#ly updates

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

this is an open and formal invitation for any songs that make you think of ly!dan (whether it’s him/his character, him & phil, or him & izzy — all suggestions welcomed)

(if you’ve dropped them in a comment on ao3 and see this, it wouldn’t hurt to reply/send an ask if you see this because 1) i’m frightfully forgetful and 2) i’m trying to catalogue them in one place)

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

a proper ly progress update

tldr: it's fine, we're getting there, just getting there slowly (no eta on posting tho)

it's been a hot minute since the last chapter (which ended on a cliffhanger no less!!!) and i've been less vocal about updates for a mixture of both life reasons and writing reasons. but i also miss yapping here so i thought i'd info dump a bunch of those

life reasons:

icymi i moved house in june and despite only moving 20 miles it has been a very chaotic move for lots of reasons, including that i'm navigating a couple of other big life things at the same time (ie, bought a car, three cheers for freedom).

i'm 3 months on t (just upped from half to full dose last injection) and while i'm fucking loving everything t is doing, i also feel like my dysphoria has gotten a million times worse (probably an overly personal think piece on this coming at some point)

i've had a really cool chronic pain thing going on w my sciatic nerve (which has been happening for ~6 months, but definitely went from "annoying" to "oh, debilitating, actually" due to all the lifting w the move) that literally mostly only hurts when i sit or lie down. aka when i work... or write (i have started seeing a doctor for this and am wrapping up the first line of intervention, which seems to have alleviated pain while i took the drugs but not solved the problem so... probably will need to do like an mri or some shit)

writing reasons

i knew all of the above (except the worsened chronic pain, that was a ✨fun surprise✨) would mean i'd have a few weeks of forced vacation from writing, and i thought i left myself in great shape with that. aka with like 6k of part 3 written and just a couple of scenes to fill in... except after that break i came back to what i wrote and actually hated it. not just like the flow of the words because that's relatively easy to fix, but like the whole concept of the scene was wrong. so after a couple weeks of wrestling with "is this massive amount of text going to fit it" i eventually decided "no" and writing got easier (but not easy)

i'll yap more about this in the end notes of 45p3 probably, but this is quite possibly the hardest chapter of ly i've written. like, period. including the one after the six year hiatus. not a lot i can say on this front without being spoilery, but the crux of it is that they are two people trying really fucking hard to be mature and rational and kind in their communication, while also being really freaked out and imperfect and terrified. so writing has felt like constantly striving for the right balance between those two fact, while also not erring into either extreme

because of point 2, i've been writing like 300-600 words a day max, which even when i write every day, leads to... very slow progress. i'm finally up to 6.5k and happy with the overall content (incomplete, but not unimaginably so) but also feel like it's... unbelievably disconnected because i've been writing such intense dialogue snippets in these short little bursts.

yesterday i lowkey started from scratch -- not like, scratch scratch, but blank document, rewrite the messiest parts and copy/paste over the good parts. the opening 1500 words were so choppy originally that they basically needed rewriting, and I think some of the back half needs reordering, but that work seems to be going overall smoothly and i'm happy with how it's going

all that to say, no timeline on the chapter being posted. y'all are always amazing and not-pressurey, which I appreciate. but wanted you to know i am working on it and progress is happening, just mega slowly. cheerleading and yapping about the ly boys with you guys always brings a smile to my face & often helps me write better and faster, so thank you to those who have popped by even during the drought <3

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

due to the insanity of life, had to take a full two weeks off not just writing ly but even thinking about it. i’m so excited to finally be able to look at it again, but also probably won’t have real writing brains for a few days.

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

think i'm gonna get wild and crazy this morning (drop ~12k of ly)

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

quick lil ly43 update

i’m moving, albeit it very slowly. before starting this chapter last weekend, i’d written a lot over the last six weeks, but not a lot of narrative fiction and getting back in that groove was unexpectedly hard. zero timeframe estimation at this point, but just wanted to share some general facts as a lil holdoer

current wc: 8.2k (some of which is bullets but bullets are plans yet to be enacted so!)

there’s a kink scene that’s currently at 3.6k

(and the *official* foreplay has only just begun)

lil bit of a different format this chapter, partially bc it benefits the plot and partially bc it eased me back into narrative fiction

getting to use (read: heavily doctor) not one but TWO scenes from the “future chapters” folder which is iNCREDIBLY exciting for me personally

emoji hints (in order of what i currently think of when i think of the chapter): 📱🧖🏻🫩🎙️😳🥃

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

is anyone with a phan/dan/phil-themed username willing to volunteer their name as tribute to show up in love yourself? I might yeet my keyboard across the fucking yard if i have to come up with one more fucking username.

if you’re willing, drop a yes in the post replies? I need… many

EDIT: if you don’t have a phan/dan/phil themed username and still would like your name in ly for some reason, i’m not actually that picky, just lmk lol

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

Love Yourself: The Playlists

I've been putting off sharing these for a long time, because I wanted them to be Complete™ when I shared. But I'm realizing, much like the fic, these are constantly evolving bodies of work and I don't know when I'll feel like they are Complete™, so I decided I'd share in the meantime. Don't be surprised if you see changes happen over time! If you have a suggestion for the crowd sourced playlist, by all means, send in an ask or comment!

LY: The Album: A playlist I've had for the entire life of writing this fic. It's grown and changed some over the years, and I reserve the right for it to grow and change up until ly!dan releases his album. But here's the official list of what I consider to be part of Love Yourself: The Album

LY: The Expanded Verse: Songs that (probably) don't fit on LY: The Album but I think ly!dan might have written at some point in the past, or might write someday in the future (some we might even see him write on page 👀). They are, incredibly roughly, in a vague chronological order for Dan's career.

LY: The Vibes: A playlist of songs that include everything from the album + the expanded verse, as as well as other songs that remind me of ly. Some are too far off music-style, some are songs I listened to while writing a chapter, some I just haven't mentally worked into the canon but might someday.

LY: Crowdsourced: I asked readers to recommend songs and boy did you deliver! I compiled them all so I could comb through them (which I haven't listened to all of them well enough to develop a personal verdict on them yet, so there's still a chance songs from this playlist could work their way onto other lists, too). If you suggested a song and it's NOT on this list that means I missed it for one of multiple reasons & please send it to me again.

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

today’s goal is to finish the draft of ly45. i’d say the end is in sight, except the end of it has been written for two weeks, and it’s more like i just need to write an introduction to the last scene lol. and then go back and sprinkle some more phil into the earliest scenes i wrote before he started talking to me again lol