#gretchensinister

[tejoxys]

WIP "Find the Word" Game :D

I was tagged by @gretchensinister, who has given me water, aim, plan, wish, and leaf. I'll do the MalVa WIP again, because it just passed the 30k mark and it's consuming my brain.

water: 40 uses

SkekMal slowed his breathing with effort and focused on the rushing of the water. The woods were silent, most other creatures having fled from the scent of blood and open bowel. They would return for the carrion. Some might be worth hunting, if he cared to stick around. There were good, strong trees here to perch in; he could wash away the last of the Castle stench, repaint himself with sap, and disappear.

aim: 1

He could remain out in the world and keep doing everything by halves, as befitted half a person, he supposed. Cheat around the continued insult of his presence on Thra—like a liar. Give advice, but only in riddles. Teach others to shoot, so they could aim where he could not. Keep one eye on his skeksis, tempering him when he could. Enact the Song without acting upon Thra. Find out how invisibly thin a thread could get before it snapped all by itself.

plan: 17

“We will solve this,” he said softly. “Even he… cannot make it here… in only one day. Tomorrow, we will all plan together.” UrVa hummed and rested his chin on urGoh’s shoulder.

wish: 6

In your tree, you sit and make your call through the sinking of the suns, into the purple-tinted hour when the firebugs flicker on their predatory lights. It’s a low, fluid chant in the language of your birth that goes on a long while before starting over. You got the idea from a bird, voiced much higher and sweeter than you, her call so intricate that the pattern seems lost by the end, only to retrieve itself and repeat. You’ve become an expert mimic, but this call is your own. It makes other creatures unwary. There’s a murky story, passing into legend, of one whose singing brought about the Division. You don’t think it was you—the one who broke apart to make you—but you wish it had been, because they gave your kind everything. They gave you the world. Honor them with your song.

leaf: 0, but leaves: 7

They weren’t fighting on the day when they had discovered something mystics didn’t know about themselves. They lay tangled together at the bottom of a gully, screened from sight under thick brambles and drifts of fallen leaves. They’d lost their clothes a while ago. They were lazily playing a game that had started when urVa realized skekMal had two heartbeats instead of one—that they had three hearts between them. What else was different?

Hmmm I'll tag @darrenious, @sylphidine, @caffeinatedpoltergeist, @phenyxsnest to find try, borrow, delight, blue, and star.

[bowlingforgerbils]

Trope: human/no powers AUs

No | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don’t even know |

Maybe it’s because of the fandoms that I gravitate towards, but I am awfully fond of human AUs. There’s something compelling about having supernatural characters re-imagined as humans, dealing with life the human way. The stakes are lower, but also weirdly higher in certain respects. Also it’s fun to incorporate their powers in a different way, like a job or perhaps a special interest of theirs. It’s fun. :)

[azulcrescent]

Hi Azul! :) I started following your silly scribbles about a year ago, and seeing Cheryl model how she came out to her friends and family in the comic helped me articulate my gender experience better with my wife and even come out to my friends and family. Thanks for sharing your art! I also wanted to say that I'm sorry that you're experiencing poor sleep and burnout lately. :( Those can make you feel awful. I've had a chronic illness for the past six years -- and I'm fully aware that's something separate, nor do I want to equate it with your experiences -- but, at risk of giving any unsolicited advice, I do wish someone had said something to me about this when I first felt those as well. Because I was pushing myself to work for 2 hours a day as a special education paraprofessional in a wheelchair due to fatigue and systemic dysfunctions throughout my body -- so I had to quit my job since I was making my health even worse. When I stopped working, I was fully bed bound for a time but even still kept pushing myself to attempt grad school online despite only being able to sit up for 5-10% of the day. My point is that, even when our bodies are burnt out, we still push ourselves because that's generally just our human nature to do. And I wish that during that time someone had gently said it's okay to slow everything down and listen to what my body was telling me it needed.

