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misc-obeyme · 11 months

Note

Hi there i have been reading your blog for an hour now and im obsessed. Your writing is amazing. May i please request gn! Mc who was just in a fight, and got badly injured, but doesn’t care. So they ask the demon/angel there yo cuddle?

Im so so so sorry of this doesn’t make sense im very tired xD

Preferred characters you can ignore this well the entire request too xD (lucifer, satan, belphie, dia, barb, and simeon)

Here is a cat to keep you company his name is mr. Whisp 🐈

Hello there!

Oh thank you, I'm so glad you're enjoying my writing! (Also thank you for Mr. Whisp I love him.)

Okay, so I wrote these as little scenes instead of the usual bulleted list style, I hope that's okay! They did end up a little longer because of that, though. I did it that way because you requested specific characters and it's easier to write little scenes for fewer characters rather than all of them.

Thank you for the request!

GN!MC gets hurt in a fight, but doesn't care and just wants cuddles with Lucifer, Satan, Belphie, Diavolo, Barbatos, and Simeon

Warnings: MC is hurt! Bruises, blood, general injuries, talk of fighting.

Lucifer

You were standing in front of Lucifer, summoned to his room after he inevitably heard from several of his brothers about the state you were in. You had shown up at the House of Lamentation covered in scrapes and bruises. They all noticed how you were walking with a slight limp and the dark circle that was forming up under one of your eyes.

You had considered blowing him off when you got the message on your D.D.D. that he wanted to see you immediately. You didn't really feel like listening to a lecture about getting into fights. And yet you knew that if you put it off, it'd only be worse later. And secretly you wanted to see him.

Lucifer was observing you with a dark expression, clearly looking over your various injuries.

You kept your arms folded, chin up, and said, "You wanted to see me?"

He didn't say anything at first. You weren't sure if this meant he was so angry he couldn't speak or if he was just trying to make you nervous.

"Explain," he said at last.

You sighed. "I got into a little fight, it was no big deal."

Lucifer quickly closed the distance between you. He took hold of your chin and tilted your face this way and that. "No big deal? MC, you have a black eye. I think perhaps you've also injured your ankle in some way. Do you really think it's okay to risk yourself like this?"

You frowned up at him. "I can handle myself. Just because I got hurt doesn't mean I didn't win the fight."

Lucifer shook his head in exasperation. "That is not the point. Surely the issue could have been resolved without you getting hurt."

You softened a little. "You don't have to worry about me so much, you know."

Lucifer let go of your chin, tracing the tips of his fingers down your cheek lightly. "How can I not when you come in here looking like this? I know you can take care of yourself, but it really is a problem if you-"

You cut him off, catching his hand and stepping in even closer. "Lecture me later. Right now, can't you just hold me?"

You saw his resolve break as his expression changed. He wrapped his arms around you gently, careful to avoid aggravating your injuries. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, unable to hold back as his worry for you spilled over.

"We will treat your injuries shortly," he said into your hair. "And MC, you will not worry me like this again."

You smiled to yourself at this blatant admission of his concern for you. The warmth of his arms was more than enough to make you feel as though you were healing already. You later heard all about how he hunted down those who hurt you (though you could never figure out how he knew who they were). Those demons were never heard from again.

Satan

You sat down across the table from Satan at the library of RAD. There was nobody else around - it was late in the afternoon and all the other students had long since gone home. You knew Satan was there late, taking his time studying for an upcoming curses and hexes exam. You had agreed to meet him there at some point, since you needed to study for that exam as well.

Satan looked up as you sat down and instantly reached out across the table, grabbing your wrist.

"MC," he said, his voice low. "What happened? Who did this to you?"

You knew he was reacting to the bruises on your face and the cut across your forehead that was currently still bleeding a little.

"I'm fine," you said, shrugging a little and pulling your wrist out of his grip. "I just had to take care of something on my way here. Now are we going to study some hexes or what?"

Satan stared at you with wide eyes for a moment. You watched as his face changed, his eyes going dark and his teeth clenching. You could see where this was going and sure enough, he was suddenly in demon form. He half stood out of his chair, leaning across the table and growling.

"Who was it?" he demanded. You could see the tip of his tail twitch just above the table, unexpectedly free rather than wrapped securely around his leg.

You weren't scared because you knew he was contemplating tearing some other demons limb from limb for doing this to you. His reaction was a little over the top, but nothing you weren't expecting. This was Satan, after all.

"I know you're upset," you said. "But it really isn't anything you need to worry about." You placed your hand over one of his, leaning forward yourself to meet him.

His death glare only cooled slightly. "You can't show up to a study session with injuries like that and expect me not to worry, MC."

"I can if I'm telling you that you don't need to worry," you said adamantly. "I need you to trust me. And honestly, it would help me a lot more if you would calm down and give me a hug than if you went off the rails right now."

He was struck by your words, and they caused him to sit back down. Slowly, his demon form left him and he was back in his RAD uniform. The anger still smoldered in his eyes, but it was in competition with how much he cared for you.

Satan closed his eyes, clearly fighting with himself to push down the wrath that continued to simmer in him. After a few moments and some deep breaths, he opened his eyes again. He came around the table, gently taking your hands and pulling you out of your chair.

His eyes roamed over the cut on your forehead, but he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you into his chest. You pressed yourself to him, letting your own arms return the embrace. The pain of injuries seemed to fade away entirely as you let him comfort you.

You pulled your head away just a little to look at him and as you did so, you saw a splotch of red against the grey fabric of his uniform. "I'm sorry," you said. "I got blood on your uniform."

Satan sighed and pulled you even closer to him, resting his head on your shoulder. "What am I going to do with you, MC? Promise me you'll be more careful. I hate to see you hurt like this."

"I promise I'll be more careful," you said. It was a promise you felt you could keep.

Belphegor

You moved as quietly as you could through the halls of the House of Lamentation, avoiding any of the brothers you came across. You were on your way to the planetarium to meet up with Belphie and you didn't want any of the others to see the state you were in. So you kept to the shadows, moving along the walls until you came to your destination.

You slipped into the room and smiled at Belphie as he looked up at you. He had been nearly dozing off, so he was still a little bleary.

"There you are," he said with a yawn. "You're late."

"I'm sorry," you said, hoping the room was dark enough that he hadn't noticed your cuts and bruises. You sat down next to him, making sure you stayed partly in shadow. "I lost track of the time."

"Hmm, fine, I'll forgive you this time," Belphie said, rubbing at his eyes.

You laughed softly. "Gee, thanks."

Belphie leaned against your shoulder sleepily. You winced. You didn't mean to, but your shoulder was still sore in that spot.

Belphie noticed instantly. He sat up straight and looked at you carefully, the sleepiness suddenly gone. "MC… is that… a black eye?"

You shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Belphie frowned. "It is. You're hurt." He tugged on your arm a little to move you more into the light. You knew he could now see how banged up you really were. "MC! What happened to you?"

"Don't worry about it," you said. "It's not a big deal."

Belphie scoffed. "You got into a fight, didn't you? At least tell me that you gave worse than you got."

"Of course I did," you said.

Belphie stood up. "Hang on," he said. "I'll be right back. Then you should tell me about it."

Belphie was gone for only a few minutes, coming back with a first aid kit in tow. He sat back down next to you and opened it, pulling out a disinfectant wipe. He started to wipe down the scrapes on your face. It stung only a little.

"So? What happened? Did some demons insult you or something?" he asked.

"Yeah," you said. "Well, they said some things that I couldn't just ignore and things escalated quickly. But I can promise you they're suffering worse injuries than I am."

Belphie smirked. "I'm not happy about you being hurt," he said seriously. "But I can't pretend I'm not proud of you, either. You should let us handle stuff like that for you, MC. I know you can take care of yourself, but I don't know if it's worth you getting hurt like this."

Belphie carefully put a bandage over the largest cut.

"It's really no big deal," you said. "Especially since I have you to take care of me."

Belphie frowned, a soft blush creeping across his face. He sighed and put his arms around you. "Just because I'll patch you up doesn't mean you should go around getting yourself hurt."

You leaned into his embrace, nuzzling into him while still being careful of your injuries. "I know. Thank you for taking care of me, Belphie."

Although Belphie stayed by your side that night, you later heard rumors about those particular demons being plagued by nightmares.

Diavolo

You ducked into an empty classroom, having finally gotten away from the scene of the fight. You were covered in scratches and bruises and your lip was bleeding. You had eventually escaped the pandemonium after landing a particularly well thrown punch and running while your opponent was dazed. Now you could take a moment to breathe and figure out what you needed to do for your injuries.

You turned around from the classroom door and froze in shock. Diavolo was standing there in the middle of the room, looking just as shocked as you felt. He stared at you for a long moment, taking in your disheveled appearance, and the blood still dripping down your chin.

"MC," he said and the darkness of his voice sent a shiver down your spine. He came toward you. He put one hand on your arm and lifted the other to wipe the blood off of your bottom lip. He let his touch linger there. "Did a student do this to you?"

You considered telling him exactly which demons you had been dealing with. But then you thought about how you weren't entirely blameless. You engaged with them, after all, and there was no doubt that you'd left a few of them injured.

"Please don't worry about it," you said. "It wasn't like I couldn't handle it."

Diavolo sighed. "That isn't the point, I'm afraid," he said. "It's against RAD policy to fight on the grounds."

You smirked a little. "Are you going to give me detention?"

Diavolo laughed. The sound filled you with a feeling of warmth and contentment. It was his usual laugh and it let you know that everything would be okay. "I don't think that will be necessary," he said. "But if there are students picking fights, I'll have to do something about it."

You put your hand on his where it still lingered by your bloody lip. "You can do something about it later, can't you? I could really use a hug right now."

Diavolo put his hand gently on your cheek then wrapped his other arm around you, pulling you close to him. After a moment he put his other arm around you, too, keeping you safe and warm in his embrace.

"I am so sorry this happened to you, MC," he said into your hair. "Please come back to the castle with me so I can be sure your injuries are properly cared for."

You pressed your cheek against his chest. "Are you really that worried about me? I can handle myself."

"I don't doubt you," he said. "But I would feel much better knowing you are being taken care of. Won't you indulge me?"

It wasn't like you could really refuse him. Especially not when you looked into his gold eyes and saw the deep concern there. So you would allow him to take you back to the castle, where you would stay for the rest of the night. You later heard about the rules regarding fighting at RAD becoming more strict.

Barbatos

You pressed your fingertips into your cheek in an attempt to stop the bleeding from a small cut you had gotten there. You felt that it was the most prominent wound, since it was right on your face, and while you couldn't exactly cover up all your bruises, you hoped you could at least stop the bleeding.

You were waiting for Barbatos in the gardens of the Demon Lord's Castle where you were meeting him for tea.

You weren't delusional. You knew you couldn't hide what had happened from Barbatos. But you still thought it would be better if you weren't actively bleeding.

When Barbatos finally arrived, he was carrying a tray of tea and pastries in his hands. The moment he saw you, he nearly dropped the tray, catching himself just in time. Still it tipped enough for a teacup to go flying off the edge, falling to the ground and smashing into tiny pieces.

