepy, he also looked like he ate all the Smurfs for a day.”

“What about Elias?”

Again, Glaz’ contribution gives them pause, albeit a noticeably more pensive one this time. He’s right, what about Blitz? Together with Sledge, Thatcher and Montagne he makes up Team Dad, meaning they look out for everyone but especially the younger operators, take them under their wing – yet it also means neither of the three are particularly keen on details about their love lives, which is why Mute’s thoughts instantly went to Sledge as a form of punishment. Blitz is similar in that vein, though he fits the Brit’s description to the letter: he’s quick to forgive people, has an atrocious track record concerning relationships as far as they know and he seems to enjoy Rook’s company. He might indeed be a good target for this.

“Rather him than Gilles or Mike”, Rook hastens to reply as soon as he realises that if he rejects the German, this is where his friends’ worrisome thoughts are going to end up. Both of them could easily be his dad, unlike Blitz who might have a fatherly protective attitude towards his younger colleagues but at least no grey hairs yet.

“I’m sure you could win them over with your boyish innocence”, Mute deadpans, making Rook grimace. “They might be a tad too old for your tastes though. I think Mike even owns a Cat Stevens CD.”

“Remember how Elias and Marius talked about a DOS-based game? I think he is, too, but he’s the best out of the three.”

“Ten years older isn’t too old.”

Glaz and Rook exchange a meaningful glance and merely raise their brows at an increasingly flustered Mute who looks ready to smack himself in the face with his phone, given how much he’s suddenly fiddling with it. “I’m not sure we’re talking about Julien and Elias anymore”, the Russian states drily, and Rook nods up a storm.

“Look”, Mute begins to defend himself to two expectant expressions and eventually just sighs in frustration. “Whatever, let’s not talk about my crush -”

“Oh, so it is a crush now, is it?”

“Shut up.” Rook wasn’t aware that Mute’s ears could be this shade of red. “James is… a good friend right now.”

“You say this as if you hadn’t thought about whether he sounds in bed just like the time Seamus accidentally pelted him in the balls with Diana’s tennis ball and he whimpered for an hour straight.” Rook feels a rush of pride at his comment when Mute suddenly looks ready to murder. It seems like he hit the mark, just like Sledge had done: right in the crotch.

“He strikes me as someone who’s had dog slobber in that particular area before”, Glaz murmurs probably as an aside and looks almost shocked when Rook’s instant guffawing lets him know that he said this out loud. Even Mute doesn’t seem sure whether he should be horribly offended or deeply amused.

.

In the end, they do decide on Blitz being their victim. Glaz gets cold feet halfway through the conversation, raising the issue of morality and deceit but gets shot down quickly when Mute lists some of the pranks with which Bandit got away and which had exceedingly far-reaching consequences. The West wing of their building still has no running water. Not that Rook is complaining about sharing their showers with some of its occupants, no, not at all.

“We’re going to Bond you up”, Mute announces while digging through one of the many, many drawers in the workshop that are filled with… stuff. Rook is waiting for the day this stuff starts pouring out of every cupboard they have, because it means it’ll all get cleaned up and tidied by someone who’s not getting paid enough and maybe then they’ll find the remote for the TV again. He’s sick of bribing people to turn the volume up or down by pressing buttons on the device directly, especially because his candy stash has run low by now because of it.

“What are you guys doing?”

Only Rook and Glaz turn away from the unmanageable mess of cords, cables, plugs and other electric parts in which Mute is elbow deep right now, and maybe Rook should worry about it turning sentient and swallowing the Brit whole at some point, but right now he’s worrying about one thing only: the possibility of Bandit catching wind of what they’re doing. He’s pretending to make nonchalant small talk but really, he must’ve smelled blood. He always knows when they’re up to something.

“Befriending communists”, Glaz replies politely.

“Hiding boners”, Rook supplies.

Bandit’s eyes narrow suspiciously but he remains silent as Mute produces a triumphant noise and pulls out what looks like an earring attached to a cable and a few other things, with a small box at the end. “Here we go! You can wear this, Jules.”

“In my life I’ve only fucked one guy who wore earrings”, Bandit deems it necessary to divulge. “And when he got dressed, he’d do sock shoe sock shoe.”

Rook snorts. “I’m not surprised you’re friends with James since you seem to have prior experience with psychopaths.”

“Let’s go, boys, we have all we came for”, Mute tells them, an unambiguous signal to not engage Bandit any further or else he’s never going to leave them alone, and starts herding them out of the workshop. To their collective annoyance, Bandit follows, unperturbed by the waves of get lost rolling off of them.

“If I give you a Curly Wurly, will you leave us alone?”, Rook addresses him and earns a scoff.

“Please, as if I could be bribed with sweets. This is an interesting device you’re undoubtedly going to misuse somehow and I want to see where it’s going.”

“And four hobnobs. The ones with chocolate.”

“I just told you -”

“Add a chocolate orange to that.”

“Deal. Have fun!”

.

“I feel extraordinarily gay”, Rook mumbles into his collar and prays that no one else in the canteen is paying any attention to him hovering uncertainly at the edge of the room, waiting for Zofia to be done talking to his mark. Blitz looks comfortable in the middle of the room, paperwork spread out on the table before him and an open bag of crisps by his elbow – only he would still be working during his lunch break. Considering all the people in front of whom Rook could be thoroughly embarrassing himself, he’s one of the better options as his smile is not only contagious but also very pretty. So even if this will influence his reputation for a while, Blitz is likely to be a good sport about it all.

Rook is wearing an apron reading Kiss the cook because one of the items on Mute’s blasted list involved making him look ‘approachable’, and since the pink t-shirt they gifted Glaz with the slogan ‘single and ready to flamingle’ is in the wash, this was the next best option. The earring which serves as Mute’s and Glaz’ way of communicating with him during this whole ordeal is not only garish but unfortunately a clip-on, so Rook couldn’t refuse wearing it. He feels like a budget version of an undercover agent, only much, much shadier.

“You look it, too, so it’s perfect”, Mute’s tinny voice reassures him into his left ear. They’re both sitting at the other end of the canteen, sharing popcorn and crunching infuriatingly loudly into their mic. “Make eye contact, smile and raise your eyebrows – that’s the first step, according to this masterpiece.”