With slowing down, I also get that finances are a thing, and I wouldn't have been able to recover from severe to moderate ME/CFS without my wife working her butt off for us to cover medical expenses by switching jobs and upskilling. (She jokes that she has no more butt anymore because of those years :'(... )

So, although this is stepping into unsolicited advice, but as someone who was burnt out and constantly eepy for years, I feel like it would be remiss of me to not try to say something and just give a bullet point list of free things that helped my nervous system not be so overstimulated and tired but wired that I couldn't sleep and even when I did it was unrefreshing and yucky to wake up the next day:

•Search for "ally boothroyd yoga nidra" on YouTube and pick a 10 minute video •Do belly breathing to expand the diaphragm (one of the few ways we can give input to our parasympathetic nervous systems -- the rest, digest, and heal system) •When breathing, breathe in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4, repeat to tell your body it can be calm •Spinal flossing in bed: start from your lowest vertebrae you can, try to isolate it with your muscles, and shift it up down left and right, then go up to the next one •Listen to how your body responds to foods: maybe try cutting out gluten and refined sugars for a week to see if it helps in any way; a lot of our immune system is in the gut, and being in a stressed state can cause our immune systems to mistake food molecules for pathogens which then activates the immune system and turns off the parasympathetic nervous system •Drop your jaw fully open like you're going to yawn, then stretch your tongue upward outside your mouth as far as it can go and stretch it around. This is a stretch for the muscles near your vagus nerve near your ear/neck behind the jaw to help them relax •Plan a bedtime routine for the thirty minutes before you go to bed and be consistent •Brain retraining: When you feel stressed or anxious about sleep or being burnt out, compassionately tell yourself "Stop, stop, stop." Thank that part of you for bringing up its concern, then remind that part of yourself that it doesn't need to worry anymore because you are working on recovering and healing. And if the insomnia or fatigue do happen, you have plans for what to do and will be okay. •Remember the conclusion from the American TV show Mythbusters: https://www.tumblr.com/gretchensinister/678474387179077632/one-of-the-most-life-changing-things-i-ever You're still getting rest even if you just close your eyes. You've talked about having ADHD, and while I don't have it, I get that it messes up brain chemicals and can contribute to both insomnia and burn out. There might be a reddit discussion that speaks to you better about medications or deficiencies. I hope you get to rest. Cheering for you. It's always fun to see your art. Thanks for what you do! :) Sleepy cat tax:

Glad to hear you like my comics! And thank you for the very informative and helpful info on sleeping better! Ill try to put your advice to use!

[marypsue]

Reblog game: 10 movies you gotta watch if you want to be a freak like me.

I was tagged by @gretchensinister!

This list is not about your favorite movies (though some could be). This list is not about movies that have had the most artistic influence on you (though some could be). This list is about those movies that helped give you your specific kind of freakiness, whether you watched them once or a hundred times, 20 years ago or 1 year ago. Good? Bad? Popular? Obscure? Could be any of these things. Freakiness can form in a person from any source. Definition of freakiness intentionally left vague.

It was tough to settle on a list, because it was tough to settle on a working definition of 'freakiness' for the purposes of this post, but I think I got there in the end! The ten I picked ended up being:

Treasure Planet

The Lost Boys

Labyrinth

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Ravenous

But I'm A Cheerleader!

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Renfield

Crimson Peak

Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou

And I shall tag...@thelibrarybat, @forthegothicheroine, @titleleaf, @maddie-grove, @amethystunarmed, and also

@bixxelated and @aethersea. As well as anyone whose name isn't here but who'd like to give it a shot!

[queerpyracy]

@gretchensinister tagged me! 💜

Rules: shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist & post the first ten tracks, then tag ten people. If you're not on spotify, just share ten songs that you have on repeat.

my on repeat having been thoroughly fucked by christmas playlists left on for hours while mom and i did baking, i have elected to choose ten songs from it at random based on what i have actually been listening to repeatedly on purpose, which for some reason does not seem to include the christmas songs i did intentionally seek out over the holiday season

so in no particular order:

Cup Runneth Over by Kiki Rockwell

Hei Skål by Songleikr

18+ by Scene Queen

Babylon is Fallen by The Merry Wives of Windsor

Helvegen by Kalandra

Wondrous Love by Bear McCreary, from Black Sails

Burn Your Village by Kiki Rockwell

Rolandskvadet by Trio Mediæval

May it Be by Anúna

Nervous by Maren Morris

tagging @moriarteaparty and @borgevino who are of course each worth five people, but also anyone else who wants to hop on c:

[sylphidine]

I ***believe*** I have sent askbox sunflowers to everyone who didn't have asks closed or was an RP blog where I know their main.

