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savrenim · 3 years

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hi hi hi. so I just got into the Hamilton fandom, I swear I am four years late where did everybody go, and, well. I am apparently a hamburr shipper. bcs that is my life now. anyway I saw your fic ifmlam and I swear it is my favourite of all the fics I've ever read (and trust me I've read literally thousands). I love it so so much, how do you write fics like that??? I cried about four times during the whole thing, I stayed up till 4am reading it even when I had to wake up at 7 because it is just. that. good. I could not stop thinking about it for days afterwards and ifmlam has just ruined me. I can't think of listen to Hamilton without thinking of ifmlam anymore.

on to my qursttion: is it abandoned? of course it's perfectly FINE if it is. don't let anyone tell u differently, your fic is YOURS and u are amazing.

but pls I really need closure from ur fic, it has been haunting me if its abandoned or ongoing and I've read ur other fics and they are just chefskiss and thank you so much for writing them all. thank you thank you thank you, I will never be able to thank you enough for writing this fic and for everything it's done for me. I am probably thousands of miles away but I am sending you virtual jugs through a co.puter screen right now.

(don't feel pressured to reply to this or update it flam, I know how overwhelming it can get with so many messages and after a while u get desensitized to it. u can literally reply "thx. itfmlam is abandoned" and I would still be amazingly star struck. anyway has gotten way too long and I need to sleep and I'm sorry u probably won't see this so I'm just talking to myself right now but bye!!)

and thank you so so much for writing itfmlam.

aaaah hello anon!

thank you so so much???? I am so??? honored??? that ifmlam rates so highly to you, and also that you've read my other fics??????

the answer to the "is ifmlam abandoned" question is probably the worst possible one, which is pretty much "I do want to finish it, both for the folks that still want closure as well as it bothers to me have abandoned projects that are in the public eye/ already partially published, but also, it is last on my current writing projects list"

my current actually active writing projects list, kind of in order of priority, is

I'm literally three chapters away from being Actually Fully Done with the not-quite-first-not-quite-second let's call it 1.5th draft of an actual?? full?? original?? novel?? Opus which of course then goes out to beta readers and then gets who-knows-how-much edited and then maybe beta readers again if a lot does change and then a copyeditor my mom, my copyeditor is my mom, and maybe my little brother he's one of the betas but is very good at catching typos and then I!!! get to publish it!!!! which is the single thing I am most excited for!!!!!!!!! this should be closed up in the next week or two, and then take a while for people to actually read the draft and get back to me.

I really desperately want to finish my open-but-like-90%-written fic, which means we raise it up, the final chapter of to the bottom of the river bc I realized that it was kind of incomplete, and the second chapter of a buried and a burning flame because any more work there will need to wait until the author publishes the next book in the series. this should be closed up in the next month or two.

Speedwrite the draft of the second book of the Opus series so that hopefully by the time book 1 edits are happening, I have an almost complete draft of the second book. this is mostly me side-eyeing myself about taking nearly four years to write the first book, but that is solidly in part because I had so many other open projects which point 2 is about clearing that docket. this should be done in the next year.

And then just have my major projects be, at least until books 1-5 are written and published, books 1-5 of that because that is arguably the first major 'plot arc' of the series, so if I'm looking for a pause point on writing, that's probably where to stop.

There are two or three other short side projects (a weird fun second person short story tentatively titled witch-queen, a collection of four short stories Memoirs about a not-so-evil necromancer and the shenanigans he gets up to trying to rule a kingdom, working title Perfectly Normal Recipe Blog which is a collaborative project about a perfectly normal recipe blog that definitely doesn't include anything out of the normal) that will happen when they happen

There are other projects that are on the backburner -- The Numanok Files, a series of probably 12-15 short novellas about a mercenary/ bounty hunter esque person in space whose specialty is dealing with hauntings, but, like, 80% of their jobs is actually "you are effectively a space home inspector pointing out faulty wiring reacting to solar flares/ there's a weird alien fungus/ it's carbon monoxide okay change your atmosphere filters" and 20% of it is punching ghosts; there's a post-post apocalypse novel that I want to write that I know characters and general pacing and half the setting but need to work out the other half and figure out how much aesthetic I want to commit to; there's Strangeside7 aka spacerace book that is my reaction to how much I love how Redline the anime movie commits itself to "no we are about a race, like 60% of the screentime is just fully going to be an utterly ridiculous sci fi space race"; there's even a ridiculous YA trilogy that I would have to completely transplant the setting but might end up writing because the interplay between angel-physics and physics-physics was one of my favorite things in the world. and I guess the weird ridiculous technically a sequel series to ifmlam that was going to be published as original books that was basically me having fun with 'okay I fucking love star wars prequels old rotting space bureaucracy galactic republic style' except with seers and that also still might happen because it does have some of the coolest sci fi concepts and honestly I thiiiink that's all?

but the tl;dr of that timeline is I'm trying to finish a punch of projects Right Now, so that I can write books 2-5 of Opus, and then when I'm done that (which honestly, my average fiction-writing output is close to 100k a year. if I'm concentrating purely on one project, and writing books that are about 100k, we are talking four years. although my job situation is super up in the air in that period and writing might get put solidly on the backburner as I try to make it in academia, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) I will re-evaluate which projects go next, and that's when ifmlam is likely to come up for review.

I do not have any expectations that I will make it as an original author. I'm planning on posting all of my stuff online for free, but, like. it is incredibly difficult to convince people to try out even a piece of free and easily accessibly original work even if one has a huge following, I am a very small fanfiction author, and from what I can tell the majority of the people who are interested in my work are mostly interested in me finishing ifmlam. writing is a hobby for me, and while I'm writing mostly for me--and hence the for me bit at least for the next five years is pretty solidly going to be this series that I am deeply excited about and have sunk my heart and soul into every single aspect of--I'm human, and I don't really like shouting into the void, and I expect if I spend five years publishing to absolutely no response I will either stop writing for a while and do other things gods know my life is busy enough, return to fandom in general to write some other fanfic about whatever I get deeply into, or return to a work that I actually get response to. so ifmlam will probably start getting worked on a bit at that point one way or another. unless, of course, we are in the incredibly rare timeline in which I do make it as an original author, there are people who are deeply hyped for my original works and an actual demand for them, in which case as you may have noticed there are enough ideas there to keep me busy for a decade or two, and they will just get my full attention instead of fanfiction*. in this timeline, I will do what I was considering doing a few years ago, which is officially declare ifmlam otherwise abandoned and make one more giant chapter update which is a full and cleaned up outline of what I was going to write, interspersed with the scenes already written, and have ifmlam be given at least that closure.

*I want to make it clear that I very much love fanfiction and am proud to have been a fanfiction author and in my heart of hearts would keep writing it forever, I just also have a lot of ideas for characters and settings and magic systems and Aesthetics and I have been biting at the bit to write something that is //mine// and all mine and only mine for a while, I don't see original work as superior so much as there are a dozen fandoms that I am currently in and bursting to make content about except oops these fandoms currently only exist in my head, and I want to correct that

of course given how much as writing is my vent activity and I write what I'm in the mood for, there's a chance I'll feel ifmlam cravings before then, just... expect it to take a couple of years for an update, but also for there to be an update one way of another in a couple of years? but as for right now, I'm turning to original writing, because that is what brings me joy.

but I am really deeply honored that it brought you so much joy!!! and while I will never publish spoilers in a public place, if you message me off anon I am perfectly happy to give a run-down of my current plans for the ending, bc I know "wait a couple years and see" is not the most satisfactory of answers! and hey maybe you'll be like me and once you've given Opus a try you'll decide you like it better too, it does have Seers although they are deeply different Seers than in ifmlam but imo it's very gay and fun and at least politics on one side

#my life #my writing #ifmlam

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lycorogue · 4 years

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Tag Game: Authors

Tagged by: @livrever

Author name: I make life easy for everyone. I’m LycoRogue just about everywhere.

