Scales and Tales

I had a wonderful time hanging out with some FMA fans this weekend in the MEATSWORD ( Massively Entertaining and Transformative Slash Writers Online Retreat & Discussion) chat! Our wonderful host provided a bevy of 5-sentence fic prompts for Saturday's hangout, and although I didn't manage a ficlet for all of them, I still came out with a generous handful.

All are FMA, except for the "Night and day" prompt, which is NiF.

( Prompt: Hint of vanilla )


( Prompt: Careless Whisper )


( Prompt: What the hell is that smell? )


( Prompt: Something old, something new )


( Prompt: I didn't know it would be this hard. )


( Prompt: Night and day )


( Prompt: That's not supposed to go there )


( Prompt: Love in an elevator )


( Bond(age) of love )


( The sun isn't the only thing going down. )

The other night I was in Ed/Roy FMA Chat with anotherfmafan and the usual suspects (plus a few new faces! Hi!) and we had a blast! There was much exciting discussion, and fun trivia questions (anotherfmafan was the victor! I was sadly nowhere in the running for the crown), and prompts for 5-sentence ficlets.

Mine are below, lightly edited.

( Lick )


( Candlelight; post-anime (2003), Roy-centric )


( Heat )


( Goodbye; established relationship, smut )


( Condom; established relationship, smut )


( Tickle; futurefic, fluffy WAFF )


( Push; postcanon, sort of h/c? )


( Shudder; implied Ed/Roy, Al-centric )


( Lotion; postcanon, humour )

Well, my last word count post was in July (*wince*) but anyway! Here it is, back again. I went a long time where I just had zero energy or inspiration to write, but in the last week or two I've had two or three bursts of sudden WORDS ARE HAPPENING excitement. (As usual: not necessarily on anything I should be prioritising, but at least it's something!)

Document 1
last wordcount: 90,267.
current wordcount: 99,121!

Document 2
last wordcount: 10,694.
current wordcount: 12,837!

Document 2 is even more impressive because I've actually split the largest of its pieces off into a separate GoogleDoc, so that means most of its new words are divided between just two fic starts. For purposes of word counting, the GoogleDoc version shall be known as "Document 2.1" henceforth.

Document 2.1
last word count: ??
current word count: 5434.

I hit a roadblock in this one for a long time due to POV issues, but I've been slowly hammering away on them (it boils down to having to rewrite everything after a certain point), and was able to post another snippet to AO3! Next bit is giving me grief because it's hideously infodump-y, and I really really hate "we now interrupt your hawt pr0nz to bring you All The Background Info" -- so I'm having a hard time convincing myself that it's okay to post it as-is and clean it up later. (I think the lesson this story is teaching me is: No, posting works in progress is Not For Me.)

My fourth prompt was from seerofbread: "smoke". Somehow that resulted in a sonnet for Vlad Taltos.

( Sonnet below the cut. )


smoke, n.
1. the visible vapor and gases given off by a burning or smoldering substance, especially the gray, brown, or blackish mixture of gases and suspended carbon particles resulting from the combustion of wood, peat, coal, or other organic matter.
2. something resembling this, as vapor or mist, flying particles, etc.
3. something unsubstantial, evanescent, or without result.
4. an obscuring condition.

Hmm, I need an icon to go along with word count posts.

I forgot last week's word count post (well, 'forgot' is simplifying), but at least I didn't forget to write! I've actually hammered away at a few things in the last couple weeks, including (gasp!) things I ought to be working on! I am tentatively pleased.

Speaking of 'things I ought to be working on', I made a post laying out most of my largest-wordcount/most-frequented fic efforts, for the sake of my alpha readers so that they'd have a better idea of what I'm talking about (because nothing actually has a title); it's currently filtered so that only they can see it, so as not to clutter things up in here with Yet More Homestuck Stuff, but if anyone wants in I'll gladly add them to the filter. (Warning: you may learn more about my fic kinks than you wanted to know, or at least about the ones I feel competent to write. More serious warning: there's a couple things - on a very long list - that fall into the dubcon/noncon area; these are marked.)

If, at some point, I pulled out the Valdemar doc and did some scribbling for that maybe-possibly sequel to "Solace", that'd be nice, too. The Vanyel comm has been pretty active lately, and it's giving me urges! *marks that idea down in the timeslot labelled "blocked for everything Homestuck*

Sooooo today I woke up with a fabulous scene in my head; by the time I got up, I had two. So I slapped them into my in-progress document, pleased with myself if slightly surprised.

Then I skipped through some of the other in-progress things and tacked a few hundred words of smut onto a couple of them.

Then I went and read some smut, came back and wrote a few hundred more words. o.O

Apparently during the night someone set my writing switch to YES, but the faucet is drawing straight from the Adult Content well.

(Too bad my current reverse-prompt projects are mostly non-porn! D'oh.)

I should post, but have fallen into the issue of there not being much to say.

I'm tired a lot for no single particular reason; I'm working, in spare moments, on a couple of Homestuck fics that I hope to post to the kinkmeme when it moves to DW. I'm contemplating ways to exercise that don't involve the outdoors. I had a birthday. I still desperately want to be employed and feel like a failure as a grownup. I need to draw myself a new icon.

Notice how that's mostly a list of things that haven't been done? Yeah. That's why I haven't been posting. (Also see: tired.)

In more cheerful news, I'm travelling next week; I may or may not have internet access, but I anticipate much fun being had regardless.

WIP Amnesty... Week
Since it's been extended till Wednesday, I suppose I should release some of the literary eggs I'm brooding. (Or at least tiny snips of them.)

( This one's an HP/RL that's been lurking on my hard drive for... well, a long time. )

I haven't entirely given up hope on this one, but it looks like it will be a long time in the making. Too, even these snips need some heavy reworking in places, I think. And then there's my inability to decide tiny nit-picky details like prices or sandwiches... Sigh.