an excellent example of me being Back On My Bullshit: I was absentmindedly singing Christmas songs to myself while walking Hazy, as you do if you’re me, and it happened to be “O Come O Come Emmanuel” so the word “rejoice” was in there a lot, which reminded me of the scene in @lizardbeths’ fic Ragdoll where that particular word gives Loki a Thanos-era flashback, and anyway now I kind of want to write a Christmas fic where Loki goes with Steve and maybe a couple other Avengers to a Christmas Eve service out of curiosity and gets badly triggered because that specific word keeps popping up in the songs and sermon

and, I mean, I did kind of want to do a seasonal fic, especially since I actually did a New Year fic the last couple years, and this would arguably qualify

the problems with this, of course, are

  1. what fucking context would I set this in, like, post-IW fix-it or pre-IW AU or what, I don’t know what I like better or what makes more sense and the context would change like…everything
  2. it’s…ha ha shit less than two weeks until Christmas, and I have at least 10 reports to edit at work, a couple Etsy orders to finish and send very soon, and other packages to send, and other things I still need to list on Etsy, and Tumblr backups to deal with, and computer shopping to do very soon, and more cleaning to do, and a different fic I’d really like to finish for a Yuletide treat, and tons of gifts to sort and wrap, many other fics to write that people might actually be interested in, and we still haven’t set up the tree, and knowing myself it is not super realistic to think I could write a complete fic by Christmas even if I didn’t have…everything else

the fic writer’s eternal question: am I feeling stuck/unmotivated/etc. because of internal factors that I can control to some extent (tired, disorganized, busy with other things, general mental-health issues) and that are up to me to fix, or is it because I’m not getting enough attention to make the work feel worthwhile

and if it’s the latter, what the fuck do I do about that, considering I have never found a reliably effective way to advertise and I don’t have a big audience, so it mostly depends on whether someone who does have a big audience happens to reblog me…which pretty soon won’t even be a viable way to reach people because fuck Tumblr

(I will say, if you’ve ever thought one of my ideas or WIPs sounded cool, commenting on and reblogging fics I’ve already posted is THE BEST way to motivate me to write more)

Lie Down Weeping at Nightfall

ameliarating:

Summary

He swallowed up my name like it was covered in honey. “Mild-May-Your-Sufferings-Be,” he started and just like that it was his. And then he smiled wide as Don Escobar with the shepherdess, and laughed like him too. “At-The-Hands-Of-The-Wicked? Darling, what does that make me?”

In the Bastion, Mildmay slips.

Notes

So much thanks for the support and betaing rendered by @veliseraptor, without whom I never would read this quartet (and you all should to!) and probably wouldn’t be writing at all.

Lie Down Weeping at Nightfall

make it a clean break – 100indecisions – Marvel Cinematic Universe [Archive of Our Own]

Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki, En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki/Original Character(s), Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Characters: Loki (Marvel), En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster
Additional Tags: the OCs are just other party guests and barely mentioned, Extremely Dubious Consent, Loki (Marvel)-centric, Hurt Loki (Marvel), it’s weird whumpy dubcon kind-of porn idk, Dark Frostmaster, Orgy, POV Loki (Marvel), Angst, Past Torture, Bad BDSM Etiquette, I mean I guess that’s what it is, the violence is not really that graphic but tagging to be safe, Sakaar (Marvel), Sakaar Trash Party
Word count: 1261
Summary: When the sunlight finally drags Loki toward wakefulness, he is alone and in his own rooms in the Grandmaster’s palace. A missing moment on Sakaar.

I originally posted this on Tumblr Nov. 30, because I was obsessing over getting something new up during November, and I said I’d probably edit, title, and repost it the next day, and instead it took me a week and a half because of course it did. but hey, at least it’s there now. (will Tumblr cooperate this time with tagging @loxxxlay? guess we’ll see!)

make it a clean break – 100indecisions – Marvel Cinematic Universe [Archive of Our Own]

What are your thoughts on fanfiction authors who start writing and publishing original stuff? As someone who writes fanfic, it means a lot to see that a lot of my favorite authors did/do it too, but it also seems like it brings a LOT of crappy internet abuse with it, because sexism. :/

seananmcguire:

Hi!  My name is Seanan, and I’m a fanfic author.

