#will i write the alternate version out in ramble fic form??

[jennyandvastraflint]

Would love to hear more about your thoughts on the commercialisation of fandom!!

Ooooh, boy you've opened a can of worms. I took a Fan Studies course at uni for a module bc I could choose it, and I did a lot of research into this specific topic... I hope it's okay that I'm just putting in some of my slides and then summarising underneath each!

Now, fandom in, for instance, fan fiction spaces, works on the basis of a Gift Economy in which gifts rather than money are exchanged. However, these gifts aren't just meant for one person, but for many, and even when you for instance do an artwork or a fanfic for someone, other people can still ALSO read it. These gifts can (but don't have to) be responded to with another gift, be it a comment on a fic, or a fic in return. Now, I could go into much more detail here, but I recommend checking out for instance this text by Trisha Turk on the TWC for some more in-depth stuff about this. (I'll list all the sources I used in the presentation in the end btw!) The gist of it is that fandom is a very complex system in which the reciprocation of gifts - and therefore labour - is distributed across the community.

(more under the cut)

HOWEVER capitalism, as always, comes along and tries to ruin things for profit.

Fandoms continue to form because of the unrestricted movement and no one dictating what is well, "really" canon and what isn't. I'm sure you've witnessed some fans in more recent years refusing to ship things that "won't become canon anyway", positioning the canonicity of a ship or a scenario higher than... well, their own critical reflection and interpretation OF the media and their own creative endeavours. At the end of the day, canon for me personally is something to draw on, negotiate with, or reject if it's stupid, while more recent fandoms I've seen sometimes go about their engagement with fandom as a sort of... worshipping of canon almost, and where being noticed by the creators is sort of the ultimate goal.

Now, this is of course connected to corporations realising that hey, actually people engaging with our media and creating something about it bring in numbers, and with them being able to make a profit off of views on social media, they seek to drive certain forms of engagement with the content. However, they are of course seeking to police HOW you engage with things, and don't you dare stray from their vision too much. This, of course, harms especially marginalised communities who propose alternative readings of media, who subvert the show itself and who transform it into something else, adding themselves into the work and into a world where, by design, they were invisible. It's also an attempt to undermine fan activism and grassroots organising by fans (if you wanna hear more about fan activism shoot me another ask and I will ramble <3 edit: link to post about fan activism) by keeping them in line with a sterilised version of fandom. In this sterilised and controlled version, the forms most often encouraged are things like video edits (but don't be too out there, that's bad too) that can be consumed like content by fandom... They like video edits, sterilised fanart, and things that are easily consumed and bring numbers, but "don't you dare write that nasty Spirk fanfiction where they have sex in the captain's chair! Ewww, yuck yuck!"

Rather than having a fandom driven by community, you have one driven by consumption, and that has become increasingly clear in the past few years, with readers on fan fiction asking "When next chapter?", pressuring artists, writers, etc. for more 'content' for them to consume without a) participating in the Gift Economy fandom is built upon and b) realising that these fan works are gifts to the community in the first place, and not content... These are, by the way, often the same fans who will cheer on AI because now they can finally read a story they wanted someone to continue :D Instead of using their own fucking brain, they're asking a bot trained on scraping works to produce them some bad, surface level jumble of words just so they can consume, consume, endlessly consume without ever having to think.

A few years ago (well in like, the late 2000s), a site called FanLib wanted to profit off of the resale of fanfiction, but were quickly shut down. Their mistake was that they mistook the community of fandom for a commodity to exploit for their own commercial interests. I'm not sure you've seen it, but Wattpad has sent authors emails asking them to update their fics frequently because it would appease the algorithm (see Tumblr Post about this here), which leads me to my next little point!

Algorithms! If you have ever done fan edits and posted them on sites like TikTok, Instagram, etc., you'll have noticed that... unless you post regularly and frequently (like. one edit a day at least), the algorithm will NOT push your video at all and it will be buried. Algorithms are based on how well a post performs not in terms of actual community that is built, but of course on numbers. Wattpad also functions on an algorithmic principle, which is why you have some........ individuals coming to AO3 and complaining about the supposed algorithm, spamming their work and reposting it, yadda yadda. Basically, these fans are so used to being spoonfed by an algorithm by now, they are confused when they are actually left on their own and are supposed to learn some basic fandom rules. It's honestly frightening to see fandom not only be reduced to this surface level interaction and to number-based algorithmic systems, but also to the trend-hopping TikTokification of fandom.

A study done by Booth and Dare-Edwards published in 2021 that focused on school age children basically came to the following conclusions... Children still connect "fan" with the same stereotypes of obsessive and unruly individuals that were plaguing us thirty years ago. A whole bunch of children think fandom is a thing of the past and that it peaked in the early 2000s - and while fandom of course is different now and has changed with the spread of the internet, fandom very much still is A Thing. Further, children connected fandom and being a fan mostly with buying merchandise and collecting, and also with plain consuming content, echoing "neo-liberal associations of ‘emotion’ with ‘buying power’, but at the same time, seemed to pathologize those who practice fandom (as they see it) ‘too much’" (Booth and Dare-Edwards 230). The text concludes that while there has been an explosion of media and you are becoming more multi-facetted in what you are a fan of, lilypad hopping and essentially abandoning fandoms after a brief period of surface level engagement and consuming content is increasingly becoming more common. From my own experience, this is for instance the case with shows like Willow (2022), Good Omens(ish), etc. Pretty much anything more recent doesn't have as stable a fanbase and if you enter the fandom a month too late it's already fizzing out. It's really fucked up, honestly.

Right, after that long tangent about this, I want to bring up ancillary models, which is an attempt by capitalist companies to market the previously unwanted Gift Economy of fandom as something new and desirable, but something they are in control of.

Ancillary Content Models try to lure fans in with "free" Behind-the-Scenes content. The guise they have stolen from fandom of acting like a Gift Economy of saying "here, this is for all our dedicated fans <3 Consume :D" is used to downplay the commercial infrastructure these Content Models (honestly it's already in the name). The "gifted" content is more concerned with getting loads of people to individually consume as much of it as possible to create an alternative revenue on for instance social media through views, clicks, likes, etc. They're essentially trying to commercialise our viewing time and keep us engaged with that additional content as much as possible. Rather than having a community that comes together to share their ideas and stories around a metaphorical campfire, Ancillary Content Models want each person alone to sit and stare at the stuff they put out as much as possible, always placidly clicking "like" and demanding more. They also want to cultivate an "official" fan community (aka the ones most dedicated to consuming additional content) that they can monitor and control, and they don't encourage anything that's too... out there, too subversive, too queer, etc. Coined "re-gifting economy" by Suzanne Scott, capitalism with these Ancillary Content Models has warped the Gift Economy fandom functions on into a model that equates consumption with community, and which wants to profit off of fans' engagement and their free labour of making viral TikTok edits that adhere to the sterilised version of what a fan "should be". The example I used in my presentation for this is from The Dragon Prince, which, while I do love the show, has been pushing such Ancillary Content Models. They also have a Discord (which is regulated and monitored) as their "official fan community" place, and not only are the rules pretty strict, but it also just... doesn't feel like a community but just like a bunch of people wanting more content gathered in one place :/

Now, to conclude this, capitalism sucks and is trying to ruin fandom communities in order to replace them with something they can make some more money of, and rather than having a critical fanbase that questions things, they want one that endlessly consumes the "free" content they churn out. Stay active in fandom, remember we're a Gift Economy, learn the fandom rules, and keep hating capitalism <3

Fan Work: Labor, Worth and participation in Fandom's gift economy by Trisha Turk

Now, the sources I have used for this...

Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models by Suzanne Scott

Stanfill, Mel. “The Fan Fiction Gold Rush, Generational Turnover, and the Battle for Fandom’s Soul.” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, New York, 2017, pp. 77-79.

"No one's a fan of anything anymore, this isn't 2002.": Surveying 7–17-year-olds on being a fan and contemplating the future of fandom. by Paul Booth and Helena Louise Dare-Edwards

[glitch-pep]

Under the cut is a massive ramble that I NEED to get out of my system, because a lot has changed in the last two months or so-

Also the oc stuff on my blog has been looking like this and it's been bugging me to no end so I wanna explain some stuff below- 💀

#1

After 4-5 years of drawing on my phone with my finger, I spent my savings on a drawing tablet. It's been a giant wish of mine to have one for ages, but I never really worked up the courage to do it since it's a big financial decision and I always feel guilty about spending money... but, after months of intense contemplating I did it!

Buuut I did have a few mental breakdowns once it arrived... long story short, turns out that you can't connect a HP PC with the tablet using the USB-c cable that you get with the tablet, because the USB-c port of the PC doesn't support an additional screen display.

I did look up if you can connect them beforehand, and the internet told me that the answer is yes. You can't trust anything these days bro- 💀💀💀

After A LOT of back and forth and me trying to return the tablet because I can't use it without it being connected to the PC, they told me that I can't return it. Than after EVEN MORE back and forth, we found out that it would work with a completely different cable that I had to order seperately. I had just about enough money left for it, so I ordered it, and then it was peace and love on planet earth because it finally works now.

