AngelSelene

I... don't know whether to hope that not all of my chapters end up this long or just embrace the fact that I'm apparently writing a Superfic as a new author. I have 66 chapters outlined and we've not even made it as far as the Liore/canon timeline yet. This... is gonna take a while.

On the other hand, I fucking love what I've written. Totally. Completely. Entirely enamored. It's so good. I mean, it needs major editing. I still don't have spell check on because I don't want to deal with the squiggles, the tense keeps bouncing from past to present and back again - sometimes in the same sentence, there's a few incredibly clunky sentences in there, and I need to go back and rework any instance of "Roy thought/contemplated/wondered/considered/whathaveyou" so that the reader is actually in his head rather than being narrated at. But all that is standard second draft work.

What I actually love is... everything else. Roy's thought process, his actions, Ed's reactions, the porn is hot, the domesticity is sweet, their emotions read as real, their dynamic actually came across natural to who they are as characters... And I learned so much? About who they are at this point in the story? Like, I had nearly 500 words of outline just for this chapter and managed to take that and "discovery write" (your words and I love them; I'm keeping them) character motivation and emotion and even hints at the greater plot?

This is kind of a middle ground scene between when they first start sleeping together and when the feelings realization/confession happens. Neither of them are aware that they, themselves have greater feelings for the other, much less that the other does as well. All the while they move around each other with the comfort of long-time partners. Roy acts and thinks of Edward as a permanent fixture in his life. Edward treats Roy's home like communal property. And both are completely oblivious to the implications!

Writing this was so much fun. So much discovery.

I got to figure out how Roy navigates having a lover who has such little life experience whom he nonetheless views and treats as an adult. I'll be able to take that back several chapters and establish that dynamic from the very beginning of their relationship. I apparently decided that one of his coping methods is appropriate communication with the inexperienced partner so he feels like they're both on equal ground, as much as possible. (Which means if/when miscommunication does happen, it'll not be because they're both shit at talking to each other. Probably, it'll be a sign of one or both of them tripping over a trauma response.)

I kinda fell into writing a hilarious bit of banter that revealed so much about Roy. Made me go "Oh! Apparently Roy is a Wine Snob. Did he get that from Chris? Hmmm, no. He must have cultivated that on his own as part of his ambition to work his way up in society by looking like One of Them (the rich and influential)" and then I connected that to earlier in the chapter when i realized Roy speaks with an affectation - he fakes a upper-middle class Central accent/dialect, even in private, that isn't the one he grew up with. Why upper-middle and not just upper? Because he knew he wouldn't be able to fake being upper class amongst a group where everyone knows everyone else. He could fake a higher social status that has been known to translate into upwards social mobility with enough work and connections, though. And this told me that Colonel Mastermind's ambitions and games have thoroughly saturated who he is as a person to the point that they've become a part of him even when he is safe and at home.

None of that was fucking planned! But it works so well. Works in this chapter and in the larger plot and with Roy's canon upbringing.

And I realized half way through that I'm almost entirely against the 'describe someone rather than use their name' habit a lot of writers of slash get into because it's hard to figure out which "he" they're talking about. None of that the smaller one, the older man, the golden eyed Adonis, the Colonel that I've read so much. Nothing against it, it just didn't fit the writing style. Instead, I have the narration - in Roy's POV - almost aggressively use just their names. Which, on one hand, is a fun bit of character writing because Roy always calls/thinks of Ed as 'Edward' when they're alone (as opposed to Fullmetal when they're working, a nice way to compartmentalize) whereas Ed thinks of himself as 'Ed' in his own POV and Roy as either 'the Colonel' or 'the Bastard' or 'Roy' depending on the state of their relationship. This also means when I do break the Names Only rule its with purpose. In this case, I have Ed referred to as "the boy" several times, but only when pointing out his age is particularly uncomfortable - to both Roy and the audience. Because I'm evil 😇.

Also? Ed makes Roy laugh. It's great to compare how he is while alone with Ed against how he is in the office or around others.

What's fandom for, if not to communicate and share with people also into your thing?

I'm a life long lurker. I've spoken to you more than anyone else in 30 years of fandom... combined. 10/10 would actually recommend!

That kind of situational comedy is golden! I'm so impressed. I find humor one of the hardest things to write, and dialogue is one of my strengths. Situational humor like this is delicious (and way hard imo).

Having not written since high school and never finished anything (ever, in my life), I honestly don't know what my weaknesses and strengths will turn out to be. I know I likely wouldn't have managed that bit of situational humor without having an outline. I was able to see the character's progression all together and realized that the most reasonable reaction from Ed concerning [redacted] would actually be the exact opposite of Roy's. As this is before they're on personal speaking terms, they have no clue what the other thinks in the aftermath. Everything just fell into place from there.