It’s the perfect opportunity to implement a technique Rook has mastered almost twenty years ago: he starts out by rolling his eyes over his friends but as soon as he notices Blitz looking over, Zofia nowhere in sight, it transforms into a bright smile. This instantaneous switch in facial expressions has served him well over the years, especially around unlikeable teachers or bosses – only this time, he thinks a little too much about what Mute has said and ends up with a manic grin instead of a friendly smile while lifting his brows so high he must look either utterly astonished or inexplicably anticipatory.

Glaz masks his snort as a cough whereas Blitz reciprocates his bloodthirsty smirk with a much milder lifting of the corners of his mouth. Even from this distance, Rook can detect his concern which is probably fighting Blitz’ omnipresent drive to be social, accepting and open-minded. He always looks like this when Twitch’s current explanation has left him lost half an hour ago or when Tachanka jovially reminisces about early Spetsnaz training (and who in the world thinks that being chased through a hallway filled with blood and guts by a massive dog in the middle of the night was in any way, shape or form fun).

He’s starting to feel bad. Only a little, but honestly, when Blitz put on the clothes his blind roommate laid out for him this morning (because how else does he explain his usual attire), he probably wasn’t expecting to become a wikihow experiment today.

“I swear you’re gonna make me choke on this popcorn”, Glaz mutters and, like clockwork, Rook immediately replies: “Sounds less entertaining than choking on cockporn.”

More strangled noises in his ear, but fortunately Mute takes over to rescue him from certain death via being cast out of society by informing him of the next step: “Indicate interest and project confidence during social situations. Go on, be interested and confident. You’re as great as you are misguided in one of those, and terrible at the other.”

Rook ignores the slight (really, just because he once paid no attention to what Mute was telling him and they ended up stranded in the wilderness with no more gas doesn’t make him a bad listener, and him self-assuredly flirting his way into some stranger’s car who then became a little too interested in him doesn’t necessarily mean he’s overconfident), and approaches his target with a cocksure swagger he’s practised for exactly three seconds on the way to the canteen. “Hey, what are you doing, I like you, is this equipment paperwork, I’ve actually done a ton of these so I’m an absolute pro, how are you this fine day?”

Blitz stares at him. Maybe Rook should’ve let the other two know that he gets the worst case of stage fright whenever he feels observed in social situations and that it manifests in casual blabbering. “I, uh, I’m good, thanks. Are you alright?”

He sounds hesitant and Rook can’t blame him. After plopping down opposite of the German with a slightly less manic smile, he attempts to ignore Mute and Glaz whom he can very clearly see over Blitz’ shoulder and who both seem to be shoving their fists into their mouths to try and not giggle too obviously. “Peachy”, he beams. “How’s the work going? Is it just as work-y as always?”

His contagious laugh falls on deaf ears, at least from the man he’s talking to. Glaz looks about ready to cry.

“I suppose so.” Bless Blitz for his endless patience. The doubtful tone is still present and betrays his suspicion of something going on, but as Rook neither attempts to steal or set fire to the papers nor to shove a cake into his face, he probably figures there’s no immediate danger. “Have you actually filled out these kinds of forms before?”

“Confidence”, Mute squeaks into his ear, still suppressing his mirth, and Rook suddenly wonders whether Smoke would like to know about the time Mute despaired over his new laptop not working, troubleshooting it for several days and refusing any and all outside help until an innocently passing-by Jäger pointed out that it wasn’t plugged in. So far, the event has been contained but Rook has long been waiting for an opportunity to unleash this knowledge.

“Of course, I used to do them all the time as homework, I could do them in my sleep”, Rook lies through his teeth.

“Great!” It seems Blitz failed to get the memo about projecting entirely misplaced confidence because he goes on to ask: “Could you help me with this one detail then? I’m not sure what -”

And while he explains his problem, Rook’s brain long having shut off, Mute informs him of the next step: “Make engaging small talk. Ask broad, open-ended questions like ‘so, what got you interested in rock-climbing’.”

“So, what got you interested in rock-climbing?”, Rook interrupts Blitz’ detailing completely out of the blue. A distance away, Glaz is putting his head in his hands.

Blitz forgets to close his mouth for a few seconds, and Rook almost wishes he didn’t stop talking but instead ignored Rook’s question entirely. “I… am not particularly interested in rock-climbing, if I’m honest. Why do you ask?”

And while Rook flounders and stutters out a non-committal oh, you know, Glaz, the absolute angel on his shoulder, decides to step in and save him: “Perfect opportunity, the next step is don’t take yourself too seriously. Try making a joke at your own expense if you say something you think is utterly stupid. You can save this, Julien, I believe in you.”

“Well, uh.” Think, think, think. Rook feels like Winnie the Pooh and barely stops himself from tapping his temple. As usual, his mouth is writing checks long before his brain has earned the money, and so he witnesses in unfortunately non-mute horror as the words come over his lips: “It’s just that your muscles are as hard as a rock and I suddenly thought how awesome it would be to go rock-climbing.”

Smooth.

Blitz is genuinely gaping now.

Behind him, Mute nearly falls off his chair while shaking with silent laughter, and Glaz is wearing the all too familiar expression of ‘if anyone asks, I will forever deny knowing you’.

“I, um, well, thanks? I guess? Julien, are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“I’ve never felt better in my life.” Confidence, right? What was the other thing? Open-ended questions? “Speaking of, what do you want to achieve in life?”

How Blitz hasn’t gotten whiplash yet is a mystery. Maybe Rook will be able to make Mute laugh so hard he’ll drop dead. He’s looking a little blue in the face already. “Why do you ask? Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!”, Rook responds too forcefully and thanks whoever is responsible for Blitz being completely resistant to weird behaviour, merely accepting it as a fact of life and glossing over it. On second thought, the reason for this is most definitely Bandit and Rook would rather gnaw off his own toes than thank Bandit for anything.

Blitz’ eyes lower and he absent-mindedly moves some of the papers around. His entire demeanour… shifts. “I want to make a difference somehow. And I know this sounds horribly cliché, and everyone here has the same wish – but does that make it in any way less special? I don’t think so. We put our lives on the line to ensure some girl will have a mother when she grows up, to inspire some people to turn their life around, so that people have a roof over their head and peaceful sleep. And I don’t care if some say there’s better ways to do this. This is mine, this is something I’m good at, and my capabilities are useful here where they would be lost as a politician or anything else. And there always will be more to do, I’ll never be done, but that’s okay. I’ll know I’ve done a bit, and I’m happy with that already.”

