#maybe i'll finally get around to the river song diaries

[yesokayiknow]

best part of listening to the edas after only having watched ~1.5 seasons of classic who is that sometimes a guy will turn up and eight's like there he is. my sworn nemesis. the man i battled against in several bodies. the man so horrific i will drop everything to stop. the only man i've ever been afraid of. and i'm like hell yeah fuck that guy. also who is he

[terapsina]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @isagrimorie (thanks, this looks fun 🤩).

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1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

120

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

324,790

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I'll just copy-and-paste from ao3, cuz I'm not writing all that down.

The Vampire Diaries (TV) (25), Legacies (TV 2018) (12), Person of Interest (TV) (9), Once Upon a Time (TV) (9), Leverage (US TV 2008) (7), Shadowhunters (TV) (7), Doctor Who (2005) (5), Arrow (TV 2012) (4), Merlin (TV) (4), Captain Marvel (2019) (3), 苍兰诀 | Love Between Fairy and Devil (TV) (3), Batwoman (TV 2019) (3), The 100 (TV) (3), Willow (TV 2022) (3), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV) (2), The Magicians (TV) (2), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (2), Supergirl (TV 2015) (2), The Originals (TV) (2), Star Wars - All Media Types (2), The Old Guard (Movie 2020) (2), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types (2), The Good Place (TV) (2), Avatar: Legend of Korra (2), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV) (2), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) (2), Charmed (TV 2018) (1), Angel: the Series (1), Wednesday (TV 2022) (1), Star Trek: Voyager (1), Teen Wolf (TV) (1), Star Wars: Rebels (1), Sweet/Vicious (TV) (1), Star Trek (1), Star Wars: Ahsoka (TV) (1), Lost Girl (TV) (1), Legend of the Seeker (TV) (1), Hustlers (2019) (1), Stargate SG-1 (1), Revolution (TV) (1), Sanctuary (Canada TV 2008) (1).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

5 Times The Doctor Talked About River Song With Graham (+1 Time The Fam Finally Met Her) - the 13/River fic where Graham finds the Doctor's missing wedding ring and she gradually opens up about her wife.

“Her name was River Song.” She says once he’s already taken a few steps. He stops, turning around, giving her the opportunity to continue or not as she needs. “She was an archaeologist. And a professor. And a criminal. And she was brilliant and absolutely mad.”

“She must have been. Married you didn’t she?” Graham jokes before he can help himself.

But Doc just grins like she agrees and laughs to herself.

Something uncoils in Graham’s chest at seeing Doc’s face regaining its natural brightness, however tinged with grief. The grief isn’t new either, he’s seen shadows of it in her all along but this is the first moment she doesn’t seem to be trying to hide it. Or maybe the first time she’s not trying to hide from it.

The Suspicious Case of Tribbles - the 13/River fic where River tries to "borrow" the TARDIS for lil'bit.

"Don't mind me. Carry on!" The woman says, dropping a bag of something heavy that sounds like a bag of rocks to the floor and hurrying towards the TARDIS controls. "I'm only here to establish an alibi. A short hop over to the other side of the hemisphere and some 38 planetary hours in the past should do it. I'll send you lot right back to him none the wiser. It'll be our little secret."

She's Come Undone and Set Free - Elejah, Bonbekah, Klaroline and Elena/Caroline/Bonnie/Rebekah friendship story that deals with Elena and Caroline getting to be angry and making Damon pay for what he did to them, as well as supporting each other and beginning to heal. (WIP, but there's only 2 chapters to go).

“I want you to know, that’s not why I will always hate you, Damon.” She strengthened her hold on his face at the look of caution that was surfacing at her words, likely because he’d just now been remembering that not that long ago she’d broken his neck. “I won’t even hate you because of the sire bond. Though I wasn’t lying, it felt like being a slave to your every desire, whether or not you actually voiced them. And the funny thing? I’m not sure I’ll ever know how much me there was when I was making any of the choices that lead to Jeremy dying.”

“What’s your point?” Damon asked and grabbed her hands in a vice-like grip that made it impossible for Elena to try again what she'd done nearly two days ago when she'd regained her humanity. But she'd already known there wasn’t a point trying now that he'd be expecting it, so she didn’t fight to escape him.

“She’s my best friend, Damon. I will never forgive you for what you did to her,” she said and did absolutely nothing as Damon’s eyes widened and he tried to turn around. He wasn’t fast enough. He’d been too consumed by Elena to pay attention to any other heartbeats around them, and despite her age, Caroline had always been an unusually fast vampire.

Morai's Call to Hope - my Star Wars, time travel, Snips and Skyguy fic where Anakin gets pulled into the World Between Worlds three days before his Fall, watches as Darth Vader is about to kill Ahsoka... aaaaaaand jumps forward to stop him. (WIP and I'm very ashamed about it, because I loved writing this story and really hope to get back to it someday)

From behind Anakin there comes again a whisper from a different time: ‘I would never let anyone hurt you, Ahsoka… never…’

But in front of Anakin comes something else.

‘Then you will die,' the Sith says in direct contradiction to everything Anakin has ever promised both aloud and inside his own heart to the closest thing he’s ever had to a little sister or a daughter. And every single cell of his body rebels against a time where he would ever utter those words to Ahsoka. So even as the red lightsaber ignites in the Sith’s hands, Anakin rushes forward and through the fragile line of a portal separating his reality from theirs.

As the Sith’s lightsaber finishes the arch of its blow instead of encountering Ahsoka’s white dual sabers it’s stopped by the intervening block from a blue lightsaber in the hands of the Anakin Skywalker sixteen years out of his time.

