Eden

Another extra for Right Where We Belong, my au_bigbang fic! Back when I did the kink_bigbang, I made an author's mix for it, so I thought I'd do something like that again. This time, instead of snippets, since you got snippets when I did the promo, I'm going to explain a bit about why I chose the songs. Thanks, feywood, for the help putting it together. ♥

There are spoilers for the fic in my commentary.

You can download the mix here, or listen to it on Spotify here.

You can read the fic here!

( Cut for length and spoilers )

It's nearly time for posting to start on au_bigbang. I have been waiting impatiently to make this post since the end of March. Consider this a heads up: there is going to be a ton of awesome fic over at au_bigbang, very soon.

In particular, there's going to be my fic, "Right Where We Belong", on the 10th. Summary: When John dies, Dean ends up at the roadhouse and is brought up by Ellen as Jo's big brother. Growing up there is no protection, though -- not when the apocalypse is about to start.

It includes: woobie!Dean, badass!Ellen, bratty!Jo, clueless!Castiel and misguided!Sam! There is angst! There is violence! Dean is mute and scarred and did I mention woobie? And the world is saved by hugging!

I am not even joking.

As I was writing this fic, for some reason, I started to think about a drinking game for it. By way of promo for the fic, I am going to post the rules for that drinking game right now.

Right Where We Belong, or The One In Which Hugs Saved The World: A Drinking Game

It's like this. Take a drink:

( Rules under the cut, with teasers! )

Alternatively, grab a bottle of your chosen beverage, click on the cut tag, and start drinking. Keep drinking. No, really, keep on drinking. Don't stop. And -- no, get another bottle. Really! Keep drinking!

Disclaimer: If you drink water each time, you are going to be needing the toilet a lot. If you drink alcohol, well. I'll allow you to hold off on leaving me feedback until after you've had your stomach pumped. I do not accept responsibility for anything that happens to you if you actually attempt to put these rules into practice, they are a joke.

You can now read the fic here!

In suggestions from people who've done several Big Bangs, someone always seems to mention the idea of a PDF version. I'm definitely pondering this.

I'm also pondering doing a version with a bigger font, a better font, whatever's necessary, so that partially sighted people would be better able to read it. With all the fic I post, it would be hard to provide this for every fic I post, although I am planning to -- when I have chance -- disable viewing posts in the journal layouts, so you get the site scheme. Then there's no problem with faint colours or the wrong font, hopefully.

But with a Big Bang, and providing PDFs, and reaching a wider audience, and especially considering that two of my Big Bangs focus on less-abled characters (Dean is mute in Right Where We Belong, and blind in the SPN/J2 Big Bang fic), it would be appropriate to provide a more accessible option. It wouldn't matter to me how few people needed it, I would like the option to be there. I know my mother, if she read fanfiction, would probably have to copy and paste things into Word and make them bigger/change the fonts.

Now, I haven't tried making my fics into PDFs before, and I suspect I will have to do more wrangling than I'd like, so the PDFs won't necessarily happen this time, or next. But I'd love to do it at some point -- even just as an experiment, to see if anyone needs it. I'm going to consult with Mum about what would help her in terms of font, font size, spacing, italicisation or no italicisation (maybe bold for emphasis instead of italics?), but... if anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it. If you think this is a terrible idea for some reason, don't be afraid to say that, either. I am putting out feelers!

(I have been steadily growing horrified at how unreadable some of my various LJ layouts might be to anyone with sight problems. I am probably going to be changing those, too. Just in case you are viewing this on the DW version of this journal, and thinking that I could start with actually making my journals more readable.)

Edit: And someone suggested .rtfs so that people can edit it however they want and of course that would be better -- I think? Any reasons why not?

I haven't updated properly about progress in a while, so here goes. The SPN/J2 Big Bang fic has progressed no further than a handful of paragraphs. I've decided that my approach to it is no good, and sometime today I'm going to fit in sitting down and working it all out, including making sure there's an actual plot.

Proving that that method works for me is the AU Big Bang, which only needed to hit 15k words and is, in fact, closer to 20k, at around 18.5k, and bound to get a bit longer when I do last edits. Which, yes, I am trying to say it's finished. And edited, somewhat. It acquired a title in a burst of inspiration just before bed the night before I finished it, which is unusual for me. The title is "Right Where We Belong", but it should also be affectionately known as "The One In Which Hugs Saved The World". That isn't a joke. Hugs save the world, and everyone (except the demons) gets some hugging time. It ended up being genfic (I thought for a while it might be Dean/Castiel) and involves Ellen and Jo both being badass. Ruby even gets a line or two.

I have also jokingly created drinking game rules for it, which I think I'll post as a promo, nearer the time, like I posted the author's fanmix for the kink_bigbang fic.

The SPN Crossover Big Bang still has no title, but we'll see. I need to add 300 words of padding to satisfy the mods, since it came in juuust under 15k.

