#ameliacareful

[monicawoe]

Fic Writer Tag Game

Tagged by the lovely @denugis and @ameliacareful Thanks!

AO3 Name: monicawoe 

Fandoms: My top 3 fandoms are Supernatural, MCU, and Venom, others include various Marvel comics and TV shows, Alien Covenant, Forever Knight, Good Omens, Hannibal, Legion (tv), Lucifer (comics), Preacher (tv), and The Mandalorian

Fic you spent the most time on: In terms of longest time spent writing? Probably Burdens Doublefold, co-written with @quickreaver just because it was such a beast of a fic: still my longest at ~67k words, and still one of my all-time faves.

The longest one from conception to actually completing the fic though was On His Head a Crown which I started thinking of while season 5 aired (back in 2009!) and then didn't write because canon went in such a different and also fascinating direction that I ended up writing more canon-adjacent fics at the time. This one veers off wildly from 5x03 with Sam as the Horseman Conquest, and was finally written last year as part of the Sam Winchester Big Bang featuring glorious art by @slytherkins. That means it actually took me a full ten years to get around to writing it. Glad I did though ; )

Fic you spent the least amount of time on:  A tie between Letters of Resignation, a cracky collection of letters written from the POV of the demons killed by Sam during My Bloody Valentine and Hunt, the first Sharp Teeth fill I ever did for the prompt Wile E. Coyote finally catches the Roadrunner.

Longest fic: Burdens Doublefold, as noted above, a 67k retelling of seasons 1 & 2 co-written with @quickreaver, aka the fic where I wrote myself into shipping Sam/Brady forever.

Shortest fic: a 100 word BuckyNat poem Mirror

Most hits: How They Make You a Weapon at 18,619 , Winter Soldier POV beginning with Bucky being captured by Hydra through and beyond the end of CA:TWS) This is the only fic I've ever written in second person but I found it worked rather well for the Winter Soldier's POV accentuating his missing sense of self.

Most kudos: Ink at 2165, Venom (movie), Venom admires Eddie's tattoos.

Most comment threads: Also How They Make You a Weapon at 133, likely largely due to the fact that this was posted as a WIP, which I don't normally do, but at the time I felt a burning need to immediately share all of my Winter Soldier Bucky thoughts!

Fave fic you wrote: Wow that's a tough one. I love so many of them for so many different reasons. If I had to pick one favorite from my top three fandoms it would be:

MCU: Bad Becomes Worse. I suspect it might be one of the best (albeit angstiest) fics I've ever written, you tell me.

Supernatural: Counteroffer and its sequel The King's Guard - I still really love the unreliable narrator POV in the first one and the unsettling tone I think I achieved there, and as for the sequel, writing Sam as physically containing all of Hell was just so damn fun.

Venom: Wedding Party (because this one was just SO MUCH FUN to write!)

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: So many. Early on in my spn fic-writing days I ended on cliffhangers a lot because that's what the show liked to do, and I myself enjoy the open-ended nature of them, but some of them really are begging for a sequel. If there's any particular one you'd like to see a time-stamp to let me know and I’ll likely add it to the list.  

I am currently working on a sequel to my most recent Venom fic Many Thousand Feet Beneath because I'm told I can't just leave those biotech millipedes under San Francisco! (and you're right readers, you're right!) It will take me a bit longer because ::gestures at everything this year:: but I promise I'm on it!

Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea that you’re planning: (see longish excerpt of my WIP of Kale!Sam / King of Hell Sam under the read more tag below)

Tagging : @wetsammywinchester , @slytherkins, @brendaonao3, @rokhal, @tigerlilynoh, @hafital​

a WIP fill of a prompt for the 2020 round of Antichristmas: Sam Winchester's Birthday Prompt-fic extravaganza (still accepting prompts if you want to join the fun! fics due in May, for Sam’s birthday)

Sam stood in front of his new Mirror™ and smoothed down the front of his moisture-wicking tank top.  He could feel the increased definition in his abs, but it wasn't quite where he wanted it to be. Not yet. He was, as ever, determined to be his best self. That's what he'd built his whole career on, and he had to embody it wholly.