However, I am a tired human recently recovering from a bad bout of respiratory ick and blargh, so if I missed you, please assume it wasn't intentional.

Don't be the anon person who essentially told me what I should be doing with my own blog, that I should have better things to do with my time.

This is a flippin' fandom blog. I have to deal with enough aggravation in my professional social media spaces.

My thanks to all of you who enjoyed them and told me so. As I said initially, sunflowers are very personal to me because of my late partner Joanna, who has been immortalized in my ROTG story "Starmeadow" set in GretchenSinister's The Doors of Perception AU. So when this lighthearted askbox game crossed my dash, I thought of her and figured it would cheer a few of you.

[linddzz]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

@gretchensinister tagged me, and I realized I can't mope about lack of interaction if I don't interact! This ended up being a really fun sort of retrospective :)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

44. tbh I think that's an inflated number since for some reason I posted every single chapter of the Evil Boyfriends Series as a separate ficlet??? and there's like 30 of those.

2. What’s your total word count?

349,680 if my math is right (it rarely is)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Rise of the Guardians, The Hobbit (movies), Fantastic Beasts (first movie only and wrote is in bold past tense there lmao), and now getting back into it (arguably returning to my roots of dramatic hot mess Nightmare/Dream King Sandmen) with The Sandman (Netflix)

4. Top 5 fics by kudos

Safe and Distant (Thorin/Bilbo, The Hobbit)

Mahrâna (The Hobbit, Thorin POV companion to S&D)

A Study on the Habits of the Adult Obscurial (Fantastic Beasts movie 1, Newt/Credence) ((ngl I was surprised this was so high in the ranking))

The Blizzard of '68 (Pitch Black/Jack Frost, Rise of the Guardians)

The Intervention (same as above lol, man that Evil Boyfriends Series was fun)

The Device Has Been Modified (Kozmotis Pitchner/Jack Frost. Rise of the Guardians movie/novels/a wild fuckin "Jack is a sci-fi AI" AU. holy shit I forgot about this one it was a wild blast)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Rarely and not as often as I'd like. I'm also bad at responding to texts from friends tho, so it's a Thing. I love and read every comment repeatedly though!

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

Shiver/Tremble for the Rise of the Guardians. No question. They're also the darkest things I've written. First thing I ever wrote seemed to purge all my darkest impulses out right at the jump.

(I ain't linking those lmao. I don't regret writing dark noncon fic, or even taking on writing it from the predator POV. They're just my very first published works and shit is ROUGH.)

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

The Cultural Misunderstanding series of Safe and Distant and Mahrâna. Based on the fact that they actually ARE finished and I always held that the Evil Boyfriends Series isn't exactly a "good" ending for Jack, even if it isn't a bad one.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Mahrâna had a commenter who was mad that all the dwarves said fuck because "Tolkien wouldn't have them say that."

This was on the sequel to a fic where Thorin and Bilbo explicitly touched their dicks, and thus it remains the funniest comment I've ever received.

(They also thought Thorin was too obviously Mentally Ill and since there were no therapists in Middle Earth they didn't see why anyone would put up with him. So. Y'know. Fuck that commenter in general.)

9. Do you write smut?

YUP

10. Do you write crossovers?

Nah

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Safe and Distant has been translated to Chinese, German, and Russian!

Steady Hands has been translated to Russian

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

Tremble, the equally fucked up sequel to Shiver, was done with a co-author where we went back and forth on chapters!

Currently, Audacity in Human Form has @amahhi as my co-author, as it's written based off of our RP where I wrote Dream and she wrote Hob, and she's who I bounce ideas on for adapting it all into fic form while she also acts as my beta editor.

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

This is like asking for a favorite food why. Hell some of my favorite ships are ones I haven't written fic for (Newt/Hermann, Jayce/Viktor, William Laurence/Tenzing Tharkay to name a few).