You gasped and stood up, an unexpected reaction to the shattered teacup. "Oh don't worry, I can fix that," you said.

You couldn't look at Barbatos as you cast the spell to repair the cup. The pieces lifted into the air and fused back together. The cup landed in your palm, whole again. You straightened up and brought the cup over to where Barbatos was still standing, setting it on the tray before meeting his eyes.

There was an unmistakable aura of distress around him, even though his expression remained neutral. He carefully placed the tray on the table you had previously been sitting at.

"Thank you, MC," he said. "I'm afraid I lost my composure for a moment. I apologize for my clumsiness."

You had to hold in a laugh. Of course he would apologize to you for that. "Don't worry about it," you said.

You were about to sit back down at the table when he caught your arm. "I must inquire about your current state, MC."

You shrugged. "It's nothing important," you said. "Just a little altercation I was in on the way here. But I'm fine."

"I must disagree," Barbatos said. To your complete shock, he touched your cheek, leaving a smudged red stain on his spotless white gloves.

"Barbatos!" you cried, taking his hand. "You're getting my blood all over your gloves!"

It wasn't like Barbatos to allow his gloves to get dirty.

"A small matter compared to the fact that you are currently bleeding, MC," Barbatos said calmly. "You must allow me to tend to these wounds."

You sighed, squeezing his hand in both of yours. "All right. But first won't you…" You blushed, a little embarrassed to ask him to hold you.

But Barbatos knew what you wanted to say. He pulled you down into his lap as he sat down in one of the chairs by the table. You rested your head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around you, gently kissing your neck. Much later, he would bandage you up and give you some healing tea. But in that moment, his touch was like the magic you had used on the teacup - making you feel whole again.

Simeon

You fidgeted outside the door to Purgatory Hall. You had come here to spend some time with Simeon, studying while he worked on his latest novel. It was something you had gotten into the habit of doing recently. You were currently concerned about running into Luke and scaring him with the sight of your injuries.

You decided to send Simeon a message on your D.D.D. letting him know you were outside.

He sent you back a question mark sticker, clearly confused about why you didn't just knock on the door.

You waited for a moment instead of responding and the door opened to reveal Simeon, his expression just as confused as the sticker he sent.

"MC?" he asked. Then he got a decent look at you. "Oh, MC. What happened to you?" He grabbed your hand, pulling you inside.

"I'm fine," you said. "Can we just go to your room so I can study?"

Simeon frowned, but he did as you asked. He held your hand tightly as he led you down the hall to his room.

Fortunately, you didn't run into any of the other Purgatory Hall occupants.

When you reached his room, Simeon sat you down on his bed as he stood before you, fingers lightly touching the largest bruise on your face.

"I told you, I'm fine," you said again. "I just didn't want to scare Luke, that's all."

"I appreciate that you were concerned about Luke, MC," Simeon said. "But you really should be worried about yourself, too. These injuries are serious. They need treatment."

You groaned a little and leaned forward, letting your forehead rest on his stomach. "I knew you'd be worried about it," you said. "But I'm fine. And anyway, I'll really start to feel better if you just hold me for a bit."

Simeon chuckled. He gently pushed your head back to make you look up at him. "I could never say no to that," he said. "But you really should let me take care of this later." He let his fingers hover over the various places where you had developed bruises.

"Later," you agreed.

Simeon shook his head, but he sat beside you on the bed. He took you in his arms, leaning back against the pillows so you were lying on his chest. He ran his fingers down your back and kissed the top of your head.

"You really should be more careful in the Devildom, MC," he said.

You snuggled into him more. "It's fine. I can handle myself."

"I have no doubt of that," Simeon said. "But I'd rather you didn't get injured. I can only imagine how the demons you fought are faring."

"Let's just say they'll think twice before messing with me again," you said.

Simeon sighed, but he only held you a little closer.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me nightbringer #obey me headcanons #obey me fanfiction #obey me lucifer #obey me satan #obey me belphegor #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #obey me simeon #i always forget how much i love writing for barbatos until i write for him again #request #misc writes

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queenbees21 · 5 months

Text

BNHA Their nickname for you | Them

Warning | Grammar error | Not proofread

Type | Bullet Point • Fluff

A/n: I really need to finish this character list 😭 I’ll try my best write them quickly, also I’m still working on some requested works so I’m sorry if I’m slow right now (꒦ິꈍ꒦ິ)

M.List

| ꜱʜᴏᴛᴏ ᴛᴏᴅᴏʀᴏᴋɪ | | Y/N |

✯ Love ✿ ✯ Icyspicy

✯ Princess ✯ Hot stuff

✯ Darling ✯ Candy cane

✯ Peach ✯ Shou ✿

• Shoto never thought about giving you any nicknames. Both of his parents weren’t the most, affectionate couple; so it never crossed his mind. Until he noticed how other couples gave each-other cute nicknames, and so he seek advice from an export at romance.

“Hmmm, well you could call her maybe love? Love is a good start, for relationships starters. ^^” Ochaco advice, and that’s exactly what he did. As he did; it made you shy around him.

• Where there’s a prince, there’s always a princess. Yes, you’ll always be Shotos princess. He calls you Princess when he's in a good mood. And he thinks it suits you very much. Because of how charming you tend to be, you do it without realizing it. <3

• “Hello darling, how are you?” yes, this is a classic nickname he calls you when you're alone. It may be cheesy but, he loves be it. And as for you, you love it as well. You feels so special in a way, when he calls you darling. It gives you butterflies in your stomach.

• Peaches are your favorite fruit, although; you rarely ate them. Shoto figured it was because you didn’t have time to pick some. For you both were way too busy with hero studies to do so. Therefore, he somehow convinced Mr. Aizawa to take him to a peach farm… Perks of being the number one hero’s son.

When you had first heard him say that, you were confused. So when you asked him how he got the nickname, you were surprised and very amused at the same time.

“Aww! You remember! I like peaches! That’s so sweet Shou!”

He only nodded, and there was a stumble small smile when you called me Shou.

| Y/N |

• How do I even begin with this… nickname. Icyspicy? Really? What kind of nickname is this T^T? I can’t even believe how nonchalant Shoto was about it.

He was a bit confused, though; there was surprisingly faint pink hue upon his cheeks when you called out his “nickname”.

“Where did you even come up with that?” He questioned.

“Honestly, I don’t even know. I figured since you have an ice and a fire quirk. I’d give you a nickname that is combined with it.” You smile. He pat your head in amusement.

• “Hey there hot stuff~” You purr in Shotos ear, as you gently ran your fingers through his hair. Okay, now this took him by surprise. He was barely getting used to icyspicy, but now you are coming up with nicknames left and right.

“Where do you get theses nicknames…”

“From my heart hot stuff ❤︎“

• At this point Shoto doesn’t even know nor question, where you get your.. unique… nicknames for him… “Marry Christmas candy cane! I love you!” You say, as you handed him a present and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Merry Christmas to you too love.” He kissed your nose and walked away.

“Hey! Candy cane! You can’t just do that and walk away!” You exclaimed, flustered by his action.

• Shou is his permanent nickname. Out of all the nickname you called him. You’ve been thinking about it for a while, but never came up with anything. You wanted to give him a permanent nickname. One that you could proudly call him out to without embarrassing him. “Hmm…” you thought as you wrote down some nicknames.

You played around with it, until you “accidentally” spelled him name wrong. “Hmm… oh! Opps—wait…” you looked at the writing. Shou… “sounds like shoe hehe.” You giggled as you doddle around.

The next day, you had accidentally called him Shou. He was confused. “Oops! Sorry, I wasn’t trying to call you that—“

“I like it. Sounds cute.” He smiles slightly. You blush a little. “Oh.. alright than,” you giggled.

“Anyways! Shou~ let’s go on a date! I wanna have you all to myself today!” You cheekily winked. He agreed and left to go change. “Oh! Shou!” You called out to him. He turns around curiously. “I love you!” You smile, before running off.

————————————————————————

A/n: Thanks for reading! Have a good day and night! I’ll be working on the rest, so stay tuned! 🐝 👑 2️⃣1️⃣

#hispanic reader #latina reader #nicknames bnha #bnha nicknames #bnha x reader #reader x bnha #mha x reader #bakugo x reader #izuku x reader #shoto x reader #tamaki x reader #hawks x reader #dabi x reader #shinou x reader

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meanbossart · 3 days

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I normally don't get too invested in other people's characters (bc I already spend so much time thinking and promptly forgetting stuff about my own) but I've really liked how you flesh your characters out and how they interact with one another in your fic! So I wanted to ask if you have a process when getting asks about your characters or writing chapters for ANE.

Thank you so much! For lore asks I don't have much of a process besides for spilling out whatever information I have as comprehensively as I can. I do try to make it an enjoyable reading experience and to establish a bit of a mood through the writing (for the longer/in-depth replies, at least) to make it more fun for both myself and whoever is reading it.

As for how I come up with them, it's usually something I have already thought about prior, other times I might take a few hours or days to think it through. I'm just having fun so I take my time.

Questions about Companion Drow take some minor research. For the Dryad's love quizz ask, for example, I went and looked at the questions the rest of the companions got and their answers for them - broke it down in a kind of pattern that I could identify and then wrote my Q&As based off of it.

Naturally, ANE takes a lot more prep lol the first 4 chapters in it were complete stream-of-conscious stuff, but it was soon after that when I figured out where I wanted the story to go and outlined the plot for myself. Each chapter gets a bullet-point list of plot beats I wanna hit and roughly how to get there, dialogue is often pre-written in as little or as much detail as I feel necessary. Main plot/twists/ending is already set, with some connective tissue in-between roughed out and subject to change as I write more.

#ask #a novel experience

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siilvan · 10 months

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Could you please write a platonic fic with reader and Nikolai? Maybe with a little bit of peril involved so they are both worried for each other?

crash site

characters: nikolai

summary: after your pilot crashes in the middle of a war zone while trying to extract you, a reverse rescue mission ensues.

genre: general, gn!reader (bravo 0-5; no desc.)

warnings: semi-proofread, cursing, canon-typical violence, mild descriptions of injuries, inaccurate medical care, nik and reader get hurt, mutual worrying, i wrote this w/ a migraine i’m sorry

word count: 3.2k

note: anon i hope you know i love you for requesting something that i already sorta wanted to write

also so sorry this took so long, i hope you enjoy <3

you instinctively raise your gun when a bullet flies past and pierces the half-destroyed concrete wall just in front of you. various shouts in a language you can’t understand soon follow, and your heart races as you spin around to confront the enemy.

the mission was supposed to be simple. get into the city, take out the target, and get out without being compromised.

the first two objectives went without any trouble, but your escape was compromised the second the target’s body hit the ground. that’s how you ended up in this situation - with a single magazine in your gun, a city of armed men pursuing you, and no signs of backup in sight.

not to mention the approaching sandstorm, you mentally add to the list, blinking back tears as rough grains of sand whip around and obscure your vision.

you manage to take out the group actively giving chase, which then leads to your next problem: you’ve completely run out of ammo. even your sidearm was emptied as you fought through the small militia, and you lament the speech that price is going to give you about "being prepared" once you make it out.

vaulting over the short wall brings you to a city square. you crouch low near a stack of crates and building supplies, hoping that the chaos of the situation and the sandstorm would mask your presence to the various search parties nearby. you scan the area for any weapons while moving undercover; the last thing you need is to be caught without a way to defend yourself.

if you had a nickel for every time things did not go to plan today, you’d be rich enough to retire. a yell and a bullet landing near your feet signaled that, despite your best efforts, one of the parties spotted you.

you rise to your feet and lift your hands, praying that a surrender would buy you some time. the square fills up, and soon you’re stuck in place as several dozen guns are pointed right at you. there was no way you’d be getting out of this, even if you did miraculously find a weapon during your brief search.

the apparent leader of the group steps toward you, repeating some command - or, perhaps a question, you couldn’t tell - while the others slowly form a half-circle around you. several of the soldiers look antsy, hands twitching as they adjust their grips and rest their fingers against the trigger, like they were just waiting for an excuse to open fire. your stomach churns at the thought of someone getting a little too anxious.

your radio suddenly crackles to life for the first time since you confirmed the target’s death. at the same moment, a distant silhouette in the sky catches your eye. you focus on it and squint, trying to make it out through the ever-increasing cloud of sand, before a familiar voice catches your attention.