"Alexa, start Mirror, play Morning Pilates," Sam said, getting into starting position on his PVC-free yoga mat.

He moved through the first three exercises with ease, looking forward to the upcoming side plank with grim eagerness. He'd been getting better at the advanced version and was confident he could hold the position perfectly. When the time came he held the form without any quivering in his arm or leg, so focused on using his core to hold himself still that it took him a few seconds to realize the mirror was glitching. Sam's reflection wasn't doing a pristine side-plank at all it was just standing there. And it was wearing a suit.

A suit he was pretty sure he didn't even own.

"Alexa, restart mirror," he snapped, annoyed at this interrupt. He could hold side-plank a long time, but likely not all the way through the restart and plus he wanted to make sure his other side got an equal amount of attention, and— The mirror hadn't turned off. A bright red line was flickering down the middle. And his reflection—still wearing a black suit with a dark maroon silk shirt—was looking right at him, a crooked smile creeping across its lips. 

Unsettled, Sam pushed himself to his feet and moved to turn the damn thing off manually. He pressed himself up against the glass, reaching around the back with his left hand to find the reset button, and then the glass wriggled under him, and a hand grabbed him by the throat.

Sam choked as he was lifted two inches clear off the ground by himself. Or somebody who looked exactly like him. Except for the suit and his eyes which flashed golden-yellow just before he tossed Sam unceremoniously to the floor.

[semirahrose]

It’s unbelievable what a little kindness can do. I read your kind messages and let myself cry and I’ll figure this out. I feel much better. Thank you all. You’re wonderful beyond words and I adore you. Thanks for taking a moment out of your own lives to generously share your support when you all have your own struggles. You have beautiful souls. ❤️❤️ Replies under the cut.

sunflowerchester replied to your post:

omg honey i'm so glad you're okay, of course you can grieve a car, don't be too hard on yourself <3

;A; Thank you so much. I think I’ll compare any car I ever own after this to that one. It was wonderful. I already miss it.

ameliacareful replied to your post:

The first car I bought with my own money, I drove until it was getting old, then passed it on to my kid who didn’t appreciate it.  I still think about that Toyota with great fondness.

Entirely understandable! Yeah, this one was the same. I feel like I put so much into it and got so much back. It was the enabler of many adventures and many wonderful new twists and turns in my life. Toyota for the win! Mine was an old Prius.

geekinthejeep replied to your post:

oh sem <333 i’m grateful you’re okay. everything you’re feeling is totally valid.

<33333333 You’re the best, thank you. I don’t think I really understood how much I needed to know that it was okay to feel so messed up about it.

lovedsammy replied to your post:

omg im SOOO glad you're all right!! Terribly sorry about your car, especially since you held such fondness for it. ;A; I'm so sorry this happened.

Thank you! I was really lucky to be wearing a huge thick coat over the thick sweater and extremely thick scarf, so the seatbelt bruising wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Ahhh, yeah, I’m gonna miss the heck out of my little car. I didn’t really think I was one to get attached to inanimate objects, but apparently I really really had a soft spot for that old thing. Thank you more than I can ever say for the super sweet message! <3 ;___; 

cagetraumasam replied to your post:

I’m so sorry that that happened!! I’m so glad you’re okay, but I completely understand being overwhelmed. That’s a lot to deal with. I’m trying my best to send good vibes your way. I hope you feel better soon. And of course you can grieve your car! Anything that you’re feeling is natural and valid, and lots of people are very attached to their cars. Also, I totally know what it feels like to question urself - but pls try not to beat yourself up!  We can only try our best; sometimes sucky things just happen. I hope things get better for you really soon. 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

You’re so kind and your support means everything to me. Good vibes absolutely received. I hope you know that you’re wonderful. Thank you thank you thank you ;A; <333

kleinerwaschbaer replied to your post:

Hey my dear! I am so really sorry but at the same time relieved that nothing has happened to you ❤️. I hope things get better soon!!! All ghe love and hugs

Hey back!  ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Thanks for the kindness and concern and support and good wishes and hugs! Right back at you! *hug*

klove0511 replied to your post:

Hugs. I'm so sorry this happened to you, but I'm really glad you're ok and the other person is ok (you know, physically). First cars are a little like first loves, in my experience. So yeah, it makes sense that you're grieving your car.

