#literally started the agent Carter au in 2020

[avengeclintasha]

12 & 2

Ahh these are the two that have been in my WIP folder the longest out of everything. It's been AGES since I worked on either of them but they both are still in there in hopes that one day I actually do write them and flesh them out to their full potential.

12. Age of Ultron AU

Okay, I think this is literally the oldest WIP I have, it was SO long ago when I started this one--it's basically age of ultron but with Peggy in it and a few other details changed bc I both loved and hated age of ultron when I first started this fic (now I can say with certainty that it's one of my least favorites, but I don't question my past self and her movie tastes)

It follows the plot of age of Ultron and everything kind of still happens in the same way major plot point wise—I only have the very beginnings of it because I wasn't sure how much I wanted to include of the actual movie/how true I should stay to the dialogue, but there is a part I particularly like that I'll leave below the cut from the first chapter (which is still set before the party scene in the movie but after they fight the first battle, if I'm remembering correctly.

2. ACS3 AU

UGH and this one, this one is an agent Carter season 3 like, what I wished would have been created, and it starts out RIGHT as season 2 ends and it's kind of meant to bridge the gap between the end of agent Carter and endgame, but like idk about years and how long and timelines and stuff got complicated but anyway—

They start out looking into Jack's death and Peggy realizes quickly that he was killed for a file with fake information on her, but just a few short hours after his death and their work at the crime scene, Peggy goes back to the Los Angelous office and though she just reported she was taking more vacation mere hours ago, the head of New York (Jack's old boss) wants her back to run the office by Monday at the latest.

Peggy also gets a call after that from Phillips and Stark about creating SHIELD and making a new organization together and there's supposed to be a whole side plot with her getting offered jobs in the middle of the big extensive plot that's going on

Anyway, Peggy starts combing through old war records and eventually finds out that it's Michael and he's not dead and it has something to do with the Arena Club too, but I didn't plan out all the exact plot of that and eventually after dealing with all of that she takes the job with Phillips and moves to DC and she's only been in her new place for a few days when Steve shows up at her door and that's the end.

It also was meant to kind of have a lot of war flashbacks and flashbacks to childhood with her and Michael, and this is one of my more planned out WIPs I've just never had the time and energy to devote to it to write it, though the first chapter has been edited multiple times I've never posted it, but honestly, it's kind of tempting even though I haven't worked on it in over a year rip. I might post it later on AO3 just because you asked about it.

Thank you so much for asking about these two, they hold such a special place in my heart, and I hope maybe one of them will be posted soon, or at least partially out there for everyone to enjoy :)

More for the Age of Ultron AU for giggles:

"Where is she?" Maria said handing Steve a folder. 

"Who?" He asked taking the folder and opening it. 

"The director!" Steve looked over the room and everyone else was there. Tony and Bruce were sitting next to each other with Thor listening to their discussion. Natasha, Phil, and Clint were sitting opposite them and talking to each other. "Fury's coming too," Hill said looking up and down the hallway. "You'd probably have better luck finding her, Cap. I checked her office and the rest of this floor." 

"I'll be right back," he said. He set his folder and his bag down in the seat beside Clint before leaving to go find Peggy. 

Peggy was very good at hiding inside the intricate hallways and rooms of the SHIELD headquarters, but Steve always knew where she went when she was stressed or needed moments to herself. He checked his office first, then the break room on Natasha's floor, then the training room on that floor. He checked them all with no luck, but then realized where she would be. 

He quickly rode the elevator to the floor with the upper level gyms. Most of the higher ranking agents didn't ever come on this floor because the other gyms were more centrally located on their floors. He knew Peggy liked it here because it was often deserted and he quickly found her punching a sand bag in one of the rooms. 

"Peggy," he said. She instantly jumped at the sound of his voice. She had sweat rolling down her face, and she looked more tired than usual. He walked over to where she was and took her hands in his own. "You alright?" 