"0-5, get down!"

before you can even register who the voice belongs to, you follow the order and drop to your knees. the sound of heavy gunfire surrounds you immediately after, forcing you to lift your hands in an attempt to protect your head as every other person in the city square was gunned down. you bite back a panicked noise when the men closest to you are dispatched, worrying that whomever was in control would accidentally hit you, as well.

when the dust settles, both literally and figuratively, you cautiously lower your hands and lift your head again, scanning the area once more.

as expected, every soldier around you laid dead. some laid on their stomachs due to the unexpected ambush, others were on their backs after attempting to confront the source. your eyes flicked back to the sky, towards the silhouette you had seen before.

even through the sand and dust, you could make out the all-too familiar helicopter hovering near your position. it was a little unsteady, clearly a victim of the intense wind and debris in the air, but you grinned at the sight nonetheless.

"ace shots, nikolai." you let out a relieved laugh after reaching for your radio. "i’m surprised you can fly in these conditions."

"not for long, so let’s make this quick," he says, and you watch as the chopper attempts to land on one of the nearby roofs. "the storm will be here any minute. seems like i got here just in time, no?" he adds with a smug chuckle.

"i’ll be sure to send a thank-you card after this!" you huff and rush to the building he was landing on. for the first time today, things seem to be going according to plan; a ladder inside leads directly to the roof, which you quickly ascend with renewed vigor, and wait impatiently for the chopper to touch down.

you aren’t sure why, but a wave of cold dread washes over you once you reach the rooftop. your attention shifts from your escape to the nearby buildings and streets as you give your surroundings a once-over. surely it’s just adrenaline, you tell yourself.

you spot a figure in the window of a house just a block away. they’re kneeling behind the edge, eyes trained in your direction, pointing something directly at the building you were standing on top of. you stare at the mysterious object in their hands, until they carefully shift their aim a little higher. directly at nikolai, you realize just a second too late.

"watch out–!" you frantically shout into your radio. even if the weapon, which you now recognize as an RPG, hits the building and damages it, your chances of survival were far superior to nikolai’s own.

before your warning can reach him, however, a rocket is fired at the helicopter. you can only watch helplessly as it connects with the tail and sends the vehicle spiraling out of control. despite the damage, nikolai manages to maneuver it upwards while attempting to regain control. a second rocket is fired shortly after and hits the engine, stripping the pilot of any control as the vehicle practically falls from the sky. it crashes into the ground a decent distance away, and your stomach drops at the scene.

you scale the side of the building at breakneck speed and start towards the crash site, completely ignoring the eminent threat at your back as you pray for his safety. you didn’t care about empty guns, failed escapes, or compromised assassinations - you’d take a hundred of each before losing any of your teammates.

you’re swiftly given a cold reminder of your situation during your mad dash to nikolai. you duck into an alley and press your back against the wall as a team rushes down the street, no doubt heading to the same place as you. with a deep inhale, irritating your throat as sand and dust contaminates the air, you push off and follow their path.

come on, nik… you mentally beg the man. this is no way for you to die.

the combat knife tucked in your vest, your last line of defense, finds its home in the neck of one of the soldiers when you attack him from behind. you grab his rifle and dispatch the nearby soldiers, silently thanking the sandstorm for finally hitting the city in full force. it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you, but such was the same for the enemy.

"0-5… can you hear me?" a strained voice comes through your radio and just barely cuts through the raging storm. nikolai. thank god.

"i hear you– nik, what’s your status?"

a pained grunt and the sound of creaking metal answers your question. "i don’t think we will be flying out of here–" he cuts himself off with a sharp hiss. "i’m not sure i can even stand."

"i’ll get us out of here," you tuck yourself into the shadows again as a patrol passes by, the lights on their guns permeating through the dust cloud and highlighting their position. "just stay put for now. get to cover if you can, i’m on my way."

"the enemy will have me surrounded within minutes, 0-5. you cannot fight a militia alone."

you click your tongue and shake your head from side to side, as if he could see you. "i’m not leaving you, nikolai. i’ll sooner drag you out by my teeth than abandon you." a stiff laugh and a muttered comment about your "stubbornness" was his only response.

the group that previously passed you was now stopped in an intersection, exchanging words with another small party. you squint at them and manage to count eight in total. difficult, but manageable. you had the benefits of stealth and surprise on your side, at the very least.

with a slow inhale and exhale, you open fire on the group. you take out two of them before the others start their search, frantically pointing their guns in every direction. once again, the lights gave away their positions; your rifle didn’t have a flashlight, allowing you to stay concealed as you picked the remaining members off one by one.

you reach for your radio again after you confirm the kills. "still doing okay?" you ask, continuing towards his location.

a second passes before you get a reply. "i am still alive, at the very least," nikolai grunts softly, and you recognize the sound of not-so-distant voices through his radio. "they haven’t found me yet. too worried about you to conduct a proper search, i assume."

"hopefully i can reach you, then. it’ll be difficult, but it’s not impossible to slip by." you notice the crash site after rounding a corner and running a few more blocks. it was yet another area that resembled a plaza, with several soldiers dotting both the inside and the outskirts.

"be careful." he speaks slowly, and you push down the worry that stems from his tone. instead, you try to reassure him. "always am, nik. just try to keep your blood in until we get out of here."

you approach the entrance and quietly dispatch the trio standing in your way. judging by the sounds of panic that followed, the gunshots weren’t entirely drowned out by the winds. that’s fine, you inwardly boast. even if they investigate the noise, they’ll come up empty-handed; you move on before the alarm is even raised. weaving through their sights is easy enough, thanks to the soldiers’ scattered and uncoordinated paths. nonetheless, you take out as many as you safely can.

before long, you come across debris from the crash, and you follow it until the main body of the helicopter is visible. you physically cringe at its ruined state until a whisper-shout of your name from somewhere nearby catches your attention. doing your best to follow it, you shove some metal scraps - hot to the touch, even through your gloves - out of the way.

you have to choke back a relieved sigh when you finally locate nikolai, leaning against more of the wreckage while clutching his side.

"never been so happy to see you," you chuckle and reach for his free hand. with a soft grunt of effort, you pull him to his feet and guide him to rest his weight against you. "i’ve got you, just lean on me."

"we need to hurry…"

nikolai’s words are brushed off by your gentle shushing as you make for an exit - easier said than done with the state he’s in. "i know, i know… we’re almost there, just need to get out in one piece."

"you don’t understand–"

his warning is cut off by bullets whizzing past your legs. you regret brushing him off as your adrenaline is sent into overdrive, and you practically carry him out of the plaza. you search for cover before your eyes settle on a small house with boarded windows; inconspicuous, but you really don’t want to back yourself into a corner.

an acute pain in your shoulder makes you reconsider the latter concern. you stumble forward, tightening your grip on nikolai as he nearly collapses from the sudden movement, and resign to your fate.

your lungs are burning by the time you reach the building. you shove the door open and haul the both of you inside before kicking it shut again. cautiously, you scan the interior, fingers twitching as you prepare to grab the rifle slung over your shoulder. the house was meager, you realize; a small sitting area bordered an even smaller dining room, with a modest kitchen that was surely emptied a long time ago.

you stagger to the torn-up sofa in the sitting area and maneuver nikolai to lay on his back, apologizing under your breath at every pained noise that left his lips. the rifle is leaned against the wall as you shove a tall wooden shelf across the room to block the front door, creating a decent barricade.

well, "decent" was a generous description. it would buy you a precious few seconds, at most.

the sharp pain in your shoulder bleeds into an agonizing throb from the effort, and you desperately try to shake off the feeling. your minor injury didn’t matter right now.

"we don’t have much time," you say while shifting your focus back to nikolai. "i’ll patch you up as much as i can. no point in escaping if you bleed out, yeah?" you add with a forced chuckle, trying to ease the both of you. the only interior doors lead to a bedroom and bathroom, and you search both for any supplies.

following the apparent theme of this mission, the only useful items you find are fabric, some foam, and a basic first-aid kit. the kitchen and dining room are equally as frugal, with a half-emtpy bottle of alcohol and a pair of small metal rods as your only rewards.

"you’re not a medic," nikolai says, staring at you from the corner of his eye while you gather the supplies on a nearby table. you huff and begin looking over his injuries. "it’s me, or a grave. pick your poison." you briefly meet his gaze and smile. he concedes and remains silent as you continue the examination.

considering what he had been through so far, his injuries were surprisingly minor. the worst of it was a laceration on his forearm and a fracture below his knee. there was also the bruised and broken ribs, but you couldn’t do anything about those. the smaller cuts just needed to be disinfected and bandaged, depending on the severity - all things that you were perfectly capable of doing.

despite the bad luck, you managed to gather just enough to make a splint for his leg. a shitty splint, but it’s better than nothing.

you start with the fracture, doing what you can to stop the bleeding and disinfect the wound. he hisses in pain when you try to move his leg to apply the padding, and you mumble another apology. the rest of the process goes as smoothly as it can, given the circumstances. you manage to make the splint and wrap his lower leg with the cloth you found, securing it in place.

after checking the splint, you move on to his arm. the first-aid supplies included a suture kit that you were already loathing having to use. your hands shake as you prepare it and clean the wound, taking a deep breath and internally recoiling at the scent of blood.

the stitching is about as torturous as you expected, for nikolai more than yourself. he is remarkably calm, though the occasional grunt or groan still escapes his tightly pressed lips. you finish the procedure as quickly as possible for his sake, tying the thread off and cleaning the area again before wrapping it in the leftover bits of cloth.

"it’s not much, but it’ll suffice for now." you send him another smile. he breathes deeply and nods his head, inspecting your work.

"you are a better medic than i thought," he confesses and nods again. "i’ll definitely put in a good word with the captain." he chuckles softly. his gaze shifts to you, and you’re reminded of your own injury.

before he can say anything, you stand up and grab your gun from its spot. "i’ll be fine. we’ve already spent too much time here, anyway." you sling it over your uninjured shoulder and head to the wall opposite of the front door. the planks boarding the windows were weather-damaged and easy enough to pull off. you detach one and peek through the gap.

the street was quiet, thankfully. the soldiers must have lost track of you after you ducked into the house - at least, that’s what you hoped for. further down the street, you spot a car. your escape.