Fandoms I write for: I mostly write for Miraculous Ladybug, starting in the fandom late 2017. In the past (about 2010-2013), I was almost exclusively writing for the “Hey, Arnold!” fandom. While not as many, I’ve also started up some Fruits Basket stories once the reboot began airing last year. Beyond those normal fandoms, I’ve also thrown in random fics for any old thing that has caught my attention: a couple of stories for the Enderverse series, a random story based on a song about zombies, a one-shot teaser about a Cirque du Soleil show, and oddly only one Legend of Zelda story even though that’s probably my favorite fandom outside of ML. I’ve also had some “fanfics” that were MOSTLY original works based vaguely in the worlds of pre-established properties, such as backstories and side stories for my D&D characters, a short-lived attempt to recap the World of Darkness - Vampire: The Masquerade LARP I was in, and stories for the original characters I created for an X-Men play-by-post. The PbP, called X-Future, was a game where all of the playable characters were OCs that only occasionally interact with canon Marvel characters.

Where I post: You can find my works here on Tumblr (tag #LycoRogue Fanfic), over on AO3, on FFN, and - if you’re desperate - I still post to DA.

Most popular one-shot: Based only on AO3′s stats, it would be my Lukanette birthday gift for @thetauruspixie: I Was Thinking of You (As of 3/6/20: it has 1773 hits and 208 kudos)

OK, this became long because that’s just who I am... 9_9 So... if you want to know more about me, check below the break. ^_^

Favorite story I wrote: I have a multi-chapter story and a one-shot. Both are for ML. The multi-chapter story is Peeping Tomcat, and it is my magnum opus! It started off as one of the first-ever fanfics I wrote for the fandom, and then I realized it had LOADS more story to tell. It is the first multi-chapter story I’ve completed, despite starting and abandoning about a half-dozen before it. This is my baby! The story is about Chat Noir checking in on Marinette once when he thought she was in danger, and then got addicted to innocently spying on her in her bedroom in order to learn more about her while she’s relaxed and most “herself”. I have a sequel that has been in the works for nearly 2yrs now. Yes, I AM still working on the sequel One and the Same, in case any of my readers were nervous about that....

The one-shot is Build Your Own Luck which is a headcanon story about where I believe that lucky charm bracelet Marinette gave Adrien originally came from. It’s a sweet family-bonding story that I loved so much that I’m tying it into my Peeping Tomcat canon. The story behind The BraceletTM will appear in One and the Same.

I also really love one of those “mostly original” stories for X-Future. It was a story originally written by @cyhyr‘s spouse, but when I corrected him on how my character Willow would have truly acted in that situation we decided to make it a collab story. Then it became monstrous, and I think I overwhelmed him. So it’s kind of been in limbo for a few years, but I periodically go back to that project every couple of months, really wanting to get it back down to a manuscript he can manage so we can complete it. For anyone interested, the as-of-now-unofficially-abandoned story is Please, Let Me Explain. In the roleplay, his character Devon left the Xavier Institute to find out more about the parents that abandoned him as an infant. About 1/2hr later, the school gets destroyed in an attack, and the surviving students and faculty believe Devon had something to do with it. Two years later, Devon returns to the school, surprised to find out there were any survivors after spending the last 20 months or so “avenging” all of the students’ deaths. My character Willow is pissed at Devon. He wants to prove his innocence to her. Things are complicated....

Story I was nervous to post: I mean, I’m always nervous to put my heart and soul out there; screaming into the void. Especially when I write things that are more original-leaning. Or when I’m writing gifts for people, especially for those fandom exchanges. Those are terrifying because you know virtually nothing about the person you’re writing for, so you don’t truly know if they’ll like it. I still have a couple of stories that resulted in complete radio-silence from the receiver.

The one I was MOST nervous about though? Probably one I’m still nervous about sharing here. It’s my first-ever published smut for a fandom I didn’t even know existed until last summer and has seemingly died off since the book series completed back in like 2012. My story is called Sparks for the Moment and is for the story Bitterblue within the Seven Kingdoms Trilogy (also known as the Graceling Series). It’s a bittersweet sex scene that takes place between canonical scenes at the end of the story, so beware spoilers.

How do I choose titles: Oh lord, how DO I choose titles!? It’s usually a truly grueling process because I try to stick to 4 rules of thumb: 1. Something that is significant to the story, be it an item or a phrase or a theme, etc. 2. Something that gives you an idea of the feel of the story based on the title (I have no clue if I ever succeeded on this) 3. Something easy to remember; generally less than 5 words long. 4. A title that isn’t already being used by another author (this makes things REAL tricky)

Do you outline? Ummmmm.... Once upon a time? No. I was a full-on pantser. Then, more-or-less when I was working on Peeping Tomcat I became more of a plantser. I now have a skeleton of what I want to write, and try to get as much figured out as I can, only for the characters to go “HAHAHA. Nope.” and then I just kinda follow them.

Complete: 35

Cirque du Soleil (1) Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game) (2) Enderverse (2) Fruits Basket (4) Hey Arnold! (7) Re: Your Brains - Jonathan Coulton (Song) (1) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (1) Miraculous Ladybug (16) Seven Kingdoms Trilogy - Kristin Cashore (1)

Incomplete (I added this one for ReasonsTM):

Pseudo LoZ and Fable crossover original hybrid thing (1) Hey Arnold! (1) World of Darkness - Vampire: The Masquerade (1)

In progress: After unofficially abandoning so many stories, I’ve stopped publishing any until the whole story is written and just needs one last polish. That was how I managed to get Peeping Tomcat done. That said, I have a couple of irons in the fire.

Main WIP: One and the Same Current WIP: Love Square Fluff Week 2020 (an exception to the “wait til it’s all written rule) Random On-going WIP: I Don’t Care (I never intended this to be an on-going story, but there you have it) “Backburner” WIPs: > What Is Truly Meant To Be (A HA! story I unintentionally abandoned in 2013) > X-Future: The Second Generation Begins (My recapping of the X-Future game) > X-Future Snippets (Random one-shot stories in the X-Future universe) > Please, Let Me Explain (The aforementioned X-Future collab)

Plunnies: > When Love Matters (a retelling of the ML series if Gabriel actually was a loving father) > A collab with @thetauruspixie to write a Fu-centric story telling of his travels through Europe with the Miracle Box and his love affair with Marianne

Do you take prompts? I’ll be honest, I struggle a touch with prompts, but I like challenging myself. One of the reasons I’m doing the gift exchanges. So, if you have a prompt idea, I’d love to hear it. See if it inspires me. :D

Upcoming project I’m most excited about: When Love Matters. I wanted to work on that between breaks, while I had time to backtrack before more episodes aired. Considering how long OatS is taking though, I might not get to start his project until about the time S4 starts. 9_9

Tagging but you are under no obligations to participate: @thetauruspixie, @cyhyr, @chibisunnie, @rikareena, @coffeecomicsgalore, @chanceuseladynoire, @zenmisery, @i-am-the-niece-of-satan (I know some of you are socially anxious, so again, you are under NO OBLIGATION to participate. I just figured people might be interested in knowing more about you)

Also, if you write and want to answer, assume I’m tagging you as well. I’d love to know more about your writing.

#Tumblr games #tag games #writing #LycoRogue writing #get to know me #long post

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sheliesshattered · 4 years

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Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top: @claraaoswald, @ambitious-witch, @someillplanetreigns, and @junoinferno, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one.

