#technicallysublimechild

With Mikey

From this list! I hope you like~

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Mikey hadn't even been paying attention. He had no idea how it had started. These days, the only way Raph and Leo actually talked to each other was to yell, fight, snipe, and blame. It was nothing new. No reason Mikey thought he needed to pay attention to this particular fight. They'd insult each other, storm off to cool down, and then go back to their hostile silence, only talking to him to act like he was their passive-aggressive messenger turtle.

They'd existed this way for years. It'd started slowly when they began giving up hope of finding their missing genius, then escalated suddenly when Master Splinter was killed. It wasn't a good life, but it was their life. Mikey had grown accustomed to it. It was their way of life. It was the way things were, and he just had to live with that. It was better than the alternative, he supposed.

So what had he missed? What made this fight different? If he'd realized this was going to be the last fight, could he have changed anything if he'd intervened?

"It should have been you!" thrown in Leo's face was when Mikey tuned in, past the time the rumblings had started, just in time to witness the avalanche. No chance of holding it back now that its awesome might was rumbling down the mountain.

It wasn't a particularly new sentiment. They'd both said horrible, awful, untrue things about each other regarding Splinter's sacrifice and the aftermath. They each blamed themselves and took it out on each other. But this wasn't about Master Splinter.

"No one woulda cared if you'd disappeared! Gone and done us all a favor," Raph spat.

Holy shit. It was about Don. They never talked about Don. None of them. Not since all hope for him died with Sensei. They'd raked every detail of Sensei's death over the coals, blaming each other for the shifting of the wind, but they never brought up Donatello. Mikey froze.

Leo hadn't even told them he was losing his sight. He just struggled in silence until it was gone, and there was nothing else to do but for Mikey and Raph to realize that they should have taken his squinting and practicing in the dark more seriously. At this moment, Leo's face twisted and warped in a hideous grimace, eyes so alive and so focused on Raphael that, with his mask off, Mike forgot for a moment that he couldn't see.

For once, Leo didn't place blame back. He simply snarled, "I wish," turned tail, and stalked out. Mike and Raph watched him go in silence. Mike had never wanted to lose any of his brothers, and he certainly couldn't have chosen between them. Why didn't he say anything before Leo was gone?

He turned to say something to Raph instead (the only one there to say anything to) but Raph was staring hard after Leo. Mike sucked in a harsh breath, and Raph stalked away, radiating too many emotions to process.

"Please don't go," Mike called. Too soft. Too late. Far, far too late.

Mike never had managed to matter more than their rivalry.

Mikey or Raph please. 🧡❤️

Thank you for the prompt <3.

I got a bit carried away with this one ^^;

For the writing questions: 3, 7 and 55 please!!

It's just a bitty fracture and will be okay! Thank you ♥♥

right, now I actually have the questions again--

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

Honestly, chapters don't come about with a bunch of creative planning, just scheduling. For the writing itself, it's just kind of... sit down and write what feels right? Occasionally write half a page and go "hmm no", change POV and go again. The timing of writing is always the same - if I don't work that day, I'll play video games over breakfast, do 5 mins exercise, and then sit down to write one (1) page. Making myself do this is the only way it gets written when I'm not hyperfixated** (which I am currently not, alas.) Send it to my beta. Every time I open the chapter I review the last page, make some corrections, make beta corrections, fiddle with wording, then write another page. For the writing itself, mostly we're just vibin', which is great because none of my characters ever shut up so mostly they drive the plot on their own and we eventually get places. Sometimes if there's gonna be a long and complex conversation, I'll script it first - the Leo and Mikey oneshot re: don't kill yourself for a corpse was scripted first to make it sound natural. So was Leo and Casey's talk. So is the secret side project I'm working on now (which is indulgent and may never see the light of day, but--). Once I'm happy I'll go back to flesh it out with conversation tags etc.

Re: fic creative process, one-shots are just kind of written and not planned out ahead of time. If I come up with a long and convoluted plot, I'll probably outline at least enough for me to be confident of where I'm going with it. Other than that, it's always games-exercise-sit down and write (occasionally with a cider to loosen up) with some minor distractions thrown in as I try to research something and end up down a rabbit hole somewhere, you know how it is.

** if I'm hyperfixated I will write you a 130k fic updating weekly-ish, apparently. I miss the obsessive drive, lmao.

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

My writing style of choice is (usually) limited third person. Thus I'll usually end up choosing the character who would have the most interesting take on the events going on or the one who doesn't know what the reader knows/suspects and thus can drive readers nuts with their cluelessness, it's kinda fun. If there are multiple choices for that, I'll pick someone who hasn't had a POV in a while. And sometimes when I write, I'm like "...this is missing something," delete what I've got and go again with someone else to see if I'm happier that way. (Ch. 5 of NRTFW was originally written from Raph's POV. And then I was like "nahhh Raph is too stressed and dragging down the pacing" and switched to his jerk dad instead.) It's amazing how much a POV switch can fix a derailed chapter, tbh. Also, if you get stuck mid-scene? Flipping to someone else in the room also works as a kind of restart/reset/refresh to keep things going and your pacing solid. And again, past all that, sometimes it's just vibes.

55. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

It's Leo. It's always Leo. BUT Donnie snuck up on him like a dark horse theatre kid to steal the spotlight somewhere along the way in NRFTW and I ended up giving him such a huge part as a result, b/c lemme tell you the outline was uh... it had no spaghetti in it, let's just leave it at that. 8D; Part of this is that, once I got the hang of his speech and his scientific drama-queening, he was just so much fun to have talk at people. But one of my RP friends also loves him to pieces and was very encouraging when I made noises about trying to write again, and I also wanted to give him more screentime to kind of go "look, it's your boy!" (Casey also got this treatment to some extent, rofl. TBH if I get vocal readers/supporters I'm always paying attention to what they say.)

Thanks for the questions! <3

Thanks!! ❤️

:D

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Inspiration is everywhere! Incidents in my own life, dialogue prompt lists, monthly writing challenges, unresolved plot points in movies or episodes, even fics for other fandoms where I'm like "What if something vaguely like this but to the left and with turtles? Lol" And especially in my bed when it's after four AM and I should be sleeping and instead lines of dialogue are playing out in my head and I just have to write them down or be doomed to forget ^^"

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

The one that always stuck with me the clearest from my writing class was the acronym FANBOYS for words that don't typically need a comma in front of them in a sentence: for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so. I followed it very strictly for a long time. I've loosened up to put a comma in front of an occasional "and" if the sentence needed a comma for an emotional beat to make it sound better in my head but yeah.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

How do you feel about raspberries?

Raspberries are good. I like raspberries.

Blueberries are nice too, though I'm always a little wary about getting a surprise sour one.

My favourites are blackberries and cranberries, though. Big fan of both.

Tbh, I enjoy most berries. It's just strawberries I have an irrational distaste for 😅

Thank you so much for the tag, @technicallysublimechild 💚

Fave tag (s): Hurt/Comfort, [X Character] needs a Hug, Angst with a Happy Ending/Eventual Happy Ending, Whump

Ships tag(s): Mutual Pining, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers

Three go to fandoms: I also tend to lock in on one fandom at a time. At the moment I am very much in a TMNT stretch, but before that it was Undertale and Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons.

How do you normally comment: I have a bad habit of setting high expectations for myself when it comes to comments (perfectionism, I know ye well). So I sometimes won't read a fic if I don't have the spoons to leave a long, detailed comment (which is ridiculous, because I love the emoji and keysmash comments I recieve on my own works!).

That said, I really enjoy picking a specific part of the chapter/oneshot and focusing my comment around that. If there's a paragraph or a scene or even just one line that especially captured my attention, I love analysing it and telling the writer how good that particular bit was in the comments. My favourite type of comments to leave are when I get to do that with multiple sections of the work

Light or dark mode: Dark mode, please :)

Mobile or desktop: Mobile. If fic writers didn't mean us to read their masterpieces late into the night instead of going to sleep, then they wouldn't write them so compelling /silly 😉

WIP or completed: Both. A completed work is a treat, because I know there will be a conclusion going in (unless it's part 1 of an ongoing series). But I love coming into a WIP and getting to share the author's excitement as they go. And getting an email that a new chapter just dropped is so much fun! Plus, I'll often go back and reread from the start once the work is completed, so I get to experience it all through again, but this time pick up on all the foreshadowing :)

Multi-chapter or oneshot: Again, both. I love getting sucked into a compelling multichapter fic and letting it consume my every waking thought. But I also love a oneshot that can floor me with just a single chapter. Plus, I don't always have the energy/time/spoons for a large fic, so oneshots are nice and bitesized.

WHOO-HOO!!! Second ever finished multichap fic!!! It's about Rise!Leo becoming a vampire. Check it out. ;)

My goal was to write every day with a secondary goal of just hitting 400 words a day. I wrote for 31 days straight, completed a fic from start to finish, and averaged over 900 words a day, ending at 28,306 words total (just under twice as long as my second longest fic).

Oops, I'm so sorry @technicallysublimechild! I accidentally hit 'post' on this too early!

Thank you for the asks!

2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

I used to just write as I went, but now I'm a bit more of a planner.

I definitely don't totally outline each chapter before I write. That would feel too much like writing it all out twice, to me. And I like flexibility in my plot. If the characters what to take the story in a different direction to the one I intended, I've found that following them is often more interesting and rewarding than sticking to my original idea.

But I do benefit from a basic outline. I generally have a vague idea for what I want a chapter to be and where I want it to go as I start writing it. Though I've often found that, when I do outline, what I'd planned to be 2 chapters ends up being more like 4 or 5 😅.

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

I was a little surprised that Reflections & Renewal didn't get more interaction, but I suppose the fact that it was primarily a Tang Shen and Splinter oneshot probably meant people weren't as interested in it.

And I'd love for Will You Still Love Me? to get more interaction, too. It's genuinely one of my favourite 03 headcanons, but the fact that I wrote it months after I wrote the meta post might have meant that everyone who read the post just thought the fic was rereading old ground, maybe?

57. Do you prefer editing as you write, or waiting until it's finished?

Again, it's a bit of both.

I know they say you shouldn't edit as you go. And it definitely breaks up the flow when I'm just putting words down on the first draft. I like to write on paper first for this very reason, but even then I'm rereading what I've just written and striking out parts I don't like.