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n7punk · 21 days

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"Start Your Engine" Fic Notes

SYE is done! For once something didn’t get away from me. What, it was supposed to be a one-shot? Shut up!

Playlist:

Unreleased demo (we could be the baddest losers in the world together)

Life Sux — Leah Kate

Supernatural — Transviolet

I Want Her — Georgie Harris/The Blind Truth

I Can See You (From the Vault) — Taylor Swift

GIRL ON TV — chloe morionado

Cdbaby<3 — chloe morionado

Suburban Legends (From the Vault) — Taylor Swift

Hot Child In The City — Jessica Leigh

Ruin My Life — Zolita

Fruity — chloe morionado

GLOW — SNOW WIFE

Overdrive — Gia Woods

good girls go bad — Lauren Sanderson

Your Engine — Gia Woods

Epilogue Life:

Catra does take awhile to adjust to school because it is a huge shift from her last few years of essentially doing whatever the fuck she wanted whenever (she did have a stream schedule, but it wasn’t a big deal if she canceled, or extended, or slept or ate or anything else whenever she felt like it), but even though she spends the whole first year questioning her decision, she does adjust eventually. Her friends all graduate long before she hits grad school, but Entrapta and Bow both went for a grad degree too so their life keeps following the school rhythm and it keeps her from feeling too left out. Catra does keep up with streaming even after she gets an internship with a law firm, her hours just reduce as it becomes more of the side thing she was trying to downplay it as.

Swift Wind isn’t actually 100% done until the summer after graduation, but Catra certainly doesn’t mind how long it takes, and on nights when both of them have roommates home they like to take drives out somewhere private to make out on the side of the road under the stars. Adora 100% supports her girlfriend in her weird niche and later on hypes her up a lot as the more impressive one for going through law school, which kind of blows Catra’s mind because she’s still used to thinking of herself as a loser.

Entrapta’s software does see a steady rise in usership after the introduction of Wildcat, and there are two main reasons why: 1) yes okay she specifically improved the physics for Wildcat. I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t a driving factor lol, but 2) Emily did a great job of showing off what was unique about Entrapta’s software — but people who weren’t looking for unique didn’t have much reason to pay attention to it. Wildcat showed she could make great, more “mainstream” avatars as well. She doesn’t become the #1 overnight or anything, but she does slowly become the #1 alternative to the corporate options and that’s really what she was looking for.

Catra does eventually tell Glimmer and Bow she’s Wildcat — who Glimmer likes even more than she ever did Emily — once they’re better friends, but it takes a few months. Glimmer doesn’t really suspect anything until Catra lets slip the occasional comment leading up to her revealing it because Catra is very private about her identifying info on stream — and cognizant not to tell stories involving Glimmer when she’s in chat — so she doesn’t actually have a lot of clues to get suspicious from. When she finds out she loses it, though. She eventually comes around to finding it funny, but by god for a while she would pout about it if you mentioned it. She’s mostly annoyed that Adora hid it from her, but Adora does argue that it was Catra’s life and it wasn’t really her business what she does for work. It mostly matters because Glimmer actually watches her, lol. If it wasn’t for that, she wouldn’t care.

Around the time Catra is comfortable telling Glimmer she’s finally ready to meet Adora’s moms, something she has been avoiding as long as she can because she’s terrified of the concept of Family, but obviously Mara and Light Hope are super sweet, it just still takes her a little while to get comfortable with them, but by the holidays she’s ready to experience them with Adora and her family for the first time. She never thought she would get a family along with a girlfriend, but 14 year old Catra couldn’t even conceive of the life she would have ten years later.

Chapter 1:

⦁ I’ve already talked about this a little because an anon guessed it Fast over here, but the original concept for this AU was just the neighbor thirsting stuff around the car. Catra didn’t have a job planned, but that stuff came up when it did come time to write it. I figured Adora would be in university since they were supposed to be in their early twenties, and I could have stuck Catra there too, but I liked the concept of Catra having this kind of very different life experience that made her feel a little alienated from her peers and especially contributed to her not being confident when it came to actually making a move on Adora. I don’t follow any like, VTuber vtubers, because the ones I do are people like jaidenanimations who just use an avatar of themselves and aren’t a character or anything, but a friend of a friend is super into vtubers and I hear a lot of the drama and shipping and stuff secondhand because of that. When I was getting ready to write the AU, my friend was explaining the drama about this company having a bunch of controversies with its vtubers and nearly everyone leaving, and that planted the seed of “lol wouldn’t it be funny if Catra was a vtuber in this”. And then I put in the allusions in the first chapter to stuff like gigabit internet still not thinking I was going to do it, except by the end of the second chapter I realized I was definitely going to do it, so I doubled down on it when editing chapter one to post.

⦁ Before those additions, I was kind of thinking this would be a one shot, and tbf that would have made sense with the amount of content in the first three chapters, but then I decided I wanted to shift perspective in chunks, which meant it made the most sense to make it a multi-chapter with the POV shifting by chapter even without those additions, and hey, I did manage to keep to my predicted chapter count once I decided that! For once! It totally counts.

Chapter 2:

⦁ This chapter was really short but I had to show that they were both being so incredibly stupid with their flirting when at any point one of them could have asked the other out and they would have said yes so fast the marriage proposal would be implied.

⦁ Catra lashed out a lot in school because, to be fair, her home life absolutely sucked and she had no friends and no hope for the future, so she just hated everything about school knowing it would probably add up to nothing and at least if she was a problem people were paying attention to her. Teachers might not have liked her, but they were looking at her and not hurling insults like Weaver, so that was about the best she got.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Adora was really just trying to lean over and not caring about where she put her hand because all her friends are touchy and she is too, but any touch like that from Catra would be her trying to put the moves on someone she desperately wanted to hold, so she extended that to Adora’s behavior as well. Adora doesn’t remember it at all because it wasn’t important enough to. If you asked her about it five minutes later it would take her a second to think if she had done it at all.

⦁ Scorpia and Sea Hawk aren’t exactly friends, but they did have a class together. They would wait for it to start in the closest lounge for a good half hour if not an hour beforehand so they ended up talking a lot over that semester and they still chat now when they run into each other. Scorpia only saw Mermista if she came there to be with Sea Hawk, and usually she was “too cool” for that and Sea Hawk had to come to her instead, so Scorpia really isn’t involved in Adora’s friend group at all despite the peripheral connection.

⦁ Adora stopped working on Swift Wind for two reasons: 1) she was only working on him so much for an excuse to talk to Catra (though she’ll glad for all the work she got done once it does get hot) and 2) she just felt so disappointed when she would see Catra and Catra would ignore her that it discouraged her from going out even the baseline amount she would without her.

⦁ Adora brings up hooking up with Mermista once because she, not remembering the leg touch thing, can only guess that someone mentioned her history with Mermista to Catra and she drew conclusions from partial information that was out of date and incorrect anyway.

⦁ Catra knows Mermsita doesn’t believe in marriage from Sea Hawk telling Scorpia he’d love to make the gesture of proposing but Mermista would just dump him again for it.

Chapter 4:

⦁ The valentines card was handmade because ain’t no way Weaver has even letting Catra use a printer to get something that looked “better”. Adora would have treasured it as if

⦁ When Catra is talking about hiding her face, she doesn’t get deeper into it, but it’s all about being safe. It’s not just Weaver punishing her for acting emotionally, it’s also the danger of letting someone see when she’s afraid, or in love, or anything else they can use to hurt her later.

⦁ The "go live" scene was one of the first ideas I had related to Catra being a VTuber and is one of the things that kind of convinced me to include it in the fic and then I almost forgot to write the scene lmao. The only problem with this joke is the whole thing is based around the fact the two different kinds of "live" are written the same, but that makes it hard to control which version of the word people naturally read there (especially the people who had figured out Catra was a VTuber already) so I hope the way I framed Adora's reaction to it made it clear. Catra was SO grateful Adora read it entirely wrong, but that showed her she couldn't keep it secret for much longer, but she wasn't ready to force herself through telling her either.

⦁ Okay, Roach. The cockroach thing is actually a joke I had for canon four years ago, thinking about how ways Catra talks sound like insults because that’s how she had to disguise her compliments in the Horde. That lead to the cockroach nickname for Entrapta, because seriously, thought dead twice and actually just thriving? Really? And no one in the princess alliance is really sure how to take it because Entrapta doesn’t seem bothered at all — because she understands, and she takes it as the weird compliment it is.

⦁ The black curtains are supposed to muffle sound transmission. Catra shoved her sound absorbing foam boards — which she just had leaning against the wall even months after moving in anyway — into the closet when she showed Adora the room before.

⦁ Adora doesn’t know what an OC is, so she’s just assuming that’s the name for a VTuber avatar and calls Catra’s new V that. She’ll eventually figure out how it works.

Chapter 5:

⦁ I had a lot of fun with the chapter titles in this one. I used a similar basic structure in LotD to signal when I was switching perspectives by chapter but it’s fun to heckle the characters in them.

⦁ Catra did try to pay Entrapta. Entrapta was confused. Eventually she more than paid in her back in commissions following Wildcat.

