the_rck

I'm looking for brainstorming and revision help with some Weiss Kreuz fics for weissvsaiyuki. I'm not sure how much canon knowledge is necessary for any of these. They're all Schwarz-centric, so there's less canon to work with (I don't even try to be consistent with the drama CDs and manga, just the anime).

One is either T or M rated and complete, but I think the ending is weak and possibly too rapid. I'd like a second opinion on it. The story is dark. I'm trying to end with a glimmer of hope, but that's one of the things I'm not sure even vaguely works.

The second is somewhere between one third and three quarters done. I'm at a point where I have to make a story decision and can't get myself to because none of the options quite work for me. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something. I'm not sure where to put the rating on this one-- Probably T for now with the possibility of it going upward depending on where it goes from here. Right now, it's gen (but could be read as Crawford and Schuldig being involved off screen. Or not), and I'm not planning to change that, but...

The third is E rated and potentially squicky due to noncon. I think it's half done. At about 2000 words in (out of about 3400 currently), it took a sudden left turn from PWP into character development that I think is not consistent with the first part of the story. I'm just too close to the story to be able to tell for sure, and I want a second opinion on that and on whether I should axe the character development to go back to the PWP or rewrite the first part to support the character development.

I'm looking for suggestions for story idea generators that might appeal to Cordelia. She says she wants to write but has no ideas. Anything I suggest is, naturally, too parentally tainted to be interesting, so I thought maybe some of those generators that slap ridiculous ideas together might help.

I don't play with them much, so I have no idea what's out there or how to find them.

I have signed up for Camp NaNo. I haven’t done anything with regard to cabins at this point, and I may not. I don’t know. My goal is 25000 words which will definitely include finishing my current exchange fic. I’m not sure what else I’ll end up working on.

( Talking about possible stories for WIP Big Bang )

I’m also considering Night on Fic Mountain which is a small fandom fic exchange. My main hesitation is that I’m not particularly enthusiastic about writing anything in the current tag set except the things I nominated.

An AO3 fic tagging question— How is it best to tag for something squicky that looks like it might happen in a fic but doesn’t? I know that this, a potential forced pregnancy, is a deal breaker for some readers in a rather nasty way. I hesitate to tag it straight up because it doesn’t actually happen. It goes beyond being referenced, though, because the POV character seriously considers it (she can shapeshift, so she can be coerced only up to a point on that subject) and isn’t happy about it.

Hm. Zoloft at night or Zoloft in the morning? The doctor told me that there was about an equal chance that the medication would make me sleepy or would make me unable to sleep.

I’m kind of leaning toward morning just because being sleepy in the morning would be less terrible for me than being sleepless tonight. On the other hand, Paxil made me fall asleep every time I stopped moving for more than a few seconds. I don’t remember how I reacted to Celexa (it’s been twenty years). Prozac didn’t make me sleepy or sleepless, just gave me constant tremors.

Anyone else taken Zoloft?

I have decided that I’m just going to end this Amber AU with the vague possibility of impending change and let everything I’ve written after that point be sequel material.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to tag this and what to mention in notes. Mandor’s in one chapter, 1300 words out of 33000. I didn’t tag for him. Should I? How do I tag for the fact that my first person narrator monologues (introspection) a lot? Right now, I just mention it in an author’s note. Do I need to warn people that Merlin has kids if they never appear in the text but are a plot point?

Right now, my tags are: Revenge, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Shapeshifting, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Ambiguous/Open Ending, POV First Person, and Captivity. I’m warning for rape/non-con. I wanted to tag for dark!Merlin, but that autofilled, and I’m 100% sure that the other stories with that tag are referring to a different character and canon. I’m not sure I want this fic lumped in with those, but I feel like that might be information a potential reader might want. Author’s note or use the tag anyway?

There’s an offscreen death of a canonical character who doesn’t actually appear in the story. Does that need a warning? I’m not sure it should go to archive warning level, but maybe another author’s note? If I use the archive warning, I think people might assume that one of the characters who appears in the story will die.

But my author’s note is really very long already. Will anybody actually read it?

I’ve got everything in a draft on AO3. Twelve chapters. I need to check the FAQ for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang to see if there’s a prohibition on posting early or when exactly I’m supposed to post.

