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So, I was not able to post anything in July, sadly. I did not actually get distracted, at least not for days at a time. It really just took nearly the entire month of July to finish that notes/very rough draft of the Uther/Merlin 5+1 porn thing.
I typically keep all my files in three places, on my computer, in dropbox and on a flash drive. I work on them from my computer, the dropbox is the back up (I have lost too many pages of writing for various reasons so now I keep the back up) and the flash drive so I can work on them when I'm not at home (namely when I am at work, which is especially fun because it looks like I'm actually doing work when I'm typing in a word document on the computer verses playing around with my phone all day.) However since that Merlin fic is mostly graphic pornography I actually just refused to open the file on my work computer, so I actually wrote the whole thing in the notepad of my iPhone which is why the whole thing is in such a spectacularly rough format. It actually needs to be 'written' before it can be edited.
But the important thing is that I finished. Tragically I did lose part of a scene in chapter two because of the way I happened to write the story out. (Where I wrote the first part, didn't think it went far enough, wrote an alternate ending, decided I liked both parts and decided to make a completely different chapter, started writing out the beginning of the second chapter only to then realize I wanted more chapters, then skipped into starting to write chapter three.) So when I jumped to writing chapter three I still has a scene between the beginning of chapter two and the ending of chapter two to bridge the gap. I figured, "it's ok I'll come back to it at the end," but when I did come back I had forgotten it.
A couple of other interesting things about this fic:
Chapter 4 developed a plot, like an actually episode of Merlin type plot. Because so much happens in chapter 6 it's actually about two chapters long and then chapter 4 was just so short I felt like I had to pad it. So part of the exposition in chapter 6 and then the lead in to chapter 3 gave me an idea for a scenario to lead into chapter 4 that ends up being pretty serendipitous to a a sort of reoccuring thing I have going on in the story. It fits nicely.
I wrote it somewhat out of sequence. Like 1,2c,2a,3,6,4,then 5 and currently there is not really a 2b, not like I originally envisioned it, anyway. It doesn't matter, I'll work it out.
Also, I spend a night thinking/half dreaming about how I wanted chapter 6 to proceed instead of sleeping. But of course when I started to write out chapter 6 it took so long because I couldn't make the conversation work like it had in my head. The conversation being how Arthur confronts Uther about what he's doing to Merlin. I managed to make it work but of course I don't think it's as good as my original envisioning. Then writing chapter 6 first caused an difficult tonal shift in chapters 4&5.
So in this story, Merlin is the main character/narrator for the first five parts and Arthur is the Narrator of the 6th part. This is because chapter 6 is when Arthur finally clues into what's been going on and he goes to Uther and basically says "Stop raping Merlin" which is sort of contentious because from Uther's perspective he really, really hasn't been. But he sort of has.
The story is Dub-Con(dubious consent) because while Uther isn't exactly forcing Merlin to do anything, Merlin still doesn't think he can actually say no. Dub-con is something I'm fine writing and reading in a fictional story but I don't actually feel exists in reality. As in if it's not 100% consensual then it's Non-Con, no gray area. That's pretty much where Arthur is on the issue, he's got other personal reasons not for wanting Merlin to stop being with Uther but he's still pretty clear on this one issue. Except neither Merlin nor Uther feel the same way, at least not about what was going on between them. For Uther's part, he never actually heard Merlin say "no" or "stop" despite giving him ample opportunities to say so, and he knows Merlin enjoyed himself, so there's no problem. For Merlin's part, he wasn't forced, he wasn't hurt, he doesn't see himself as a victim and he's ticked that Arthur feels he is; Merlin knew what he was doing the whole time and while he probably wouldn't have chosen to have sex Uther he really just want's Arthur to stay out of it. Arthur sees this as Uther abusing the power he has and that Merlin doesn't understand that if you don't want to do something but you have to do it anyway, then you're being forced.
Basically after writing Arthur's part with his black and white view on the issue, it was troubling to go back at write Merlin's sort of Gray "I don't want to be here, but I'm here so I'm going to enjoy it." When I started writing part 4 suddenly Merlin was really more adamant about not wanting to be doing what he was doing and Uther was being a bit more callous by not recognizing Merlin's protest. Suddenly my Dub-con was Non-con. It took me a good long way to figure out why the tone has shifted and then to fix the problem.
