now is time for Blog

been thinking about fic summaries of all things recently. it's largely due to actually having to sit down and write some for the big bangs i was participating in, when usually i can just default to an excerpt from the fic itself. i do think that writing (interesting) summaries is something that does take real skill, as evidenced by the scores of ppl disclaiming that they're bad at writing them, but my own preferences as a reader and as a writer are for excerpts over summary, so i wanted to sit with that a bit.

as a reader, it comes down to fic reading habits: i don't tend to read as much fic as i used to, and when i do read fic it ends up mostly being 1) the same handful of fic i reread all the time or 2) new fic by a small handful of authors whose writing i know i enjoy. i very rarely browse for fic anymore, but when i do i'm looking at both tags and what's been put in the summary, so a lot of the time an actual summary feels superfluous to me if the fic's got enough tags. which is why i'd rather see an excerpt there: i want to know what the writing is going to be like more than i need to see a summary.

there's also the unfortunate fact that a lot of the time i will skip over a fic completely if the summary's bad (bad is of course subjective: ppl leaning too hard into the bad-at-summaries disclaimer--even if their summaries are fine--will turn me off a fic just as much as a summary that's just poorly written).

this gets carried over to when i'm posting fic too: i don't like writing summaries, but i also just kind of think it's more useful to have an excerpt (i mean it's effectively just a quick little writing sample). every time there are posts i see going around about this it always seems to tend towards the opposite direction, with a majority of people preferring summaries, or outright saying they don't read fic with excerpts in place of summaries. which has ALWAYS struck me as bizarre, especially bc the reasoning is "how do i even know what your fic is about?" like idk look at the tags??? you can get a pretty damn good idea from those i think, like unless people are tagging characters/relationships and that's it, there's usually a lot of information there.

i mean i'm also kind of perpetually being shown that people just don't fucking read tags tho, so maybe i'm expecting too much there lmao.

but even without tags, most excerpts are chosen to pique the interest of the reader, like this one, from my all time favorite fic:

"This is like some kinda bad dream," Ironhide said aloud.

"No," Cyclonus said, low and harsh. "But it will be."

gonna get to the tags in a sec, but even if you don't read them, i'd think that this is still enough to get people interested: it's dramatic af. what are they talking about? who knows! but i'm certainly intrigued!

and if you DO add the tags in (and there aren't even that many of them!!) you get a clearer picture of WHY this is so dramatic: Parallel Universes & Time Travel are two of a bare handful (there's also "Crying on the Moon," which has got to be somewhere in the top three best fic tags i've ever seen). i feel that this is really enough to give a clear picture about what to expect from the fic, especially if you're also taking pairing and character tags into consideration. like you may not have a detailed roadmap of where the fic is going, but personally after i have eyed the Time Travel tag and read that excerpt i am already Locked In. (my time travel/time loop bias! it's showing!!!)

anyway, all of this is really just to say that i prefer excerpts over summaries and personally think they're more effective, at least when it comes to getting me to read a fic. :p it's def going to come down to personal preference regardless, and i am now sort of curious what the ratio of summary to excerpt is in the fics in my bookmarks, but that's an exploration for another day i think lol. gotta get back to work!

(unfortunately now i just want to reread the fic i linked instead of continuing to work on things orz)

it's almost april, heck. didn't accomplish as much as i'd hoped this month, but then when do i ever tbh.

do have a few fic updates tho! chapter 18 of 'sunshine' is now up on SW. also wrote a Jesse/Chester Evil West fic for a flashfic challenge which can be read here. i'll be posting it to SW as well once the current challenge is over.

already cursed with another Evil West fic idea too, but we'll see if i ever get around to writing it lol. been wanting to do the 100ships fanfic challenge so maybe that'll be the impetus for finally starting the challenge, who knows.

anyway, going thru lightmode's beta of 'sunshine' ch19 tonight; gonna try to post that one here once i finish. depends how late it is tbh. i just typically like to finalize the next chapter right after posting one, since i've just reread that chapter for any last-minute typo catches & to fix all the formatting issues that carry over in copy-pasting from docs.

the chapter following that one is kind of proving to be troublesome tho. lightmode was having trouble beta-ing it due to additional fic knowledge i'd given them, so probably it needs fresh eyes on it, but i also feel bad asking anyone to pinch-hit beta a chapter. :/

anyway, we'll figure something out, i guess. lowkey dreading trying to wrangle it tho lol.