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it.

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories.

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him:

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later.

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!”

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt.

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point.

Eventually, but not yet.

#long post #about me #my writing #like seriously all of it #fanfiction #fandom life #AO3 #Home The Long Way 'Round #For As Long As We Get #All Hands #Truth Universally Acknowledged #et al #if you read that chapter let me know what you think!#❤️

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nautilusopus · 7 years

Text

The Number I

Chapter 1: A Very Normal Opening Chapter For This Post-Series Fluff Piece

Hooooooooooooooooooly fuck this thing's live now. This is easily the stupidest thing I've ever written. It's also the first thing I've ever technically published. Thank you so much to @cateringisalie, @fury-brand, and @limbostratus for helping me proofread and copyedit this magnificent piece of self-indulgent, petty, overcomplicated garbage for the world to see.

And to think this thing spawned from a joke about watching someone take a piss.

Four years after meteor-fall and Cloud Strife still isn't himself. The thing that haunts him comes always at the same time... and when it does, on a distant far-off world, a needle moves. Twisty AU. Warnings for future chapters.

At precisely 6:09 am, Cloud Strife heard a creak outside his window, sighed, and quietly reached for the hunting knife under his pillow.

He had already been up at that point, partially for a quick workout -- it didn't really do much for his actual physique due to the enhancements, but it had been a habit for so long it felt wrong not to. There was a small part of him that still felt a small thrill of satisfaction at his own ability to put himself through a morning routine that would have had most professional athletes red-faced and exhausted and not even feel winded.

He carefully crept towards the window, staying low to the ground, and crouched underneath it. If they were burglars, they were certainly persistent. Any thief with half a brain would have moved onto another building by now, after he had noticed them the first eight times. Salvagers didn't come in this far from the ruins of Midgar. And it should have been obvious, given the shabby look of nearly everything in Edge, that he didn't have anything worth stealing, save perhaps his bike, which wasn't even upstairs anyway. Yet nearly every morning at the same time, there they were. Figures, outside his window, in the corner of his eye. Watching, until the minute it was clear he knew they were there -- and, he somehow knew, trying to get in.

He hadn't brought it up to Tifa, let alone anyone else. They'd have thought he was mad, which was an option he hadn't entirely ruled out himself -- they never left any scent for him to follow, and he wasn't really sure how they had gotten onto the roof anyway. The hallucinations were one of the few things he had managed to leave behind with that mess four years ago, and what sort of hallucinations woke you up eight days in a row at the same time?

Barret would probably suggest a shrink again, and Cloud would brush him off and say he was fine, really, and Barret would just shake his head and give him a look and mutter under his breath. Tifa might actually believe him, but the thought of that appealed to Cloud even less. She did enough worrying about him as it was. And about the bar, and the kids that passed through it, and who knew what else she hadn't told him about. Tifa needed good news.

So, here he was, crouched under the window next to the tire he'd been using as a chair for months on end, ready to stab a complete stranger that for all he knew maybe just really really wanted food. There was a bar and grill one floor down, after all.

He sat in silence for what must have been two minutes. A quiet tapping started against the wood -- quiet at first, and slowly, then louder and more insistent. It grew in volume until a hundred fingers must have been drumming against the window, and a rushing sound began building behind it, until it felt as though the noise was coming from every wall. Something moved through it all.

Cloud jumped up from under the windowsill and yanked the window open, brandishing the knife at the rain.

"...fuck's sake..." he muttered, sitting down on the chair his family had insisted he replace his tire with, dropping the knife on the table. Upon further reflection, he got back up and pulled the screen down, the water already starting to spray on the papers on his desk.

He turned his chair back to the desk and away from the window. If he didn’t look directly at it, then nothing would be there, and there would be nothing to worry about. And truth be told, he was worried that if he looked at them, they’d somehow be able to see him. Today was a good day -- he had woken up and gotten out of bed knowing exactly what he was doing and why. No need to acknowledge anything to the contrary.

He thumbed through the papers absently. Most of them were bills -- not for him this time, thankfully. Invoices he had been meaning to send out to clients, largely for repair work, or delivery. A couple were accounts, but the numbers part of it all never made much sense to him, so he often had to drag in someone that had actually finished their primary education to help him. Usually that was Reeve, but Reeve's time was extremely limited these days now that the rebuilding effort had moved beyond literal construction of roads and buildings and was now focused on political infrastructure, and Cloud always felt a bit guilty about calling him over for the sake of paperwork, and therefore never brought it up. The end result was a large pile of stressful charts that he could never motivate himself to do alone.

A noise from the end of the hall snapped him out of his intense focus on absolutely nothing constructive, and he hastily flicked the water off an account involving a leaking roof and got up, stashing the hunting knife back under his pillow. Tifa was awake.

Cloud crept downstairs, careful not to wake whoever was asleep on the couch in the back. He'd since lost track of who was here this week. Maybe Yuffie? He probably should have written it down somewhere.

"You're up early," he commented as Tifa came downstairs. Cloud was usually up by 7 (they had talked him down from 4 am, reminding him that most of society didn't run on military time and the extra sleep would do him some good), but Tifa usually slept in until 10 in preparation for the late shifts the bar usually offered.

"The storm woke me up," she said, rummaging through the fridge for eggs. "Maybe I should start a garden, with all this rain.” She paused, staring out the window for a moment. “Wouldn't have to bother taking care of it much." She took a can of corned beef hash from the cupboard and set about dumping the mixture into a frying pan.

Cloud watched her intently. He was banned from the kitchen after the incident with the dishwasher. "It's nice," he said quietly. Tifa looked faintly uncomfortable and refocused her efforts on chopping mushrooms, so he looked away.

The streets would likely be empty today. Cloud was one of the few people in the city that owned a vehicle, by dint of him building it himself, and nobody wanted to walk in the rain. Tifa wasn't the only one it set on edge these days.

"...Gonna be across town today. Broken roof," he continued. "Was gonna save it for tomorrow, but they'll probably want that finished now."

"You should visit Yuffie while you're out," she replied, grateful for the change in subject. "She stole from the till last time she was here, and she knows I'd probably break her fingers. She'd listen to you."

He shrugged. "Headed into the ruins today, too. Maybe she'll turn up. Don't think she's left for home yet."

Tifa looked up from the pan on top of the stove, which was now giving off the tantalising scent of grilled mushrooms. "You're fixing a roof in the ruins?" she asked, doing her best not to sound as though she thought he was wasting his time.

He seemed to notice anyway, and shook his head, looking a bit embarrassed. "No. Was thinking, it's been a while since anyone's checked on... things, out there."

A look of comprehension settled on her face, and she looked up from the pan at him. "D'you want me to come with you?"

He scratched his neck nervously. "If you like. You didn't really know him. Wouldn't you be bored?"

"No."

Cloud looked at her appraisingly.

"...It's something that matters to you. And I figured you'd need someone with you anyway," she said, shrugging. "Johnny comes in at five today anyway. We'll switch off and I'll meet you there." She dumped half the mixture in the pan into a bowl and set it in front of Cloud, and he relented.

They ate mostly in silence, with Tifa intermittently speaking to him about the bar, or the relief effort, or how he really should remember to lock the back door more often, but he didn't mind it much. He appreciated the company, and it was nice to spend time with someone that realised you couldn't really have much to say. Mornings made it more difficult. At the very least, his family said he'd been getting much better, and it helped to hear speech.

Eventually he got up and pulled on his boots. "You'll be here later tonight, for the dinner rush?" asked Tifa.

He nodded, so she could see. "See you later tonight," he confirmed, and turned to leave, pulling on his jacket from the hook on the wall nearby and opening the door to the now slightly less street empty.