But with longfics like that, I don't plot them in advance (eyes current problem child fic). Usually, with fics over 100k, I don't really start plotting them until I'm hitting about the 2/3rds point... or when I'm really ready for this damn thing to be done, and a little more structure helps push through. Even then, the outlines are still pretty bare bones.

Do you also skydive without a parachute? Deep sea dive without a depth gauge? Go spelunking without a map? You scare me (positive).

Personally, I've already found multiple instances where I decide {something happens} in the outline and I realize I need to set it up ten chapters before. If I were writing from chapter one forward, without an outline, I wouldn't know I needed to add that setup until it was too late. Like, I have Gen Armstrong showing up (years too early) in reaction to [reacted] but realized if I wanted her personally coming down from the North to seem natural, I needed to sprinkle hints throughout previous chapters that would make the [redacted] more important than it seems to Ed while he's in the thick of things. I'm in absolute awe of anyone, yourself included, who can write full stories and post them while still writing without that sort of crutch.

Knocked 100 years off the AC timeline and said the first colony went up in 1910

The Wright Brothers first flew on December 17, 1903. How the fuck... That is one hell of a space race. You know what? I'm just gonna have to read it, aren't I.

Because we get such deep insight into what's going on with Roy and his team, it's really easy to miss the fact that Roy's considered somewhat dangerous--both because he is obviously ambitious and because of his power as an alchemist--but, to your point, "overthrow the government" is a whole different level of ambition, and a lot of people really think he's just some young upstart. It's an image he takes cares to cultivate and reinforce, but we don't really see what kind of toll the work to hide what he's doing takes one him.

Yeah, turns out I apparently like to explore the ways he 'cultivates and reinforce[s]' his public persona and how it and his manipulations effect his personal life and the toll the constant deception takes on him. It's just so juicy. Especially when he tries to show someone new in his life (Ed) who he is inside. He's made to confront parts of himself that don't come naturally yet have still become integral to his mental image of himself. Who is Roy Mustang has got to be a hard question to answer even from the inside. Wrote those parts of the chapter before ever reading your reply. lol

What a heartbreaking bit of naivety. I really love when we can see where young Ed might be crazy smart but he just doesn't have the real-world experience to make the right decisions

I have multiple instances where Ed's intellect and his experience clash planed out - some small, some life changing, some devastating. Part of it is that broken moral code I mentioned but a larger portion is how he's actually pretty sheltered, socially speaking, when he first gets commissioned. Grew up in a small farming village on the ass end of Amestris. Spent a year living with a butcher's family in a small town. Pretty much raised himself. Fucking twelve. He's missing a lot of the nuance and socio-cultural subtleties that come with 1) being an adult, 2) in the big city, 3) in the military, and 4) all three at once. Poor Roy is going to have to suffer Ed's ignorance in the worst ways for a while.

After having at least one fic updating weekly for the better part of the last five years, I've got a really good internal sense of how long 2k is, and when I need to start wrapping up a scene.

Every time i learn something new about your writing habits, I get more impressed. I aspire to something so disciplined in my future but it looks like I'll have to have a good portion of the fic written before I can even begin to post.

I cannot really force the chapter to "wrap up" simply because of the Ed-Roy-Ed-Roy way I have the chapters organized. There were at least two, maybe three, places I could have cut the chapter in half or thirds to knock down the word count but the next chapter is supposed to be an Ed chapter and I wanted that whole section in Roy's perspective. It would throw off my whole system if I just cut it and made a new chapter.

And I like what I got down. I like all the things I learned about the characters, especially Roy, throughout it. Without letting it balloon, I don't know I would have discovered so much. So I don't regret letting it balloon like it did. I'm just intimidated by the size of the chapter and afraid it'll become a habit. Fortunately, Ch1 is currently proving my concerns unnecessary. Unfortunately, that just means the word count per chapter will vary wildly between one and the next. :/

There's only one non Ed-or-Roy pov chapter outlined and it's because I literally could not come up with a way for it to work from either of their pov's. So instead A Wild Maes Hughes Appears! It's far enough into the fic that I think I'll use Hughes's chapter as a transition point between Part 1 (pre-canon) and Part 2 (where the canon timeline around Liore picks up).

Roy cultivating an upper middle class accent to the point that it actually becomes his real accent totally tracks. 100% something he would do. I love finding happy accidents like that.

Doesn't it, though? Roy's upbringing combined with mastermind tendencies make for such fertile ground to plant weird and wonderful quirks like that.

