#viticomus

franco’s succubus vibes?? 

heart with no companion

a reincarnation au, i’ve always been a sucker for those “ancient beings are reborn and try to find each other” fics. i’m thinking of ariande going through her life chasing shadows just out of reach, there’s something beyond that she just can’t grasp. there are whispers, sometimes, of knowledge that she can’t comprehend but feels right. when she meets a strange man talking about dreams and something beyond this world, she follows him. she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, not yet, but she’ll know when she finds it. when she sees mal for the first time, it feels like being doused in ice water, it feels like a kick, a baptism, a renewal. 

memories start coming in, a trickle and then a flood. she remembers a time long ago, of hands in hers, of a beloved person so different and yet the same to the one standing in front of her. her feet move forward without conscious thought, but rough hands seize her by the arms, and there’s a crowd surging around her, holding her down. she thrashes in their grasp, trying to fight her way to the only thing she’s ever known, but there’s a sharp pain and her eyes fly open.

… mal’s dead. she’s too late. 

ariande feels no ill will towards this man who mal loved, she can’t fault anyone for falling for her beloved as she once did. he seems devoted in his own way, and ariande is glad that someone cherished mal when she could not. 

there’s nothing left of the woman she loves except for a small metal token held by the man. she distracts him with a few silver words, and with deft hands she earned in a different time, slips the totem from his pocket and palms it. 

DO I EVER. :D I love this question. I love it so much I spent the last couple of days thinking about it because I wanted to make sure I will be actually helpful. Plus it’s been quite the struggle for me to switch from fanfic to original -- or rather, I should say, switch back, since original fic is where I came from before I was sucked into the black hole that is fandom. 

OKAY SO people love to talk about how fanfic will teach you to write, and you can graduate from it to original fiction or whatever. This is a lie and the first you need to do is let go of the idea that anything you know about writing fanfic will help you from now on at all. 

This doesn’t have anything to do with the whole “Is fanfic as good as original fic / Is fanfic literature?” debate. It’s just that there are two writing essentials that fanfic very much doesn’t teach you: creating characters and exposition. 

In fanfic, you don’t create the character from scratch, but rather you expand on an existing one, which requires a completely different skill set.

In fanfic, even when you create an OC, you still only add one character to an existing cast while in original fiction, you have to balance out an entire ensemble of new characters, so even that is completely different.  

In fanfic, you can reliably assume that your readers will already know any number of things about the world and the characters, so you don’t learn how to introduce. 

And most importantly: Your readers already love the characters. 

I think the last point is essential. It’s Aristotle who first stated that you first have to convince your audience that a character is worthy of knowing about and caring for (this is what’s called ethos) and only then will their actions make your audience react emotionally (that’d be pathos). In fanfic we already go in caring. Pair your favorite character with your favorite trope, and you’ll probably devour that fic no matter how bad the grammar or how ridiculous the plot. But in original fiction, when we’re introducing the story, every sentence threatens to cost us readers, as they get bored. I can start a story with the sentence, “Felix Gaeta stared at his drink moodily all evening” and the Gaeta fans will fill in Felix’ sordid history of trauma and betrayal. Plenty emotion will immediately be involved. Heck, just mention his hair and his fans will go, “Aw!” :-D But if I start an original story with, “Henry Hankypank stared at his drink moodily all evening” then none of that means anything to the audience; there is no automatic emotional pull. (this is of course why original writing advice puts so much emphasis on the first line. Compare, for ex., the first line of The Godfather, which evokes compassion for a character by introducing the worrisome concept of “waiting for justice”: “Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.”)

So all in all, in original fic, you suddenly have at hand the problem of a really empty first page. You’re supposed to now unfurl a story on it, while simultaneously convincing your audience to a) stay interested in the story you’re building and b) start caring for these characters you’re introducing. And you’ve never had to do anything comparable before. It’s a new skill you need to learn.

So, y’know, let go of everything you thought you knew about storytelling and start fresh. 

Your characters will now be much simpler and way more straightforward than what you’re used to. 

Nobody cares about the characters before you make them. 

Nobody cares about what’s next unless you make them super curious. 

This sounds hard - well, it is hard, nobody said it was easy. ^^ I know you though, you’re awesome, you will be just fine. Just stop thinking about it as a transition. Start thinking about it as a new hobby. The things you did learn when you wrote fanfic, the things that will still help you, they’re not going anywhere; they’ll help you when it’s time. But seriously, what’s blocking you is the things you haven’t learned / practiced yet, so you have to focus on those first. 

(one of my favorite first lines of all time, btw, is from Joe Haldeman’s Forever War: “Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man." It gets more intriguing with each following line, it’s a beautiful first scene.)

fic title prompt: “blood on my name” from @viticomus​ 💕

part of me is thinking victorian era lesbian vampires, but i don’t think i could do that justice. or a mythological au, with ties to greek myths and the ariadne of lore...

ariande knows the story well. as it goes, she is a princess, the daughter of a faraway king. or so they say, for she has no land to her name and no crown to weigh down her head. one day she meets a man or perhaps a boy or perhaps a hero, and falls in love as princesses do. he faces a trial as all heroes must, a daunting one that has taken the lives of many. in her love, she goes against her father, her kingdom, and gives him a weapon with which to fight and a means with which to escape.

she is a dutiful supporting character and plays her role well. after the hero’s triumphant return, her path splinters. in some stories, she is abandoned. left behind on an island like useless cargo. sometimes a god comes across her, and takes her for his own. in others, the hero leaves her and she kills herself in grief, having served her purpose in the narrative. sometimes it is a different hero that kills her, marking down her demise in the margins of his ledger.

ariadne knows what awaits her. in her story, she is given the duty of leading a man out of the labyrinth of his own mind, of giving him the tools with which to reach his salvation. whatever happens next will not be passed down through the ages. for her, it’s freedom, it’s obscurity, there is no guarantee whether she lives or dies after her job is complete. 

in one world, she goes back to her humdrum life. presses play on her narrative that was paused when the hero crashed in. forgets the world she was thrust into and the things she saw there. in another, she is killed for what she has done, or perhaps for what she is about to do. in others, she is placed into someone else’s story. a background character, a convenient tie-in. a shortcut of a person. 

inception, arthur & eames

cw: blood, animal death, unsanitary 

--

Arthur’s been missing for two months when he gets the message. It’s from an unknown number to his personal phone, the one whose number he’s given out to maybe three people. The first message is two numbers, a coordinate about 50 miles north. The second is a list of detailed instructions. He reads about halfway through, and then gets up to hotwire a car. After a stop at a hardware store for a shovel and a few pairs of gloves, he heads north. 

A few miles away from the coordinates, the road begins getting bumpier. The woods become denser. What little sunlight is out is blocked out by the branches over head. Eventually, the road ends and Eames gets out of the car. With a shovel and a flashlight in hand, he keeps going. The roots are thick beneath his feet and he feels his way through mossy trunks. When he reaches a clearing, his eyes are immediately drawn to a path of earth that looks more recently overturned.