Something flutters.

He hasn’t felt it in a while, not like this, usually stemming from a different place in his body or more concrete, aided by alcohol or general giddiness, but paradoxically his heartbeat is calming down despite the tingling sensation in his chest. Speechless, he stares at the man in front of him, trying to do what he always does when people’s sincerity makes him uncomfortable – joking about it in his head, react with sarcasm, discard the notion as sentimental or naive. Only right now, it’s his cynicism which feels fake instead of Blitz’ words.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you with a speech”, the German adds sheepishly and laughs a little. It’s cute. It’s the cutest thing Rook has seen today and if he does that thing where he scratches the back of his head because he’s embarrassed and a little lost now, Rook might pass out on the spot, just lose all body tension and glide to the ground like a jelly pancake because no one, and that includes genuinely happy Glaz, no one has any right to be this adorable.

Blitz scratches the back of his head.

“I’m going to faint”, Rook informs someone, he’s not even sure who, whether it’s Mute and Glaz and this is a badly hidden attempt at getting them to come to his aid, or whether it’s Blitz to inform him that the cute police is on his case.

“Oh, that’s right, it’s lunch and you haven’t eaten anything yet, no?” If his next sentence is something along the lines of ‘let me offer you food’, he’ll have to propose. There’s no way around it. “I’d offer you something more substantial but I only have the crisps. You can try them if you want, but they’re a little hot.”

Right on cue, Mute whispers in his ear: “You should find some common ground and then ask him out. This is already a disaster, no need to prolong it.”

“I love hot things!”, Rook exclaims cheerfully and it’s not even that big of a lie, except that ‘food’ isn’t on the list. But if Mute wants his common ground, he’s going to get it. Without checking the packaging, Rook reaches into the bag and shoves a few of the suspiciously red potato crisps into his mouth.

“He’s going to die”, Glaz utters full of concern, just as the spiciness hits Rook full force.

Blitz seems to be convinced of the opposite. “Really? That’s great, I’ve not found anyone who likes this type. You should try some of the Indian dishes I make now and then!”

Rook’s consciousness is fading, slowly being replaced by unadulterated fire. This must be what it’s like to be burnt alive, he reckons, and right now he’d rather eat glass than ensure a second more of this brilliant pain. His eyes are watering and he’s doing his best to efficiently chew without letting any more of it touch his tongue so he can swallow it as fast as possible, in the process ruining his throat. Now it, too, feels like he ate glass. “I’d love to”, he croaks and sniffles pitifully while a cold sweat breaks out on his back.

“Are you ill? You’re a little…” Blitz’ concern is as heartwarming as it is unwelcome; it only makes everything worse.

“Yes, actually.” He can’t cough now. If he does, all is lost, he won’t be able to stop, ever, and it’ll invade his lungs and slowly cook him from the inside out.

“You need to get out”, Glaz informs him, sounding troubled, “and eat your emergency chocolate. Now. Ask him and then bolt.”

This is it, huh. This is what he’s been working up to for the last half an hour: posing a question while sounding like he’s been smoking for longer than he’s been alive, choking back tears which make it almost impossible to see Blitz, and faced with all the kindness and compassion of a man he suddenly doesn’t want to disappoint.

And so he asks.

.

“I am still in shock”, Mute says. The others nod.

“I have no idea how it came to this”, Glaz says. More nodding.

“I can finally feel my tongue again”, Rook slurs and downs the third glass of milk, just to be safe. He feels like he ran a marathon, solved maths problems and had an allergic reaction all at once. Not to mention the overarching shame of having embarrassed himself in front of someone who turned out much more sympathetic than he thought.

“I don’t understand.” Mute’s rational brain is rejecting this reality, Rook can almost hear the gears crunching. “Why would he say yes?! Where did we go wrong?”

He’s hesitant to tell them that he actually wouldn’t mind getting to know Blitz better because the memory of them shoving oversized condoms into Glaz’ pockets in order to embarrass him in front of his crush is still all too fresh. “This was a success then”, he very inaccurately summarises the unholy catastrophe of whatever it was that happened in the canteen twenty minutes ago. Maybe he can just… pretend he doesn’t want to actually go on the date but go nonetheless, be far, far from either of these two so he might end up enjoying himself – and if something comes out of it, he still has ample time to let them know.

“You don’t seem sad about this result”, Mute picks up on his careful neutrality and squints. “Are you telling me you actually want him to make you groan with something other than his terrible dad jokes? Is that it?”

“We probably should’ve picked Shuhrat after all”, Glaz muses with a sigh. “He wouldn’t have accepted. He might’ve refused to ever go near you again, but at least we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“Wait.” Mute is on his phone, which is never a good sign if the Thomas the tank engine toy he modified into a fully functioning flamethrower after having watched a video of someone else doing it was any indication. A sense of dread starts rising in Rook. “There’s instructions for a first date here, too. We can do the same thing again, give you instructions and have you follow them. At this point, we kinda have to do this.”

Rook pictures it. All he can see is carnage, chaos and more catastrophes. It’ll be a disaster, he’s already struggling with multi-tasking without it involving another largely unpredictable person, and his nerves don’t deal well with expectations of any kind.

He weighs this against the alternative: admitting that he’d like to go on the date without their interference and facing endless mockery as a result. He remembers his own mental threat against Mute to divulge embarrassing stories of his past to Smoke. He thinks of the time his tongue got stuck to a pole because Mute told him this only happened to children, not adults.

“Alright”, he agrees with a sigh and regrets his decision as soon as Mute’s and Glaz’ eyes light up.

[relenafanel]

Reading your fic about Bucky writing Steve fanfics makes me wanna start writing my own and actually posting them. I’m pretty nervous do you have any advice?

Just do it.

I know it doesn’t seem like great advice, the same as ‘just rip the bandaid off’ doesn’t always seem like great advice, because it ignores all the nervousness, the hard work, the actual writing and then the posting, but if you don’t just do it, then you’ll get up in your own head and never go through with it.