My first “serious” writing–IE, had a continuity, was not abandoned as soon as it got hard, went through an actual editorial process where a red pen was applied to my precious pages–was for an ElfQuest fanzine called Dreamberry Jam.  I wrote about a glider/sea elf cross named Gull, who basically hopped from one disaster to another, because I was a sixteen year old girl with the power of life or death in her pen I WAS UNSTOPPABLE and I was having so much fun.  So much fun.

My high school LJ (which became my college LJ, which became my post-college LJ) was studded with Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic (not gonna lie: lots of porn there, much of it written for my girlfriend of the time, who had a thing for Buffy/Faith), with Veronica Mars fic (including my Shakespearean adaptation of season one), with Halloweentown fic (I am most of the fandom).  I have participated in every single Yuletide.  My agent knows I will turn down work in December so that I can remain a pitch-hitter for defaults.

What are my thoughts on fanfiction authors who start writing and publishing original stuff?

I’m in favor.

But you’re right: people do get some shit for their fannish pasts, and by “people” I mostly mean “women,” because “being a fanfic writer” is a “giggle giggle let’s show porn to the actors and see if they get mad” thing that girls do, while “putting myself in the story” is a manly masculine imagination thing that boys do.  Almost every guy in my high school creative writing classes began with a self-insert Trek or Wars character, assuming they weren’t writing up their D&D or World of Darkness campaigns, but they never got the scorn from the teachers or other students that the girls got for admitting that maybe they gave their OCs the hair color they’d always wanted.  It goes all the way back to elementary school.  It was totally normal for the boys to be racing around BEING STAR WARS PEW PEW PEW, but weird for the girls to want in.

(I know this is gender essentialist, I know, and I’m so sorry about that, but I’m talking about my elementary school experience, where girls would literally be pulled out of aggressive pretend play, and my high school experience, where the boys were encouraged to file off the serial numbers and the girls were told to write what they knew.  The lens of the past is dusty and cold.)

Most of the shit I see slung at former fanfic writers (or professional authors who still write fanfic) is thrown at women who write YA, because, well, fanfic is juvenile and YA is juvenile (unless you’re a man writing YA romance and then it’s world-changing and revelationary).  They are hence easy targets.  You’re right: it’s sexist.  It’s unfair.  It will, hopefully, decrease and even go away.  It will not happen fast enough for people to stop leaving bruises on my friends.

But here is the thing about fanfic: fanfic never dies.  From kids playing on the playground to elementary schoolers writing their first stories to adults on the internet, fanfic is the human urge to interface with the stories that make us.  A lot of very successful, very powerful works are saved from being fanfic solely by the fact that their source material is no longer under copyright.  As the number of those works increases, as the scholarship on and around fanfic increases, the stigma is going to decrease.  I genuinely believe that.  I look at fandom now and compare it to fandom ten years ago, and I see so much more acceptance of fanfic on both the fannish and professional levels.

Crappy internet abuse aside, fanfic is restorative and powerful and important, and if it’s a thing you enjoy, you should absolutely embrace it with all the joy you can.  The abuse may be here for a while yet.  I will not lie about that.

But I think our stories are stronger.

Simple tips for understanding and increasing (fanfiction) reader feedback:

avelera:

Desiring feedback is the perennial state of pretty much every fanfic writer I know. Fortunately, it is possible to increase the feedback you receive with a few simple and respectful tips! Unfortunately, there are many factors which are outside the writer’s control when it comes to receiving feedback, so you should be aware of those, but don’t worry about them. 

Writing quality is subjective. We should always strive for quality, but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it or compare ourselves to other writers. All that does is slow you down, which in turn stifles your improvement. You are only ever competing against yourself. So I’m going to start with a few reasons why your fic might not be getting the feedback you think it deserves, before diving in to ways you can improve that.

Fandom size: larger fandom will, naturally, have more readers. You should scale your expectation of Hits, Kudos, and Comments accordingly. In theory, if you’re starving for feedback you should focus your attention on larger fandoms, but I don’t recommend that. You should write what you’re passionate about.