#2

Also, I needed a free drawing programm I could use, but problem was that my old app, Sketch Draw And Paint, has the most simple layout and functions it can have, so I was used to simplicity.

When I tested out GIMP, Krita, Inkspace and FireAlpaca, I could not wrap my head around how they worked and my lazy ass didn't feel like watching a bunch of tutorials... I was like bro let's find one that I can figure out on my own, it can't be that complicated. 💀

Everyone thank MediBang Paint for being simple enough for me to understand... if MediBang Paint has 0 fans I'm dead fr. From now on, all of my art will be drawn in MediBang Paint and on the tablet.

Is my art any better? Idk but I'm having fun so far, experimenting with stuff, slowly getting towards actually getting some oc stuff done...

...and, speaking of oc stuff...

#3

...I'm going to explain what I plan to work on in the future for each of my oc's, so, let's get started.

Mina - I'm not going to be making any more main character eene oc's, I only gotta design Mina's aunt and a different side character and add them to the characters in her lore and that's it. Mina's story is by far the most simple out of everyone. She'll just get 1 or 2 fics. This doesn't mean that I don't love her, trust me I've had some crazy ideas for her lore, but I've decided to keep it simple, because it makes sense given who Mina is.

Milo and CJ - For the sake of telling you my versions of Seasons 3 and 4 of mf, I have to slightly redesign each canon character from the main cast, figure out how to draw them and write some new lore for them, while using any info I found to characterize them somewhat properly.

I watched and overanalyzed the entirety of the webisodes and the alternative versions of them, as well as the Nickelodeon show, and I looked through the website and the wiki, all for the sake of writing down ANY piece of information I can get about the lore of this show and the characters, because I really needed to have something to work with.

I rearranged S1 a bit and put together a S2 with the webisodes. I'll talk about this eventually.

I won't be making any new main character oc's for this one, only background characters. I'm planning to write S3 and S4 in the form of fics.

Sunny and Molly - For this one I have to add a bunch of secondary and background characters, but we don't need those to begin the story, they'll be relevant later. I'm currently trying to piece together episodes and which goes where so that I can start writing it. I also gotta analyze the website a bit more, to get a feel of how to somewhat properly write the canon characters. I also have a seperate wh oc story idea in mind that I wanna get to eventually as well.

Charlie - I have to remake Charlie's intro, slightly redesign her, add 4 additional main characters, also secondary and background characters but those will be relevant later... Charlie shares her story with a bunch of other oc's. This one will definitely take me the longest, and it's the last thing on my waiting list, because I wanna tackle the easier ideas first. I do also have a seperate sm oc story in mind that I wanna get to as well.

Piper - I don't exactly know what I'm gonna do yet. I wanna see how tadc plays out, and then I'll work on setting some stuff in stone. I do have some ideas and concepts in mind, but I'm not sure in what direction I should go with it, depends upon how the story in the show will play out. (I probably won't wait for the whole show to be done, but at least 1-2 more eps would kinda help me understand where it's going.) I will work on some of the ideas tho.

As of now, I don't plan to make any new oc's for any other fandoms, mostly because I haven't gotten a good enough idea for anything yet, but also because I really wanna work towards polishing the oc's I already have.

I am setting stuff up so that I can start writing the fics. I have no idea how long this will take me, given that I got irl responsibilities to take care of too, but I'll try my best to get it done eventually.

And that's it. I hope you'll have a nice day! 💕

[qqueenofhades]

Do you have a favorite character relationship, platonic or romantic, that’s your favorite to write purely from an author format?

I feel like I’m wording this terribly, but I know for me personally, my favorite relationships to read and write from like… a fandom perspective based on what I ship? is different than the relationships that are interesting to me as an author, because trying to figure out how characters interact, trying to capture their relationship and banter and dialogue and mannerisms, I find in some ways is more fun and interesting and dynamic to write over even some of my absolute favorite relationships, because with my favorites, I read and write them so much that I’m very comfortable with them and sometimes it’s nice to know that I’m just able to go for it and write them because I trust my internal instinct about how to write them and how they act and talk.

But the ones that are more challenging to explore or more unique are in many ways almost more interesting to write, they scratch that author itch when I can pull them off, and especially enjoy.

Like, there’s the things fandom author me enjoys, and things literary author me enjoys, and while there’s a LOT of overlap I have different preferences and favorites on both sides

And honestly I think this goes for ALL writing, not just necessarily relationships? So yeah, there’s the question and I’m so sorry for the rambling, but what would you say are your favorite things and relationships and plots etc to write as a fandom author, and favorite ones as a literary author? I’m happy to try to explain more if I’m being confusing. Words. Hard. Sorry

Are you asking in terms of abstracts (i.e. overall character types/dynamics/broad themes) or specifics (i.e. actual characters/ships from particular media properties)? In general for fandom, I have certain tropes and dynamics that I gravitate toward: i.e. Trashy Garbage Man Falls For Tiny Fierce Woman Who Doesn't Take His Bullshit; Sunshine and Grumpy (any combination thereof); Stupid Homosexuals are Stupid and Cannot Communicate, Cause Problems for Themselves; Now With Even More Literal Centuries of Pining God They're So Fucking Stupid, and more. Most of my favorite and long-term ships, such as Garcy, Fivan, Dreamling, etc. fall into one or more of these categories. I also particularly enjoy or have enjoyed writing Flynn (Timeless), Hob (Sandman), Ivan (Shadow and Bone), and their associated relationships, for various reasons. I know all of their characters well and they give me joy, so it's easy to slip into their POV, create scenarios or headcanons, and put them in various settings and give them problems. So there's that.

In terms of my original stuff, I am much more experimental and interested in a broader range of styles and outcomes. When you're writing fic, you are usually heading toward a certain ending (a happy ending for the blorbos after various tribulations), and I therefore have a certain writing style for fic that reflects that. My original fiction is different and in some ways considerably darker, and pushes character boundaries, plotlines, and interactions beyond what you'll normally see in my fic. For example, I have two currently finished original novels that (and I KNOW I have said this before) I should just quit procrastinating on and publish, especially since I badly need the money. One of them, The Wives, is a dark feminist murder-version of #MeToo with an unreliable and extremely feral female narrator. The other, Wormwood, is an alternate-history science fiction saga that is a combination of The Man in the High Castle and Chernobyl. They're both considerably different from each other in tone, style, and character relationships, and they represent more experimentation, complicated morality, and plot conflict than is generally reflected in my fics, because long-form fandom writing is one kind of thing and original long-form writing is another. So hey.

I likewise am currently working on an original version of my fic The Key of Solomon, entitled The Empire of Bones, which is an epic ensemble political-magical fantasy set in a historically inspired world. @silverbirching has read Part 1 and very much enjoyed it, so I am hoping to finish that one sometime in the new year (probably not sooner, but we will see?) It is likewise quite different from The Wives and Wormwood, and will (I hope) readily appeal to fans of my fics, because it preserves some of the same themes, styles, and character dynamics, while also including a ton of original stuff, extensive world-building, and new plots, themes, and content.

Thanks for the question!

[goodtweetbadtweet]

19, 22, 24 and 32! ❤️

Oh thanks for asking 💜 I’m gonna put my rambling under a cut.

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

I have been reading fanfic since I was about twelve, starting with LotR, but the earliest thing I really remember writing were these stories about this group of online-turned-offline friends that I had when I was fifteen. We all wrote a different ‘alternate universe’ versions of our little group going on some adventure. In hindsight, the stories were relatively cringey and obviously full of inside jokes, but to put it in cliche terms, it ignited a spark. Around that same time I read a really popular HP/marauders fanfic that actually inspired me to read the HP books and then I was brave enough/inspired to write my first fanfics. At first I wrote something that I thought people would want to read (in my own language) so I tried writing stuff like Sirius/Remus, and I was so used to constant praise for my writing (because my readers were all my friends) that it started to feel fake almost. Eventually I just wanted to write something that nobody I knew would ever see, so I chose a username nobody would think to connect to me, started writing in English and wrote something I actually wanted to write which was a self-indulgent, practically self-insert OC romance fic. Cringe, maybe. But so much fun.

So I’ve been writing on and off for nearly 18 years, mostly off, and you don’t even need all your fingers and toes to count the things I’ve finished. I’m not the most productive. It’s the same as with any hobby; I get really into it for a while and then eventually it fizzles out. I take breaks that last months, years even. I am at a point where I don’t know if I’ll ever call myself a good writer, but there are certain parts of my writing that I actually really love. For the first time I’m also writing with intent and not just making stuff up as I go along and I want to challenge myself a little more, exploring some darker themes etc.

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

Not very. I am generally an organized person, but when I write I put the whole story and everything related to that into one Google Doc. I can’t stand having to switch between documents or having anything separate.