And that would be a shame.

RelenaFanel’s 101 on Fanfic Writing: ADVICE, not RULES

(keep in mind that my very first fic was posted in 2001 that’s how long it’s been since I started, so I’m going to base this on what I’ve learned in my advanced age. there’s also a tiny bit of these feelings when you start a new fandom)

1. Think of something to write. I love writing AUs, but usually the fandoms I end up writing AUs for are ones that need them. So, you can look at fandom and see what it is that you want to put into it, OR you can acknowledge the many-cake theory and just write what you WANT and love. So Bucky in the Steve Rogers Problem tended to scope out fandom for gaps, and I do that too, but it’s not the only way.

2. Sit down and write it. Maybe scrap it and start something new, maybe not. This step is extremely personal to what will turn out to be your writing habits, so I’m not touching it. It turns out individuals treat an activity like writing as personal, so if you want tips, there are a ton of writing guidelines out there, but don’t take any of them as YOU MUST do this.

3. Get someone to read it over for you to check for plot inconsistencies, typos, etc. I advocating getting a beta reader, but I know a lot of people have trouble with this step and I’m 0% help. So, if not, get someone you know irl to do it. I started with my BFF.

Also: remember that you’re the author and so you have final say over what your beta suggests. This isn’t me telling you to ignore all their help, this is me telling you that you know what your intention was. So if they say ‘no this doesn’t work’ but you think it’s important, consider that maybe they picked out clunky phrasing or something else that would hinder the reader. 

4. NOW YOU’RE READY TO POST YAY. (this is all assuming Ao3, and honestly gets a little tl;dr)

Pick a title. Look, picking a title sucks a lot. If you’ve noticed mine have started looking like clickbait articles, and I’m ok with that. A funny title fits my writing. Honestly, go ahead and use song lyrics or poetry lines, or maybe a reference to the fic. Life is short and you could spend half of it thinking up titles - JUST, don’t use something common. Like, if *I* can recognize it as a line from Hamilton or Mumford and Sons, maybe don’t use that one.  Ppl don’t pay that much attention to the title unless there’s no title there to pay attention to or if they’ve seen 8 fics in the last week with the same title. 

Your life will be happier when you don’t really give a shit WHAT the title is. It took me until like 2015 to reach that point, so... *shrug* Just make sure to call it something.

Write a summary. This also sucks a lot and I haven’t entirely mastered it, but DO NOT admit to anyone that your summary sucks. “summary sucks, just read”? dooonnnn’tttt. If I see that line I’m going to assume the writing in the fic also sucks. Most of the time the summaries aren’t that bad until you get to that line, so just own your summary, no matter how awful you feel it is.

Sometimes you can get away with a line / para from the fic. I try to reserve that for shorter fics that don’t need a lot in terms of summary.

You’re trying to convey what the story is about and make it interesting.  So, go look at some summaries for similar tropes and see what people are doing. Just read the summary, this isn’t the point you’re looking at reading the fics.  If there’s something you like, copy the style of it (but not word for word).

Also PROOFREAD. Summaries with typos are also something that tends to repel discerning readers.

Make the tags. So for tags you want to remember a few things. Only tag the main relationship in the fic as a courtesy. Then start broad and then narrow in on more specific. So start with whether it’s au or canon. Then the tropes in the main theme. Then some of the tropes that aren’t as important but are present. If you mention something once and it has no bearing on the fic as a whole, there’s no need to tag it. Also be aware of what possible triggers are involved, and conversely what things you might tag so people can find it. An example of this is with sex scenes and whether one of them bottoms. I want the people who love that to be able to find it. I am, as a person, a lot less concerned with people who might find that specific example triggering, but they do, so also be aware of that.

also, be aware of your tags as a whole message. If you write a 5k adorable coffeeshop au that has one line where someone inappropriately comes on to a character, don’t dedicate 5 tags to that line because it’s disproportionate to the contents of the fic. This, ofc, depends on the gravity of the thing, but you could honestly just explain the contents in an author’s note instead of using the tags to explain. If it’s a fluff fic, most of your tags should reflect that.

And honestly if you have a fluffy fic with some major grim or dark themes, then maybe it’s not a fluffy fic?

Also, once I’m done with that I sometimes add some funny or clever tags, but if you’re into the funny and clever tags, remember to make sure the important ones are included so Ao3′s tagging system can work to your advantage. 

FINALLY as a specific nitpick of mine that I think is also good advice, don’t admit it’s your first fic or your first fic in a while. It feels like you’re lessening your own culpability, like saying “this is my first fic be gentle” means you’re admitting it might suck so you hope people will be gracious, but in my experience what you’re doing is telling people “be slightly harsher judging this because it might suck” - whether they do it on purpose trying to be helpful or whether it’s subconsciously.  It does the opposite of what you mean for it to do.

So, in general, don’t show weakness. Fake it til you make it. The whole process is scary and sometimes it makes us feel better to say something like “oh god this sucks idek” (yes, including me) but it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to your own anxiety. Feel it in your brain, but resist the urge to put it in the post, because what readers see isn’t your ball of anxiety or ‘what if ppl don’t like this?’ panic, they see an author who doesn’t like their own work, and so why should they?  They see an author who says ‘this sucks’ and since they’re the authority of their own work, they believe it.

So don’t sabotage yourselves my dears.

5. Authors notes and Posting. You can put any details you don’t tag in the authors note. Usually, I also include a link to my tumblr in the end note because I want people to find me. Learn the html here.

Then, hit that post button.

6. Advertise yourself. You’re your biggest advocate. So make a tumblr post (if you have one and didn’t anon me because you don’t) and tag it with the common tumblr tags within the first 5 tags.  This isn’t as important, but it helps. If you do this, make sure to include the link to the tumblr post in your Ao3 notes. You want people who like it to pass it on.

7. Be kind to yourself. As a final point, I don’t know how to approach this without sounding like an egotistical dick, but don’t ever compare your fic to mine and allow my kudos/comments to make you feel bad. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been writing fanfic since 2001, I adapted early on Ao3 and have had a ton of time to build up subscribers. I’ve been around for a long time, ok, and so you can absolutely strive for the popularity and put the work in for it, but don’t torture yourself over comparing your work to mine.

