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neo-shitty · 2 years

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ahh congrats on finishing midterm!! sending u party toot thingies so we can toot party toot things together toot toot (idk what theyre called)

but for the firectors cut!! if i can be so selfish as to ask for two..

⭐️ meet me where the flowers are

⭐️ thou shall not die

literally anything you wanna say about them pls maam i'll be happy w mere crumbs

(i actually went back to ur m.list and i really wanna reread these)

thank you so much! sorry it took me a day to reply, i was waiting for one final midterm (i was technically done with majors but this one subj just felt important to make me wait a whole damn day only to never issues the exam <3 i am fucking pissed) it's not selfish to ask for two! you could've asked for more and i wouldn't bat an eye.

meet me where the flowers are - hwang hyunjin

oh, the love of my life. i think i spent days trying to find the right word combination to open the fic. i wasn’t heading anywhere with anything and i had rows upon rows of opening lines until i finally found the right one. it took a while, i can even remember just letting it sit in my drafts, completely given up on. but alas, i came up with the right word combination and with a plot already ready, i got to writing.

three inspirations: the k-drama youth of may which i finished days before i started writing this, the song hain ka by bullet dumas, and my frustration towards the results of our national elections. i came up with this at a restaurant (haha i remember looking at a chair across the room and imagining hyunjin sitting there? yk, like in that scene?) but i think the ride there was the actual medium. it gave me time to think about all three of them and before i knew it, i was typing this down on my notes app.

i was mad then, hearing the news of the son of a dictator leading the race for presidency. i couldn’t fathom how people allowed this blatant repetition of history to happen. i heard of stories of corruption, abuse, torture and killings back when that man’s father was in power and they ousted him and his family for it. only to have the same damn hands welcome them back into power 4 decades later. fucking hell. but, as enraged as i was, this story wasn’t written out of hatred (maybe a little bit haha). this was born out of grief towards people i never got to know but people who nonetheless only had the country’s best interest in mind. they fought back and lost their lives for it. everything that they fought for, all for nothing. (im not gonna bore you with politics tho so!! moving on!!)

i watched youth of may not knowing that the story would take a similar turn. turns out 80s in korea and 80s where i’m from weren’t too different lol lots of governments enforcing martial law and justifying extrajudicial killings as part of their duty <3 the gwangju massacre was a lockdown on an area where the SK gov’t suspected NK spies resided. and it frustrates me how a room full of people could issue a few commands to kill off a hundred innocent people just because of poorly supported suspicions. same goes for my country back then. and while i was very fortunate to live in a region where the dictator had some sort of bias towards, i never suffered losing someone directly. but i’ve heard enough stories, watched too many documentaries to still live in this bubble of neutrality.

then there’s ‘hain ka’ which translates into ‘where are you’. it’s a song written in my mother tongue making it more personal than literally anything else on my playlist. it tells a story of someone wondering what life would be like if the person they miss was still around. it breaks my heart every time i listen to it and it hurts no matter which way i listen to it. be it from the perspective of a friend suffering a fall out or a person grieving over someone who has passed away. YOU KNOW I’D BE HAPPY TO TRANSLATE THE WHOLE THING FOR YOU, that is if you want me to.

tldr; it’s a very personal fic, second only to ghosting. and it might be the first fic where i tackle a topic out of the ordinary fic scope. it’s borderline reality disguised in the form of fanfiction.

thou shall not die - kim seungmin

this is straight up chuuya brainrot disguised as a stray kids fanfic. i distinctly remember that this was inspired by me <dying on the dentist chair> and seeing my doctor’s sleeve smeared with my blood for the first time in the decade i’ve been visiting him. no, i’m not romanticizing my dentist or the act of going to my dentist. i was just shocked to see evidence of my bleeding be visible. the gauzes come and go but that smear would take bleach to remove and maybe a change of gowns before the next patient came in. it made me feel mortal in a way and like, i know i am, i’m just not actively reminded about it. i also know i nearly died a couple of times in that clinic but that was just the first time i paid any particular attention i guess.

fic-wise, this drew inspiration from a lot of things. there’s the wheel from howl’s moving castle, fissures with monsters from game of thrones, chuuya and yosano’s abilities from bungo stray dogs. there is really no deeper meaning to this beyond wanting to kill off a strong mc that actually has a chance to fight back but their power has a limit and this is it? DID THAT SENTENCE EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE.

god i just realized that both these fics are just people running out of time. i picture how mc could’ve lived instead of sacrificing themselves. if they waited a little longer to regain their strengths and had that miraculous 1 out of 14 million chance of winning the losing battle without another casualty, they would’ve. but that wouldn’t make a good story to tell 🥱 honestly, i haven’t thought too much about this bc i hated it : ] but looking back it had such good dystopia potential especially with their abilities. i wish i introduced the whole gang and how their powers worked but i haven’t thought that far into it, didn’t feel the need to.

#toff.asks #ask game: director's cut #straykats

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teejaystumbles · 15 days

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⭐ give us the bonus features/making of for your big bang fic!

Ooooh! OK!

For "Hell or High Water" it all started with a poll I made in May 2023 to decide which kind of fish half to give merman Hob. The British or Common Skate won and my merman Hob was born. The rest is kinda history lol.

For months I drew sketches and came up with a few scenes, like Morpheus being a freediver and dropping the ruby for Hob to find. I watched a documentary on freediving ("The Deepest Breath"), and skates of course. I talked a lot to mutuals like @amielot who helped me come up with some ideas for the story and whose drawings of Hob and Johanna shaped the way I wrote their relationship a lot.

Thinking about mermaids and movies with mermaids made me remember "Dagon", which has an ending scene that has very much made a lasting impression on me (and made me realise that I am quite a bit thalassophobic), and so I thought - "let's make it a bit creepy, a bit Lovecraftian."

I listened to "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and a lot of other Lovecraft over the next months, put together a playlist for writing and got to work on gathering more information to build my world. I decided to go with Lovecraft's love for ancient cultures as the cradle of weird/inhuman cults and made Hob's ancestors be descendents of Tiamat, originally living in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, using Accadian and Cuneiform writing as their form of communication. I have a whole Gdoc dedicated to notes for the fic, and another one for the story outline. I really put in a lot of effort but it was worth it. I love research and world building, I loved learning about freediving and revisiting my knowledge about Accadian language (I did two semesters of "Oriental studies" at the beginning of my time as a university student). At that point I don't think that I had decided to write the fic for the Big Bang, but then I thought, "why not? The pressure will help me actually write it." And it worked!