(Tbh I wouldn't even say whether or not I write fic depends on how much I like the characters. Amahhi and I also have many rp storylines that are basically full fics of all of the above ships (shout out to the Newmann Star Trek AU that remains one of my favorites ever, along with the Willzing with Werewolf!Laurence). It just depends on if my brain figures out how they'd be written as a fic.)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

A Study on the Habits of the Adult Obscurial. In my heart I still love my version of Credence, who is pretty much an OC of mine with how far I went "oh fuck that" at canon after the first movie. But between the terrible sequels, Rowling going full terf, and the fact that I had not actually plotted out a good outline and was hitting a wall.....yeah that thing's never getting finished. I recently put a note on there letting any new readers know it's officially abandoned.

Things That Were also ran into the problem of me taking on a big fic idea without the big fic planning. I had specific future scenes in my head but didn't have a strict guide on what happened when or how characters would get from A to B. That one I'm more sad about needing to give up on though.

16. What are your writing strengths?

According to friends and comments: dialogue, particularly capturing a characters voice in the dialogue and POV prose, and getting a solid characterization overall.

I'm also told I'm good at making a ship into a convincing couple and how they work as a couple.

Which is good for me, because those are my favorite things to write! Most of my fics are built on scenes of dialogue that popped into my head and the dialogue is what I have the most fun writing (hence why most of my Tumblr posts are goofy dialogue bits).

And I just like taking the characters as they are at a point in their story and going "ok, if these two get together, how does that happen?" and exploring it from there. Tbh I consider most of my successful fics to be character studies hiding in a full fleshed fanfic.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

What the fuck is a story plot????

Is a plot not just "two people take 50k words to figure their shit out with almost no other characters coming in?" What the fuck is actually planning out a storyline with beats to it and an outline? (Trying to get better on the last one, Audacity actually has an outline that includes what specific RP scenes to flesh out or what gets subtracted/added!) (As far as plot goes I've now accepted that I'm not actually A Writer. I just wanna do my drawn out character studies and that's what I'm gonna do damnit.)

Besides that: laying out scenes beyond just the dialogue. Using repetitive descriptive language or getting rambly with it. I legit don't know if my occasional super short sentence lines for character reactions come across as punchy or if it's just choppy and disjointed, which ties in with a general struggle to keep small scenes flowing into each other without getting bogged down in details that fuck pacing up.

According to my various betas: punctuation is my mortal enemy, and I don't know how to make a sentence that isn't a fragment or an eternal run-on. I will sometimes fight them on my sentences and they put up with a lot.

Also, writing discipline in general. I'm uh, very bad at making myself sit down to write even when I want to, and my job tends to burn up the executive functioning points that my ADHD meds give me.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

Did it a little bit for Mahrâna with Thorin speaking Khuzdul, but not more than short sentences and it took a stupid amount of looking things up for a couple sentences of dwarvish dirty talk lmao.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

If we count what was actually posted: Rise of the Guardians.

But there's some notebooks rotting away somewhere with a classic early 2000s isekai LOTR fic in it with an OC that was so much like Tauriel that my old buddy and I joked that "Peter Jackson fuckin stole my OC!!" This isn't a dig at Tauriel bc my OC was rad.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Safe and Distant/Mahrâna are my magnum opus, with Safe and Distant as my personal favorite even though there are bits I'd change (mostly in the smut scene).

I think finishing Mahrâna was a bigger accomplishment and it was overall a bigger challenge to write Thorin's pathos and the mental journey he had to go through, but Safe and Distant was just FUN to write. It was the last time I was young and dumb enough to do things like stay up until 7AM writing nonstop. I think I did a good job of managing to take my strength of chronologically disjointed, shorter character driven scenes and stringing them together into something cohesive. I still like the back and forth flashbacks I did and think I did a good job making the flashback scenes related to the current storyline, even with the flashbacks being out of order.

(Ironic that Bilbo was more fun to write, when Thorin was who I fixated on more ferally and thought about more as a character. I'm having the same thing now with Hob and Morpheus lmao. I love rotating those dark, dramatic, brooding king types in my head, but actually writing the internal brooding out makes me want to chew glass and bully their dramatic asses.)