Tifa dashed forward and quickly slammed the door shut again, causing him to jump. "Wait!" She produced a pair of tinted sunglasses he had left on the counter the night before. "Don't forget."

Cloud grimaced and put them on. He would look a bit odd, he supposed, wearing sunglasses in the rain, but that was the least of his problems. "Right. Sorry. Later tonight."

Tifa moved away from the door and went back upstairs, probably to resume sleeping. Cloud left Seventh Heaven and headed around out back for his bike and the crate of supplies he kept next to it.

He stuffed the crate awkwardly into the harness on his back (it wasn't really meant for things that weren't swords, but it would hold well enough for a few short trips through even roads), and dug his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and cupping it under his body to shield it from the rain, scrolling through the tiny two inch calendar the screen offered. Roof, moved up to today. That first.

The drive over helped wake him up a bit more -- weather was another thing that helped, he had noticed. Outside stimulus that wasn't overwhelming, the way sound and light and scent could be, and the act of driving gave him something familiar to focus on.

He should have been focusing on it, anyway. After the first two days, he had started keeping track of it. 6:09 am, every day, without fail. It seemed like the sort of thing a human would do -- whatever they were up to, it was planned and consistently executed. But they didn’t have any scent. Everything had a scent. Even water, if you could believe it. Maybe they were hallucinations after all. He considered sleeping outside, and seeing if he could get a glimpse of them as they approached the building. The idea didn’t appeal to him much, though. If he was outside, they would know he was there, and see him, and…

He couldn’t think of anything worse than having them see him, but that only made him feel worse.

A loud honk cut off his train of thought, and he swerved quickly to avoid an oncoming truck. You’re still thinking about it, he chided himself. That’s not important. Your job is.

His hair was plastered to his face from the wind and the rain by the time he pulled off the overpass. He didn't speak much to the first clients -- out of pragmatism, not inability -- and got straight to work after a few quick questions. An out-of-place pipe rather than an actual hole in the roof, fortunately, that was welded back into place with fire in about an hour. The couple had been a bit suspicious as to how he got onto the roof of a five storey building that quickly, but then he was a young man in his prime who did this for a living.

By this point the rain had let up a bit, and he checked his phone again in the lobby of their flat. Dislodged pipe, check. Next... of course, that sink. It had been a week already, hadn’t it?

He checked the time and saw he had about an hour left to get there, so he made a quick run to the nearest store, consulting another list on his phone that he'd saved as a memo by now: bread; tomatoes; some sort of greens he couldn't pronounce the name of; dish soap; and two rolls, the kind with berries baked into them. He awkwardly shoved the bag over his shoulder to hold it in place during the trip, and made his way back into the city again.

He had barely knocked on the door when it flew open and he was hurriedly pulled inside. "You look like a drowned cat. Didn't I tell you last time to get a hat or something?" said the old woman currently somehow leading him into the kitchen by his sleeve. Ms. Suk. She was a regular of his. He opened his mouth to answer and she cut him off again. "Never mind that. Get yourself situated, I've got a lot more work for you today than I planned."

He unpacked the groceries and sat down at the table, not removing his jacket. She simply shook her head and busied herself with the tea kettle. "How's that nice young lady doing? Tessa?"

"Tifa," he said. "We hired some extra hands. Too busy for just the three of us anymore." He watched her work, suppressing a pang of guilt.

"Mm. About time, too. It's a shame about Shinra, really, she could have been quite successful working for the president, all his fancy dinners and such. She's got the talent to. Don't get up," she warned, as he moved his leg slightly in preparation to help her with one of the lower cupboards, "I'll not have you tiring yourself out this early."

A few minutes later, and after much uncomfortable staring at the tablecloth on his part, she had tea set out for the both of them, and a cheese sandwich for Cloud, with the rolls set off to the side. Cloud chewed in silence for another few minutes.

"My sink," she began, regarding him shrewdly over her teacup, "has not been draining properly since the day before yesterday. I suspect I must have accidentally dropped some silverware down it. I'm sure you're aware of how clumsy I can be. Bad joints, you know."

Cloud nodded. It seemed like a fork and bits of cloth lodged itself in the drain every week at about the same time, for about two months now.

"It's very fortunate you're here, I can never make heads or tails of any of this myself," she continued. "You can take off your glasses, you know. I don't know why you'd bother in this weather."

Cloud finished his sandwich and started on his roll. "Medical condition," he said. That part wasn't entirely a lie. "Too much light gives me headaches."

"Mm. Well, it's a good thing it's raining out then, isn't it?" she said brusquely. "When you're finished, we can get started."

It didn't take long to get the dishes cleared away, and after setting then by the sink, he had the u-bend unscrewed, this time removing a handful of yarn. He reassembled the pipe and showed it to her.

"Well, how about that," she said offhandedly, and he set about washing their dishes while she fiddled with the portable radio in the background. She was unable to get it to produce anything other than heavy static and distorted, indistinct voices neither of them could make out properly.

"Damn weather," muttered Ms. Suk, and switched it back off. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to talk to each other, won't we?" She led him upstairs and gestured to several boxes.

"I need all of this moved downstairs and out of the way. It's mostly things my son sent me from Kalm four years ago to help us get by, but it doesn't do me much good these days, and if I trip over them one more time in the dark I'm going to disown him." She brought out a mug of water and set it on a nearby table for him. "Off you go. I'll let you know what needs keeping."

In the next hour he'd come to regret the lack of a functioning radio. She spoke frequently of her own family in between sorting through dusty boxes of blankets and unused china, of how her son had gone to work for Shinra and had set aside some money for her to live, about how much nicer things had been since she had come to Midgar from western Wutai, about her sister who hadn't gotten out of the city in time, but when the conversation turned to him he found himself drawing a blank. He mostly tried to redirect it about his family as well -- Barret, coming by with Marlene to visit every other week, Nanaki's letters (he wasn't entirely sure how he was writing them), Cid visiting every now and then to remark on his bike or other things he'd built. Ms. Suk continued to probe elsewhere.

"What about you, dear? Where are you from?" she asked.

"...Nibel," he said, after a pause. She nodded thoughtfully.

"Thought you had a bit of an accent, but I couldn't quite place it. Your Standard's quite good." He took a sip of the water and unpacked another box that only looked a few years old compared to everything else. Clothes, mostly, with some photographs he set aside for an end table downstairs. "You don't see many people around from that region. Was it nice there?"

"Cold, mostly." Ha. "The weather's nicer down here."

"I'd imagine so. Your parents, were they natives?"

"I --" Something tore through him, like putting weight on a broken leg, and it opened its mouth to speak. He tore himself away from the daze in his head back to the dimly lit room and the sound of rain, suppressing a wince. "Yeah. Yeah, they were."

"Do you speak much of the language yourself?" she asked. He took deep, slow breaths, not caring for the moment about the mess of old scents that did nothing to help him orient himself. "You're a bit young to, I'd think, but if they knew some perhaps you picked it up?"

"A bit. Just phrases. Suffixes. Stuff that gets mixed in." God, how he missed that radio.

"You've got a good ear, then. Most boys your age don't even know there are other languages. I suppose they speak it up there a bit more. Pah! They did a lot of good for the world, but if there's one thing I begrudge Shinra for, I suppose it's all that culture that got washed away. Nobody's bothered to remember. When I was a girl, we used to... did you want to take off your jacket?" she suddenly interjected. "You look like you're about to have a heat stroke."

It was true. The heat of the house, combined with the work, his own body temperature, and the stress (god, the stress) had sweat running down his face. He hesitated for a moment, braced himself for the inevitable, then obliged. If it'd keep her on the subject of Wutai, maybe his head would stop pounding.

