#wantonwhale

What work was the quickest to write? And, Which took you the longest?

(AO3 wrapped writers ask game!)

ohhhhh damn I'm gonna have to wrack my brains on this one, shit 🤣🤔

10. What work was the quickest to write?

Okay so What did you call me? (OFMD) was probably the quickest to write, because it was just 200 words and was more comedy than smut 😆

For something a little... heftier, my recent Sandman fic Unseen was one that absolutely seized me, once I knew what I wanted to do. Hammered that sucker out in a few hours and then cleaned it up and posted it the next day, and I am quite pleased with the result 🎉

11. What work took you the longest to write?

Oh jeez that's probably my Lokius fic New message, which was a request by the endlessly patient @starport-seven-five , because it languished for.. I don't even want to think about how long, probably somewhere close to an entire year ahahaha. But once I actually got started on it for real, it went pretty quick!

The other option is Unfairly good, the Dresden/Marcone smutty sequel to a little fade-to-black oneshot I originally posted for Fictober 2021. I started the sequel not long after part 1, but it took months of picking at it literally sentence by sentence at a time, until I finally finished and posted it in July of this year 😂🙈

...

But really, yknow, what is time anyway amirite or amirite

Dayja forking around with a mouse droid.

Based on a scene from Chapter 24 of @wantonwhale’s epic Promises You’ll Only Make (Rated E).

👣🖊️🖕

(🐋💙😘)

And, which do you like better: bouncing off and playing with canon scenes you saw/read and said "YES!" to, or fixing/reworking/playing with different possibilities for things that made you go "URGH"

The Thrawn books jumped into my head first, soooo... 😂

Something that happened in canon that I adored:

Thrawn & Thrass crime-foiling shenanigans in between adorable nerd tabletop gaming time

Something that happened in canon that I found disappointing:

Thrawn: Alliances

Which do I like better...

In all of my fandoms, I definitely prefer playing with and getting inspiration from bits of canon that made me go YES!! for 👀, 😳, 😏, and/or 😍 reasons 😆 There's something about the challenge of writing stuff that could fit into canon, or after canon, or before canon, that I really enjoy. I don't think I write all that much in the way of Canon Fix-It fics, in contrast... 🤔 With, of course, the notable exceptions of "Nightswan didn't die" - "ok but how, exactl--" "Nightswan. Didn't. Die." and hardcore denial-shipping Thrass/Being Alive.

YES

I look scary but really I'm just coming in to give you hug

...in a dumpster. Like the filthy little gremlin I am 💙🦝💙

AND!

Please let at least one of them be by you. 💙🙏

Sorry for the homework assignment, feel free to pretend it doesn't exist 😂💙

Oh boy, fun homework!! 🤩🤓

Okay so I thought about this pretty much all afternoon and evening 😂 And I've picked a few that I think are good examples of different types of short fic, as well as being good fic. And also came up with silly category names because I could.

(I'm afraid some of these will be a little out of your fandom wheelhouse, but I do think they're good examples so I hope that's alright 🙈)

The wanky drabble

I learned this one from @revakah, who's still the master of 100-word-witchcraft in my books. Playing with formatting and throwing any concept of sentence structure out the window in favour of pure unadulterated vibes; and somehow winding up with a story that spans way, way more time and feelings than it should be able to. Two of Rev's I particularly like for that:

Blank Space (100 words - Sylvie & Mobius - Loki Series - Sads ahoy)

Grounded (100 words - Kaladin/Dalinar - the Stormlight Archive - Fucking Hot ahoy)

That One Scene

This is probably my own favourite and most frequent sort of ficlet / short... where you take the established world/canon and either situate readers with the summary itself, or with like one or two quick lines-- and write literally just that one single scene or idea and nothing. else. Leave the finer details of exactly how they got there and what happens after up to the reader's imagination. If those are even relevant, they might not be 😂 I love these cause they're so flexible-- they can be introspective, they can be kind of a character study or a What If, they can leave people pondering implications and going ..oh, they can be a quick n dirty little smut scene or powerfully moving angst or pure happy-making fluff; or any combination of the above.

A universe all its own by @jewelliffer (647 words - Thranto - So Fluffy I'm gonna Die)

Unending by saisei (405 words - SGA vegas!Sheppard/Todd the Wraith - impossible levels of characterization, canon backstory, and post-canon story for that many words)

In time by me (200 words - SGA one-sided Sheppard/Todd the Wraith - I'm just really proud of how creepy and not-quite-human I managed to make this Todd POV one)

Longfic speedrun

For when you have the idea for a long fic but don't actually want to write the whole thing. Instead, take the most important, core bits of key moments over time, and just... don't write the rest. It has a particular feel to it that's kind of hard to describe, but they tend to leave me feeling a little stunned. Because I only read one or two thousand words, but somehow they've beamed a year's or a decade's worth of story time directly into my brain.

The Taste of Him by @draculard (~2.5k - NightThrawn with background/nonromantic Thrawn/Palpatine - okay yes this is on the longer side for a short fic BUT in my defense it's incredible and oh yeah OW heartbreaking)

Still there is my attempt at a slowburn speedrun (~1.3k - more SGA - vegas!McShep post canon)

Thank you!!! ^_^

Happy Exceptionally Belated Palentine's Day!