"see anything?" nikolai asks. you turn back and hum affirmatively.

"there’s a car down the road. if it has fuel, we can drive out of here."

"the militia won’t follow us outside of the city."

you nod towards him. "exactly. i’ll head over and check it out."

nikolai jolts upwards, before grunting and clutching one of his various injuries. "you’re not heading out there alone. the enemy could easily ambush and overwhelm you like they did before."

"it’ll be far faster for me to look at it alone," you argue while pulling the other planks off the window frame. "you can’t walk on your own, let alone fight, nik. this is our only option."

you swing one leg over the edge of the window and shoot a glance towards him. "i promise i won’t be gone for long."

the storm immediately takes you off-guard again, and you clutch your weapon close as you jog towards the car. it was an all-terrain vehicle, left behind by one of the militia groups. you check the fuel gauge and sigh a breath of satisfaction at the half-full tank of gas. best of all, the keys were left in the ignition.

must’ve abandoned it during one of the skirmishes, you think. those weren’t so unlucky, after all.

you head back to the house and find nikolai trying to lift himself from the sofa. "so impatient," you comment, pulling his arm over your shoulders and offering yourself as a support once more. "seems like the car is going to work. just a little further, nik."

he mutters something in russian that you assume is positive, based on his relieved tone, as the two of you head for the exit. both of you stumble towards the car together, fighting against the storm and your own exhaustion that is slowly but surely creeping in, ignoring the painful ache that plagues you from head to toe.

you get nikolai settled in the passenger’s seat before circling the hood and turning the keys in the ignition. the vehicle sparks to life, and every horrible twist and turn is all but forgotten as you speed down the street. the edge of the city isn’t terribly far from your current location, you can make it.

"it’s funny," you say, barely audible over the turbulent winds. "usually you are the one driving and saving our asses, but now the roles are reversed."

nikolai shakes his head. "one save does not make up for a hundred, 0-5. you still owe me." he replies with a self-satisfied grin, earning a frustrated curse from you as you cross the city border.

sure enough, the captain had his speech prepared before you even left the medical bay.

#call of duty #cod #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #cod nikolai x reader #nikolai x reader #cod nikolai #sylph.writes

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ashwithapen · 9 months

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yooo writer questions tag!!

thank you @yesireadbooks

no pressure tagging @leisoree @palebdot @tea-and-mercury @the-stray-storyteller

clean questions list at the bottom below the cut!!

1) What motivates you to write?

hmm good question... motivation has always been a really tricky thing for me in every aspect of my life (which more recently i learned could be in part because of dual adhd+autism), but at the end of the day, it usually comes down to want, one way or another. i want to write to define these ideas and characters and places i can't stop thinking about. i want to write because the song playing demands i do so. i want to write to prove that i can do it, even when i doubt myself, even when i convince myself that everybody thinks i'm worth shit. i want to write because i've never been much of a speaker, and with a pen, i can tell you what my lips never will. so a combination of all of that, i think.

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

ooh ok. honestly, i have quite a few lines that i'm quite proud of, that i go back to however long later and have to pause at because Damn, I Wrote That?? but a recent one was actually in an email—of all things—that i sent to our therapist in which i ended up writing ~4k words just to explain something we've been keeping very private for a very long time. i had been doing that thing where you try your best to explain yourself away before you even get to the whole point, and when i realised that i was just going in circles and sounding pathetic, i cut myself short with this absolutely banging one-liner:

all this prelude as if it will soften my casket.

like daaamn i sound Philosophical and Poetic and shit :0

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

there is this one dork (affectionate) that i made a few years back for a thing that never went anywhere, but i keep him around in case an opportunity comes up. his name is Scott Thomas and he was originally a sorcerer in training. he's a teen (he was going to be a part of a series that spanned about 6 years), has a secret alcohol problem, enjoys not sleeping, and is a professional couch surfer. he has a little sister who the reader wouldn't have even known about until his dying words where he asks the protagonist to go save her from his childhood home which, upon visiting, reveals that his other-worldly hilarity was a classic result of trauma and abuse. he's just a silly, classic-vans-wearing, hoodie-dwelling, guy. the type to try and fix a bullet wound with a bandaid. love that kid lmao

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

it's a small thing, but the moment when you have The Idea that is The Best Idea You've Ever Fucking Had. getting to sketch out the idea, seeing it fit into the plot, figuring out how everyone reacts to it and in what ways it changes the story. the excitement of it all, that "i can't wait" when you think about how your readers are going to react to what's happening. ugh i love it <33

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

again, the little things. the add-ons tied to the backs of sentences with em dashes, the palpability of every emotion as dictated by whichever little inflexion that character lives with, the pauses in the conversation where the birds chirp outside. just whatever i can do to try and make it feel like a real sensory experience and not just words on a page, whether it be the temperature of the air or the traffic in the streets.

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

i like how people here are excited about what they do. i like seeing people be endorsed with their own worlds and so willing to share about them.

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

OMG OK so i'm shit at reading lmao, so everything i write is written just freestyle, fuck it all, forget the spelling, just get it on the page. then it goes through Grammarly, just for spelling (i don't like when it tries to rewrite my sentences or tell me that my grammar is poor. i'm good with grammar and neglecting to use an "and" there was a stylistic choice, get off my back.) (i've been using the free Chrome extension for everything i've ever put effort into writing), and then i reread it with the help of text-to-speech for any words that Grammarly might have missed because they are technically spelt correctly, but they just weren't the word i was trying to write anyways, and for anything that sounds a bit funny out loud sentence-structure wise. for someone without a beta reader, Grammarly and Read Aloud (the Chrome TTS extension i use) literally save my illiterate ass time and time again lmao. even my emails, even my essays, sometimes even longer posts on here (like this one lol)

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

tbh most of my stories have relatively modern settings (which makes sense because i typically write psychodramas rather than fantasy or sci-fi, so most of my "worldbuilding" consists of me googling shit like "how long is the train journey from Brighton to Newcastle" lmaoo), but i did have an unfinished world i made not even for writing purposes, just for daydreaming, called Aldenhors which i still have an unfinished digital map of (made with Inkarnate). maybe i finish it before school starts back... anywho, Aldenhors had a unique calendar: 16 months a year, 20 days a month, 5 days a week, 20 hours a day (roughly 8 light, twelve dark). the months were named Annua, Verlo, Manna, Klaus, Jaes, Deboh, Firen, Liero, Caden, Temma, Fento, Quazo, Sprill, Wideo, Oraah, and Ulyss. which month you are born in determines what you will be innately skilled at and in which way you use/channel your power depends on your race. the majority of the inhabitants of Aldenhors live to the west of the Wyvviet Mountains and nobody crosses over to the east because it is said that horrors await there.

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

pretend you are creating a rant post about some media that isn't yours that the most recent episode/chapter/whatever of was released and you are a theorist. start with something like "okay so recently in [WIP name], X and Y did so and so and now X doesn't know how to feel about Y, right? well, i think that..." and just pretend to be taking part of a mass discussion happening online. keep going until you hit something golden, then write that golden patch into the real story. get yourself excited for what happens next. be your own fan. if you don't like what you're writing, then how can you expect anybody else to? some more advice is to pick up an idle hobby like crocheting, make a playlist with the vibes of your WIP, sit down, and just go at it, thinking the whole while about your OCs and your setting and all that jazz.

10) Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters:

in terms of people whose work i love, there are two people in particular who come to mind. @inkskinned, i love the way you articulate absolutely everything that i've read of yours. one day I'll crack the code and reach your level. @thechildoflightning, although you've moved on from tumblr, your encompass series on ao3 is one of my favourite literary works ever and it will never cease to inspire me. thank both of you. when it comes to my own supporters, i'd want to tag every single person who has liked even one of my posts about any of my WIPs. as that's not possible, i'll have to name some people in particular, however, neither of these two people has a tumblr to my knowledge. anyhow, thank you to the two guest users "!lurk" and "The-Kings_prince" on ao3. without your two names littering my inbox sporadically, i know for a fact i would not have written quite as much as i have by this point.

and that concludes this essay! :D

clean question list below :)

1) What motivates you to write?

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

10) Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters:

#ash.txt #tag game #writeblr #writing #writers on tumblr #writers #poets on tumblr #writers and poets #poetsandwriters #creative writing #writerscommunity #ao3 writer #ash writes

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astrobei · 1 year

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Been binge-reading your stuff for about a week. Absolutely wonderful. Heartwarming. Love it. Can’t wait for the final chapter of a body in motion.

As a fellow writer, kind of, in other mediums, sometimes: are you more of a pantser or more of an outliner? What does your process look like, if you feel like sharing? Have a great day!

hi omg i’m sooo so so glad you’ve been enjoying my writing recently !! and that is such an excellent question let me try to answer this in a somewhat coherent way LOL

i don’t really have much of a Process in a more structured sense of the term because honestly. up until i started chapter 2 of abim i had never outlined anything before and my fics would kind of just be a stream of consciousness where i figured out what the next scene was going to be as i wrote. with abim chapter 2, i did make the most barebones outline (like 10 bullet points w 10-15 words each) just listing the scenes because it’s a bit of a heavier fic and i wanted to keep things as cohesive as possible !! (it was also the first fic where i’ve ever jumped around and written scenes out of order which is normally very hard for me to do so this helped me keep track of that) i know some writers live and die by their outlines and honestly i’m starting to get the appeal, at least for fics i know are going to be more plot heavy or chaptered, just for continuity, but for plotless fluff-centric fics, i haven’t ever and don’t really see myself making them !!

one thing that is a common denominator between all my fics though, outline or otherwise, is that they’re all built upon one or two ideas for a scene that i kind of work backwards from. for example, in a body in motion, the last scene in chapter 2 was like. the first one that came to mind when i thought of the fic idea and i really did just work backwards from there !! sometimes it’ll be the kiss scene but more often than not it won’t be and i’ll put off the kiss until i physically cannot any longer LMAO but there’s usually one scene that the whole entire fic is based around and i feel like this is a pretty common thing as well but that’s where i get most of my ideas from!!

other than that uhhh usually my process is: start fic, write way way way way wayyy too much dialogue/banter, realize im not even halfway but i’m already at the word count i thought the whole fic would be, say fuck it and add more dialogue, finally write The Scene, fumble my way through a kiss, then say thank god i’m done and then edit and hit post before i can think about it too much. yeah.

thanks for asking !! i’m sure u did not intend to get a multi paragraph breakdown of Literally nothing of substance at all but. i love talking about writing and the process so thank u for indulging me !!! :^)

#sorry this is so long #for no reason #there’s nothing substantial in here anyway #but !!#so so glad you’ve been enjoying my work and thank u for popping in to ask !!#<3 #/ask

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slashmagpie · 1 year

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How long do you spend planning/world building for fics? If I should be more specific, how long did you plan the lore and mechanics that feature in Lifeline au before you wrote it? I mean it’s technically based on a video game but still

Okay so actually my answer for fics in general and my answer for LLAU is different! Normally before I sit down to write a fic I will figure out enough of what's going on to write a page of bullet points of lore/worldbuilding, work out the magic system, and draft an outline. I'm the sort of writer who, even when I have an outline, will inevitably drift from that outline and add a bunch of new subplots and worldbuilding elements as I go to flesh out the story more, and I'm familiar enough now with my process to account for that and roll with it.