Instead she fixed her eyes on the melted-looking scar running up his left arm and disappearing into his sleeve. "Ah. Goodness, you're certainly lucky, aren't you? Or perhaps very unlucky, as it were. How old are you?" she asked, scrutinising him more carefully.

"Nibel was hit pretty hard. That's why I came to live here, after it was over." Another lie, covering up more questions he couldn't answer.

She nodded curtly. "Well, we're happy to have you, dear," she said. He felt the pit of guilt in his stomach twist a bit tighter, but at least it had the intended effect, and she switched the topic to the rebuilding effort and kept it there for the next half hour.

By the time they were finished, he had a trash bag he dumped out the back, a full bin for recycling, and a pile of old clothes. Ms. Suk scooped the clothes into an empty bag and pushed it into his arms.

He stared at it blankly for a moment. "...Should I put them in the wash?"

She "hmphed" amusedly. "Those? Of course not. What am I going to do, wear them? At my age? Something like that, it'd be awful on my figure. I'd look like porridge someone poured into a sock, if they fit at all. They're yours now."

Cloud blinked. "I can't take these," he objected.

"Why not? They look about your size, and you could do with something decent to wear that isn't worn thin. Makes you look like a hoodlum, and we both know you're certainly not too good for anything I could offer you, don't we?" she said pointedly. "Go, get them out of my sight. They're only taking up space. And here, for your trouble," she added, pressing a wad of gil into his hand. He was certain it was quite a bit more than what he had asked for. She handed him the pocket radio, too. "Something else for you to fix. It's obviously broken."

Cloud nodded numbly, struggling to come up with something to say that wouldn't sound as inadequate as "thanks".

After another quick exchange and her thrusting another package into his hands "for the road", this one containing some sort of spicy baked egg and cabbage mixture that he could never remember the name of, and he was hustled out the door into the now sunny street again, until she found something creative to stuff down her drain next week.

“Get a hat!” she yelled after him.

He flipped open his phone again, wondering if he should perhaps get a proper watch. A bit past noon, with five hours to kill. He could head out to the ruins early and see if there was anything worth salvaging, but it'd be more efficient if he just picked Tifa up himself. And besides that, it'd be easier to get where he was going without carrying a box full of scrap metal and screwdrivers and a bag of clothes all day.

There was a small crowd of patrons in the bar by the time he got back. He came in through the back, set down the crate and the clothes, put his food in the fridge, and made his way towards the front and slipped in behind the bar and began washing the dust off his hands.

"You're back early," she said over her shoulder, fetching him an apron.

"The roof thing took less time than I thought," he explained. "Tables or bar?"

"Bar. I need to help out in the kitchen," she said, and slipped into the back without another word as he set about making drinks for the patrons.

As it turned out, there wasn't much to do either way. Once the initial crowd cleared out, business slowed to a trickle, and Cloud found himself leaning against the counter with his back to the door, chewing at a hangnail on his thumb.

Tifa reemerged from the kitchen and crossed her arms. "That's bad form. What if someone walked in?"

"Nobody's gonna walk in."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. There aren't any cars coming, and the sidewalks are empty for at least a block both ways."

Tifa uncrossed her arms and sat down. The vibrations-off-the-sidewalk thing still freaked her out a bit, he suspected, but also Cloud really wanted to win his petty argument for not doing anything.

"I brought food."

"I saw. Kimchijeon?"

"Sorry?"

"The food."

"Oh." He scratched his neck. "Got some clothes, too. Dunno how well they'll fit. The shirts'll be nice, at least. See if there's anything that'll fit you in there."

"Oh!" She smiled. Most of her clothes doubled as work clothes these days and were worn threadbare much like his own, and she'd been putting off buying anything nice for herself for months. "I'll make something for you to bring over next time."

"That'd be nice."

He stood in silence for another few moments. Now that the sky had cleared up, the whole bar was comfortably warm from the sun filtering in through the windows. Tifa was prepping some sort of drink mix, occasionally glancing out the window just in case. His hair and jacket had finally dried out.

They were always busy, it seemed -- he and Tifa and Barret and the rest of the family. That was a new experience; having something to do or be done constantly. People to see, and things to fix, and a room of his own to keep tidy. Or not keep tidy at all. If he wanted he could do nothing at all, for a whole hour. Maybe two. Maybe even a day. (A day, he had thought, seemed like far too much time. It wasn't as though he disliked work.) And then, if he got lonely, he could go downstairs or open his phone and talk to someone that expected nothing of him but his company, and maybe for him to wash dishes or do laundry sometimes.

It was too perfect. He had always suspected as much, and two years ago he'd received an unpleasant reminder of how easily it could be taken away. Having something to lose, for the first time in years... that was a new experience, too. All it took was one mistake.

He thought of the people looking in through his window and wondered if he was on the verge of one of those mistakes right now.

"Hey... Tifa?"

She looked up from the bottle she'd been unscrewing. "Yeah?"

The words caught in his throat. "...If it's all the same to you, I'm gonna head out early," he managed to get out. "Let me know when you switch off, and I'll come pick you up."

"Alright," said Tifa. "Remember, later tonight."

"Later tonight."

Cloud quietly seethed at himself the entire ride back into what was left of Midgar. She'd been so patient. Coming up with the system they had, letting him live in her building, putting up with his presence. If we're having any trouble, we'll talk to each other. Even if it's stupid, she'd said.

All it would take was one mistake, though. Maybe a panic attack at a bad time. Maybe if he had one of his bad days at the same time as one of hers, and neither one of them handled it well. Maybe if Marlene saw. She wasn't there often, and she had seen quite a lot for a girl her age, but there was no point in scarring her further.

That was the point of this trip, though, wasn't it? For his own benefit. Something like that. Some things were a lot more difficult to fix than others.

He pulled his bike up alongside an old abandoned church in what used to be Sector 5, opened up Fenrir and removed the centre blade Vigilante, and proceeded into the city. Strictly speaking, civilians weren't supposed to be here, and going any further on a vehicle was impossible due to the millions of tonnes of twisted steel piled high, with human remains they hadn't been able to retrieve sealed away under concrete and melted skyscrapers. If it was decomposing at all, it was doing it very, very slowly. The earth here was still barren -- not even bacteria seemed to thrive here anymore.

Cloud had been one of the few people "allowed" to head as deep into the city as he was today. If a building collapsed on or underneath from anyone else, it would have been a problem. Cloud and Yuffie were both light enough to navigate unstable ground, and athletic enough to get through what would be completely impassable territory to anyone else.

It had to be him, visiting like this. There was nobody left that would care about that spot on what was left of the sixty-eighth floor. So every week, he came back. One day it would all crumble, but until then it was something that he considered his duty. The world had already forgotten him, so Cloud couldn’t afford to.

It was eerily silent as he climbed higher and deeper into the ruins. Occasionally he'd hear the creaking of metal, as more infrastructure crumbled in on itself, but there was nothing living here for hundreds of miles. The silence set him on edge, and he switched on the radio, which now seemed to be working properly. He'd try to get her to take it back later, if he could convince her to.

Cloud delicately hopped off the top of the six storey building he'd scaled and landed lightly on the wreckage of a train below it. The tracks were mangled and the supports keeping them up had collapsed years ago, but he'd found one could still mostly follow them in towards the centre of the city. Every now and then, he thought he recognised a building. It was impossible to tell anymore. Sector 6 looked just as bad as everything else.