"Just needed a few minutes to myself," she said. He began to unwrap her hands, and she relaxed a little because of the familiarity of the situation. This was not the first time this had happened. 

"You're late for the Avengers meeting." He tossed the gauze onto one of the benches near the bag Peggy had brought with her. His gaze came back to her before seeing her face. There was something wrong that she wasn't saying. "Pegs, what's wrong?" 

"Nothing, darling. I'm just tired. It's been a long week," she said. She started to gather up her belongings. She shoved everything into her locker and locked it with her keys. "We'd better get to that meeting." She quickly grabbed her black leather portfolio where she put everything she needed for the day before walking out of the room. Steve quickly followed her to the elevator and got on. 

"Do you have a full plan for the defense conference talks?" He turned to her tying to take her mind away from what was bothering her. 

"Almost. I wanted everyone's approval and input before it became a full plan. The end is a little open," she said opening the portfolio in her hands. She glanced over the content inside before snapping it shut again. "It'll all work out." 

[palukoo]

💖🧐⏳if you'd like!!

thank you so much for the ask :) i always end up making my answers so long so its under a cut

💖 What made you start writing?

so this one is basically impossible for me to answer. the first story i remember writing/trying to write was when i was 6 years old, and i think it was just bc i had ideas i thought were cool! the first fanfic i remember writing was when i was in like 5th grade and i remember i would do some writing and then my friends basically being like oh would you write this and i would handwrite fic during class or lunch or recess or whatever and give it to them, and at that point i was also constantly writing parts of original works, and then it just all spiraled! so at this point it's literally like. why wouldn't i write, what would that be like?

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

oh my god yes. it's awful. i mean, okay, it really really depends on the fic but there tends to be at least one detail i get really hung up on and spend hours researching, which honestly more often than not doesn't end up in the final product? i mean, long time followers, embarrassingly, may remember the agent carter roller derby au which i did research on the history of roller derby to try to make it actually reflect the state of the sport, in some way, in the 1940s. its extremely inconsistent though, even internally. like, for the cats that walk alone, i read the whole play of the women and the short story i named it after and read a little about reno divorces but i did not in fact even rewatch the film before posting it (i did watch it after posting and go oh so i got the timeline a little off but the title works out so much better than i originally intended??) probably the most gratuitous example is the amy fic, because i literally would have well over twenty tabs open in like congress.gov to try to incorporate bills/legislative debate that would actually be somewhat accurate for the early 2000s, and i also did a ton of research on like electoral maps and various theories and whatnot. more of that actually probably shows up in the second, currently unfinished and unpublished part which isn't exactly abandoned but its been a hot minute, because since that's post canon it involves a lot more of me making shit up and often drawing inspiration from actual real bills from corresponding or close to corresponding legislative sessions and modified numbers from elections. which was always :/ bc like. neither early 2000s politics nor tww ideas of politics are really things i agree with but i was like really committed to a degree of real world and canon accuracy. more recent examples for things that are unfinished and unpublished would be like doing research on the climates and demographics of various parishes and towns in louisiana, trying to find a map of railroads in 1940s arizona, reading about the state of maternal medicine specifically with regards to childbirth in the 1940s, and trying to find real postcards sold in melbourne, australia in the 1940s. the first i'm probably never gonna actually really write the fic associated with it and the last three i basically ended up getting vaguer in the writing to avoid specifics. typing this out is fascinating bc damn i've done some specific research abt the 1940s...

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

okay this depends so fucking much. i mean like, in 2020 when i was starting the amy fic, i wrote so fast. like its long as hell so it took me a long time but i would write like 5k in a day some days and i wrote that whole thing at a velocity that i had never done before and never have since. some things i also agonize over more than others i guess? my kiradax body swap au was a wip that i rewrote multiple times over the course of multiple years, but the final version probably didn't actually take that long? idk. the cats that walk alone is the most recent thing i have published and i made the file for it in mid june and published it in early september, but i think i had it mostly done sitting in my docs for a while. my current high focus wip is one i've been working on since november, but its also multi-chapter and shaping up to be longer than anticipated... i'm gonna say the answer varies but tends towards several months, but at a very uneven pace within that. ultimately, i also have the adhd thing of like, if i don't finish a project within a certain amount of time/at a certain level of hyperfixation, it usually will die, and that timing tends to max out within a year, give or take a few months.