While writing I think I changed a few ideas of the story. For example, I had debated to let Thessaly try and romance Morpheus and make Hob even more jealous, but I decided to cut that short and let her focus on the ruby. I also needed a lot of time to figure out what to do about Johanna's selkie skin, there were different ideas, like have Morpheus stumble upon it where Jo had simply forgotten it. I think the final solution came to me fairly late into writing, but I'm very glad I thought of Rachel. It was my first time taking part in a Big Bang and I hope to take part in the next. There's nothing better for me than a project deadline actually forcing me to focus on one thing, as I tend to let my creativity wander and drop things halfway if I don't have to finish something.

Thank you for asking, I hope this was a bit interesting. 🥰

#asks #director's cut tag game #teejay writes #hell or high water

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darkisrising · 20 days

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⭐

suuuuusssshhhhiiiiiiiii my love! Thank you for playing with me, and per our dm conversation you settled on the sex worker bobadinluke au series for the director's commentary ask game. Which is gonna be hard since you were there when I was writing it, I'm not sure what I can come up with that you wouldn't already know/vaguely recall, but I'll give it my best shot.

Right away, I'll say that everyone that knows me has dragged me at least once about my fic titles. I'm not great at coming up with them, and usually just pick something at random. At the time I was writing this series, I had this idea of grouping fics together with some very loose theme. Which is why my dinluke stuff mostly have a mando'a words as titles, the big BDL series are all lines from songs by Frank Sinatra, and this series has titles that are all songs from the 2000s. The songs have nothing to do with the fic, except that the one line I used for the title somewhat had something to do with the fic itself. Which I know drives @bronze-lorica crazy, lololol, and I'm sure she'd not alone.

This series started off as three prompt fills. Three people requested "sex worker" from a list of AUs but asked for different ships, and I decided to make my life easier by setting them all in the same, modern world. This series got me by the throat as I was writing, and I'd post a little more, only to be like "Oh! And another thing..." over and over, until there were 37k words of it.

I knew I didn't want to tell an angsty story with this one-- I love angst but I wasn't in the mood--so instead I went with the idea that Luke's a sex worker that's doing this as a means to an end, and is very clear about when the end will be. So, instead of seeing him hit rock bottom and let that be the motivation for the sex work, it's more transitory than that. This is only a moment in his life that we're seeing, and he's very clear about that.

His sex worker style I sort of based on the persona I take on in my client-facing/customer service jobs. Upbeat and patient. "You can trust me" and "We'll get through this together" vibes. And since I like my triads where everyone is a puzzle piece that fits in together, providing something for each person that's unique and different, it synced up nicely to make Din someone with a repressed/religious fanatic background. Luke's very open and non-judgemental, not to mention competent, energy is like Valium to Din. It lets him soften and be more willing to engage in a way that he doesn't really with his bristly husband. Boba's my gruff, blue collar man and when I hit on the idea of him dealing with chronic pain from an accident at a construction site (the Sarlacc building project, he fell into the pit, natch, and then after I decided that, I couldn't stop hearing Andy Dwyer singing "pit. I fell in it, the pit. You fell in it, the pit. We all were in that pit.") it made sense that Luke was able to help him if he was training to be a physical therapist. After that, it was all a matter of teasing those three connection points in different directions to see how the three of them could provide for each other in unique ways. That's really where the plot (such as it is) came from. Writing it was a really organic, natural process, which isn't normally the case for me. But, I guess, I started off knowing the characters in this incarnation really well (and with faaaaaaar more clarity than usual) so it was mostly a matter of seeing where that would take me.

(link if anyone else wants to play)

#ask game #directors cut #sex worker au #bobadinluke #dark is thinking #ask box

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flowerandblood · 12 days

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Hi, Hagi! ☺️ Can you do a director’s commentary of your choice? ⭐⭐⭐

Hi! I'm sorry it took me so long. I decided to write about The Fall from the Heavens. ⭐⭐⭐

When I started this series, I knew that I wanted it to be longer than the others and what I wanted the main theme to be. The titular fall from the heavens is the children's collision with reality, the world and situations for which no one has prepared them.

Their heaven was the relationship they created with great difficulty just for themselves − it was important to me that the reader did not enter a world in which they immediately was close friends. I wanted to show the way children think, their naivety, innocence and ease of making rash decisions, the fact that they do not think about many things and take others for granted.

Their love is filled with idealism. As a child, Aemond does not know that having seven children is not easy, that his wife will have to experience the agony of difficult childbirth, which he has never witnessed, because it always happens behind closed doors. He thinks that taming dragons without riders will be easy, he plans it in his head like a hunting expedition.

His Rhaenys, on the other hand, is convinced that the adults around her know what they are doing. That her mother, when she is forbidden to see her uncle after he lost an eye, saying that he is tired, is right and it is the right thing to do − let him rest.

The clash between naivety and reality is painful and leaves them wounded and defenseless. Aemond locks himself in his mind, but his Rhaenys is unable to do so − she pours everything she feels into letters to him.

This is the only thing that saved them both from madness − while reading them, he still lived in the conviction that she had never forgotten him and, despite his rage, his hatred did not turn into what it became in Stay and love, leave and die.

That's why when they meet in King's Landing after all these years, everyone around them thinks there's going to be some incident − we know that Jace thinks their uncle simply despises them all.

He doesn't know yet about the hundreds of letters that Aemond had been reading for years and which, whether he wanted it or not, he kept deep in his heart. When they look at each other, only they both know it, and even though they would like it to be otherwise, they suffer at the sight of each other.

Aemond doesn't want to allow himself to think that seeing her again brings him any kind of contentment or satisfaction − he's excited and filled with emotions he doesn't know what to do with. When his niece comes to him, he uses passive aggression to push her away, knowing that if he doesn't, something in his mask will eventually crack and expose him to ridicule.

That's why when she kisses him, he doesn't push her away − he just accepts it with relief. Although they both believe that they have lost these years, thanks to her letters, they have never stopped missing each other, and what happens between them that night is their desperate, wordless attempt at reconciliation.

Even though Aemond never wrote her back, he had unknowingly proven to her then, though she didn't understand it at the time, that he had never stopped thinking of her as his future wife.

He unintentionally uses the phrase "− your husband will treat your body with a proper respect −" and thus reveals what he really thinks. He was her husband in his mind even when they were children. His first question after what they did was "Do you still want to marry me?" and he adds "− we will finally end these years of misery −".

He means his own misfortune, his own suffering, believing that she felt exactly the same.

All the while, bits of who he was was emerging from underneath the stone fortress he had created around himself, and that was my intention. Create characters who experience something inside themselves, who really feel, who really suffer. I wanted readers to believe they are truly in love.

Ask Game: Director Cut

#ask games #director cut #the fall from the heavens

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ellethespaceunicorn · 11 months

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Director's cut ask... 👉👈

Did you ever consider a different ending for 'make that kitty purr'?

I cut down Make That Kitty Purr extensively. It was originally much darker and very sinister.

