#{fire verse}

↳ moodboard for A Pair of Splendid Morons

a little update, as a treat

This fic turned two on Valentine's Day! (I remember when I started posting & didn't even realize what day it was lol.) I still consider it my first fic in the fandom (even if it technically wasn't) & wanted to do a little something for it, but still didn't have the energy to do much of anything at the time.

What I ended up doing was transferring the playlist to spotify, along with playlists for most of the fics in the series, including one that I've yet to write but hope to someday in the future. So, for anyone interested, here it is!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIMON!!!

listen, there’s probably a million better ways to honor Simon than this, but my fic First Bite is a birthday fic, so I figured I’d draw this bit. because it’s been over a year since I posted the damn thing & Simon dancing on that pole still haunts me. also I did this piece in purple partly because of how colorful the club is & mostly because it’s my color. so here he is, complete with Fire-verse lip scar & doing his best to seduce a boy. (spoiler alert: it worked. Baz is a constant disappointment to himself.)

YEAH

oh man oh man okay. idk how long I've had this is my inbox because I low-key spaced out for a while there BUT I just have to say this: I had a proposal fic planned for fire-verse snowbaz that involved a magickal proposal harkening back to the stars scene. like. baz was going to do a song as a spell to give simon the stars again. & then of course WS came out & I haven't been able to do much in that universe since. (also I'm not sure I like the idea anymore...but that might just be my 🍆🧠 telling me it's a bad idea lol). (although...ws did prove that baz is a canonically good singer so I've got that going for me.)

anyway here's a snippet for that that I wrote approximately one million years ago before I started working on btl & forgot about everything else ever:

I’ve been hustling all day to get this done in time!

My fic A Pair of Splendid Morons turns one today! I’ve always thought this scene looked better in my head than it does in words, so I decided to take a crack at drawing it myself. Let’s all just pretend this car is a Jaguar, kay? (click for better quality)

I feel like I've got a shot at a future, at a (relatively) normal life.

And the shame, was on the other side

Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever

Then we could be heroes just for one day

I feel almost like I felt when I could fly, only I never felt safe then. I feel safe now, safe because Baz is driving. Baz is holding onto me.

I think, Maybe the future isn’t so scary.

“Alright up there, Snow?” Baz yells over the music.

“This is brilliant!” I shout, then let out a triumphant whoop.

—Simon, chapter 11

Hi friend! I'm doing okay. Hope you are too 💜 Thanks for lending some distraction while Mr HH gets hangry looking for a taco bell lmao

may: a fic you have regretted posting?

Regret is a strong word, but there have been times where I've gone through "regret stages" after posting certain fics lol.

The one that immediately comes to mind is Merry Gentlemen. I got fucking roasted in the comments & even though that was March 2019 I still think about it sometimes. Anyway that's why I have anon turned off on ao3 now lol.

On a broader scale, I regret removing Simon's wings & tail in fire verse. (Though to be fair, he was supposed to get his magic [& dragon bits] back in the last installment.) The majority of those fics were written pre WS, before we had a lot of the symbolism re the wings & tail, but I still am slightly embarrassed for doing that. Hindsight is 20/20 🤷🏻

Oh also I had FEAR run through me after posting God Save the Queen but that one ended up going over surprisingly well LOL

friday: most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted?

It's a toss up between A Pair of Splendid Morons & Between the Lines. I wrote APOSM because at the time there were very few first time fics in the fandom & it's what I craved. And then I ended up sticking around. I think BTL has likely surpassed it in terms of self indulgence at this point? Especially considering the whole DeNiall thing that I never meant to be a thing that turned into a thing. Anyway this is a DeNiall blog now lmao

......see First Bite for context 🤣

Thanks for the ask! I am having one hell of a time focusing on literally anything today so here I am, Tumblin 💜

4. Where do your story ideas come from?

When I tell you I struggle with this...God do I struggle with this! Coming up with ideas is one of the hardest things for me! (This is probably why literally nothing happens in my fics all the time, lmao.)

The idea for my first fic...I have no idea where it came from. A lot of the time I’ll be inspired by music, like I’ll be listening to a song & I’ll just see a scene in my head that will then play over & over again until I get it out (this is partially why I’m always sharing songs with y’all). (Like with most things, unsure how much of that is “normal” & how much of it comes from my repetitive OCD brain. It’s my normal, in any case.)

