Title: the missing piece of me (is you)
Author: wolfish_willow
Artist: pterawaters
Relationship(s): Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington & Dustin Henderson, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Rating: PG-13
Genres: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Warnings: n/a
Spoilers: through Season 3
Summary:Steve has been in a relationship with Jonathan and Nancy since the week before graduation (though he’s not quite sure relationship is the right word; they’re something and that’s already more than he ever hoped for). With them, his summer was going better than he expected when his dad first cut him off. Then Dustin came back from camp with his secret Russian code. Between the ensuing drugs and interrogation, Steve’s missing pieces of his summer—he doesn’t remember that he’s in a relationship at all.
After Star Court, Nancy and Jonathan notice the distance Steve is putting between them and worry he’s realized trying to make the three of them work is too complicated; especially when they see just how comfortable he is around Robin.
Wordcount: 23,000
your opponent is the most selected option. please don’t spoil anything in the tags
for the ask game!
Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?
Is there a particular fic that readers gravitated towards that you didn’t expect?
Post a snippet from a wip.
urisarangDo you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?
Sort of a mix, maybe? Some of my fics, especially the ones where I need to make them longer (big bangs and the like), I do tend to outline and that involves some daydreaming in order to figure out when things need to happen. Others, I’ll be thinking about nothing in particular and then I get hit with the first sentence of a fic and just start writing it.
Then I’ll have a wip or two that literally keep me tossing and turning all night because I keep imagining how the next line or scene or ending should go, but those are more dreams than daydreams.
I get luckiest when other people (*cough*you*cough*) give me whole ideas and I don’t really have to spend too long daydreaming because there’s enough stuff there for me to work with and I can dive right in.
Is there a particular fic that readers gravitated towards that you didn’t expect?
I’m still SUPER surprised that so many people read Day Four: Green With Envy, back when it first posted. And it still shows up in my kudos email with surprising regularity. I don’t know what draws people to it at all. I feel like the writing on it is really wooden. But I’m happy that people like it because I also love Steve being taken care of by the Hendersons!
Post a snippet from a wip.
From one of my too-many July Break Bingo wips!
Steve bends at the waist to sift through the stack of junk in the Byers’ yard. Between the both of them, they’ve found a couple heaters already. They’re stacked carefully out of the way of the rest of the mess, waiting for anything else they might find. Hard as he tries to keep his attention on what they’re supposed to be doing, he can’t help but repeatedly glance in Nancy’s direction.
The next thing he picks up to inspect slips out of his hands, crashing back into the pile with a startling crash. Nancy and Steve both jump in surprise. He doesn’t know whether he dropped it due to nerves or the way his palms have begun to sweat, but heat rises up his neck all the same. Nancy’s relieved laughter helps smother some of his initial embarrassment.
She meets his eyes and they seem to glitter in the porch light.
“Choose me instead.”
He doesn’t know where the words come from. Or he does. They’ve been turning over and over again in his mind since Tommy first told him about Nancy skipping school with Jonathan. It’s only gotten louder since finding them in the woods, seeing how they looked walking together. Watching how they work together; how comfortable Nancy seems with him when she’s been anything but with Steve for longer than he wants to admit.
So Steve knows where the words came from. But he never meant to say them out loud.
Selfishly, it’s not even that he doesn’t want to make Nancy choose. He likes to think that he’s a better person now than he’d been when they first started dating, but he hasn’t changed that much. Of course he wants her to look at him, to choose him. Like she chose him last year when she came back to him a month after Will Byers went missing, but really mean it this time. Steve wants her to look at him, to choose him, to love him, and not regret it or resent him like she apparently has for the last year.
The real reason he’d meant to hold those words inside until they stop hounding him is that he doesn’t want to hear her answer. Doesn’t want her to look up at him with pity— or worse— on her face and tell him, gently but no less painfully, that she can’t. That Steve is the last person she would choose after spending the last year dealing with his bullshit.
listen. l i s t e n. listen. kudos does not equal quality. popularity does not equal quality. i have read some “fandom classics” that i could barely fathom how boring or terrible i - personally - found them, and i have stumbled across some absolute gems that didn’t even break 100 kudos.
what is good doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. it’s sad, but true. just because you haven’t - or possibly never take - off in fandom doesn’t mean your work isn’t astounding and beautiful, it doesn’t mean you should stop writing; it just means that a very select corner of the internet missed the diamond in the rough.
fanfiction is flooded with content, there are so many of us out there producing it these days, and having a fic that takes off is almost as much about luck as it is about talent. never let a few artificial numbers on the internet dictate to you what is and isn’t worthy writing.
additionally, you don’t have to read or enjoy fics just bcs they’re big. i cannot count the amount of times i’ve read the first paragraph of something fandom adores and immediatly exited out of it.
just… do what makes you happy. write what you wanna write, read what you wanna read. understand that while we all want recognition - and some deserve it more than others - we did not get into fanfiction for that recognition.
recognition is good, but sometimes we get all tangled up chasing it and stop enjoying writing and reading and fandom as a whole along the way. be careful of that, please, or you’ll burn yourself out.
🔹 You are allowed to write fiction in whatever style you want.
🔹 Your fiction writing does not have to conform to academic writing standards.
🔹 You are allowed to repeat words.
🔹 You are allowed to use dialects, incomplete phrases, slang etc, in dialogue or in the body of your prose.
🔹 You are allowed to have idiosyncratic phrasing.
🔹 You are allowed to be verbose.
🔹 You are allowed to be concise.
🔹 You are damned well allowed to fucking swear, I shit you not.
🔹 You are allowed to use said tags liberally or to omit them as much as possible.
🔹 You are allowed to use adverbs liberally or to omit them as much as possible.
🔹 You are allowed to make mince-meat out of grammar rules for effect.
🔹 Your fiction is not bound or to be judged by academic writing standards.
🔹 You are allowed to write fiction any way you want, even if it is not ‘correct’ in terms of writing rules.
🔹 There are no absolute rules for writing fiction.
I am sharing this for my friends who are disheartened by unnecessary criticism. Fanfics are not school assignments to be graded by your teachers. Styles vary by region. What looks odd to an American may be perfectly fine for Australia.
Every style has an audience.
Just so y’all know: I can’t speak for every other fic author but I can say that I remember when people leave me kind comments. I recognize your urls and/or usernames on AO3. I remember you and sometimes in writing my fics I think to myself, “Oh, I hope this person sees this because they liked x in this other fic I did.”
Not only that—I go back and reread comments when I’m feeling low. I look at tags and reblogs and asks and wish I could hold them in my hand like a note from a friend on an old, torn piece of notebook paper.
Your comments have so much more impact than you know. So thanks to those who use the comment section to spread love and encouragement. We appreciate you.
how does it feel to be tumblr famous now
autistic-fuckwadThanks for the question autistic-fuckwad. I’m enjoying the popularity :3
OP will be hunted for sport if the asker ever changes their name
OH FUCK
If you were in a fanfic, would you be the pining idiot or the oblivious dumbass?
post it in the tags!!
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