So that's that. It's done. Or at least it's done enough that I can put it down and work on some other things I want to actually get posted before I fully flesh out that story.
On that note, I went back to Dangerous Bonds and accomplished my goal of making Duo a little less Kaitlyn and a little more Duo. I fixed some of the narration so, at least in my opinion, it flows a little better. It took a bit more rewriting that I wanted, but the story didn't actually changed, just Duo's tone and a bit of his reasoning for doing the things he does.
Right now I took a break from Dangerous Bonds to make this post. Really, I think I need to do a floor plan for the Institute. I kind of remember doing that before but I don't know where it is anymore and while editing and rereading the descriptions just don't seem to match what I thought it looked like in my head. That's what I'm going to go back to doing when I'm done here. I hope, again, to get all the the previous chapter, now edited, to AO3 before the end of the month. I will probably fix the way it is posted on all the other archives it's in (fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org as well as My website.) Hopefully I can get this done before the end of the month.
There's also a Merlin Podfic BigBang going on that I kind of do. I just doing know if I can manage. There's at least 3 Merlin fics I really want to see podficced and I do have a podfic on my list of goals for this year. I'm just sort of stuck on a few things. Namely my near compulsive urge to do voices/accents. I don't want to offend anyone with a shitty, inconsistent, and non-region specific faux English accent. That's actually a personal pet peeve of my own that I don't want to inflict on other people. Also, the one thing you sort of need when recording a podfic is silence and I have a 18 month old, silence is just something I don't have anymore. I still have a couple of more days to decided if I want to give it a try, but really, time spent podficcing is time spent not writing which is really what I'm trying to make the priority for myself. I want to but I probably won't.
Peaking forward a bit, I think after I finish getting the next part of Dangerous Bonds out I need to shift my attention to Strange. It's been so long since I last updated that story I think I'm at 5 years now. Ouch. Ha, it's not like I forgot about it. I'm just having trouble reigning in the plots a bit. Actually there's a story about what's going on with Strange, I think I will save that for the August Round Up.
Anyway, back to Dangerous Bonds for now. Be back next month at very least.
I typically keep all my files in three places, on my computer, in dropbox and on a flash drive. I work on them from my computer, the dropbox is the back up (I have lost too many pages of writing for various reasons so now I keep the back up) and the flash drive so I can work on them when I'm not at home (namely when I am at work, which is especially fun because it looks like I'm actually doing work when I'm typing in a word document on the computer verses playing around with my phone all day.) However since that Merlin fic is mostly graphic pornography I actually just refused to open the file on my work computer, so I actually wrote the whole thing in the notepad of my iPhone which is why the whole thing is in such a spectacularly rough format. It actually needs to be 'written' before it can be edited.
But the important thing is that I finished. Tragically I did lose part of a scene in chapter two because of the way I happened to write the story out. (Where I wrote the first part, didn't think it went far enough, wrote an alternate ending, decided I liked both parts and decided to make a completely different chapter, started writing out the beginning of the second chapter only to then realize I wanted more chapters, then skipped into starting to write chapter three.) So when I jumped to writing chapter three I still has a scene between the beginning of chapter two and the ending of chapter two to bridge the gap. I figured, "it's ok I'll come back to it at the end," but when I did come back I had forgotten it.
A couple of other interesting things about this fic:
Chapter 4 developed a plot, like an actually episode of Merlin type plot. Because so much happens in chapter 6 it's actually about two chapters long and then chapter 4 was just so short I felt like I had to pad it. So part of the exposition in chapter 6 and then the lead in to chapter 3 gave me an idea for a scenario to lead into chapter 4 that ends up being pretty serendipitous to a a sort of reoccuring thing I have going on in the story. It fits nicely.
I wrote it somewhat out of sequence. Like 1,2c,2a,3,6,4,then 5 and currently there is not really a 2b, not like I originally envisioned it, anyway. It doesn't matter, I'll work it out.
