WIP Wednesday

Sep. 4th, 2025 08:06 am
firethesound: (Default)
[personal profile] firethesound
(A day late, but I'm doing my best. We're all doing our best.)

Trying to get back to my usual routines after August is over. Whew, a long weekend and a quiet week, I thought to myself. Surprise! On Friday the window people we've been trying to get on the schedule with all freaking summer called and were like, we're going to be there next week, that works for you right? And of course we said yes because my windows are very old and desperately need to be replaced, but, le sigh. It's more routine disruption and stress and shuffling about of furniture each evening and I am very tired. It'll be worth it when I'm not trying to stuff blankets around the sills this winter to keep out the drafty cold air, and we had a couple that didn't latch properly anymore which didn't make me feel particularly safe, but seriously. The timing.

New words this week : 1338 words which is pretty fantastic considering, you know. Everything else.

WIPs worked on this week : 2, with no new WIPs (yay!)

The Old Guard

food truck au : 768 words which brings the total to 15,692 words and I worked out the details on one little bit I'd glossed over earlier so I'm pretty happy with that. Not much forward progress has been made otherwise.

werewolf au : 570 words which brings the total to 1461 words and still not much of a plot? Just a lot of pining, and also some smut. Not a bad thing by any means, I'm sure this story will let me know what it wants to be about when it's time to write it.

August Wrap-Up / September Goals

Sep. 2nd, 2025 08:23 pm
firethesound: (Default)
[personal profile] firethesound
2025 GOALS

2021 Total Wordcount Goal : 27,399 / 50,000

2021 Total Writing Days : 33 / 365


AUGUST
Whew, what a month! Multiple rounds of visitors, birthdays, my and Mr FTS's anniversary, and then the relentless life stuff continues. I did all right for the first half of the month, and as predicted got basically nothing done for the second half. I had wanted to try to post a finished fic every month through the end of the year and that did not happen. Alas, the fic I thought would be 5k has run away from me, and that plus the end of the month being bonkers meant that it just didn't come together in time.

August Wrap-Up : I finished the month with 13,609 words which is remarkably consistent of me from the month before. A total of 2 WIPs & 2 new works got words, with all words going into 4 Old Guard fics. I did meet my goal of 10k (yay!)

SEPTEMBER
My biggest goal is to get this silly runaway fic finished and posted. My secondary goal is to pick which long term fic I am going to dig in on because right now I am torn and want to do both at once.

September Wordcount Goal : 15k and I will be curious to see how it goes! I did about 13k for both July and August, but only wrote about half of each month. So in theory this should be an easy goal, but we'll see!

September Fics to Focus On
food truck au : because it's so close to done already, and this time I mean it. It's currently at 15k and I have the rest of it mapped out already, so it should come together quickly (in theory, at least). Estimated wordcount, 25k.

Redamancy part 4 : Adding this one in as an easy win. It's at 1.4k and mostly finished. Really this just needs one or two focused writing sessions to finish off. Estimated wordcount, 2k

And then I need to decide my next long-term project. My options are:

Old Kingdom AU : This one has benefited from spending the last month marinating in the back of my brain. It's deviated significantly by now from the source material, which is what I wanted. I remain obsessed with the idea of necromancer!Joe and his loyal oathbound knight!Nicky. The bad news is that at some point during the marinating process, I'm pretty sure it's going to have a sequel. Estimated wordcount, 50k

-or-

werewolf!Nicky au : Other people were talking about their love of werewolf!Nicky and here we are. I actually had the idea of writing two stories at once: a horror story from Nicky's POV and tropey Hallmark channel character-returns-to-their-small-town-from-the-big-city-and-falls-in-love thing from Joe's POV, but honestly I think it's going to end up being a rom-com all the way down, which is fine. Not much of a plot so far, just vibes. I still like the other two-in-one idea so am saving that to see what else I can apply it to. Estimated wordcount, 30k (maybe??)
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

Latest installments:


EARLY ACCESS

A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands: Novel and Side Stories (Crossing Worlds), which includes an expanded version of Deadly Introductions, is now available to my Patreon and Ream readers. The omnibus will go into general release next month.


NEWS

Early access previews at Patreon and Ream

I'm now providing one-month-early previews of my new e-book fiction through Patreon and Ream. I want to give a treat to readers who financially support me, while still making those stories quickly available to the rest of my readers. The early access model seems to be the best way to handle that.


General news and upcoming fiction )

Ways to offer me a tip, financial or nonfinancial )

penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
[personal profile] penaltywaltz posting in [community profile] wipbigbang
Check-in #4 will be open from August 31st to September 7th. Please remember it is open to both WIPBB and WIPRB participants and is optional.

https://forms.gle/5mTqrrfUEq4Ti6TLA
penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
[personal profile] penaltywaltz posting in [community profile] wipbigbang
I was going to post this on the 1st but I, in my infinite round of rotten luck, injured my foot today so I'm probably going to be sleeping a lot to stay off my foot. So it goes up today!

On your posting day, there is a specific form we would like you to fill out to post your fanworks. It allows you bragging rights for finishing your fic/art, and also links to the location of your fic (it should be up somewhere like AO3/FF.net/your personal Tumblr under a tag/any other fic or journal community) in its completion*. We also have an AO3 collection for this round where you can post the AO3 postings of your fic and art to.

These are the bragging rights form for WIPBB authors/WIPRB artists:

Project Title:
Fandom:
Link:
Summary:
Warnings:
Characters:
Pairings:
When I Started:**
How I Lost My Shit:**
How I Finished My Shit:**

You can submit your post to the Dreamwidth and Tumblr blogs as early as you like (but DW will only allow you to have one post in the queue at a time, so be aware if you have multiple posts to make!) and we'll queue it to post on the date you've claimed. Don't worry about tagging posts; we will use a system we've determined.