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

Honestly? Not enough probably. When I have an idea for a story, it can be anything from one scene that evolves into something entirely different or a whole story arc that just appears out of thin air. Like, Kendall/Avery literally started off as ‘Kendall meets a girl in rehab and has sex with her’ and was meant to be a one shot. And Lukas/Gia came to me sort of fully formed late at night. My plans are usually very short, just a quick list of things that happen in each chapter. Since I write exclusively romance/smut/relationships, I start writing from the point where the characters meet because that’s usually very clear in my mind, and then I write a bunch of unrelated scenes that I have already imagined taking place. Eventually I backtrack to the actual beginning and try to write chronologically, but it’s a lot of back and forth and connecting these scattered scenes with each other. But there is always a plan, even if it is constantly evolving it doesn’t fundamentally change, and I always know what I’m writing towards. So basically, no, I don’t do a lot of prep work, but while I’m writing I’m working on the entire story at once. I also don’t like prep work, but it is helpful and it keeps me in check.

Back when I did zero planning, I started writing and posting a Bucky Barnes/OC story chapter by chapter and it went off the rails a little bit and eventually turned into a Tony Stark/OC story which… made sense and it was kind of like the characters had a life of their own, but obviously that wasn’t what my readers had signed up for. If I had a plan, maybe that wouldn’t have happened or I would’ve realized it was inevitable while planning. Idk. That story was/is 130k words and technically I never finished or wanted it to end where it did, but I lost interest and a few years later I came back to it to see that it had run its course and the ending actually kind of worked as ‘the finale.’ Sometimes I have a hard time ending things; a plan helps with that.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

“You all know, don’t you, that if people are frightened very often, they sometimes become invisible.”

From the short story The Invisible Child by Tove Jansson. And I don’t know if it’s this line specifically, but off the top of my head this is a story that comes to mind as something that has held meaning for me since I was young and now again as a parent. It’s about Ninny, who has literally turned invisible due to living with her child-hating, abusive aunt. In a nutshell: she comes to live with the Moomin family, finds respect and love and learns to speak for herself. In many ways I relate to Ninny a lot and I think somewhere along the way I overcorrected and instead of being invisible, people pleasing and afraid I became almost confrontational and too tough. Inside I will always be Ninny, though.

Ninny in the Moomin anime

[descaladumidera]

“Nobody Asked About My Writing” Meme

I got tagged by the wonderful @amethyst-noir, so you all get unnecessary infos about my current WIPs thrown in your face. And as I am, currently, able to write and share my fics, I shall even do this meme.

Answers below the cut, 'cause this got long.

 1. what are you currently working on?

I have three WIPs right now that I'm actively working on. Which. Is insane. 'Cause usually I have one and then I might throw a one-shot in-between writing chapters. But. Yeah. So, today I've finished the next chapter of like lead in my heart and I'm about to edit it. I've also started the sequel to give it 'til i beg (give me some more), so … I'll hopefully finish that at one point, so my Fratt peers get more juicy dom/sub action. And then I have started to actually write a little something that I've only thrown into a Discord before in the form of a quick idea. It's titled Five Times Frank Fucks Matt From Behind and One Time He Wants to See Matt's Face. Yes. That short. So. Yeah. I'm currently writing the first chapter, but have outlines for all the chapters.

2. summarize your current project

like lead in my heart: NWH rewrite with a twist. Local horned vigilante takes on a more prominent role in Peter's life during the events of NWH and after. give it 'til i beg (give me some more) sequel: Matt tries to avoid Frank after what happened in the first part. He is not very good at that. Five Times: Exactly what it says on the tin. Frank fucks Matt five times from behind and the last time he wants to see his face.

3. summarize your current project poorly

like lead in my heart: Local horned vigilante gets too involved in teenager's life. And then he fucks the teenager's doppelganger. give it 'til i beg (give me some more) sequel: Too embarrassed to function and also too horny to function. Five Times: Too much fucking, not enough talking.

4. describe your favorite character or characters

Matt Murdock: Gets fucked over by life and personal bad choices again and again and again. Needs some hugs and lots of therapy. He also has very interesting alternate versions from other dimensions. Frank Castle: Got fucked over by life royally, meaning his wife and kids died in front of his eyes. Decided the best coping mechanism is killing the scum of the earth. Also needs therapy. I don't recommend hugging him, though.

5. post a line from your current project without any context

like lead in my heart, chapter 8: Peter needed Tony Stark, not Matt Murdock. give it 'til i beg (give me some more) sequel: And then he had jumped out of the window, like the mature adult he was. Five Times: Things like this were never planned.

6. how do you get through writers block?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

7. would you want to live in the world of your current work?

Abso-fucking-lutely not! The Marvel universe gets attacked approximately every 0.2 seconds by something or someone that can kill me and my loved ones with one thought and I would rather eat chalk.

8. briefly discuss your outlining process, if you outline

I do not outline. Outlining means that my brain goes, "Oh! So we're done with this one, onto the next idea!" and I'll never write it. The only "outlines" I do are when I ramble on about an idea in a Discord or to friends and then decide to flesh it out and write it.

9. what is the aesthetic of your current project?

I. I don't know what that means? I mean, like lead in my heart is kinda action and found family and romance and everything all in one, I guess? The other two are basically PWP, more or less. Maybe there is a bit of plot.

10. what song sums up your current work the best?

like lead in my heart

give it 'til i beg (give me some more) sequel

Five Times Frank Fucks Matt From Behind and One Time He Wants to See Matt's Face

Tagging: @atypical-snowman, @jeromesankaraao3, and @kimmycup. And whoever else wants to do this!

[ginevralinton]

8, 10, 18, 20?

Thank you for the ask!!

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

I think so! I tend to write more for the characters and relationships that I enjoy most, and I wouldn't write something I wouldn't want to particularly read. Still, I think I probably read more broadly than I write?

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Generally it goes:

I get an idea and make a note of it

I make a really rough plan (unless it's going to be super short) and scribble down any sentences/phrases that I've already got

If I don't start writing then, I tend to 'write' the piece in my head as I go about my normal day

Then, I sit down to write it, with varying degrees of success and speed

Finish it, leave it for a little (a few hours or days or weeks or months, depending...) and then edit

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

There were several alternative/abandoned ideas for House Share:

In the first plan, when Mike makes the pet cemetery for Fanny, he makes a mistake or something isn't precisely right, Fanny criticised, but later Alison tells Mike she's seen her visiting it and admiring it. I decided to ditch that because it felt too negative

Mike was going to introduce Thomas to some new poets (that he'd just googled - or asked a friend about) and Thomas might or might not have hated them. I just wasn't really feeling that in the end

For Robin's chapter, they were going to go stargazing outside at night and then Mike ended up with a cold, but it felt a bit too expected, unexciting, and again, negative, which wasn't the vibe I was going for. I was discussing it with @thelastplantagenet who gave me a lot of the actual idea (thank you!!)

With Julian, I was considering a games night, Mike creating a night club type thing, them exchanging music suggestions (and listening to the worst songs). I tried writing all of them, but kept getting stuck so I scrapped it and started over

Oh, and in general, it was supposed to be a one chapter fic, maybe 4k words with a short section for each ghost (a bit like Hard-earned privileges) however, well, you know how long it became...

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

This Feeling and Inheritance both mention Julian taking Rachel out to a restuarant and going against Margot's wishes and letting her have one of those fancy sundaes that are always on the menu for kids but which the kid never actually eats - so naturally Rachel doesn't eat it and steals from Julian's cheeseboard instead. This is now some kind of core memory for both of them in my head

Talking of This Feeling, it mentions 'that ice-cream based uproar at the local hospital, involving smashed bowls, screaming arguments and no willingness to compromise on either side' - which er... was a thing that happened when I was in hosptial

There are some fun references in Still the same girl. I say fun, they are fun only to me and are mostly literary since I drew a lot from Victorian novels for this one! The references include: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Gaskell (which seemed fitting, considering Fanny's ghostly appearances in photos), Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, Great Expectations and Bleak House by Charles Dickens and Dracula by Bram Stoker. It also mentions Mrs Greville, who owned Polsden Lacey (which is a National Trust place these days) and also Royal Holloway College/university, which is where I went and did indeed open for women in the 1880s.

Don't let them get you down, you're the best thing I've seen is, in many ways, my dissertation in the form of a story, including all the extra details/paragraphs that I had to cut from my final essay (as in, they didn't even get written, because halfway through the original plan, I realised I was already 5000 words over the word limit, which...yeah)

Okay, that got very, very lengthy - thank you to anyone who actually reads that. (I could expand further but I do not think that would be read 😁)

[accidentalsoravoice]

Shameless Fanfic Plug

So I write fanfiction in my free time, and I've talked a bit about my Genshin crossover fics, mainly A Link to Eternity and What a Real Heart Feels Like. But today I want to bring up my main fanfic, and the one that got me into writing. I've scrapped and discontinued the original version of the fic and I'm working on a rewrite currently. (The rest of this is under the cut if you don't want to bother reading this, just for the sake of not taking up all the space in someone's scrolling feed).

The title is More Than Just a Shield Re:Written.

The "Re:Written" is for the new version that I'm writing, since the old version fucking sucked (in my defense I was new to fanfic writing at the time).

