Write Every Day, April Day #21 (and rec your stuff!)

[auroracloud]

I've been meaning to do this for a while, but I've either forgotten or been so tired I haven't had the energy. But, this year the previous hosts of Write Every Day have had this new idea that I'm going to continue. So, if you want, rec something you've written in the comments to this post!

And if you didn't happen to write today but want to rec, you can just comment on the post anyway to rec your writing (maybe specifically mention that you're not checking in for the day, just so it's clear).

I haven't managed to do this yet, but I'll try now that I'm hosting it. I'm going to post mine in the comments. At the moment I'm trying to read through my old fics to find something I can rec - the problem is that I keep wanting to edit the already posted works and finding they're not as good as they were in my head... Trying to find something that doesn't make me lose faith in my writing... (I try to remember that I am writing fanfic in a language that isn't my own, and that actually can be something of an extra challenge.)


Today's Writing

I was exhausted by some RL stuff, so I let myself just do the word equivalent of doodling: I added character sheets for a few characters into my Scrivener project for Ambush Project #2, and wrote bits and pieces about the characters there. It's useful both for getting ideas down, and seeing what I still need. But I got a bit distracted trying to decide which pictures would best represent my characters (I saved a bunch when I first brainstormed it). And then I got even more distracted by inherent sexism in my language, gah. People tend to imagine Finnish is very gender-neutral because we don't have gendered pronouns (or gendered nouns, adjectives etc.) but we do have a ton of job names and titles that are inherently masculine, and they can be a pain. Some of them are easy to change into gender-neutral versions, but some are decidedly not. You can't just insert the word for "person" or "woman" where the original word has "man" because the expression only has the meaning in its original form, and people get totally different connotations when you change the word. Gaaaah.

Basically I don't know what to call one character's job title because it's one of those words and I can't find a workaround that's any use. Maybe I have to brainstorm with some local writerly friends... (And no, the society hasn't tried to find a gender-neutral version of the title yet either, as far as I'm aware.)

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, elliet, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 4: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 5: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme


Day 6: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme


Day 7: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 8: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme


Day 9: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme


Day 10: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, caprices, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme


Day 11: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme


Day 12: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme

Day 13: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 14: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 15: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 16: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 17: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 18: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 19: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme

Day 20: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 21: auroracloud, china_shop

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

Comments

[luzula]

Today's wordcount: 500
Total wordcount on fic: 14,200

Reccing, well. I'm currently completely obsessed with a tiny fandom based on the 1925 book Flight of the Heron (link goes to free ebook). The book is about two enemy soldiers in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in Britain and it is like the pure distilled essence of slash. The love story is as explicit as it could be in 1925, and has lots of hurt/comfort, conflict between love and duty, etc.

So I guess I recommend 1) the canon, 2) my recently posted looooong fix-it story for the fandom, or 3) if you want something short, I also wrote a filk song for it recently.

[auroracloud]

You're building up to a sizable fic there! It's soon a novella!

I've got the book on my e-reader now, I'm only waiting for the return of my ability to read books for more than ten minutes. But when I do read it, I'll be sure to check out your fic!

[auroracloud]

All right, this is me trying to find something of mine I can rec without wanting to instantly start editing it. Since I don't feel able to single out just one, here are four self-recs across a few different fandoms, both older and newer stuff.

While I've got complicated feelings about Doctor Who at the moment, I still love the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts very much, and here is one of the Bill & Twelve stories I've written a little over a year ago. Just a few scenes of Bill and the Doctor being friends and doing things aboard the TARDIS, like playing board games and making pancakes. Friends Make Friends Pancakes

A 2018 work from me, femslash for Mansfield Park, Fanny Price/Mary Crawford. I still want to return to these characters some day and write more for them, because I found them really fascinating to explore. Shades of Fair and Dark

More recent stuff: my first fic for Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War. Post-canon Red/Blue. A Letter in Her Smile

And my most recent Classic Who story which I wish had more reads, because I do love this ship and these characters: Present Perfect, a Zoe Heriot/Isobel Watkins fic (rated Mature for sexual content; all the others I recced in this post are General Audiences)

[luzula]

I see that I have already commented on the Mansfield Park one. : )

[alexseanchai]

me to silveradept 45m ago, upon discovering that an artistic choice I decided upon last night and fell asleep before implementing is, according to research I did 50m ago, a really good choice:

…this is perfect, and also, people are going to think I know shit about music 🤣

silveradept's reply:

The Internet is for more than just porn.

