fic blog

hello! fanworks sideblog of deepestbluesky on ao3 and dreamwidth. seasonal flavors include: word of honor, assorted danmei and cdramas, stranger things. you can call me sky.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Sometimes "rarepair" means "you are literally the only person who posts about this on tumblr dot com" and you have to learn to be okay with that.

[demotu-writes]

if you have niche knowledge that a fic writer may find handy and you would love to bestow on anyone who asks, reblog with your relevant areas of expertise are in the tags

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏽👇🏾👇🏿

[erraticprocrastinator]

Not sure about anyone else but I re-read all my favourite AO3 comments when I’ve had a rough day so if you’ve ever taken the time to write a deep, funny, or just kind comment, thank-you.

[deepestbluesky]

seeing someone is green in BP highlighter... checking their profile... seeing no permission statement... checking FPSlist... finding out you added them in the first place and now have to ask for them to be removed... it's the circle of life i guess

[wastrelwoods]

I just fucking love love love when a narrative shows me a character who is an insufferable and badly behaved bully being propped up by an even shittier familal authority figure assuring them that they are a Special Princess who deserves to walk all over everyone else, and then the narrative pulls back a little and shows me that in fact the love and support of that authority figure is Deeply Conditional and Finite and this bully is both aware of it and haunted by that knowledge. Their Special Princess Swagger is PAPER thin

[deepestbluesky]

discord going down TWICE during VT is podficcer-phobic!!!!!

[deepestbluesky]

[deepestbluesky]

okay i am back in. we don't need to talk about how reliant i am on accessing discord lol

[deepestbluesky]

discord going down TWICE during VT is podficcer-phobic!!!!!

[deepestbluesky]

[deepestbluesky]

discord going down TWICE during VT is podficcer-phobic!!!!!

[deepestbluesky]

you ever get a Voiceteam challenge to create an object from someone's podfic and then get recommended a podfic with an evil cursed book of penis spells and then you find the old tiny test book cover you made a year ago while testing a cover construction and retrofit pages to it to make the dick spell book real but also it's tiny?

enjoy.

[magneticghouls]

wait ok what was everyone's gateway rpf

[rats-on-ice]

puppy crushes are such an underrated relationship dynamic. I love a character that's admires another character so much they can't help but have a little crush about it, and the other character has no obligation to return the sentiment. I love when romantic tension/ yearning is resolved by evolution of character rather than obligatory fulfillment of the desire. I love romantic feelings that have to be grown out of for a character to mature.

[deepestbluesky]

my latest fanbinding is a gift for @enter-remiges and now that it has arrived to her, i can post about it! this is her Lan Qiren-centric MDZS series, remember how the morning will arrive, colloquially known to the two of us as "angst AU". if you have not read this, i really really really think you should check it out if you can handle the topics that are warned for—i beta read this and helped cheerlead remi in writing it, and it still made me cry when i reread it in the process of binding. it's such a wonderful character study and examination of living with trauma and it's REALLY BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN!!!

and now to talk about the binding:

SO. let's start with the art. magnolias are a really memorable motif in the fic, so i went looking for Chinese art of magnolias and found some really cool options! and then... I went back and looked at when remi and i had chatted about her wanting to bind this a long time ago and realized she'd said she wouldn't want to use magnolias because then it would feel like it defines LQR's arc. so... i went a different direction lol. the art at the start of each fic is a painted silk fan with plants and birds that is supposed to correspond loosely with something seasonal about each individual fic (section opener art). and the birds are ALSO a motif! and the title page art is also Chinese art of a tree that is absolutely not a magnolia lmao.

generally for the binding, i wanted pale, cool blues and whites and grays—Lan colors but muted. i feel like that's always a good match for LQR anyway and especially in this fic, it felt right. i thought about trying to get the cassia tree from the title page on the cover, but I couldn't figure out a good way that i liked, and i wanted a cutout of some sort, so i ended up figuring i could mimic the art of the section openers with a circle cutout on the front! didn't really think about how that meant i would need to CUT OUT A CIRCLE, famously A VERY HARD THING TO DO but whatever i managed lol. i also have some very cool translucent leaf pattern paper that i thought would look neat over a pale blue. and it does! it also wrinkled a bunch when i glued it together, so there's an unexpected watery texture that i think actually is very cool. fun surprise!

as far as the layout, my original idea was to go for a very literary fiction look—I went to Barnes and Noble and took pictures of a bunch of literary novels for inspiration for title pages and text and just overall Feel of the design. And then I promptly ignored all of that for the title page and just went by what felt right. And I also added the really fancy first letter at the start of each story bc I thought it would look cool, even though that’s VERY not a litfic design choice. But I do think I managed the vibe I was going for overall anyway!

[aquilacalvitium]

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

[aquilacalvitium]

Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again

[heedra]

one of my very favorite obscure story tropes is when there’s an episode/plotline/tabletop campaign session where the conceit is ‘each member of the gang gets trapped in a specially tailored dream/nightmare/illusory mindscape and has to break out’

[abalonetea]

my favorite addition to this trope is when the gang has to pass through everyone’s specially tailored nightmare scape and it’s just one gut punching trauma after the next that their friends help them through

[gallusrostromegalus]

Some good twists on these:

Nightmares:

- one party member’s nightmare seems like a perfectly normal and even pleasant scenario until the rest of the party realizes that what’s normal and pleasant for them is terrifying for the other member.

-the happy-go-lucky character who told everyone their fear is something benign like “ducks” actually has a massive and crushing trauma nightmare scenario they never told anyone about because they didn’t want to be a burden/still can’t trust.

- villain tries to make a nightmare scenario for someone and it backfires because they didn’t realize that guy is a grade-A Freak and they love it.

“ideal life” illusions

- villain attempts to make what they think will be an ideal dream life only for the protagonist to immediately point out a glaring flaw or get mad because they know damn well life isn’t like this

-a party member struggles to break free from the illusion because it’s just like regular life for them

- party discovers someone in the group has been not entirely honest about who they are when their ideal life doesn’t match thier projected persona at all.

-the illusion is exactly the same as real life save for one glaring but inconsequential difference, like someone having a different hair color.

[eltrolodecadadia]

[yabagofmilfs]

on a related note—awhile back i created this wheel with all the summer bingo prompts from last year.

spin it twice—would you read/write that combo?

helllllll yeah brother

for sure

eh it’s fine

no thanks i hate it

i have no feelings about it / im bald / nuance

Voting ended onApr 30

bonus points if you elaborate on your choice in the tags because i’m nosy.

[thirdity]

“You write the beginning and then you go back and rewrite the beginning, and you never got off page one. It’s kind of a syndrome, and I have a rash piece of advice which is — Go on, page two, page three, and never look back. Get something finished, no matter how lousy it is. […] Perfectionists cannot get going unless they kind of do violence to their own instincts, and just blast ahead.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations

[thatgayunoriginalbastard]

Fanfiction Jargon Study

Hey y'all! So I know I haven't posted much lately BUT college has been crazy. And related to that, for one of my classes I'm doing a study on the relationship between time within the greater fandom community and understanding of fanfiction-related jargon. Below I have the link to the survey which will just have three multiple choice questions relating to your relationship to fandom and then a list of 15 terms to define if you know them. 

Please reblog this or otherwise share the survey link with anyone you think might be interested so I can have as large of a sample size as possible for this. The form will be open until April 24th. 

Thank you all so much! 

(and yes, I will post the data when I get it all collected for all you fellow nerds)

Defining Fandom Jargon

A survey to determine the relationship between the understanding of fandom jargon and the time one has been in the fandom community