((still don't know why tf I thought Bilbo would be the virgin of the two of them, or why I have that bit in there with a fucking hobbit being a little insecure about pudge. God I was off base with that lmao))

Tagging @alienfuckeronmain, @avelera, @spicedrobot, @insufferablearchanist

[olderthannetfic]

/728354668790546432/ @gretchensinister it's probably more useful to think about specificity in terms of *wording* rather than what you DNW. if you're on the fence about something like if you think it's something that you can handle "if written well enough" then it's generally better to cast the wider net and DNW that, since you have no idea who will be writing for you. I just got gifted something in an exchange by a writer in my main fandom whose stuff I usually don't care for, and I'm suuuuuper glad I was clear about my preferences in my DNWs since I'm sure if I wasn't they would've written something that was not to my taste (and they still wrote one of the characters as OOC, but nothing can be done about that I suppose). specifically, they love autistic headcanons for everyone, and so I was glad I was specific about DNWing autistic headcanons beyond a few specific characters where that actually follows from their canon characterization, lol

--

[gretchensinister]

To fulfill your request- hospital (or hopital as my fiance and I refer to it in a joking context) brick, and space

Hospital gave me Something To Say and inspired a 16k fic,

Summary:

UrIm goes to UrSen to give them a checkup and faces the difficulty of caring for the body of someone who thinks having a body with needs is a bad thing. But small miracles can happen even in such circumstances. After UrSen's checkup, UrIm and UrLii talk about what UrSen might mean in relation to the other urRu in the Valley, and what needs they all might be ignoring because they seem unthinkable.

Thank you for sending me words! I got really into this, obviously, and I was happy for the excuse to delve deeper into What Is Going On With Mystics.

UrIm has an interesting position as Healer, taking care of beings that are often very uncomfortable with their own bodies.

Also, for the people that are interested, there's a little bit of eroticizing of medical care. Be aware also that I write the mystics as a type of polycule so like, they all have some kind of past or present with each other.

[fenth-eiria]

SkekGra: Are you aware that the Circle of the Suns is basically the Great Conjunction?

UrGoh: S...k...e...k...G...r...a....

SkekGra: I know! I know!

A little SkekGra and UrGoh interaction fom my Au.

Tagging:@gretchensinister @loveforskekgra

[tejoxys]

I didn't read the whole list. 4, 9, 13, please?

ask game for fanfic writers [x]

(secret fact, I can never read too many question at a time on these long ones without pen & paper to write down my choices, or else I'll lose them by the time I go to whomever's inbox to ask them 0u0)

4. what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread?

fghsjfh if we're talking fanfic, this prize might go to a Moomins (novel canon) fic I started thinking about at least fifteen years ago. It was a direct continuation from the end of Moominvalley in November, the last in the series, following Toft as he grows up. There were a few things I was doing with it: 1. I'm fascinated with characters like him who are unique beings (Toft is ambiguously orphaned and is compared to, but not of any, canon species) who have no way of knowing what stage of life they're really in, or how long their lifespan might be. I decided what Toft's parentage was. 2. Because of what Toft is, he was then in a position to lift a curse on someone else that I believe has basis in canon. 3. Endgame polyamorous pile of creatures. As one does.

I wrote around 5000 words of this thing, and it was good, damn it. It survived the deaths of three different computers and still exists on an external hard drive in a box somewhere. I stopped writing it for the usual reasons: got stuck, lost momentum, and forgot 80% of it. :/ My brain is a sieve, and yes, the existential dread is real.

For original work, it's a tie between KM and the Nightmare Story. Both of those date back to when I was 13 years old. Walk Twice is a little younger, but I started doodling what became the main character when I was 16. The reason none of these exist yet is basically just paralysis because art is hard, writing is hard, and all of these could/should involve both, unfortunately. Also I hate being perceived. I dunno, man. Bits of all of them exist, it's just... hard.

9. in an ideal world where you’re already super successful and published, would you want to see a tv or movie adaptation of your work? why or why not?

I'm gonna quote the Stardew Valley creators on this one and say, Only if Studio Ghibli is interested. (But seriously, it is one of my wildest dreams for that studio to pick up the Nightmare Story. Got your flying creatures, got your bizarre magical powers that work in cryptic ways, got sentient landscapes, got kids of various species saving each other - it's got a bunch of elements Miyazaki loves, why not??) I can't say I'd ever want to see live action for any of my stuff. It's not built for it, and I wouldn't want any actors' faces stuck to anyone.

13. talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you.

Uhhhhh hm, well, there is that special category of fic that springs fully-formed out of nowhere and simply works, just lets me write it in one go from start to finish. I have two of these on AO3; they are Vicious Circle and Black Tuesday.

[bowlingforgerbils]

[Ask Game] Writing Patterns

Tagged by @gretchensinister

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern.

The list goes from oldest to newest:

The trouble begins when Crowley is in line at the bakery, picking up scones for his angel. (Averting Apocalypse)

Gabriel was not having a good week. (The Archangel and The Tailor)

One afternoon after Armageddon was averted, Crowley took a good look in the mirror of his Mayfair flat and decided that it was time for a change. (Time for a Change)

Crowley really liked his television. (The Perils of Television Watching)

It was obvious to Crowley as soon as he set foot in the bookshop that something was the matter with Aziraphale. (How to Cheer Up an Angel)

A week after the Apocalypse that Wasn’t, Crowley drove up to Aziraphale’s shop with the Bentley full of plants. (Co-Habitation)

As the first day of the rest of their lives came to a close, Crowley sat in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop and basked in the company of his best friend. (You can stay at my place if you like)

It was a perfect summer day, warm and sunny without a bit of humidity. (Just Enough of A You Know What)

In the quiet town of Tadfield, Anathema Device was doing her best to live a quiet, domestic life. (To Sleep, Perchance to Save a Demon)

For the first time since he had joined the PPDC, Newt felt like a rock star. (Dude, that's my body)

Hmm, what's the pattern? Perhaps that I like to open with short sentences that get right to the point? My stories are usually not that long overall, so that's probably why.

I tag whomever wants to do this meme!

[marypsue]

[Ask Game] Writing Patterns

I was tagged by @gretchensinister! And this makes a nice companion to the last lines meme!

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern.

“Michael?” (between two children of the night, The Lost Boys)

“He never had me fooled for a second, you know. Knew the whole time that he was a suckmonkey!” (into a crimson dream, The Lost Boys)

“I can’t believe you lost him.” (Détente, The Lost Boys)

It’s wrong, somehow, seeing David like this. (at long last alone, The Lost Boys)

The girl telling fortunes on the beach is all soft – fluttering skirts, delicate lace, thick curls, creamy skin. Liquid eyes, plush lips. Like the cotton candy spinning in a stall not ten steps away, fragile, yielding. Soft. (warn your warmth to turn away, The Lost Boys)

It should’ve been Billy. (with mortal pangs, The Lost Boys / Young Guns)

It surprised the hell out of me, but Nelson’s vitals weren’t bad. For a guy who’d been dead for an entire minute. (hungry, Flatliners [1990])

Michael’s head is spinning. (such a sweet thing when you open up, The Lost Boys)

“So. Season two. Any ideas about how to start it off with a bang?” (Something Borrowed, Something Blues, Gravity Falls Transcendence AU)

By the time Edgar and Alan actually make it to the Santa Carla Boardwalk, the Experience Room’s already changed over its theme. [(ever have the feeling that) you've constantly been dreaming this is life, The Lost Boys]

The big takeaway from this one seems to be that I like to start in medias res.

I'll tag @marzipanandminutiae, @mickeymagpie, @seiya234, @astriiformes, and @scribefindegil!

(ETA: also, obviously, as usual, if you're not tagged but you'd like to do this, you can consider yourself tagged by me!)

[queerpyracy]

find the word

I was tagged by @gretchensinister !

I was asked to search my wips for the words water, aim, plan, wish, and leaf. Because almost all of my attention has lately been dedicated to one wip (currently titled Maelos, previously described here) which is over 100k words long, I've stuck with that one and picked a few of my favorite lines for each word. Can't always choose just one, you know how it is.

water:

She closes her eyes. “I can’t help but feel like I’ve pulled him underwater and he doesn’t even know he’s drowning.”

“By the waters of the Sacred Well of Valroy, where the Mother of All once wept for her slain children, let your spirit be tethered to this flesh, to this life which you were given. When you are parted from this flesh and this life, when your soul exits upon your final breath, you will pass upon the road to the Lands of the Dead, to feast in the halls of the Dead Mother and await the arrival of your friends and kinsmen.”