You know who you remind me of? - the 13/River fic where the Doctor is in the middle of hiding under a table with Yaz for plot reasons when she hears the sound of her wife's laughter and is immediately distracted from the mission that brought them there.

The laugh is thick with mischief and a galaxy of secrets.

She knows that laugh.

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to. I adore comments and really truly appreciate receiving them, so I do try to respond to them. But sometimes I get into a kind of slump where replying just feels exhausting. And by the time I'm over that, it might have been like two weeks, and then it feels embarrassing to respond.

And sometimes I just don't know WHAT to say.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Last Words. I do have quite a few angsty fics but I usually end them either happily or with an open ending that's got light at the end of the tunnel. But this once I came up with an idea for soulmate-identifying-last-words and then wrote a Korrasami fic for it.

Asami had known that Korra was her soulmate. And like everyone else she was in no hurry to see it proven. And there she might be counted lucky, because she did not learn it for many years to come. They survived the war with Kuvira, and then returned from their vacation in the spirit world, and survived many more battles beyond that. The Avatar lived a long life.

But Asami Sato lived a longer one.

So that has the saddest ending.

Well, that, or maybe what's the point of greater good, which is my Queliot (with a side of Wickoff) story where Julia talks to Quentin during the time Eliot was possessed by the Monster.

She finds him stubbornly looking through the mountain of books, searching for any and every scrap of information on Enyalius they can get. He looks like he hasn’t slept since the moment weeks ago when Eliot managed to surface for those brief few moments to tell them he was alive. Hope’s a bitch that way.

“We need to stop him Q.” Julia says, from behind him.

Quentin’s shoulders freeze in place and he leans forward, hands clenching the spine of the book he’d just been about to pick up.

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

Like I said, I tend to mostly write happy endings. But if I have to pick what I considered as the happiest one, then here's a story that's full of angst in the middle, which made the ending feel even happier because of the contrast.

6 Times Bellamy Tried to Forget That He Was in Love With Clarke (+1 Time He Couldn’t Anymore) - exactly what it sounds like. My big look into Bellamy's head through most of the seasons. Canon almost to the end, where I sharply switch tracks and give Bellarke the happy ending they goddamn deserved.

The first thing he saw as the delinquents pulled aside the sheets of scrap metal to let their two missing people in was Clarke running in front, scraped up but seemingly uninjured. He wished that the relief that overtook him was entirely selfish, that it had to do with the fact that he had his partner back and he wouldn’t have to carry the burden of their people’s lives all by himself. But that was crap.

It was vastly overpowered by the simple joy of seeing that Clarke was alright.

“Hey, we heard an explosion. What happened?” she fired out rapidly as soon as she was in front of him. Face serious and eyes focused entirely on Bellamy, - and it was something that had gotten to be so familiar to him that it almost felt like having her there was akin to getting back a missing limb.

He almost, almost fell to the instinct to pull her into his arms because he was just so damned glad that she was alive that the only thing that saved him was the fact Jasper got there first.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not a lot. But there's been a few occasions where I have gotten some, yes. Mostly the 'this was a waste of my time' variety.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Not... really? On a few rare occasions I've written a bit of spice but I don't think that people that read smut would give me more than 2.5⭐ out of 5⭐.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Yes. When the idea for one strikes. And I don't know if I'd say it's the craziest one, but definitely a fun one is my Stargate SG-1/Leverage crossover where the Stargate Program needs to recruit some thieves.

The Homeworld Security Job. (incidentally this is also the fic that got me the most amount of hate comments).

“I know, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that no one at SGC can go, you need thieves for this mission. And this is a big planet, you guys must have some good ones between those 7.5 billion people. You get me a few of them and I can teach them how to play a wealthy minor Goa’uld long enough to get in and out. But I can’t teach someone to be a good enough liar to not get caught. Not with the time we have here.”

“What do you want us to do, Vala? Grab a bunch of criminals off the street and hope they don’t decide that stealing a Stargate and selling that to the highest bidder instead would be a more lucrative business plan?” Cameron asks.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I'm aware.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Once. My Lunarry fic the ones that seek and find (six years in the relationship of harry and luna) has a translation into Chinese Mandarin 探寻和发现（哈利与卢娜相处的六年).

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

No. It's always sounded kinda complicated.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I do NOT have a one single favorite ship. But there are a few that I will probably never let go of and those are: Elejah, Swan Queen, Hizzie, Bellarke, Spuffy, Doctor/River, Clizzy, Bering and Wells, Kahlan/Cara, Parker/Hardison, Graylora and DFQC/XLH.

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

All of them 😭.

But especially the Star Wars time travel one I mentioned earlier. I love that one so much. And I want to go back to it and finish it. But the stars aren't looking all that bright.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'd like to think that I'm good at getting into characters' heads. Their inner monologues tend to be the easiest part to write (it's the dialogues and surrounding scenes that trip me up).

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Grammar. English isn't my first language, so the fiddly parts of the grammar is what I've picked up through osmosis while reading, which isn't exactly... a flawless way to do it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've done it a few times (mostly in my Clizzy fics, because Izzy's character peppers a decent bit of Spanish in her dialogue on the show) and have nearly always kind of regretted it (I've needed to do fixes nearly every time, had to learn that google translate cannot be trusted the hard way).

19. First fandom you wrote for?

If I remember correctly, then I think that was a very terrible attempt at a BtVS/Stargate SG-1 crossover that has been deleted since then.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

This is a very predictable answer but that's She's Come Undone and Set Free, I'm just really proud of this story for a lot of reasons. And though there are a few other of my fics I love more than others, this one is just... my favorite of all of them.

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Tagging: @vorpalmuchness, @jennifersminds, @muse-oleum, @amandamonroe and whoever else wants to.