#you're supposed to share snippets of your writing but my writing isn't complete without the images

[arcaneyouth]

being a comic writer and then going into writing spaces is weird and confusing. a lot of the time it's lots of people focused on fanfic. so i go oh cool this isn't for me, so i go to original writing spaces (harder to find. btw.) and they talk about their writing process and all these relatable writer things and i realize i'm not really a writer. my form of writing isn't right for this group. i write scripts with descriptions of how the pages should be laid out, what brush to use, panel breaks, page breaks, only dialogue, in a format not meant to be read by anyone besides me, because the real writing will happen when i draw the page, but then it's not writing it's drawing. i make stories in my head with camera angels, pacing between panels and pages, breaking the established rules of a comic to make something new, and i call daydreaming about this writing (it's not writing). and i'm not really a writer in the same way. so i go oh, ok, this isn't for me, and then i go to original comic writing spaces except that doesn't exist that's just webtoon and then i go home because webtoon is the bane of all creativity

[indestructibleheart]

5 and 11 xoxo MJ/kiwiana-writes

5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?

First up is the AU I mentioned in this ask, but I don't have a piece that's really worth sharing yet. All I've got is a little exposition. However, the second item on my list is the coma fic... which I have a lot of. So I'll share a snip of that instead:

With Alex's eyes closed, his face slack and body limp in a catatonic sleep, Henry feels truly alone for the first time since a cake toppled over and took Henry's entire life with it. He has to look away, turning his eyes back to the book.  "He talks about anagrams quite a lot in these letters—as a metaphor, yes, but also quite literally. Lemony and Beatrice have codes in their writings." He flips a few pages, searching for a particular passage. "Here, this is my favorite bit: "'A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. But in my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrite-nine.'"  He chuckles to himself. "I suppose that's clearer when you're able to see the text," he explains. "The font mimics a typewriter and there's actually a numeral jammed in there, so Snicket is implying that his typewriter is literally malfunctioning. Quite profound for a children's book, isn't it?" 

11. Would you like to try any new fanfic genres or tropes this year?

Answered here!

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Fanfic asks for the new year

[shhhhhuuuush]

Join me under the cut because this will get long

I'm assuming you got here thru AO3! I'm sharing a couple snippets I edited out of The Very Real Adrien Situation:

(1) the original draft for the beginning of this fic, where chat noir comes through the window and instead of marinette jumping his bones they banter for a bit

(2) conversations about marinette's crush on adrien that I cut out

(3) some goofy banter I cut from the scene where marinettes going down on adrien, post-adrien-reveal

(4) the beginning of another sex scene that would have happened at the end of the fic but seemed like overkill and i didnt care enough to write it

Under the cut so this isn't crazy long:

[My original draft for the beginning of the fic - at first, the scene where ladybug + chat noir are tied up together didn't exist, and we just started at marinette's apartment right after margarita night]:

He's got a terrible idea.

A really excellent terrible idea. An idea that might be outrageously sexy.

He hears a key in the door and calls back his transformation. Marinette opens the door to a green flash, and says, "Were you hanging out detransformed again?"

"Just recharging," he says.

"Recharge in my bedroom, that way I can't walk in on you."

"I can always hear you coming, don't worry," Chat Noir says. "How was coffee? Ruined by the Akuma?"

"Completely," Marinette says, smiling. "Now I have to reschedule, and it's SO hard to get on my boss's calendar." She hangs her coat up, revealing her tight graphic T, cropped barely above her high waisted jeans. He can see her stomach as she lifts up her arms, meow.

"What was that?" Chat Noir says, cupping a hand to his ear and craning his neck. It makes Marinette roll her eyes and laugh. "I can't hear you," he says. "You'll have to come closer."

"I suppose so," Marinette says with an exaggerated sigh. She covers about half the distance to the couch and leans against the kitchen island. "How's this?"

"What's that? Pardon?"

She takes a couple exaggerated steps towards the couch, stopping about two feet away. "How's this?"

