#woriwart

[kaistrex]

What are your all time fave sterek fic reccs? (regardless of theme/au/tags)

And what do you like about them? (if you want to share)

So, a lot of my all time faves are ones that I read like 6 years ago, and it's been so long since I've read them that I think I've forgotten what most of them are 😂

Most of them are also fandom classics by writers that everyone knows, so the few answers I can remember are going to be very boring haha

But a big favourite of mine which is lesser known is:

This Was How Legends Were Made by Delta_Immortal

Caught between the Hales and the Argents in their war, Stiles finds himself a slave of the great Hale pack. Stiles spends each day working hard, hoping to earn his freedom and see his sick father. It also seems each day he’s capturing more and more attention from Derek, the young Hale lord. Stiles tells himself it’s mostly because Derek is merely trying to figure out how to send the annoying, useless slave away- not because of affection, despite the tales coming from the rumor mill.

It doesn’t matter what Derek's intentions are. Stiles can’t bother with love right now. He's got to keep his head down and survive long enough to keep his promise to Kate Argent. After all, she's promised to keep his father safe.

I think this fic features one of the most jaw-dropping scenes I've read in any Sterek fic ever, and it's even just given me chills to think about a specific line from it. It's the sort of scene where it really made me wonder if Stiles and Derek could even come back from it, but the writer handled it delicately and realistically instead of going for a cheap resolution which I really love. I've gone back to this fic quite a few times.

Another fic I love which is lesser known that I’ve been banging on a lot about over the past year is:

Set in Stone by orphan_account

When Talia is born on January 11, 1959, no one knows about time travel. Eight years later, Talia hears whispers of wolves who get unstuck from time from the alphas who visit her family. This is why, when it happens to Derek, Peter, and Cora, she is ready.

A Time Traveler's Wife AU.

I think about this fic a hell of a lot. I think my favourite thing about it is the kind of genius way that it makes Cora’s absolutely bonkers miraculous survival of the Hale fire in canon actually make sense.

We all love Derek and hurt over the shitshow that is his life, but this fic turns it all into a knife to stab you right in the heart in a way I’ve never had another fic do, before or since. I had to put my phone down at one point to actually sob into a tissue, and I’ve never had any other piece of written media make me cry like that.

What hurts my heart too is that, from what I’ve gleaned from the author’s note, they had it posted to ao3 for a couple of years, chose to delete it, then reuploaded it 4 years later, only to orphan it after just a few months. I just hate to wonder about the author’s reasoning for it, like if they lacked confidence in what they’d written or something? Because this fic is incredible and I’m absolutely gutted that I’ll never know who the author is so I can’t check out any more of their works.

As for some others, I adore Sugar and Spice and I get filthy when that liquor get into me by standinginanicedress (both deleted now, but many copies are floating around the internet easily found) and I don’t think they need an explanation as to why I love them considering the author haha

I know that I loved What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

but I think I’ve only read it once a good while ago so I don’t really remember the details of why I loved it lol

And I think that’s a problem that I have with a lot of fics which probably came under the ‘favourites’ umbrella. There are so many fics I loved that are fandom classics and on every rec list and I recognise all the titles, but it’s been so long since I’ve read them that I don’t remember the details of them. (Honestly though, that’s a pretty great problem to have. The Sterek fandom is blessed ✨)

I will leave you though with one of my favourite fics from last year which was:

The Misguided Believer by Kaye_Fraser

It isn’t easy for a human to make it in a wolf's world, especially not for a human trying to earn an unconventional living as a private investigator like Stiles. Sure, the Human Rights Act had been passed twenty years ago, but that didn't lessen the discrimination that still existed against humans. Stiles is determined though. In an effort to pay rent, he takes on a human murder case that has been buried by the werewolf authorities, only to find himself on the trail of a potential serial killer. Unfortunately, to get anything done around town, he needs the help of one stupidly grumpy wolf by the name of Derek Hale. Granted, meeting the wolf over a dead body hadn’t made the best of first impressions, but Stiles is going to solve his first case and make a name for himself, and if that means winning over Derek to his cause by being his most charming self, then so be it!

I love the setting of this fic and all of the incredible worldbuilding, and I still have my fingers crossed for a part 2. I remember I put off reading the final chapter for like a week because I just didn’t want it to end. It’s criminally under-read, so people should go and give it some more love!