Black tea and two candy bars helped considerably yesterday afternoon so that I was able to cook dinner and do all of the other things I needed to get done. I’m pretty sure it was the candy bars more than the tea unfortunately. We don’t keep anything like that in the house. That’s deliberate on my part because I don’t want to be tempted by such things. I’m just not at all sure what to do about the times when I really, really need something of the sort. Yesterday, Scott was stopping on his way home anyway, but I don’t necessarily droop like that at convenient times.

I think I have to manage to plan ahead better in the future so that I don’t end up with a day like yesterday where there are several chores that have to be dealt with. Dishes and making a sandwich for Scott come up every day. Adding laundry, trash, showering, and cooking (twice!) to that was way, way too much.

I cooked a chicken in the pressure cooker. Scott tried to tell me that the weight of the chicken didn’t affect cooking time, and I didn’t believe him, so I researched it and found several places recommending six minutes per pound with an additional two minutes or so just to be sure. Everybody really thought that browning the chicken first was important, but I skipped that step anyway. Even if we were going to eat the skin, I don’t have the resources to do something like that when I’m feeling 100%. Most recipes called for a cup of water. A couple of them suggested stuffing half a lemon inside the chicken. I wasn’t going to do that or whole garlic cloves or rub the chicken with salt and/or herbs, but I did use half a cup of lemon juice with half a cup of water for the liquid. I didn’t taste any difference, so I probably won’t do that again.

I’m trying to convince myself not to offer on a pinch hit for an exchange with a deadline at the end of September. I don’t know the fandoms dreadfully well, and the potential recipient doesn’t seem to have a letter or any other source of additional details (I also didn’t see any DNWs listed which would worry me), but the requests as given are things I absolutely could write, even playing to my strengths, and the fandoms are things where some level of fannish osmosis might work.

I keep hoping someone else will step up for the pinch hit (then I could write a treat. Or not), but it’s been going begging since the 14th, so I don’t know… Somebody with moderate canon knowledge might be better than no one at all. Committing to something with both a deadline and a recipient is scary, but it’s something I’m going to want to do eventually. Might it not be better to start with something where I’ve seen the prompts/requests before committing myself?

I’m having trouble finding enthusiasm for the prospect of doing Yuletide this year, and that makes me sad. I think I’m looking at things like nominating as chores. I don’t know if I’d look at writing for it that way or not. If I did, it would be a rotten thing to do to myself (and likely rotten for my recipient, too). But maybe I wouldn’t feel like that when it came time to write? I always nominate from the angle of what I want to request because I have a hard time finding things other people have nominated that appeal to me as a recipient (I always have lots of things I feel I can offer with enthusiasm). Right now, I don’t actually want anything because that’s too much effort. The best I can muster is, "Eh. I wouldn’t object to that."

I slept reasonably well last night. I had some trouble getting back to sleep after Scott got up, but I did manage it eventually, and I didn’t get up until 10:00. I meant to go to bed early, but somehow, once I got to 8:00, I wasn’t actually sleepy any more. I headed for bed around 11:00 and had just gotten into bed when the phone rang. Scott hadn’t put the bedroom phone back after the whole putting the phones in the refrigerator on Saturday night, so I had to stumble to the living room and find a phone there. It was his work calling to say they wouldn’t need him at 3:00 after all. Which was what I figured it had to be.

I woke with a headache, but coffee helped. I rather suspect that it was the sugar in the creamer rather than the caffeine. I didn’t end up taking anything else for it.

Cordelia ended up with two friends over to watch Attack of the Clones yesterday. They didn’t finish the movie before the other two needed to go home, but I don’t think they cared. The friend who won’t let them talk over movies wasn’t there, so they talked a lot, some making fun of the movie and some just talking. Cordelia made me leave the living room so that they could watch. I suppose that, with me in another room, they could pretend that I couldn’t hear them.

I’m going to have to do two loads of laundry today. If I have energy for it, I may try to work on the books in the basement again. I haven’t touched them since mid-June, and there are bits I can manage in five minute increments. I’ll have to go down there three times to deal with laundry. If I can do five minutes of books each time, that will add up.

I spent a good bit of time yesterday writing and expect to do the same today. I’m working in little scraps, creating things that may not actually ever fit together.