"I think I'm going deaf," Chat Noir sighs. "Or you're too quiet."

She covers the last step to the couch and collapses right on top of him. The suit makes it easy to take her full weight. She rests her chin on her hands above his breastbone, and says "I'll get you a hearing aid. Two sets of hearing aids, for both ears."

"Ah, there you are," he sighs, shifting a bit to situate his legs more comfortably in between hers. "I missed your pretty voice."

"I missed your sweet talk. How was the fight?"

"It made me think of you," he says, fluttering his eyelashes at her.

She laughs and says, "Translation, you spent the whole time looking at Ladybug's butt, and got yourself so horny that you can't let me walk through the door without lying on top of you."

"Slander on my good name! I'll have you know I spent the whole time fighting the akuma, and then afterwards, as a treat for doing a great job saving the city, I did look at Ladybug's butt."

Marinette laughs again. "And? How was it?"

"Same as always - perfect, and almost as good as yours." Chat noir snakes his hands over Marinette's ass and parks them in her jeans pockets. She wiggles invitingly under his hands.

"Mmm, you really are in the mood," she says, and her tone of voice says she approves. She starts to play with the open zipper at his neck. "Tell me you don't have somewhere you need to be in an hour."

"For you I have all the time in the world," Chat noir purrs, tilting his chin back to encourage her.

She pulls the zipper down just a couple inches, just far enough that her mouth can reach the exposed skin. She gives him a neat kiss on his chest, and says, "want to play superheroes?"

Temping, but Chat Noir has a worse idea.

"I have a counter offer," he says.

"I'm listening," she says, her fingers playing idly over the skin she's uncovered.

"It might be related to some intelligence I have gathered about your own romantic taste," Adrien says, unable to keep the teasing delight out of his voice. "Maybe about a past crush. Maybe a handsome celebrity model."

Marinette's fingers stop moving on his chest and she pales. "I don't know what you could possibly be talking about."

"Does the name Adrien Agreste ring a bell?"

----------------------------------

[early fic conversations about marinette's crush on Adrien]

He grins at her, and leans her face towards him so he can kiss her mouth, with feeling. She sinks into it, but he doesn’t let her stay for long, so he can ask: “Fantasies? Please tell me you have a whole library of fantasies.”

“Of me with another man?” she teases.

“You’re not with another man,” he reminds her, and he lets his claws trace over her bare back so that she shivers.

She says, "I thought you’d be more jealous, to be honest.”

He laughs a bit at that. “I thought you’d never see me again after we started roleplaying Ladybug. I think I owe you one.”

She smiles at that, so he supposes he’s gotten out of the conversation safely. “Fantasies,” he demands.

“It would be different from how I fuck you,” she says. “With you… I’m never nervous. You make me confident. Maybe to a fault. But it’s easy to ask you to… touch me, to fuck me, anything.”

-chat noir action to show hes listening and break up the monologue-

“Adrien makes me nervous. Not like he used to, but sometimes there’s an echo of it – I want to impress him too badly. I want him to look at me a little too much. And I can’t always read him.”

“A mystery man?”

“A mystery dork,” she corrects. “But I could say the same about you.”

“You have a type,” he grins.

“I have a type,” she agrees.

“So how do you fuck him?” he says.

She laughs. “You won’t be distracted, huh?”

“I have to hear what the other fucking options are. I’m only getting the chat noir treatment. What am I missing out on?”

[in here: marinette starts to explain a fantasy by saying she wants adrien to "find her at a party, you know what I mean?"]

“Tell me what you mean,” he says, still playful with the laughter from a minute before.

“Something like... the lights are low, the music’s loud, and… I used to imagine, you know… I wanted…”

She gives him a look, but gets to the point. “He would see me through the crowd. And he’d think I looked so good that he’d come ask me to dance. And he’d pull me in really close, you know?” She’s pressed up against him. He has no trouble imagining. “We’d get to the dance floor and he’d have an arm around my back, holding me tight to him. Like right away. He wouldn’t even mind that I was a bad dancer, cause it’s just an excuse to hold me.”