oh! also really awesome news! finally made affiliate on twitch!! c: had a whole mess of ppl show up on wednesday's stream this week and ended up getting 133 followers in one night, which is insane!!! it tripled my follower count, and then twitch got back to me about affiliate the next day, which was WAY sooner than i expected.

it was such a nice thing to have happen tho. like everyone coming in hitting us with bean emojis, and then the fact that people were showing up like that at all, and that someone had clearly directed them to us, it was just such a sweet thing for someone to have organized. i was really overwhelmed at the time so it was good that V was there hahah. def a good kind of overwhelmed tho c:

also had a few ppl subscribe right after we hit affiliate too, which was also overwhelming in its own way hahah. the support has been tremendous, like even Caro and Turtles making emotes/suggestions, it all means a heck of a lot to me, more than i can say really. V's been really excited about it too, and that's also just really great to see. i'm tearing up thinking about it all again but like really, everyone's been so kind ;_;

it's been such a genuinely positive thing and i'm super grateful!!!! i've met so many awesome people since i started streaming and it's such a highlight of my week, getting to talk to them while being bad at video games hahah.

anyway, think that sums up march for me. really don't think anything else can top that tbh.

was reminded today that my first ever attempt at wintersberg was omegaverse, which is really extra funny bc i don't even really fuck with omegaverse all that much. i just remember reading another wintersberg a/b/o fic and just being like "this isn't nasty enough, i would like this to be nastier" and started writing lmao. didn't write all that much bc again, don't really fuck with omegaverse, but then today i was like "yo let's revisit that actually" and now i have 3000 words of smut i have to graft onto the fic i started back in like june 2021 lol.

been writing a lot more in general tho. was having a bad brain time again for a while there, but i've hit the point where writing is actually helping with that, so trying to harness that for good (working on the final chapter of spirit hat) and evil (3000 words of unhinged omegaverse smut). getting to where i feel like i can start posting spirit hat again. or like publicly i mean, not just locked on here. not gonna fuck with update schedules or anything, but i've made enough progress i don't feel like it'll stress me out to start posting.

of course i still need to work out where i want to resume posting, but i've been talking about it a lot with lightmode and feel like it's definitely going to be important for me to at least say something about it. currently thinking about finishing posting spirit hat to ao3, just with prioritizing posting to squidgeworld and dreamwidth, but idk idk. future me problems.

anyway making good progress on spirit hat. i have one more small scene to finish at the end of ch20, but aside from that it's just the last chapter...which may or may not end up as two chapters, still undecided. ch20 is like 12000+ words and it's going to be near impossible to split it, so trying to avoid another very long chapter, and i suspect the final ch is going to end up being really long again. tho who knows i may dump some of that in the next fic instead; i'm not married to the outline.

i am excited just with the prospect of being done tho. inexpressibly excited tbh. no one wants me to be done with this thing more than i want to be done with it. i feel like a weight will be lifted once i'm done. freedom to work on other stuff without guilt. no more stressin about rewrites (god). absolutely never doing the thing where i jump around and write chaptered shit NOT in chronological order again; fucks me up too bad.

but like yeah also i very much would like to write all the really cool shit that happens in the next part. chomping at the bit about it. i just wanna yell about things but i can't bc that's spoiling my own fic rip.

ah well, getting closer to that point all the time, just gotta keep truckin'.

feel like i'm getting closer to finally finishing 'sunshine.' been powering through some edits, and while there are still a few scenes i need to finish up writing, or some minor stuff i need to clean up, i am done with the bulk of the editing, which is a huge relief bc i hate editing lmao.

of course lightmode still has to beta everything, and i still need to finish writing the final 2-3 chapters, but the editing was slowing me down so much that just having finished most of it i already feel a lot better about things. was feeling pretty negative there for a very long while so this is also very very nice.

anyway, i think the fic'll end up 23-25 chapters total based on how i decide to split up the last chapter + this series of three chapters before it. also going back and forth with how much i want to add into the last chapter; there's a lot of stuff i'd like to write but which isn't really crucial. like it's all stuff i can cut and post as like a bonus scene later on without changing the narrative any. same with ch18: there's a scene i need to rewrite which will need quite a bit of work, and which i think would really add to what's going on with karl, but it also isn't necessary, and i've been feeling more and more antsy about just finishing, so axing this scene would help expedite that...but i also really think it would be nice to include.