Basically, the premise is that it's centered around an OC (original character) of mine - Aris Atreides. He and his twin sister, Loretta, are descendants of Hyrule's royal family, as well as the last of their kind after the Yiga Clan launched an unexpected, kingdom-wide attack that wiped out all of Hyrule's people except the Atreides twins. The twins traveled Hyrule in search of survivors, and along the way some stuff happened. Aris lost his arm and Loretta used her Sheikah know-how to build him a prosthesis which is powered by Aris's very soul (in the form of "Soul Energy" based on the green ghost hand thing in Tears of the Kingdom), they found the Master Sword and Aris discovered he was its chosen Hero, and they discovered gateways to other worlds. They separated and traveled from world to world on their own personal journeys, thwarting evil whenever they encountered it (all of this is set a few millennia after the events of Breath of the Wild, and since I came up with this whole thing before Tears of the Kingdom was as big as it is, for all intents and purposes it's in an alternate timeline during which TotK never happened).

One such adventure leads Aris to the kingdom of Melromarc, and throws him into the events of The Rising of the Shield Hero. He's summoned as the "Shield Hero" (replacing Naofumi Iwatani) though he can still use the Master Sword. Similar stuff happens to the show, he befriends Myne/Malty/Bitch, is betrayed and left with basically nothing but his clothes and sword, you know the drill. Then he finds a Demi-Human slave girl running from her master, a slave trader, who sends a small domesticated dragon after her. Aris saves the runaway slave and takes her to safety. The slave girl is, of course, Raphtalia, who's 17 in the fanfic for...reasons that'll come up later down the line.

That's all the story I'm gonna share here, but the other premise is that other characters appear and join Aris's party. He reunited with Loretta, hatches Filo like Naofumi did in the anime/light novel, and characters from other fandoms join his party later, too. One particularly influential fandom in the story is Kingdom Hearts.

But yeah, sorry for my rambling, that's my main fic. Read it if you wanna. Here's a cover I made for the Fanfiction.net version:

I would have commissioned some art of Aris or something, but I decided to do the easy thing and take pngs of stuff and put them together in Google Slides. There's elements from almost every fandom in the crossover: the Ouroboros from the logo of Tears of the Kingdom (Zelda), the other 3 Legendary Weapons (Shield Hero), the planet from the Smash Bros. logo of Earthbound (Earthbound/Mother 2), the planet/meteor looking thing from the logo of Final Fantasy VII (Final Fantasy VII), Sora's Keyblade (Kingdom Hearts), and Joker's mask (Persona 5). As another Kingdom Hearts reference, I kinda tried to arrange the TotK Ouroboros with the Earthbound and FFVII planets to look like Mickey Mouse. The background is also from Tears of the Kingdom.

[yerbamansa]

Ohhhh my god, so I wrote a novel-length fic over the last five months and I just…need to write down some Thoughts on that, because it hadn’t happened before and I have no idea if it will again, just seemed worthwhile to collect myself a bit. To be clear: I’m…really proud of myself?? Who knew I had it in me! And I think it’s a fun read! I learned a lot! More under a cut if you care to read my ramblings.

The gdoc containing my initial outline of ideas was created on October 29, 2022. I shared it with the group chat from whence the idea came, because I was planning to participate in a daily prompt challenge in November so I wasn’t going to have time for it yet. By late November, quite a bit of work was happening in the doc—a proper outline with a three-act structure I borrowed from various writing tips websites and then wandered off on my own with. I’ve never written something this structured and long before, so I searched for some structure tips.

I found a few different forms (a 9-block, 27-chapter structure; a three-act checklist) that I ended up using almost like a self-survey/brainstorm. A couple passes through that, plus trying to work it out as a character/timeline spreadsheet, gave the whole thing a much clearer shape. I knew I wanted to alternate between Ed’s and Stede’s POVs, but not limit it to theirs. Early on I decided that Oluwande would be a third POV character because (a) I love writing him and (b) the crew’s perspective is REALLY IMPORTANT. Then, because I used Lucius as an outsider, he became the fourth POV, introduced at the beginning of act 2.

[ID: A bar chart showing word count by POV character. Ed has over 34,000 words, Stede about 26,000 words, Oluwande 13,000 words, and Lucius a little under 10,000 words. End ID.]

But it’s not like I had it 100% perfectly mapped out at a chapter level, nor did I know exactly what details would…emerge. Like, I knew the shape of the details, but I kind of worked them out as I got to know this version of the characters better. The outlining process was kind of my draft: I went through it to get to the point that I could sit down and outline each chapter (or two ahead, in some cases) and then write it.

Very few things were written out of order, but the scene where they’re trapped in the storage closet was written well before I finished chapter 1. And I thought it would happen later than it did. I really thought I was gonna enemies-to-lovers these guys! 😂

There were a TON of details/potential plotlines I thought about including, but ultimately decided not to, either because it was totally out of my lane to do it justice (ex.: literally anything to do with Ed’s heritage and food—I read up some and whew, it’d have to be its own story, and not really mine to tell) and/or because it would’ve overcomplicated/distracted from the plot as it unfolded. There was a whole thing where Stede was meant to pull a Christopher Kimball thing and screw over the magazine by starting a rival publication and, you know what, there was more than enough drama to mine from just the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen debacle(s).

The idea came from a group chat, and the same group chat was instrumental in helping me flesh out a bunch of character details. That was fun. That’s also where my main beta reader came from. It’s funny, I’ve written on and off pretty much my whole life, but rarely had an editor like this. It was very collaborative and challenging in the best possible ways, I think; especially with something this long, it really helped to have someone who knew some of what was in my head but wasn’t nose-deep in it.

While it hasn’t been a runaway hit or anything, it’s had by far more eyeballs than anything else I’ve written in this fandom. Definitely a lot more comments than anything else, which is fun. Some folks I really admire have said kind things and if that didn’t make me all 😊 well. (It did, though.) It was because of those commenters that I got a sense of how it was coming off—that it was, and could be, fun and frothy and still touch on subjects that were difficult (labor rights etc.) without making light of them. At least, that’s what I hope I pulled off in the end.

There were so many random little side routes and ideas that came up while thinking about and writing this that I really had to make a series. For the one-shots. For fuck’s sake, I put too much into building out this little world and this version of each character not to.

And if one of those ends up being some kind of E-rated fic involving Mary and Evelyn, like, posing for Doug with fresh fruit still-life and it turning into A Whole Thing, so be it. (It didn’t make the story text, but Mary and Evelyn are married and Doug is Mary’s guy who lives in the guest house out back. Also they make cooking YouTube videos together as a trio. There will probably be one-shots about them because Evelyn was too much fun to write.)

[recentlylocal]

Agape and 'til I reach you for....1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11? Actually, if you just wanted to ramble on about those fics, that would work too

Send me writing questions!

WELL TWIST MY ARM I GUESS

I blame Moira Quirk’s audio book narration for ‘til I reach you, because that scene absolutely CRUSHED ME when I listened to it. I was very no thoughts, head empty about writing it otherwise, it was once of those snippets that just fell into my head fully formed. I wrote and edited the whole thing in half a day. As a fic it made a nice home for a lot of my meta-thoughts about Camilla’s story and how she’s just...put up with so goddamn much in this series. Poor Camilla, Queen of Hypovolemic Shock.

I will also take this moment to point out that Camilla has the line “it’s just a flesh wound,” in this fic, which is 100% an intentional Monty Python reference, and I am shocked nobody yelled at me about that one in the comments.

Agape, on the other hand, took me FOUR MONTHS so I have way more thoughts.

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way? I got a Nona arc in July and of course the knuckle kiss scene sent me spiraling. I drafted a couple of scenes really soon after I read it, and then figured if I could come up with a few more I could format it as a 5+1 instead of just a snippet. (Side note but 5+1s are apparently fandom old school now?)

2. What scene did you first put down? I actually wrote them more or less in the order they appear in the fic which is VERY unusual for me, I usually write out of order and then stitch everything together. I considered re-ordering them chronologically before I posted but I liked the dreamy sort of atmosphere of skipping around, felt more true to how someone would actually be recalling a bunch of related memories.

3. What’s your favorite line of narration? "She said nothing, because every word she could conceive of was even worse than this awful, broken silence." Felt really good about this one, especially since it was like the ninth time in this fic I had to come up with another emotionally charged way to describe Cam not saying anything.

Honorable mention to “Seis muttered something about teenagers with God-complexes“ because can you imagine how insufferable those two would have been at fourteen??

4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue? I struggle to pick between any of the dialogue in snippet #3 (everyone is being SO bitchy in that one which was fun for me) but "four hours ago you called it a placebo" still makes me giggle AND I migrated it over from a scene I cut from two corpses, so I was happy to re-home it.

ALSO I really enjoy Pal’s “I could find the courage to walk backwards into hell, would I know that you were behind me” vis a vis this dril tweet.

5. What part was hardest to write? Cam's dialogue always takes a long time to write because she says so much with so few words, I have a separate, specific editing process JUST for her lines (which is a whole other post.) Of all the snippets, #6 was hardest to write because it was SO charged, and it was a rare moment of writing Cam and Pal not seeing eye to eye.

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic? Well there was an alternate version where I didn't write an entire extra scene so it was actually a 5+1 and not a 6+1 😆 I briefly considered cutting a scene when I realized my mistake, but I'd sunk way too much effort in at that point and I was attached to all of them.