But, if anyone is interested, I would love to revisit this story and present it longer, thicker, and uncut (😈). I do have to rewrite it though. So, maybe by the end of the weekend, we can have:

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jamiesfootball · 4 months

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⭐️⭐️ for anything you would like to share!!

OOOH! I have an answer for this one now, since you asked me about it in your comment (THANK YOU LOVE YOU MWAH!)

I have had a few people ask about the couch scene, specifically what fucking show Jamie was (poorly) explaining-

Community, season 2 episode 15, "Early 21st Century Romanticism" aka that one where Troy and Abed both ask out the librarian at the same time

Now I have a certain pet peeve when it comes to using pop culture references in media. If the only reaction it garners is 'look! they said the thing that I like!' then to me that's not a very good utilization of a shout out. References age, and they won't mean the same thing to people later.

But at the same time this is Ted Lasso, and Jamie was specifically trying to emulate a Lasso speech, which means references.

Starters for those who don't know- Community is a tv show. It's about a mish-mash group of students who joined a community college study group. While some of it has not aged well, much of it was made out of genuine nerdy love and it is absolutely dripping in sincerity and love.

(This is where Jamie's confused 'I think they knew they were in a tv show' is from- one of the characters in particular, Abed, is very meta, and frequently calls out the plot of the episode as if it were a tv show.)

One of the main plots of the episode I'm referencing is this: Troy and Abed, the best-friendiest best friends to ever best friend, have come to the conclusion that they are both interested in the same librarian. Wanting to side-step the common tv problem of two guys fighting over the same girl, they decided to circumvent the issue by both of them asking her out to a Valentine's day dance. Together. Like they ask her, at the same time, if she will go with both of them.

Which brings me to the how / why I chose it: because I did not like how this part played out in the finale. In the finale, Roy and Jamie going to Keeley's felt like a last-minute wrap-up, an 'oh shoot we forgot to deal with that.'

So when I set out trying to fix things, one of the first things I asked myself was 'what's a time where I've seen this sort of plot line work for me?'

Answer: this Community episode

That was my starting point. There were more things I knew I wanted. For starters, I wanted Keeley to actually have time to voice her opinion on having both of them spring that on her like that (that scene is in a later chapter.) But another thing I knew I wanted was for them to talk about it. Part of the making-it-make-sense to me wasn't just in figuring out how the fight happened, but also dealing with the aftermath of it all. I wanted them to talk about it, and I wanted them to get some closure on it.

I saw someone on here mention that Roy and Jamie have a pattern of initial disagreement -> jump to fighting about it -> admit guilt -> talk about what was actually wrong that started the fight. The whole couch scene is really those last two parts.

But with everything so raw and Keeley already admittedly a touchy subject, it felt like a topic that needed to be come at sideways. It made more sense that it would be Jamie brave enough to broach the topic- not only because of Roy being in a more intense place about it, but also because well...I think after Amsterdam Jamie's become a little more emotionally in-tuned to Roy. This is something else that I tried to weave in, that Jamie knows what Roy is like, and yeah Roy can be a dick, but he is rarely a dick without purpose. Sometimes that purpose is fun, but this was not fun.

Jamie is kind of a mess, our boy, so with Ted's most recent Ted-Talk fresh in his head, the idea of having him try to give Roy a Lasso Speech weaved itself in easy.

From there it was a matter of gathering the strings: the reference I already knew I wanted to use, and the framework to talk about it. This was actually the first part of the couch scene that I wrote. Though the initial draft was in short-hand, the core of the Lasso Speech was always the same: Jamie wandering his way towards softly admitting that a part of him was glad Keeley didn't choose between them.

Back to my earlier point about references, I had some guidelines going in for how to shape it:

Enjoyable by all. It had to be vague enough that someone unfamiliar with Community could still enjoy it, while being specific enough that it'd still feel meaningful. Because that's what I wanted the experience to feel like from Roy's point of view. He's never seen this show, he has no connection to it, so the meaning must be found in how the story is delivered.

Memory blur. Some situations call for a character to have very clear recall of an event or story. While Beard and Ted may have excellent pop culture recall, it made more sense if Jamie's was spotty (the frog in a hat bit is actually NOT from the episode he is talking about, it is from a different episode that happens to be near another dance). Plus given the age he was when the show came out, it made more sense if this is something he didn't necessarily seek out but instead passively absorbed.

Authentic. In addition to Jamie's spotty memory of the story he is telling, the fact of the matter is he is copying the style and structure of someone else, and he's filling in the gaps as best he understands them. He doesn't understand why Ted includes all these little details, but he knows that Ted includes them, and the result as Roy says is....endearing. Jamie is trying, and that's worth a lot, even if all Roy hears is straight up nonsense.

This brings the shape in a full circle for why I think the reference works. Because it's not about the reference at all. It's about Jamie telling the story. It's filler for the greater emotion at play.

It's not a perfect metaphor, but it doesn't need to be. That's not the point of a Lasso speech.

What actually happens in that episode is this: Troy and Abed ask the librarian out to a Valentines day dance. They tell her that they're best friends and they don't want anything to ruin that, so they'd like to give her the opportunity to date both of them at the same time so that she can then decide who she likes more.

Another fun tidbit- when the librarian agrees to the date, she calls them asking her out the most adorable thing to ever happen to her-

-which in itself is a subliminal clue for why Jamie at least thought his and Roy's dumb plan to go to Keeley's might work.

They go on the date.

She chooses Troy.

Abed excuses himself, as they agreed the loser would. Then, just like in Jamie's version of the story, Troy immediately has the realization that him winning means Abed lost.

The part that Jamie doesn't remember is that Troy spent the literal remainder of the date trying to figure out why she didn't pick Abed. Because to Troy, Abed is Abed. That's the person he spends all his time with. That's his best friend.

So why didn't she pick his best friend?

That's what Jamie's sublimated in the corners of Jamie's mind. Somewhere along the way, a dynamic shift happened, and Roy became another person whose well-being Jamie considers in the mix.

So that's the other thing about references: I think if you use them, they shouldn't alienate the audience, but they should also add something for anyone who does know it.

Jamie when pondering for a good parallel to their situation accidentally landed on the one of the two guys who were the best best friends to ever friend. Two characters who once famously, stubbornly, refused to end a pillow fight because the end of the pillow fight would symbolize the end of their friendship, so they planned to just keep hitting each other for hours to stave off the end.

So at the end of the night, there's Jamie. And yeah, he's kind of grateful that Keeley didn't pick either of them. Because what if she did? What if they had to live with that? That would hurt too.

#i'm not sure I explained this right #but I gave it a go and now I'm yeeting it into the shark pool #director's cut #ask game #fic: oh god you're gonna get it (you have not been given love)#may come back and edit later

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fountainpenguin · 5 months

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Frayed Knots 15,14,9,2

[Current Ask game]

Frayed Knots - Read on FNN || Read on AO3

#ridspoilers

---

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

My pacing's improved in more recent projects. Knots is pretty bogged down with things that still make me cringe, but it's also like that intentionally because it's Anti-Cosmo's bragging time and he takes pride in his memory and culture (plus he's long-winded in general and I wanted to reflect that). Still, I don't write in that style anymore (except for Knots since it's still ongoing, of course).