I have best housemates


…self-rec time? hmmm


speak truth to knowledge by equivalence relation (1656 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ready For It - Taylor Swift (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Caged Cyborg & Hooded Cyborg
Characters: Caged Cyborg (Ready For It), Hooded Cyborg (Ready For It), Original Trans Female Character, Original Male Character
Additional Tags: Dialogue-Only, Artificial Intelligence, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Sister-Sister Relationship, Identity Issues, Queer Themes, Podfic Welcome
Summary:

severalty: the sole ownership of property by someone

cage:
• to confine in a barred enclosure; to put into and keep in something that hinders freedom
• to restrict someone's movement or creativity

—

hood:
• a covering for the head attached to a larger garment
• an enclosure that protects something, especially from above

forethought:
• thinking beforehand or in advance, planning; prior or previous consideration; premeditation
• provident care; prudence


cannot break us, not with a thousand swords (647 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Alya Césaire
Additional Tags: Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marriage Proposal, The Princess Bride References, I Blame Tumblr, Podfic Welcome, Romantic Fluff
Summary:

Are you kidding? Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles.

Guess Ladybug and Chat Noir like The Princess Bride too—to Alya's delight and those of the Ladyblog's Tumblr followers. Emphasis on bride.


(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream (3103 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Emilie Agreste & Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth
Characters: Emilie Agreste, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Alya Césaire, Kitty Section (Miraculous Ladybug), Original Akumatized Character(s)
Additional Tags: POV Outsider, Resurrected Emilie Agreste, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Chat Noir Emilie Agreste, Butterfly Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Ladybug Gabriel Agreste, Ladybug Adrien Agreste | Mister Bug, Blood and Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Podfic Welcome
Summary:

Gabriel wished for his wife alive again.

That is exactly what he got.

[auroracloud]

Yay for supportive housemates! And yay for fics! If I ever get around to checking out Miraculous Ladybug (don't count on it, I'm not very good at watching TV shows, but I admit I've grown curious and it looks cute) I'll have to check out some of your fics as you've written so many. :-)

[shopfront]

Checking in for the 21st because I wrote up some new brainstorming notes for one of my novel WIPs. Not much, but I've barely been able to write anything since I moved/the pandemic thing happened so I'm taking that as a win.

And in honour of all the comfort re-watching/reading of Harry Potter I've been doing lately, my self-rec: Bedknobs and Courtship Rituals (Harry/Hermione/Ron), which remains one of those weird coincidental fics where someone's requests melded so perfectly with my post-book thoughts that it doesn't even really feel like I created it but more like it wrote itself. In the best of ways.

[auroracloud]

Hi!!! Nice to see you here! *glomps* Which reminds me, I think I forgot to reply to your last message... Will get on it. Anyway, it's no wonder you haven't had the focus to write much after the move and the pandemic because both are hugely disruptive and stressful things. So extra double yay for managing to brainstorm and write notes!

one of those weird coincidental fics where someone's requests melded so perfectly with my post-book thoughts that it doesn't even really feel like I created it but more like it wrote itself. In the best of ways.

Ah, that's so wonderful! Love it when that happens!!

[alexcat]

I am much better at writing than checking in1 I've written many words this month... and every day...
Day 3 - 368, Day 4 - 664, Day 5 - 708, Day 6 - 377, Day 7 - 718, Day 8 - 652, Day 9 - 1642, Day 10 - 762, Day 11 - 1910, Day 12 - 592, Day 13 - 721, Day 14 - 2731, Day 15 - 158, Day 16 - 1179, Day 17 - 933, Day 18 - 831,Day 19 - 478, Day 20 - 2022... Still working on 21.

Recs? Hmm... A posted a nice saddish STONY smut this week - Respite.

[auroracloud]

Well, writing is the main thing, checking in is just icing on the cake! I'll add you into the tally for those days - let me know if you managed the 21st as well! Sounds like you've had a lot of productive writing days, congrats!

[sylvanwitch]

So, the reboot of Magnum P.I. isn't the original; it's not even close, and some of that disparity is because Jay Hernandez just doesn't have the acting chops of Tom Selleck. But I started watching it to get more Hawaii in my viewing diet when I'd finally exhausted the H50 rewatching and had run out of original eps. (I still haven't watched the series finale. I'm in denial. Given that I have still not seen the last five eps of Angel for much the same reason, I may never know what happens to those adorable dickheads.) Anyway...I kept watching for Hawaii and for a lot of the other actors, who are good, especially Perdita Weeks (Higgins) and Tim Kang (Det. Gordon Katsumoto). Then, I decided to write Magnum/Katsumoto fic, and now when I watch, I'm totally looking for my own head-canon subtext.