Fandom timing: The day after the sequel film hits the theater you’re going to have an inrush of fans who are looking for fixit, romance, canon AU, or any number of needs the film/book/comic release etc left them with but did not fulfill. Unfortunately, writing takes time, especially for long pieces. Audience interest tapers off over that same time, with the occasional bump from a DVD release or a sequel announcement to remind people of that thing they love. 

Also, maybe you’re writing for a large fandom like the MCU, but it’s either flooded with writers or it’s been a while since they had a film focusing on your corner of it. Don’t despair that just because it’s a large fandom and you’re not getting attention that it’s necessarily a quality issue. It may just be there’s too much out there or there’s new, different content to disseminate and that’s where the majority of focus is.

Reader trust: It takes time to build up an audience, and you need to be gentle with yourself and with your expectations of feedback during that time. Even if you’re the greatest writer in the world, your first fic in a new fandom doesn’t necessarily come with a lot to recommend it. You’re relying on curiosity or boredom from readers scrolling randomly through the section, especially if you don’t promote yourself elsewhere or have readers who are following you from a prior fandom. There’s a lot out there, and like with published books, many readers just stick to authors they already like and trust, or they may just have one specific idea they want to read which your story doesn’t fit, or they just don’t intend to spend a lot of time in the fandom (which not everyone does!) and they rely on kudos/comment/hit count to tell them based on other readers what has been considered to be popular (which is not always the same as good!) so don’t take it personally. Sometimes it’s just a product of fandom timing. Having that solidly written movie fix-it ready within the week the film came out will tend to shoot a story to the top of the list, even if a “higher quality” one comes out later. 

Perennial rule for fanfic writers: do not compare yourself to other writers based on these metrics. There’s room enough for everyone. A larger number of fics in a fandom tends to INCREASE the number of readers, not decrease the amount of attention to go around. The presence of other fics and fic writers helps you, it doesn’t hurt you. You are colleagues, not competition. With that in mind, you should not be afraid to promote fellow fic writers! It’s very likely they will return the favor, but even if they don’t (and that’s fine!), it’s just a nice thing to do and makes you a positive member of fandom, which we should all strive to be. This can also serve as an aspect of winning reader trust if you are a known, positive entity in fandom.

With that in mind, let’s dive in to tips to increasing reader feedback. Most of my tips are going to focus on how to build an audience by increasing reader trust, the one thing a writer actually has some control over. See those below the cut.

Keep reading

soooooo @loxxxlay​ mentioned some whump preferences recently and I wanted to provide, especially because she’s been deep in Finals Hell and deserves something nice. which…may or may not be a reasonable way to describe…whatever this is.

anyway have 1200ish words of weird whumpy Frostmaster dubcon, unedited and untitled and here instead of AO3 because I continue to be anal about wanting to post at least one new thing each month but also it’s been a long weird day and I want to go the fuck to bed instead of staying up later to format and tag and edit and obsess over the right title and also fix weird issues from having to type it in OneDrive because Word apparently won’t open in Safe Mode. (I will almost definitely do that tomorrow, in between bouts of cleaning up my earthquake-disaster bedroom, which was a disaster pre-earthquake so as you can imagine it’s even worse now.)

When the sunlight finally drags Loki toward wakefulness, he is alone and in his own rooms in the Grandmaster’s palace, which comes as a relief; less so the gradual realization that he is entirely naked and lying on the floor. For a panicked moment he thinks either someone carried him here or he stumbled to his rooms like this under his own power, and as dangerous displays of vulnerability go, he is not sure which is worse.

His mind grudgingly supplies a foggy memory of bringing himself straight here with a twist of seidr after the party, so at least that is something, even if he’s taken great care to conceal his abilities from most of the people here. It’s insurance, the knowledge that he has at least one more trick up his sleeve in a place where losing the element of surprise can mean the difference between maintaining the Grandmaster’s favor and ending up poisoned or melted.

The party suite was almost certainly not empty when he left. If he is very lucky, which seems unlikely, it’s possible all the remaining partiers were insensate or otherwise occupied at the time, but there’s no guarantee of that either, and try as he might he can’t remember for certain. He only remembers—he was shaky, and the room was blurring at the edges, and all he wanted was to be not there.