This 'fic was also my first (and only) long-term project with British English phrases and spellings, so I learned how to efficiently work as closely to that as I can despite not being a native user of those words.

I'm personally pleased with my success in creating a culture for the Anti-Fairies that's unique to them and completely at odds with Fairy World, but I acknowledge that the nature spirit stuff might not be everyone's cup of tea when they come to read a Fairly OddParents story, so I try to balance that.

There are a lot of little details in their culture that I really like, like Anti-Cosmo's claim that he's descended from the Teumessian fox and that he'd be an outcast if he shapeshifts into any animal besides a fox. Anti-Cosmo uses VERY little magic for the majority of Frayed Knots (using most of it during the war, and only when he has to) and I love both his attachment to his culture and the mental gymnastics he does every time he breaks the social norms.

I'm happy with how the Anti-Fairy culture came out, but it's also pretty far from the established canon and my interest tends to be higher when I'm working on something that's canon-compliant (such as writing a scene a character referenced off-hand in present day, or fleshing out the Wanda/Juandissimo relationship, or doing character studies), so... read that however you like.

[Cnt'd under the cut; content warning for mild 'adult themes' discussion]

tbh I've also enjoyed worldbuilding a fantasy sociosexual culture, because I thought it would be an interesting challenge that would add drastic context between Fairies and Anti-Fairies while also fitting well with their bat genetics and their social norms of accepting things that many Fairies recoil from.

Ex: You're much more likely to accept bullying and theft as acceptable behavior if your social norms already permit a flock hierarchy of creche fathers fighting for dominance. It's easy to be at odds with Fairy World when they mock your cultural beliefs, such as by insisting that Anti-Fairies are a shadow of their Fairy counterparts and wouldn't exist without Fairies, when clearly all the proof points to Anti-Fairies being unique creatures of smoke that grow attached to other creatures and reflect their appearance because of it.

Since the Anti-Fairies are antagonists in the show, I wanted to set up the appropriately "cruel and evil" vibe of their modern leadership while ensuring there's justification in their culture to explain why people might turn towards a leader who embodies strength.

Mm, I'd also say I learned I don't enjoy this vibe of romance? I don't hate romance... I just either need it to be blatantly shallow or deep and complicated in a way that's amusing. The late part of the A.C. and A.W. relationship is super messy, which fixes the boredom for me, but I don't love how these early stages are working out.

In the original draft, A.C. and A.W. barely interact until their honey-lock, which would be about 40-50 chapters in. Well, probably less since we can cut most of the Anti-Wanda content from the story. I personally feel like "barely interacting until they're pushed together" fits their personalities a lot better than meeting in their youth, but... I genuinely didn't think people would have the patience for that, so I adjusted Knots to include Anti-Wanda scenes earlier.

It's probably the right call, and maybe some people enjoy the romantic bits more than I do, but they just read as cliche to me so I struggle with liking them. There are a lot of romance tropes I dislike (such as denying your attraction in front of others) and the romantic side of Knots doesn't vibe with me the way that the "animal people politics" parts do, but I do my best.

I'm satisfied with the character goals Anti-Wanda has so she has actual stuff going on in her life (including emotionally rough and some very messed-up stuff). If these were my OCs then I think Frayed Knots would be what it is without the Anti-Wanda ship at all (and/or she'd be sprinkled in occasionally until she shows up during the honey-lock for real), because I think that's my preferred romance story for them. I don't really vibe with them hanging around each other for so many years; it just feels forced to me.

Also Anti-Wanda can do better.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I hope it's obvious that I'm writing an evil villain backstory and that there are many, many things in this story that should not be glorified. Anti-Cosmo makes some seriously messed-up decisions throughout this 'fic, which is written for entertainment and not to be a guide for healthy relationships.

Same goes for Origin. Everyone sees themself as the hero of their own story. If you forget they're canonically the villains and they do some messed-up stuff that I would never condone IRL, I will cry.

Honestly if anyone's learned to love the Pixies, I'd be happy. Especially H.P. <3

Also if anyone develops an affection for the episode "Balance of Flour" and the characters in it, I'd like that. Anti-Bryndin makes his only appearance in this episode. No name, no dialogue, no context... but he's my boy.

Also, even though neither H.P., Sanderson, nor Anti-Cosmo is a ""good and correct"" representation of asexuality (i.e. in terms of healthy relationships), they are still ace. If anyone has learned more about asexuality through this 'fic (either from H.P. working out his feelings or because they were exposed to the concept here and did more research on their own), I'd be content with that.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Yeah, you could say that. The official scrap doc for Knots alone is 25k words right now. It grows regularly, and that doesn't include the existing chapter drafts.

Perhaps the biggest change is that in the first draft, Anti-Cosmo's dad is alive, but walked out on his family. I do miss that. Once you commit to killing a parent when your protag is a baby, it's difficult to give them baggage or messy relationships with said person, who frequently gets romanticized. A.C. is absolutely romanticizing the father he never knew, who wasn't as great a person as he likes to think.

Another massive change was that originally, Anti-Cosmo's parents lived in a manor house. They were nobility, but didn't live in the castle. Anti-Bryndin was leader, but flock dynamics didn't exist in the worldbuilding so there wasn't any reason for them to live in the castle. The reason Anti-Cosmo lives in the castle in Knots right now is because his mother was brought under Anti-Bryndin's wing and she gave birth to both her children there.

I very briefly considered Anti-Wanda as heir apparent to Anti-Fairy World and Anti-Cosmo married into the family and that's how he rose to power. That's actually the world my short story "King Me" takes place in, and hopefully I'll be able to get it to a state I'm happy with so I can share it soon. It was drafted back in 2016. It's waited this long; it can wait until it feels right.

Oh. The earliest draft of Origin of the Pixies didn't have Anti-Cosmo show up until Anti-Sanderson had taken over as leader of the anti-pixies, and H.P. had to request permission to cross into Anti-Fairy World to talk with him.

I would say my happiest change in all my FOP works was switching that so H.P. and A.C. interact a ton more in their younger years (although if you look carefully at my earliest pieces like "Open Your Eyes," I think it shows that they were written for a world where A.C. and H.P. barely interacted).

Theeeeee other big change I could mention is Anti-Cosmo's.... ?? friendship? affair?? interaction with Prince Eastkal after the chapter "Deep" (where A.C. saves Eastkal's life and begs him not to confess, for the whole "I'll be disowned if they find out I shapeshifted into a dragon" bit).