⦁ Catra was just a clerk at a random department store in the mall when a guy snagged a designer purse and tried to bolt with it. The purse cost equivalent to Catra’s entire paycheck, which she desperately needed, and her boss was within eyeshot and yelled when the man started running, so Catra just acted on instinct to protect her job and fucking tackled the guy — which is a terrible idea by the way, pretty sure they can argue that’s assault — which then knocked the purse out of his hands, so her boss ran over and grabbed it, and then the dude struggled up and she wasn’t paid enough to get punched so she just followed him as he ran out of the store to make sure he didn’t yoink something else. And then obviously her boss called mall security and they both told the whole story and like two weeks later the mall offered for a job because they were kind of stretched thin. She did like the mall security job better because she got to wander around a lot more without a boss looking over her shoulder and do a lot less (especially from a customer service perspective), but they both were a little soul-draining.

⦁ I’ll be honest Auntie Anne’s pops the fuck off. Wetzel’s Pretzel’s can suck a dick.

⦁ Catra just says “she’s colorblind” here because I thought about it and didn’t think she would casually make the distinction of “partially” within her own head right then.

⦁ Catra’s race both wasn’t a secret and was, because there were plenty of “hints”, but stuff like Emily having antenna in place of ears didn’t actually mean anything. Her viewers didn’t know they were mapped to follow Catra’s ears, they could have just been animations. People who were observant could figure it out given they don’t do the same thing every time she laughs or anything — it’s especially obvious when she moves just one ear — but it did still surprise some people when they saw her new avatar. The Wildcat in her handle didn’t really give anything away considering there’s a streamer named smallant irl and guess what, he’s not an ant lmao.

⦁ I think this literally never came up in the entire fic (only vaguely implied by Adora “moving away” when she got adopted) but neither Catra, nor Adora, nor Glimmer, nor Bow is from Bright Moon. Scorpia is local and Entrapta is from nearby (as is Glimmer), but Adora and Catra grew up like two hours away. When Adora was adopted, it was to Bright Moon’s outer skirts, so she’s kind of local now and it’s not even a day trip to go visit her moms. It is, however, long enough Catra dodges it as best she can. Anyway, Glimmer and Bow try to arrange their time visiting family to overlap so they don’t have to be apart for too long because they’re really fucking gay for each other.

Upcoming:

*clears throat*

*steps up to the mic*

Ahem.

Are you ready for Heathers’ Broadway debut?

#ficmeta #fic notes #sye

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n7punk · 2 months

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“Embrace the Blame (Love the Fall”) Fic Notes

EtB(LtF) is done! For what feels like the first time in a while, a fic managed not to get away from me lol, it just got a little epilogue continuation but otherwise was all good.

Epilogue Life:

I have so many thoughts it’s hard cutting them off.

Adora’s trip home is hard, but it is good overall, and she realizes during it that the reason Hope hasn’t mentioned church when talking is because she doesn’t go a lot anymore (more details lower down). Adora certainly wasn’t going to go with her — Shadow is guaranteed to be there, and Adora can’t be held liable for what she does the next time they meet — but church is pretty much never brought up during her visit. Hope still isn’t perfect, but she’s trying her best, and though Adora discovers bad memories around town along with the good, it turns out to be a lot easier to process now that Catra is back in her life. She kind of tells Hope that she’d like to see her again at Christmas, but in a noncommittal way since she really doesn’t know what that will hold for them.

The rest of the summer is just good. Catra’s internship is hard but valuable, as is Adora’s job assisting Netossa, and they both still have more time than they would during the school year to just be together and have fun with their friends. It’s great for bonding and falling deeper in love, and for integrating their friend groups properly in a way they just didn’t really have time for before.

Catra isn’t ready to go home that Christmas — isn’t sure she ever wants to — and when Adora regretfully informs Hope she doesn’t want to leave Catra alone for Christmas, they take another big step and Hope comes to visit them for the first time. It’s a little weird, but Catra is more comfortable seeing Hope again on their turf, and it turns out to be a good Christmas even around the bittersweet parts. Hope expresses approval for Catra to the best of her ability and that kind of takes Catra out for the afternoon. She doesn’t cry, but that doesn’t mean she’s not emotional enough to.

When they do finally visit home again, it’s a year later, after they have both graduated, Catra a few months established in a role at the company she interned with and Adora freshly moved to a job at a pottery studio, which isn’t exactly where she wants to be, but hey, it’s in her sector. They aren’t visiting because of work, though — they’re engaged and planning their wedding, which absolutely isn’t going to be back home, or be traditional, but they come back for the visit to celebrate and to get some of Adora’s old things from Hope. It’s just a few days, but Catra doesn’t have a bad experience like she feared and she’s more willing to come back for occasional visits to Hope after that, even if their hometown is never going to be her favorite place.

(Like I said, I can keep going, so I’ll just put Shadow’s reaction to that news lower down because I need to at least break this up)

Also I fully planned for Glimmer and Bow to get together in this but then they needed to not be together up until chapter seven and there just wasn’t room to fit it in at that point BUT know that they get together over the summer and everybody ends up laughing about how dumb they were lmao.

Chapter 1:

⦁ Title is from “There’s People Watching” by Jade LeMac.

⦁ I had to edit the fic disclaimer because uhhhh a lot of things happened in this fic I didn’t initially plan. I went into this fic pantsing everything past like, chapter one, so I didn’t know the flashbacks were coming up or any of the partying stuff. Some of this stuff is things I generally avoid, but ideas adjacent to them have come up before, so I decided to just go all in on All The Stuff for this fic.

⦁ Originally this fic opened with a (very brief) flashback scene of the night Catra left, and then I moved it to the opening of chapter 2, but that just wasn’t right so I included Adora remembering that line and that was it.

⦁ The food/dining halls/library/dorms in this fic are just straight up the ones from my own college.

⦁ For non-Americans, Title IX is basically our diversity/inclusion act so like if someone is discriminating against you based on gender or whatever (in a school setting) it protects you.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Title is from “So What Now” By Renee Rapp.

⦁ There was a while there would I would spin the wheels of my little Lego tuk tuk whenever I was in a virtual appointment and that’s where the car thing came from.

⦁ Shoutout to my freshmen year neighbor who would shout “papi” while having makeup sex.

⦁ “Catra flashes her a smile, the innocent one that has always pulled on something inside Adora she never understood but somehow makes her very aware of her tongue in her mouth.” Gee it’s almost like you want to stick your tongue down her throat or something.

⦁ Adora talking about how Catra didn’t change here was explicitly to set up the slow realization that she did. The theme of this fic is change and growth, really — both when it happens and when it doesn’t. No matter how they change, they still were those little girls and that’s so important to how they are now and they can’t let that love they had go. They can’t change in a way that makes them not love each other and even when Adora didn’t change and it was hurting Catra, Catra loved her then, too.

⦁ I mentioned it in my notes here, but I’ve written some of these story beats out of a lot of fics. Tip of her tongue was initially a hiding sexuality story, with Catra running after kissing Adora because the girl who interrupted them called her a dyke and she didn’t want Adora to have to deal with that. Catra cut her hair and everything to put the “blame” on her, it was a whole thing. I had a high school AU dealing with Adora pretending to be straight for a while that never went anywhere too. I finally “got” to do my comphet story here, by which I mean I could have done it at any time but I both didn’t and just got in my head about not wanting to when I kind of did, so I’m glad to have finally gotten it out of my head.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Title is from “There’s People Watching” by Jade LeMac again.

⦁ “Send me something cute” with a wink means “send me a selfie” but Catra’s too resigned for that.

⦁ Catra did NOT buy her sweater, it was her Castaspella Assigned Sweater her first Christmas with Glimmer’s family.

⦁ By complete accident a video about video game elevators came up and played while I was in the middle of writing the elevator scene. As Adora was trying to awkwardly say she didn’t look the narrator went “You can use elevators to force characters into awkward conversation” with a shot of an anime that I swear looked like RGU but I’ve never seen that show and don’t know if elevators exist in it, it was just a hell of a coincidence.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Uhhhh this wasn’t supposed to be here. There was a single paragraph in the last chapter talking about times they had kissed before, and then I went to do a fic note expanding on it, and I… just couldn’t stop. So this happened.

⦁ Here’s an abbreviated version of what that note looked like: Times Catra and Adora kissed: - 1 We definitely need to know how to kiss for this party - 2 I’ll show you how to kiss for your boyfriend (please like it better with me) - 3 Weaver was being homophobic and Catra kissed Adora out of nowhere when she was comforting her, which Adora interpreted as Catra coming out to her. For two days afterwards Catra thought there was a slim chance, despite Adora’s clueless responses on the night of, that they might be dating before a Very Straight comment from Adora brought Catra down to earth. - 4 Actual spin the bottle in the hallway during a school dance. - 5 :) Wouldn’t you like to know (This is the drunk makeout scene, which I didn’t actually write because I wasn’t comfortable doing it for consent reasons. Drunk makeouts can be agreed on and fine (see Glimmer and Catra) but with all the shame Adora felt from it and with her being shitfaced, it didn’t feel good to actually outline, so I skipped to the aftermath instead, which I think better showed Adora’s internalized shame and how it caused her to reject Catra anyway.)

⦁ Whenever I need a random background NPC I just pull up the He-Man wiki and look at the characters list for something that fits enough from the original She-ra. Yes, it’s not a reliable source of information, but I’d hope it’s base character names are at least correct. Aliases I’m less confident in lol.

⦁ “He’ll want to impress you. That’s what I’d do.” That’s what you’d do? Something you want to share with the class, Catra? It seems like you’ve thought about this a lot.

