I think everyone on here who sees my posts already knows that. I scream about it a lot, get stressed, and try to document as much as I can in this space in the event that my mistakes can help someone else. I'm moving all of that content over to my side blog @bellisima-actually-writes and will keep this one lighter and more fandom focused. BUT, as one last query on this side of my two blogs, I wanted to send out an ask for help.

I have written three Good Omens longfics of varying quality and complexity - my version of season 3 that is more wish fulfillment than speculation, a canon-divergent twisty AU in which our ineffables never met and Hell won the War, and a Reverse Omens Fae AU - and I would LOVE some constructive feedback on any of them from a new reader. We in the fandom are so generous in our praise towards one another, and I adore all of the feedback I've gotten on everything I've written, but what I really want is someone to take an analytical lens to it, to identify where the pacing drags, what parts are overwritten and hopefully what actually works well. I would love feedback not from the perspective of how they stand as GO fanfictions, but as stories of their own right, developing characters and building tension.

In exchange, I am happy to do the same to you or offer beta services on anything you're writing (original or fanfic in any fandom). My personal strengths are in detailed and complex plot, world-building, pacing, and developing well-rounded characters.

If I do want to do something with my book beyond toss it onto AO3 for people to read, I will need to go out and have other writers read and critique it, but it may be years before it's ready for that. And given I have three other fully written books already that I put tremendous effort into, I thought I'd try here and see what I could get back.

I am going to no-pressure tag the people who asked to participate in the December Original Fiction Writing Prompts, but am open to any readers who are willing. And @addledmongoose and @tigerseye67 am going to exclude you two because you beautiful humans have already read all of my stuff❤️❤️

@lavendermoonlitskies; @tamsinswriting; @ezomind-the-other-one; @joyandotherstories

Good, bad, anything!

An angst prompt from an Ask 😰😣

A male!YW x Crow 🥺🖕

An old Shaxx x YW that I finally finished😭😘

A female!YW x Crow 😢🥰

So I have Extreme Doubts in my ability to write original stories. Like yeah, I know that pure originality is hard, and my first full story is bound to be my worst, and editing and rewriting exist... but if what I write is so bad that I won't even find beta readers to tell me how garbage it is, what's the point in writing it?

(Also I actually have two ideas but they're both of questionable quality. This is the first I'm going to propose to Tumblr. If I manage to get feedback then I might (might) ask y'all for feedback on my second idea as well.)

Here's the first idea that I have:

The genre is vampire story, but here me out. In a fit of hyperfocus I have written out extensive, developed lore about vampire physiology and culture. There's a ton of worldbuilding to showcase throughout the story, and not just inserted through random tangents. It'll actively impact the plotline.

As far as the story goes, our main character starts out human. His name is Vick. One night while he's driving home from work, somebody speeds through a red light and crashes into him. The wreck is bad, and he's not 100% sure what happened, but he vaguely remembers a figure standing over him and a sharp pain in his neck.

When he wakes up in the hospital, the EMTs tell him that he's lucky. When they showed up, he had miraculously few injuries and apparently just passed out from shock. He still has some bruises and scrapes, and they want him to keep an eye out for a concussion, but otherwise he's fine to go home... so that's what he does, though he's sure that he was injured much worse than the doctors told him.

He sends his boss the note from the hospital saying he needs a few days off and decides to enjoy his brief break. Except he doesn't get the chance to enjoy it because weird things start happening to his body.

Suddenly, he can't eat anything. He's very hungry, but the food he has in the apartment has started to taste weird, and he keeps throwing it up. And he's so tired. He's so tired, all the time, and he doesn't understand what's happening to him. Is he concussed after all? Sick? Is it just stress? It's getting worse and he's scared, but he doesn't want to go to a hospital if he can avoid it (this takes place in the United States and medical care is expensive).

Meanwhile, our other important main character (this is switching POVs by the way) is busy tracking down the person that his idiot cousin hit with his car. He hasn't gotten his cousin to confess to it yet, but he has a suspicion that to avoid manslaughter charges, the cousin turned the human he crashed into. There's several problems with that!!

Vampires are trying to stay hidden from humans! The last time the general public was aware of their existence it didn't go well!

Vampire society has rules. You absolutely do not turn a human without their full knowledge and consent. Big no no.

When a human is turned, they become the responsibility of the Family the person who turned them belongs to (there are Houses and Families and again LOTS OF WORLD BUILDING I can explain). Generally, they're the responsibility of the person who turned them, but the cousin is not going to be trusted with a young, newly-turned vampire after turning the human without consent!!

SO, our Naturally Born Vampire Character goes looking for the human, and through less-than-legal means manages to acquire their name and address from the hospital.

Vick ends up getting his answers for what's happening when the Other Vampire shows up at his door. From there, the story turns into our primary character learning how to navigate the world of vampires and balance that world with the remnants of his human life. He gets to know the culture and society that exists in the shadows of humanity, and also gets to know his new Vampire Mentor that's taking care of him.

Both Vick and the Mentor Vampire I Will Name At Some Point have their baggage. Vick doesn't have many friends. Mentor Vampire is dealing with family drama and trying to uphold the integrity of his Family and his House. I want the two to be providing one another with mutual support and learning through one another's perspectives.

(I don't plan for this to be a romance because there might be a pretty unhealthy power dynamic there since... Mentor and Mentee, you know.)