My Soul Hath Elbow Room!

Title: First Steps (Epilogue)
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 578. Fic:

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.

Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?

Beta'ed by the amazing in_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at writethisfanfic.

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

( I'm bored. Are you bored? )/\/\/\

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

/\/\/\

If you've read this far, please leave me some incredibly simple feedback by clicking two buttons below. It'll be appreciated! (Comments are also nice, of course.)

Title: First Steps (3/5)
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 6,209. Fic: 21,925
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.

Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?

Beta'ed by the amazing in_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at writethisfanfic.

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

( You're born cold, naked and hungry. And then things get worse. )

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

Title: First Steps (1/5)
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 2,161. Fic: 21,925
Continuity: Both uses and discards varying elements of Lungbarrow. Should stand alone, though; don't be put off if you haven't read it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.

Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?

Beta'ed by the amazing in_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at writethisfanfic. Reviews are always appreciated; leave concrit, and I will love you forever.

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

( Even more than there should have been someone to welcome them into the world, there should be someone here. A technician, a carer – anybody. )/\/\/\

Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF

An interesting wording/character observation:

He's still going by the time Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa have joined him under the indigo-violet swirls of the captive Vortex.

This was originally in a scene where the Doctor has POV. In that context, its connotations are all about freedom and Time Lords controlling things they perhaps shouldn't.

I just moved it into a scene where the Master has POV. Barely changed a word, yet it's suddenly all about power.

Words: not the only things that matter.

My goals.

So, I'm behind on my editing as usual. I'm now on the very last scene of Chapter Three, which (a) is six pages long and (b) has spawned itself a couple of new sections, most notably that thing I spent all writing phase trying to avoid where one character telepathically observes another character having PTSD symptoms and it's like, WHAT, THERE IS NO VOCABULARY FOR THIS IN ANY HUMAN LANGUAGE, FUCK OFF.

I loathe Chapter Three.

Fortunately, I'm still on schedule, because I got all eager and did half of Week 3's task (plotting Regan and Meredith) during Week 1. I have a decent outline for the first two books and a vague one for the second two, and more importantly, I have a mostly-complete list of the characters I need to introduce in Book 1. The only problem now is arguments over tech level (Regan wants computers, Meredith wants swords; I'll leave them to duke it out) and laying out the world, which I can to some extent do as I go along.

I kinda-sorta have a series title now: Wild Angels, though I'm not too happy with it. It's a bit... romantic? In the Byronic sense, I mean.

For some reason, my brain has recently decided to start flipping out over the idea of a book being 'only' 80-100,000 words long. Taking the upper limit because it's fantasy: 400,000 words is more than enough to write this story in, but nooo, 100,000/~5000 is ONLY TWENTY CHAPTERS A BOOK and that's clearly the end of the world.

Oddest starting line jitters I've ever had.

ETA: Ding, dong, Chapter Three is dead! It needs (grr) editing, since it's been almost completely written, but heeeyyy. Just one more chapter to go and then I can post this!

First Steps:

19159 / 19159 words. 100% done!

Begun: December 2008 (!)
Finished: November 2010.

Just in under the two year mark! Let's see if I can get it edited by Christmas... and not take two years next time. (Which, in fairness. If not for two dissertations and my parents' divorce, this one wouldn't have taken two years either.)

For my next trick, I will finish Miasma...

A selection of notes from the original handwritten latest 1,000-ish words of First Steps:

***

"I don't know,” Flabbaduckarusa says. “The author's lost the plot again."

"Oh." Snail frowns, trying to think. "Well, I suppose you need to communicate some key information to me, then we can go and look for Tagalong. Corridor scenes, donchaknow."

"OK then."

***

[ARGH]

***

Waaaaay too adult.

...

[Dead doll]

***

Lots of decent stuff here, but it needs mixing up more: guilt WITH introspection, not after kthxbai

***

WTF

***


And that's it. The very last thing written in this notebook is 'WTF' in red ink.

So, you know.

This chapter, ugh. Hates it, precious, we does.

I keep wondering why I'm still writing First Steps. Every time I get inspired for it I seem to end up derailed by more important things (essay deadlines, family stuff, you name it), and the stubborn need to finish the damn thing has been preventing me from concentrating on anything else. Original novels aside, there's a Four/Romana oneshot - probably not more than 4-5k when finished - that's sitting on my hard drive and dying to be finished...

And yet, I can't stop writing it. It's not dead, it's just been in a couple of nasty accidents.

And today, it squeezed my hand and said my name and hauled itself off life support once more, bless its soul. aleas_iacta was cringing about the burns scene before I wrote it, too, the poor dear...

Next up: another gorram corridor scene, albeit a short one. Then, dead babies.

(Mental note: find a way to get the word 'pustules' in somewhere when rewriting.)

/\/\/\

For my own future reference, the way to turn the NumPad back on when Ubuntu's inaccessibility* feature decides to be stupid is System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Mouse Keys -> Uncheck the magically self-checking box called 'Pointer can be controlled using the keypad'. NO IT BLOODY WELL CAN NOT.

*Whyyyyyyyyy do I have to have accessibility mode turned on to use the language switcher? I'm not blind, deaf, arthritic, or any other form of disability, I just want to write in Greek occasionally!

ETA: It occurs to me how appropriate this icon actually is tonight. Tomorrow may very well indeed be hell.

Today represented a breakthrough in Simming, in that I managed to successfully turn the skies of Gallifrey orange. On a per-lot basis, no less, so the Earth's can be as blue as ever!

Clearly, this meant a trip to the Looming House, where (due to clock resets) it's been almost a day since these guys were created. Which means... yep... potty and bed.

( And the Master, against stiff competition, stole the show. )

Plus icons, of course.

( And the usual icon batch. )

For reasons which will one day become evident, but are currently top super-secret UNIT classified, I felt it necessary to spend most of yesterday building a Gallifreyan creche in The Sims 2.

Populating it was not necessary, but one thing led to another, and... well.

Of course, the real joy of doing this sort of thing in the Sims is turning free will on and watching them act entirely in character.

( Ushas spent the whole of playtime in a quiet, awkward-to-photograph corner with the science toy. As for the others... )

And then, because it was procrastinate or work, I dun made icons.

( Because some of these were just crying out to be captioned. )

/\/\/\