Hahahaha, wow, that’s hilarious. I wonder if the music haunts her to this day. Vader’s Theme struck fear into the hearts of Imperials. It just makes your roommate think she’s late for Psych. 

@veliseraptor​ Same. I have some unpopular opinions about some popular characters, and, well, mostly I just don't say anything because I don't want to ruin anyone else's fun.

yeah, this...is generally what I try to do as an overall policy, but sometimes - idk, I really want to vent, or really feel like I need to express an opinion or talk about something that’s bothering me. 

and then it’s a fight between “do I want to complain about the thing more than I want to possibly have to deal with people getting upset at me”

@praximeter​ Thank you! I thought it was super clever when I wrote it. I don't actually swear much in real life, so writing characters who do (Watney, Steve, and Bucky, mostly) is hard, because the speaking pattern doesn't come naturally to me.

I don't actually swear much in real life

🤔 🤯

I have!

Grand Slam

Steve is a first baseman who scored three grand slams last season.

Bucky is the second-highest scorer on the Scholastic Bowl Team.

the concussion was totally gone by the time he woke up. superhealing has its perks. my nerves, however, are in a constant state of “STEVE NO,” which my therapist describes as “enough to drive anybody batshit.”

after the Deathbike incident, we decided that steve can’t use anything with wheels. just to be safe. and then he went out for a walk and accidentally stumbled into and broke up a drug smuggling ring. 

… So, “The Avengers meet the Addams Family” is clearly a prompt. Is “Bucky is recovering and having nightmares of taking revenge on Hydra. Then an ex-Hydra agent dies after claiming he was being haunted. Bucky thinks it’s not a coincidence.” a prompt or a summary? On the one hand, yes, there’s a lot of detail there. On the other hand, it’s really open-ended; there are a lot of directions someone could take that story. Could someone advise, please?

Both are prompts - one’s just a little more detailed than the other one.  And, see, for me, I’d be all over the first prompt because there’s a LOT of room for me to work and create, but the second one has enough detail in it that it might spark another writer who needs a little more in the way of an outline or structure.  What you don’t want to do is this (and this is only an example I’ve pulled out of my ass and only working on my first cup of coffee, so bear with me :D):

Post-TWS, Bucky is recovering in Avengers Tower and goes jogging with Steve and Sam every morning in Central Park. There, they come upon a homeless vet who Sam recognizes as a friend of a friend from another unit...but so does Bucky, because he killed the vet’s entire unit on a Winter Soldier mission. Sam wants to help the vet get back on his feet, and is pissed off and hurt when Bucky wants nothing to do with Sam’s efforts.  In fact, Bucky starts avoiding Sam altogether.  Steve is also upset, and can’t figure out why Bucky doesn’t want to help a fellow soldier, but Bucky’s too terrified to say anything to Steve about his reasons - he doesn’t want to remind Steve of his dark past or for Steve to decide that Bucky’s not worth saving. Lots of misunderstandings and PTSD flashbacks and H/C please.

Okay, so, here’s me as a writer looking at this “prompt” - my first thought is, why isn’t the prompter just writing it themselves, because they clearly have a very specific idea about the story and the direction of it and the plot and the emotional arc of the characters. My second thought is, well, you just told me the entire story, so not only do I not want to write it, I don’t even need to READ it. 

Now, let’s take that same premise and turn it into a prompt:

Post-TWS - Bucky comes face to face with his past as the Winter Soldier when Sam starts mentoring a vet who has a connection to Bucky’s time with Hydra.

There’s a lot more wiggle room in that prompt for the writer to work with there.  And that’s the difference.  It’s not that the first one is bad - it’s just that if you want that particular fic, then that’s a commission, not a prompt. :)

Sure! (and yay! eventually I’ll get around to that story! it’s on the List! at some point!)

17 - advice for my fledgling author self?

Oh, let’s see… for the VERY young me, the me who was tentatively sticking a toe into Supernatural fandom (this was back around season four, for context), I’d say: don’t be scared to put your work out there! Everyone here is here because they love this thing too, and they’ll want to read your words no matter what, at least SOMEONE will, because they love the thing and because fans love each other - it’s like an inherent support group!

For slightly older me: plan big fics better, darn it! I’m thinking about fics like Pineapple Revolution or the Cherik werewolf fic, which just, like…got stuck at about 2/3 done, largely because of things I’d set up wrong or failed to set up properly and only later realized that I needed. (This also kind of happened with lovebirds, in Evanstan-land.) And that doesn’t have to be, like, super-detailed outlines, but even just a few minutes of thinking ahead (am I going to need to get them out of the palace? there should be a way to do that) would’ve helped, in some cases.