hello! i just read your hamilton fic (i think it's yours) and holy hell that was brilliant omfg!!! it was so freaking cool!!!! im bad at analysis but SEER BURR and TIME LOOP !!!!! i just binged all of it
aaaaaaah thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!
also laughing at myself because SEERS and TIME LOOPS are like. the free space in my "Sidus Writes Things" bingo card. one day I will finish ifmlam. but until then you can at least still count on me to write seers and time loops
Me: Let me take a week off of Tumblr and just tag one post per day in my queue I’m sure nothing exciting will happen.
Me: comes back
(is there a happy version of that Troy gif? This news is basically the opposite of a garbage fire. ANYWAYS)
So just a summary of the important shit I’ve missed this week:
* I’ve gotten more notes and followers from REAL ACTUAL LIFE HUMANS on my Tumblr in this week than I’ve gotten the whole past year since I got back on Tumblr?
* And they’re Hamilton fans?? This fandom is not dead apparently???
* legit one of the most amazing stories let alone fanfics I’ve ever read UPDATED for the first time in LITERAL YEARS WHAT THE FUCK?
(As a sidenote I guess that explains why my round 2 fic notes exploded...)
So anyway thank you so much to my new followers, I appreciate y’all so much and now I just need to emotionally recover from the fact that ONE OF MY FAVORITE FICS EVER UPDATED OH MY GOD I WAS NOT PREPARED
the black hole in my stomach (caused by the horror of not seeing a new chap) has already eaten my stomach and um
I kinda need organs yk
it has not actually been abandoned! it is just on "oops combination of Too Many Other Writing Projects I Kept Starting and Life Being AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH means updates are let's just be honest with ourselves on the scale of years at least until I get my shit together." the former I can influence by Not Starting Any New Projects which I think I'm finally ready to Stick To That Condition For Real albeit....with six other open fanfics and five other active open original series-of-novels length works if I'm counting right though some of them are much more on the backburner than others but I'm not starting anything new until aLL OF THEM ARE DONE, the latter is so outside of my control.
There is one line from ifmlam that may have genuinely rewired my brain. Like, more than anything else I have ever read.
"Death is a rather permanent solution to things that are often rather temporary problems."
Or maybe it just put into words things I already believed, or needed very badly to believe. But either way, it sometimes feels like a sort of motto for me, and I'm very glad to have read it.
You don't need to respond to this or anything, I just wanted you to know.
honestly not to get super personal here but like. back when I was an Angsty Teen it was a thing that one of my best friends said to me a bunch and it wired itself into my head and what are creative outlets for it no putting the most important weird secrets out in plain view for someone else to pluck and find their own meaning in
i saw your post about anime bullshit vs ifmlam and can i just say im so glad you're having so much fun writing? i discovered you through ifmlam but i've been shoving your other fics and patreon and original stuff straight into my mouth because i love your style and knowing that you're having a good time even with the fic that definitely comes from a Different Time Of Your Life is just. really cool idk
aaaaah thank you so much!!!!
yeah it's really fun and funny looking at my writing over both short and long time frames because there's so much of me stamped in? like there are the tiny things like sometimes when I'm lazy coming up with idiosyncrasies for characters (everything from "I'm going to give you my coffee order" to "I'm going to give you my childhood hyperfixation with volcanoes"*) to obviously with my fanfiction there is the Piece Of Fiction I Was Obsessed With At The Time but also a lot of the original fiction that I have I can pinpoint the setting influences and vibe influences of both stories that I liked but also Other Things That Were Going On In My Life and it just kind of feels like my whole body of work traces my emotional state and the things I was excited about and loved and hated in weird subtle ways and I really like that, the same way that like. the playlists that I've made and listen to on repeat for months at a time have.
and it also kind of feeds into most of my projects are multi-year projects to ever finish but I never really try to build them around the expectation that I'll feel the same way for a decade, I build them around feelings that I know will be meaningful time capsules? like the way that I choose tattoos: as things that will mean something to me because they represent something important that I felt, not that I feel
and I guess I'm really glad that I'm in a space where ifmlam is actually exciting to me again, bc it was something that was a huge positive to me for so long and it was a piece of work that not only am I really proud of what I'd written but there are so many upcoming parts that I'm even prouder of and I'm really glad that I never gave up and posted the outline of the rest of it bc it is fun to look back on who I was and how I wrote and take a break from who I am and what I've been doing for the last 5-6 years and return to a previous place both with what's changed and what hasn't. it's nostalgic and it feels right. I think I needed the break but also never needed to throw out the baby with the bathwater and I'm glad that I didn't. and like. maybe I'm having Emotions bc my life is Changing right now faster and more drastically than it ever has before and I think vastly for the better? but boy is it Emotions.
anyways this is a long and rambly way of saying that yeah, ifmlam is officially coming back; there are 2130 words of the next chapter (and oops a bit of a life update) on my patreon right now, and whether or not the patreon keeps voting for that as my open work to guarantee my working on it, I think enough momentum is built up that a new chapter will be posted-posted in like. 3ish months tops? and I'm loathe to make predictions about my life given how unpredictable my life is being right now but maybe possibly it's getting to a place where ifmlam is back on a "sporadic every few months updates" track rather than a "several years of hiatus in between new chapter drops" track???? but I guess we'll see. I'm really having a fun time letting my patreon vote on stuff bc while "wait for inspiration to strike for any given project" is a fun way to do things, I've also realized that I've got so many multi-year projects to finish that crowdsourcing some of what I'm working on makes me feel like I'm making progress on things that matter rather than stalling out on everything bc it's all going at once
although also speaking of next few months and things no longer stalling even with it being The Most Anime Bullshit thing I've ever written GODS am I excited for Opus I and I think that one's also???? coming really soon??????? as in only a few months??????????