For example: screenshots from my planning doc for TFatBatG, the fic I wrote before LLAU.

^ Here you can see me workshopping the premise and beginning to flesh out the character arcs, using points from canon to bounce off of. Some of this stuff didn't even make it into the final fic!

^ Parts of my actual chapter-by-chapter outline. As you can see, it's a lot more detailed at the beginning then it is towards the end, and if you've read the fic, you'll notice that there are several subplots that occur during these chapters which aren't even mentioned here. Those are things that I came up with on the fly. Things tend to stray for me more in later chapters than earlier ones, because things just tend to develop organically as I'm writing, and then need to be resolved later.

LLAU, however, is a little different, in that I originally started writing it as a fun chill burn-out project. You see, I'd just finished writing TFatBatG, which was the first longfic I'd ever finished, the first thing I'd written to pass 100k, and also written during a 14 week period in which I finished my masters and started working a full-time job, so as you can imagine. I was feeling pretty burnt out by the end of it. But I also then had a lot of free time open up (started working night shifts), and I needed something to do with that time. I had a bunch of other ideas that I wanted to write (and still want to write!) but trying to start any of them was really difficult for me. I just wanted something fun and easy and chill to work on when I felt like it to try and get me through that burn-out period and back to actually writing.

And then one night on discord we were making moon's haunted jokes, and I went "haha Hermitcraft Lifeline AU" (because Lifeline is a moon's haunted-ass piece of media), and then I went ".....hang on. Hermitcraft Lifeline AU,"

I picked my main characters, wrote up the summaries for EO, MB, and LB, redownloaded the game to play through it, and then wrote and published the first chapter the very next day.

And people liked it! And I liked it! And then I had a 10-day busy period between Empty Oceans chapter one and two where I couldn't write, and I spent some of that time plotting out what I wanted to do with the series and where I wanted to take it. (Shoutout to @/lunarblazes for bouncing ideas around with me!) This planning period was when I decided that Bdubs would be the time monk guy as well as the captain guy, and that Impulse was the Queen, and I figured out the basics of the magic system, but the picture of the series I had in my head at that time was still very limited.

I don't have a proper outline for LLAU: my planning document complains the fic summary, character lists, and bulletpoints taken from the Lifeline wiki. For EO and MB I was using the games themselves as an outline, since they follow the plots pretty closely, and the only fic that had a chapter-by-chapter outline was AfaM (which I didn't even know I was going to write when I started EO; I decided that I was going to write it somewhere towards the end of working on MB). LB has a general outline but it's definitely not comprehensive and has changed a lot since I wrote it (I don't even open the doc when I work on the fic anymore.)

^ The LB outline, up until the point that we've reached now. You might notice that False is not mentioned once here. That's because I didn't realise I wanted her to be part of the story until I was halfway through AfaM.

^ Some of the notes that I took from the Lifeline Wiki, which are basically all the notes I have explaining the magic system, some of which I didn't even use. (And some bonus stuff about PWG which was the basis for Impulse's backstory.)

So yeah: while I had some stuff planned from the very beginning, a lot of the specific details didn't work themselves out until much later in the process. Since LLAU is based on a discontinued game series, I basically came into it with pieces of a puzzle, and I had to figure out how to make them work together; the facade was there and I had to create the inner workings. So whilst I've always had the vague "this is what the magic system can do and this is how it works," a lot of it wasn't set in stone until... I wanna say when I was working on AfaM? That was when I worked out the specifics of time travel and also "time = space = sentience."

So yeah! I do do a lot of planning, but most of that is in the form of me daydreaming on the bus and yelling incoherent ideas in my friend Doc's dms (you may know her as doctortrekkie of Still the Echoes Give Us Light). I have a vague general outline in my head (this will happen, then this, then this), and chapter-wise I tend to have the next 1-5 chapters planned out, but I give myself a lot of room to work things out organically. (Also currently I'm doing a lot of planning/brainstorming for the endgame climax of the fic, so I can begin setting up my dominoes to knock down now that the Impulse reveal is out of the way.) This is definitely not the way I normally write (I prefer having more structure/plan than this), but the fact that this was a fun impromptu project that took over my brain in a way that I wasn't expecting has allowed me to be a lot more fast and loose with it, lol.

It does also mean that some of the stuff that cropped up in EO and even MB is what I would consider some Early Installment Weirdness, and if I was writing it now I would definitely do it differently, but I'm very happy to be transparent about that kinda stuff when people ask. I'm not gonna pretend I'm a genius and that this was some kind of expertly crafted long con plot from the very beginning. I'm figuring things out as I go and having a blast with it.

Sorry for the long ramble! I love talking about the writing process, and LLAU has been unorthodox even for me, so it was really fun to break it down. This is, I think, the creative project I have enjoyed working on the most in my life, and it's taught me a lot of things that I will definitely be taking away with me for the future.

But tl;dr to answer your question: I did very little prior planning and the entire writing process has also been a continuous planning process that isn't over yet.

#magpie chattering #llau #i am sorry this is a LONG answer #i hope you enjoy peeking behind the scenes though!

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hp-critical-reading · 10 months

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Intro Post

Thanks for checking out a random person's critical reading of Harry Potter!

For those of you who don't know, a critical reading doesn't mean only criticizing a book. Rather, it means digging into the book's main ideas, themes, influences -- everything that makes the book tick -- and figuring out what it's trying to do, how it's trying to do it, and if it's succeeding or failing. It can also involve critiquing the author's biases (which I certainly expect to do in this reading) and how they appear in the text.

I'm particularly interested in how Rowling thinks about conformity/nonconformity, and in talking about what I think the books' primary message is and whether they succeed in imparting that message.

Context

I used to love Harry Potter. As a kid, I based my identity around being A Reader, and Harry Potter was the series that made me love reading.

So of course you can imagine how devastated I was when I grew up to be trans and Rowling grew up to be one of the worst and most influential transphobes in the modern world.

I used to reread Harry Potter every year; I've read the entire series at least 10 times. It was my go-to comfort series. But after Rowling went off the deep end, I couldn't bring myself to read it anymore. It just hurt too much.

But I recently took a class on children's literature, and one of the books we covered was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And while I had some problems with the unit (mainly that we didn't discuss Rowling's current transphobia, and as the only trans person in the class, it fell to me to raise the topic, which I wasn't comfortable doing), I did find our discussions very interesting. We talked about how Rowling drew off of and modified the well-established British boarding school novel, about how Rowling both enforces and subverts conformity, wizards' treatment of muggles and nonhuman sapient species, and much more.

And it got me thinking.

I know how to do literary analysis. I hate writing proper essays, but I can put together a bullet-pointed list of analysis like nobody's business. And I know there was so much we weren't able to cover in class that I would be interested in thinking about more.

So here I am. Doing a critical analysis of Harry Potter (books 2-7 since I've already done book 1) (maybe I'll post a summary of my class's discussion and the essay I wrote about it at some point).

Expectations

tl;dr: keep them low

I don't know when or how often I will feel the urge to read and write up my analysis. I may liveblog readings and then do a roundup at the end, or I may just post analysis. Who knows! Point is, don't expect me to post regularly

Guidelines

Please engage with my analyses! Whether you want to expand on one of my points, disagree with something I've said, or add something entirely new, I've found that literary analysis is much better when there are multiple people challenging each other's ideas and pushing them farther!

However, if and when you engage, please try to do so thoughtfully and take other people's viewpoints (including my own) in good faith. If something makes you angry or uncomfortable, sit with it for a while. Interrogate why you're reacting the way you are, and if you agree with your visceral reaction. Then reply.

I'm leaving anonymous asks and submissions on for now, because I get that engaging with this kind of thing can be easier anonymously, and I think submitted media could be neat. But if those functions get misused, I'll be turning them off.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for engaging with this weird little side project! I hope you enjoy!

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theresa-of-liechtenstein · 9 months

Note

2, 18 and 26 for the fic writer asks :)

2. do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

all my multi-chapters were planned chapter by chapter, but when i say "planning" it really ranged from one-sentence blurbs (ex: shipwright and fairbairn) to a set of bullet points (ex: you can hold my hand if no one's home) to a detailed summary (ex: rivalfic 1 and 2)

the notable exception is nothing to gain to just be with me, which i literally wrote as i went. no planning, just vibes (shows, since i had to break the last chapter into two on the fly because it got way too long)

18. answered already!

26. which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

around the outside, aka rivalfic part 1! the prologue was actually written before i had planned anything, which is why there was a several-month gap between the prologue and chapter 1. this was also the first fic i ever did in an intentionally epistolary style, which saw me exploring the story from two perspectives: one from the characters', and the other from the Internet. i had to make up a whole laundry list of fake tumblr usernames to simulate sports tumblr, based on my own direct observations of phrases used or behaviors of users. (i joke that i'm the jane goodall of motorsportblr.) there was also trying to write plausible racing/car engineering and figuring out the best way to incorporate canon events like birling day and vaduz into the fic. (spoiler alert, rivalfic part 2 is going to speedrun newcastle, ottery st mary, more vaduz, and zurich and i am EXCITED) and don't get me started on all the mental gymnastics i did thinking about how characters would change when aged down! idk why i decided to adapt cabin pressure to such a specialized and frankly out-of-nowhere AU, but i somehow pulled it off lol

fic writer asks

#em answers #under the hood

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yerbamansa · 1 year

Text

Got tagged by @epersonae! Thanks! So I will tag other writer mutuals if you wanna have a go and/or didn't already get tagged (i keep losing track of tumblr scroll tbh): @thetragicallynerdy @alfalfairy @whose-modern-au-is-this @dragonmuse @sassygwaine @keriocabinet

Do you write in order? Generally, yes. Every once in awhile I'll have a scene or a little piece of something that gets written as it comes to mind, but it's often outline->write. The outlining/brainstorming process (as much as it is a process) is where the order happens.

This is notably not the case with Ask Me Anything, though, which is a collab and timey-wimey to boot, so lots of stuff needed to get figured out of order. We still haven't finished writing the chapter we're in the middle of posting, but the next one is finished and the rest are kinda 50/50 or 60/40.

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try? Gonna say a good 85-95%?? Depends on the story and whether I'm getting other eyes on it before posting. Most of Revenge Ranch got written and posted with a cursory read-through for glaring errors. Kitchen Mistakes & How To Avoid Them, though, tends to have its word count/phrasing fluctuate like 10-15% every chapter thanks to a delightfully nitpicky beta reader.

How many drafts do you go through? I don't really draft, per se? I spit it out, I review it, I get feedback (sometimes), I make changes, annnnd I'm done. Well, I guess that's technically drafting phases, but it tends to be less thorough than what I'm picturing.