The more I write the more I uncover delightful little tidbits like that about the characters that i simply Did Not Know until it showed up on page or in my notes or while writing you. Roy's public persona eating his identity is one, we've discussed Hughes's age as another, and I came up with two really fucked up ways to make the night Ed committed taboo even worse for him. And they are not something I'm willing to talk about at length here because they are capitol S Spoilers, unlike most of the rest of the stuff I post. (Even if building the foundation for it is defeating me atm.)

I tend to use these conversations like a brainstorming session/ external ways to work things out in my own mind; it's worked several times so far. It's part of the reason my replies are all so long. Also. I R Still Verbose. So, while spitballing ideas just now, I realized:

Despite the fact that Roy Mustang, Revolutionary and Resistance Leader, seems like the kind of guy who would know himself thoroughly and accurately, that's not how it's shaking out. I'm actually going with the idea that Ishval caused a total ego collapse and Roy has spent the last several years building himself back up from the few bits and pieces of who he used to be that survived combined with who he thinks he needs to be - or at least who he needs to be perceived as - in order to achieve his goals. That he sort of surfs on the surface of who people think he is in the day-to-day, while remaining aware that much of it is shallow or a farce. He's a chameleon, being who and what he needs to be depending on the circumstance or interaction. Maybe he wonders if there even is something left of him beneath the facade, sometimes, or if the hollow feeling inside him is all that's left. (Oh, shit, and that'll make him such a good foil for Envy later on! Happy. Accidents. Huzzah!)

He already plans to essentially commit Suicide by Justice Department when forcing a trial for himself and the others who fought in Ishval, what's maintaining a stable and coherent identity in the face of that? It would be interesting for him have a significant personality shift after Ishval to the point that people who knew him before were able to clock it immediately. (Hmm. Would also be interesting to have his identity solidify in his own mind while with Ed... Maybe have parts of himself he thought lost come back up to the surface because of their relationship?)

(No, seriously. I worked all that out by writing it to you. This was Not Planned. Sorry and/or thank you for using you as a sounding board.)

Once upon a time, I did some editing for a small slashy trashy (affectionate) publisher, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of the authors came from the school of fanfic to write original. They must have brought the epithet habit with them because avoiding epithets was *literally* in our style guide. 😂

Ouch, looks like I accidentally set off your muscle memory (or a trauma response) as an editor when I brought that up. Those are called epithets? I've heard the word before, of course, but from context clues I had assumed it meant something like pejorative. A lot less neutral than what "the blond" implies.

It's easy to see why a community who mostly write slash would fall into that habit even if it is a bad habit to have. I generally give a lot of grace for grammar and stylistic writing choices in fic that I wouldn't normally tolerate in published work. For the most part, fic writers aren't professional, they're writing for free, and they don't have professional editors looking over everything. I try to keep that in mind.

Neat that my own preferences overwrote the collective habits of fic writers given fic is 98% of all I read. You'd think I would internalize the writing styles I read most. Instead, as soon as I started writing I realized my POV characters would not think about each other that way, even in 3rd person limited pov. Other than the occasional the boy used when i want to hurt the reader, the only other exception is having Roy referred to as The Bastard in Edwards younger years and that's specifically because that's how Ed thinks of him. Not with his rank or his last name. With a curse. (Very Edward Elric of him.) And I will be using the shift from The Bastard to The Colonel to Mustang and finally to Roy in Ed's head as indicative of their shifting relationship, so it makes sense to use within the world. Just like Roy compartmentalizing and calling Ed by his name in private and his call-sign in public. I like that I can show so much subtle change happening through just how they refer to each other.

I do think I managed to keep the names from becoming repetitive, so that's good. Of course, part of the reason I don't have significantly more Roys and Edwards floating about is because I tend to drop the subject in all but the first sentence of a paragraph, which is.... less good. Grammatically, at least. Stylistically, it's fine. The only time I have a first name start a paragraph three times in a row is when I was using intentional repetition for emphasis. And the only time I used an epithet was, as previously mentioned, "the boy" used specifically to bring attention to Ed's age at unfortunate times. It's supposed to make the reader at least a little uncomfortable with what they're reading. Realized I can't use it too often or it'll lose it's power.