Whatever was in the Grandmaster’s new party drug, it certainly was effective.

He rolls over with some difficulty to put his back to the wall. Everything aches, and every bit of his skin is sticky with…well, with fluids, many of which he doubts he can identify, although some of it is his own blood. That much he knows, though he isn’t sure how he knows or how it might have happened.

Sakaar, Loki has learned, is like that.

He should run a bath, he thinks distantly. Find food and drink. He must be terrifically dehydrated, and if he is not feeling it yet, that state of affairs is unlikely to last long. And…clothes, or at least a towel—he should check that his doors are locked, too, though of course on Sakaar, locked doors only accomplish as much as the Grandmaster wants them to.

He should. At the moment, that doesn’t feel like sufficient reason to move at any point in the near future or perhaps ever again, not when his body is so terribly heavy. Finally he brings up one hand to rub at his eyes—and stops with a choked gasp, his fingers seized with pain and a nauseating sense of wrongness.

They’re broken, he realizes, staring at his hands until his vision blurs and conscious of a blank numbness where he should be horrified or afraid. Three fingers on his right hand and two on his left are bent and swollen, and the skin is dark with bruising that stretches down past his wrists. He never set the bones, and they’ve already begun to heal wrong.

The memories that resurface are hazy, little more than blurs of color and sound and sensation. He remembers—sprawling in the lap of some being or another. Naked, dizzy, panting. The Grandmaster’s (predatory) smile as he caressed Loki’s jaw, throat, abdomen. Everything loud and bright. Someone holding him down, maybe multiple someones at once, appendages everywhere keeping him pinned—possibly limbs, possibly tentacles, possibly some of both, pressing against him and inside him and everywhere the Grandmaster wasn’t touching, pulling his arms up over his head and holding there. His breath coming faster because he couldn’t move and it was—

The other guest, arching against him, into him, the Grandmaster’s encouragement piercing the fog in his brain. Its grip tightening, all along his body, the Grandmaster wringing pleasure from him even as the pressure turns to pain and then the creature bears up, bears down, wrenches Loki’s arms back and grips his hands harder harder harder.  

A shock of pain as something gives way in his hands, leaving him stunned and gasping. Another, agony flaring down his arm, still stroking, pain too much like Sanctuary but he couldn’t let it be like Sanctuary, not when he (couldn’t string together the words to make it stop, couldn’t say no to the Grandmaster if he wanted to survive) didn’t want to stop.  

The Grandmaster saying “aren’t you just—the prettiest, honestly, it’s like you were just waiting to land here and finally learn what you were meant for all along—and you just love it, kitten, don’t you?” and his own voice groaning yes because (he did, and he didn’t, and) what else, on Sakaar, could you say to that?

Pain and pleasure so tangled and overwhelming he stopped being able to tell which was which and all that was left was to endure it. Try not to drown.  

Loki stares at his fingers, tries to make a fist. The throb of dull pain tightens the coil of nausea in his gut. He will have to re-break his fingers to set them properly. The Grandmaster has doctors, of course, or at least some of his scientists know enough medicine to deal with the effects of overdoses, but going to find one is out of the question. Even if he does nothing more than buy a numbing agent, it will be as good as broadcasting weakness to the Grandmaster’s entire court, where the slightest misstep can be fatal. No, he will have to do this himself—with seidr to cut cleanly through the half-healed breaks if he is lucky, or brute force if he is not.

He remembers another time that something like this happened, when one of their youthful adventures went badly wrong and he and Thor were stranded deep in a Vanir cave system for a week, separated from Thor’s friends and cut off from the Bifrost. Loki broke his wrist in the initial fight with trolls and didn’t realize until the adrenaline wore off later. By then the bone had begun knitting itself back together wrong. Without any way to know how long they might be stranded or how soon they might need to fight again, Loki realized he had to reset the bone right away to have any hope of healing enough to defend himself. Thor helped him, that time—Loki had sufficient command of seidr to examine the break but not enough to cut the bone as precisely as he needed, so he illuminated the break from within and convinced Thor to give it one careful tap with Mjolnir. And then Thor sat with him, one arm around Loki’s shoulders, as Loki shakily guided the bone back into place. He never admitted it, but without Thor’s reassuring solid presence to ground him, he thinks he might have simply passed out instead.