And that’s all I have! I really feel like there’s a glaringly obvious fic that I’m forgetting about which I’ll probably remember as soon as I hit post, but you can have these for now haha

[spearxwind]

Some recent commissions!! These are for @zelterxc, @woriwart and @superlunariies !! 

[kaistrex]

Holy shit it sure was, I had the wrong tab open and I was not paying attention. I'm so sorry!

Where the Real Beasts Are ⛰️-⭐-🎢

Haha no worries! It's so easily done!

It turns out I had a lot to say, so strap in 😂

(Where the Real Beasts Are)

⛰️- What was the hardest part?

Because I wrote the fic over such a long period, there’s probably something from earlier on that I’m forgetting, but as it’s freshest in my memory, I think keeping myself motivated to get the final chapter finished was one of the hardest parts. When I first sat down to work on it after the penultimate chapter was out, I had about 2k words of notes/scenes written, and it just got longer and longer as I chipped away at it until it somehow hit 22k.

Usually when I write, I can see the finish line steadily approaching, but as the chapter expanded and I fleshed out all of the scenes, it just seemed to get further and further away and was low-key soul destroying 😂 I think it was just the idea of finally seeing the entire fic finished after years of working on it, and the thought of basking in the glory of hitting post for the final time, that was my biggest motivation in getting it done haha

It was a complete bitch to edit, and I’ve since vowed never to estimate the final chapter count of a longfic again, because then I feel a ridiculous need to actually stick to it instead of allowing myself a bit more freedom.

🎢- Were there any scenes you were nervous about? For audience reception or otherwise?

Honestly, I was most worried the two times that the Graphic Depictions of Violence archive warning came into play towards the end (one more extreme than the other lol). I really thought I’d wake up in the morning to people furious that I didn’t leave a warning that it was about to get a little bit gory, so I was cringing away from the screen a little every time I opened my inbox to read any new comments in case of abuse, but then nothing ever came haha

I added that archive warning to the fic when I posted the very first chapter back in 2018 in preparation for the fic’s finale (3 years later...), so I was ready if anyone bitched about it when the warning was right there in the tags and they read it anyway (as I’m sure we’ve all seen people do often enough before). I worked really hard on the plot, and one of the instances of violence was supposed to be a surprise, so no way in hell was I going to spoil that ~something~ was about to go down in the chapter notes.

But in the end, I worried over nothing 😂

⭐- What’s a scene/paragraph you’re proud of?

There’s a whole lot of fic to go through to answer this, so I’m probably forgetting something, but I think my favourite scene is back in their rooms after the masquerade. I’m the sort of person who feels good about something once I’ve written it, but then as soon as I post it, I tend to cringe too hard to be able to reread it properly, but if I look over that scene again, I’m still really pleased with the atmosphere of it. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same, but to me it feels like there’s a hush over the whole scene, like it’s a held breath or something, and I like how slow and tender Derek is as he undresses Stiles TvT

Shoutout also to the final line/paragraph of the fic which I am still proud of. Endings are always the worst part to write, and I can’t say a fic is finished until the ~feel~ of the final sentence is right. I wanted the final note to be something happy, and something I’d still be pleased with even after time passes, and so far that still holds haha

Derek pulls back to brush their noses together, sunlight sparkling in his eyes of green and gold, the shadow of a daffodil petal falling on his cheek. Stiles’ heart is so full that he can feel it beating in his chest, tugging him forward like perhaps it always has, leading him where he was always meant to be, straight into the arms of his beautiful, tender-hearted wolf.

I wanted it to tie things together, so it ends up touching on the procession that opens the fic with the mention of the daffodil, the colour of Derek’s eyes which Stiles had seen when Derek was first given to him as a ‘direwolf’, and then it vaguely references the journey Stiles was lead on throughout the fic. The final ‘tender-hearted wolf’ was supposed to be like a juxtaposition of how good Derek is despite Kate/the Argents’ belief that him being a wolf makes him a ‘beast’, to try and tie in the through line of the whole fic and the title.

I have no idea if that even came across to anyone reading it (I don’t usually think about word choice like that, ever!), but I’m proud of it anyway 😊 It took a lot of agonising!

(I did consider for 0.5 seconds if I should capitalise ‘Wolf’ to reflect how Derek first came to him, but realised immediately that would just highlight Derek as a pet which I knew was a BIG NO-NO and not the vibe I was go for at all.)

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Thanks for the ask! I always end up having a lot to say for these things, so I hope it was at least a little bit interesting haha

The icons are from here if anyone wants to send any my way, or you can ask anything else that comes to mind. My inbox is always open~