That last paragraph was a tangent. So about my first fic lmao: I was listening to music, & one day I just saw Simon & Baz’s kids, & they wouldn’t leave me alone. But I didn’t have anywhere to go with it, really, so the scene just kept playing over & over again (the scene in my head was Luci playing piano & singing the song She Keeps Me Warm by Mary Lambert while like...magickal film clips from her & Ty’s childhoods sort of played out behind her & Simon & Baz watched. Very fucking corny. I think it was supposed to be her 8th year Magic Words project or something.) And then a short time later I accidentally bought my husband boxer briefs with no dick hole & the first scene of The Fire In Us was born. I expected literally nothing from that & was delighted to wake up the next morning to actual AO3 comments, what a ride.

The idea for Splendid Morons came to me while I was writing The Fire in Us, specifically when I wrote this off-hand comment from Baz:

And then followed it up with this scene of them taking a bath together:

(Side note: please don’t read this fic lmao. I mean, do what y’all want but it’s. Not my best writing & if I ever come back to it I’m going to rewrite the whole damn thing. Anyway.)

When I started writing I didn’t think I’d ever write smut, but writing this scene made me feel like maybe I could? And then I tried. The rest, as they say, is history. And once I had Splendid Morons written, ideas for other firsts I could write in that verse started coming to me.

BTL...I spent a lot of time feeling like I wanted to write an AU. It felt like I had the energy but no conduit. I thought I wasn’t “creative enough” to create an AU. Then one day the stars aligned & I realized I could throw the two of them together in a bookshop. (I have personal experience working in one, & sometimes personal experience is easiest to draw from when it comes to writing.) A lot of the events in that fic are fictitious, but a lot of the emotional experience is drawn from my personal life.

Everything else? Sometimes I’ll feel like I want to write, but I have no idea what to do. The countdown was actually good practice for me in this regard: it taught me that if I sit down, & put the pen to paper (or my fingers on the keys, what have you), that a lot of the time words will come out. And then the ideas happen as I’m writing. (This is actually how most of the stuff in BTL happens, too. A recent example: I could not get chapter 17 to move AT ALL until Mordelia pointed out Baz’s hickey. Then things fell into place. It’s wild. Related: I couldn’t get my zine fic to move until Simon made fun of Baz’s sunflower shirt. Sometimes the simplest things are the key, I suppose.)

I wrote this really verbose response & I still feel like I didn’t really answer the question, lmao. I guess a lot of the time, I just let the characters carry me. Which isn’t as easy to do as it sounds, but sometimes that’s the only option. (Dev loves to help me with this. He is infuritatingly good at it.)

Thanks for tagging me @ninemagicks 💜

1. What’s your favorite genre to write?

I’m answering this question last, & I’m lying here thinking what am I writing? Is it fantasy? Is it regular fiction? WTF? Erotica?

I’m thinking about all the genres we had at B&N, & wondering where BTL would go. Regular fiction, probs. Sure wish I was better at fantasy (I mean, Rainbow has given me sufficient material to work with when I write in canon, but I’ve often had the desire to write a great fantasy but then realize that I don’t think I have the noggin to come up with my own magic system & rules, IDK).

Plus, if I write in canon I’m just treating it like “regular fiction” with the added bonus that they can do magic, so I guess I’ll say “fiction with a very generous heap of romance & also sometimes magic.”

2. Do you pull inspiration from real-life, or do you pull things from other books/fanfiction you’ve read?

I like the advice write what you know, but truthfully I’ve got inspo coming from all over the damn place. My own brand of write what you know tends to come from general states of mind, not actual events (barring the whole drunk-snogging on the couch incident, et al.) I spend a lot of time trying to think of where to take a story unless I’ve already had an idea.

Oh, you know what: movies & music are pretty influential tbh. Or they were on Fire-verse. I had very recently watched/read Perks of Being a Wallflower (& RHPS) before writing Splendid Morons, for example, & obviously that plays a small role in the fic. And we all know what Lady Gaga’s “Teeth” did for First Bite, RIP 😂

3. Do you tend to write one-shots, short stories, or longer things?

Side-eyes BTL.

So, I guess all of the above, if we’re being technical? I really only write one-shots for events like the countdown or when I have prompts. My fics used to be relatively short (I can’t remember which word count technically qualifies as a short story, but l almost feel like the entirety of Fire-verse is just a bunch of short stories strung together? Probably not technically. Splendid Morons is 40k...)

Anyway. Between the Lines has shown me what a truly verbose bitch I am, & sometimes it’s a relief to take a break from it & write something short. But also maybe I have a tendency to write longer things since it’s the main thing I’m working on. I have no idea what the real answer is here.

4. Do you prefer to write description or dialogue?

This really depends! Sometimes I find description easy, but a lot of the time I don’t. I find that a lot of the time—especially for BTL—I will write out dialogue & then come back to suffer through the description later. IDK if I have an actual preference though? Both can be fun depending on context.