⦁ Catra’s insistence on teenage boys sucking is partially the gender norms Shadow perpetuates, partially her own repulsion to the entire idea of heterosexuality she doesn’t quite have a handle on yet, and part of her trying to convince Adora of all those ideas so Adora will just ignore all those boys and only be her friends for tooooootally normal reasons <3 Definitely.

⦁ Catra was not invited to Caleb’s party, btw, it was just a (pretty obvious) condition of Adora’s attendance that Catra would be there too. Because besties don’t let besties miss out on parties or leave the other alone for their first “real” kiss. Obviously.

⦁ I just find these freshmen being sure high school is like on TV and all sophomores must have done ton of kissing hilarious, but it’s a very Kid thing to believe.

⦁ When I was a kid the game Trace Memory taught me the word crud because the protagonist Ashley said it whenever, you know, you would normally say a swear word. This led to me saying it a lot because it was something I could “get away with” before my mom informed me I could not, actually, get away with it. To this day my mom (who isn’t religious, by the way) insists that crap, damn, and hell are all Swear Words, which I disagree with. I mean those last two, sure, I just don’t ascribe to Christianity. “Crap” though? What the fuck? That is not a “swear word”. It might not be an innocent word, but it is not a fucking swear by any means. You do not have to bleep it out or limit the number of them that appear in a movie to maintain a PG-13 rating or whatever (rumor is you get one “fuck” btw).

⦁ My dark elf lore comes from Knifepoint, with Shadow Weaver’s appearance generally matching her Mystacor look and “dark elves” dubbed so because they are a race of elves with a high degree of photosensitivity that must either cover up or avoid the sunlight to avoid burns and a greatly increased risk of cancer. More info in my “Races” fic extra if you’re interested.

⦁ Shadow’s “reminders” for Adora to bring Catra are both because she thinks Catra is more likely to listen to Adora, and to reinforce for them both what a model daughter should look like. She makes Catra see Adora following expectations every time they see each other, later telling Catra that is what she should be like and slowly driving an uncomfortable wedge between them, reinforcing that Catra will never be Adora and never be good enough for her.

⦁ If I remember the puritan crime severity ranking right, it goes like Blasphemy > Adultery > Murder, which is why Adora brings it up in reference to Shadow’s own sin ranking list. That, and the rumor is that the reason Shadow’s life is how it is is because her husband left her (true) for committing adultery (ehhh it was mostly just because she was a terrible person) so she has dedicated the rest of her life to making herself appear “upstanding” by society’s standards after she “failed in her duties as a wife” (the way the church sees it — she doesn’t feel she has duties to anyone but herself, but she wants them to perceive her as capable), which is actually why she ended up fostering Catra, to appear as close as she could to the vision of a woman put together. She also… has the whole fucked up thing where she “relates” to Catra and wants to make things as hard for her as possible because she thinks she sees herself in her and life was never fair to her (she says in her $800,000 house).

⦁ The coming out scene takes place following one of the incidents Catra alludes to later at the party.

⦁ Adora vision: Oh, she’s kissing me so that I know she’s gay and for no other reason. I will not examine this further.

⦁ I’m convinced spin the bottle isn’t real tbqh, but this fic is me finally doing all the high school &college tropes I haven’t done or have only brushed against over the years, so yeah, it gets thrown in there.

⦁ Alright the spin the bottle scene I wrote in the car so the names just got pulled out of my ass.

Chapter 5:

⦁ Chapter title is from She’s Pretty by Beth McCarthy

⦁ Scorpia is watching “She Loves To Eat”, a lesbian manga/TV show that my friends have loved. It’s actually about all kinds of food but “cooking” just felt weird in that sentence (like it implies some kind of Top Chef thing) so I went with baking.

⦁ Lesbians will literally hide under the bed and call it romantic instead of admitting their feelings.

⦁ It was honestly hard to type Christmas in a fic instead of Winterfest lmao. Making Christianity exist is really antithetical to my usual views. Winterfest is a stand-in for a number of holidays, including New Years traditions, but new years is secular so I usually still leave mention of it as the name for the final day of Winterfest.

⦁ The Dean’s Spotlight is like, another version of a thing we did have at my school, shifted to the left. For this fic the spotlight is basically the faculty nominating the student they think is the best showcase of their school (academics, extracurriculars, and standards wise). Fall highlights one senior and spring nominates one junior, so you only ever have two chances of being picked, but it’s a great networking opportunity.

⦁ Hope doesn’t mention church here because she stopped going every week. She still does it a lot, but while she could go and punish herself with guilt for the rest of her life, there came a point where she just couldn’t keep doing it to Adora once it started to cost her their relationship. Adora brought a little of Mara’s glow back into her life and she couldn’t lose that joy again She did go to church the next Sunday after their phone call though, and made a point of sitting next to Shadow, who of course noticed and struck up “polite conversation” (digging for information as to why she’s approaching her since she usually doesn’t). Hope wasn’t fooled and told her she was just thinking of her because she spoke with Adora that week and she was thinking how much more they used to see each other when they were coordinating their daughters’ playdates. Shadow’s response was “Yes, that will change when your daughter goes off to college and stops speaking to you in favor of a life of sin”. No matter how coolly it was spoken it was the exact opening Hope needed. “Yes, I suppose she has been busy”. This immediately piqued Shadow’s interest because while it wasn’t the first thing Hope ever said about Catra post Catra cutting Shadow off, it was the first in a long time (she said it was not her business to meddle in family at first and barely said anything even before the fallout. She might not have hated Shadow — at the time — but she also didn’t wholly agree with what she saw of her parenting philosophies). Shadow’s response was something to the effect of “What has she gotten herself into now?” to which Hope responded “Nothing bad, making Dean’s Spotlight just takes a lot of work. It’s not an honor lightly earned. Adora could use learning some of her discipline”. Hope wasn’t actually trying to shit on Adora, just make the conversation seem more natural. It’s something she might have said back when Adora was in high school, which was the last time she and Shadow really spoke frequently. Shadow said some stuff about Adora having discipline in other important areas (unaware she came out) and tried to lightly pry for more but Hope got a lot more reluctant to speak after that.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Chapter title from Not My Fault by Renee Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion

⦁ Adora’s whole thing about Bow wanting in a different way than she does is just from how the idea that sometimes it feels like everyone else must be fine on the inside or feeling some pure ideal of emotion instead of everyone just being fucking messy like you, but when you assume everyone else is feeling the Pure™️ kind of sadness with just yearning and no Problematic Jealousy™️ you’re just setting yourself up for disaster because everyone’s emotions are messy.

⦁ Man I miss the art studio I did my freshmen year art project in. Sure, working in it was fucking miserable when it was hot out, but all the light was so great and despite the noise having a fume and particulate hood was really handy. I’ve been doing a lot more crafts project recently and I just do them in my “office” which is a tiny bedroom with a single window that’s on the side of the house that never gets any light it’s sad.

⦁ Lonnie picked up everything Catra was putting down and found it hilarious considering she and Adora were just friends. She wasn’t surprised when Adora started gushing about her girlfriend not long after.

Chapter 7:

⦁ Title from “Friendship Bracelet” by Beth McCarthy

⦁ Adora started freaking out as soon as she got on the phone with Catra for obvious reasons, but she was also internally worried that Catra had attached to someone else there who might not have her best interests.

⦁ They are having two entirely different conversations while Adora is trying to get Catra home. The second Catra says she wants something and Adora stops, her drunk mind assumes Adora knows what she wanted (her) and when she says she can have it when they get home, Catra just goes yayyy make out time! Meanwhile Adora is just like work with me here and you can get as bitey as you want okay. They are living in two different worlds as usual.

⦁ So the original outline of this scene was uh. A little darker. I’ll be honest, I find the final version of the drunk Catra scenes very funny because I love sloppy Catra, but the original outline of the scene called for her getting further in trying to kiss Adora and then crying more than she did and kind of rambling all her insecurities and outright asking Adora why she was toying with her. The final version is the right version.

Chapter 8:

⦁ If I have to tell you this chapter’s title is from “Curious” by Hayley Kiyoko I really don’t know why you’re here.

⦁ Adora does eventually convince Catra to visit the student counseling center, but it isn’t until the next semester, and Catra doesn’t make it a long term habit, just going in for a few sessions to work through some stuff and moving on. There’s processing to do, but she is also one of those people where talking about it only helps so much until it hurts instead.

⦁ Adora got that hopeful smile because Catra’s eyes blew out when she stepped into her view, just like she did the night before, and then she slow-blinked at her immediately after not denying she wanted the things she asked her for last night, but Catra as freaking out a little too much to be that self-aware.

⦁ Not to be NSFW for a teen fic but I do think this Catradora take a little longer than normal to get intimate, but once Adora is comfortable and ready she’s all in.

⦁ The kiss motivation method is an actual thing me and my girlfriend did freshmen year and yes it helps the ADHD but it also makes it worse because you’re thinking about getting the next kiss instead of the dumb textbook lmao.

Chapter 9:

⦁ Title is from “I Think I’m Growing?” by Fletcher.

⦁ This was supposed to be the end of chapter eight, but it felt more right to split it off and make it its own thing, even if it makes for a very short epilogue. It keeps chapter eight the same length as all the rest of the normal chapters (minus the 5 + 1 shoved in the middle of this fic) too, so I decided to split it off even though I was hoping not to increase the chapter count on this one. I have a really terrible habit but my policy is always what’s best for the story and not what’s best for a number so splitting off these “looking forward” scenes was right.