I've also signed up for scifibigbang, and am eyeing kinked and hardmode. I'm doing an apocalyptic Firefly fic for the SF/F Big Bang, dunno what I'm doing for kinked, and the FFX-2 cyberpunk AU for hardmode. In theory.

(And by the way, if anyone wants an DW invite code or a couple of codes, you just need to ask me. I give mine out randomly on twitter, so I am obviously not averse to handing them out to relative strangers.)

I made a lot of progress today on my crossover Big Bang. The kind of progress where, you know, it's finished. Or the first draft is, anyway. And it's been looked at by feywood, and duly nitpicked, and my typos have been corrected. I'm now going to put it away until a week before the due date and then edit it with fresher eyes. It still needs a title, which is something I guess I need to ponder.

I'm pretty glad at how it turned out, anyway. It is more towards the Supernatural end of things than the TDIR end, but Bran and Will have their own scenes and they have scenes together and alone with the SPN characters. Perhaps if I were to write another scene, it would be a conversation between Castiel and Will. I'm not sure if I will: I might decide that when I've got a week to go and it's time for my final edits.

I haven't worked on the AU Big Bang for a while, really. I have the irrational urge to delete what I've got and start again, so I'm waiting with that one until I feel a bit better about it. I got the first paragraph or two of the SPN/J2 Big Bang written yesterday, on the other hand, so that's going to be my focus now for a while. That's the longest one anyway, so if I can get that to 10,000 words by the end of the month, or something like that, and get maybe 5,000 words on the AU Big Bang, that'll be good.

Writing marathons for the win.

I'm a little stalled on my Crossover Big Bang. I've done some editing and some minor adding of words, but I have a bunch of scenes I'm vaguely planning to write and nothing's coming of them. I think I'm going to give it a couple of days and then look at the plan with fresh(er) eyes, and edit it as needed -- and in the meantime, read over what I've got and streamline it or add to it where necessary.

In the meantime, and since there's a check-in on the second of February, I'm working on the AU Big Bang. I only have a handful of paragraphs so far, the opening stuff, because I'm quite sleepy this evening.

Have a tiny, tiny snippet.

Fandom: Supernatural
For: au_bigbang
Quality: Barely checked
Characters: Ellen, Dean

( Sealing her fate )

Some of the Big Bang comms have rant/venting communities, etc, and I might make use of those too, but last year I worked on my Big Bang fics quite quietly and I'm not sure many people even knew I was doing them. This year, I'm planning to document my work on them a bit better -- to look back on, maybe, and also to keep me accountable. Each Big Bang I'm signed up for will get a tag of its own.

Right now I'm signed up to three Big Bangs: au_bigbang, spn_j2_bigbang, and sncross_bigbang. If you know of any other Big Bangs you think I'd like to take part in, then poke me -- I'm aiming for 300,000 words this year at getyourwordsout, and Big Bangs certainly help with that.

Anyway, I have rough plans for all of them. Some rougher than others. I've got an outline for the AU Big Bang; I've got extensive notes for the SPN Crossover Big Bang; I've got light notes/a light outline for the SPN/J2 Big Bang.

AU Big Bang: Dean grows up at the roadhouse, as Dean Harvelle. He's also mute. Along comes a Castiel... Characters: Dean, Ellen, Jo, Castiel. Possibly ultimately Dean/Castiel. Target: 15k.
SPN Crossover Big Bang: Supernatural meets The Dark is Rising. Disregards season five. The angels are trying to bring about the apocalypse; Will believes that this is a violation of what he and the others won when Bran cut the silver from the tree. Characters: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Will, Bran. No pairings explicitly intended. Target: 15k.
SPN J2 Big Bang: Dean is blinded. The details depend upon what happens when I catch up with canon. Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby, Castiel, Jimmy(?). Possibly ultimately Dean/Castiel. Target: 20k.

Mostly, at the moment, I'm working on the crossover. I have 2k words, two scenes. I haven't planned this all the way through to the end, because I'm not quite sure how exactly it's going to go. The original plan was kind of Will-ex-machina-ish, mostly focusing on Dean, but it seems like he's likely to have an emotional arc of his own. And well, can you imagine Bran sitting pretty and not doing anything?

So far: Will likes Dean more than I expected, Dean and Bran really piss each other off, and it's awfully hard figuring out how to fit Will in with Christianity (i.e. angels).

I wonder what I'll get by way of art. It must be hard to cross a book fandom with a TV fandom in art. I haven't seen many artists around for The Dark is Rising in general. I'm looking forward to pairing up with an artist, really, at least if they're anything like auroraprimavera.

I think I'm going to finish the crossover before I get to work on the AU, and I need to catch up with canon before I can do the SPN/J2 Big Bang fic. At least, that's what I'm hoping to do -- I want to tie it in with canon. I might not, though, once I've caught up.

Also, if you have access to this journal/if you're friended by it, then you can see sneaky snippets, now and then.