11. What do you like best about this fic? I tend to write too much dialogue and not enough description of what’s happening around the dialogue, and I really worked at writing body language and emotional pauses into this one. It’s something I really struggle with (writing body language especially), and I'm really happy with how well I managed in this fic, it was a really good writing exercise for me. 

[likeshipsonthesea]

all of your writing is spectacular I just wanted to let you know that your ficlet about bully being attracted to dex and telling nursey about it has uhhhhh STOLEN my mind, body, and soul frfr. so if you ever did happen to continue it there's at least one person (me) who might actually just. lose it. have a nice day!!

thank you so much!! you’re so sweet for this message and i apologize for not responding for a long time, i was going to respond a few weeks ago with a ramble fic about how i would continue weewoo weewoo as a thank you, but then some technical difficulties occurred and i lost what i’d written and got frustrated and didn’t retry, until now i guess??

i’m going to let myself forget about how much i liked the original and try and explain, if i were to continue that idea (which i don’t have the motivation to do for real, unfortunately :( ), how i would do it

first off, nursey would go full ass Unchill to the max and panic and offer bully help in, ehem, fucking dex.

bully would be like ??? you just said that could be a bad idea??

but i also said it could be a good one, nursey would say, drunk and panicking further.

long story short, bully takes him up on his offer and the really fuckery begins.

so the next morning nursey wakes up fairly hungover, as after the whole thing in the reading room, he went off and got suitably plastered. dex wakes him up with a plate of mushy eggs (a dish his grandmother made for him as a kid that also works very well at quelling hangovers) and while nursey moans over it and proposes marriage to dex’s grandmother, a frequent occurrence, dex tells him, confused, that bully is downstairs waiting for him

then nursey promptly remembers his promise and curses himself and bully and dex for being so damn pretty this early in the morning

nursey has dex send bully up to his room and, in between mouthfuls of eggs and toast, explains his completely ad-libbed plan to bully. the gist of this plan is that while nursey tries to dig and see if dex is in fact dtf, bully will try to subtly insinuate to dex that he is already dtf

bully is, obviously, not very impressed with this plan.

he decides, without telling nursey, that he will go along with it, partly in the unlikely chance that it actually works and he gets over this thing he has about dex and can actually just be the dude’s friend (he spent the night sorting through his feelings and decided that he isn’t romantically attracted to dex, that he wants to be friends but also the dude is like really hot– when he tells nursey this nursey blinks dumbfounded, as it took him about two years to sort through his feelings for dex not one night and he’s not even really sure he’s acknowledged them fully)

the other part of the reason bully goes along with this is because, well. it seems like nursey put a lot of thought into it and like?? cares?? and maybe bully wants to make friends. a little. just a little. the dude’s like p weird, but seems nice, so whatever.

SO the plan commences and nursey spends the first two weeks trying to work up the nerve to ask dex if he finds bully attractive while sending bully to kegsters in tight t-shirts and having him chat dex up in the shower.

in the first two weeks, both nursey and bully realize some things

nursey realizes that he has absolutely no idea how to woo dex and also that those feelings he hasn’t really fully acknowledged are maybe possibly something more significant than the guy has really pretty laughs

bully, on the other hand, realizes that nursey is stupidly into dex and, after all the extra time chatting with the dude, dex feels just about the same way. though dex is much chiller about the whole thing, in bully’s opinion.

dex remains unaware of any schemes, but also really confused about why bully wanted to talk strategy in the showers??

after the two week mark, nursey decides to try harder because he promised and bully is a waffle and he deserves the help (he also decides to repress harder, but he ignores that part because, well. repression)

bully decides that he is going to get his two stupid upperclassmen together because he’s a p good dude. he also decides to ask out the freckly ginger in his writing class because dude’s got needs, okay?

the next time nursey tries to set up bully (”help the guy bake! he loves cooking and he and bitty bond all the time, but since bitty’s been restricted for thesis reasons, he’s been all by himself :((”) bully texts nursey for help and has him come downstairs just as bully gets a surprise message from louis that he’s stuck in his shower again and has to run out

dex, being in the middle of a pie, asks nursey if he wants to help. because why not??? bully was supposed to be helping him and if nursey’s already here…

nursey nods forcefully and rolls up his sleeves.

they spend the next hour making somewhat of a mess, bantering about something funny chowder did on the bus last week, and creating a slightly lopsided but thoroughly delicious pie. they eat it together, before it’s really cooled enough, while watching an hgtv show. nursey grins at the side of dex’s face while he complains about the choices the showrunners make and all around has a good time.

then he gets guilty because he’s supposed to be helping bully not himself!! what a bad upperclassman he is!!! bad nursey!!

bully face palms, but like emotionally. he’s too cool to physically do it.

queue montage of other dates meant for bully that he intentionally ruins to get nursey to take his place, followed by nursey’s happiness and guilt, and dex’s concurrent happiness with mild confusion.

months go by and nursey and dex don’t actually get together even though they’ve technically been dating forever and finally bully loses it.

“you’re in love with him!” he yells, over nursey trying to explain the next phase in the plan to him.

nursey blinks. bully’s voice had never gone above inside-voice level before.

“what.”

bully huffs. “i get it, dude. i got out my thing about him months ago with alex from my writing class. but i can’t keep watching you try to set me up with him when you’re obviously into the dude.”

“i, uh, i’m not– haha– i don’t– um–”

bully stares flatly. “he loves you too.”

nursey falls out of his chair. bully shakes his head. so unchill.

“he’s what.”

bully grabs his bag. “you’re welcome,” he says, pulling out his phone to call alex and update him about the whole mess. dude’s actually p cool. and p good in bed, too.

then nursey scrambles to find dex and see if it’s true and it is and they kiss or whatever and it’s hella cute and they thank bully at their wedding and everyone lives happily ever..

also an alternate version where it works and bully and dex start hooking up and DRAMA ensues but i guess that will have to be another post because i’ve got to get to bed my dudes lol

[outofangband]

i would love to see your darkening of valinor bullet fic!

I was inspired in this by @tanoraqui who has absolutely amazing fics and bullet fics often based in what ifs and other scenarios

I don’t know if headcanon fic is a term but that sounds better than rambling half outline so!

The Darkening of Valinor is one of my favorite scenes in The Silmarillion and that is almost entirely for the version that is in Morgoth’s Ring (link to my post that has the original text)

Keep in mind there are a world of possibilities for each point in the story that changes! I’d be happy to explore any!

And as always requests and asks are open and welcome. I really like things like this so I’d love to write more!

There are a number of possibilities that I think of for alternate timelines regarding the Darkening. 

I also could only do up to the arrival of Nolofinwë’s host in Beleriand with some speculation on after so this might have to be in two parts

The first is one that has been explored before but I enjoy for its awfulness

Maedhros arrives only somewhat earlier than in canon and is caught in the confrontation and dies with his grandfather. 

-He makes his brothers wait. They do not wish to obey him but the Amras was injured when he was thrown from his horse and his twin is inconsolable in his fear, exacerbated by the dreadful fumes that permeate the air. As I said before, under normal circumstances Maedhros would not have been able to prevent his brothers, headstrong and reckless, from following him into that darkened, doomed house but these are not normal circumstances. He hurries home on foot and reaches the door as he hears the king cry out. Perhaps Finwë is already dead and Maedhros is simply knocked aside with the awful weapon, senseless violence simply because he was in the way and Morgoth had no mercy left for those who stood in his way. Perhaps he was able to get in between his grandfather and Morgoth to no avail and they are killed side by side in a vicious struggle that nonetheless is over quickly.

-Their bodies are found by the other Fëanorians. Celegorm howls but the awful sound is broken by Caranthir’s hand clamped over his mouth. They take far longer to arrive at Taniquetil and Maglor delivers a broken explanation to Manwë and his father. He cannot articulate the scene or the happenings, his shock is too great.

Had Maedhros been slain with the king, I think the events of the book would follow a similar course to if he had simply remained in Angband. Fëanor’s grief and rage is even more pronounced, he leaves Valinor still more quickly and recklessly. 

There is one difference I could potentially see with the first kinslaying. 

Olwë still refuses him the swan ships but, both in compassion for the loss of both parent and child and not a small amount of apprehension at the state Fëanor has come to him in, does offer a less efficient alternative in the form of smaller sailing ships the Teleri use for shorter journeys. They will not carry as many but far more can be spared as they are easier to make and more widely used among mariners. 

Perhaps Fëanor is caught up enough in his grief to accept this, uncaring that it will take longer. He has the will to make the journey. A minor obstacle will not set him from his course. 

His host takes the smaller alternatives. There is no kinslaying, no slaying of elf by elf on the shores of Aman. If a Doom is proclaimed, it is in no way punitive but far more of a warning to the hosts of what awaits them, not what they have brought upon themselves through their own violence. 

Perhaps he still attacks in which case the events continue as they do in canon. They are doomed for the spilling of elven blood at the hands of their own kindred. 

Fëanor still burns the ships at Losgar. The murder of his son only exacerbates his mistrust in Nolofinwë who has the audacity to have all his children living. There is no protest from his six surviving sons and all walk away from the fires. 