⦁ Entrapta’s relationship with her parents is largely transactional and they just aren’t close at all, so she has to consider the scenario where they deem the transaction “isn’t worth it” anymore. It’s not actually something that would happen, but they just have a weird relationship overall. They aren’t bad people (I mean, they aren’t Shadow), just busy and kind of neglectful, so Entrapta finds a lot more support in her friends, and wanting to be with those friends and have community she didn’t experience growing up is why she likes to share an apartment.

⦁ The waterpark is based on an actual park I used to visit that could hold (and usually did hold) thousands of people at once. The pools would just be seas of bodies, it was insane. I haven't been in years and probably won't ever again because swimming and masking don't exactly mix. It was often manned by college students in the summer rushes, though.

⦁ Okay continuing from the epilogue section: Shadow’s reaction to them getting engaged. True to the protocol of the first few years, Hope doesn’t really tell Shadow anything that’s going on in their lives after that time Adora drops hints for her to, and she sees her a lot more rarely as Hope starts to fade in her faith, so she goes back to just brushing her prying off for years. The engagement is big enough to break that form, especially because Catra drops hints again when they visit that maybe Shadow should know about it. Hope goes back to church the weekend after they leave (her first time in a month — listen, going a few weeks between visits is “falling off” for her. She visits once every month or two at this point, but she is still involved in certain initiatives she deems important, like the annual toy drive). When standing around with a bunch of the older ladies afterwards talking — Shadow included — they’re talking about their “joys” that week and Hope says that hers is that her daughter just got engaged. Shadow is immediately alert as the church ladies offer Hope congratulations and Hope is just quiet and gracious about it. When asked about Adora’s suitor, Hope just says they visited together that week and it’s good to see her so in love. She’s lucky to be marrying her best friend. The ladies just aww and talk about how it’s a shame they had to leave before Sunday so they couldn’t meet them, but Shadow know what that means, and she’s quietly seething. Honestly it’s mostly impressive that she waits until she can catch Hope in semi-private out in the parking lot that she asks if she’s allowing that, which like, wicked not her choice dude, but it’s more like is she enabling it and acting like it’s okay. The answer is just “yes” and Hope ignores her protests otherwise, continuing on to her car. Shadow definitely considers outing them to hopefully have the rest of their congregation exert pressure on Hope for Hope to exert pressure on Adora and Catra to “correct”, but ultimately it would expose her own “failure as a parent” when it came to raising Catra “right”, so it just becomes a “painful secret” for her to bare.

Original Outline:

Since I was wicked winging this one, there really wasn’t an original outline to deviate from. Basically I had the entire first chapter outlined and then… nothing else. Sometimes it’s fun to do a fanfic off the cuff like that.

The one “big change” was my original idea had Catra living in an apartment with the BFS, but I wanted one of them to live on campus.

I also had this vague idea (inspired by “I only smoke to feel bad” by KiNG MALA) where Catra would have another friend group and they would kind of be stoners. She would have someone in that group who she sometimes kind of hooked up with (I went with Glitra instead) and after reconnecting with Adora, Catra goes to one of their hangouts, gets high with them, and then freaks out when that girl gets flirty with her because she’s in a weird frame of mind and suddenly all she wants is Adora again and this just feels very wrong. Because she’s anxious-high she doesn’t do the logical thing of “hey I’m not feeling this” and instead leaves to call Adora to come pick her up. She doesn’t explain much other than “I’m high and I want to go home” at which point Adora is immediately out the door and not leaving her to navigate the bus system. It was supposed to help push them a little more towards being vulnerable with each other as Adora takes her home and tries to take care of her, because I was envisioning their relationship as still being kind of antagonistic at that point.

You can see how that idea became the party scene. There were some things with that I just didn’t want to write, and I think the party version is way more fun, more logical with the set up of the world and characters (which didn’t exist when I had that first idea), and more fitting for where they were in the story.

Aside from that and stuff previously mentioned, it was all off the cuff.

Meta:

Playlist

Upcoming:

To be 100% honest next I’m going to work on my SPOP Big Bang fic which y’all aren’t going to see for months, but then I’m probably going to do the ******** AU. Not saying exactly what that is because a certain subset of people are going to be feral for it and I know it’s at least going to be a bit before I’m ready for it, but since there’s a whole fic between here and there my whims could change too. We’ll see! Updates on my Tumblr as always.

#etbltf #ficmeta #fic notes

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n7punk · 3 months

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i am working on editing so i can give adora Emotional Trauma for her birthday 🥰 but this chapter is like 6k so we'll see if I edit in time. aw fuck i still need to name the fic

#tr #ficmeta #fic rambling

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n7punk · 1 month

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“Make Me a Monster” Fic Notes

MMaM was pretty short and this will be too but this fic has some Backstory and I wanna talk about it lmao.

Playlist:

Warriors (AJ Michalka version)

heavy. — Au/Ra

The Creeps — Garbage

LIFE AFTER SALEM — Lil Nas X

The Heartless (original rock version) — PVRIS (kind of hard to get. Was only available on their PARIS EP which isn’t available for streaming last I checked)

Waking Up (Acoustic) — PVRIS (from the acoustic version of the PARIS EP, which is available on youtube)

chaotic — Tate McRae

Hate myself — Tate McRae

R.E.M. — Mothica

Shatter — Against The Current

Frankenstein — Rina Sawayama

My Limb — Hayley Williams

Epilogue Life:

It takes awhile and I could never write this fic in a timespan where it’s complete, but Adora does come to accept her new prosthetics. After the revelations about She-ra and the Heart, she comes to realize this version of them is the most ideal she could get purely because they don’t need maintenance, removal, cleaning etc and she can care for them the exact way she can the rest of her body, which makes them feel a lot more like her body. Her sense of touch isn’t 100%, still losing some texture differentiation and the ability to really feel light touches (she wouldn’t feel a bug walking on her arm for example), but as shown in the epilogue she learns to adapt, and eventually she stops covering up so much either. When she starts to wear her jacket less is when Catra knows she has made real progress. Her prosthetics are magic and never need intervention, which helps.

On Catra’s part, her guilt also takes a lot to process, as does her trauma from her time chipped, which only feeds into her guilt because she feels like she inflicted that same dehumanization on Adora. She comes to focus her energy on “fixing” things instead though, which does lead to some unhealthy burnout, but the worry her friends show for her then does a lot to help her internalize that no, they really don’t hate her.

It’s one of those cases where they take longer to get to a healthy place than in canon, but they do eventually reach it. They get through the worst of it early on, but those effects echo for a long time.

Chapter 1:

⦁ I was pretty worried going into this how people would feel about this, mostly because it’s an incredibly complex situation. Prosthetics are often helpful, but they tend to not be as effective as people hope and even when they are, that still doesn’t mean people don’t look at them and see what they lost sometimes. This situation in particular, where the prosthetics were largely unnecessary and completely forced on her, was painful. Adora is struggling not just with that, but with the very familiar process of trying to get back where she was before an injury/disability, but sometimes that’s just not possible. She’s seeking every piece of functionality and feeling she gets with her prosthetics, but that doesn’t mean she is less for having lost something either. I was worried about people thinking that attitude she has is ableist, when it’s really just a part of the disabled experience. Some people never have it, but I’m definitely someone who has struggled with trying to get things back while knowing I’ll never get it all. It… really sucks, and even when things seem good, there can be a bittersweetness to them. That’s the kind of attitude I was approaching this fic with. There was also the medical abuse angle with her prosthetics. Despite her impossibly advanced prosthetics, this is a very real thing I actually saw conversations about when TotK came out, which is what gave me of the exact phrase for that trigger because I was having trouble naming/describing it in the content warning before that.

⦁ Hordak was working on prosthetic limbs in the event that his deteriorating state made it impossible for him to keep working, using Adora as his guinea pig to test their effectiveness. Shadow Weaver kind of thought there was a chance She-ra could regrow them entirely even if that wasn’t what she was banking on. She actually thought the second accident was a mercy, because Hordak already wanted to test out the set on Adora at that point, so making it “necessary” was supposed to be easier on Adora. Her empathy meter is broken.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Catra just can’t “get” why Adora stayed, but it was kind of impossible for her to leave before that. Part of her already knew Shadow Weaver would be back for more, but she couldn’t let herself do it because it was the “wrong” thing to leave Etheria to the princesses. When she realized the Rebellion wasn’t actually monsters, it was all so much worse because she realized everything — her arms, Catra’s punishments, the horrible way they grew up that she didn’t even really have perspective for — had been for nothing. Catra was right all along. They should have runaway. So she did

⦁ I didn’t intend to title the chapters of this fic since it was so short, but then the “You promise?” line came up and I wanted to make that the chapter title for clarification purposes if nothing else, so I added them in.

Chapter 3:

⦁ I know I’m kind of the “let’s talk about traumatized Catra” person but tbh I still don’t think we give enough weight to having your body literally puppeted while you watch and undergo nightmare hallucinations. Like how the fuck was she functioning after that. So yeah on top of Adora being extra traumatized in this (and Catra additionally having extra trauma from watching that happen), I wanted to go a bit into the echoes of having been under Horde Prime’s control for Catra too. (Other members of the Princess Alliance who were chipped definitely deal with nightmares from this too, but I have a feeling the nightmare scenarios were mostly unique to Catra, especially considering the green pool wasn’t used on the others and by the time Prime had the others under his control he was dealing with a lot of chips and conjuring up nightmare scenarios for them all doesn’t make sense.)