so idk, stuff for me to figure out as i'm finishing up that chapter, i guess.

would like to give some kind of concrete estimate for when i plan to be finished but it's really entirely contingent on how long i can keep up this level of energy/motivation lmao. i guess what i can say is that of the 24 chapters listed in the google doc, all but the last two are 'finished,' with ch18 having a sizable scene left to (potentially) be written and ch20 having a much much smaller section for me to finish. the final chapter is completely unwritten but ch23 is around 3/4s of the way done. oh! and i am planning on an epilogue/coda as well but it's not going to be very long and i'm also really looking forward to writing it c:

of course there's also going to be a final multi-chapter fic, but it's not going to be anywhere as long as this one, thank god. i'd like to work on other stuff sometime before i die after all. it's also got all the shit i've been most wanting to write in it, so that's motivation for sure.

anyway, think i'm done with my little progress report. there is progress! i'm going to eventually finish this sucker!!

and then eventually start on another multi-part wintersberg series bc after all why not, etc.

doing a reread of spirit hat bc finally feeling the motivation to work on it again, but i equally feel the need to reread it to make sure i'm remembering details correctly bc it's been SO LONG, and it's just amusing the heck out of me to get to certain points and know exactly where certain things were changed or even entire chapters deleted. there's also the level of "how much i planned out from the beginning" vs "how much was added in later."

( more rambling here )

and then the other part of rereading pt1 is seeing everything that i was setting up that i haven't even gotten to write yet, but that i've been dying to, and getting all motivated to continue writing.

got so hung up on and frustrated with doing rewrites for so long that it just really compounded the burnout i was feeling and the stress i was under from irl shit that i just had to shove everything to the side. which is, honestly speaking, probably for the best. was getting to where i hated even thinking about the fic for a while there, like it started feeling like a job, not a hobby, and that's exactly the opposite way i want to feel about fiction writing.

it is very genuinely frustrating to have basically the whole of pt4 technically written, but being unable to post any of it bc so much of it needs to be rewritten, in some cases for the third or fourth time (aaaaaaa!!!!!!!!). slowly being backstabbed by my own perfectionism over and over and unable to do anything but sit there all: "okay :-("

and focusing on getting to the parts i'm dying to write doesn't help bc it's just a reminder that i'm not writing it lmfao.

like only lightmode knows how many times i rewrote what i've been calling the shed chapter (the "ethan gets drunk and they make out on the porch" chapter). and i think it's infinitely better for it but by the end i was so fucking sick of it. nothing was working for me 100% and i needed that chapter to work 100%. it was goddamn imperative that it work 100%. not even for like. the success of the narrative, i just needed it to be perfect bc i guess i'll die if things i make aren't perfect? idk.

anyway, enough time has passed now that i'm not feeling the burnout as much and i feel like i actually want to write again. to specifically write spirit hat again. gotta get thru pt2 and ethan's castle explorin' first tho (not a big fan of that section tbh; would prob rewrite it if i was editing pt2 rn). there's stuff that got axed from pt2 too; not bc i misremembered something from the game, just because it fucking sucked lmao. no one knows what bullet we all collectively dodged, but we should all be glad to have dodged it lol.

(oh, except for the part where i was going to have karl find the karl book when they got to the winterses' house and things were going to go Very Poorly bc no telepathy yet and ethan was going to end up impaled and it was going to be So Fraught, and then i was like "nah they spent most of this fic fighting, the karl book discovery can be moved to later." but like initially was really gonna lean into the enemies to lovers thing, was gonna need to For Real Tho the dubcon tag, and then i was just like nah bc i was tired of writing them fighting. also bc i wanted to add in fake married bc i knew lightmode enjoyed the trope. the ways lightmode has unknowingly shaped the fic: fake married. the ways lightmode has knowingly shaped the fic: i asked them what they wanted to see and they said karl in a hawaiian shirt on the beach. i mean also all their edits/suggestions lmao, but here specifically i am referring to Unforeseen Plot Divergences.)

just rambling at this point. a lot of this is stuff i've wanted to talk about for a while, but twitter isn't exactly the best place for it, and then i also figure that this is all a "no one cares" sitch. but thankfully i've remembered my dreamwidth exists: my personal internet word vomit space, hell yeah i'll holler into the void.

anyway back to the reread. here's hoping i can finish soon and actually get to some writing!