She can’t get closer to him, but she shifts so he can feel her move. He winds his arms around behind her and holds her there, like she’s describing. She slips her arms around his neck.

“Like that,” she says. “Really close.”

“Hot,” Chat noir says encouragingly. “So he’s got you out on the dance floor. He’s snuggling up close to you. What would you have done? If he touched you?”

She fights a bashful grin and says, “I was too shy to do anything, really. But – if it’s a fantasy – if it went the way I wanted – I would have kissed him.”

“Just kissed him?”

“Oh no,” she whispers, flirting. “Nothing ‘just’ about it. I would drag him into a dark corner, and… I wanted him to drag me to a dark corner. And touch me more than you can do on a dance floor. Touch me like he couldn’t help himself. I—I used to…”

She trails off and he realizes he’s been sitting still, hanging on her words.

-------------------

[sometime after the adrien reveal while marinette is being sexy at adrien]

She's admiring him. Her eyes wander up and down his body in an obvious way, and she gives him an approving nod, like she's the one putting on a show. It's intensely flattering, and sends a pulse of want through him.

He wraps his hand around his own cock, to give her something to really good to watch. She licks her lips as he strokes himself, but only lets him get a couple in before she sits back up stops his hand.

"Lie down," she says.

"Who do you want to lie down?" He teases.

"I want Adrien and Chat Noir to lie down," she says. "I want to fuck my two favorite men."

He laughs and bends over to steal a fond kiss before following instructions.

She takes off his jeans.

"See?" She says, while he gives in to laughing. "It's not that hard. Some people can take off their partner's jeans without being bribed with sexy talk."

"You sucked me off before you did!" he accuses, and she says,

"I didn't even make you ask once!"

"We took the same amount of time to de-jean each other,"

"I am still wearing a shirt! With my bra undone underneath it!"

"Oh woe," Adrien sighs, leaning back into the mountain of pillows that Marinette keeps on her bed. "The lady's suffering is deep."

"You ARE Chat Noir," she huffs, and he winks at her. She rolls her eyes, twisting her mouth to stifle a smile. It takes refuge in her eyes. "I can't believe I spent six years pining after a horrible dork."

"Seven, I think you said," Adrien supplies helpfully.

"Yes, thank you, seven years," Marinette returns. "We could have cut that down to a quick two if you had just tossed a couple puns my way in Collège."

"Oh no," Adrien says, propping himself up a little to get on her level. "Now I can't sit here and say nothing. Remind me who you let into your window?"

"I can't think who," Marinette says coolly.

"Remind me who you seduced with a little red dress?"

"I only like sophisticated, suave-type men."

"Remind me who - " Adrien starts, but she cuts him off by saying,

"Oh my god - I'm ridiculous - I'm dating both of Paris's most eligible bachelors. That's just greedy!"

Adrien laughs too. "You know," he says, "there was an article last year in Dimanche that compared us. I mean, compared me to me. Chat Noir and Adrien. The consensus was that Adrien is more handsome, but Chat Noir is more romantic. I'll show you - I bought the magazine and saved it, to show Ladybug someday."

"Oh," Marinette says. "I saw that, actually. That's... kind of sweet. That you saved it to show her."

Adrien grins. "I think she'll lose her shit when she finds out I'm a model. She already says I'm too much to handle, I'm going to get a good laugh out of her for this."

Marinette is looking at him fondly. It's an impossible reaction to talking about another woman. He supposes he doesn't have to worry that his reveal will change how she feels about Ladybug. About how he feels about Ladybug.

Of course it wouldn't - if she IS ladybug, she wouldn't mind at all, some traitorous part of his mind whispers. Stop it, he whispers back. down that road is disappointment.

Marinette says, "I don't think Ladybug would even have to ask. I think you'd have already taken off her shirt."