⦁ In this AU there was a lot more immediately obvious awfulness from Shadow Weaver, so even after the portal Glimmer did keep her confined to her room, not that it helped Adora’s mental state much. She was a lot more hated and shunned in Bright Moon and when they were on the run. Catra and Adora still cried watching her die, but after the fact their general attitude is a mixture of “good riddance” and “how could she do all that to us and then just die without ever acknowledging it?” They take her sacrifice as the closest thing they’ll ever guilt to an admission of feeling guilt.

⦁ The thing about Adora never being able to tell if her sensation is back to “normal” is a very real thing when it comes to disability. I remember at one point telling a friend that I couldn’t tell if I wasn’t in pain or was just shouldering it because I didn’t remember what not being in pain felt like anymore.

⦁ If you know my poll, this was “in the engine room.”

Chapter 4:

⦁ In this AU, they have no idea the First Ones Virus could infect She-ra with just the sword since it seemed “obvious” it spread from the robots, to the sword, to her prosthetics, which somehow caused everything to go haywire. Because she was working with her original set that was less advanced, the virus was legitimately latched onto She-ra itself, which also explains why it went away with she reverted the transformation. They just thought changing “bodies” let her purge the virus when she transformed back. The corruption from the First Ones… worm, thing, corrupted Adora’s limbs similarly to how the virus took over her, only with green instead of red, completely changing the colors of her arms and legs and then slowly creeping up her veins. It was gnarly.

⦁ Entrapta just has a better connection with Catra and was looking to her for an answer, but a small incline of the head was their signal back in the Horde that she should really just agree with whoever she’s talking with. She almost never paused to notice it, but Catra was trying her best (and failing) to keep her out of trouble.

Original Outline:

Originally this AU was supposed to be longer, starting when Adora first lost her limbs, then skimming through scenes throughout the series, until finally landing on Darla. That was just an extra 2-3 chapters probably, but 1) god that’s too much angst. It kept me from writing it for like 9 months because I didn’t want to do it, 2) the balance just wasn’t there? Everything got “minute-to-minute” once they were on Darla, with entire chapters dedicated to it, where as the previous chapters were scattered moments taking place over literal years. This did mean I lost some ideas that were supposed to take place in the war and such (the princess prom scene, for example), but it’s still better for it.

I started to write that longer version of it back in 2022(!) but only worked on it for two days to about 2k before I was like this is not vibing and dropped it. When I picked it back up with the shorter timeline in mind, I wrote 70% of this fic in one sitting back in September, but then I got kind of stuck on their reconciling conversation and I think it was just a little too much angst for me then so I didn’t come back to it the next day. I’ve opened it occasionally since then to glance over but it just wasn’t clicking until this week. I edited what I had and wrote the rest of the fic in two days once I was there, though. I am proud of this fic but it’s definitely a very emotional one so it kind of has to happen in bursts like that. I’m glad to have finally gotten it out now, as rocky as getting from idea to completion was. I had the idea November 14th 2022, wrote most of it September 4th 2023, and finally finished it March 9th 2024.

Upcoming:

Start Your Engine ;)

#MMaM #fic notes #ficmeta

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n7punk · 3 months

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"freak occurrence: confluence" Fic Notes

“freak occurrence: confluence” is definitely the most meta (and the most ridiculous) fic I’ve ever done, so I’ve compiled some references, notes, and explanations to act as fic notes. If you’re opening before reading the fic, I recommend reading each scene before checking the references for it and absolutely don’t read anything after this first section before you’ve finished the fic.

Catradoras in order of introduction:

Scene 1: This is actually MToHL!Adora immediately post-canon but they haven’t figured that out because they’re similar enough that nothing has thrown them off.

Scene 2: Teenage Catradora from a canon-divergent reality where they run away from the Horde as teenagers and horses aren’t real.

Scene 3: toht!Adora.

Scene 4: slas!Catradora.

Scene 5: BFM!Adora, looking at slas!Catradora obviously, but the other Catra trying not to laugh is toht!Catra.

Scene 6 has no Catradoras, but the tattoo is from my OotW fic 'her heart on her sleeve.'

Scene 7: of course this has the Lone-Adora that isn’t from any other fic, but it also has another reference to slas and a reference to ISoHM.

Scene 8: strange disease!Catradora with mentions of my very first AU (and one of my first fics period) ‘in thundering realizations’!Catradora.

Scene 9: DITM!Catradora POV and Reflection!Catradora across from them, named for Adora turning into a magicat when she's She-ra (side note: shortly after arriving, Reflection!Catra asked if She-ra was a magicat in this universe specifically because she has always held that was because Adora was gay and when she was told ‘no’ that gave her all the ammo she needed for the next three years).

Scene 10: strange love!Catradora.

Scenes 11 and 12 are the Lone-Catra that isn’t from any fic. Well, I would say this is her origin fic, same for Lone-Adora.

Scene 13: Lone-Catra and LotD!Catradora.

Scene 14: WDtFD!Catradora POV and mentions of Knifepoint!Catradora. It’s very easy to think the couple where Catra’s hand was messed up was from AMLAIT, but I also kind of wanted to include allusions to some Catradoras from other fics, so you could read it as R&B!Catradora if you want. I thought about including an explicit mention of Catra’s boots to make that more clear, but when that ended up being the only pair not from one of my own fics, it felt kind of weird. I wanted to pay homage to some of my favorite AUs others have written in the fandom by including references to other Catradoras that were there, but it’s really hard when most of those fics are just modern AUs without much easily visible about their Catradoras to identify them, and I definitely didn’t want to write any scenes from the perspective of someone else’s version of the character without permission, so I just kind of left it at this ambiguous reference to a friend's fic that I asked them permission for first.

Scene 15: Mentions of catcher!Catradora, Superzero!Catradora, and IHtWCYN!Catradora.

Scene 16: Mentions of TFHFY!Catradora, strange disease!Catradora again, and the Greys!Catradora.

Scene 17: CotC!Catradora (for people following my Tumblr this was the entire scene that was just. missing after all my planning somehow).

Scenes 18 and 19 have nothing new.

Scene 20: SaD!Catradora.

Scene 21: This one is a tease for a future fic :)

And from here on it’s no one new.

Epilogue Life:

Okay I had to cut the fic off there because this could honestly go on forever BUT here’s some stuff about the fallout of this whole event:

This event is, as you would assume, completely non-canon to the rest of my fics. If you want to imagine each couple went back to right around the time they got taken and quickly their memories of the other reality melted away once in their own timeline again, sure, whatever. There are two dimensions permanently affected by all this however, and that’s Lonely-Adora’s and Lonely-Catra’s.

Adora’s universe splits off from canon at the Portal, whereas Catra’s splits off at Princess Prom. I think both universes could survive on their own without Catra or Adora, but there is a reason the couple needs to be in Adora’s universe, and it’s Prime.

Yes, I might be permanently locking one universe in Despondos either way. Oops. Listen, you win some you lose some. This is supposed to be a crack fic at the end of the day (remember that?) and I wasn’t too focused on implications like that. However, Adora’s universe has already signaled Prime thanks to the portal, so without her and Catra they would be locked in a pocket dimension with an apocalypse on its way, no leader in the Rebellion, and Entrapta on Beast Island.

In Catra’s universe, Entrapta never got left behind because the rescue mission went very differently, so Hordak’s portal project is basically doomed, and the Princess Alliance is intact, united, and extremely motivated to crush the Horde after what they did to Adora. They’re in a good position to fight them thanks the Best Friend Squad uniting the Princess Alliance again and the Horde (more specifically, Shadow Weaver) reeling from the loss of Adora and Catra. They’ll take them down in the end and they’ll do it Adora’s name, just like they would have if Catra stayed in their dimension. After having seen the brainwashing the Horde is willing to do, Scorpia eventually defects to join them when Entrapta manages to — completely accidentally — extend a hand to her just by being herself.

Adora’s universe needs Adora’s inside knowledge to save Angella and Entrapta quickly and face down the Heart and Horde Prime. They’ll find their feet, get Entrapta back, start working on their portal technology, and then get the Failsafe before they even get Scorpia and face the Heart. They’ll move Etheria out of Despondos, taunt Horde Prime to the surface as best they can, question their decisions, but ultimately lure him in and set off the Heart faster and with less loss along the way. No one on the Princess Alliance ever gets chipped in this universe and they rescue Angella not long after and reunite Glimmer’s family.

It takes a bit until after the war for Adora and Catra’s relationship to start shifting, but they do eventually get together, there’s just a lot to process first and fighting evil is a good thing to focus on instead while they do that. They need to become each other’s friends before they can become anything else.