I made a promise to myself that if I started posting, I had to finish it. Since then, with weekly update schedules, I've overwhelmingly finished nearly every longfic I've started posting

You are very inspirational. Like I said, I aspire to write/post like that. Less the pantsing, though. The first and only time I've ever posted was back in '09. It was a destiel fic written back when Castiel had only been on the show for a few episodes. Despite being posted on AO3 for over a decade, it didn't manage to get even one hit. Lost in all the other fic out there, I guess. So I recently took it down. :P

I have successfully defeated "perfect being the enemy of good," because if I try to make it perfect, it will never be finished

I hear that. It's something I'm not particularly good at yet but something I'm actively trying to practice. I used to write and edit and edit and edit and edit the first chapter of a fic until I got sick of it and never picked it back up. This time, I turned off the squiggles and just wrote. Get stuck trying to think of a word? Put an underscore ______ down where it goes and come back to it later. Can't figure out how to word something? Best guess and add brackets around it to make it easier to find. Et cetera. Et cetera. I keep telling myself that's future me's problem, save it for second draft. I... mostly succeeded? I did do some editing while reading it over but it was mostly spelling errors and things, the big changes will have to happen on second.

(No, seriously. I worked all that out by writing it to you. This was Not Planned. Sorry and/or thank you for using you as a sounding board.)

It's amazing how much just talking through ideas with an interested and informed fandom friend can help. I can't think of the number of times I've basically talked myself through something that had me stuck just because I had a friend who was a good sounding board (even if they didn't *actually* say much, just the right thing to trigger my brain to unpack the problem. It's one of the funnest parts of fandom friends, in my experience.

Ouch, looks like I accidentally set off your muscle memory (or a trauma response) as an editor when I brought that up.

Lol, I probably should have said "ubiquitous" instead of "a bane." I'm not so much of a snob that I drop anything that has them. There is a *threshold* at which point they become actively distracting, but *especially* in my old stomping ground of Gundam Wing, they're virtually impossible to avoid. I certainly was as guilty of using them profusely as anyone in my younger days. 😂And if you mostly read fic, it's just the standard.

... I admittedly draw the line at things like "greenette" and "pinkette." Those are automatic back buttons when I hit them. I am a weirdly bigger snob about fic than I am about original stuff. Fic I have Opinions about characters and characterization. Original stuff, it's on the author to sell me on.

By the way, one of the reasons they're so ubiquitous in fandom is because--in the vast majority of cases--you're working with fandom of a *visual* work. You have established and (generally) universally understood ideas of what characters look like, so referring to them by their appearance is a lot easier, because everyone *knows* what they look like. This is much, much, *much* harder to do in books because 1) you're not always given a lot of details about what someone looks like and 2) everyone's idea of their appearances may differ. I am in the middle of listening to a book where it just revealed--like a solid two+ hours in, that one of the main characters is biracial. It threw me because there were no clues before then that he was (or if there were, I totally missed them). I'm now two hours into a book and my whole mental image of this main character needs adjustment. In original work, the *author* may have a very strong idea of what the characters look like, but that doesn't mean the readers do, or that epithets based on appearances could immediately be parsed.

Using epithets intentionally is just fine--especially in third-person limited (obviously my favorite POV). The Specificity of Names is something I *love* and personally do a lot (though I don't know how much my readers notice--I enjoy it, so it doesn't matter), but I tend to be very specific about how people *think* about other people in my fics. Also how they address them aloud. Ed would 10,000% think of Roy as The Bastard. The "would Roy think of Ed as 'the blond man'?" is a good way to think about it, at least if you're doing a close third person limited POV.

Of course, part of the reason I don't have significantly more Roys and Edwards floating about is because I tend to drop the subject in all but the first sentence of a paragraph, which is.... less good.

Eh, Roys and Eds in narrative are fine. There's a tendency in writing to overuse direct address (calling someone by their name) in dialogue (we address people by name to their face *far less* than most people realize. Except for kids. I say my kids' names probably dozens if not hundreds of times a day, but my husband's? Maybe once every few days? It's rare enough to hear him address me by name that I always find it jarring to hear him say it. 😂It gets overused in dialogue because writers use it to avoid a dialogue tag and remind readers who is being talked to. Don't overthink this one, though. There are people who say people's names incessantly (will never forget the girl I worked with who literally could not talk to her SO without saying "babe" to him). We tend to use people's names when we're greeting them, introducing them, or when we're talking *about* them (not to them). Otherwise, it's usually something you do to get someone's attention (which is why parents say their kids' names over and over and over 😂). When I'm checking the first sentence of paragraphs, I'm not specifically looking for names, but for patterns. "did the last three paragraphs all begin with someone's name?" I also get antsy when the last three paragraphs all start with gerunds (since that's my favorite sentence structure switch-up), or too many lines of dialogue all starting with the quotes). I give more leeway to dialogue (especially quick, snappy dialogue) than the other two.