It’s not a fair comparison.

You know what is a fair comparison? Compare your second fic to your first. Did it do better with kudos/comments? Worse? What’s different between them? Maybe it’s a less popular trope, which you can’t control (unless you write for popularity, in which case make note of it). How can you improve? What do you want to try next?

Play the game against yourself. I promise you, the results are better and you feel a lot less bitter and downtrodden.  It’s ok to emulate other authors you admire as a way to work on your writing and find your niche. Don’t outright steal, but work on copying tone as a writing exercise. Keep in mind the fics that you love and ask yourself what you love about them. Tone? Characters? Dialogue? Description?

Hold the nice comments you get close to your heart. Did someone love your description of a certain scene? Love that you’re good at description and keep writing descriptions until you’re better at them. Until you’re the description master. 

Did someone leave you a not-so-nice comment about your characterization? Ok, first of all, it’s ok if your first thought is ‘screw you’ because yeah! you stand behind your fic! (maybe don’t answer back ‘screw you’ and if you have the ability to stomach it, instead ask if they mind being more specific in order to help you improve - I have never had that skill, I’m a sulker under negative feedback). But also, if you’re going to internalize their criticism anyway, then use it to your advantage and start paying a little more attention to that part when writing.

A lot of this stuff gets so intuitive that you probably won’t be consciously thinking about it.

Most importantly of all: have fun. 

[miss-m-calling]

Fandom 5k letter

Requests:

Adult Wednesday Addams -- Wednesday Addams

American Gods (TV) -- Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

Cabin Pressure -- Carolyn & Arthur & Martin & Douglas

Moonlighting (TV) -- David Addison/Maddie Hayes

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

I do give more or more detailed prompts for some of these canons than for others – that’s not because I want some more than others, but only because for some I get lots of ideas, for others I’m more “waves arms all over the place give me more of XYZ I love in canon!!” I hope whatever I put down sparks your creativity, and feel free to reach out through the mods if you have any questions! My likes and DNWs are all the way on the bottom of the letter.

Without further ado…

Requests:

Adult Wednesday Addams

Wednesday Addams

Genres: Action/adventure, Canon-style plot, Humor, Slice of life, Worldbuilding

I belatedly discovered this webseries, and it resurrected (see what I did there?) my love for Wednesday and how the Addams Family canon runs on the endless possibilities of this loving, happily eccentric family being 100% true to themselves and the world just having to deal with it. The show was everything I never knew I wanted till I watched it, the perfect blend of Addams-macabre and cozy slice of life with bonus Wednesday navigating the world alone, without always knowing her family will back her up, and it made me crave more of adult Wednesday’s mini adventures in LA. For this canon, I’m good with gen or, if you want to write that, more of Wednesday’s adventures in dating guys who really aren’t up to the challenge, and you can absolutely have Wednesday interact with OCs I haven’t listed as part of a pairing. I’m keeping the prompts pretty short, just to (hopefully) pique your creativity, as I expect I will love any way you make these or any similar scenarios play out:

-Wednesday goes to IKEA

-More of Wednesday’s interactions with the nice interns at her receptionist job. Maybe they invite her out to happy hour, or to the beach or a club. Or maybe we get to eavesdrop while they shoot the breeze on their lunch break, possibly over barbecue-chicken pizza from CPK.

-More of Wednesday’s gigs. She already babysits and walks other people’s dogs, what else might she do for extra cash that would be both really common and seemingly ill-suited to Wednesday, except she totally makes it work for her? Cat sitting (especially if the cat belongs to someone incredibly rich whose house is full of secrets – and expensive things for the cat to knock over), driving an Uber/Lyft, becoming an AirBnB host, catering/server, working the late shift in a New Age/occult supply store where none of the woo is real…?

-Or, alternately, Wednesday finds a career that is perfect for her, in which she can have success and respect. What ever could that be and still fit into the non-Addams world?

-Wednesday tries speed dating

-Or, she runs into Brian a.k.a. chains guy (I cackle with glee every time I rewatch the bit when he tries to kiss her at the pet store) a third time – how does it not go quite as he wanted or expected this time?

-Wednesday’s family comes out to sunny, plastic, image-conscious LA to visit her and make sure she’s doing alright. She gives them a tour of the city, and LA will never be the same again.

-Wednesday takes an evening class, or goes back to school part time, or enrolls in an online degree program

-Wednesday takes a road trip, alone or with her apartment mates/colleagues/Brian/strangers she met for carpooling purposes. Bonus points if you work in real roadside attractions, or tourist traps, or famous sites/landscapes.

-It’s Dia de Muertos, and Wednesday goes out to celebrate and soak up the atmosphere. It may or may not live up to her expectations.

-If you wanted to get a bit meta and/or enjoy playing around with different formatting, what does Wednesday’s Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook/Tindr look like? Or, Wednesday gets tasked with updating company social media at her receptionist job, and she does it with her own special flair.

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

Genres: Action/adventure, AU - canon divergence, Canon-style plot, Character development, Getting together, Smut, Worldbuilding

Let me preface this by saying how much I appreciate that you are willing to write for an ongoing canon! I love this pairing, and while most of my prompts are basically the same ones I’ve used in exchanges before S2 (which I am watching) started airing, let me assure you that I am 1000% fine with your fic getting jossed, or including a divergence from what we already know or how things happen in canon. You can work with the canon -- or as much of it as we have by the time you’re done writing -- or diverge in a way that works for your story. Really truly honestly it’s all fine since you are writing for an active canon, and I really truly honestly appreciate you wanting to tackle this! Canon divergences and canon-flavored-if-not-entirely-compliant stories are my jam, so please don’t feel anxious as the canon keeps unfolding, nor pressed to keep up with S2 if you can’t or don’t want to watch it right now. (I tried to keep S2 spoilers to a minimum in my prompts, but there are some spoilers.)

So *clears throat*

I ship it. Yes I do. They had me at “gimme-my-coin-dead-wife”-flicks-him-into-wall. The snarky road trip was the best thing I never knew I wanted until it happened, and I adored every second of it. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they start to mellow toward each other a bit toward the end of S1, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Also I love love love how their dynamic is about equal parts spikiness, pathos, and humor (they’re funny! and the canon doesn’t shy away from putting them in ludicrous situations), and it weaves seamlessly between those three. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there’s the angst of he having killed her, feeling really guilty about it, and then bringing her back.