The Battle Under the Stars starts off similarly. The Noldor host defeat the orcs with ease and speed, coaxing Fëanor to travel Northeast towards Angband to slay still more of them. His sons do not get to him in time and he is struck down by Gothmog. 

Fëanor dies on the battlefield as his sons arrive. They are unable to move him from the host of balrogs and orcs but do manage to drive them away after Fëanor’s death.

An emissary comes from Angband. It makes no attempt at a parlay and the words are purely in threat. Retreat and give up all claims or suffering shall be thy lot. No response is sent back and the next few years are marked by a number of smaller sieges and ambushes that kill not a small number of the host.

The children of Nolofinwë, Fingon in particular, are less enthusiastic about journeying. If they attempt to cross the Ice it is after a longer delay.

The sun and moon rise. Morgoth shrouds his fortress in choking clouds.

If the Host of Nolofinwë cross, they arrive later than in canon. They still fight a siege that kills Argon. Turgon still departs from the host.

When drafting a bullet fic for a timeline where Maedhros was not rescued by Fingon, I was struck by just how much this changed the course of events. 

Just in one place, the two hosts of the Noldor never fully reconcile. There is not open hostility, or it is at least rare. But the alliance is a cold, fraught one. Other individual bonds between the cousins suffer. Celegorm and Curufin do not have their eldest brother to push them against pride and remind them of their love outside the house of Fëanor. Their relationship with Aredhel never resumes as it was in Valinor or even a shadow of it. Thus, Aredhel will likely not leave Gondolin to seek the brothers. She does not meet Eöl and Maeglin is never born. This of course has far reaching consequences for the fate of Gondolin that I struggled to reconcile with anything resembling a canon timeline. 

Maglor is king regent after the death of Fëanor. The crown is never given to Nolofinwë though many among his host consider him the rightful king. The Nolofinwëan and Arafinwëan host attempt more diplomatic contact once in Beleriand. If the first kinslaying does not happen, there is less tension with Doriath though it is not nonexistent.

I do wonder if the third kinslaying would have taken place at all or if the Fëanorian host would have been too scattered and broken to launch a full attack

Alternately I do wonder what would have happened if one or more had been taken by Morgoth during the Darkening. That puts the Valar in a somewhat more difficult position, at least for the immediate present. A murder cannot be undone but one taken and presumably still alive, suffering, when more suffering could be prevented. 

[stairre]

Hiya! I absolutely adore your writing; I’m horrible with words but it feels so.. alive? Like it feels like I could ask you questions for days about the characters and the world and you’d have an answer for all of it. I mean, it’s probably not true, but I’ve never really felt that way about any kind of story before so naturally I’ve just been reading and rereading your stuff ever since I found ya. Im very normal about it. Very very Normal.

(Your hot rod in particular, oomf. That’s HIM that’s my BOY!!! You Get Him and I am so glad you do because it’s So Hard to find really good roddy content.)

And don’t feel inclined to answer this last part if you don’t want to, but!! Are there any brainworms/headcanons/etc you’d like to ramble about? I’d love to hear about it!

Aw, thanks so much for your kind words, and for coming and letting me know; you've put a right smile on my face :)

Hm... as for headcanons and brainworms... well, first off, I don't tend to have solid headcanons for many characters, simply because I like to take their core personality and reinvent them depending on the situation I've landed them in in any particular fic. I feel that this frees me up from getting too stuck in trying to make a square peg fit a round hole if I don't have the ability to let something that was true about a character in one fic change for another, however there are some personality and interest traits I keep similar.

My version of Hot Rod | Rodimus Prime tends to be quite charismatic. And very uneasy about his own charisma, because when people follow you and you make mistakes, they then tend to blame you even if they chose to follow. This is especially prevalent in IDW versions of him that I write, and is another layer in his insecurity over whether or not he can make good leadership decisions.

My version of Hot Rod | Rodimus Prime also tends to have an interest in people and the ways that they live, which is expressed through interests in history, anthropology, religion, etc. By no means is he an academic, or conducting research, but he likes to hear about different ways of life and how and why people are the way they are.

Neurodivergent Cybertronians! One, they absolutely exist, and two, IDW Minimus Ambus (in my works, at least) is autistic. Or, like, the mechanoid equivalent. I myself am autistic so I feel comfortable writing him as such. And now the obligatory "everyone's experiences are different, it's a wide and varied spectrum so it won't necessarily be reflective of your own personal experiences" sentence. (Addendum: yes, Rodimus gives off ADHD vibes as well and I'm hardly the first to headcanon that.)

Now this one's a bit more controversial, but in the post-IDW "The Lost Light disappears into an alternate universe" ending, Rodimus and Megatron absolutely form a strong bond with each other. There's a lot of canon moments and comments from them about the influence (and the ups and downs, yes) that they've had on each other - Megatron keeping the Rodimus Star close while stuck in the Functionist Universe, and Rodimus saying that they work best together, just to give a couple of examples - to justify the groundwork for a deep connection. Given time and effort on both sides, I believe that they would end up rather close.

Again, more controversy, but I also believe that a lot of the initial Dratchet (Drift/Ratchet) foundations were built upon what they wanted each other to be (to themselves, in their life, etc.), rather than who they really were. Now, this is absolutely not a hate on Dratchet, because the pairing has a lot going for it, and if written well then I like to read it, but I also believe that a lot of honest communication had to go in off-screen for it to work out (which it canonically did!), and that we just didn't get to see that part.

As for brainworms - well, I don't tend to share story ideas on my tumblr, simply because there are just so many that never fully manifest and I don't want anyone to get disappointed by them not becoming fully realised fics.

However, I will share a bit of an old WIP (like, I last worked on it in July 2020) with you. Please note: the likelihood of this story ever being completed and published is very, very low. Please do not think for certain that it's coming, because it's most likely not.

The premise for this WIP was that IDW Rodimus and Drift, before the Overlord incident, decide to become amica endurae. But the Matrix (half of it, at least) interferes with the vows and sends Rodimus and Drift off on a journey through the other's mind in order to fully understand each other. Like, it was meant to be a mindscape fic, full of symbolism and interacting with memories and all that good stuff.

And here's a small snippet:

Deadlock turns away from him, gazing out into the distance across the battlefield of grey corpses, the aftermath of his standard spare no one order. “We wanted better,” he whispers out, voice hoarse and carefully controlled. “We cared so much about people, about how they were in pain, about how we wanted to free them and raise them high.” Deadlock laughs, bitter, glancing back towards Rodimus with wet cheeks and bright red optics. His frame shivers, begins to fade away, like so much artillery smoke dissipating when the cannons stop firing, and he admits, mournfully, like a confession, face twisted in pain, “But compassion did not survive the revolution.” Rodimus’ hand darts forward to grasp Deadlock, to try to comfort him maybe, but his fingers cannot touch him before he wisps away into dust, scattering to join the noxious fumes still lingering above the wasteland.

Hope you enjoyed this little insight! Have a lovely day :)

[withahappyrefrain]

From the fic ask meme: For Let Me Satisfy Your Soul 4 & 9 and For Can I borrow your height? 1-4 9 & 11. Hope you dont mind me asking so much

Putting this under a cut since it's kinda long, but thank you! Don't feel bad about asking so many, I love it!

Let Me Satisfy Your Soul:

4: What's your favorite part of dialogue?

"Well, I was hoping to ask you out before I fucked you, but then someone had to go wear knee highs."

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Originally, this wasn't going to have blonde Peter, just regular Peter! and a reader he was already in an established relationship with. Then I realized how much I wanted to write blonde frat Peter and did it.

Can I borrow Your Height:

1: What Inspired you to write the fic this way?

I got the idea from rambling to @spidervee about Peter with a short reader. I'd thought it be cute if the way Peter met short reader was by them asking if he could help them get something on a shelf that's too high. Also, the line "Can I borrow your height?" is something I regularly ask my partner, as he is nearly ten inches taller than me.

2. What scene did you put first?

The intro where reader is reflecting on the pros of being short. I'm 5'2 so it was very....personal lol

3: What's your favorite line of narration?

Being short had some great benefits. And today, that benefit came in the form of Peter Parker.

4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?

Instead, he began to ramble, "...you really don't have to do that, I mean that's really nice, but I was just being a decent person, I don't think that deserves going out to dinner with you. Not that that's bad-

I just love writing nervous, flustered Peter. He's so fun to write.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Nope! I became dead set on it being in a bookstore and the way Peter would meet the reader.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

It's adorable, makes my short ass feel seen, and we get flustered Peter who's also adorable

[deanmarywinchester]

3, 4, 20

hi noa, hope your firefighters are winning!!!

ok these answers are gonna be about my wip that I’ve been calling “wife dean fic” but that’s titled “men like me,” which is an alternate s13 in which dean says yes to au michael during the widow arc

4: Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

I just really like this bit from dean and cas’s reunion. “did it look cool like in the movies” ass

But out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Michael’s true form lunge, and Jack yelps, and the world dissolves into nothingness.