Eventually he reached something that did look familiar -- a pile of shattered glass that had once been part of the neon sign next to it: Shinra Electric Power Company. He made sure his gloves were on properly, bent his knees, and took another leap, managing to get a handhold on the ledge of the second storey. The stairs were blocked on many floors due to collapse, and some passages he'd discovered the last time around had since collapsed in on themselves, so he'd opted to cut his way straight through the ceiling rather than bother shifting rubble. It was faster that way, and at the very least if the building collapsed in on itself anyway he'd already have his sword out to cut himself free before he was crushed.

On the sixtieth floor, the trumpet solo the radio had been broadcasting was suddenly replaced with heavy static again. He stopped to retune it, but it only got louder. He was surprised it had gotten reception this far out at all, and clipped it onto his back pocket again. Perhaps the signal would sharpen if he made it back outside at the top.

On the sixty-first floor, the signal did sharpen, but the jazz solo did not resume. The indistinct voices he had heard before became slightly clearer, but no more intelligible. Cloud saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

His sword had already been out, but now he switched it to its wider stance with a quick flick of his wrist and held it at the ready. Something else moved, and he whipped around to face it.

They were all around him now, and no longer at the periphery of his vision. Shapes he couldn't make out, as though his eyes didn't quite focus on them. The shadows outside his window were here now, with no glass to view them through. He took a step back, and they seemed to move with him. He could hear the distorted noises more clearly now, and it was no longer coming from the radio. They had no scent.

He wanted to get away, to attack, to yell at the shapes, anything, but suddenly his thoughts felt muddy and confused, and his sword clattered to the ground as his hand didn't quite want to grip it properly anymore. The shapes moved faster and they seemed to twist the world around him as they moved, as though they were taking the world and dragging it with them, like ink splashed through water. The noise was deafening and overwhelming, and the air felt thick.

Cloud Strife abruptly stopped thinking.

It was a curious sensation, if it could be called a sensation at all, given he couldn't process it. Every thought he'd had was snuffed out as quickly as it came, and nothing else followed them up. He simply existed, mind inert, his sword still lying at his feet. If the shapes were still there, he wouldn't have known, or cared.

He stood there, completely motionless, scarcely breathing. He took a step forward, then another. He began to walk, at first aimlessly, and then with purpose. He went to the sixty-second floor, and then the sixty third. At the sixty fourth floor, he stood in the centre again, this time for longer. The world seemed static at times, and spun around him at others. His breathing came in odd spurts, as though his lungs simply stopped working on and off.

His phone rang.

Cloud coughed, stumbled forward onto his stomach, and cried out, his sunglasses clattering off his face.

He didn't answer it right away, nor did he pick up on the second or third calls, and simply lay there, trying to pretend he wasn't shaking slightly. The radio had moved onto another song more prominently featuring a saxophone. He felt sick and disoriented.

He put his glasses back on, went back downstairs, collected his sword, and began descending Shinra Tower, frequently stealing glances over his shoulder. He saw nothing but rubble.

He walked back to Fenrir, replaced his sword in his harness, rather than inside his bike, and drove back into Edge, trying to sort out his thoughts. His head throbbed.

He remembered very clearly walking up the stairs. The motion, the sounds of his footsteps, the careful observation of his surroundings and the fixed staring at nothing with his eyes unfocused. But there was a strange period of nothing that accompanied all of it. He hadn't thought anything, been aware of anything, felt anything the entire time. It was as though a portion of his life had simply been replaced with images shot from a camera.

There had been something in that tower with him. He was certain of it, though he didn't know how. He wasn't harmed, as far as he could tell, apart from a scuff on his cheek that would already be healed by the time he got home. It hadn't felt like anything he'd experienced before, even with Sephiroth. That was the worst part of it all, he thought. If it was related to him, he'd at least know how to deal with it. Sephiroth was dead. Explicitly dead, killed twice over. The first time had been fairly thorough, he'd thought, until it had turned out the dead part of him needed killing again, two years after that. None of it had made much sense to any of them, but that had destroyed him for good. He had at least sensed that.

A sharp stab of pain in his head brought him back to the present. Sephiroth might have been dead, but the genetic tampering was still irreversible. He'd have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

When he got back home, Tifa was standing there looking concerned, which was almost worse than looking angry. "You didn't answer the phone. What happened?"

"...Not really feeling well," he supplied lamely. "We'll go back out there some other time."

"Jenova?" she asked, to which he gave a small nod. Whether or not it was the problem before, it was certainly the problem right now.

"If you need me to find someone to cover for you, you'll have to let me know now. If you’re not feeling up to it I can find someone to fill in." She looked over her shoulder at the clock. It was nearly eight. “Do you need me to sit with you for a bit, or…?”

He waved her off. "No, I can still help. Just gotta deal with this real quick."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. S'cuse me." He hurried up the stairs to Tifa's room and closed the door. She'd almost certainly seen his sword out of its storage and on his back.

He removed his boots, his harness, and his gloves, and sat in the middle of her bed with his legs crossed. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, and quietly found the source of his headache and dove into it.

This "meditation" was something he did every day, as a means of keeping himself in check. Jenova would always be a part of him, whether it was in his head or his DNA, so Cloud had given up suppressing it. In his case it was a temporary measure at best. Instead he had opened himself to it, trying to supplant it and incorporate it into himself, to take all that deliberate gnawing at his psyche and make it his own. Progress had been slow but steady, although not without its drawbacks. The benefits far outweighed them, as far as he was concerned. And he'd learned quite a bit more about Sephiroth, and himself perhaps, than he'd intended to. Some things he'd shown to his family. Others, he'd been afraid to acknowledge, even though he knew he'd have to sooner or later.

Usually it was something he did before bed. Clearly that wasn't an option today.

Half an hour later, he emerged, feeling a bit odd as he usually did after it was done. He glanced around the room and noted that there hadn't been any fallout from the process this time. If he were in a better mood and didn't have a dinner shift to attend to, he might've taken that as a sign to experiment with some of the more mundane things he'd uncovered. He slid off the bed and put his boots back on.

As he headed to the door, he paused and glanced under the bed, at the box he knew was hidden there, and the odd white materia kept stored in it. Perhaps it would help if he...

Best not to, he thought, and closed the door.

#forfdorfsorf #spitegarbage #amazing literature #the number i #dirge and crisis core are not canon to this because fuck that noise #This is a normal story. Nothing unusual or bad happens in it.#Just your normal postgame FFVII fanfiction like how you normally see in the regular vanilla canon with Cloud and Tifa and some others in it.#Mostly fluff. Nothing to see here. Keep walking.

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camsthisky · 7 years

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Writing Self-Evaluation for 2016

Writing Self-Evaluation for 2016 for @camsthisky (and my sideblog @lanceaboo)

Tagged by @seitosokusha about a month ago and I’ve been putting it off bc I know looking into last year will be a serious wake up call (I’ve written a total of 6 things since the new year and it should honestly be more)

1. Lists of works published this year:

Ricompensa [KHR]

In a moment like this [KHR]

War Torn (chs 15-23) [KHR]

An Older Brother’s Duty [One Piece]

It Takes a Blink [One Piece]

And on and on we go [One Piece]

Headphones [Voltron]

Run With Your Heart [Voltron]

Stop Telling Me Everything is Simple [Voltron]

The Point is to Understand [Voltron]

All That Matters [Voltron]

One Word Story Game [Voltron]

It’s Getting Darker But I’ll Carry On [Voltron]

Everything is Fine (Even When It’s Not) [TMNT]

Thanks For Trying [TMNT]

The Control Freak, the Narcissist, and the Liar [TMNT]

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

Probably The Control Freak, the Narcissist, and the Liar. Last year (and going into this year) was a real challenge, and I feel like the Control Freak AU was reflective of how I was feeling. I also (successfully) tried out writing in present tense, and I absolutely love the way this story flows.