Please give me either missing scenes from the road trip (if you can work in a divergence, that’s great - for example, I like Salim, but if you want to have him boot Sweeney and Laura to the curb and go off on his own, or Sweeney to boost his taxi before Salim catches them, or whatever else to have those two alone, go for it!), or a S1 divergence (instead of going to Ostara, they go where? to see whom? about getting Laura resurrected) or something about these two post-S1/during-S2:

-Laura discovers (how? you decide!) that Sweeney gave her back the coin after their accident – whatever happens next, some punching may be involved.

-Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me, you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other.

-Laura asked “What does Wednesday have to lose?” and the answer is…? (Yes, give me that sweet poetic justice. One possibility, though not remotely the only one, but as of S2E3 Laura is technically a god-killer...)

-On a similar note, Wednesday told that luckless cop that Sweeney had been against the big gods’ war from the start, and while Wednesday lies, Sweeney definitely seems to be participating out of a sense of obligation and lingering guilt over the war he ran from long ago, rather than lust for a good fight or even a dominant death wish. What if he decided to hell with Grimnir and his war and his having Sweeney kill random people? I’m guessing Sweeney too drank three glasses of mead so he can’t back out without dire consequence - but he does have a fierce, dead woman in his corner.

-They go to some as-yet-unnamed old god (feel free to bring in whatever mythology you want) in order to bring Laura back to life. Between Sweeney’s mouth and temper, and Laura’s mouth and temper, it doesn’t go well. Now one or both of them are in big magical trouble with a pissed-off deity and have to get themselves/each other out of it.

-Things happen and Laura finds herself in the position to throw Sweeney under the bus but also help/save him, and while he knows it’s only karma, he can still be pissed about it - how do they navigate this?

-Laura gets fully alive again, but traces of her (un)dead state remain – what are they, how does she cope, what price did she/he/they have to pay for her resurrection, and how does their relationship change? I’d especially be curious how it would work if they’re already a sorta-maybe-item and *then* she’s alive again and it’s weird in a new way.

-For reasons I’ll leave up to you, Sweeney and Laura have to stay put in a single place for a while and end up essentially cohabiting, regardless of what their relationship is at that point. Take “cohabiting” as literally or as creatively as you want -- in any case, I’m sure it will be marvelously disastrous and amazing.

-Slight or major AU from the opening of “The Ways of the Dead”: Laura has hitchhiked with Sweeney instead of going off in a huff with Wednesday, or she otherwise gets to New Orleans sooner, and she and Sweeney tear up the town together. Gimme bar fights, carnival shenanigans, backstage craziness with the Christian rock band (Sweeney seems to have a backstage pass on a lanyard around his neck when Laura finds him)… Maybe they even cross the paths of some loa and it doesn’t get all angsty (for what it’s worth, I think the reason the sex magic didn’t bring Laura back to life was because she couldn’t accept the truth(s) revealed during the astral-plain sex – see how she defaults straight to “this is all Wednesday’s evil plan” the morning after – not because the loa fucked them over as Sweeney said). They were actually getting along nicely in those first couple of scenes, only ribbing each other a little while still being their grouchy selves, before they got to Le Coq Noir. I wouldn’t have minded seeing some more of that.

-All the old gods hide their true appearance to an extent. A situation arises in which Laura sees Sweeney’s true, or at least old, self (I’m thinking of his surprise!poignant monologue about when he used to be a king, and the glimpse of him in full Celtic warrior mode in the S2 teaser). Or Wednesday’s war ends in victory, meaning the old gods again get belief, worship, and sacrifices. How does Laura, the ultimate skeptic even when she’s on the other side of the mirror, react? How does this new knowledge and new reality change her opinion of/attitude to Sweeney? Or to flip that around, if Sweeney were again relevant and believed-in, would that actually change his bad attitude and fix his issues (my guess is it would be complicated)?

-The power of names: for all his “dead wifeing,” there comes a time when Sweeney (has to) call her by her actual name, and that’s a tricky moment for them to navigate. Or, Mad Sweeney is almost certainly not his actual name, since true names have great magical power and so must be kept secret; Laura discovers or learns his name, from someone else or from himself; what does she do with that knowledge? Or, Sweeney gets to say “cunt” in a situation (sexual or otherwise) where, not only does Laura not peel his lips from his gums, but she finds that she can’t object, even though she knows that he knows that he’s getting away with it.

-So far in canon, it’s pretty clear that Sweeney has a lot of complicated but sincere feelings for Laura. But Laura is still pretty focused on Shadow (or rather her idealized vision of Shadow and what their relationship might yet be), whom she seems to equate with her own lost-maybe-to-be-regained life, although she’s starting to soften toward Sweeney as she realizes he’s doing things for her that are not all about getting his coin back (and her sparring match with Wednesday in “Muninn” may finally force her to accept that her relationship with Shadow died alongside her and Robbie on that road in Indiana). Tell me the story of how Laura stumbles her way to starting to feel more complex, maybe kinder or softer, really annoying for her blunt-force-trauma-personality things about Sweeney and about the notion that her dynamic with him is different from the way she tended to use men for her convenience without really letting them in in the past. Also I’m pretty sure that even if they felt the same – or sorta in the same ballpark – about each other, their relationship would still run on a lot of conflict, and I would so be here for it.

-On that note: in “Munnin” it also becomes clear that Laura has, without realizing it herself, started to rely on Sweeney. The “I trusted you” line made me think, whoa she’s too mad to catch herself doing it but this is huge for Laura, and the fact that she goes off with Wednesday (!) basically because she’s mad at Sweeney because she thinks he’s prioritizing his debt to Wednesday over her… Yeah, I would like to see that explored some more and/or to see Laura and Sweeney get to a point where they trust each other and rely on each other, and know it and accept it, however difficult the getting there and being there may be for them.

