#fayth talks

making decent progress on lost fic still, not as fast as I'd like, but with as shit as my health is these days, not really surprising lol. I've finished through scene 10, though it's fair to note that scene 10 was not originally in the outline and I added it because I felt it needed it… but hopefully this won't be a fic where I just keep adding scene after scene to the outline… though that started as far back as when I was writing grey skies, so who am I kidding. I'm already feeling like I need a couple of extra scenes for ignis and gladio towards the end of the fic. lmao. we'll see how shit goes.

and really it's because these dumbass boys both decided they wanted to dive into their guilt over stuff with/about noct in their childhood that's making me need/want extra scenes, if they would just stick to angsting about noct being kidnapped it'd be fine!! >:(

it's fine. it's fine. I am wordy and the readers can have a 14K chapter every once in awhile. as a treat.

(ignoring that 14K chapters are starting to increasingly become the norm with me. STOP BEING SO EMOTIONAL.)

(but they make it so easy… my emotionally repressed trauma filled beans…)

(noct voice: beeeeeaaaaaaannnnssss)

also… I feel like the way I write is having to change, because my brain sucks donkey dick these days, and… I don't really like it. the change, not the donkey dong. ain't touchin' that. because it's just. it's so much harder to think, to focus, to concentrate, I got that brain fog in me because these big dumb idiot baby apple fight hormones are trying to murder me and I got the chronic fatigue real bad and now I got the pain from the HS trying to distract me all the time and. sigh. I can't get all those little details and emotional reactions and deep dive of thoughts down the first time the way I used to.

like. I have always, always been an edit as I go person. I have been writing fics for twenty-six fucking years and I do not do drafts. I just don't. I hate them, I don't work that way, for me it's too time-consuming and just… it's a waste of time, I have no patience for it. when I was in school and teachers/professors would make essay drafts a requirement and part of the grade, I just. wouldn't fucking do them lmao. I'd take the zero on the draft portion and get my full marks on my essay and it was fine. never tanked my grades. if they wouldn't accept a final essay without a draft turned in first, I'd write the final essay in one go and then go back and edit in some "mistakes" and turn that in as my draft. fuck your drafts, I loathe them and I don't need them.

but now my brain is struggling so much that I find I'm having to write in… layers, almost? it's not really a draft because I'm not taking the original version and then rewriting it from scratch to be better. but like now I'm writing down the bulk of the scene in the first go, the base so to speak, and then I go back through and add in and expand on any descriptions that need it (I very much have an issue with making my characters feel like they've been plopped down in a black void, and especially with so much of lost fic taking place in one room or another until noct gets free and starts trying to make his way back home, I definitely need to be careful of that here), and then I go back a third time and expand on their thoughts/emotions/physical reactions to stuff.

and I used to be able to drag all this out of me in one go but I'm just so tired all the time that I no longer have the ability to put myself in their emotional shoes and it's hard and frustrating and I hate it. am having to ask the bestie to keep helping me figure out how these bitches would react to shit or feel about it when I used to be able to just… do that.

anyways, all this to say that's definitely making progress a little slower than I'd like, but it's still happening and I'm getting there. will I be able to finish this fic in a month? I'd like to, I was hoping to, but I'm not sure at this point. might be a couple months. but some of that is just because I can't stop being wordy T^T lol. like. it's fucking. 71K???? AND I ONLY HAVE TEN SCENES. that total six chapters so far. 71K FOR SIX CHAPTERS. fucking ridiculous lmao.

it's fine. really. ain't nobody got time for short fics. or something.

okay. this bitch be tired. imma shut it now. if you actually read this I appreciate it. it's lonely shouting into the void sometimes.

here, have a line I really, really love. as a parting gift. a lil treat.

Rules: without naming them, post (up to) 10 gifs of characters that altered your brain chemistry. was tagged by @ivorydice for this, thank <3 (yeah, this was hard. lmao.)

(GIF by moonakarii)

You tagged my main @zanarkandfayth but I'm putting it in my writing sideblog because it fits better here lol.

Rules: Share the original base ideas for your WIPs.

aftermath fic: idk what to say about this one, honestly. I like non-con/rape aftermath fics. the second ever fanfic I read was a non-con fic. it's the first thing I search out in new fandoms. I always end up writing at least one for any fandom I write majorly for. originally it was a way to process my trauma and now it's just. idk. comforting??? anyways, yeah, I actually attempted to write this fic in 2017, very early on in the fandom at which point pretty much the only non-con fics I could find featuring noct had ardyn being the one to do it during main game canon (and often didn't involve much aftermath) and I wanted something during brotherhood era that involved someone more or less a stranger, so. this fic. that was it, that was the base idea. when I sat down to write it for real in 2019 that was all I had to go on. no outline, no ideas, just writing and seeing where the hell it took me.

college au fic: I want to explore a coming of age for noct where he isn't royalty and doesn't have the burden/responsibility of becoming king resting on his shoulders, but where he still believes he has to follow in his dad's footsteps, and his relationship with is dad is worse because of it. and, well, the original intention was also to explore a broken friendship between noct and ignis, and then I kinda did that in monsters because I forgot I was going to do it in this fic… lmao. am still gonna do it in this fic though, just. different. XD anyways the college au aspect was just an easy way of exploring the things I wanted to explore, and also because I'm weak for a good college au that isn't meet-cute. and this fic has nothing to do with me cramming all the trauma of my intial attempts to attend university right out of high school onto noct, nope

lost fic: literally part of my comment on @quartzguts' fic Lost Signal: "anyways, I adore this, I adore it I adore it I adore it, I could have read thousands more words of a hurt and scared noct fleeing through the lucis countryside alone" my brain: you know… we could make that happen me: oh? 👀 and then I promptly got writer's block on it after outlining the whole fic xD

started working on 49 this morning at least but hhhh it's been. slow-going. everything is slow-going with me these days. I've only rewritten 597 words in the last three and a half hours, half of which I didn't even change from the original, but I'm just. I'm tired, man. I'm so tired. I'm always tired. focusing properly is SO hard. but I'm persisting!! I will finish this fic if it kills me. which it probably will.

Knowing me, they won't even be pure fluff lol. They're not even really supposed to be cos boy still working on his trauma. He just gets to be spared any panic and/or breakdowns and/or PTSD triggers and have an overall good day while being slightly on edge. The things we writers do to our characters...

I'm aaaaaalmost done outlining the second arc (this fic has arcs now!! T^T). Fic goes from April to April and Sept-Dec is the second arc... I'm kinda hung up on winter holiday stuff, because I made up a holiday for it ages ago, and then I wrote monsters, and for some reason I made up a similar but different winter holiday for that fic??? And I like having consistent worldbuilding between my fics but I kinda like the stuff in aftermath fic better but it would also make the fic a little longer and one thing is also a little too similar to a thing I made up for the not-halloween holiday which, admittedly, Noct didn't get to do cos trauma said no so it's not like it would read the same... Yeah hi I'm torn and it's stopped my outlining because I don't know which one to go with and neither of the two people I usually ask for plotting help are available rn so here I am rambling on a blog post instead dksksk

The outline is up to eighty-nine chapters so far. lmao. keeping in mind it's the second arc. there's a whole third arc after this that covers january to mid-april. genuinely what the fuck is wrong with me. why did I ever write such a ridiculously long fic. still feeling/fearing it'll hit a million words, but maybe it won't. it'll get close though. I mean it's at 650K and it's only just started the second arc??? yeah I'm doomed.