But Thor isn’t here. Thor is probably dead by now (your fault, you fool, if you hadn’t panicked—). Even in the unlikely event that he survived Hela somehow, he has no reason to believe Loki survived a second fall from the Bifrost and less reason to care. At best he might be relieved he no longer has to worry about the trouble that follows Loki wherever he goes.

It’s fitting, Loki supposes. He’s been discarded like trash before; this time was simply more literal. But knowing it’s what he deserves doesn’t make the aching emptiness hurt any less, doesn’t stop him from wishing, pointlessly—

It hardly matters. Once again, Loki is on his own.

He grits his teeth and begins. 

Hello! Regarding your tags – #I’ve done this to Loki on occasion but I can always do more – on the recent magical exhaustion post, could I ask you to point me to the direction where I could find it, that is, you having done this to Loki? Also yes, poor Loki can always take more of magical exhaustion, heehee :) Anyway, have a lovely day ^^

well, in thinking about this more I realized that I’ve never used magical exhaustion as…the source of the whump, I guess you could say; it’s mostly been kind of a side effect of Other Bad Shit, partly because magical exhaustion (and internal resource depletion in general, I guess) is an easy way to handwave beating up somebody who’s canonically really durable. but, hmm, fics of mine where that’s a bigger part of the premise…

speed the collapse (scatter what remains) – not so much magical exhaustion as magical…autoimmune disorder? basically, the Other fucked with his magic and it eventually broke after he reached Earth, turning on Loki and making him really, really sick. trying to use it just makes things worse.

Avengers Academy: Friendship Is Magic – obviously this is Avengers Academy Loki but I inevitably write him as strongly influenced by my understanding of MCU Loki, and this fic is whump based on somebody trying to cut off his magic. (if you’re not familiar with Avengers Academy, you can pretty much just think of it as an AU where most of the major characters are much younger and in school together.)

winter in our bones – Loki falls from the Bifrost to Earth and gets snapped up by HYDRA when he’s still half-dead from the fall (also, in this AU, Steve is the Winter Soldier). this one definitely goes in the “magical depletion as a handwave so I can beat him up” category.

all turn to fire – Infinity War speculation based entirely on trailers. Loki exhausts himself softening the Statesman’s crash landing and doesn’t have much left to fight Thanos, which is why he resorts to bargaining away the Tesseract.

clearly, I need to write something more specifically about magical exhaustion, because that’s a fun variety of Loki whump that I’ve only sort of used.

thelightofthingshopedfor:

thelightofthingshopedfor:

man, having a non-functioning computer sure puts a cramp in your ability to do like…anything

I mean, I did some stuff this weekend, I found a computer for my mom and a video card for myself, and I wrote and mailed 15 letters to Georgia voters, but I was also planning to do a bunch of other things, like listing some new stuff on Etsy and TYPING UP MY OLD NOTEBOOK

but instead I spent a bunch of time troubleshooting and, so far, getting almost nowhere, and now I have two Etsy orders I should really mail within a week or two, which coincidentally happens to be the last few days of November and obviously I have not posted a fic for the month. which is probably a dumb thing to stress about! but there’s all this stuff I theoretically want to write until I actually sit down to do it (mostly excuses for more Loki whump, tbh), and then there are several fics that I think should be fairly easy to finish except I don’t have everything in one place so I don’t actually know what still needs to happen and also I’m probably being overly optimistic about how long it might take.

but like. there are so many things on my WIP list that should be fairly short! except then I think about them in slightly more detail and either what I have is a mess requiring a shitload of editing/stitching, or I need to write setup that always ends up being more complicated than it should, or two characters need to have An Important Conversation that also takes longer to write than it should, or some combination of the above. such as