[infinitestarsintheskye]

A03 Stats

I was tagged by @kaytikazoo. Thanks lovely! 

I joined October of 2013, and have posted 32 works in 10 different fandoms.

What are your five most popular works of all time? (starting with the most kudos)

1. When I Kissed The Teacher with 180 kudos (Captain America/Agent Carter - Steggy Single Parent/Teacher AU) 

2. The Lady and the Chauffeur with 124 kudos (Agents of Shield - FitzSimmons Downton Abbey AU) 

3. Four with 94 kudos (Agents of Shield - FitzSimmons, pre-canon speculation) 

4. I’ll Always Be With You with 93 kudos, (Captain America/Avengers/Agent Carter - Steggy Endgame Canon Divergence)

5. 2015 NMTD Secret Santa with 83 kudos, (Nothing Much to Do/Lizzie Bennet Diaries - Beadick, Pedrazar, Donalduke, Dizzie, Various drabbles) 

What are your five least popular works? (starting with the least kudos)

1. Lydia’s Spiral with 8 kudos (Lizzie Bennet Diaries - Lizzie Bennet & Lydia Bennet, post canon speculation fic) 

2. Winter Flurry with 12 kudos (Agents of Shield - FitzSimmons, FZZT poem)

3. Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday with 21 kudos (Agents of Shield - FitzSimmons, Academy Era, How they met fic) 

4. First to Last with 22 kudos (Captain America/Agent Carter - Steggy, Future Fic) 

5. October 29th with 24 kudos (Lizzie Bennet Diaries - Dizzie, Future post canon fic) 

Are you surprised about any of these lists? 

Nah. All of the bottom five I wrote during the fairly early stages of the AoS fandom, when I was about 15/16 years old anyway and not that good a writer, or were written for fairly small, fairly niche fandoms, like NMTD and LBD. The top ones, not really either. When I Kissed the Teacher was written DIRECTLY post Endgame when the Steggy fandom was on literal fire, and was a multichapter fic so got lots of exposure during that time. The 2015 NMTD one is a bit of a headscratcher. Maybe bc I included LBD in there, for legitimately about a paragraph. Who knows, I cannot account for its popularity AT ALL. 

Optional, if you want to calculate it (remember that ao3 will count all the words in a multichap towards the year it is completed, regardless of how much was actually posted that year): How many words did you publish in 2020?

I wrote 157,931 words this year, which is about 100,000 more than I have ever written any other year. I think I doubled my overall wordcount this past year ALONE, and I only started writing fully and properly in about May. 

What’s a favorite fic you published this year?

Oh Other People easily. 

How do you feel like you’ve improved as a writer this year?

Well, I feel a lot more confident in myself and my abilities. I wrote my first ever long form fic, and I pushed myself and wrote things I never thought I ever could or would. I feel like I’m beginning to acknowledge that I can actually write and that I’m not actually that bad at it.

What is something new you did writing-wise in the past year? (new fandom, pairing, setting, genre, collab, etc)

I wrote my first smut! (See Other People) I never in a billion trillion years thought I would write smut, and yet here we are. I surprised myself, by kind of enjoying it too. 

What is something writing-related you would like to try in the future? (check back at the end of the year and see if you did it!)

FitzSimmons Pride and Prejudice AU. I want to do it so badly, I will do it I promise, it’s coming at SOME POINT I just need to figure out the logistics of it, will honestly I think will take longer than writing the damn thing. 

Today’s date, so you can see how your results might change if you do this again in a year

02/01/2021

I think just about every writer I know of has been tagged in this now, so if you are a writer, haven’t done this yet please consider yourself tagged! 