It is the sort of weather in which one imagines water witches crawling out of the mud, and trolls waiting to snatch the unwary.

aim: (surprisingly this one only showed up twice)

“My prince will not need the boy himself to make war, should he choose that road,” Asaf says. “The accusation will be enough, particularly if the princess can be persuaded to confirm it. These many years ago, Suhail was robbed of a fairly agreed upon betrothal to suit the vile perversions of the man who now calls himself king of Vrendel. It is a holy aim, to unseat such an evil man from his throne.”

plan:

“Far be it from me to assume to speak on the behalf of our God,” Jochail begins. “Oh, I cannot wait to hear what comes next.” “Whatever it was that He intended for this world, I cannot accept the notion that the whims and impulses of men who style themselves kings and princes were part of that plan.”

wish: (BOY this one came up a lot)

“It’s a noble wish, to not want to be a burden on those dear to us,” Jochail says. “But to take up the burden of each other is the only way in which we can truly care for our loved ones. Margred looks after you because she cares for you, and while we hope that someday you might be more comfortable going about the city, it should not be for the goal that she would no longer give that care.” “And what if I don’t know how to pick up anyone else’s burden?”

But he can’t leave Almaude in the dark. His mother who used to sing and dance and ride. His mother who wishes he were a monster.

leaf: somehow, in spite of spending just so much time on food, herbs, trees--not one instance of leaf to be found anywhere.

[sylphidine]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

I was tagged by both @gretchensinister and @insufferablearchanist and am thus compelled by their charm and glamour to surrender my secrets! [grin]

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

93 at last count. It will probably stay at that number until 31 March 2024, which is when ROTG Hope Week starts. [I get a lot of mileage out of fandom events that are prompt-based.] My goal between now and the month of March is to complete or add to the chapter count of at least three of the multiple-chapter longfics I've got in various states of progress.

2. What’s your total word count?

AO3 says it's 220,945. I don't know if that counts chapters saved in draft on several of my works, which act as notes files for me. So I'm going to underestimate by a lot and say my word count is more than 200K and will leave it at that.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I'm most well-known for fics in the RISE OF THE GUARDIANS/GUARDIANS OF CHILDHOOD fandom and its subfandom Nightmare Dork University. in the last two years I've ventured into writing fics set in the milieu of DELTARUNE [the videogame by Toby Fox], but those fics are so far into the realm of AU country that I can't claim to "write for the DELTARUNE fandom".

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

A CITIZEN OF THE UNIVERSE AND A GENTLEMAN TO BOOT, which is the first fanfic I posted on AO3 and is still in progress. It's set after the ROTG movie and involves plot threads from the GOC books, as well as featuring several characters from the Rankin/Bass holiday specials.

"Fleecy Shining Streaming Gleaming/Gimme A Mare With Hair", a giftfic based on a prompt from the ROTG Kinkmeme on Dreamwidth from years agone. Still in progress; my giftee is ***extremely*** patient. [sob]

[[ATTIC]] [[NEST]] [[HOME]], my first DELTARUNE fanfic, set in an AU created by @penbwl and featuring the Swatchton pairing.

"A Temptation Averted", set in my Six Guardians AU series, and apparently everybody's favourite of my ROTG Blackice stories, probably because it's so schmoopy.

CALL SIGNS. Ah, CALL SIGNS. The mammoth fic that has eaten most of my current brain capacity, to the point where I have dreams about it. [and plans for sequels] It was supposed to be so simple. A "what if" story where two DELTARUNE characters met in a human!AU and at a different point in their timelines than they did in-game. Then it suddenly roared to life as a whole sequence of events lifted from my own experiences, spread out over an ever-increasing number of protagonists, not to mention featuring cameos from NDU characters. I wrote it to be accessible to people who haven't played the game and had no familiarity with the characters, and I've been told I've succeeded. I expect it will move up in the kudos count the longer it runs... so far it's the highest word-count work I have ever written. EVER.

5. Do you respond to comments?

99.9999% of the time, yes. [see the answer to questions 8 and 11]. I love comments... short comments, long comments, comments that are nothing but emojis and keysmashes, comments that are well-thought-out analyses. As long as the comment is offered in good faith, I'll answer it.