Tell me about your process. I get an idea. It takes hold of my entire goddamn brain. I am compelled to start writing it down in some loose structure, usually bulleted lists, just to get it out of my brain. Sometimes the idea keeps growing, almost self-propelled (All That I Need Is You And The Sea). Sometimes it incubates a bit before it comes together, and needs to keep being formed and re-formed as it goes (Kitchen Mistakes), but the idea is still kind of in charge, if that makes sense.

Other times, I really need to work at it, like, I know I want to do something with X character, but I need to do some background research, think about what my goals are for the thing, make notes on the POV character, etc. I put a lot of time into breaking down Revenge Ranch Roach for his POV story last fall, and that was kind of like pulling teeth, though I'm happy with the result. I think this version of the process might end up with more of "me" in it. Maybe because I have to work at connecting to it.

While I'm actually writing, I typically try to keep some VERY simple/high-level notes handy--like the key plot points/character notes to hit--but abandon the rest. Exception: if the background research includes some specific entity (object, video, song, etc.) I need to describe/reference in the story itself. Even if I don't feel like I'm in a 'flow' state or whatever, often I'll just sit there and try to start pecking out some dialog or description of wherever I'm at, and it starts to move along, or doesn't.

Sometimes I have to flit through a lot of background noise to find the right vibe for my brain at a given moment. The nicest, though, is finding one of those "8hr ambient aesthetic vibes" videos on YouTube that is kinda close to the setting I'm writing. There's a road trip Revenge Ranch story that I wrote while watching someone's dashcam video of a drive through New Mexico. I watched a TON of thunderstorm videos for a couple other entries. A chapter of Kitchen Mistakes that took place in Stede's study was helped along by one of those "evening fireplace and rain sounds" ambient videos. Fuckin' love those videos. It hits a sweet spot of noise (without lyrics or too much rhythm) and background imagery like watching TV, but without all the distraction.

In terms of technical settings: I like writing in LibreOffice when I can, but if I'm collaborating at all, it has to be GDocs. And I am a heavy user of headings/outlines in that case. I have a half-assed AO3 post template in LibreOffice with places for notes etc. to copy and paste in order. I've been known to make a spreadsheet when shit gets very complicated. My brain loves little boxes. I don't write on my phone except maybe some notes to self in Signal for ideas that come up when I'm not at my laptop. Love a physical keyboard and multiple windows, mmm, room to spread out and see lots of shit at once.

#my stuff #am writing #tag meme #good lord this is long #scroll scroll scroll #archem finish writing chapter 8 challenge

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safyresky · 2 years

Text

Frostmas Year Nine: Behind the Scenes

Prologue | Y1 | Y2 | Y3 | Y4 | Y5 | Y6 | Y7 | Y8 | Y9 | Y10 | Y11 | Y12

(in Kermit the Frog voice) Let's begin!

I straight up thought this chapter would be fairly short, because when I wrote it out in point form the events didn’t seem like they’d have a lot of action. Then I began writing it, and I was DEAD wrong

I listened to the opening scene of the North Pole Resort SOO MANY TIMES to hear the lyrics to the song perfectly. I had to ask my wonderful housemate to take a listen to try and figure out the “santa t-shirts, santa ties” line and WHEN I FINALLY WATCHED IT ON DISNEY WITH SUBTITLES, HEARD THAT I GOT IT W R O N G! It's Santa SIZE. I'll have to change that up lol

FUN FACT! “at this point I’ve adopted a stance of the less I know, the better” is my family’s motto up until recently

“I like the cut of your berg” is one of my FAVOURITE frosty-fying slang lines I’ve ever done! It’s a frosty version of “I like the cut of your jib” which was used in sailing in the 1700s ish to describe if an incoming ship was frens or not frens

-> I originally thought it was just some funky 20s slang, then googled it to make sure I was right and learnt the above!

-> the berg is short for iceberg--B likes the cut of Jacqueline’s iceberg, being the idea to maybe get rid of the awful recordings :)

Sometimes I’m like ‘these things don’t really need explaining’ but I get excited about my own work and then have to share how I got the ideas with everyone so ONWARDS I SUPPOSE

Man I miss multi-level lists! this Frostmas BTS has been in my drafts for FOREVER, and was the last one I did before tumblr switched to the new post editor

WHICH DOESN'T LIKE MULTI LEVEL BULLETED LISTS!

So it's kinda all over the place. My bad lmao.

LET'S KEEP ON KEEPING ON

Jacqueline realizing that she hadn’t updated everyone on what the elves thought of her nonsense was a BLESSING because I realized that I hadn’t addressed it, so thank you for that opportunity, Jacqueline

Archie's Guide to Important People in the North Pole: Big Man->Santa. Boss Man->Bernard.

I would like to take this moment to credit @shittyelfwriter with Archie’s existence in those few chapters of ROE, because I love him and always picture him as the elf playing the piano and going UGH and facepalming during Jack’s rendition of North Pole, North Pole (pictured below). THANK YOU FOR NAMING THE BOY, ANA!

The conversation between Jacqueline and Archie, that dripped sarcasm, was my favourite thing to write this chapter :D

The scene with Chrys give you weird vibes of all manner? Yeah, that was intentional. "Perfection" can be unsettling, after all

Bernard is definitely so DONE this year and it SHOWS -> That is exactly what I was going for, especially since I know that he's not normally

Okay so. Let's Talk About Chrys. TW: Sexual Themes

very embarrassing, but I got the concept from a series of fantasy erotica novels and I wish I was joking

(they’re called the World of Hetar series, very good, very very VERY smutty. I’d say it’s 60% SEX, 30% PLOT, and 10% SEX DRIVEN PLOT)

(I know people who know me are like YOU READ SMUT? YOU?? AN ACE??? and yes, I did, I read exclusively smut from the ages of 12-17 because my Dad worked for "Trash Romance Novel Company" and brought home books for free every month, and the books were, in fact, mostly if not totally smut)

Erotica aside, I quite liked how the author had built up the magical world, the beings, and how magic works in it

In the third or fourth book, called “The Twilight Lord”, the fairies ally with the desert princes who are some kind of magical fae themselves, and they create the Perfect Wife for the corrupt leader of the neighbouring continent to distract him from starting a war

She was a mix of his current 2 wives and the things he liked about them, and looked like the protagonist, Lara, who cursed him to not be able to fuck I shit you not and who he ALSO had a big huge thirst for which was GROSS because he was old as fuck and even though she’s half fairy, she was like. 12 or 13

And this new wife is able to GET IT UP with him, hence how he’d be distracted--he really liked sex (reminder: this is an erotica series)

So he’s too busy fucking her and then on top of that, she would divide the other two wives and basically bring the house down from the inside, neutralizing the threat of this corrupt sex loving mofo

And that’s where the idea of Chrys came from!

So basically tl;dr: Chrys was inspired by a spell a sexy bunch of desert princes in an erotica series did to make the perfect wife for their enemy and knock him right tf down :)

How this works with Cheri’s magic: same concept, less sex

Chrysanthemum is a Perfect Being, who is bound to a specific magibean. Chrys’s purpose is to be Jack’s Mrs Claus, and because she was made with dark magic she drains energy of those around her (except for jack’s energy bc he’s the person she’s bound to) and magnifies bad ideas

spoiler alert: in the long run, Chrys will be TOO perfect and TOO agreeable for Jack and he’ll grow tired and it adds to the whole “I thought this would get me everything I’ve ever wanted but it didn’t” long term theme I have going for Jack as Santa

but yeah

end tw for sexual themes. away from chrys we go!

battled with the “cultural appropriation” bit because I felt as though it may be insensitive but then I wrote it anyway because that’s what it is at it’s base :\

it was supposed to be a stand in? I'd go back and change later? then I didn't. We're rolling with it now lol

Have you ever heard Elf’s Lament by the Barenaked Ladies?

Because it’s where I got the Union Comment from

Then I was like “but DO THEY HAVE UNION???!?!” and remembered the “accident or design” thing and realized “OH they ARE their own union” and figured that in terms of a Santa like JACK, The council would step in (which they’ve done. and tried to do stuff. but haven’t had luck bc PLOT)

god Frostmas is exhausting. Villains are underappreciated for all the effort they put into for being on TOP of things

(in Korvo Solar opposites Voice) what fucking scene are we on. why are these so long. why did i do this to myself. FUCK

ANYWAY CIRCLING BACK TO THIS MESS OF A BTS!

This uniform thing was unplanned/meant to be just a footnote. Then. Well. THIS.

It is a decent feature of the Resort in the movie so, I guess it works out :)

FUN FACT: I was playing a very good dnd campaign at the time! And that's how Davian got her name, lol. One of the amazing NPCs was named Davian, and we had a really good session with them and the name stuck and boom! Into Frostmas it goes. Once again, Frostmas is proving to be a time capsule reminding me of wtf I was doing while writing these bad boys :)

I miss my friend's campaign ):

And yeah, this fight is one Jacqueline cannot win. this is on the elves. So what does she do? Goes back to her hyperfocus of destorying SantaJack

How? By figuring out wtf Chrys is >:)

STUPID DUMB CHRYS

Alright. Scene subheadings are back! Right on.

"Myles would be proud AND would probably have been able to connect the dots and figure out what was up, and then place it on a neat presentation board, to boot."

LEGATE DROP! Myles is Tooth Fairy's Legate! He's v sweet, a lil bit clumsy, SUPER into conspiracies--hence Jacqueline being like "MAN I WISH THAT KIDS WAS HERE, HE'D KNOW WTF IS UP"

So let's talk about BLINTER. Just to clarify: THEY WERE NOT ABOUT TO GET IT ON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DEN. This is just a typical post work day for them: start a fire, make a blanket nest, be cozy until kid 2, 3, or 4 come to harass them

Blaise is pouty bc they didn't even get a single cuddle in before Kid 2 came in like

And I was 100% referencing the meme lmao.

god tumblr killed the quality. I'll post it separately. ANYWAY

the Blinter and Jacquie scene was fun to write! This is one of the scenes where I was dropping very strong hints that Jacqueline was freezing--and Winter AND Blaise were noticing. Winter'll explain it all in Y11 ;)

FINAL RESORT

"You could really tell that graphic design was Chrys's passion"

another meme reference:

I think we, as a collective people using slang, should bring back "gag me with a spoon". Also some older slang! I try to sneak those in when I know of some to show. Y'know. AGE.

This whole scene with Jack and Chrys actually was me laying the ground work for FINAL RESORT. Trying to get in all of the booths we see, the petting zoo, and the different announcements about various activities set up before the double digit years! That was my goal :)

THE ELVES UNION AT WORK

Ah yes. the walk out. God, this uniform thing was meant to be small, but lord did it EVER go big. I'm actually okay with it--my y9 notes were so lacklustre, I was concerned it would be (you'll laugh I know) TOO SHORT lmao

No. Fr. Look at them.

"Because those outfits are a joke, and you wouldn't catch me dead wearing those."

Sassnard. We Stan.

"I'm so proud of all of my crew," said Davian. "Crimes against fashion should NEVER be tolerated!"

"And the break from the constant ruined showtunes, what a relief!" said Archie, leaning very far back in his stool."