Names will *feel* repetitive when you're starting to write, especially if most of your reading is in fandom. You're just primed to expect the change-up of an epithet. It really is just a matter of sentence structure. When all your sentences start with "Roy did this" and "Ed did that," it gets super noticeable.

And once you've started seeing it, it's almost impossible not to. 😅

Despite being posted on AO3 for over a decade, it didn't manage to get even one hit

I... would honestly not have believed such a thing could exist for the flagship for a megafandom. Makes me think it was likely the tagging (or lack thereof) that was more likely the issue. Especially if it were the only fic you had. I'd be curious to see what would happen if you put it back up without backdating it (just from a curiosity perspective. I'm afraid I'm a Wincest girlie all the way 😂).

I used to write and edit and edit and edit and edit the first chapter of a fic until I got sick of it and never picked it back up.

I've heard this is a pretty common issue with perfectionists. The cure here is exactly what you did--you're not allowed to edit the first draft. I will sometimes do the brackets of [Look up what this stupid thing means], especially because I use sprinting a *lot* to write last minute. I mentioned deadline pressure works well for me? It does in sprints too. 😂. Because I'm so used to doing minimal editing, I have 1000% posted a chapter with one of those notes still in there. 🤣 Fortunately, my readers let me know ASAP and I fixed it.

I did do some editing while reading it over but it was mostly spelling errors and things, the big changes will have to happen on second.

I think everything I saw was just spelling errors. Anything I would have usually said was "continuity" I can't actually say because it's only the one chapter I've read and I don't have broader continuity, just my assumption of where this chapter was in the story from what you told me.

And for some reason, I thought it was their first time sleeping together. Whoops. 😅 You can see why I might have been a little thrown from a "continuity" angle until I figured it out. But I think you'd mentioned previously that it took them a LOT of chapters to sleep together, and I just got the specifics muddled. I'm actually delighted that they get intimately involved earlier than I thought, even if it hasn't progressed to penetration.

Are we fandom friends now? I've never had one. I would like to be. Gotta admit, I'm constantly a smidge terrified I'm bothering or otherwise harassing you with my long exchanges. But I'm having too much damned fun to stop.

I think so! Trust me, if I weren't having fun, I wouldn't keep replying.

I swing back and forth between being a canon purist and accepting - or even liking - fanon content.

I tend to strongly favor canon-based fics. It can go extremely divergent, but I tend to shy away from fics that aren't set in the original setting in some capacity. Since damaged child soldiers are definitely my jam (Gundam Wing, FMA, Naruto, My Hero Academia--it's a legit trend 😂), removing those core parts of the worldbuilding that made them child soldiers tends to lose me. If Ed didn't lose his leg trying to resurrect his mother and then sacrificed his arm to save Al, it just doesn't hit the same. Roy who isn't an outright war criminal? Which means I'm picky about characterization first and foremost. I *can* be sold on most things if the writing is good enough, but I do a lot writing than reading these days, and most of the "reading" I do is audiobooks, so I'll push through lower-quality original slash. 😂 I will nope out at a certain point, but I'm much pickier in what I'm usually looking for in fic.

That said, I kinda had to use a bunch for chapter one because what the hell do you call God, The Universe, The Truth, The One, The All, and You?

"The thing." 😂 Genuinely. This is where I'd lean into Ed's POV.

What's sprinting?

Sprinting is setting a timer and doing a task as nonstop as possible until the timer stops. I tend to do 15-minute sprints to force me to focus. I usually use a sprint feature on Discord, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other online options. I've always been a pretty fast writer (when I sit down and force myself to focus), and when I started, I would regularly get about 350-450 words per sprint, so I could do about 2k in ~2 hours? After 4-5 years of sprinting somewhat regularly, I'm usually more around 550-650 per 15-minute sprint. The trick is to keep putting down words and don't overthink it. And I'm crazy and will usually do this... hours before I'm supposed to post. 😅

You probably saw what I meant by "dropping the subject after the first sentence of a paragraph". I'm calling it a grammar sin but writing style win.

Oh, that's normal writing. The last subject you used is what would be referenced with the pronoun until otherwise indicated.

Fucking before kissing, fucking before oral, exclusivity before officially dating/being together, Ed all but moving in before the confession...

I LOVE sex-to-lovers. (not because it gives me the excuse to write the smut before they've actually grown the feels, nooooo...)

And a lot of it was because I was actively writing in his POV at the time. But even more is because so much about Ed's

Okay, obviously from Wreckage, Outsider POV is one of my favorite things ever, and I am *definitely* guilty of doing it with the partner of my blorbo. That lets me see blorbo through external eyes. I love it so much.

I want to talk about this! I want to tell you all the shit that went down with Truth that makes it so different from canon.