I’m a little… I’m not even sure what I am, but it’s Yuletide nomination time in another few weeks. I don’t know if I’m going to participate this year or not. Unlike last year, I probably could this year. I’m just not sure that I want to. I’ve been busily writing fragments of a lot of things that I might, in theory, be able to finish and that I will almost certainly abandon if I do Yuletide. I also… I don’t think that darkfic is appropriate for Yuletide unless it’s specifically requested, and that seems to be the direction I’m still going right now. But Yuletide gets me to write things I’d never have tried otherwise, and I really love that.

I suppose that nominating doesn’t commit me to anything.

I’m tempted to do a poll asking what I should write next, but I don’t think I’d actually follow the results, so it would mainly be an exercise in seeing if anybody cares about what I’m working on. And six of the things I’m thinking about are very definitely novel length or longer.

Here’s a question I’d like opinions on— In terms of works in progress where I have multiple chapters that I’m fairly certain are solid and not going to change, should I post those chapters? I haven’t been willing to do that since I realized that I was stalling out on Rheotaxis, and I can’t promise that I won’t stall out on these, too. In fact, it’s pretty likely. I think I’m mainly tempted because I want to talk to people about these worlds in my head, and I’m not certain that posting to AO3 would give me conversation.

Anyone know, realistically, how hard it would be to get from a hotel near O’Hare to various touristy things in Chicago? I’ve found a hotel near O’Hare that’s within our price range, highly rated, and that has all of the things we were looking for. I think we can deal with airport noise if we need to, given everything else.

Google says that, right now, driving from there to each of the four destinations I suggested would be in the forty to fifty minutes range and that mass transit would be about an hour and ten minutes. I have no idea how weekday traffic would change the driving estimates or if there are more options for mass transit on weekdays (I know that there are more buses around here during the week, but I don’t know if that applies in places with better mass transit).

I was extremely surprised that all four destinations came out so close in terms of trip time. That seems unlikely. I’m also really wary— Google’s trip planner is extremely unreliable when it comes to getting around the Ann Arbor area using mass transit. I have no data as to whether or not it’s better for the Chicago area.

I sat on these for a while after writing them up. A lot of them turned into more me figuring out what the problem was and, maybe, what to do about it as opposed to me being puzzled over the problem or wanting help figuring out a solution. I think that writing about this has been good for me in terms of figuring out where these stories stand. I’m not sure that it’s actually at all interesting for anyone who’s not me, but posting it here means I won’t lose track of it. And if anyone actually wants to discuss any of these, I’m definitely up for it. I’m still not going to fast about responding to comments, but I’ll get there eventually.

I have also decided to label a bunch of bits and pieces that I haven’t touched in at least fifteen years as 'abandoned.' I’m not sure that I will hold to that because I’ve thought for years that I would go back to one or another of those stories, but… I haven’t done it so far, and it’s not like I don’t have enough other WIP to think about. The abandoned stories include two things that I wrote more than 20000 words on, so letting go is hard, but… No new words in a decade and a half. If I finished those stories, they might be great, or they might be terrible, but I’m not going to finish them.

( Auguries of Innocence (Harry Potter). Discussion of rape in a dark AU. )

( Occlusion (Weiss Kreuz) )

( Untitled Weiss Kreuz time travel fic )

( Nothing False and Possible (Amber). Discussion of gender and sexuality and what they mean for a species not fixed in terms of either )

( Untitled Amber fic. Discussion of Patternghosts and effective slavery )

( Untitled Narnia fic with Rilian and the Lady of the Green Kirtle )

( Untitled Narnia fic with Polly and Digory back in Narnia )

( One More Folded Sunset (Weiss Kreuz) )

( Read more... )

And right here is a placeholder for something that I’ve realized I’m not writing because it’s the purest of Mary Sue crossover id fic and okay for day dreaming but actually extremely dull (even to me) when I try to write it. So that’s one WIP off my list.

( Rooms of Falling Rain (DCU) )

( Shatter Like a Cry (Weiss Kreuz) PWP BDSM with five male characters )

I should note that, both for the stuff listed here and in the previous post on the subject, I’m willing to let people see the fragments I’ve got if they’re willing to talk to me about them. I write better when I can talk to people about what I’m putting together. It’s just that a lot of this is darkfic or explicit or for obscure fandoms or otherwise not likely to interest 99.9% of the world.