The elves have their priorities lol. I Bet Archie and Davian are biffers.

Curtis on damage control was A) a stroke of genius on my part and B) the way I decided to start laying the groundwork for Customer Service Sales Person Curtis we see when Scott gets to the Resort! God, there is SO MUCH GROUND WORK FOR VARIOUS ITTY BITTY BITS WE SEE IN THE MOVIE, IT'S ACTUALLY INSANE. No wonder you all dig Frostmas so much. good lord

And then, we have it! Final Resort. Wholly heckeros! And yes, I did indeed name the Fire Marshall. Marshal. I'm a genius 🙃🙃🙃

""Course! It's lunch. I doubt anything will happen during lunch."

Famous last words, B-Man. And yes, I did that on purpose >:)

CHRYS UNMASKED. AND ALSO, IT'S CHERI!

Cheri's...interesting

While she is master of the dark witch arts, she isn't evil? Very chaotic. Kind of lets it slide a lot of the time when Witches use "dark" magic. Everything has a price, blah blah blah, it's not her place to tell people off about it--that's her sister's place, Gwen, aka, Glenda, master of the light witch arts

And also, dark magic will take what it needs in response. She just makes sure people don't use it SUPER illegally. Otherwise she kills em. It's her favourite part of the job :)

Lawful Evil?? Idk.

FUN FACT: She gave Gwen the nickname Glenda, like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz (derogatory), and Gwen went, "oh! Glenda, like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz (affectionate)? you're such a sweet sister I'll take it :)" and now everyone calls her Glenda much to Cheri's (dis)satisfaction.

Cheri is very not serious and hates being called in for business unless murder is involved. She does NOT ignore any summons, ESPECIALLY from Mother Nature.

Hence why Tara had a easy enough time getting her in

But Cheri does NOT make things easy for people, nope!

"Hay, Jacquie" a la Catra going "Hay, Adora". I was watching SPOP at the time. It's a DAMN good show, Catra/Adora my BELOVEDS

FUN FACT: Only recently decided how Warlocks worked in my universe! They know everything and can guide ANY castor. It's like a reverse of Warlocks in DnD. They don't need a patron; they ARE patrons!

By RETIRING Cheri means that a lot of Warlocks went into Rosehaven with the Call. They were making BANK on the feuding fae factions.

Petty vengeance->one night stand with Jack where he said he'd call back, and didn't, which Cheri expected but any excuse for petty revenge is a good one! Good karma->Cheri explains it herself: if it helps the "good" forces, and she contributed to it, she gets a bit of a pass on being The Worst :)

OH SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT THE SNAP BACK INTO THE PRESENT

this was an idea I had had since like, the BEGINNING. Halfway through or so, Jack would bug Jacqueline in the proper timeline, to check in and also let her know that he'd like a turn and also, as a plot device so I could remind everyone it's a story of the past being told from the future, and plant the seed of "wait, is Jacqueline going to forget it? Or is she going to remember it?"

Is she? Well, you're not finding out until the Epilogue :)

It is just as jarring as I had hoped it'd be, especially since I forgot all about it! I was ready to title this section THE END and talk about Bernard's amazing exit.

But yeah, it was a fun reminder that this takes place POST redemption, TECHNICALLY, which is a lot of fun! And that was so pleasantly jarring. I'm pleased >:)

anyway

THE END: BERNARD'S STELLAR EXIT

if you listen to this version of the halo theme song on loop, you may enter the space I entered when I wrote this bit

anyway. i love Jack. He is. the Blorboest Blorbo EVER. But he did, in fact, steal Christmas for his own holiday and turned the park into a Resort. Implying that there is an overnight stay. Especially with a pamphlet THAT THICK. It;s not even a pamphlet. It's a fucking guide book. FUCK.

And like, there were no hotels that we saw. Maybe there are inns! I mean, the Winter Wonderland has rooms. But I digress.

REGARDLESS, something needed to happen to really get B-Man, well, GONE. And this was the final straw: Elf's houses for you to stay at, with your own personal elfsisstant!

It HURT to SUGGEST Jack would make the elves like. SERVANTS so I tried really hard to avoid that sort of thing--but yeah, they'd be like hotel staff but live in. Imagine being an elf and having to NANNY HUMANS?! FUCK

"That's what your emotional support sprite is for," I said.->Meme alert! "sir this is my emotional support x" meme lol.

Jacqueline gets to kick down doors, once again. Idk why she slams doors open so much? She just does lol

"...It's perfect," Jack said. "It's everything I've ever wanted." I tilted my head. There had been something about the way he said that that made me think that he did not believe that anymore"

I'M LIKE, DROPPING HINTS NOW AT JACK'S ENDGAME FOR FROSTMAS (since we already know Jacqueline's)

AND JACQUIE IS PICKING THEM UP!

I wanted to avoid "servant" related words, but B-Man is way more blunt than I am and we thank him for it tbh

"Really? Cause this is me, walking away."

SO THIS RAW ASS LINE WAS GIVEN TO US BY @shittyelfwriter YET AGAIN! WOMAN'S A GENIUS! We were chatting about BMan's exit and she sent a snippet with that line and I went "Ou. Yeah. That's GOOD" and did a bit of "do it different so they can't tell it's copied"

but credit is given where credit is due lmao! Ana's mind is like, BIG BRAIN when it comes to writing and connecting dots n shit :)

and there we have it! Frostmas BTS: Y9. Y10 coming to you SOON I hope! I'm clearing out my drafts. They're all just. Frostmas BTS and wips that have yet to see the light of day :3

#dani speaks #frostmas #the twelve years of frostmas #frostmas behind the scenes #frostmas bts #frostmas bts year 9 #CLEANING OUT MY DRAFTS! MAYBE Y10 WILL MAKE IT'S WAY TO A DASH NEAR YOU THIS NOVEMBER #WHO'S TO SAY!

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wa-royal-tea · 1 year

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Hello! How far in advance do you plan out your story? And do you find that it changes much as you go along?

Haiyouuuu!!! Long explanation under the cut!

Hmm I'd say pretty far? But mostly the future story plans I have are usually in bullet form. Usually, these ideas comes when I'm doing my other work or just me sitting down and relaxing. It's basically what I think I want to happen during that story so I can do my readings and research ahead before I actually start planning the details. And some ideas get striked off the list the more I do my readings either because I don't think the idea will work or I don't feel confident that I'll be able to do it justice. As much as I like to write about stuff that I don't usually write about (or just something that is out of my comfort zone), I have to know my limitations 🛌🏽

As for my current story arc, all of the plot points has been decided months ago and the only thing left now is for me to write the script, visualise the scene so I can make the poses, shoot the scene and then edit. Even then, I don't usually follow the plot points to a T when writing the script. Kinda like how writing a real script works 💀 You plan to write it like this but end up writing it in another way. Sometimes the points that I wrote in the plot point boards don't make sense when I try to make it into a scene so I have to brainstorm and think about how do I make this scene work and still inserting the point of said post. You kinda have to figure out how to work around this one idea and make sure it didn't change that much from the OG plan?? Does that make sense?

Also, I usually do these when I have the time and feeling inspired tho. Rn I try not to force myself to write anything if I'm not feeling it bcs there's a part in my brain that's gonna nag at me for doing things half-assed 💀

#WRTAsk #Thank you for the ask! ^^#Oh. Did I tell you about getting the 'I'm a shit writer' thoughts while writing a scene bcs you feel like it's not good enough?#Yeah. That happens. It sucks ass #Self-doubt can go to hell. Stop making me feel like shit about my writing #Also. I try not to plan too much now. I worry I won't be here for long #Not saying I'm quitting. Just that my stuff will be slowing down in the (near) future 🛌🏽#I ain't no quitter 😤#Sorry for the long rambles ajshfjklsa

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cha-melodius · 2 years

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How do you plot or outline a story?

Im still amazed by the plots and twists in your Lokius bodyguard story!

If you're asking how I physically plot stories out, it's nothing too special tbh. I often put an outline of the major plot points at the beginning of the document, and then I try to break it into what I think will be appropriate length chapters (this part sometimes fails when things get longer than I expect). For instance, the fourth major "beat" of A Good Man is Hard To Find was just listed as: "Ravonna finally lets Loki go on a mission, to NYC. Bea as backup. Lots of warnings. Mission goes smoothly. Bea gives Mobius a hard time about Loki."—This whole thing became chapters 7–9, mostly because the mission did not go as smoothly as I noted here lol. As I write I tend to plot out the actual action in more detail for the next chapter or two, in big runon paragraphs at the beginning of each chapter. This is also how I "outline" short fics in their entirety, if I do it at all. Unfortunately I tend to delete these note paragraphs as I'm writing to kind of check things off my list, so I don't actually have a good one to share with you. What's kinda funny is that I don't think the bodyguard AU had any of that, actually, I think I just wrote it as it came, though the whole twist was absolutely planned in my head at least from the very beginning.

If you're asking how I come up with my plot twists... I'm not sure I have a great answer to that question lol. I turn possible plot lines over in my head while I'm driving places or in the shower or trying to fall asleep until I hit on one that just feels right, one that I can get excited about. Sometimes I have to think about it for a while, and sometimes the twist is actually what kicks off the whole story in my head. I'm pretty sure that the twist for the bodyguard AU came to me immediately after I decided Mobius would be a criminal psychologist. I think, in general, I like to seed echoes of canon into my overarching plots. Not beat-for-beat reworkings, but how characters relate to each other. What kinds of situations those relationships could result in in an alternate universe. Some more about the bodyguard AU under the cut, since you brought it up specifically. LOTS of spoilers ahoy for The Hardest Cut.

I'm pretty sure my thought process for that fic was:

Mobius needs a bodyguard—why? I figured I'd take his canon job investigating particularly dangerous variants and turn it into someone who might be needed to testify for a trial, and thus need protection.

The next two parts—why is Loki his bodyguard, and who does he need protection from—came together IIRC. I needed a big bad who'd serve as a nigh-untouchable mob-like boss, and it occurred to me that Loki could be a plant, supposed deliver Mobius, but who falls in love with him instead. Thanos was the obvious big boss answer here, because even though Mobius has no interaction with him in canon, Loki certainly does.

The first chapter was mostly setup, but I also wanted to end on a fake threat to Mobius that was engineered by Thanos to build his trust in Loki. Hence the gala and Maw's attack. Oh, I almost forgot: I decided that I wanted Mobius to know Loki’s background and decide trust him anyway, because that’s such a central part of his character in the end, so I had Ravonna show up for that purpose.

The jazz club came about because I needed something else for them to do to both build their relationship and delay the big climactic betrayal/car chase/etc. Having Mobius make his drugged confession also served as the trigger to really convince Loki to ignore the threat to his own life in order to save Mobius's.

I always knew I wanted the big car chase, and I always knew I'd have Loki take a bullet for him. As for where to go, Bea was a pretty obvious answer to put in as a LEO Mobius would have interacted with in the past who he could trust.

Putting them both in witsec wasn't part of the original idea, but as I was figuring out how to wrap things up it was just about the only thing that made sense. Plus I got to put Lokius on a beach.