  • the extra fic for Maximoff Fic Exchange, a post-IW thing where Loki and Wanda bond a little over similar trauma
  • the one where they both survive but then Thor gets dusted
  • Loki whump on Sakaar
  • kind of similar, from a post by @theotherodinson before Ragnarok even came out, where Loki ends up on Sakaar with amnesia and is given to Thor as a prize
  • the epilogue for “kindness of strangers” hahaha fml
  • more chapters in “going down to nowhere” because it’s LITERALLY ALREADY WRITTEN but it needs…so much editing. so, so much editing.
  • Loki, before and during Ragnarok, trying to deal with his fear of falling (well, I haven’t written much of that but it should be fairly short and simple, for anyone else)
  • virtually plotless post-Ragnarok Loki whump that should’ve been finished aaaaages ago but I kind of…got stuck on plot
  • a Thor POV follow-up to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart
  • ditto except a Loki POV, which again should be VERY EASY because it’s largely an excuse for whump and angst, and yet
  • the fucking Hydra Cap Part 2 fic
  • I had at least one Whumptober idea I wanted to do and you would think I could make that short but my brain instantly has to make it more complicated

why do I always manage to make things difficult, and also why do I write so slow, “I will kiss you till your breath is found” was about 7,000 words and I feel like writing it took me f o r e v e r

I’m tempted to ask for short prompts in hopes I’ll get something that I actually manage to do in a reasonable length but, well, the list above probably shows that I’m bad about that

would also take audience recommendations for which thing off this list I should focus on

I guess I should publicly whine in slight detail about my WIPs more often, because after writing this I ended up thinking about some of these more today and now 1) I’m pretty sure I know how to finish one short fic off this list and I can do it fairly easily, and 2) I have another (…short?) idea for Loki whump

man, having a non-functioning computer sure puts a cramp in your ability to do like…anything

I mean, I did some stuff this weekend, I found a computer for my mom and a video card for myself, and I wrote and mailed 15 letters to Georgia voters, but I was also planning to do a bunch of other things, like listing some new stuff on Etsy and TYPING UP MY OLD NOTEBOOK

but instead I spent a bunch of time troubleshooting and, so far, getting almost nowhere, and now I have two Etsy orders I should really mail within a week or two, which coincidentally happens to be the last few days of November and obviously I have not posted a fic for the month. which is probably a dumb thing to stress about! but there’s all this stuff I theoretically want to write until I actually sit down to do it (mostly excuses for more Loki whump, tbh), and then there are several fics that I think should be fairly easy to finish except I don’t have everything in one place so I don’t actually know what still needs to happen and also I’m probably being overly optimistic about how long it might take.

but like. there are so many things on my WIP list that should be fairly short! except then I think about them in slightly more detail and either what I have is a mess requiring a shitload of editing/stitching, or I need to write setup that always ends up being more complicated than it should, or two characters need to have An Important Conversation that also takes longer to write than it should, or some combination of the above. such as

  • the extra fic for Maximoff Fic Exchange, a post-IW thing where Loki and Wanda bond a little over similar trauma
  • the one where they both survive but then Thor gets dusted
  • Loki whump on Sakaar
  • kind of similar, from a post by @theotherodinson before Ragnarok even came out, where Loki ends up on Sakaar with amnesia and is given to Thor as a prize
  • the epilogue for “kindness of strangers” hahaha fml
  • more chapters in “going down to nowhere” because it’s LITERALLY ALREADY WRITTEN but it needs…so much editing. so, so much editing.
  • Loki, before and during Ragnarok, trying to deal with his fear of falling (well, I haven’t written much of that but it should be fairly short and simple, for anyone else)
  • virtually plotless post-Ragnarok Loki whump that should’ve been finished aaaaages ago but I kind of…got stuck on plot
  • a Thor POV follow-up to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart
  • ditto except a Loki POV, which again should be VERY EASY because it’s largely an excuse for whump and angst, and yet
  • the fucking Hydra Cap Part 2 fic
  • I had at least one Whumptober idea I wanted to do and you would think I could make that short but my brain instantly has to make it more complicated

why do I always manage to make things difficult, and also why do I write so slow, “I will kiss you till your breath is found” was about 7,000 words and I feel like writing it took me f o r e v e r

I’m tempted to ask for short prompts in hopes I’ll get something that I actually manage to do in a reasonable length but, well, the list above probably shows that I’m bad about that