*hugs back!* Thank you. I’m really glad, too! It could have been much worse than the loss of a car, and I had a chance to sit down and do a bit of planning for where I need to go next, which feels like letting go but was also quite a relief. I don’t think I’ll ever stop comparing future cars to my first one (I love your analogy, by the way??), but it enabled some amazing adventures. :D Thank you for taking the time to write this message. You’re unspeakably wonderful! <333

[themegalosaurus]

“Can I borrow your Jeep?” asks Max, and Alicia says, “No, I already said I’d meet the girls in town.” Come on, Max thinks, his date evaporating in front of him. How’s it fair that Alicia’s the one with the car, just because she’s more financially savvy than him? She can get one of her friends to pick her up. It’s not much for him to ask, one evening. Come on, let me take it, he thinks.

Next to him, Alicia stiffens, her limbs stuttering rigid. She drops the keys into his palm.

Max’s stomach swoops, a rollercoaster drop. “Shit,” he says. “Lish, no. Take the car if you want to.”

His sister’s head (his sister’s head?) tilts sideways, unnatural. She blinks at him. “It’s up to you.”

“Take the car,” Max says. He doesn’t feel like going out after all.

[lillysilverus]

Mysterious deaths are occurring in the small town of Norris TN and the residents are whispering about the Bledsoe Curse. But no one can tell Sam and Dean what the curse is or where it came from. And no one can explain what connection the deaths have to the old log cabin or the strange object they find there.

I wanted to recommend this fic.  It's a great case fic and goes back and forth between the boy's investigation and the past showing what lead up to the curse. It's very in -character and just a good read for anyone who likes a well written, well thought out casefic. It's Gen and it's not finished, but it's already up to thirteen chapters and they have updated fairly often.   Give it a look and give the authors some love.

[quakerhobbit]

denugis replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

I’m so sorry. You and your family are in my thoughts.

fioreitaliano replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

*hugs* I’m sorry. You’re in my thoughts and prayers.

bigfunnywords replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

I am so sorry. I know there are no words that can make this better, but know that you are surrounded by love and support, even from the Internet. ❤️

ameliacareful replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

So hard. Sympathy.

fides-sam replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

I’m so sorry. You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.

archeralec replied to your photo “Death doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes…”

I’m so sorry about your dad. I hope you’re alright and can grieve and heal however you need to. You and your family are in my thoughts and have my deepest sympathy. <3

Thanks, all of you. Internet support means a lot to me, and my family and I are fortunate to have lots of in-person support as well. People from church and my dad’s work are bringing meals to my mom, with enough for my siblings and I if/when we go hang out with her in the evenings. People who know about that stuff are helping my mom figure out all the legal/financial/insurance stuff (of which there’s a lot because death in this day and age is tied up in a bunch of weird mundanities). And my babies help lift everyone’s spirits (or at least provide a distraction because it’s hard to think about anything besides “dear god how do I make it stop what do you WANT” when there’s a crying baby).

(This post in reference to this from last week.)

[themegalosaurus]

On literary standards, ‘good writing’ and fanfiction

(@zmediaoutlet​ I’m looking at you - I meant to message this to you but it’s WAY too long. But it’s in response to these two posts of yours: 1 / 2.)

This thing about good writing/bad writing and how you determine which is which is interesting to me because a lot of the academic work I've done - including my PhD - has looked at texts that others have considered 'bad writing'. (I was working on cheap fiction from the early c19, which is very melodramatic, founded in repetitive genre cliche, uses a sort of heightened self-consciously ~literary language, contains a lot of political polemic, and lots of other things that don't fit into the model of the Victorian realist novel.) Working on those kinds of texts the point of view that I've come to find most useful is less about 'goodness' (measured against standards of 'the literary') and more about 'success'. Does a piece manage to achieve what it wants to do, within the parameters of its form/intention?