-And since I’m on the subject of Laura, you know how she’s not actually an abrasive bitch all the time to everyone? And when she is, the people on the receiving end of it sometimes richly deserve it, and anyway it’s refreshing to see a female character who doesn’t bother flirting and accommodating others for the sake of social harmony? As much as I enjoy watching her rip into people (ahem, Sweeney), I also love it when she acts differently, like her genuine interest in getting to know Salim and her joy in seeing him again in S2, or her running passive-aggressive battle of wills with Wednesday, or even her general disaffection and numbness in “Git Gone.” Her beginning to feel sympathy for Sweeney and her anger and disappointment when she feels let down by him are a part of that, and I’d love to see all that explored more. Nuance! Give me all the nuance and seeming contradictions in both Laura and Sweeney’s characters!

-My perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So yessiree I’d be down for porn, including “it’s technically necrophilia/zombiesex” porn.

-All the petty, ridiculous ways in which Sweeney’s bad luck manifests itself make me laugh (can’t help it, won’t even try), and I’m down for more variations on that theme.

-If you wanted to throw in some worldbuilding, maybe something exploring living death. Magical bargains. What kind of favor did Sweeney do for Ostara that would be worth her bringing someone back to life as repayment? What other powers might Sweeney have (he doesn’t seem on a par with someone like Wednesday and Ostara, nor is he really a god, more a mythological being/kinda-deified former-mortal)? How long can a dead wife keep going before she’s “soup”? What other superhuman abilities might dead!Laura have? Can the dead do magic? What even are the rules governing and the limits of different beings’ magical abilities?

If it helps your inspiration, you can find some of my meta and lots of tag-burbling about these two here. I have read the book though I remember it only in bits and pieces, and while I prefer the show characters and the fact that they get thrown together, you can use or riff on book material if you want. With reference to one of my DNWs, for this canon, describing Laura’s physical decay is totally fine. Also, Shadow/Laura don’t interest me except as a part of Laura’s backstory (so if your story wants to include Laura figuring out or having already figured out that pinning all her hopes on Shadow to make everything right is unrealistic, unfair, and not how it works – by all means, go for it!), and Shadow/Sweeney interest me not at all.

My one canon-specific, really strong DNW for this pairing is this: I’m not into Laura being Essie’s reincarnation/descendant or – as fanon suggests and canon hints she may be – some sort of reincarnation of Sweeney’s wife from back when he was a king in old Ireland. Reincarnation/“new love looks like old love”/“lost love found again” plots bore me, and I don’t enjoy ships that hinge on characters being somehow destined to be together. Characters having agency is my jam as much as canon divergences are. Or if your fic really needs to go there, please please please don’t dwell on the Laura-Essie-Sweeney’s-wife-of-old thing, a brief mention would be more than enough. I’m certain Laura would have neither time nor patience for the notion that Destiny Fate and All That Jazz threw her together with ginger minge, and even if it were technically true, she’d still want this relationship to work on her terms – and Sweeney obviously has a problem with Laura’s cheating, her relationship with Shadow, her personality (though he also recognizes they’re alike in many ways), and all that maps onto his anger and sadness over becoming irrelevant over time, so it’s not just about Laura. So yeah, let them be their own (grumpy, spiky, dysfunctional) people, and let Laura’s dynamic with Sweeney not be shaped solely by his past and his issues.

Cabin Pressure

Carolyn Knapp-Shappey & Arthur Shappey & Martin Crieff & Douglas Richardson

Genres: Action/adventure, Canon-style plot, Humor, Slice of life

I just want more canon-y stories with their loopy humor and their weird yet loving family dynamics among the crew. Shenanigans in mid-flight or in the tedium which precedes and the tiredness which follows them. Someone smuggles (knowingly or not) an exotic animal on-board, legal, security, medical and/or slapstick chaos ensues. A mechanical, passenger- or smuggled-goods-caused problem arises and is solved during a journey. More games played on board GERTI. Playing around with a specific destination, like in many episodes, would be a plus. If it helps inspire you, my favorite episodes in terms of tone and content are: Douz, Gdansk, Johannesburg, Limerick, Ottery St. Mary, Uskerty, and Xinzhou.

For this canon, I prefer gen with maybe, if you want to go there, some Douglas/Carolyn on the side. That’s a ship I always thought had potential – they understand each other very well and trust each other... some of the time, but they’re both also snark-masters, tend to look down on anyone not as smart or quick-witted as they (Arthur being the sole – occasional – exception), and are really good about keeping their defenses up against other people. But I requested the gen group, and I definitely want the gen group – please don’t feel pressed to write the ship, that’s just a wild suggestion I threw out there.

Moonlighting (TV)

David Addison/Maddie Hayes

Genres: Action/adventure, AU - canon divergence, Canon-style plot, Established relationship, Getting together, Humor, Mystery/procedural, Slice of life

I osmosed tons about this show over the years but didn’t get around to watching it myself till recently. And then I loved it much more than I thought I would! Yeah, sure, some of it’s dated, and some of it’s ropey in terms of how the characters interact ( all the casual sexism and battle of the sexes stuff are very 80s indeed), but the chemistry! the banter! the funny! the shiptease! Gimme!

I tried to come up with lots of prompts, but ended up with a list of stuff I love about the show – and would love to see in fic – with some prompts mixed in. Hope it helps! Basically, give me as much of the show’s “flavor” as you can, and I’ll be happy.

My two DNW requests for this canon would be: please ignore everything that happens post-S3 (so if you want to write Maddie/David in the aftermath of their resolving their UST, please go ahead with the canon divergence of your dreams, I bet it’ll be a million times better than canon), and please don’t have secondary characters (Agnes and Herbert, or Maddie and David’s relatives and exes) hijack the story. They can be in it, but I really do want a David/Maddie story, despite the canon sometimes sidelining them due to behind-the-scenes shenanigans.

Prompts/likes:

-all the banter, wordplay, innuendo, puns, comic repetition

-arguments – those long, explosive, funny, overlapping, always hilarious fights they have

-breaking the fourth wall – yes, please. In canon, they often seem to know they’re fictional characters but ones that exist in the real world, with studio lots and such. Do they now know they’re characters in a fanfic of fictional characters that also exist in the real world, or something even more mind-screwy?

