#marypsue

[thelibrarybat]

✍, 🛒, and ✨ for the fic ask meme, please?

✍ Do you have a beta reader?

Nope! No betas, we die like [insert fandom reference here].

When I'm writing original fiction, I'll have someone else look over it before I try to publish it anywhere - to catch typos, sanity-check what I've written, etc.. But fanfiction is my playground. I like to just toss my finished drafts out there and see what happens.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Blood. Memory, and lack thereof. Agency, and lack thereof. Conversations in bed. Hard moral choices. Streetlamps. City streets. Disability. Chronic pain. Queerness along various axes. Research. Pushing yourself too far. Monstrosity. Complicity in monstrosity. More blood. Fate, and what that means on a meta level. Dramatic anguished haircuts. Death. The modern Gothic.

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

I think I'm good at writing tragedy.

There are places in a dark story where you can chicken out, recoil from your own outline. Places where you know it's going to hurt and some readers might not like it. But I commit to the bit. I will never flinch away from a tragedy when I've chosen to write one.

I've been told by readers that my fanfiction has made them cry in public, which is an achievement. Most memorably, in a dentist's office and a bank. (Why anyone was reading my fic in a bank, I don't know, but I was delighted nonetheless.)

Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask

[amethystunarmed]

5, 7, and 13 for the music asks, please!

5. What 3 music artists would you say describes your taste in music?

My taste is so varied, god. Uhhhhhh, honestly I think my concert list speaks for this, I'm all over the place.

I very rarely listen to specific artists? I tend to attach more to songs.

7. How many concerts have you been to and which ones?

Let me think if I can remember them... I think five?

Hillary Duff, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Pentatonix/Kelly Clarkson, My Chemical Romance, and Elton John.

I am also planning to see Sabaton this year!

13. Have you made art or fanfic related to any music artist or their songs?

Haha, I sure have! I'll exclude fic I have for musicals, because I think that is too obvious. Honestly I use song lyrics as titles a lot, but the fics that I think could most be considered songs fics are:

Taste of a Poison Paradise, an Heir's Game comic where Cesair and Armand fall into a toxic relationship. (Toxic by Britney Spears)

Oh Captain Let's Make a Deal, a Pulp Musicals Fic where Morgan makes a deal with Kal to save AJ (Ship in a Bottle by Fin)

Will It Ever After Happily?, a Pulp Musicals fic about Rose contemplating her life after Samuel's death. (Ever After from Cinderella's Castle)

[titleleaf]

Frankly I don't know if we've shared a fandom in the last uhhhh decade (apart from that brief interlude with Eddie 'Cryballs' Strangerthings), but you are still the go-to The Lost Boys writer in my mind and a Ravenous crossover/AU by you would slap so unbelievably hard.

I know I really should be spinning out more of how I would write these but this also slaps and I want you to know I immediately envisioned Ives in the Max role, just a nice lavishly mustachioed health food store entrepreneur who wants to introduce all the starry-eyed seekers of California to his radical new dietary regimen for health and wealth. I don't know if this makes Boyd a surly teenager a la Michael or an extremely weary single parent with a minivan.

also my god, Eddie's cryballs are so majestic... I salute all your genuinely thoughtful and transformative ST fanworks and meta, I am just over here doing horrendous things to that young man's psyche and also asshole.

[marzipanandminutiae]

*I* want to hear everything you know about the Chocolate Cream Killer!

Many many people asked, so here we go!

Q: How do you get a man to leave his wife for you?

A: Mass poisoning, apparently.

At least, that's the answer if you're Christiana Edmunds.

Born in 1828 in Kent, England, she was highly educated and had apparently been diagnosed with "hysteria" in her early 20s. Given that this diagnosis was frequently a catchall term for "Woman Behaving In Unexpected Way," it's uncertain whether she suffered from an actual mental illness. But her behavior in her 40s, when she was living with her widowed mother in Brighton, would suggest that she may have been.

Around this time she became close to a married doctor, Charles Beard. Their exact relationship has never been worked out, but she tried to kill his wife in 1870 by giving her a poisoned chocolate truffle.

You know.

As one does.

It didn't work and, incredibly, despite strong suspicions that she was the culprit behind his wife's illness, Dr. Beard did absolutely nothing about this.

So she decided to poison. Um. Everybody.

Essentially, she bought boxes of fancy chocolates from some poor local confectioner, injected strychnine into them at home, and then returned them. Apparently returning fully opened packages of food was just Okay in 1871- one really begins to see how modern regulations on these things came about. The chocolates would then be put out for sale again, because I guess nobody saw anything wrong with that either as long as there were no visible bite marks. #capitalism or something

she hired local boys to buy the poison for her after the first few times, in an attempt to allay the suspicion that would doubtless arise if she were seen buying vast quantities of strychnine

(apparently the possibility that they would compare notes and be like "that Miss Edmunds keeps asking me to buy her poison for stray cats 'round her house [yes that was her actual excuse]. she asked you, too? seems a mite rum to me!" did not occur to her. I never said this was a smart Take Out Lover's Wife scheme)

meanwhile, large numbers of randos were getting sick all over Brighton, mostly visitors as it's a seaside resort town. nobody connected these illnesses to the chocolates until- and this part is not funny -4-year-old Sidney Barker, vacationing there with his parents, died from the poison.

that was the only death, and again, it's. not funny. a little boy died because this woman (maybe not fully rational, probably not intending anyone but her target to die, but still) wanted her crush/possible lover's wife out of the way and didn't care about the collateral damage. I will go back to the Ha Ha Funney Weird Inept Mass Poisoning tone in a moment, but...I don't know. take a moment of seriousness for this poor child

everyone good? okay. let's move on.