Adrien easily sets aside his thoughts to tease Marinette. He says, "Ladybug is a strong woman who can take off her own shirt."

"Ladybug wants some attention from her impossible model boyfriend," Marinette says, slipping easily into the roleplay.

-------------------

[started to write them fucking at the end of the fic, but ran out of steam and couldn't justify it for the story so i cut it. here's how far I got]:

“Go again?” She says, all Marinette again, but still Ladybug. He almost laughs, she must know he does.

“Yes,” he says, answering her seriously anyways. “Definitely. Please.”

“Good,” she whispers.

“What’s the plan, my lady?” He asks.

She sighs. “Stay there. On me. I just want you in me.”

He kisses her deeply on the mouth, and then says, “great, I’ll remember that,” before he picks himself up off her and moves until he’s between her legs, and he kisses her deeply a second time, not on the mouth.

She laughs at his change in direction, so he digs his tongue inside her until she sighs, “Ooh, wow. It’s so much better without the suit. Next time I’m taking it off right away.”

“Oh no, not so fast,” Adrien says, raising his head at that. He uses his thumb to keep touching her while he talks, running soft, wide circles around her clit. “Marinette. You can’t. You know what that suit does to me. In excruciatingly private detail, you know what that suit does to me.”

She gives him some kind of bashful grin. “Yeah,” is all she says.

“Yeah,” he repeats, and it comes out much more serious than he intended, because he’s looking at her and she’s looking at him and she knows how much he wants her. “Yeah,” he says again.

“It wasn’t to tease you,” she says, as he lowers his mouth back to her clit, to replace his fingers. “When you told me about Ladybug. I wanted it. I really… wanted it.”

He licks her slowly, pushing his whole face into her, savoring the hot slide of her against his tongue. As sappy and romantic as he wants to be. Like he can sing her Romeo and Juliet poetry from right here, between her legs. Like he can hand her a rose, silhouetted by the moon, if he touches her right.

She settles her hands in his hair, and breathes, “I didn’t know I could have it.”

“Tell me,” he says, shortly, so he can bury his face back in her.

------------------------

THANKS if you read this!! It's possible nobody did this is pretty hidden. But it can't hurt to make it available.

[lire-casander]

2, 7, 17, 29 💕💕💕

Since one of these questions got out of hand so quickly, I’m putting all of them under a cut to save all your dashes!

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

I’m not sure I haven’t tried every single trope in the world of angsty tropes. I’ve been writing for far longer than I’ve known what tropes were, so I can’t really know.

What I can tell you is that I’d love to be better at writing the fluffier tropes: only one bed, idiots in love, accidental marriage, road trip fic... Hard as I try, I always think I fall short.

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This isn’t tough at all. I loved writing an American Idol RPF big bang ten years ago, and the first scene I wrote was the one I’m quoting below. For context, the main character is a female OC named Addira, and the main male character is David Cook, and they’re meeting after she ran away from him because she felt like she wasn’t enough for him (while he, obviously, didn’t think so). Before you say anything, no, this wasn’t a self-insert kind of fic, even if it may sound like it. Addira is the one character from the ones I’ve created that I love the most, and I always wanted to write someone who was brave enough to follow their dreams but fragile enough to be afraid of breaking if they did. Thus, Addira came to life.