An eyeblink later, the three of them are back in the bunker, and Jack’s saying “Oh, I guess I can fly with passengers now! Cool,” and Dean’s saying, automatic, “I told you, flying sounds stupid. Call it teleporting. Like Star Trek,” and then it all becomes too much for him, the fight and Michael and the inexpert flying and the way he froze all over when Cas appeared, and he’s throwing up on the war room floor.

20: what’s some meta (themes, symbolism, characterization) you want to ramble to people about?

one of the things im trying my best to get right is having jack learn “do as I say, not as I do” from Sam. sam considers jack worth standing up for in ways where he won’t stand up for himself, and protects jack in ways where he’s willing to throw his own life away. and Jack’s learning from Sam’s actions, not his words

3: what is one scene you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be bothered to write all the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it anyway)

THANK you for this question which I will shamelessly use to post a scene that it’s killing me to cut bc I had to cut the context. below the cut, a newly vampired Max Banes talks hunting with dean. it’s from an earlier version where sam’s hunter community is made of OG hunters not au hunters, but I ended up having to use au hunters as a shorthand. SOME version of this scene is going in my next (banes-centric) fic, i hope!

“You’re taking this pretty well.”

Max gives a short laugh, like he’s testing it out to see if he can find the humor in it. Dean isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Yeah, well. Vampires. Kinda hot, honestly, maybe I’ll pull better with a certain type of guy.”

“You sure you want that type of guy? I’ve met the kind of chicks who are into that Twilight crap, and man, they are not worth the effort.”

“Yeah.” Max’s mouth turns down at his reflection in the rearview mirror, and then he bares his fangs consideringly. “Not exactly Edward Cullen, but this is cooler. More useful than his teeth on a hunt until I can get it fixed, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

“You’re still hunting?”

“Hah. Yeah, I get why that would be surprising. You, I know you have some sort of demon trauma, whatever. Me and Alicia, we weren’t raised to hunt monsters, though. We were raised to hunt witches. And witches are, they’re fuckin’ human, man. I don’t know.”

He pries up his lip to study the way his fangs retract in the mirror, avoiding Dean’s eye. Not that Dean is too interested in interrupting, anyway. He’s no good when people get philosophical about whatever got them this far in the life, so he tends to clam up and let them say what they’re going to say. They usually do.

Max isn’t an exception. “You know I was fifteen,” he says, his voice carefully conversational, “the first time I put Mama’s sawn-off against the back of a man’s neck. By that time, he’d killed eight people. Low-level hex bags, pretty amateur stuff, but the victims had no way of stopping him. I did. So I stopped him.

“I got home and I told Alicia what I did, and she just started crying. Like, instant waterworks, I’ve never seen her like that before or since. And I just knew she was thinking, I’m a witch. What if someone does that to me? What if it’s you?

“So after that, Alicia and me took a long vacation from our mom. She was pretty pissed, but she understood. And we decided, you know, that we would keep doing what we were trained to do, but not if we could help it. If we can bind witches, we bind them. If we can reason with them, we reason with them. If they’re just some poor idiot who needs to be taught or threatened into not getting into more than is good for them, we do that. But if not--” Max cocks an imaginary shotgun, the gesture practiced and ironic. “I’m not stupid. I know we’re probably going to hell for being judge, jury, and executioner. But we do our best to keep people from getting killed, either by witches or, you know. Me.”

Dean lets the silence stretch out. Tries to picture sudden, unstoppable tears on Alicia’s face, where he’s only ever seen determination or a cocky grin. Thinks about Dad telling him he might have to put Sam down like a mean dog that can’t be trusted. Thinks about Jack--

Max shoots a glance at Dean in the rearview mirror and glances down, looking suddenly self-conscious. He flips his sunglasses back on, too studied a gesture to be as nonchalant as he wants it to come off. “Look at me, giving you my whole sob story when I know you’ve seen worse. You old-school hunters, man, you’re the most emotionless, John Wayne bastards I ever met. You still wash your wounds with whiskey or are you not too cool for store-brand antibiotics?”

Dean feels a pang at that. The guy’s got him wrong, not that he knows how to communicate that. “Nah, cool won’t cure an infection, I learned that the hard way. And. You know.” He glances over at Max, catches him fidgeting with the arm of his sunglasses. Wills him to understand the hand he’s reaching out to Max. “Tough thing for a kid to do. Any kid.”

Max lets out a short breath, surprised. “Yeah, well. Guy had it coming. At least if I have to kill a witch, I know they dug their own grave. Creatures, though, they sound like a lot more trouble than they're worth. Don’t know how you can tell which ones are gonna be a problem.”

“You can’t,” Dean says. “Some hunters put down any they can get their hands on. Some let ‘em go if they seem harmless enough. Sam and I’ve done a little of both.” And both have gone bad on us, Dean thinks but doesn't say. Both have left him waking up feeling like a heavy weight was pressing down on him, a weight of something he did, a worry that he let a killer go.

“Well, I promise not to bite anyone that doesn’t deserve it, and you promise to tell me if you’re going through one of your kill-anything-with-fangs phases, deal?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, man,” Dean says, low. Something in his voice makes Max look to him, then back out the window again.

[magicofthepen]

For the character thingy, romana and leela?? ❤

ROMANA - I’m going to answer for Romana I, since I already did Romana II!

favorite thing about them: so I fell in love with Romana I instantly when I watched The Ribos Operation. I was like “wait no one told me that Romana’s basically a recent graduate who always thrived in school but has now suddenly been thrust into the Real World and is a bit of a mess” and oh my god why is she so relatable, also I love that about her. I love that she doesn’t quite know what she’s doing, and her academic brilliance doesn’t necessarily help in the situations she’s finding herself in, but she keeps trying and learning, so by the end of season 16 she’s much more confident and capable on her own than she was when she started. I just absolutely adore the premise of her character and how she develops during the key to time quest. also her banter skills are so excellent. (….this wasn’t one thing whoops. 😄)

least favorite thing about them: I feel like it’s something about how she’s portrayed in the Gallifrey audios, but I can’t quite articulate what? but I feel like somehow, some of the things I really liked about her on TV (her witty fun banter, her determination even when she’s out of her depth) aren’t represented as much when we get glimpses of Actual Romana I (not Pandora or an alternate universe version). idk if this is even fully true, it’s just….she doesn’t quite have the same vibe as the character I remember from the TV show (but this is also tricky because the Lies scene, the Matrix projection in Lies (which *isn’t* really her technically) and the remains of her consciousness in the body that Pandora’s using are the only times we get Actual Romana I - which isn’t that much time to express all the nuances of her character.)

(continuing to skip the favorite line question because it’s too hard)

brOTP: her and the Doctor!! (like I said in the Romana II ask, I used to ship them more, but lately I’ve been more into a platonic interpretation.) I just as instantly fell for their dynamic in the Ribos Operation - two people with very different personalities who don’t get along but are forced to work together and gradually become friends?? this is exactly the kind of relationship arc that I adore. Their banter and snark is So Good (I was so entertained by their interactions in Ribos Operation that my brain refused to pay attention to anything but their scenes, and I ended up having issues following the plot later oops). And I love their growing respect and care for each other - how they go from being mutually dismissive of each other to valuing each other and being a solid Team and just really genuinely liking each other! their friendship is just Very Good (…..and now I really want to rewatch season 16….I’ve only seen it like one and a half times but I loved it very much….)

OTP: I don’t think I have any ships with Romana I that I would consider an ‘otp’? (the closest would be her and the Doctor since I have sometimes shipped them and I adore their relationship in general)

nOTP: Brax/Romana again….and tbh with Romana I it’s more of an actual nOTP (rather than ‘kinda nOTP, kinda ‘it’s complicated’’) because this is the time frame when she’s actually his student and so my discomfort with student/teacher relationships really rears its head (although there’s still one fic out there that I just think is so well-written.....but it does show the relationship as very unhealthy). 

random headcanon: .....so sorry to continue Sartia posting, but oops the first thing that popped into my head is my new maybe-unrealistic headcanon that Sartia was Romana’s first kiss. in a teenage “I’m curious and want to try this thing and you’re the only person I hang out with, but it doesn’t mean anything....or does it??” way. (.....this is so self-indulgent in such a terrible way rip.)

unpopular opinion: Armageddon Factor is my favorite Key to Time story! (I gather this is an unpopular opinion in Doctor Who Fandom At Large, it doesn’t seem to be liked as much as some of the earlier stories in the season.) technically I’ve only seen it once and it was a couple years ago, but I remember loving it as a Romana story, there were a lot of really interesting character bits for her!

song i associate with them: hmm I don’t really have one? my Romana playlist is specifically for Romana II in Big Finish so....yeah.

favorite picture of them: anything with her Ribos Operation outfit (with the full cloak), it’s iconic and beautiful! on a similar note, I love this Romana I art by @volucris-liga, it’s the first Romana fanart I ever reblogged and it’s so pretty!

more under the cut!