[mhalachai]

A decade that was - looking back at 10 years

I have just enough introspection left in me to pull this off - let's look at what fanfic disasters I've put out over the last ten years, shall we?

2010 & 2011

I was between fandoms at the time, but I had a Criminal Minds kick for a while.

Immutability: Once part of the team, always part of the team. That's what Spencer told himself as he walked up the stairs.

Branching Out (Criminal Minds/Stargate): Jennifer Jareau's first day as liaison for the Department of Defense really wasn't what she expected.

In Darkness (Criminal Minds/Harry Potter): To the world around him, Aaron Hotchner is a (somewhat) normal FBI agent, with a somewhat normal son and a moderately normal life. He's never told his team who he was... before. When he was known as Aaron Black.

These Small Bones (Doctor Who/Harry Potter): It starts with a girl. With him, it usually does.

2012

I dabble in time travel with this next one, and I still really like how the paradoxes of time hold up.

Marking Time (Doctor Who/White Collar): These are the things Peter Burke knows about Neal Caffrey's beginnings. None of these things are true.

Next up, a little four-part Criminal Minds series, featuring Spencer Reid (genderswapped) 

Fragility Optional: Given all that's happened, you'd think no one would expect Spencer Reid to put on high heels and slink out undercover.

But this was also the year that Avengers came out, and my love for Natasha Romanoff sent me down an amazing rabbit hole for the next couple of years, an Avengers/Stargate crossover series in which Natasha Romanoff was John Sheppard’s mother. And that was the least complicated part of it.

A Widow's Tale series (a 10-part series)

The main pieces of this series are Widow Maker, Baba Yaga's Children, and Old Soldiers, the other bits and bobs lead up to it. 

I also dabbled in a bit of Teen Wolf this year, starting Child of the Wolf (Avengers/Teen Wolf) and getting the first five chapters out the door in November-December before I got stymied - I would come back to this 7 years later, see below.

Child of the Wolf (MCU/Teen Wolf): Caught between hunters and werewolves, Stiles almost doesn’t have time to wonder much about the hot new redheaded Deputy Sheriff or the bow-wielding sarcastic gym teacher. Almost.

2013

Before Agent Carter came out, I wrote a Peggy Carter biopic, going off the riff of, what if Peggy had touched the Tesseract and stopped aging? It's two-thirds done.

Rhapsody in Blue: For decades, Peggy Carter has had only two constants in her life: Howard Stark, and the Winter Soldier.

2014

Agents of Shield came out and as I tend towards dark-haired girls with mysterious powers, I latched onto Skye for five minutes. Here's a quick installment...

Hell's Gate: In the wake of revelations of Skye’s past, Phil Coulson wasn’t expecting to find out what happened to Skye’s parents, and certainly not from a former Russian agent turned SHIELD operative showing up unannounced on his plane.

And oh! I finished Inevitable! My Anita Blake/Harry Potter epic, started in 2005 and in limbo for a number of years, I finally got it wrapped! Although, epic; I am fast closing in on its wordcount with Hour of the Wolf.

Inevitable (Anita Blake/Harry Potter): A late-night run-in with werewolves in the woods outside St. Louis dumps Harry Potter into a whole new world of trouble. Now Anita Blake has to deal with a new charge as well as Death-Eaters come to town.

Also in 2014 I started my baby, Hands of Clay, my Stucky kid!fic in which I attempt to give Bucky and Steve a happy ending, and Natasha and Clint happy childhoods.

Hands of Clay: James Barnes leads a busy life as a single working father in New York. But when his childhood best friend Steve Rogers falls back into his life, James will have to re-learn what love, friendship and family are really all about.

Also randomly I wrote a small Night Court fusion with the Avengers that I still love and am including it in the list.

Then Thor: The Dark World came out and after I punched a wall at yet another MCU mother getting fridged (Frigga, fridged, get it?) I started a resurrection fix-it featuring Loki’s children on earth, that was going to be great only I lost momentum, but the structure of this were good.