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

If we're being strictly literal with the use of the word "ending", then it's a toss-up between "His Days Like Crazy Paving", "Exit", and "Making Fire".

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

So many of my stories are windows into my characters' "middles", rather than having narrative endings, and I tend to the fluph side of the writing scale. So here's a sampling of one-shots that conclude on a happy note... "Caterpillar", "Starmeadow", "Your First Memory Of All", "Bedtime Story", and "Centres Small And Still".

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've never gotten out-and-out hate on fics. I *have* had someone react negatively when they wanted to use my comment space to plug fics they had written in fandoms I wasn't interested in and I said as much in reply.

9. Do you write smut?

On occasion. I *enjoy* smut... a lot... but I read more smut than I write. "The Joy Of First Flight" is probably my most explicit work to date, and even that is not terribly steamy.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Again, on occasion. CITIZEN ended up being a crossover about halfway in, surprising me rather completely. CALL SIGNS features cameos from other fanon characters, but isn't technically a crossover. AND FEAR AS MY COMPANION is the only work I've written with the initial intent of being a crossover between RISE OF THE GUARDIANS and DOCTOR WHO.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of. I **have**, however, fallen victim to being fooled by AI bots writing what I thought were truly sincere and sweet comments, which I foolishly answered before realizing the truth. Still kicking myself for how gullible I was, but it was at a low point in my confidence as a writer and I was starved for reassurance.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Into a language other than English? Not that I've been informed about. However, someone did make a podfic of my drabble "Hope In A Storm", if that counts as "translation" rather than "transformation".

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

I've collaboratively tossed ideas around with @ksclaw and @piratekingpitchblack that have made their way into character development and plotlines for more than a few Nightmare Dork University stories.

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

HOW CAN I CHOOOOOOOOOOOOSE?

The one that started it all, that punched me in the gut not even twenty minutes after I saw RISE OF THE GUARDIANS for the first time, was Blackice. I devoured then and continue to devour now every Blackice shipfic I can get my little paws on. From there, once I found the NDU subfandom, it was NDU StageFright all the way, although it's now running neck-and-neck with NDU Nightmare Galleon as far as fics I've written. And currently, I have a very active Tumblr tag labelled "i have fallen down the swatchton sinkhole don't even try to rescue me", if that gives any hints.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

I am realllllllllllllllllllly hoping that I can get inspiration for "Sweater Weather" going again.

16. What are your writing strengths?

RESEARCH.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Falling into the timesink that research leads to. [sob]

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

That hasn't come up in any of my fics so far, other than throwing gratuitous Italian into dialogue for my OC Mama Michelina.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

If you don't count the self-insert novelization of YELLOW SUBMARINE that I wrote when I was fourteen, then ROTG would be the first fandom I've written for.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

That's a toughie. The most ***personally satisfying*** fics I've written have been "Deal The Cards", which is a love letter to one of my favourite relatives, now deceased, and "Which Witch", one of the few times a story came pouring out of me without needing to be edited to shreds.

I am hesitant to tag people because when I've done so in other ask games, it has often backfired on me. I love all my mutuals and don't want anyone to feel left out. Therefore.....

WHOEVER READS THIS AND WANTS TO PLAY, CONSIDER YOURSELF TAGGED.

[linddzz]

So I've been tagged by @omgcinnamoncakes and @gretchensinister now for this game. Which is fun because it assumes I'm organized enough to have a WIP folder and that the names aren't a ton of "untitled" docs that I have to figure out every few months.

I tend not to make things until after I write it, so my names are mostly quick descriptors for me

RULES: post the names of the files in your WIP folder. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

Audacity in Human Form Ch3 WIP/Rough - I'm forcing myself to try to get the rough of this done today actually. The source of the "oyster nightmares" snippet is in this bad boy

Congratudolences on the Surprise Marriage, Hob

Shit-wizard Hob

Feral Cat Morpheus

Why Viktor Isn't Forced To Come to Parties Anymore

StarTrek Newmann AU logs

Boffinshield Halloween

Let's see I'm gonna tag

@insufferablearchanist @avelera