Of course that relies on the reader having a sense of the genre/context which would give them an idea of what it is that the author is looking to achieve - of what are the success criteria for a work of this type - but a) that's useful in itself because it requires paying close attention to generic convention and b) I think I like it as a reading approach because it's more flexible and because it doesn't privilege a particular set of standards which are bound up, as you say, with an educational background that has historically been accessible only to certain privileged classes of society. If you're responding to the rules that the text is helping to make for itself then it means you're open to thinking about different ways that texts can work on their readers and I think that can be really rewarding. (The readers for the stuff I was doing in my PhD were mostly drawn from the working classes. They didn't have the same educational background as the wealthy people who had historically been the readership for printed fiction and as such it would be weird if the people writing for this audience produced works of the same type as were being sold to the rich. That doesn't mean, I think, that what was being done in that cheap fiction was less valuable or less interesting or less 'good'. It's just a different set of techniques with their own ends and investigating them offers a new perspective on some of the things that literature can do.)

Also - and I've been meaning to respond to this for ages but let's do it here - I was interested in how firmly you drew the dividing line in this response (which was fascinating so thank you) between emotive/catharsis fic vs 'literary' fic which you frame as more logical and argumentative (about exploring a point of view rather than working through an emotion). Surely the lines are a lot more blurred? When I read and enjoy a work of literature it's not primarily an analytical experience, most of the time; it's much more about the emotional response that the text evokes in me. That doesn't mean that I can't admire something that's deftly written or clever or thought-provoking, just that the emotional level is always present and often at the forefront. This isn’t necessarily different in fic. I think a lot of ‘literary’ fic is absolutely working with an emotional goal in mind.

I was thinking about this because in general the role of emotion in literature is another thing that really interests me, particularly in the context I guess of an academic response - why it's more sort of academically respectable to talk about literature in a dispassionate way than it is to discuss its affective impact on us. Literature - it seems to me - is so much about emotion, and exploring emotion, and getting an empathetic sense of other people's experiences which is inevitably largely emotional in nature just because that's how we interact with the world, that the idea of having to neatly separate off our emotional responses to it in order to provide a 'serious' reading is... well, I think it's another reflection of the idea that there's a proper audience for literature and a proper way to read it and anything outside that is less or wrong. That's not me personally getting at you, btw, no way, I'm just... thinking about it.

To clarify that last point; what you see a lot of in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century is educated male elites getting twitchy about the new audiences coming to printed texts (specifically women and the working class), and the way they sort of tried to exclude these audiences from the debate was to characterise them as very emotional readers who couldn't control their responses to literature. This made them vulnerable to bad influences and demanded that the existing elites take a sort of supervisory role, choosing which texts were suitable for these audiences to consume in order to ensure that they didn't come to harm from reading texts that were too ~exciting (politically, sexually). So of course one response to that is for these audiences to sort of haul themselves up and demonstrate that they can participate in cultural debate in the same detached dispassionate way as the male elite supposedly does already. But the other way is to query that whole premise by pointing out that actually, that's nonsense. Nobody's response to literature or art is devoid of emotion and if it IS devoid of emotion then it's a very narrow, limited kind of response to have. In the C19 a lot of these debates are framed around pornography and people's access to it - it's okay for rich men to look at things which wouldn't be suitable for women or the working class. (Think about the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial - this was a book that got banned in the UK in the 1920s - famously the barrister for the prosecution asked the jury if this was a novel they would be happy for their 'wives or servants' to read.) The justification for that is that these men can be detached, scientific, whatever in their responses. But that's obviously disingenuous when the whole point of porn is the emotional/physical response it provokes.