Notes:

⦁ I mentioned a disclaimer in the fic end note. To elaborate on that: I first had this idea around August of 2020 (give or take a month) when my friend asked me which of my AU Catras/Adoras would fuck their alternate universe wife. IDK man, her mind is beautiful. Anyway, it gave me this idea, which was a fun crack scenario that I would turn over in my mind occasionally when I came up with a new AU that I thought would have an interesting pair to add to it. I had no intention of writing it, especially back then when I didn’t have enough AUs to fill out the roster. Since then I’ve thought about making a post explaining the idea just to get it off my mind so many times. In that time, a Spiderverse AU for Catradora was written (oh: I also didn’t watch the Spiderverse until 2023, to the point that the outline for this fic was titled “This Fic Is Older Than The Spiderverse” until I looked it up and realized that’s wrong and I’m just late to the party lmao, but I had no idea what the Spiderverse was about other than multiple Spidermans until I watched it so the death plot point really was just me being fucked up) that dealt with some similarities with the deaths between realities. The fic is good, it made me cry, and I actually read that before I watched the Spiderverse because I missed that tag and thought it was some kind of canon AU. I recommend the fic and wanted to acknowledge it since it shares a plot point. Honestly, when I read that fic I was like oh thank god someone did it, now I’ll seem like I’m copying if I do it too and the idea can leave me along, but the idea Did Not Leave Me Alone and I need to end this 🔫

⦁ Because I know someone will ask: This is absolutely crack and not canon to my OotW series at all. I still have no idea where I should really put it. Being in the AU collection makes sense because it’s relevant to a lot of them, being inside the OotW series but non-canon like ‘take care of each other’ and ‘You and I (and Me)’ makes sense, and it not being in any of those things because it kind of isn’t an AU and definitely isn’t canon to OotW makes sense. I still haven’t decided and I’ll probably move it around multiple times lol.

⦁ Ethereal!Catradora are from my upcoming fic "Lightbeam" and are just a fun little teaser because no one was better suited to sussing magic out. It was either her or Glimmer, who was busy laying magic alarm systems all over the castle for the new alternate universe couples to trip into when they arrived so they could be collected. This is how Catra knew to come running when the SLAS couple appeared.

⦁ “The universe is as dumb as it is passionate, apparently.” C’mon Catra you can’t ask finesse from a celestial body that is no thoughts all vibes

⦁ The whole conversation around the cot/bed is just to show that yeah, they’re different Catras and Adoras, but they’re still Catra and Adora in every reality and this will work out eventually.

⦁ I mostly picked Catradoras based off when would be easy to reference or who I thought would be interesting in the scenario and basically nothing else. Making them distinct was the biggest challenge lmao.

⦁ Oh I know SaD!Catradora teleporting back near their original disappearance might make it seem otherwise, but Adora was missing from her reality for as long as she was in the Prime universe for (and yes, I did internally refer to it as the Prime universe, so I had to make jokes about it. And then I made the omegaverse canon - AS FICTION - to a few of the modern universes for a laugh). I think the people from other highly-similar Etheria's were gone for a 1:1 time or close to the same amount of time they were in the other dimension, but the further a dimension was from canon the less time passing in the Prime universe applied to their own. Or something. Again, none of this is canon.

⦁ They go to Lone-Adora's universe because Catra reaches out for Adora, opening herself up to her. They would have gone to Catra's if it happened the other way around.

⦁ Adora's room was a mess because the Princess Alliance kind of tore it up looking for a sign of her but of course found nothing.

⦁ "So even here I'm..." is "So even here I'm a killer."

⦁ I don't think I ever say specifically what Catra's cause of death was in this universe (because I wasn't sure myself for a while) but when the Fright Zone was kind of shaking apart post-Portal Catra fell and Adora wasn't able to stop it.

⦁ Glimmer is emerging from Bow's room because they actually made some progress on Glimmer healing and reaching out for her friends for support when Adora disappeared. Glimmer was afraid it was because of her and it caused her to do a little - a little - self-examining.

⦁ I've mentioned this a couple times but I spent most if not all of last year secretly hoping to get to 1% of the tag. It's a super pointless goal, but it is cool to have done it. This work is also the 50th in my AU collection (at least, as of now since I'm putting it in there for now) so that feels like a fitting number for a special as well.

⦁ This was supposed to be like 7k.

Upcoming:

I might do another OotW fic or two, but right now my plan for the next AU is “the Reverse AU.” Have fun figuring out what I mean by that, you probably won’t :)

#foc #ootw #ficmeta #fic notes #i know what i said about posting tomorrow but instead i stayed up way too late doing this yayyyyyyy #i have work tomorrow

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n7punk · 3 months

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not brought up because the fic is T but you KNOW some of the other catradoras spotted BFM!Adora's necklace and went OH

#some of them were like interesting #some of them were laughing #some of them were furtively glancing at each other like heh. ha. isn't that. um. interesting. funny! it's funny. that in that reality we're #um. anyway. so many dimensions wow!#lmao #foc #ficmeta #fic rambling

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n7punk · 3 months

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After the Catradora Confluence, Entrapta starts exploring dimensional travel more and eventually builds a portal machine capable of temporary dimensional displacement (temporary mostly as a safety feature to ensure no one gets lost in a parallel universe) and they get to visit a few of the universes that participated in the confluence and finally get them closure on what the hell that was and check-in on the Lone couple to see how they're holding up.

#fuc #hm. thats a cursed acronym #fic rambling #ficmeta #this isnt actually canon because the fic isn't canon but XD im answering old comments and having thoughts lol

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n7punk · 4 months

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“By the Sea (Drown Me Already)” Fic Notes

By the Sea is done! It took a longer than I was expecting with everything that happened in my life, but it’s also longer than I was originally intending so that's to be expected lol.

Playlist:

This AU was purely vibes for a while, and thus the playlist was mostly vibe-based at first, but a few of these are very good fits.

GOOD GIRL ERA (SIDE A) — UPSAHL. FBL (SIDE B) — UPSAHL. WEEKEND — Betty Who. Silk Chiffon — MUNA (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) Bed — Niko Rubio. Love Seasons — Nina Nesbitt. Yellow — XANA. bad idea right? — Olivia Rodrigo. Casual — Chappell Roan. HOT TO GO! — Chappell Roan. Shy — K.Flay. Naked In Manhatten — Chappell Roan. Borderline — Sigrid. Minute — Kim Petras.

Epilogue Life:

I did more of a traditional epilogue than I usually do, so there’s not too much to say here, but they date working through their issues for six months before Catra officially moves in with Adora and not long after Scorpia, Entrapta, and Perfuma move in together. Catra does stay at the marina for a lot longer than she ever thought she would before eventually getting too fed up with the waves and getting an opportunity to work for one of the resorts instead.

Chapter 1:

⦁ This AU is heavily based on an area I used to visit as a kid, which sucked so much you can bet there was not a single resort there, but it was the basis of my beach experiences, so it inspired certain parts of this set up. I wanted to do a resort-type AU, but there are also some moral issues when it comes to resorts so I focused on the general vacation town angle.

⦁ I made a lot of jokes about not knowing jackshit about what I was writing, which is partially true, but I actually have Some experience related to the water parts of this fic, it’s just rather removed, and I don’t know the first thing about diving. I haven’t even been to a beach in seven years, but I dated a girl with a boat once and I leaned heavily on that experience lmao.

⦁ “Hot surfer chicks coming to the marina might make it a bit more bearable.” Catra, honey, you have Got to stop jinxing yourself.

⦁ Entrapta was right about Perfuma being anxious. She has so much experience trying to decipher emotions that are easily evident to others and picked up on the body language.

⦁ My POV for fics is always somewhat reactionary. If I do a fic that is primarily from one perspective (Adora POV in Roses & Thorns) it’s almost inevitable that the next fic (Catra POV in By The Sea) will swing the other way to balance it out. That’s not planned at all, it just happens a lot. My brain misses whatever girl it got to spend less time with lol.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Mermista’s dad owned the marina for several decades before he sold it to Netossa when he retired because Mermista wasn’t interested in running it and also in middle school. They get a free boat spot for life.

⦁ I mentioned this in a comment but couldn’t expand on it at the time: Adora and Catra’s relationship is very inspired by the setting. It’s a surprise reunion in an unexpected place, which works well with the vacation town vibes, but they’re both also worried about losing it, which matches with the transience of such a place.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Adora’s small talk was actually really important stuff for diving, that just didn’t have any relevance to the rest of the office, nor did Frosta care, and to Catra it just sounded like weather small talk.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Catra kept up most of their photos from high school. There’s one or two she had said something too glowing about Adora in the caption and thus deleted in a fit of spitefulness, but for the most part she couldn’t stand to lose them. Except that one. That one hurt so much every time she read it because it just seemed like lies, and when she was feeling generous enough to not view it was that, it was the ramblings of a best friend who only felt friendly. It was either lies, a goodbye, or a consolation prize to being “friendzoned.” She wiped it from her account and then quickly regretted it.

⦁ On Adora’s part, you can guess, but she wiped her social media in a low fit after her shoulder. The last thing she had posted was a photo taken by the training pool, gushing about how excited she was for the scouting. It hurt too much. Every photo from college did, and every photo from high school had for a while, but those were at least good memories. Now everything from college was tinged with regret and failure. She saved a lot of the old photos — mostly from high school — and even screenshotted some captions or comments — Catra-related, or even left by Catra herself — and then stuck all of that on her harddrive and pretended none of it existed. After she found a life again, she found herself occasionally going back to look at those high school photos, but she rarely revisited the few she saved from college. It took her months to feel like she could post again. It wasn’t until the next summer, when she hoped enough of her college friends had moved on or forgotten either her or what happened, that she felt comfortable doing it, and when she did she went public on her account, trying to open back up her life. Being public also felt like it gave her a layer of separation from those old high school/college followers even if all it really did was add more strangers to the pool.

