You Know When

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your latest fanfics (or up to if you have less!) & tag 10 people.

Thank you for the tag, @terezis! All my published fics are almost-entirely centred around Turmeric's tapdole disaster journey so I will also have to dip into some unpublished stuff, but here we go-

1. More Graves to Dig (BG3)

It starts in the House of Healing.

(Succinct, that one.)

2. Exhuming the Past (BG3)

“We agreed you would remain within-”

3. Whistle Past the Graveyard (BG3)

It's a relief, Shadowheart realises, to work in daylight again.

4. Wings Outstretched (Talons Extended) (BG3)

As unfortunate as it is for Ulder, Wyrm's Rock Fortress is the best place to regroup after the fall of the Absolute, and the tower – the former-Archduke Gortash's quarters – the most suitable location to organise the efforts.

(Bit of a run-on, here. You can really tell I've started to lean into endless dashes as punctuation since the beginning of the series.)

5. Moments Between (BG3)

“I really do think I preferred staying in ignorance, darling, I don't know why you had to point out that this place is actually some ghastly shithole.”

6. White Rooms with Red Floors (Firefly - a really old one from way back in the day that I'm still not sure why I wrote, and I'm too afraid to reread past the first line in the fear it won't hold up. I do still have a fondness for the title though.)

Simon remembers the exact moment he realised the Academy wasn't an academy.

Okay, here's where we get into random work-in-progress stuff that will probably never see the light of publishing day anyway but oh, well.

7. You can now use the workshop at Oberland Station (Fallout 4)

The slow ticking of a Geiger counter rouses Preston from his peaceful sleep, on a mattress that doesn't make his back ache, in clothes not weighed down by weeks worth of grime- in a place that finally, for the first time in a very long time, makes him happy to be waking.

8. Rat Sucker (Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines)

There's nothing like the smell of a Nosferatu – the pungent aroma of sewer drain mixed with the all the revolting fragrance of a festering sore – which, unfortunately, Therese knows all too well.

It's quite clear with all these in a row that I try to introduce the perspective character within the first line - unless it starts with dialogue I guess - but I do like to make it clear who we're with and who we're following as soon as possible.

I don't think I can think of ten whole people to tag, but @fandang1, you might like a go!

your unreliable narrator fucking bit me

as an optimist i dream of a beautiful world where people are fucking normal about aromanticism

[about my own oc, who i created] in theory its possible she would say that, but we just dont know for sure

another stroll (they met a cute cat this time)

i call this category: bitch

Now, planning my own post-game narrative without the structure of the game as a guide may be tricky to make complete and satisfying but, honestly, I am just so glad to be out of realm of writing Act 3 that I barely even feel it.

Act 3 is definitely my least favourite in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to trying to make a narrative out of it. There's so much going on that it just feels impossible to cover it all, so I had to resort to time skips and just covering the bits that'll be relevant later for my own sanity, but then it felt like I was glossing over things and worrying that would make everything feel all disjointed and, ugh.

And act 3 is so loud as well, I got so overstimulated all the time, there's all these people endlessly milling about everywhere and everyone's talking constantly - and those bloody magicians outside Sorcerous Sundries, oh my god, don't even get me started. That's probably why I like Act 2 so much, come to think of it. It's nice and dark and quiet out there, there's no one around but you and your friends unless you intentionally go to a population centre like Last Light. I find it very soothing for an area that was definitely intended to be horrific.

So, yeah, glad to be out of there.

Anyway, back to planning.

“But Tav/Durge, what’s worse - kidnapping Astarion or destroying the muppets?”

Had so much fun puppet-ifying everyone else in the origins crew. And if there ever were a muppet-ified BG3 movie, Astarion would make a fantastic non muppet. He’d probably have a stroke or something.

homesickness