realizing that putting out poisoned chocolates into the world willy-nilly and hoping Mrs. Beard would buy some wasn't working, Edmunds escalated to just sending boxes of strychnine sweets directly to people- including her intended victim. I assume the rest were mere decoys to throw investigators off the scent, since she sent some to herself to allay suspicion. and pin the crime on the poor confectioner, to boot

but this time, Dr. Beard decided to get off his ass and actually Tell Someone that his possible ex-mistress had a murderous streak. thanks, Charlie. thanks for divulging that little fact

Edmunds was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder and attempted murder. though initially sentenced to hang, she was granted a reprieve due to apparent mental instability and lived out her days in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum [their wording, not mine]. she died in 1907

so that concludes our brief foray into True Crime, folks. remember, inspect your kids' Halloween chocolates! Someone might have [checks notes]:

bought a bag of Fun-Sized Snickers

opened the packaging

injected poison into the candy

returned them fully opened

counted upon them being placed back out for sale on the off chance that this person's crush's spouse might eat some

(dear sensational news outlets- THAT IS SARCASM)

[gretchensinister]

Kaiju Storm Chasers?

Living in the American Midwest as I do, I have always really, really wanted to see a tornado. At some point I thought, kaiju attacks are kind of like tornado touchdowns. And so I wrote a page and a half of vibes. No plot had begun to develop, and this is one of the inactive ones, but here's how it was going:

***

She wouldn’t wish. A wish would be cruel to the farmers that were her only neighbors out here, and if she voiced it and it came true, it might be too much to bear. Still, when the path of the red dot on the map shifted to place her late grandmother’s house (now her house) firmly in the red zone, she couldn’t help but grin. Her heart sped, and all her thoughts seemed turned into sparks. She felt almost like she was falling in love—and this was just the dot on her screen.

                “This way,” she whispered. “This way.”

                The dot moved. The clinking of the glasses grew louder. She laughed, and put her phone in her sweatshirt pocket. She wouldn’t need the dot anymore. That was what it meant to be in the red zone. With no more hesitation, she stepped out onto her porch.

Boom.

On the edge of the red zone, it felt like a short, low rumble of thunder. The boards under her feet buzzed, shedding paint chips. Habits of childhood pulled her gaze to the sky, but it was far from stormy. Herds of puffy white clouds flew across a bright blue sky, driven by a fresh spring wind.

Boom.

The last time she had felt like this, the sky had been a churning grey, the low clouds magnetic in the whipping wind rather than heavy.

The sky had shifted, then, turning greenish even as she watched. The wind pulled at her hair, her pajamas, forceful as an ocean riptide. She had been thirteen, then, left home alone that summer evening, and glad of it. Especially glad of it now that she stood on the porch, rather than in the basement, where voices from a hand-cranked radio would tell her to stay. It would be safer, but right now she didn’t want to be safer. She wanted to see. How many people got to see such things in their lifetimes? How many people took the chance?

And then again, even now, there might not be anything to see, despite the thunder and the wind and the green sky. A warning wasn’t a promise with something so unpredictable.

She walked from one side of the porch to the other, keeping one hand lightly on the railing, as if it would be enough to hold on to if…if…

[thefearofcod]

10, 17, and 26 for the ask meme, please!

10) alternate universes, canon divergence, or in-canon?

I am not a picky man. Something looks good to me, I will read it, especially if it's an author I'm already familiar with. like tbh @brawlite could probably write anything and I'd be like lol ok let's see it then. That said, if you manage to have some manner of alternate universe where everything is That Much Grimmer then I am on my way. also if you can involve a vampire in some capacity that never hurts. i want to see that sad fucked up man (generalization)

17) any crazy first-time fanfiction experiences?

I'm not sure how to answer this. Of course I've had a crazy fanfiction first experience? We've all looked at something and thought "how the fuck did you manage that" and then clicked through and learned something that day. and yeah we've all clicked something and got smacked in the face with some literary or sexual concept that had never occurred to us in history.

26) what’s your favorite part about fanfiction?

people will create anything! it's amazing! people will write any concept on earth! and they'll do it with their little paper dolls from the tv shows!! Much of the time, if I've thought of it, then someone has already done it, and it's wild to see that someone else had that same thought, and they posted about it! wow

[monsterhunting]

" ghost files cinematic universe pt 2" HI HELLO????

HELLO!!!

So ghost files cinematic universe part 2 is, as one might imagine, a fic that takes place within the ghost files au!! my friend Allie once was like “you should include too many spirits in the ghost files au universe” and i was like hmmm.…. and thus a Google doc was born. basically the fic would take place sometime in the middle of who you gonna call, before stoncy gets together, while nancy and jonathan are pining for steve (and steve is also pining, he is just blissfully unaware of it). it would be just a short lil thing about them filming a too many spirits-type show for ghost files, and Steve getting a lil too drunk, and the others having to help him out and take care of him and put him to bed so he doesn’t fall over and break something. The catch is that it would be Robin’s pov!!! So basically a fic of the moment she actually realizes Jonathan and Nancy have feelings for Steve. It would truly be such a short lil fic — like probably no more than 5k — I just haven’t actually had time to write it 😭 but one day! It’s on my immediate “to write” list!!

send me asks for the wip game!

[sayitwithsarcophilus]

Could I get a 100% organic home-grown authentic self-portrait of your Ms Frizzle dinosaur dress?