Also, I spend a night thinking/half dreaming about how I wanted chapter 6 to proceed instead of sleeping. But of course when I started to write out chapter 6 it took so long because I couldn't make the conversation work like it had in my head. The conversation being how Arthur confronts Uther about what he's doing to Merlin. I managed to make it work but of course I don't think it's as good as my original envisioning. Then writing chapter 6 first caused an difficult tonal shift in chapters 4&5.
So in this story, Merlin is the main character/narrator for the first five parts and Arthur is the Narrator of the 6th part. This is because chapter 6 is when Arthur finally clues into what's been going on and he goes to Uther and basically says "Stop raping Merlin" which is sort of contentious because from Uther's perspective he really, really hasn't been. But he sort of has.
The story is Dub-Con(dubious consent) because while Uther isn't exactly forcing Merlin to do anything, Merlin still doesn't think he can actually say no. Dub-con is something I'm fine writing and reading in a fictional story but I don't actually feel exists in reality. As in if it's not 100% consensual then it's Non-Con, no gray area. That's pretty much where Arthur is on the issue, he's got other personal reasons not for wanting Merlin to stop being with Uther but he's still pretty clear on this one issue. Except neither Merlin nor Uther feel the same way, at least not about what was going on between them. For Uther's part, he never actually heard Merlin say "no" or "stop" despite giving him ample opportunities to say so, and he knows Merlin enjoyed himself, so there's no problem. For Merlin's part, he wasn't forced, he wasn't hurt, he doesn't see himself as a victim and he's ticked that Arthur feels he is; Merlin knew what he was doing the whole time and while he probably wouldn't have chosen to have sex Uther he really just want's Arthur to stay out of it. Arthur sees this as Uther abusing the power he has and that Merlin doesn't understand that if you don't want to do something but you have to do it anyway, then you're being forced.
Basically after writing Arthur's part with his black and white view on the issue, it was troubling to go back at write Merlin's sort of Gray "I don't want to be here, but I'm here so I'm going to enjoy it." When I started writing part 4 suddenly Merlin was really more adamant about not wanting to be doing what he was doing and Uther was being a bit more callous by not recognizing Merlin's protest. Suddenly my Dub-con was Non-con. It took me a good long way to figure out why the tone has shifted and then to fix the problem.
So that's that. It's done. Or at least it's done enough that I can put it down and work on some other things I want to actually get posted before I fully flesh out that story.
On that note, I went back to Dangerous Bonds and accomplished my goal of making Duo a little less Kaitlyn and a little more Duo. I fixed some of the narration so, at least in my opinion, it flows a little better. It took a bit more rewriting that I wanted, but the story didn't actually changed, just Duo's tone and a bit of his reasoning for doing the things he does.
Right now I took a break from Dangerous Bonds to make this post. Really, I think I need to do a floor plan for the Institute. I kind of remember doing that before but I don't know where it is anymore and while editing and rereading the descriptions just don't seem to match what I thought it looked like in my head. That's what I'm going to go back to doing when I'm done here. I hope, again, to get all the the previous chapter, now edited, to AO3 before the end of the month. I will probably fix the way it is posted on all the other archives it's in (fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org as well as My website.) Hopefully I can get this done before the end of the month.
There's also a Merlin Podfic BigBang going on that I kind of do. I just doing know if I can manage. There's at least 3 Merlin fics I really want to see podficced and I do have a podfic on my list of goals for this year. I'm just sort of stuck on a few things. Namely my near compulsive urge to do voices/accents. I don't want to offend anyone with a shitty, inconsistent, and non-region specific faux English accent. That's actually a personal pet peeve of my own that I don't want to inflict on other people. Also, the one thing you sort of need when recording a podfic is silence and I have a 18 month old, silence is just something I don't have anymore. I still have a couple of more days to decided if I want to give it a try, but really, time spent podficcing is time spent not writing which is really what I'm trying to make the priority for myself. I want to but I probably won't.
Peaking forward a bit, I think after I finish getting the next part of Dangerous Bonds out I need to shift my attention to Strange. It's been so long since I last updated that story I think I'm at 5 years now. Ouch. Ha, it's not like I forgot about it. I'm just having trouble reigning in the plots a bit. Actually there's a story about what's going on with Strange, I think I will save that for the August Round Up.
Anyway, back to Dangerous Bonds for now. Be back next month at very least.