As David Cook strolls confidently across their front yard in Tulsa, Addie holds her breath. He's alone, rain soaking him while he walks as if he owns the world. Frank disappears into the building with the raincoat and the mug. "Addie!" he calls when she turns around. "It's raining," it's the only reply she can come up with. "I couldn't care less," David says as he climbs the few stairs to the porch. "You're soaked," she points out. "That I already knew." David is reaching out and grabbing her hand, pulling her out of the porch and into the pouring rain. "I needed to talk to you." "Did you need to get me caught in the rain as well?" she complains. There's a strange light in David's eyes; Addie feels short of breath and dizzy all of a sudden. "Maybe not," he admits. "But we're even now." "Well, weren't you supposed to be performing somewhere far from here?" she questions. Her voice isn't as stuttery as she thought it'd be; she doesn't know if she should be proud of that. "Let's say that what I needed to tell you is far more important than any show." "More important than your fans?" Addie can't believe what he's saying. David has always been devoted to his fans from the very beginning. "I think my fans would worry about me being unhappy," he replies as clarification, but Addie still doesn't understand. "Addie, listen." "I've been doing nothing but listening to you for years," she quips when it's obvious David has trailed off, gaze lost somewhere deep into Addie's eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry I was a bastard to you. I didn't have any right, and I was hurt and tired and disappointed and down. That's not an excuse, though." "I wasn't exactly what you'd call a good girl," she admits lowly. "I was mad at you. I'm still angry, you know." David hasn't let go of her; they're both dripping wet under the rain. "But I think I've understood you in the end. These three days have been a complete disaster without you." "Don't," she starts. She doesn't like where the conversation is going; it isn't the first time they're having it, and although she's having second thoughts about her position, she's still unsure. "I know you're afraid," he cuts her off. "Believe me, it's taken me years to get it, but now I do. You're terrified you'd get in my way." "I would," she says firmly. "You believe it," David muses. "But lemme tell you something. You're not the only one who’s scared. I'm thinking that the only happiness I'll ever find in this world might leave. Again." Addie shakes her head and turns away. "You're making a mistake," he calls after her. "You're refusing to be happy for the wrong reasons. I know you think you'd stop my flight, but why can't you see it?" David sounds desperate. "You're not stopping me. You're my wings." She stops dead in her tracks. She can feel the emotion lacing each word, as if it's present between them. She balls her hands at her sides, trying to control her tears; she fails spectacularly. "It wouldn't work," she says. It's barely a whisper but David hears her over the rain that's drenching them both. "What does your heart feel, Addie?" he asks. "I won't take a lie this time. It's not about what you think that's good for me, it's not about what I need. It's about what I want, and I want to be whole again. Don't you want that too?" Against her better judgment, she nods. "Then let's try. Please. Let me show you how high you can take me," David says. "Turn around and give us a chance to be happy. I think we deserve it. Haven't we gone through enough? Do you love me, Addie?" Words leave her. Her throat is tied with a knot so tight she doesn't think she will talk ever again. He's right – she's denied the two of them this chance for long enough. She doesn't want to risk their friendship, but she has to admit to herself that it isn't enough for her – she needs more, she wants more, and David is offering it for what seems like the last time. So she does the only thing she feels strong enough to do. She turns around and runs toward David under the rain. David is ready to catch her when she launches herself against him, like he's been waiting for this forever. She reaches up and searches for his mouth to kiss him. She tries to express everything she can't say in the motion – the frustration, the pain, the fear, but also the hope, the longing, the love. Her tears mix with the rain, mingling with David's. David takes her hand and entwines their fingers. When he squeezes them, Addie realizes that, for the first time in over ten years, she doesn't know what's going to happen from now on. It's oddly freeing. "Yeah," she says, finding her voice rivers of water marring her freckled skin. "I love you." Her heart stops aching, finally.

It came to me one day as I was going to work, and I daydreamed about it until I could write it down. I love the scenery of rain and meeting in the middle of a field, and I love how this turned out to be. I even love the dialogue!

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

It depends on the story, but I usually write out of order. Sometimes I get hit by an idea and I write the scene, and most of thos times said scene happens to be either the end of the fic or somewhere in between, so I have to fill in the gaps. It’s fun writing out of order, but it’s also a pain when you have no recollection of what you’ve written so far.

29. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I would never try my hand at someone else’s work. I don’t think I’d do it justice. I have played with other people’s characters (I’m looking at you @bellakitse, thanks for letting me play with the Reyes women!), but I don’t think I could write something in someone else’s universe, fandom-wise. I took part some years ago in a remix challenge, and it was fun, but I felt like I was doing a poor service.

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