So I suppose from the course of doing the PhD, what I’ve come to is sort of... a skepticism about the way that an education in literary criticism can often encourage us to respond to what we read. I think it misses out some key elements of what literature does and I think there are sort of palpable reasons for the approach it takes which are founded in outdated models of literary interaction that try and dictate who readers ought to be and how texts ought to go about their business. And I find it more fun, if sometimes more work, to try and do something closer to what I’ve seen called ‘reparative reading’, where you try and build a set of standards that are particular to a certain type or genre of text. And in the context of fanfiction in particular, I think this is relevant because this is a genre written largely by and for a marginalised audience and so there’s an absolutely direct comparison to the kinds of material I was looking at from the nineteenth century.

I know that what you’ve been saying doesn’t sit in direct contradiction to this. It seems more like, you know what kinds of texts you most enjoy and the criteria for those align quite closely with established academic standards about ‘the literary’, which doesn’t of course mean that you wouldn’t leave room for the kind of approach I’m describing. But I wanted to write a fuller response to the ideas you’ve been throwing around, and so, here it is! 

[themegalosaurus]

@zmediaoutlet and @winchestersinthedrift both tagged me to talk about my current WIPs but gosh it's difficult as I have like 8000 which are half-done or part-done and may or may not be finished. So I guess here are the top 8 in descending order of completeness/likelihood to actually be written...

1. The main one I'm definitely going to do is a long fic for an upcoming bang that will be a casefic with Sam/Max Banes and past Sam/Brady. I probably already revealed too much ahahaha but yeah ummmm I'm super excited about this one.

2. I have a set of prompts for Springfling and will be writing something for that this week (no more of that because it's double-blind and hush hush but I have a couple nice ideas).

3. I keep coming back to one that I've barely even started I think but is a sort-of-Wincest fic based on a prompt for the kinkmeme which someone already filled in a sort of... porn-logic way but I would like to fill in a real-life logic way. This one will be kind of angsty and difficult and I'm a bit not sure if anybody will read it (because Wincest people might not like that it's not very resolved or happy, and non-Wincest people will find it too Wincestuous). But I keep thinking about it so I guess it will get written anyway.

4. I have been writing a very silly J2/Stephen Amell threesome fic for like... two years or something and Becky keeps cheerleading it and I just reopened it after finishing my Sam Winchester Big Bang last week and have started to hack away at it again. It's only gonna be like a 5K PWP but you have to be in the right frame of mind to write that stuff, am I right?

5. I have another super-angsty Wincest fic part written that’s a coda to 11x18 (I think - one of those slightly awful late S11 episodes) but I have to be in a certain kind of self-destructive bad mood to write it ahahaha. (But I will finish that at some point I think.)

6. I want to write up the silly Sammax half-a-ficlet I posted yesterday into a slightly more beefy fic but that's just a function of my current deep obsession with that ship. Still it might happen I guess.

7. Somewhere deep in my likes I have saved a reply from @sheriffjodes to somebody on the premise that in S3/4 instead of Ruby it's Brady who comes back to act as Sam's demon temptress and like... HOOOBOY I wanna write that fic. So. Maybe next year’s SWBB.

8. Another airy fairy idea I might write at some point should the right opportunity present itself: a long-ish late-seasons first-time Wincest fic where Dean goes deaf after an accident on a hunt. Mostly because I want to write like 10k words about Sam's beautiful long fingers ahahahahahaa (EDIT: because of the sign language. I just realised I left out that key connecting detail omfg.)

OK that's enough I think, half of those aren't even really WIPs. (I just thought of like 2 more which I have in mind as sneaky treats for people but they can stay in my brain.)

Ummmm idk who follows me that is writing lots nowadays. @withthedemonblood, @wetsammywinchester, @ameliacareful, @caranfindel feel free to wax lyrical about what you’re up to... if you like

[themegalosaurus]

ameliacareful replied to your post “transgendersam replied to your photoset “Sam Winchester/Max Banes...”

Your eggplant boyfriend is here Sam! (I may die.)

i mean there was context for this (blame max) (no wait blame kendrick sampson) (who is not max however much the two have become conflated in my mind) (max is definitely a political activist now)

(the real question, tho: why do i always come back to sam/vegetables? every time)