It’s Getting Darker But I’ll Carry On is a close second, though. I love the way the dynamics work between Lance and Keith in IGBICO, even though I’ve all but stopped writing for Voltron at this point (which sucks, but the fandom in general is killing my writing spirit).

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

Thanks for Trying or An Older Brother’s Duty are both stories that I really wish I worked harder on. The fact is, I was writing both under pressure, and neither turned out the way I had envisioned. Both are stories I’m probably going to redo within the next few years. Not now, but it’s on my to do list.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

Here are two.

From The Control Freak, the Narcissist, and the Liar

The sobbing tapers off, and when Donnie looks down, Mikey’s gone still. He’s holding his breath, and Donnie’s not really sure what to make of it. As far as Donnie knows, this isn’t normal, and Donnie knows a lot.

“Mikey?” Donnie tries. “You with me?”

A shuddering nod is all Donnie gets in response, but it’s more than he was really expecting, especially with the glassy look Mikey’s got in his eyes.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No.” Mikey’s voice is raspy, and the sound of it makes Donnie wince with sympathy. He was probably going to be feeling that for a little while.

“Okay. That’s okay,” Donnie tells him. He holds Mikey a bit tighter. “You, uh, you don’t have to say anything you don’t want to. Just- Just know that I’m here and not going anywhere.”

Mikey mutters something along the lines of “thank god” and turns his face into Donnie’s plastron. They stay like that for a long time, on the floor of Donnie’s lab, with a broken toaster sitting on his lab table waiting to be fixed.

The toaster can wait. Mikey can’t.

It’s Getting Darker But I’ll Carry On

The thing about guns were that they were loud; Lance had lucked out with his bayard. It wasn't nearly as loud as an actual sniper rifle would be, but it still made a noise that had Mullet Man wincing from where he was sitting next to him on the branch. Lance was glad they'd had time to come out here, otherwise they'd probably be hopelessly surrounded by now.

But now they could (probably) relax. Lance had blown off the zombie’s head, and that usually did the job of stopping the things from moving, so he let out his breath in a relieved huff.

“Alright, Mullet Man,” Lance laughed, shoulders actually relaxing now that the zombie couldn't get them. He turned to his companion. “Let's go find that brother of yours.”

Mullet Man raised an eyebrow. “Mullet Man?” he asked, face scrunching up in incredulity. “Seriously?”

Lance shrugged, an easy grin pulling at his lips. “Hey, I had to call you something.”

“Then call me Keith,” the guy said. “Not Mullet Man. Who are you?”

“The name’s Lance,” he said, holding out a hand, one that Keith took. “Zombie Slayer extraordinaire.”

5. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

Asghjhsj I always die whenever I get a comment from @maychorian, who I really look up to a s a writer, on any of my Voltron fics.

On War Torn, I’ve gotten a bunch of reviews that go something like “I just read through it ALL and I haven’t slept for like 48 hours bc I wanted to finish this so bad” and they always make my day (But even though I’m not one to talk, you guys should get more sleep). But my fav from War Torn has to be by KellyKatt19, who is just so sweet and amazing.

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

I can’t remember how much I’ve shared on tumblr before, but some of my mutuals may remember the time I had to go to the emergency room, then bounce around from doctor to doctor when they couldn’t figure out how exactly to treat me, get surgery, and then spend a week and half at home recovering from an infection almost exactly a year ago (February of 2016). I was…not very cheerful, and all I did from two weeks was cry, and feel pretty sorry for myself. I could barely muster the energy to get out of bed. I looked and felt like death warmed over, and through the entire time, and for about two weeks after that, I didn’t touch a notebook, and I couldn’t bring myself to type anything. It was a disturbing feeling. No ideas were coming to my head, I was constantly frustrated with everything, I couldn’t update anything. It was a hard time. I managed to get myself out of my funk though.

7. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

There were two things that I never thought I would do. One, write angst (and wow, I created an entire four chapters full of it so far, and it’s still going strong), and two, write Leonardo (from TMNT) in a bad light. But I did both of them in the same story.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

The one thing that I learned this year was that not everything I write is going to perfect. Also, after experimenting more with my writing style, I found one that I really, really like, so that’s a plus.

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

Hopefully I can develop my writing style a bit more. I’m also hoping to get a bit better at dialogue. I suck at normal people interactions, so that’s always been a weak point for me.

10. Who was your positive influence as a writer (could be another writer or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

Oh boy. Okay, well I’ve met a lot of amazing people last year. A few mutuals - @seitosokusha, @stepichu, @mithril-lace (we’ve actually been mutuals for longer than a year, I think), @lancemcgayn, @lancemcclains. I’m really lucky that I had all these wonderful people to support me, especially in my writing. Hay and Mei were awesome when it came to my insecurities about posting, and Mithril, Seito, and Steph were always there when I needed a pick me up or some advice.

The other positive influence I’ve had as a writer is probably @taizi, Without Problem Child and all the TMNT and One Piece stories, I’d definitely be a different person than I am today. All of taizi’s stories (especially PC) have made me look at the world in a different light, and I can’t express my thankfulness enough that I follow taizi, even if we don’t know each other.

Also - @omggummybear. Thank you for everything.

11. Anything from real life show up in your writing this year:

I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder last October, so I probably projected at some point.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Writing is always, always developing. Even for experienced writers. Just because you don’t think that you’re improving, doesn’t mean you aren’t. Don’t get frustrated with yourself if you can’t see your improvement. It’ll show, you’ve just got to give it time (that was a lesson I learned the hard way).

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

Oh geez. I hope I can finish War Torn this year. I’ve had the ending planned for two years and I’m finally getting close. Maybe by chapter 30. Maybe.

I have some batfam ideas I want to get started on.

Other than that, I have a One Piece modern AU and an alive!Ace story that are both in the works. I don’t want to publish what I have yet since I already have so many WIPs. Hopefully sometime soon, though.

14. Tag three writers whose answers you’d like to read: @mithril-lace, @omggummybear, @dickie-gayson (You know, only if you want to).

Man. This was more introspection than I needed. This was also really long. Thanks for reading :)

#things i was tagged in #tagged memes #writing self-evaluation #camryn rambles

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muggle-writes · 5 years

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10 Questions Tag

I genuinely don’t recall seeing this tag game come in, but either I missed it or I didn’t tag my responses. Either way, I found it again today, so @elizabethsyson thanks for the tag, here’s my answers

1. What book/s made you want to write?

I don’t think it was a book necessarily. Fanfiction inspired me to write and publish fanfiction of my own, but previously, I would just concoct something equivalent to fanfiction even though I didn’t know it had a name, entertain myself with it without ever writing it down, and then eventually forget and move on to something else. But I’ve always used those same unwritten (though still primarily verbal) creative endeavors as a way to process emotions. Later, writing (original fiction that was more individual scenes with no plot resolution) served the same purpose, and now fanfiction serves the dual purpose of being an emotional outlet (those don’t necessarily ever get published) and being a fun and social thing to share with other fans.

On the other hand, I’ve got so many memories of having written stories above and beyond what a school assignment would call for, going at least as far back as second or third grade, so who knows, maybe one book in particular did inspire me to write. But if so, I don’t remember what that original inspiration was.

Also there’s one book in particular that’s just... Awful. I bought it at a dollar store and honestly no wonder it was only selling there. Worst book I’ve ever read. And sometimes I’m writing out of spite because if something with that many plot holes and “plot twists” that ignore any foreshadowing the author set up and come out of literally nowhere can get published, then I’m also definitely good enough to get published if I ever wanted to.