So there you go, that's as best as I recall my thought process on figuring out the twists and turns in that fic. I'm glad you enjoyed it, it was a fun one to write!

#lokius #writeblr #writing #writing advice #about my writing #asks and answers #fanfic

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westanallthegays · 2 years

Text

Writing 101 with your favorite queer (EDITED)

Writing is h a r d .

If you think writing is easy, then I'm going to ask you if you've ever WRITTEN A STORY BEFORE because clearly, you're oblivious af.

Writing isn't just w r i t i n g a s t o r y, it's late nights trying to figure out how the fuck to write this moment, it's sleep deprivation to puzzle this character over, it's scribbling ideas down, it's questioning whether your writing is GOOD or not and whether anyone would actually want to read it, it's staring at your google doc or word doc and thinking, "Is this worth it? Maybe I should just quit ahead of time."

It's so many things, but it's not fucking EASY.

Which is why I'm writing this post for y'all. Let's be clear, I don't know everything about writing. I'm in progress, still trying to figure shit out, but I thought I might share what I've learned with you through a very, very painful process.

So ✨here we go✨

One of the things about writing is that everyone has different methods. Here's mine. Use it or not. It's up to you.

I know a lot of people who don't plan their writing out are gonna be screaming at me, but I've found out that having at least a basic plan, if not the simplest plan EVER formed by just a few bullet points really helps.

I'll give you an example (which is miraculous themed because I'm pretty sure everyone at least KNOWS what miraculous is)

Marinette goes to school

Alya gushes to her about this "cool new girl" that has arrived

Marinette reaches school and discovers the new girl is Lila Rossi

shenanigans ensue. Adrien is the only one who isn't clueless. Lie la is a bitch, as usual (what is new?)

Okay, this example was pretty crappy, but you get the idea. It doesn't even have to be an exact copy of what's gonna happen in your story, just the general idea and a few more plot points. Doing this when I'm bored, whether in my sketchbook or on a google doc, really helps. For one, I can just write down a bunch of shitty ideas and later go through them and decide which ones are the least crappy to put in my fanfic.

I'm a planning person, but I don't go super crazy when planning out a chapter. I've heard of some people creating the most intricate plans EVER for their story, and well, sorry, but that just DOESN'T work for me. This method is a lot more simpler, and it's not totally crazy.

(hopefully)

Also, if you're writing a story based on a tv show or book series(*cough percy jackson *cough) Then I find it INCREDIBLY helpful to write down a list of all of the minor characters i want to include in my story, because let's be real, I'm pretty sure I'd forget after like a day.

And I've read too many stories with only the main characters and there being like one mention of a minor character. (*cough GROVER *cough)

So spare your innocent readers (not really) and use this method.

Welp, that's it! I'm sorry this ran on for so long guys, I had a lot to say and wanted to elaborate on it enough so that it made sense. If you actually read through this shit pile of a post, then TYSM IT REALLY MEANS A LOT.

Stay safe, don't fall into a deep, dark hole of depression that you can't get out of, and I'll see ya later~

EDIT:

Hi guys! It's been a few months since I stepped into the world of tumblr and wrote this post. After that i kinda forgot about tumblr with the existential crisis that is school and basic stress, so ....sorry bout that.

Thank you to the two people who liked this post, it means a lot <3

As usual, your girl is here to give some more tips that i learned over those few months i was incognito.

2. Brain dump, second draft, third draft, fourth draft...

I dont know if yall have heard of the brain dump in writing. I recently found about it when despertely researching ways to improve my crappy writing. Basically, a brain dump is when you take all of your ideas and write them down on paper or a google doc or whatever you use. I thought it was a pretty good idea, but i kind of already told you guys this with my previous tip above.

SO I REMODELED IT YOU'RE WELCOME

MY version is that you do a brain dump but in the form of a really messy, chaotic first draft. Write whatever you want using the ideas you have, and you dont even have to put proper dialouge. I find that i obsesse way too much over dialogue, so with my brain dump, i just leave blank spaces where the dialogue should be and put that in the second draft, which is a much more organized version of the brain dump.

THAT WAY, you can have all of your ideas down and begin to edit them into a slightly better piece of artistic creativity. I haven't tried this out myself, so im not sure how reliable it is. if you want to try this out, drop a comment telling me how it went.

Im pretty sure that's it. There isn't much esle to say, and im sure yall are familar with the "first draft, second draft" concept thingie so i dont have to explain that bit.

Again, sorry about my long absence. I would promise to do this more often, but im pretty sure i wont be able to keep that promise, so . . .

anyways, have a great day and ill see you soon (hopefully!)

#creative writing #writing in general #writing is haaaaaaaaard #your resident queer is dropping facts here listen up #planning is okay sometimes #percy jackson #miraculous ladybug #writing 101 class #i should become a teacher yES IM THAT GOOD SHUT UP

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lunatic-fandom-space · 1 year

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Im about to watch RWBY Volume 9 because I need some background noise while I translate a german version of Jesus Christ Superstar and then I remembered that I watched that RWBY DC crossover a few days ago as background noise while I made my lyric videos and then I wanted to make a post about my thoughts but then I just. never did. So I might as well do it now

Before that though, I feel the need to explain myself and my lyric-video-translation process. Basically, what I do is I pick my song that Id like to translate from german to english and then I make what is essentially a normal lyric video, which involves a lot of me listening to the song a bunch of times so I can make sure everything is properly synched up, in this particular case I actually had to listen to the entirety of the song in order to make sure it was actually synched because something went horribly wrong with my editing app and I couldnt figure out how to fix it. And then once Im done with my lyric video I can just kinda turn the audio off and add my english translation without worrying about anything because Ive already synched everything up properly. When I do musical soundtracks like this I usually synch up all the lyrics for all the songs first before getting to the actual translation process, which means theres a long period of time where Im just kinda listening to the same part over and over, except worse and it took me even longer this time because again, something went wrong and I had to listen to the songs from the beginning, otherwise it just inexplicably wouldnt synch up, and because I have a low attention span Im usually watching youtube videos or movies Ive already seen at this point

Now, I was still in the lyric video stage when I watched this movie (I was doing Pilate and Christ if youre curious) so picture this: im sitting in front of my computer, I have this RWBY DC crossover open in some piracy site bc I was looking for A Movie and this one came out recently so it was on the front page, I have my tablet with the lyric video Im about to make in front of me, Im wearing headphones, one of them isnt actually on my ear because I need to be able to hear both the song and the movie at the same time, Im playing the song over and over again as I watch the movie, slowly zoning out entirely the further I get into it because thats just kinda what happens when youre forced to listen to the same first two minutes of a song even when you do have some background noise to break up the monotony a little

The reason Im giving you that long winded explanation of the boring shit I do for fun is because I want to stress to you that I was practically physically incapable of properly paying attention to anything. So you would think that I would also be incapable of finding shit to criticize or complain about, after all, I barely managed to watch the movie

And you would be very wrong. Im gonna be honest I just wrote that long intro to whatever this is in like 20 minutes and Ive already run out of steam so please enjoy this bullet point list of mostly shit I didnt like about this crossover, as someone who doesnt know anything about DC and also didnt pay a lot of attention just in general

The Justice Leagues semblances were so bad you can tell they just kinda took their existing superpowers, barely if at all modified them and went "yep, those are semblences alright" and as a result Superman, Wonderwoman and Green Lantern all basically have the same semblance, which inexplicably consists of multiple unrelated abilities and also Vixen's semblance seems pretty similar to theirs as well

The dialogue was so awkward man, I know some stan is gonna try and defend it by being like "well none of these people know each other ofc theyre gonna be awkward" guess what, i dont care if you can like stuff about this show for no reason I can dislike stuff about this show for no reason

That weird love triangle between Nora, Ren and Cyborg was so weird and unnecessary and idk why it was there

'Weird, unecessary and idk why it was there' is honestly a great way to describe this whole movie, I dont get why they did this Isekai thing with the Justice League I feel like this wouldve been better if they were already just characters in RWBY's world but I guess then neither continuity would be able to really consider it canon which would be bad I guess??? Idk i think this crossover thing was a bad idea tbh and they shouldve made it more of a cross-promotional thing where its like "lookat the RWBYfied versions of these DC characters!!" "oooooo look at the DCified versions of these RWBY characters!!" for one movie each if you know what I mean

Speaking of pointless romance, I saw some people say that they didnt like the weird romantic subplot between Bruce and Weiss but honestly, I didnt even see one there they had less romantic sparks flying between them than Bumbleby and thats saying a lot, not that I was paying too much attention

Ive seen some DC fans say that Bruce's thing about him maybe not wanting to leave Remnant because hes got powers there was really out of character and idk anything about that, I just know that that whole thing was pointless and barely set up and didnt mean anything at all for anyone

Ruby's arc about learning to be a better team leader is something that she shouldve had in like volume 4 max this is too late into the show for the Main Character whos been leading A Team since basically day one to learn how to do it, then again its not like shes gotten any meaningful screentime in the past 9 years so maybe that justifies it

Killgore or Killg%re or whatever was just cringe

When Killgore was explaining his plan and how he was working with someone and then it turned out that he was actually trapped in this VR world by that someone, I thought, oh its probably Salem given that shes yknow, the main villain. I mean, it doesnt really make sense why she would do all this shit but its not like her motivations and actions have ever been consistent right. And then he was like "he" and I went, its fucking Ironwood?? Are you joking?? Like, yeah, I'll give them a smidge of credit here, that does make more sense but I hate how these guys' weird desire to demonize Some Guy gets in the way of even attempting to make The Actual Main Villain even remotely threatening. Someone tell MKEK that sidelining a female character in favor of a male character isnt suddenly less sexist because shes Satan Herself but they wanna villanize the "shitty white guy" instead

The action scenes were decent enough, obviously nowhere near the level of Volume 1-3s fightscenes but Ive definitely seen worse from RWBY at this point

I guess the mystery aspect was fine too I was atleast kinda intrigued

And to end this whole thing on a somewhat positive note, heres some stuff I actually kinda liked:

While the isekai thing honestly doesnt seem like a good idea, it was still kinda fun watching people from a setting more similar to our world interact with Remnant and try to blend in even though they had no idea what was going on

I kinda liked Barry, he was pretty fun

I really liked Jessica, her finding that ring and saying that rhyming incantation actually gave me goosebumps, her VA was really good. I just wish she didnt spend all her screentime with Jaune and also I wish Jaune died already

I liked that they were wearing their Beacon Era outfits for most of it so I didnt have to endure their absolutely horrendous Atlas outfits although I am about to watch Volume 9 and they dont get an outfit change from what Ive seen so. You cant run from your problems forever I guess

Thats about it, but to bring this thing full circle Id like to once again elaborate on my lyric video translation stuff. Right now Im fully done with the lyric videos and all I gotta do is add in the english translations which I can do without needing to listen to the music, which means I can actually listen to the dialogue at the very least even if Im not properly looking at the screen. I was originally gonna do the same thing with Volume 9 as the crossover movie which is to say, blast music while watching and fully zoning out half the time but I figured the actual volume deserves a little more respect than that. I mean, thats still not a lot but RT isnt getting any more than this from me

#rwde

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