*neither of these have appeared yet in anything published please no one waste time pouring through everything I've ever published to try to find these examples
I’ve decided to try something new with my patreon, as I both currently (a) am in a tighter spot financially and currently need to be taking up extra work, and (b) would really like some of that work to be creative writing, so that I do not lose all time for writing in my life. So I will begin my patreon like a monthly writing commission: I will write [monthly earnings] x 10 words for whatever current work of mine the $5 tier or above votes for in a monthly poll.
I will continue to work on all other writing projects as the inspiration strikes me; this simply acts as a guarantee that I will produce a certain number of words for the chosen project in addition to that.
This means both fanfictions — ifmlam, ttbotr, wriu, aiimbp, abbabf — and the drafts that I am working on for both original short stories and novels. The full description of all of the options will be posted on each poll. I will post all words written from the previous month’s poll in the access to everything tag. Maximum possible words per month will cap at 10k, because that is the amount that I amount that I can reasonably do while still working my day job.
Full descriptions of the options below the cut.
Fanfiction:
it feels more like a memory: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456225/chapters/12613484] fandom: Hamilton. Aaron Burr is the Seer — a figure of religious and political importance, due to his ability to see how someone dies the first time he touches their bare skin. An extremely detailed series of eight different alternate histories emerge from there. This probably has at least 200k to go, with an existing outline of plot points to hit and scattered scenes written amongst that.
as if it must be pure: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/43954528/chapters/110519095] fandom: Boku no Hero Academia: I am gonchposting my way through a canon retelling healer! Izuku fic. featuring All For One having an existential crisis about a Yoichi-shaped child turning up out of the blue and sure is doing something with this ‘second chance’, big brother Tomura, the entire League of Villains’ original founding tenet being the Izuku Protection Squad, Aizawa is so tired of all these extra Problem Children he has accidentally adopted, All Might did not realize what he was getting into choosing this successor, Class 1-A unanimously deciding that their precious cinnamon roll must be shielded from this world and if the HPSC needs to go down to do it that is an acceptable price, and an incredibly tired hacker! Hitoshi who is not being paid enough to deal with the insanity and also terrible opsec of said Class 1-A conspiracy and almost certainly going to get a spinoff fic of his own.
we raise it up: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608963/chapters/56655328] fandom: the Magnus Archives. Jonathan Sims reads a Leitner, gains foreknowledge about the course of canon through the end of season 4, and everyone proceeds to run around like headless chickens with the playing in the background fixing everything. The five remaining chapters + four epilogues are painstakingly outlined and/or partially written, probably tentatively around 50k remaining with 20k of that already written.
to the bottom of the river: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066571/chapters/24678171] fandom: Yuri! on Ice. A retelling of the anime with a twist on the world background: people can lease their souls to demons in return for making various supernatural deals. There is a single chapter mostly written remaining that better emotionally wraps up and concludes the whole thing, then some additional content already ready to post as a patreon exclusive.
a buried and a burning flame: [https://archiveofourown.org/works/32158693/chapters/79679947] fandom: Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor. A retelling of the canon universe with the twist of two different sorts of culturally specific soulmates.
Unpublished Fanfiction:
the wind, the wind, the wind: lesbian Hadestown in space. need I say anything more.
shade of the morning sun: a crossover of my unpublished novel Opus (characters appearing in a beating heart of stone) with the Star Wars prequels. possibly the most insane and indulgent thing I’ve ever written.
Original Works:
Opus I: incredibly tired diplomat is annoyed that his assigned assassin-pretending-very-poorly-to-a-bodyguard’s murderous love polygon drama is going to have political ramifications that will in fact be his problem. featuring: Seers, except this Seer can only see 10 seconds into the future and uses it to be Extremely Good At Punching Things, the red/blue/gold relationship system, a magic system based around hiveminds, and an incredibly complicated and fucked-up language with plot-relevant linguistics. some characters and draft 0 concepts appear in a beating heart of stone to get an idea of the Vibes. This is the first in a series of, like, 15 books that will eventually become a multiverse-spanning space opera.
The Numanok Files: Murderbot Diaries crossed with non-sexist Dresden Files crossed with that TV show that was a psychic and a home inspector investigating supposed hauntings, but like, in space, and sometimes the hauntings are real. Valryka Numanok is a bounty hunter who specializes in dealing with ghosts, except while half of the time, a haunting is a haunting, the other half it is poorly covered wiring being affected by solar flares / an alien fungus / hi welcome to me infodumping about everything that might possibly go wrong in exoplanetary settlements. This is a series of novellas each following an individual case.
Strangeside 7: this is Redline but in the aesthetics of a Miyazaki movie; a civilization that spans a galaxy is constrained by the existence of the ‘Strange’ — think sci-fi Fae Wilds. Every year the Strangeside7 race runs through seven unannounced segments of the edges of the Strange. We follow the motley cast of characters as they attempt to qualify and run in this year’s race in a stand-alone novel.
The Heart And The Heartless: shounen anime of ‘kids going to sorcery-warrior school to learn how to wield their innate sorcerous abilities to hunt down and seal revenants’ except told from the perspective of the Incredibly Tired and Perpetually Overworked teachers. Also a stand-alone novel.
Link to my patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/savrenim
do you think you’ll be releasing the outline for ifmlam in the coming year?
honestly probably not. the thing with releasing the outline is.... just with respect to my brain and how I view stories and closure, if I release the ifmlam 'outline of what I would have written' that will be me declaring the story as incomplete and discontinued with the outline giving people the sense of how it would have ended. and I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on ifmlam like that yet?