-David calling Maddie “blondie blond” – it just makes me laugh – and Maddie calling him “Addison” when angry but “David” when worried or when shit hits the fan

-random cultural nods – off the top of my head, canon referenced Spanish poetry, objectivism, American realist drama, Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare, of course all the Hollywood tropes and genres; go high or low culture, go famous or obscure, even if I don’t know the reference, I want it! Ditto if you decide on a plot that parodies and pays homage to a cultural landmark story (The Silence of the Lambs? Much Ado about Nothing? A Hitchcock movie? Something else?), I’d love it!

-speaking of: I love the pun-tastic episode titles referencing everything under the sun

-all the canon-era detail which both takes me back and jars me with how much things have changed: people smoking in public buildings, seeing someone off at the boarding gate, dial and push-button telephones, VHS rentals, no cellphones/internet, all the 80s fashion and permed hair… Throw it in just for kicks or weave it into the plot (e.g., they’re following someone and only have a paper map and their own faulty sense of direction to help them)

-casefic – I love the silly plots (and chases! All the chases!), which often combine really gruesome outcomes or real violence with slapstick. I’d be especially tickled if you wrote a plot that starts out silly and seemingly innocent (e.g., they get “hired” by a kid who lost their homework) but ends up deadly serious, or vice versa

-I also love the flashes of really dark humor, usually provided by David snarking about plot developments, though my favorite example remains the intro to S3E1, with David assuring his sick mother that they’ll sweep the Emmys, and then they lost big time and we see a title card saying that the mom died on Emmy night. What can I say but: ROFL

-Maddie and David are really pretty terrible detectives, but they always manage to solve the mystery – or a solution falls into their laps – and I’m here for it

-Blue Moon almost never seems to take on actual paying clients – what else might David and Maddie do for much-needed cash? Bodyguards, extras on a movie, professional consultants on a movie (probably a really shlocky, C-grade production being filmed in the middle of nowhere), dance marathon, talent contest…

-all the shippiness before the UST becomes RST – in canon they slow-danced in a bar, they slept side by side on a plane, he’s snuck into her house multiple times when he was in trouble, etc. etc. etc. The sky’s the limit!

-maybe they get together in a different way than in canon and/or they have a relationship that departs from canon? Or how about if they resolve the UST as they do in canon, but then find a way to be both partners and lovers, without getting so wrapped up in what they each think the other one should be that they spoil everything? Basically, could they be mature enough to have a relationship that works for them both, or be friends with benefits, or hell even break up but remain each other’s most important person (and maybe still have sex occasionally)?

-tropes – the canon plays with so many tropes, you could too! Some suggestions: there’s only one bed, undercover as lovers/married/client and bodyguard, waking up married, any variation on Lady and the Tramp you can think of (including David having to pretend he’s a class act while Maddie has to play the slob, for a case or because of a situation with their families or…), they get zapped by a mad scientist they’re surveilling and swap bodies, etc.

-road trip! Oh the possibilities...

-playing Twenty Questions or another game during a boring stakeout, and personal revelations come spilling out

-Maddie’s experience as a model proves key to cracking a case, whether you want to make the whole story a riff on the world of fashion (The Devil Wears Prada parody, anyone?) or use that as a surprise plot point

-they get tangled up (again) in international espionage and go on a globe-trotting adventure, either chasing a MacGuffin or being chased – basically, get them out of Los Angeles and their relative comfort zone, and send them Indiana Jones-ing all over the world

-the show often makes 80s-typical mean jokes about Russia and the Cold War – what if a case took Maddie and David to the Soviet Union in its last years? Give me all the culture clashes, David being obnoxious and Maddie trying to be diplomatic, all the vodka, chases down frozen streets and over the frozen Neva River, dodging the KGB, sneaking around behind the scenes at the Bolshoi or Kirov Ballet and winding up on stage…

-when they visit a “rough” dive bar in S1, there’s a whole scene of David teasing Maddie to show tough-girl attitude, and she quips that she can’t wait till he has to accompany her to a high-society event. Um, yes please!

-they attempt to date like a regular couple, and stuff keeps getting in the way – whether they go to the opera/ballet and a fancy restaurant, or a basketball game and out for beers, or they try a quiet dinner and a movie at home (or all of the above!), canon-like complications keep interrupting. But then again, the ridiculous way they work is what brought them together in the first place. Bonus points if the fish-out-of-water partner ends up getting into the other one’s date-activity of choice, while snarking all the way.

-David has been to Maddie’s house multiple times – including to sleep over, both platonically and not – and they’ve both crashed at the office, but what little we see of David’s place, it seems to be a bachelor pad/hovel with a large yet mysteriously unfurnished living room. Maddie visits David/comes to spend the night/hides out with him from villains, and shenanigans ensue.

-canon often resolves the clash between David’s opportunism, happy-go-luckiness, and cockiness, and Maddie’s gentle idealism, worrywartness, and romanticism, by having David “win.” That can be funny, but what if the plot gave Maddie the right a bit more?

-I’m honestly not that into smut for this pairing - a fade to black, something implied, something referenced, innuendo, maybe brief flashes (heh) of what the characters think about/imagine/remember work much better with the canon’s overall tone, I think.

Likes:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and missing-scene stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love stories about characters at work and play, group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples (new lovers/first times as well as long-term/established couples), UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too, etc.

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I especially love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an actual workplace/casefic/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). Or, if they can’t get along, show me why not and what’s preventing them from finding common ground.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), oh-god-why-did-it-have-to-be-you-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this, bickering yet loving couples, faithfulness, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping. A dynamic I cannot resist is shipping a couple who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop and criminal, spies from opposite sides, one betrayed the other or they betrayed each other), and while they love and want each other they’re also not willing to change sides or surrender/compromise their identity for the other’s benefit, and how they might (or not) make their relationship work anyway.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it-hammer-and-tongs, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. When it fits the characters and their canon dynamic, you also can’t go wrong with we-both-wanted-this-for-forever-and-now-we-both-know-it-so-here-we-go-diving-in-headfirst. For het and/or slash, oral, vaginal, anal incl. pegging, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” or “clit” sexy.

DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, kinks, incest, underage, genderswap/genderbent characters, xeno, non-/dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore/blood and come are fine), toilet humor, character bashing, issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons, unrequested ships, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (unless it’s canon), serious illness or injury, pregnancy and children, holiday or wedding setting/theme, secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job, reference to RL current events, 1st/2nd person POV, AUs which have nothing to do with canonf