fic talk: why write lot word when small word do trick?

[sword_logic]

groans. shorter fic is still so fuckin hard.

convergence was fun to write, even when i hit the inevitable slog point. i feel like every "shortfic" (i really hesitate to call it that, what i really mean is anything ~5k ish or less) i write is making me better at editing, though.

i cut a lot out from convergence, and i had this one really clear moment where i thought "this whole section here is completely pointless." it felt really good to take a step back and know that something wasn't working, and this fic would have been so weirdly paced if i'd kept that chunk in.

but damn, it really is hard to have to say no to something you've written. sure, i can always recycle it or post it as a ficlet or something, but it's so frustrating to feel like i'm being, i don't know, wasteful. and it's frustrating that it's frustrating.

this fic was really satisfying to write, though. when i finally got hit with what i wanted to write for the last section and found a way to include the IX in the ninth section, lord, nothing compares to that kind of feeling, you know? being a lore gremlin in fic, mimicking the style of different lore cards and transcripts, it's so much fun. i have no idea if anyone will pick up on this, but section v. has some easter eggs i wanna humblebrag about:

v. FULCRUM

now ere we nine were held idle here we nine were won

They learn so much by watching you, but not enough. I know you are a liar but nothing speaks more true than your actions and they betray each clever word that falls from your mouth.

You prick holes in fabric and claim that you rend but you draw thread through each careful shift of weave and weft.

I
1PL=IRR.be.PROSP.INCHO
—so much more\less than you thought.

I watch you in ways they do not and I know|Hope you will not repeat my mistakes.

 

 

I miss Namqi.

it's precisely 99 words long! google docs doesn't count "1PL=IRR.be.PROSP.INCHO" as one word, but i do, so... ha. "now ere we nine were held idle, ere we nine were won" is a palindrome, and i definitely looked up lists of palindromes till i found a "nine" one, lol. irrealis is a type of verb mood denoting that a speaker does not know if the action of the verb has happened yet; prospective aspect has to do with time framing; inchoative aspect has to do with the beginning of a state. so, orin is saying "i do not know if this state of being (more\less than you thought) begins yet/at this time." a fun dive back into some linguistics stuff!

man, again, really looking forward to writing more shorter-form stuff in the near future, no matter how much i bitch about it internally as i'm doing it. i love writing weird, esoteric things like this.