⦁ I went back and forth on how to describe the age of the account and the timing of the incident, because they’re kind of halfway. Adora’s shoulder got injured at the end of sophomore year, and her social media existence started many months later, after healing time, so her account got remade roughly two-two and a half years ago and she got injured around three.

⦁ The post of Adora getting fancy dinner after the surfboard post was because her friends saw her anxiety and her overworking herself to get the money to get it fixed and knew she would never let them just pay for the repairs, so they took her to dinner instead and didn’t let her pay for the check. She needed a good time with her friends, and the free meal couldn’t hurt.

⦁ The line about crutches in Adora’s caption is actually something I said to my friend once when they were feeling ashamed of their aid. When you need them, you need them, and something being a “crutch” doesn’t mean it’s bad or unnecessary.

⦁ Adora’s injury was her “breaking the sword” moment in this universe.

⦁ It got cut because it was awkwardly shoehorned in the dinner conversation, but Adora’s Serenia bio says she has four years of experience because she actually tried diving while at college, but it was basically just some fun lessons she did that she never expected to go beyond that. It’s part of why Mara took her under her wing so hard, though. She recognized Adora’s trauma with water, but also how it was so tied to her identity and left her feeling like a shell after “failing” at swimming, so she found new ways for Adora to use those talents and find fun in them. And honestly she needed another hand with the town’s growth.

⦁ I’ll be honest: my knowledge of torn ligaments comes not from sports, but from my dog tearing her knee. I remember the vet told us some wild statistic like half of all dogs will have torn their other leg within a year of the first injury but we made all the lifestyle changes recommended while healing from surgery to mitigate risk factors and she never had any more problems! That was like six years ago now and she’s still super peppy. You’d have no idea she’s a senior dog with a knee surgery under her belt. Oh anyway that’s why I mention the injury lingering because yeah it can affect dogs at least so bad they fuck up their other leg the same way from compensation within months.

⦁ Adora talking about being happy in Bright Moon making her realize how much she missed Catra actually was a pretty big revelation for her. College was just hard the whole way through and Adora was distracting herself from her pain (emotional and physical when she overworked herself) by… overworking herself more. Taking a full load, spending too much energy at practice, working a part-time job after school, she had absolutely no room to breathe and honestly the only surprising thing is that it took her that long to get injured. She never had room to look up and see what was missing because she was explicitly avoiding doing that and pretty much everything was a pain point. Once she was healed and happy, the loss of Catra reared its head again and refused to be pushed aside, even if she was more prepared to process it. It was a lot less painful, but still present.

Chapter 5:

⦁ I think Bow 100% is the kind of guy who would enjoy being made into a sand castle but sand is so unpleasant in a lot of places and to get it out of your binder you’d have to take it off and then put it back on, which is kind of difficult on the go.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Okay so the “armor” from the title is Catra’s bravado combined with the emotional armor of making her wants and Adora’s lingering eyes all about desire instead of acknowledging the enormity of her feelings. Adora is doing a similar thing in her head, but she’s also trying to deny her desire too, so her head is a full on shitshow.

⦁ Originally the grocery store scene was going to be later in the fic when they were “Maybes” because I love the casual intimacy of grocery shopping together (romantically or platonically! It’s just fun), but I needed an Adora scene in this chapter to give a little more of a read on where she was at (denial) and the chapter was really short without it, so I decided to write it now.

⦁ I have actually seen a guy “rescue” a grocery store lobster and keep it as a pet for years on youtube. The transformation she went through under his care is insane.

⦁ Apparently cats and dogs aren’t really suppose to have nuts because it’s a big risk to them, but for the most part it has nothing to do with toxins and is just because they’re a choking hazard or at risk of being a blockage since cats and dogs don’t usually chew things up a lot. Anyway there are a few that are actual problems and that’s specifically raw cashews.

Chapter 7:

⦁ I actually wrote the scene with Mara talking about Adora surfing before chapter five, but it was too early in the fic for that and they needed to build more before something that important. The entire point of putting it early was Catra being surprised by how quickly Mara was willing to accept her and thus wondering what Adora had said about her in the past, but 1) it’s honestly still like that even being pushed back, and it’s more reasonable in that regard, 2) it was both too assuring and too insecure for the vibes I wanted.

⦁ Everything from chapter 8 was originally in chapter 7, but then all the swimming/hook up stuff got so long I had to separate them out, so CH7 ended up being mostly transition. I tell myself transitions are important when I just want to write angsty trash make outs lol.

Chapter 8:

⦁ The make out against the pool deck is like The Scene Lite™️ for this fic. It’s one of like two points I was building to early.

⦁ The original idea for the fic was that Adora would live in a house on Mara’s big property out of town, but when I went to write this scene Adora just said some stuff about living twenty-five minutes away and that got abandoned.

Chapter 9:

⦁ Honestly you can take your pick on whether Bow couldn’t arm wrestle Sea Hawk because it would make his arm too sore to drive or the losing penalty was taking shots. Both were ideas.

⦁ The closet scene is The Scene™️ for this fic. I think I wrote it before the first hookup scene in the first outline when things were more antagonistic (more on that later).

⦁ It’s so not relevant to the fic so I’m sticking it here, but Adora’s old swim coach was almost as bad as Weaver, but that actually worked out for her when it came to scouting. The swim coach wanted Adora to go pro for the glory to her team, and she knew Weaver wanted her to go to a local college, so when scouting started, the coach worked with Adora behind Weaver’s back to help her get seen and apply. This made it even easier to hide, and without it she probably would have needed Catra’s help to pull that off, thus assuring Catra actually knew about it and wasn’t totally blindsided. Adora’s coach actually helped her out and drove her to the airport for her flight out since Adora had a total blow-up with Weaver when she found out. It was something Adora needed, but it was still self-serving.

Chapter 10:

⦁ Their whole conversation here was supposed to be a quick joke and then it became the entire chapter somehow and that’s just the story of all my fics tbh. I really wanted it to be quick since I didn’t want people to think I was making light of IRL racial fetishes but I truly do think all of that would function very differently in any world with multiple species, especially the more diverse the species get and thus the less alike. It starts becoming increasingly harder for a human to be wired to find them attractive, and obviously the species in SPOP aren’t that different, but it’s a topic that always intrigued me in Mass Effect/sci-fi fic that there really is nothing like in our reality, so I was interested in at least brushing up against it and that’s how the joke happened. I’ve made some jokes about it before but they were always the quick jokes I meant for this one to be and obviously that didn’t end up happening here.

Chapter 11:

⦁ A lot of people clocked it but the musical song was Dead Girl Walking (not the reprise) from the Heathers musical (which is infinitely better than the movie, god, don’t watch that thing).

⦁ I went back and forth on if Catra would like the Ferris wheel, because on one hand, they have their secret place really high up and she doesn’t seem to be afraid of falling off the railing, but on the other hand, cats getting stuck in trees. Lol no but it is very different when you’re in something that feels as precarious as a dangling basket versus a solid building seemingly made from steel.

⦁ Okay so Bow’s whole thing here was actually written before I had the idea for Adora to ask Catra if she’s aromantic and I ended up turning this scene into that Seed Of Doubt instead of the single mention. It was another thing I meant to be a quick joke (well, Catra to be the joke where she managed to act unbothered so well — to Adora at least — that she screwed herself) but it ended up expanding into a full plot point. Also I should probably mention here I’m greyaro for the people who don’t follow me on Tumblr usually.

Chapter 12:

⦁ Let’s just say that Catra’s work day here is incredibly realistic.

⦁ I know I’ve mentioned this fic spiraling a few times, but the title “Surfboard at Midnight (I Just Might Swim)” was originally on… chapter 5. Okay, okay, it wasn’t that bad because I came up with the name before the chapter contents, but yeah, I was constantly kicking it back. The title belonged to chapter 5, and then 6, and then 8, and then like 10, and then 11, and 12, just constantly kicking it down the road as things leading up to the skinny dipping moment spiraled.

Chapter 13:

⦁ I originally said the POV for this fic was whoever because I wanted to leave the door open for having a scene from Scorfumtrapta’s perspective, but that was back when the fic didn’t have plot, and as the lesbians got increasingly dramatic, the focus on their relationship fell into the background. The main scene I was thinking of was what ended up being turned into the dinner scene. At the time, I just thought it was funny for Scorpia to realize months late that she was in a three-way relationship, but in the fic it turned into this thing about Catra feeling adrift and alone even with her friends, which wouldn’t have come through if I had used Scorpia’s perspective or something.

⦁ This chapter has a Secret Theme. So sometimes — quite often — I’ll write scenes in my head for a fic that I know have no place in it. Maybe it conflicts with the overall tone (in the fic, or just that portion of it) that I’m going for, sometimes it doesn’t super make sense, etc. Some of these things end up repurposed or I do find a way to integrate them, and that’s what this entire chapter is. When I was outlining Catra turning up at Adora’s in the middle of night for sleep cuddles, I wasn’t actually planning to put it in the fic, but then it was really sweet and I realized fit with the transition of their relationship, so it became an unofficial part of the outline before being promoted to part of the story.