In the current version, A.C. gets distracted [cough] and fails to meet the prince as promised. This leads Eastkal to pursue him several chapters later, with Eastkal making multiple attempts to talk to A.C. during "This Close to Heaven", "Floodgates," and "Crossroads". It works, but... it saddens me because this is not the attitude Eastkal has towards Anti-Cosmo in future chapters, which were drafted years ago with the assumption that they met up right after the dragon fight :/ I like the vibe of the first better and regularly wish I hadn't cut it.

Actually, that's another thing I've learned from Knots (and I even wrote a Tumblr post about this months ago before setting it aside under the belief no one would want to hear my vent about it). I cut that scene hoping it would be better for the story's flow and because I was tired and wanted to get to the zoo stuff, but since this is my fanfic I write for fun, I should've just let myself follow the direction I wanted to go. It's frustrating to want to write characters behaving a certain way because of what that cut scene would have done, and then having to change it back to what's "actually canon."

In my first draft, A.C. did meet Eastkal as planned (in the Pink Castle) and it involves a lot of soul-searching on both their behalfs. In current Knots, Eastkal does feel grateful that A.C. saved his life, but boy do I miss the dialogue of the original scene.

I cut the main scene because it was several thousand words on top of a very long chapter... I'd already split "Deep" into... 5 chapters at that point? And I really wanted to wrap up Arc 2 without struggling with another chapter, especially if it might wreck "the vibes." I convinced myself it broke the tension (Going from dragon attack to peace and then zoo), but it's the scene I regret cutting most, because there have been multiple times this year that I've wished it was there because I think it's important to show how A.C. acts (and because I think the scene's hilarious).

This cut meeting inspired Eastkal's attendance during migration season. Frayed Knots can work around not having that scene, but if I can mimic it, that would be nice. The lame part is that it probably would've been nicer right after the rescue, to increase tension of being caught fraternizing with the enemy. I'm trying to find a place for it that's not too near the war.

On reason Knots has been delayed so long because I've been looking for a good way to fit it back in to the timeline, but it was very specifically written for that scene, in that location, so it's rough. There's that and because Cosmo and Wanda are about to become notable, and I don't want to mess up this first meeting between A.C. and Cosmo), so... it'll come! Just been on a necessary hiatus.

I also have a scrapped scene where Anti-Cosmo babysits a nest of spirit eggs, but that got cut because the story is long enough without it. There's a lot of spirit stuff in the second half of Knots and I'm trying to decide how much should be cut... I'd like to end it sooner rather than later. Definitely hoping to post more regularly in 2024.

2. What scene did you first put down?

I think the earliest scene in the story was originally going to be its opening: Anti-Cosmo watching his father pack his suitcase as he prepares to walk out on the family. It would predate my scrap doc, but I might have salvaged something.

Mmm, I didn't find it atm, but I think it was rewritten into a very rough draft of A.C. reacting to his brother leaving shortly after their father's death.

“You’re leaving?” I asked, clinging to the door. “Of course,” he snorted. “The green needs me now more than ever.” “But then I’ll be left alone with Mother.” I glared at the ground. Anti-Schnozmo rubbed my hair, kissed my forehead, and then swept out the door. When I was young, I didn’t understand why we lived in the castle. But I was a smart pup, so I began to put the pieces together, of all the times I’d walked in on Anti-Bryndin kissing my mother.

^ Obviously a very rough version, but a lot of my drafts are this vague to get the story beats down before I flesh them out over weeks, months, or even years.

With polish, I think this would have made a great opening to Knots as well since it immediately sets up A.C.'s difficult relationship with Anti-Schnozmo, that his dad is dead, that he doesn't want to be left with his mom, A-Schnoz's motivations to carry out his father's legacy, and one of the core themes of Knots which is Anti-Cosmo's desire to be wanted.

The current opening of the story is there to establish worldbuilding, especially with the newborn smoke forms (something Anti-Fairies and Fairies can't see eye to eye on). The first chapter is pretty confusing and if I were writing commercially, I think I'd go with the brother walking out. But I wanted to write a longform 'fic about complicated worldbuilding and Anti-Fairy culture and that's exactly what I did, with the establishing shot to open it.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully these were interesting thoughts. Ask box is always open if anyone wants to ask more stuff like this; a lot of the time I tag these things as "director's cut" and I do enjoy sharing what the alt versions of my stories were.

[Current Ask game]

#Fairly OddParents #FOP #Anti-Cosmo #Frayed Knots #The bat with the hat #The best bat queen #ridwriting #Director's cut #Long post #asks #Anon #Ask box games #Dragonfly parents

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loveshotzz · 5 months

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Just because I know everyone (including me!!) loves it so much, I would love to the director's cut of AIRWIY. Just any little thoughts you wanna share about him, or your favourite parts of the story!

Directors cut asks

So AIRWIY’s entire plot came to me in a single shift at work lol. I wrote the entire outline on the sales floor like a woman possessed sending screen shots to cece, carol, taylor and jelly like someone who lost their mind lol. I was the worst manager to ever exist that day.

It was also the longest series I’ve ever written, and the first time a single story has kept my complete attention for that long. Also the first story I’ve ever outlined from start to finish (which now I am in the habit of doing because it really makes everything so much easier lol). It’s also the story on my masterlist I’m the most proud of. 🥹♥️

#asks #directors cut game #all i really want is you

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neo-shitty · 2 years

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⭐star⭐ : pick your most favorite fic that you want to share and give comments about it !! ♡

roger rabbit - lee minho

i wrote a whole response to this and tumblr white-screened on me. i'm gonna kms /j thank you for sending this in!! also long post ahead bc i never shut up. and tagging @june-again, just in case you're interested on a whole roger rabbit. your feedback for that fic only made me love it more :'( <3

honestly, at this point my fics are either classified into stories i want to keep and stories i wish never existed. this is one of the few that still remain in the 'want to keep' file while everything else i wrote around the same time has fallen into the latter.

this is a prequel to checkmate (CM), another fic i'm very fond of for the character dynamic and the plot(twists). in the story, skz along with my ocs are in a friend group but there was barely any establishment whatsoever for them. someone who reviewed CM told me that they didn’t really care about my characters and rightfully so bc i felt the story (CM) lacked in giving the reader room to develop what they feel towards the characters. it was supposed to be a long story compressed into the fast-paced piece it was, focusing more on the situation they got themselves into rather than the relationship of the characters. roger rabbit (RR) gave me an opportunity to give the friend group the back story they needed to give CM more impact. and an excuse to write more on this universe i subconsciously latched myself onto.