5. Favorite fic/book of all time?

TOUGHIE so I’m going to go with the things that have spurred me into obsessive phases (the good kinds of obsessions, y’know): Carry On (obvs), A Song of Ice & Fire, Harry Potter, & The Lord of the Rings. Also a big fan of The Kingkiller Chronicle. When I feel bad about not updating BTL for a month or six weeks or whatever, I think about the fact that the last installment of TKC & ASOIAF literally came out in 2011. Oof. (I was working at B&N, & it was a wild ride of a time.)

6. Favorite trope?

I ADORE truth or dare where they end up having to kiss—bonus points if it’s for the first time & it’s like, a realization, truth spells, accidental love confessions because we are intoxicated & or spelled...but IDK if I can actually write them?

I did write a truth or dare fic for last year’s Round Robin: Dare You to Trust Me. I had a lot of fun with it but admittedly the T or D part is pretty short. IDK I just...IDK if I can do tropes y’all! Why?!

First times tho. That is my shit. Does that count?

7. Are you the kind of person to work on more than one WIP?

LOL YEAH RIP

Side-eyes the week-long DeNiall detour I just took, even though I actually consider that to be part of BTL. (The DeNiall fic totally intertwines with chapter 18, just FYI. Y’know.)

Also sometimes I just need to work on something different. Sometimes there’s just a visceral need to write something that isn’t my main WIP, & after I fulfill that need, I’m much more capable of working on the WIP again.

Also I thought I was done DeNiall detouring but they are STILL YELLING AT ME. I WAKE UP EVERY MORNING THINKING ABOUT THEM. WTF.

8. How long have you been writing for?

A long-ass time.

I can remember writing stories as far back as like...the early 90s, but I can’t recall what they were about. My friends & I wrote HP fanfic (& made like...little movies of them?) during the long wait for Order of the Phoenix. Then I worked on a very sprawling self-insert LOTR fanfic from the ages of like, 12 to 18 (mostly just for myself, not published). And then I wrote a novel when I was 18 & in the middle of an OCD spiral (it’s probably awful tbh, though I did get a small bit of it published as a short story in my community college’s anthology journal a year or two later). Kept writing through college—Spring Break 2010 was absolute cannon fodder for short stories—& then I got rejected from my university’s creative writing program & then didn’t know what to do with myself. And then I decided to take that LOTR fanfic & try to adapt it into an original novel, but I had a Lot of trouble trying to create my own fantasy aspects for it & I stopped trying...& that was probably around age 23?

Stopped writing for a while.

When I was 26 I started a blog about holistic lifestyle shit. And then I went to school to be certified as a holistic nutritionist. And I worked on that blog throughout school & then I graduated & didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself. The last time I wrote for that blog was sometime last year, & it’s on hiatus while I...still try to figure out what the fuck to do with myself.

BUT while I was trying to figure that out, I came across Carry On. And it’d been about 5+ years since I’d written fiction at all. But I had The Itch. (I’d actually had The Itch many times during that 5 years, but I had no idea what to write. Turns out Simon & Baz were just the thing I needed to get going again.)

This was an unnecessarily long answer, very on-brand.

9. Do you tend to write more during the morning, afternoon, or evening?

I try to write all day, but a lot of it ends up just being me staring at the screen &/or flipping aimlessly through apps. If I’m at work, I’ll sometimes keep my doc open in the background & jot down lines as they come to me. I’ll also write on my phone during my breaks, but that also sometimes just turns into my flipping aimlessly through apps + listening to songs I think are a good mood for a scene but not actually writing anything. Just in the last few days I’ve set a few BTL-verse scenes to new songs & written exactly none of it.

On the weekend, I’ve found I’m actually most productive in the evening. Though again, I try to work on stuff all day. Sigh.

10. Do you prefer to post & update your WIP chapter by chapter, or do you prefer to wait until your WIP is 100% finished before sharing it?

LMAO. So, IDK if I’m physically capable of writing something in full before posting it (barring one-shots, obvs). I wanted to try that with the direct follow-up to First Bite, & then never finished it. The only fic I’ve been successful at writing fully before posting is Don’t Leave Without Me, but that’s only because I had a big old crisis about it halfway through in which I decided that I was a terrible writer & had to set it aside for a few months.

Truthfully, I would love to be able to write things fully before posting them, but...alas. I’m too hungry to post things as soon as they’re ready. To all of y’all reading BTL & waiting for me to post the next chapter, I am so sorry. (But not really, because I try not to apologize for myself. Just. Condolences.) I’m going to try to be a bit ahead on chapters when I start posting the sequel but that’s probs just wishful thinking tbh