2. What is your favourite genre to write in?

Fanfiction is totally its own genre, right? Besides that, the gray area where fantasy, urban fantasy, and realistic contemporary fiction all meet. I tend towards realism, even when I write magic, but I love to write in universes where mythical creatures can be real, too. It’s my favorite genre to write in because it’s where I’m comfortable writing, and also because those tend to be the stories I enjoy reading and therefore know how my own contributions compare. Also because I love worldbuilding, and being in a fantasy universe not so different from our own gives me plenty of space to explore exactly what’s the same or different and why.

3. What is your favourite genre to read?

Fanfiction again, because I can explore an arbitrary character through hundreds of different lenses and poke at all the facets of their identity almost indefinitely, and it’s not restricted to what happens to be plot relevant, or even to scenarios that are all compatible with a single timeline, and it’s so character driven. It’s by far my favorite thing. Fantasy, primarily in two different flavors. On one hand, fuzzy rules of magic where everything goes as long as the magic user is powerful or creative enough, as a backdrop to an allegorical, easily divided black and white morality story is a category I almost always love. Magic can do basically anything, and it’s easy to know what’s right and wrong, and who to root for. On the other hand, I love what Brandon Sanderson would call “hard magic” fantasy, where magic is just as structured, and nearly as understood, as science, which I enjoy combined with a plot in which the characters have as much nuance and shades of gray as in the real world. I tend to prefer things at one of those extremes, but I’ll read almost any fantasy story.

4. How do you think your reading habits have influenced your writing style?

I mean it's just like verbal language: whatever I surround myself is going to shape the ideas and phrases and slang that come back out of my brain. Likewise, if I’m creating a magic system “from scratch” it’s inevitably shaped by things I read or watched young(ish), including but not limited to the Belgariad, and Star Wars and Pern (so basically, strongly connected to the mind and limited mainly by what you can imagine) (the Dresden Files and Good Omens seem to have pretty similar ideas about magic, but I ingested those much later)

on the other hand I think that my habit of primarily reading, even over watching shows or movies, has contributed to how little I ever actually think about what a character looks like, except occasionally when introductions get delayed for some reason and I can't use names in narration. So characters I only know from reading, I have zero idea what they look like. For example, I only remember that Sabriel is deathly pale as her default state because I reread the beginning of the book recently on Libby (a library app) while debating whether to check it out and reread the whole series in order to potentially write a crossover fanfiction. Her appearance was mentioned once or twice in the first few chapters and then never again, and it wasn’t something other characters often remarked upon, so I promptly forgot. Even though it’s absolutely fitting. Idk I’m just really not a visual thinker apparently, and always having character names to reference only reinforces that because why do I need to know what someone looks like if I know who they are?

5. What is your go-to cure when you get writer’s block or can’t focus?

Focus is easier. I make sure I’ve eaten, and I put on music so I’m not distracted by the silence or by the sound of my own typing. Plus I'll keep something cold and caffeinated in arms reach to sip on when I'm tempted to relinquish focus.

Writer’s block is harder to overcome and usually ties in with depression, so I’ll sometimes go months without writing and come back when I have energy for anything again... But in terms of actual strategies, sometimes rereading what I’ve already written will kickstart my unblocked writing, which is why I try very hard to only stop writing at “stopping points” if it’s genuinely the end of the story. Because when I come back later, it’s so much easier to read a partial chapter, get into the swing of it, and remember where it was going, than to start carving a new chapter out of nothing. Another thing that helps chip away at writer’s block is to talk to someone who is enthusiastic about my stories, or who is willing to let me infodump. Those are the only two things I can really control that have helped. Occasionally other things will help, like getting the book review style comments on fics (when I also have time to sit down and write while the comment is still new enough to make me surprised-and-happy over it), or if I can find the right balance of “obligation to someone else” and “not so much pressure I implode” (like, for example, I submitted a half-baked WIP to the recent WIP Blind Date event, and the afternoon after we got our assignments I started getting motivated to add to what I’ve posted about it to have something “worth” sharing for the event, and even though I didn’t get the momentum going enough to make progress until after I’d already been reviewed, I made a large amount of progress on that fic just because there was some amount of external pressure.... But that only works if I only do it to myself occasionally. Too often and I’m just annoying everyone by asking them to expect something from me and never following through.)

6. Why did you decide to start writing?

I think I got the right amount of compliments and encouragement when I was in elementary school, on writing assignments and challenges, then I was proud of the original stories I was writing in middle school, and then in high school I figured out that I could create barely-not-me characters and put them through things I wished (or feared) would happen to me and explore the consequences... My depression started getting bad around then, and with it came executive dysfunction and I started having to focus only on schoolwork and still barely finished everything I needed to. I might have stopped writing for longer but then I started publishing fanfiction. initially because my brain was generating it anyway, and I was in a shitty living situation with nothing else to do with my free time that I spent hidden away in my room besides actually type it up, but I kept at it because I was proud of my stories again, and because of the social aspect. And now I continue writing because I love the excuse to explore characters, or just because I can put characters I already love into new and interesting situations.

I might eventually write my own original novel, just because being on writeblr and seeing everyone else writing original works is super motivating, but that requires I have ideas for a setting and a plot and for characters all at once and I’m trying not to force it.

7. Pick a character you’ve written/are writing. What personality trait of theirs defines them most?

I’m going to cheat and peek a bit in the future to when I’m actually writing that fic featuring Julie Kwan, because I ought to have a better handle on her before I get too much further. She’s got a very sharp mind, very good at logical deductions (even if they involve magic before she really knows magic is real) and she’s also fairly good at reading other people. She’s also not afraid to confront people, whether they’re people who are literally threatening her and her friends, or whether they’re her friends and they’re not taking care of themselves sufficiently, or anything in between.

8. What is their primary language? Do they speak it natively? Do they speak any other languages?

...I'm not actually sure. English is her primary language, as she has grown up in the USA. If Julie speaks other languages, Mandarin would be fitting (because that’s Wei’s primary language, and I know Kate also speaks it, so that could add to team unity if over half of them all speak the same non-English language), or maybe Korean depending on her family (since Kwan is usually a Korean name.) Regardless, if she speaks any other languages, then I suspect she also speaks Klingon. @davetheshady can you confirm?

9. What does the character value the most in their life?

Julie is very focused on academia, she’s accomplished and rightfully proud of herself. She wants to be respected, (she’s so tired of being disrespected in academic circles just because she’s neither white nor a man), but she also very much values her friends.

10. If they met you, what would they have to say to you?

I think she would make fun of me for quoting her so often but she makes so many pop culture references, I don’t think she has room to complain. She would probably also encourage me to pursue graduate degrees no matter how “impractical” other people find the subject.

#tag games #writeblr 10 questions #anyway @dave thanks for letting me borrow your characters :)#i was determined not to tag you again until I had more progress on that fic but uh? I almost mostly have a plot so I guess that counts #it's ridiculous - basically saying house elves have relatives in one of the fae courts (haven't decided which one)#but i've never said this wouldn't be a crackfic so I think it's exactly on brand for the tone I've been aiming for #spew gets briefly revived until julie suggests a better name for it #because honestly? be more aware of your acronyms no wonder no one was interested in your society #i'm really skeptical of the ''oh house elves LIKE serving humans'' explanation #so instead the same humans that tricked the house elves into perpetual/generational slavery #also wrote into the contract that if a house elf was ''freed'' they'd surrender all their worldly possessions to the human family #and some other nasty clauses #so basically most have to be as desperate and mistreated as Dobby was before they're willing to try #but it's not because they're happy where they are just that the process of leaving is designed to screw them over and discourage it #also probably a prohibition about talking to unbound relatives about the contract but that doesn't say 'never mention it to a human' so...

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