#hellz yeah chiastic structure

[turanga4]

Favorite fic: Mysteries - I love how evocative it is xx

Thank you so much, friend!

That one was an incredible struggle, but I'm proud of the result, so I'm so glad you like it too!

I Like Attention Challenge: tell me about your favorite fic.

[turanga4]

Fic Stats Game

Rules: Give us links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most bookmarks, fourth most comments, fifth most words, and fic with the least amount of words.

Thanks thanks for open tag, @midnightstargazer!

Math is hard, but...

Most Hits: Oh noes it's lil baby turanga's head hop jamboree. This (actual title is After the War) is my "longfic" which is actually just twenty short fics stapled together, and I wrote it when I was very new to fan fic and had truly no idea what the HELL I was doing so it is cringe cringe cringe time when I re read it now. Nevertheless, it holds a special place in my heart.

Second Most Kudos: Accidental Magic which is also quite old but aged decently well, my lil stab at understanding Harry's evolving sense of self as he moves past the Dursleys.

Third Most Bookmarks: Argh it's the head hop. Rather than link that, though...this is the first time I've actually checked to see if lil baby turanga even GETS bookmarked and truly, whut the FUCK is going on with Aftereffects? It's a tiny buried gen one-shot that every now and again sort of blows up, and whoa wow huh it evidently has 43 bookmarks (only 30 of which are public). Unreal.

Fourth Most Comments: Mysteries, which cool cool, I am proud of that one. My first actual ship piece, when I think about it, and hellz yeah chiastic structure.

Fifth Most Words: With caveat that all but the one thing that is 14K, is less than 2 K....that'd be Animals, which posits a besties situation between Remus and Firenze.

Least Amount of Words: I have a handful of 100 word drabbles, so might as well share the first one of those: Relief. Featuring good godfather Sirius Black.

Tagging (no pressure) a few people i can think of who have more than six works out there who i don't remember seeing as already tagged: @saintsenara @greenhousethree @ala-baguette @ashesandhackles @broomsticks

[turanga4]

fic writer asks! 🌈

Ooh ooh ooh I LOVE THIS QUESTION THE MOST.

Cute emoji ask game here.

🌈is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

Yes. But @evesaintyves knows, because she is Writing Coach and Finest Beta.

Mysteries kicked my arse.

Like, not even a normal amount of arse-kicking. It was a knock-down, drag-out, fight fight fight, start to fucking finish, every single word like a tooth pulled from the back of my jaw. I started, I stopped, I gave up, I restarted, it seriously took at least 20 hours and it's....less than a thousand words. I had no idea how to make my ideas even remotely cohesive, I did some really stoopid things with figurative language, I struggled mightily with tense and time. I got such excellent suggestions and they all pissed me off because acting on them would mean working harder than I ever had before in a fic. Indulge me for a moment as I share a screenshot from the beta doc:

Ultimately, this is one of the pieces I'm proudest of, a thing I learned the most from. So...it was all so very worth it. But...whoa.

[turanga4]

Fic Author Self Rec

Thanks thanks, @ashesandhackles! I love to see these, because a carefully selected assortment of five is a great lil introduction for me to new content, a nice glimpse of a given writer's style and themes.

I do mostly one-shots, mostly gen, mostly connected to themes of human resilience and human connection. Here are five I feel good about. Feel free to check 'em out.

Unfinished A humble birthday offering for the goddess @evesaintyves, in which the Fat Friar grief-counsels Harry in the days after the War.

Socks Tiny fluffy one-shot of Harry and Ginny in the Burrow during the summer of 1998.

Mysteries Hellz Yeah Chiastic Structure: an alternate POV of the battle at the Department of Mysteries.

Accidental Magic: A meta fic about how Harry came, over time, to move away from how the Dursleys saw him and more into his own self.

New Ice on a Lake: Turanga stab at "Harry Potter Needs Therapy."

Tag time! @greenhousethree @sliebman10 @ginnyw-potter @sleepstxtic @mirrorofliterature

[turanga4]

tell me about padma fic please 💖

Thanks thanks for asking, and also thanks thanks to @hinnyfied! WIP ask game is here.

I need to get back to this one.

I have the opening, a few middle beats, and the last lines that call back to the beginning because Hellz Yeah Chiastic Structure. Everything else...needs a lotta work.

Excerpt:

Her mum’s office was in a brownstone building on Victoria Park Road, near the garden where riotous shrubs of flowering redcurrant grew taller than her childhood self.  The office had lush white carpet, a soft blue sofa, a smooth little table and a bookshelf full of toys.

Parvati beelined to the sand tray, its little figures heavy like chess pieces in her hands, spinning wild stories while she made things fight and kiss.  The mosaic set drew Padma in most: plastic tiles in different shapes and colors, bound like the figures by the confines of a tray. Red and gold and green and blue, corners and edges to bump and to nestle—maybe, if she did it right, there’d be space for every piece.  Her mum watched them both with a curiosity that wouldn’t really make sense until fourteen years had passed.

[turanga4]

Can I ask you #15 right back? Because I'm always so impressed with how you are forever learning.

You are so sweet, along with all the wonderful humanz who have given so generously to the project of shifting lil baby turanga towards current toddler stage.

Ask game here.

I honestly had no idea, when I started writing fan fic in March, how much, exactly, I was going to learn this year. I, like, actually studied writing at a prestigious four-year university back in the day: I thought I knew things, I thought I had tools. I quickly realized that I knew almost NOTHING about plotting or point of view, and then I banged my head for months against dialogue and tense. And this is to say nothing about things like epigraphs epifauna epithets or Hellz Yeah Chiastic Structure.

But the thing that I actually learned, reading and writing Harry Potter fan fiction while navigating some of the life shit that led me to go "hey, I wonder if stories about fictitious wizards would work as Trauma Therapy," participating in Hell Competition and finding, refining, and using my voice...is weirder, harder won, and more precious than any achievements in learning how to write. I learned that I actually am, for better or for worse, a Gryffindor, a person who holds courage close and will choose it on purpose regardless of their fears. I discovered, through the Sorting Hat Chats quiz, three basic words that encapsulate a lot that has driven me for years without me even having the language for it: "steadfast intuitive morality." And, in big ways and small ways, ways that made sense and ways that were to all observers including me utterly fucking ridiculous, I learned about what it looks like--for characters, for real people, for ME--when people take actions that line up with their beliefs, and see those actions through to the places beyond their immediate consequences.

In reading the stories of others, in telling my own stories about people who aren't real, I came to better understand my own different narratives. It's been a wild ride, and it's been so very worthwhile.