LEELA

favorite thing about them: her resilience and her kindness. Leela goes through so much grief and pain, she has her world upended again and again, she never really finds a place where she belongs. and yet she still keeps choosing to love, choosing to keep fighting for what she believes in, choosing to rebuild again and again. and sometimes it’s really hard and she doesn’t want to go on….but she does, and she finds moments of happiness again. and that strength is really powerful. and no matter how cruel the universe (and other people) are to her, she is still relentlessly kind - she listens, she protects, she wants to help, she cares. 

least favorite thing about them: I mean, the “savage” stereotype that her character references is a racist/anti-indigenous trope (especially the whole dynamic of the Doctor trying to “civilize” her ugh). and I hate that characters keep calling her “savage” (even when they’re the Bad Guys, it’s still bringing up this trope again and again, and it’s even worse when it’s the Good Guys). why are they still doing this.

brOTP: see all characters listed under otp, every relationship that I ship is also an incredibly important friendship in Leela’s life and I love all of them <33 as far as relationships that I see as entirely non-romantic….I really love the version of Leela and Ace’s relationship that exists in my head (and in fandom) - they didn’t get to interact enough in the audios, but I absolutely think they were really close, because of their shared experiences and the ways their personalities mesh. (I feel like I should also say the Doctor here, but tbh I don’t remember her TV stories that well, so I don’t really have a solid memory of what their relationship was like.) and of course, Leela’s parental relationship with Rayo is very important to me!

OTP: once again, ot3 my beloved <33 and Leela/Romana first and foremost (I already rambled about them here, so I’m just going to second everything I said earlier). 

and I also ship Leela/Narvin, although I’m not quite as invested in that pairing? (due to a combination of ‘Romana is my favorite character and so I’m just more interested in her relationships with other characters,’ ‘I joined the fandom when things were pretty much all Leela/Narvin all the time (I say with great respect and affection for the artists and writers putting out amazing content for that ship) so I was motivated to write fic primarily for R/L and N/R to balance out the ot3 content,’ ‘apparently I have a contrary streak with Gallifrey and the more the writers push a romantic interpretation of a relationship, the less interested I am in actually shipping it,’ and ‘I’m not really into Leela/Narvin as a pairing on its own - although I do love a lot of fic that portrays them that way bc it’s just very well-written.’) But just. how they form a grudging alliance for Romana’s sake and then develop genuine respect for each other and then build this really solid foundation of teamwork and fondness and care and really relax and feel comfortable around each other….the way they become ride-or-die for each other and just trust and love each other so much….it’s Very Good!! (And I did love writing scenes with the two of them in Call It Home - I might not focus on them, but I do genuinely love their relationship.) 

And of course Leela/Veega <33….I debated if they even interacted enough in the actual audios for me to consider it an otp, but I love the idea of their relationship and the story of them in my head so much?? going to link to this post because it really captures my feelings about them - they’ve both been through so much grief and pain by the time they meet, they’ve both lost people they love before, so the idea of them choosing to love each other and build something together against the odds is just. very powerful. plus I have a whole playlist for the family they’ve built together, which is a strong indication that I really love this ship. 😊

nOTP: Leela/Andred. last time I answered an ask meme about Leela, I had this complicated response about how I hated Leela/Andred when I watched Invasion of Time (bc it’s so abrupt and arbitrary), and then Louise Jameson’s voice acting Convinced Me To Care because oh she really did love him....alas i am a Leela/Andred detractor at heart, and I have been nudged back to my default state by re-listening….I simply hate how he treats Leela in Gallifrey.

random headcanon: I really like the idea of Leela being more politically involved in her own right after they all return from the Axis. She’s just spent a lot of time leading a group of people who don’t have a voice in the government, fighting for their rights against the established injustices of Gallifreyan society. I don’t think she’d easily slip back into only being Romana’s bodyguard after experiencing more political autonomy on the other Gallifrey. What exactly this looks like in practice I’m not sure about - in my one fic ‘verse, I wrote about her being more directly involved with the Academy as a political liaison and guest tutor, and also advocating to Romana for policies that would benefit those who live outside the city on their home Gallifrey. but there’s probably a lot of options to explore here!

unpopular opinion: hmm I don’t think this is necessarily unpopular but idk and I want to talk about it: even though Leela identifies so strongly as a warrior, a “happy ending” for her would, I think, need to involve getting away from fighting. too often she throws herself into a fight to try to avoid thinking about how much she’s hurting, and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t stop the pain. and in the Time War, she’s tied her identity so strongly to war (it’s inevitable, inescapable, and she will Fight and Defend because that’s all she has left). there’s a difference between “I am a warrior” and “all I am is a warrior,” and Leela’s slid too far into the second one, and she needs to untangle her own identity from war to heal. 

song i associate with them: Freedom by Karmina (it’s a song about going on defiantly in the face of heartbreak -  “Tearing my room apart, I’m starting over” / “Take my pride I can still survive I’ve got my freedom” / “Hunt me down you’ll never find me now that I’ve got my freedom”)

favorite picture of them: the first one that came to mind is this gorgeous art by @laurelhach (which I didn’t realize was based on a picture until I stumbled across the original picture and was like oh my god!! it looks exactly like the art!!)

[orime-stories]

Writer meme: 2, 4, 8, 16, 25!

Thank you! ^_^ Asks here, more answers here.

2. How much research do you do before you start?

Depends what we count as research. I’ll play the games I write about to death and watch all the alternate paths on youtube and buy all the lorebooks but none of that feels like ‘research’ as such, it’s just me indulging in my interests with the happy side effect being that it inspires and shapes the stories that are coming out of me. I do take extensive screenshots and notes on in-game dialogue though. And sometimes if I have a specific question I want answered about the world or its established characters I’ll do a meander through some wikis. But I’m rarely interested or motivated to start delving into 15th century painting techniques or what have you to make my fics more realistic. I’m a big supporter of the whole ‘in fantasy land we can have whatever we want’ movement, and I’m always going to resist turning my writing into the not fun kind of work for myself (though I know and admire that that part of research is what some writers enjoy getting their teeth into, it’s just not for me).

4. Do you visualise your characters as you create them? Do you make mood boards or playlists?

When it comes to conceptualising my characters in my head, I tend to be more focused on imagining their personality and background and inner struggles. Looks-wise, I’m usually pretty happy to stick with how they turn out looking in game, though that of course depends on the graphics of said game and how many options I get in character creation to make them actually feel like a distinct person. Recently I have been prodding my brain to try projecting different body types onto the characters though as quite frankly I’m getting bored of all the hourglass figures. I’ve never tried making a mood board (too unsure about what the rules and etiquette are there to avoid accidentally stealing things without appropriate credit), but I have started dabbling in playlists after being tagged in some challenges and having a lot of fun with them. Seluna’s is here, and I have a bunch of works in progress for other characters.

8. Do you attempt to target a specific genre (YA/romance/mystery/horror/etc)? What’s your favourite to read? What’s your favourite to write?

I don’t tend to think in genres. I just want good character-driven stuff, whatever form that takes. My anxiety-ridden brain doesn’t do too well with certain kinds of horror though.

16. What’s the hardest part of writing for you? What’s the easiest?

I’m very good at only writing when I feel the urge to and then patiently waiting for the next burst of inspiration as and when it hits in its own time, so writing has never felt like a chore for me. However, that does bite me in the arse when there are bits of mundane groundwork needing done that I don’t feel immediately drawn to work on. I’ll just keep chasing shiny butterflies ten chapters down the line if I let myself, leaving scenes of questionable chronology and half-completed chapters in my wake. So I’m trying to get more comfortable with a middle ground of “why don’t we open a document with the intention of hashing out a rough version of what we need for this part, then it’s ready there waiting for us when the inspiration floodlight falls upon it”. And more often than not I am surprising myself with how much comes out just with that gentle nudge of focused intention and the knowledge that I can tap out as soon as I’ve had enough.

25. Free space. Tell me anything you want about writing in general or one of your stories.

I see so many suspiciously capitalist-looking tendrils in the writing norms on tumblr and I wish I could release people from the burden of them, especially when they just seem to be making themselves miserable trying to adhere to them. Some examples of this are the pressure people feel to be dedicating every spare moment they have to writing (I’ll sometimes go months without writing and I don’t need or want to feel guilt about that, this ain’t my job and I don’t owe anyone anything); the pressure people feel to always be striving to improve their writing or for it to need to be ‘good’ at all to have worth (writing in and of itself nourishes your mind/soul, it always has that inherent worth, the rest is optional and ‘good’ is such a subjective and useless term anyway); the pressure people feel to constantly be churning out current and relevant content for others to consume, as though they and their works are just another set of products on a shelf whose value is set by other people. All this apologising for works being “bad” or for taking “too long” between uploads or for not improving any over time, when none of that needs to be relevant at all, especially if it’s just stressing you out and making you hate a hobby that has the potential to be making you feel good. This is turning out to be such a ramble XD but it’s something I clearly have a lot of feelings about. And of course, usual disclaimers apply that all of the aspects I highlighted above are and can be aspects that people absolutely do enjoy and thrive in. I just wish there were more unapologetic examples on here of people moving in different rhythms so that everyone can pick the one that feels right to them without complication or shame, opting in and out of self-improvement or speed/frequency based challenges or various extrinsic motivations as and when they are relevant to us, our needs and our goals.