⦁ I did say this entire chapter was from scenes that weren’t supposed to be used, though, so what about the boat scenes? Well, the boat scenes were originally outlined… for Roses & Thorns. Yes, okay, I know. Let me explain. That fic wasn’t supposed to be nearly as horny as this one, but when I was writing the very end of it I had this vision of a scene with the two of them messing around backstage (being vague to avoid spoilers if you haven’t read it). It included some of the dialogue that ended up in the make out scene on the boat, but I knew it wouldn’t fit with the rest of the fic to suddenly have them getting hot and heavy on screen, so I just kind of saved the dialogue with the plan to implement it somewhere else down the line. As I was outlining this fic I had the idea for them to hook up in the storage room at the docks at one point, but I ended up moving it to the boat because that would have necessitated luring Netossa away first if they wanted to get away with it, which was less likely after the summer rush faded.

⦁ So I don’t know how all phones work but on iPhone you can set certain people to break through Do Not Disturb and Adora put Catra on that list because sometimes they would text past when hers activated for the night.

Chapter 14:

⦁ Kinds of chocolate according to Catra: White Dark Super Dark Baking Semi-sweet Sweet Milk Orange (wildcard)

⦁ The “there’s other ways to get these endorphins” thing really goes to show how little Adora understands what Catra is doing. Those kisses are “I love you”s and bids for assurance that Adora just isn’t getting and thus isn’t giving back because she’s so focused on not taking advantage of Catra and the such.

⦁ I’ll be honest I tried to get them together here and it didn’t work. Catra reacted too strongly, too fast. When I first outlined this scene I was thinking about another possible get together (that didn’t end up happening) and wondered how I would even get out of this scene without them getting together and then when it came time and the plan had changed I couldn’t MAKE them talk.

Chapter 15:

⦁ Samantha is dressed like a butch prince and I think that’s great. Also I pulled the name Samantha out of my ass because I didn’t feel like coming up with a reference like a week ago- psyche nevermind the song it's from literally just came on shuffle as I was posting this so it's actually from a Leah Kate song and I just forgot why I picked it.

⦁ This chapter easily could/should be split into two, but I like the flow of it all being together.

Original Outline:

So, this AU didn’t have an outline. It was pure vibes when I started it, with plot just taking vague shape in the back of my mind as I wrote. Pretty quickly I had a few big scenes — the make out at the pool, the closet scene — but I was building the rails as I drove at first. As such, I kept having ideas that pushed the few ideas I started with further out in a spiral.

When this AU was extremely nebulous, there were some different ideas for the concept where maybe Catra worked for the resort so she and Adora were closer to being coworkers, and then others where they all worked totally unrelated jobs on the pier but were hooking up in the “offices” when others weren’t looking, which is closer to what the final thing became, but these were all fleeting ideas before I really started writing. Originally the AU featured more antagonism between them at first too, with Catra denying even being her friend at first, but again, things just happened as I wrote and that didn’t materialize at all.

There was a draft with a very different final chapter/get together, but I honestly might use it in another AU where it fits a lot better (there’s a reason it was kicked) so I don’t want to say what it was lmao. Aside from that, this AU was something I wrote as the ideas came to me, which is fun to do sometimes.

Upcoming:

I’ve got a couple of one shots in the works and then we’ll see what AU takes me, but for now I’m playing around in canon universe (mostly).

#btsdma #ficmeta #fic notes #new share link will go up later

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n7punk · 10 months

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Fic Reference #1 for Children of the Crystal: Catra's outfit from the second fic Wild, Weird. Catra/base by @jem-jarrett and lining/outfit by me.

#this. will probably not be the last you see of this base. is all i'm saying #chapter 2 will be up very soon!#im editing it rn but i had to pause for this lol #cotc #fic reference #ficmeta #catra #also im sorry if the colors are off everything is always way darker on my ipad and then i upload and it's neon #and i dont know which screen is wrong lmao

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n7punk · 2 months

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staring at the page like come on words. happen

#ive already written 2k today it's fine but GOD i want to get these two to just kiss already!! yall cant keep doing this to me #fic rambling #lightbeam #ficmeta

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n7punk · 3 months

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the reverse au playlist fucking pops off btw

#it doesnt have a name yet in case you were wondering about the title use lmao #tr #ficmeta #fic rambling

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n7punk · 4 months

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2023 Writing Wrapped!

I think I forgot to do this last year but I was a little burnt out at the time. I had so much fun writing this year I wanted to do a little retrospective/celebration for it (which I encourage everyone to do! Even if you wrote just one fic, take a second to congratulation yourself for accomplishing it).

I wrote 34 fics and updated 118 times this year. Almost half of those were for the Children of the Crystal series (16 fics) but that series was so fun and clocks in at 121k so I'm totally okay with that. If anything, that's a bit of equalizing, because I know my fics are a lot longer on average than most people's since I write a lot of longer AUs (quick math off the top of my head is about half my fics are longer AUs) so now my words-per-fic average is probably a bit closer to usual lol. Actually that got me curious and my average is 20,176 which is honestly lower than I was expecting but still almost certainly higher than average since I've seen a lot of profiles without a single fic that long. Okay I'm a nerd and I did the math and it was only 21,041 before this year which is way more surprising since I really would have thought it was more.

Anyway, I posted 610k words this year between all my fics (though I wrote more in WIPs and upcoming projects). I had so much fun with a lot of the fics I did this year. Children of the Crystal is still a stand out for me, but I'm SO proud of 'the long way down' and I spent the first half of the year pretty feral for each idea as I tore through Hurricane Adora, As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You), Superzero, City of Angels, Trade Today For Tomorrow, and CotC of course. February through August I averaged 12 updates a month which is. insane. I updated daily for 12 days in a row in July/August for CotC, and I spent most of that fic series updating every other day.

A lot of that creative energy came from the health stuff that has been bogging me down for a few years (and especially last year) improving, and though I'm still dealing with that, I'm doing a lot better and it has really felt like rediscovering my creative passion. I had a span from like March-ish trhough August I called my "unhinged era" between how feral I was for my ideas, how much I was updating, and just how wild some of those ideas were lol. My slow down at the end of the year came from starting a new job that was very demanding and especially exhausting with my health issues, plus health issues for the rest of my family, but I've still been averaging updating once or twice a week since, so I'm happy with that given everything that has been going on.

Now let's get to the two big ones.

Writing streaks: Definitely not for everyone, but for me they're really motivating and 100% the reason I was able to keep up momentum these last three months with work. I wrote every single day this year. I still can't believe that. Sure, some days it was literally 50 words at the end of the day when I was exhausted, but I also had my highest single-word count day since I started recording them this year at 12,738 on July 18th when I was writing CotC. My previous record was 94 days in a row. 364 is a huge leap. I don't know where I'm going to go with my streak from here. On one hand, it was hugely motivating. On the other, you always want to be careful to prevent burnout. For now, allowing myself to count days where I barely do anything as long as I engage with my WIP seems like a good middle ground since it keeps me motivated and connected to what I'm writing while letting me mostly take time off. I'm exploring more creative hobbies like painting in my free time, though, and as long as I've created that day I don't necessarily feel the need to write, so we'll see if I reconsider my writing streak as a "creating" streak in the future, but for now I'm just going to see how long I can go.

And the final one... my stupid goal.

I can't remember if it was at the end of last year or the start of this one when an anon pointed out how much I had written and I realized I was something like .99% of all Catradora fics on AO3, but my ridiculous goal for this year was to get my fics to 1% of the entire Catradora tag. This goal... I half reached. It takes a bit of explaining.

First, when I first set that goal, I think needed to write twenty-something more fics to reach it. Obviously, I well exceeded that goal at 34 fics, but as I was writing, so was everyone else, so the number of fics I needed to write to reach 1% increased. In the sense of my original benchmark, I definitely passed my goal.

Second, as I write this, AO3 shows there are 11,632 Catradora fics. You can consider 1% of this to be either 116 or 117 depending on rounding. I have 117 She-ra fics, but one of those is a Glimbow fic with no mention of Catradora, so that takes me to 116. However, one of those 116 is tagged as Adora & Catra because it's the CotC fic from when they're small children and meeting for the first time. I consider it a Catradora fic, but it's not actually in the tag and thus doesn't contribute to it. As such, I've fallen short at 115/117, but I really do consider this goal complete for this year given that I passed the initial milestone, the rounding makes the final number debatably 116, and I do actually have 116 "Catradora-centric" fics. That said, I'm very aware those are technicalities and I have a special celebration planned for when I actually, officially become 1% of the tag, so look out for that :) It'll be a great way to celebrate the new year. I'm hoping/planning to do it in the next week or two.

The future: I'm ending this year and starting the next trying to clean up a bunch of WIPs since my fic folder is getting a little ridiculous with the (mostly Outside of the War) one-shots I've written one scene or just a description for, which feels like a really fitting way to end off the year, accomplishing my goals and making everything neat and tidy. I have like 7~ to work though, though my actual goal is maybe 4-5 since I don't want to "force" myself to work on an idea if I'm not feeling it at the second, but I also have a longer AU calling my name, and I don't want to ignore an idea interesting me either... so we'll see, but I'm excited for everything I'm working on right now, and that feels really good. I finished last year in kind of a rough place writing/creativity wise, and I'm finishing this year really excited for everything I did and everything upcoming, so that feels pretty great :)

Thank you to everyone who read and commented this year! I know I ran out of energy to keep up with comments a lot, but they really made me smile so much and I appreciate them so much. Some days they were the difference between the motivation to write 1000 words versus 50. Thanks for another great year!

#fic rambling #ficmeta #mylife

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