though i thought of writing a CM prequel, i didn’t expect it to be this one. RR’s original draft got partially trashed though the gist remained: minho gets framed for something and the friend group tries to help him. i got around a quarter into a writing it, with a full bullet-draft of events leading up to the end, but i had a lot of issues with the story. firstly, the reader felt more like a watcher of the events happening rather than someone directly involved. that aspect, for me, eliminates the whole point of the y/n perspective. i mean, of course you can experiment on having a y/n while telling someone else’s story but it wasn’t what i was aiming for in this fic. second, it felt too short and limited. in the end, the original draft turned into a mere chapter in the final story.

a few factors were responsible for the revamp of this plot. 1) i re-read and rewatched looking for alaska which made me miss teenage mischief and the hard-to-comprehend bond between high school friend groups, 2) playing run by bts on repeat over and over bc it makes the perfect getaway anthem, and 3) reading six of crows and discovering that a multiple-perspective story can be good if done correctly. i think it was a single “i miss the checkmate squad” thought that led into the full draft revamp. i had run on repeat all night and i fell asleep thinking of expanding the original RR plot. how can i make that build up more impactful, how can i make minho worth the save, who wants to save minho, how can i make it fun.

i remember being in the bathroom and finally coming up with the full plot. the multiple perspective bit was an add on of who can tell the story best while simultaneously giving more depth to minho’s character. i butchered his character in CM and i villainized the shit out of him so i hoped that this could offer a bit of redemption for him. coming up with the six separate perspectives on the guy was difficult but i made it a point to not have all of them lean into fondness towards minho. i felt that slipping in the lack of bias towards minho made the dynamic seem more realistic. minho, afterall, is notorious for messing around hence, the accusations made towards him were more easier to believe than to deny.

all of RR was just the slow clicking of pieces into place. the title itself was a big boost bc i was stuck on that for quite some time until i remembered the term roger rabbit—rabbit relating to minho to an extent. but of course i couldn’t just title it that without knowing the context behind the term. so i did my research only to find out that the whole of it is “who framed roger rabbit”. highkey the most convenient thing that happened to me.

bottomline and tldr; it’s a fic i’m very proud of. not just for the plot unlike CM but also for the process, the writing style and finally, the result. i believe that it deserves more than what it got in terms of notes and feedback but no external thing can impact the way i love this fic.

bonus: the entirety of the checkmate universe aka the in these halls series. working on anything related to it gives me so much comfort and happiness even after all this time. maybe because it’s self indulgent but let’s forget about that :"D

#toff.asks #ask game: director's cut #starlostseungmin

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ghosts-of-love · 6 months

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hiyaa, how are you doing :>> can i- yanno- for the director's commentary, yanno, the hand? (from the quick and the dead) cause i know ppl bring it up a lot, but i had to walk around the room stimming so so, yes :>>

ahhhh hehehe yes the infamous hand. so important to me that I had to foreshadow it in the first chapter and then include both their perspectives on it.

I just really like the parallels and differences between chapter 1 where Pat cuts himself on the grater and doesn’t know about Cap’s vampirism, in comparison to later when he does know and specificically offers his own blood to Cap like it’s no big deal.

I think maybe he thinks the Captain won’t take him up on his offer – that he’ll flee like he did when he first moved in. He realises quickly, because of how Cap’s appearance changes, this it is a big deal though, and that his offer has properly stopped the Captain in his tracks.

They just know each other so well, Pat trusts him to be able to stop and that trust is the whole reason that the Captain’s control falters in the first place.

And then. the actual Act. Listen, okay. it’s about the homoeroticism first of all. It’s about Cap being on his kneeeeeees. It’s communion, it’s holy, it’s sacrilegious, it’s undeniably sexual.

Pat obviously doesn’t understand the extent to which it will be all of those things because Cap is standing up at first. But then he gets on his knees and goes first for the trail of blood down his wrist 😳😳 Pat’s like ‘oh shit, potentially a mistake’ but not for any other reason than he’s about to get really fucking turned on.

And Cap resting his head on Pat’s knee 🥺🥺 it actually makes me quite emotional, it's like he’s a loyal dog or something. and Cap is just feeling monstruous and out of control the whole time versus Pat is realising he’s okay with more okay with the vampire stuff than he probably ever realised.

both of them having different kinds of control over each other!! and both of them being turned on!! they're so silly for this i love them!!

fanfic writers: director's cut

#ask games!!#fanfic writers: director's cut #the quick and the dead #bbc ghosts fanfic #patcap

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flowercrowngods · 11 months

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Evening finds him on the living room couch again, staring up at the ceiling as he lies there, tired but too strung up to find sleep. Helpless to stop them, his thoughts wander to Robin, imagining the familiar weight beside him on the couch. How often they lay here together, staring at his ceiling and holding hands when they crossed a thought they didn’t like. He hasn’t been alone in this house in almost a year, it doesn’t feel right without her here — it never really felt right to begin with, but with Robin here it was a bit more of a home most days. It’s cold without her. It hurts. It hurts so much, but Steve can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop feeling like she’s right here with him, about to turn the corner and throw a comment at his head and watch it bounce off. Like she’s about to tuck her head under his chin and ask what he’s doing. Ask, What’s with the long face, Dingus? Steve swallows and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes in an attempt not to cry again. He’s so tired of crying. Even for Robin. So instead of crying, he talks. “I miss you, Robs,” he whispers into the empty house. She should be here. Should come bursting out of the bathroom and say something stupid that will make him laugh, and then she would laugh, and her eyes would shine, and she would drop onto the couch, onto his chest, and be a nuisance. But she’s not here. And she won’t be. She can’t be, not until Steve figures it all out — which, fat chance without her and the superkids. “I miss you so much. I’m… ‘M gonna save you this time, okay? Promise that I’ll try.”

I hope that isn't too long of a selection. I am just, on a deep level, fascinated by situations that separate Steve and Robin.

⭐️fanfic writer director's cut⭐️ 🌷the fic: i'll try. ill try. (but i couldn't be better)🌷

first of all, hi! it's absolutely not too long of a section, don't you worry! :D and even if it were, you know i will always indulge you 🤍 but i'm gonna break this down into pieces, so uh. i have no idea how long this is going to be...

He hasn’t been alone in this house in almost a year, it doesn’t feel right without her here

so i love the fanon idea that everyone just always hangs out at steve's, but it's not quite realistic. what is realistic, though, and what i am absolutely convinced of, is that robin stays at steve's most of the time. they just hang out, he picks her up from school if he doesn't have a shift, he makes sure there's something for dinner, they watch movies together, she does her homework and her projects, steve comes home after a late shift and robin is there on his front steps, her bike on the curb, waiting for him to get home.

steve is not alone, and neither is robin. they're joined at the hip, they're codependent, and it's been almost a year of that. so he hasn't been home alone like this in almost a year – because even on the days when robin can't come over, he knows that tomorrow she will, and her presence is still everywhere, her stuff lying about, etc etc. so she's always there, even if she's not.