Anyway, that was a long lead-in to my "Risky Business" series (five-part, finished), which begins with "Risk Assessment" and is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166089.

Today, I added 908 words to Bond/Q and may finally, finally be coming to an ending...

[auroracloud]

I must admit I've no idea about any of those fandoms or people (other than that I know of Angel, but I've seen like 5 extremely weird minutes of it), but I totally get wanting to work on your own headcanon. I definitely have fandoms I need to write my own headcanon fics for, though I think for most of mine it's more "this is what I want to happen a few years after the canon when the people have maybe had a chance to sort themselves out".

Ooh, yay for being near completion of the Bond/Q! Great work!

[badly_knitted]

Gave myself a headache through gardening in the sunhine without a hat. Silly me.

April 21st - 1000 words, a challenge ficlet plus a double and a triple drabble.

Oooh, rec time! I'm going to rec my completely AU Torchwood story. Jack and Ianto as they grow up as inseperable school friends, taking part in as many of the school's plays as they can.

Stages Of Life tells the story of Jack and Ianto, growing up as inseperable school friends, taking part in as many of the school's plays as they can. It's a story in 7 parts and requires no previous knowledge of Torchwood since it has nothing to do with aliens, just two boys growing up together and falling in love.

Part 1 is here: http://badly-knitted.dreamwidth.org/193355.html

[auroracloud]

Ouch, I feel for you! I'm terrible at tolerating the glare of sunlight, and from May to August I'm pretty much not allowed to spend more than 15 minutes out in sunshine without a hat. Now in April the sun's still low enough in Finland that I've been fine without, though I don't know what'd happen if I suddenly spent a lot of time gardening in full sunlight.

Thanks for the rec, that sounds like a cute idea for an AU! I'm mostly not good at reading different-universe AUs (*glances away from the fic inexplicably open in another tab that's both a coffee shop AU and a flower shop AU... I've no idea how that happened*) and I've also not really been reading Torchwood fics for some time because thinking too much about the characters gets me into a less than good mental place... but I used to be very into Jack/Ianto, and I utterly love theatre, so that's an interesting concept!

[badly_knitted]

It was foolish of me, I wasn't thinking, but I remembered my hat today so I don't have a headache, but I nearly got my hat knocked off so many times...

Torchwood is still my main fandom, I write a lot of fix-its and fics where certain things just didn't happen and everyone's alive. I've decided canon is just fiction or an alternate universe *grins*

I don't generally write AUs, not quite sure how this one happened. I know nothing about theatre! That's why I went with school plays. I had fun writing it though.

[shadaras]

I wrote out character notes for a new ttrpg character, that definitely counts. (I spent quite a lot of today reading, which was very nice.) (I've also written a couple sentences of fic, but the character notes are more interesting.)

Some Self-Recs:

Respite (The Untamed, Wen Qing/Jiang Yanli). Two fics, each ~4k. The first one is rated G and is about them realising they're into each other. The second one is rated E because it's them having sex. I delight in this femslash rarepair and these fics make me very happy.

Hearthfire Heroism (Tortall/Protector of the Small, gen, Kel & Raoul) 1.5k. A chocobox gift I wrote that I'm very happy with, tagging on to the end of Lady Knight so that Kel and Raoul can actually talk about what happened in Scanra.

This Miracle (Star Wars, T, Han/Leia) 2k. "Leia Organa and Han Solo married three times, and only planned one of those occasions. (The first one was a whirlwind, the second time mattered, and the third was for everyone else.)" Second person POV, and tagged "a surprising amount of crying for a variety of reasons and emotions". One of my favorite things I've written (for ToT).

[auroracloud]

I agree character notes definitely count! There's a lot of creativity involved in RPGs.

Thanks for the recs! The Han/Leia one is something I would actually be able to read, being familiar with the fandom and all. :-) I'm mostly really bad at being into the same fandoms as other people, so unsurprisingly there aren't that many recs being made by people that I can check out. (Since I'm not really into reading about fandoms I don't know; I know many people do that, but it's not my thing.) But anyway, that sounds adorable. :-)

[shadaras]

Star Wars is generally a pretty accessible fandom, this is true. :)

I also have trouble reading outside of fandoms I'm in, unless I really know/trust the author to give me enough context that I'll be fine regardless.