Hel's Bones: Magic pulled Frigga back from the realm of the dead, but not even Loki's children can shield her from the consequences of long-ago actions coming back to haunt her.

2015-2016 

the rest of 2014-2016 were consumed with Hands of Clay. But then! Tumblr caught my eye with a figure skating anime, and after the longest time, I checked it out. Which led to

2017-2018

when my Yuri on Ice! phase began. 

First up, we have the Blood in the Water series:

Water's Edge: For years, Yuuri had heard people say Viktor’s skating was otherworldly. He never thought they were being literal.

Undertow: Viktor Nikiforov has spent his entire life pretending to be normal. It's never enough.

There Be Dragons: Seven-year-old Otabek knew two things - he wasn't really related to a dragon, and he was never going to fall in love. Things like that belonged only in fairy tales.

A Late Frost: The one thing that Yuuri didn't expect about the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston was that beating two world records and winning a gold medal was going to be the easy part. (WIP) 

I also wrote a bunch of YOI one-shots: 

Midnight Salchow: Yuuri is convinced he has hidden his shameful past as a writer of Viktor Nikiforov RPF. Yuuri is mistaken.

Eight Days A Week: okay but a nanny!AU where Viktor has somehow acquired a bushel of children and needs a nanny to help care for his screaming brood - enter Yuuri, freshly retired from what he thinks was a failed figure skating career, and in desperate need of money to help pay off his student loans.

Sex Maniac: Katsuki Yuuri, Grand Prix silver medalist and a sorry example of a human being, was seventy percent sure that sleeping with Viktor Nikiforov had turned him into a sex maniac.

The Trials of Anteros: Of course Yuuri knew about Viktor’s hockey-playing twin brother; everyone in the figure skating world did. But given that Viktor had never mentioned the man, Yuuri never expected to get home one day after practice to find Vladimir Nikiforov cluttering up their apartment.

An Uncertain Arabesque: Yuuri never went to the banquet. Viktor never looked into the eyes of a beautiful, sloshed Japanese figure skater, never had the spark brought back into his life with the idea of coaching, and of love.  Viktor never saw the gash in the ice, not in the last minute of his free program at Russian Nationals, and couldn’t prevent his blade from catching in the depression, sending him to the ice with a broken knee and a ruined skating career. Viktor never saw any of it coming.

Silver and Glass: February 14, the Four Continents started in two days, and Yuuri was freaking out. Valentine's Day was the least of his worries... or so he thought.

and lastly, the fantasy swordmaster AU that consumed my summer vacation in 2018:

And each man stands with his face in the light: After the carnage on the fields of the Elven Wars, Viktor Ivanovich, general of the northern armies, was done with fighting. When Prince Regent Yuri asked him to track down the mysterious man who slew the Elven King, Viktor complies, hardly knowing how that one action will change his life forever...

Also in 2018, something kickstarted me down the road of wondering what it would be like if Clint Barton (Hawkeye) was raised by Susan Pevensie (formerly queen of Narnia), as one does.

Turn, Archer, and Heed the Wild Hunt (MCU/Chronicles of Narnia): In the summer of 1983, Clint Barton goes to live with his new foster mom in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. Now he just needs to figure out how negotiate this new life... and also what's up with all the strange things happening in the night.

 2019

And as I mentioned in yesterday’s, post, 2019 was the year of salt, in which I got cheesed off at Avengers: Endgame and resurrected Child of the Wolf, and then started my current obsession with time travel and other paradoxes:

Hour of the Wolf (MCU/Teen Wolf): Allison Stark has spent her entire life trying to live up to her father's sacrifice. But when the universe itself starts to dissolve, desperation and magic come together to push Allison back in time to try to right the wrongs.

2020

Who knows where we go? I hope it's going to be great :D

Thanks to everyone who's been hanging out with me in this pocket of fandom!