It’s cold without her. It hurts. It hurts so much, but Steve can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop feeling like she’s right here with him, about to turn the corner and throw a comment at his head and watch it bounce off.

but here, now, back in the past, she isn't. and it makes the entire house feel even more alien to him. it doesn't feel right, and there's no reassurance in his chest that at least tomorrow she'll be here again. this absence of robin just heightens his alienation from his house, his home, and his person, and it highlights it, too, because he is so endlessly aware of it. he misses her, with everything he has and everything he is. but it's not just the i wish you were here kind of missing, but a deeper, darker sense of having lost something you can never get back, and living in the aftermath of it. in a world that doesn't even know about your loss.

Like she’s about to tuck her head under his chin and ask what he’s doing.

they're in platonic love, your honour. they're one. they touch and they ask and they know and they see.

and steve needs someone to see him, so he longs for robin, aches for her, thinks of the small things, the tiny gestures that mean the whole world to him like her tucking her head under his chin just because she can. just to be a little bit obnoxious and a large bit his soulmate.

but also

It's cold without her

i feel like one of the heaviest things about grief is the way you will feel like you'll never be warm again. like you'll always be cold. shivering.

(plus, warmth and cold is one of the motifs in this story. remember the way he made sure el was warm again in chapter 6? and then in chapter 9, wrapping her in all the blankets even though there were none left for himself? and then (spoiler) in chapter 10, when hopper makes him take a shower and puts him to bed. or when steve, panicked, tells him that she's cold, she's cold, she doesn't like the cold, please, she's going to be scared again.

being warm, and warmth, is a symbol for hope. a placeholder. a harbinger of comfort. being cold is the exact opposite. think of steve in the upside down, shivering, or him in the cabin when el has all the blankets. so steve's It's cold without her is really just a whole bunch of symbolism in one sentence that continues throughout the story.

She should be here. Should come bursting out of the bathroom and say something stupid that will make him laugh, and then she would laugh, and her eyes would shine, and she would drop onto the couch, onto his chest, and be a nuisance.

it's not even her death he's thinking of or obsessing over. he misses her. this isn't grief or mourning first and foremost, this is dwelling on the good things. and as much as it hurts, as much as it cuts him open, it's still a good thing. compare this to how in chapter 9, he was reminded of her cold, dead eyes, the moment she died, or her sickening cries and just. you know. the bad things.

the worse steve gets, mentally, the more his thoughts of robin morph into something horrible. it is almost tragically ironic, then, that he thought right after the scene you sent me, "I think I'm gonna have to stop thinking about you." – and he did, but in fact what he did stop thinking about were the good times. and it's breaking him further.

But she’s not here. And she won’t be. She can’t be, not until Steve figures it all out — which, fat chance without her and the superkids.

he doesn't think he can do this, doesn't think he can pull it off, saving all of them

“I miss you so much. I’m… ‘M gonna save you this time, okay? Promise that I’ll try.”

but he's gonna try anyway.

i'll try. i'll try. (but i couldn't be better)

#time travel au #steve harrington whump #platonic stobin #steve harrington #i actually started crying writing this and thinking about time travel steve and robin and el and just. yeah. uh. this is fine.#time travel steve #fanfic writer director's cut #ask game answered #i'll try i'll try

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flowerandblood · 12 days

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⭐️Glass Cuts Deepest⭐️

For Glass Cuts Deepest, I wanted to go deeply into the topic of trauma and sexual abuse. What trauma it leaves on a person, how it can turn a victim into an abuser, only of a different kind.

Aemond is a professor who is a professional and a good teacher, but his own horror and prejudices, which he is entitled to, make him incapable of existing in the presence of strange women.

I wanted us to slowly discover what is the reason for his unacceptable behaviour, what has caused him to justify his actions in his head and how slowly under Wright's influence he begins to calm down.

Wright for him is like an alien from another planet. He is distrustful and wary of her, but also feels excitement, like an explorer of a new land. Before her, he had never met a woman who aroused his sympathy as a person and he finds this feeling surprising but not unpleasant.

Wright wins his heart in that she gives him space, that she respects his barriers, that she treats him with respect and seriousness. A bit like the Little Prince and the Fox, Aemond takes steps towards her of his own accord because he wants someone to tame him.

My biggest fear was that in some scenes his reactions would be overdramatised and overplayed. I wanted us as readers to feel both uncomfortable with his character and at the same time sympathise with him, rooting for him on his journey to become a better person, appreciating Wright and what she does for him.

Ask Game: Director Cut

#ask games #director cut #glass cuts deepest

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raccoon-eyed-rebel · 3 months

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Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines.

Seeing as I’ve just finished reading part 5 of Under Orders I want to ask you about it.

One thing I love about your stories is that you have what I think is a great understanding of psychology and power dynamics in sexual relationships (I’m explaining this very poorly, sorry) And you manage to communicate these things very well in your stories. I appreciate it a lot because I am totally clueless about these things.

Example is when reader understands what Sy’s place is in her little universe. It’s a couple of paragraphs and, even if it’s in the middle of a pretty amazing sex scene, it is just so RIGHT. Like, I know reader is me but I had the same epiphany as her!

So please give us any insight or info on how the addition of Sy to this little universe came to be or where it’s going?

Thank you so much for this question!!!!! I love it. Let me put this under a cut because it's a little bit of an essay...

Partly because I get to blame @deandoesthingstome without thinking twice, because it's 2100% her fault that Sy even made an appearance in this series! She started this, it's her fault, she did it, it wasn't me, Charlie's responsible, I was powerless against her charms.

(I know damn well I didn't have to write it, like... She didn't put a gun to my head, I was free to do whatever I wanted. And apparently, after a whole ass while... This is what I wanted.)

Now, I'm not denying Sy is hot stuff, okay? I'm not even going to bother pretending that I wouldn't think twice about taking that beard for a ride if I was ever presented with the opportunity.

But he's not my go-to guy, and probably never will be, which definitely didn't help in figuring out his place in this arrangement — which is when I realized that trying to force him into it the way I was trying to do was never going to work, and that there was a strong possibility that reader would be having the same struggle when it came to that subject.

And so, Charlie is still waiting on that hot foursome, and I still have hopes that it will happen some day, but I really do need to stick to my usual approach and let my characters do the talking instead of trying to force them into something they're not ready for.

And to a degree I think the research and understanding of these dynamics make that even more difficult. Because I want to get it right. I need it to make sense.

Because I know August "Will Kill For Her" Walker loves reader and doesn't want to hold her back, so he knew he had to give her the space to explore it. He knows she loves him and he's certain this won't come between him and reader because he trusts her like he's never trusted anyone in his life.

... Except maybe Walter, who he's known for years (since college). He decided to share the woman he loves with his best friend. And he doesn't trust Sy that way.

Walter isn't exactly a quick study when it comes to trusting someone, either. So I know there's a relationship to be built there.