[deifire]

Today: 236 words

This is for one of those canons most people haven't even heard of, but my current labor of love is The Roller Rink on the Edge of Forever, a longfic set in the future of the obscure, weird 90s TV show Eerie, Indiana.

For a shorter rec, Print the Legend, a Thelma and Louise ghost story from a couple of Yuletides back.

[auroracloud]

Almost all of my canons are ones that most people haven't even heard of. The only non-Yuletide-sized fandom I have is Doctor Who, and I'm on somewhat complicated terms with it at the moment, so, uh, yeah. Yay for obscure fandoms!

[sanguinity]

A longhand page this morning before work! It felt nice to get back to it, even if it wasn't much.

[auroracloud]

Yay for longhand writing and morning writing! Glad you were able to get in some, even if it wasn't a lot.

[nafs]

Two and a half pages longhand. How do you write an argument without making the antagonist obviously and cartoonishly The Bad Guy early on? You make him concede he's being kind of an ass and de-escalate the argument. (Still not as satisfying as setting fire to his office.)

My published oeuvre is small and most of it is quite old, and most of it is RPS, which means that for both of these there are characters in the fics (main characters, even) that I no longer like IRL. But I still like my writing in them.

Moments When You Can't Deny What's True which I somehow managed to write in one summer, and write the whole thing in order, even. Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy) / Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) This is rarest of rarepairs but I swear it works. If he'd thought about it much, Patrick would have envisioned a pretty boy with a lot of attitude and a backing tape, not a pretty boy with a guitar who wanted to soundcheck.

Painted Wings and Giant Rings My only Big Bang entry, from 2010. Does have two shorter stories that precede it but I think it stands alone. Have occasionally toyed with the idea of an original story in this universe. Spencer Smith/Ryan Ross (Panic! at the Disco)mid- and post-split. Ryan has always known that someday he was going to have to let Spencer go, so that Spencer could find his chiropteric mate. As the Rock Band tour goes to hell and Panic starts falling apart, Ryan gives Spencer his space and Spencer gives Ryan his freedom. Only that's not what either of them really wants or needs

[auroracloud]

Writing antagonists isn't easy, especially when you want to avoid making them two-dimensional and Just Bad, so kudos to figuring out how to handle the scene! Even if you don't get to set things on fire.

Hee, I'm so very bad at pop music, though at least I know of all those bands. Though Backstreet Boys is the only one I could name songs for, because I'm of the generation that absolutely couldn't help knowing of all those boy bands; the others I mainly know because people quote their lyrics a lot for fanfic titles. :-D Yes, I'm just Really Bad At 2000s Music, my taste is old-fashioned and somewhat random.

[sierranovembr]

Checking in for Day 21 with a handful of sentences. Also, could you please add me to Day 18? I got skipped.

Finally, I will rec something short, silly, and soft. Good sheltering reading if you are a fan of Iron Man and his Rhodey:

Five Times Rhodey Wants to Touch Tony's Hair
Ship/Main Pairing: James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark
Rating: Gen
Major Tags: Fluff, 5+1 Things
Word Count: 1925

[auroracloud]

Oops, sorry about that! Sometimes I get distracted when I'm replying to comments and picking up the names for the tally, and skip someone. I'll add you on the 18th as well as the 21st!

I'm that only person who hasn't seen a single superhero movie since the 1990s and am pretty clueless about those fandoms, but enough people are into them that I recognize character names. :-) Regardless, I fully support soft and fluffy fics in this time period we live in! ♥

[cornerofmadness]

I had a lot of work to do today but got 484 words on the Prodigal Son story and 221 words of original and finished the chapter.

Rec something I wrote? How about this Prodigal Son story, Chasing Oblivion

[auroracloud]

Yay for both writing fic and finishing your chapter!

[cornerofmadness]

thanks

[yasaman]

Day 21: back to the plotty WIP with 352 words!

[auroracloud]

Yay for more plotty WIP words!

[lferion]

Day 21 - 150 new words on the Play piece I've been working on, and a Tumblr inspired drabble, that may work for Fan Flashworks.

I shall have to come back to this comment to rec something. My mind is quite blank at the moment on what I might put forward.

[auroracloud]

Yay for words! And no worries, take your time, and anyway the self-recs are entirely voluntary. I haven't got around to participating in them at all so far, which is why I recced several now that I finally got myself to do it...