#barely but...

[douevenbleachbro]

Albescence

Kurosaki Ichigo is a 20-year-old med-student who could see ghosts for as long as he can remember. Then one night he meets Kuchiki Rukia, a shinigami hunting monsters called Hollows. One thing led to another and now Ichigo is on the floor dying and Rukia needs to find a way to save him. The method to do so is...questionable.

Rated T

AO3

[nanayashi-agenda]

How do you think yashiro will react if he saw doumeki kissing or being intimate in some way with izumi? Do you think he’ll just accept it?

yeah he will. what else is there for him to do but accept it? we already saw it happen, kind of, and i've talked about how yashiro by the end of vol 9 seems to be more resigned in general than he was back just a few chapters ago. currently he's convinced that what he and doumeki have is just sex, and he knows that it's not his business who doumeki is seeing or sleeping with in the first place (he says so in ch 56, and he's right, but i'll never stop seething at the hypocrisy of doumeki's question there). yashiro is not in a position to demand anything, and he wasn't allowed to cope with his feelings (in an admittedly unhealthy way, but it is his right to do so) last time he saw doumeki with izumi either, so if anything i'm more curious if he'd even try to cope in his usual manner if it happened again or just... take it

personally i don't really expect a scene like what you're describing, though. the one we got was bad enough. while we as readers need an eventual confirmation one way or another on the nature of the relationship, yashiro already has his answer, and i think that in a way the interaction he saw hurt more than a kiss would have. it was so far removed from anything sexual (or even explicitly romantic), which gives it ambiguity, lets us speculate, but again - yashiro doesn't have a reason to. so what he saw was the intimacy that he and doumeki currently lack - izumi can call him by his name, simply talk while having her hand resting on doumeki's arm and be treated with gentleness and kindness. yashiro can't. hence his attempt to say "chikara" when they have sex later (back to the idea of "substitution" or "replacement", as in 代 in yashiro's name) and thoughts about how doumeki doesn't treat him gently as he would a woman. that scene was more about underlining the differences between yashiro and izumi, specifically in how they are treated (it's always about the ones that things are done to, right?) than about izumi's presence in itself

that being said, if we were to get a similar scene again and if we're talking about what would hurt yashiro to see, then... an embrace, i think. maybe throw an "anata" in there, too

[outlinesnotghosts]

Day Four

[anghraine]

Writing questions

Tagged by @incognitajones!

1. When you start a story, do you usually have a general plot overview or do you make it up as you go?

It depends. For longer stuff like ad astra/wgdots, I write out fairly detailed outlines with some room for improvisation, and also tend to have a side doc for things I definitely want to do but can’t bother to figure out with the outline, bits and pieces I cut out of other chapters or which popped into my head but I’m not writing yet, etc. 

I’ve occasionally gone for just starting something and going where it takes me, but that rarely ends well, unless it’s separate fics in a single continuity. So, like, I definitely planned for Script AU!Jyn and Cassian to leave Hoth before ESB (for canon continuity), but that was just something in the back of my head. I didn’t come up with the details until I got the prompt from @skitzofreak (lol, hi again).

2. What’s your preferred POV to write from?

Third person limited past tense. I don’t care for present tense—it’s fine for reading (though past is my favourite), but for writing it’s just viscerally uncomfortable.

3. Do you write fan or original fiction?

Both! I’m perpetually poking at a fantasy novel (w/ assorted short stories and such in the same universe) when I have the time and the willpower—@crocordile occasionally enables me. <3

But I’m not terribly concerned about publishing it. It’d be cool, and I never would have imagined I’d have academic publications before fiction ones, but lo, this is the life I have chosen.

4. Which one do you prefer?

Hard to say, really. Fanfic has the advantage of constant reinforcement and, maybe more importantly, a strong interpretative element. That is, it’s ultimately creative writing, but it’s creative writing that involves analyzing and interpreting texts, which is my... Thing. So the union of the two halves of my brain is very appealing. OTOH, I do really enjoy the freedom of original writing, where I can be God and consistency is about being consistent with myself rather than somebody else’s stuff. And I can just be like, okay, this is something that I find interesting, so now it’s going to be part of the universe.

So, hard to say. 

5. For fan fiction writers, do you like using AUs or canon settings better and why?

What-if canon-setting AUs, definitely. For me, the engine of my interest in fanfic is always my interest in the original source. The further it drifts from the source, the weaker that thread of engagement is. 

So, for instance, I’m really fond of otherwise canonverse genderbending, which a lot of people find disconnected from canon by its very essence (...and which they feel the need to tell me about in otherwise-complimentary comments. anyway). But moderns and historical AUs are a lot more difficult for me. I’ve written them, but both in what I read and write, there’s a sense of remoteness, a shallower engagement. 

6. What’s your favorite platform to post your work to?

In theory, Dreamwidth, but nobody comments there, so in practice, AO3. And I do really love AO3 as a common repository, and as something that functions entirely as an archive, with features as an archive, rather than a platform for something else that’s been sort of MacGyver’d into an archive.

7. How do you feel about unsolicited criticism?

It’s okay. I mean, I’m pretty /eyeroll about most that I actually get, because it’s usually either a misunderstanding or something that I was already aware of, but I don’t have any objection to it in theory. I’m pretty uncomfortable with people insisting that things they put out into the world should be immune from criticism; the issue, IMO, is with how and when it’s done.

8. Again, for fic writers, what’s your favorite fandom to write for?

The Borgias was the very nicest, but I’m weak enough that I probably enjoy writing for SW the most, just because there’s so much feedback and interaction and little pockets of community. I particularly like RO fandom because of the heavy overlap between gifmakers/ficwriters/meta writers/readers, so there’s this kind of constant feedback loop between the different areas of fandom—I’m constantly reblogging things that I find pretty from people who turn out to leave nice comments on my fic and such.

9. What is it about a certain character/relationship/fandom that inspires you to write about them?

It varies, but it’s usually because there’s something I find intensely engaging yet incomplete—so there are things I uncomplicatedly love, like Darcy/Elizabeth, but Austen has such a light touch that I want to dig into the spaces she didn’t or wouldn’t have filled. 

There are things that I love despite flaws in the canon, but it’s in some way abbreviated and I pretty much long for more of a chance to roll around in it on my own terms—so in very different ways, Luke and Anakin’s relationship or Jyn and Cassian’s. 

There are also just characters/ships who fit into tropes I find viscerally appealing For instance, I really like troubled heroes and/or troubled villains who are fucked up by forces outside of their control and make choices that are driven by a mix of their own agency and the things they can’t control (I’m sure this has nothing to do with constant bipolar cycles >_>). So Korra, Tarrlok, Noatak, and Kuvira in LOK were Id Central and I shipped all in various formations. 

10. Do you do much research before starting a piece?

Depends on the piece! But usually, it’s more that if I’m interested enough to write something that would benefit, I’m already so interested that I’m researching independently. So it can look like I’m doing a lot more fic research, when it’s really that I’m doing academic research and fic research just piggybacks off that. 

Say, I’d often get a sort of O_O at the amount of research in my long and much-footnoted Borgias fic, but I was actually very interested in them professionally and published a paper, so fic-specific research was just an extension of what I was already doing. And I was so enthused about my research that I wanted to work it into the fic as much as I could!

Same with Austen, where I’ll look up something specific if I need to, but most of what I know was done for separate academic work. Also, in general, ideas tend to catch my attention because of what I know, rather than starting with a vague idea and digging up information to make it work.

[ithadtobethemoon]

It's raining 😍