Like, the objective going in was "write porn" but sometimes (most of the time) that's not enough (for me. It's a perfectly valid way to write, of course!!! But I do need to know why they're fucking, and in this specific case there's the issue of how it impacts everyone else involved in this relationship.)

I'm also lucky enough to have a bunch of wonderful queer friends, and some of them tell me all the lovely tales (and the drama! So. much. drama) of their lovely non-monogamous relationships, and it's taught me a lot.

And, in a way, this fic has taught me a lot. Because it was never supposed to turn into this polycule. It was supposed to be a relationship between reader and August, and a more or less platonic arrangement between reader and Walter — until it wasn't. And with the addition of Sy, there's a whole new side of this relationship to explore. One I'm really excited about, and really eager to delve deeper into.

I know not all of their story has been told yet.

So I guess what I'm really trying to say is... Thank you, Charlie!

#raccoon ramblings #director's cut ask game #Under Orders fic #under orders

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claudiajcregg · 7 months

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i'd love to hear any behind the scenes you have on 'say it's here where our pieces fall in place' bc i read it and loved it and i want to know about it 💜

Welp, I've been thinking about this since you sent it and I feel I won't do it justice! I feel like I could say a lot if I went chapter by chapter, but many tabs of unread fics stare back at me. I'll skim and try to say something, though.

Some commentary on say it's here where our pieces fall in place under the cut! I am sick and rambly. And lbr I can never shut up anyway, but this might be too incoherent even for me. (Original ask post here)

It was sort of an unofficial NaNoWriMo project, in that I set myself a goal to tackle “longer fics” or ideas I wanted to cover but hadn't. From my notes, I had this idea to write a ficlet per year because I always enjoy this kind of story, and I know I'd tried to approach different ones in the past. I started writing in late October/finished in Nov 2021. (The other fic I started was never finished, even if dammit, it hits.) I posted it in January, so it wasn't that bad, considering I'll often take months.

It's maybe important to note that I had only finished writing “The Monster (affectionate)” (aka the 148k-ish word IM AU) in early September and I felt a bit burned out after spending five months writing that (would’ve been less but the struggle was real for the last third of the story. Oddly reminiscing of you-know-what story these days). This arbitrary deadline helped me get back into writing. Granted, I wrote a couple of fics in those five months, but I wanted to try another multichapter.

Anyway. I picked some random, perhaps not obvious choices for the vignettes. It was partly to avoid writing something I might have potentially covered at one point, and also a challenge. Some are also strange (the dream!), but I kinda loved it? (Fun fact: the fic references the Sherry-Netherland, whose exterior is the establishing shot in Internal Displacement. I swear there is some thought put into my writing.) And as the A/N I wrote to myself, I definitely wrote and rewrote bits and pieces of this on my way to and from therapy, haha.

Let me find a fun fact about each of the chapters, if I can think of any.

1998: actually repurposed some campaign fic idea I distinctly remember writing in spring 2018, while I was still in uni. It also has GLOVES. I live for that.

1999: I like the idea of exploring Danny and Abbey's relationship! They presumably have a good one and yet, I don't think we ever see them interact. (And god. Danny's recent, pre-campaign breakup is a recurring theme in my campaign stories too, loool.)

2000: Danny and Josh are an underrated friendship, and I like the references to Rosslyn. There was so much in those months in Midterms that we didn't see, and I like thinking Danny visited his friend.

We also got two back-to-back chapters focused on Danny - I remember trying to make it even, so that the focus was more or less evenly split.

2001: the Manchester fuckup! And it's one of the dream chapters! There were two of them? (We're 3 out of 4 in which I was surprised by the focus, but now I kinda want to re-read it all properly?) I'll say that I can see some vague, unconscious inspo from Freefall by KadeeFalls in this chapter (esp since I was just talking to you about it)... But I'm mostly obsessed with the magical realism (there's another term that my foggy brain cannot think of rn) of dreams, and how it can help us clear our heads.

2002: I remembered this was set after Simon! I know it's probably an odd, controversial choice but they both tried to move on (at least, we know CJ did), and it felt disingenuous not to include it. There are moments when she almost admits to her previous (?) feelings for Danny, but stops.

As with most thus far, there were fluffier and probably better choices for 2002 (Christmas!!), but... My brain wanted it to appear like CJ couldn't really bring herself to think about Danny.

2003: Aw, the specialty store is inspired by a franchise over here that had Goldfish (not many flavors) and I took a dramatic license and added it over there. I also added a small flashback because I love thinking Danny doesn't think they're all that but likes them. (But will tease CJ about it.) Plus, some more resolution to moving on!

2004: Yeah, the formatting is weird. (This is one I'd have to go back and do a blockquote or something.) Danny winning a Pulitzer for the Shareef stuff is a mostly accepted headcanon. CJ seeing his picture on the paper and having feels is just something I love, especially if he mentions someone else. (Look. I'm all for letting him pine, but he deserves to move on and fail too.) Plus Josh teasing her!

2005: The Sherry-Netherland! fwiw, I'm sure I had finally figured out this was the place and decided it would be so cheeky to add it here. I'm so sMaRt. Flowers when she gets promoted! And my spin (in this story) of CJ vaguely shunning him. This is the angst before the fluff.

2006: I remembered this one was a dream at some restaurant! (Again the formatting is not great, but I didn't want to tip my obvious hand.) The same way I think CJ's dream in 2001 was about her wondering how Danny would have reacted, this is about Danny realizing he needs to reach out to her... But with the added family ~tale~. Def inspired by that lyric in "Sad Beautiful Tragic."

2007: I feel like having it at some random dinner with Josh and Donna was an odd choice, but I loved the idea of a double date! The scarf scene is just so! And the chaos siblings energy is great. It was a reprieve from the angst.

Meeting at LAX was right there! I had written a story or two trying to do it justice, so I'm guessing that's why it's not. And fwiw the airport story I wrote shortly after that is the one being posted ~soon~. (A rewritten, slightly expanded version.)

2008: Pregnancy mood swings! It hurt to make them fight, but it's so fluffy otherwise. From what I remember, it has various references to things that happen in the story (particularly from the first two chapters) but it still manages to close it rather nicely, showing how strong their marriage is. I hope.

Okay. This has gotten way too long and it's probably useless.

I've always said I could have written another 11 chapters using different scenes, because there are just so many, even outside the obvious ones... Though I feel I wouldn't be able to recapture the magic.

I do definitely want to reread this for real. As with many fics, it's one of those I used to reread often before posting it (especially the last quarter/third) and then just ignored after. See some other recent examples, such as memoir fic, Portland fic.

Thank you for asking, Ally! God, I used to be a good writer. What happened?!??!

#fanfic director's cut #ask games #onekisstotakewithme #asks #it's taken me an hour or so to write it alskdjasdasd

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