And don't worry, WIPBB artists & WIPRB authors, we've got you covered, too! You get your own separate post, though you are welcome to just have your author post your art on their post if you want. If you don't plan on making your own separate post to the comm, you still must do the check in below. In this post, you can share things like:

Project Title:
Fandom:
Link: (or you can post the art here, too!)
Warnings:
Bragging Rights: **

Your posting day is all about you. So celebrate! Don't be modest! Shout it to the world! We all come from so many fandoms, but we all came together to finish our shit, and that's something to shed a proud tear over.

And here are easy to copy formats with HTML formating:

WIPBB AUTHORS/WIPRB ARTISTS:



WIPBB ARTISTS/WIPRB AUTHORS:



(You will have to delete the <*br> tags by hand and add breaks, unfortunately, Dreamwidth does not like the textboxes...)

When you finish posting your final chapter, post your bragging rights to the WIPBB Tumblr and/or the Dreamwidth blog, and then feel free to add your project to the WIP Big Bang 2025 collection on AO3.

We are also requiring a Google forms check in to make it easier for mods to track posts. To fill out the check in form, you will need the email and check in ID you used to sign up, as well as a link to your bragging rights post/finished project. All participants except pinch hitters need to fill it out! You should have received an auto-generated confirmation of your sign up with your check in ID if you need to double check what you used, but if you didn't or lost it, please email us at wipbigbang@gmail.com and we'll find that info for you. Please fill out a different form for each fic/art you post.

The final check in form can be found at https://forms.gle/kNzALWPdi2Mea1am6.


*If for some reason, you can't post this yourself, you can always email this information to the mods, and we'll post it for you. You can also post via proxy, just let us know that you will be doing so.
** These are optional but encouraged
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

WIP Wednesday

Aug. 27th, 2025 01:10 pm
firethesound: (Default)
[personal profile] firethesound
Wow the past couple of weeks have been exhausting. My parents came for a visit, then my in-laws (who are departing this afternoon, so we're going to be getting back to our regular routine soon) and it's been birthdays and social engagements and trying to get the house ready and then absolutely no time for myself in the past eleven days. I did manage to keep the momentum going in the few days before it all started, and I threw down some words a couple of days ago because I had some ideas I was afraid of forgetting, but beyond that I feel like I haven't even had space to breathe.

New words this week : 648 words (plus 3012 from the week before).

WIPs worked on this week : 3, with 1 new WIP

The Old Guard

food truck au : 2704 words which brings the total to 14,942 words and it's getting there. Slowly, but getting there. I'm in that stage where I'm oscillating between thinking it's the best thing ever, and thinking it's so stupid and boring I should just delete it entirely. I've now had a good long break from it so next step is to reread what I've got so far and jump back in.

werewolf au : 308 words which brings the total to 1461 words and all 308 words were smut. So, still no real idea of what this one's going to be like, but there will be smut involved.

Miscellaneous : 661 words which brings the total to 661 words. Started a new doc for throwing ideas at that aren't quite ready to have their own document. This has bits and pieces of four more story ideas in it, and the plan is to just sort of let them incubate for a while and if one of them starts rolling, I'll toss it into its own doc and take it from there.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

Much more prominent than the sling is a statue of the Living Dead that stands near the altar. Carved and painted in the northern style, the slave stands naked except for an iron mask in his hand, representing the moment upon which he receives his freedom. His face is scarred from wearing the mask for so long, but in his eyes lie hope.

Although the statue is intended to represent all of the Living Dead, both men and women, it is based on the likeness of one of the last men to be freed from slavery before the Emorian occupation: Kester son of Hoare, who died in the attack upon Council Hill by the Emorians. Although free at the time of his death, he was present at the palace on the day of the attack because he had voluntarily chosen to return to his place of slavery, in order to help other slaves survive their misery. The statue was commissioned and paid for by Kester's son, the present High Lord of Koretia.


[Translator's note: Kester's story forms part of Death Mask.]

penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
[personal profile] penaltywaltz posting in [community profile] wipbigbang
Dates for most participants run from September 8th to November 30th. Emergency dates run from December 1st to December 31st and are not listed on this form. Please list your date preferences in order of most wanted to least wanted. If you have been given permission by a mod to claim an emergency date, list the emergency date you want and a second and third emergency date, just in case, then leave a note you have mod permission in the notes.

This round we'll be using a new form so that everyone can sign up despite the dates being here on Dreamwidth. If you are planning on posting in December you still must fill out the form, as there's an agreement all participants must agree to that they will post their project by December 31st or drop before that date, or else they will be banned from participation for a round. I will update on a daily basis. If all three or your date choices are taken a mod will email you with other potential dates. Please check this page to verify you got one of your date choices!

Posting Claims Sign-Up Form Is Up At https://forms.gle/8bK7B4WHRiB1CTb28


Dates )
penaltywaltz: (I'm A Mod)
[personal profile] penaltywaltz posting in [community profile] wipbigbang
As we still have a number of unclaimed WIPs, we'll be leaving our pinch-hitter signups open until August 31st (the Dreamwidth pages have been updated but the summary pages and form links will remain the same). After that, if there are WIPs still left unclaimed, we're afraid we cannot provide art or fics for those WIPs.

We understand that this may be a disappointment for these authors and artists. Unfortunately, the unexpected growth of the event this year in conjunction with the lack of available pinch hitters has made it impossible for us to guarantee art/fic for all the participants who signed up for claims. We hope this event nonetheless continues to help you finish your WIPs.
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

In the corner of the sanctuary is a small table with a boys' sling upon it. Far from being a mistake, this is one of the most moving monuments in the sanctuary. The sling represents the thousands of orphan boys who, over the centuries, were forced by their guardians – the priests – to serve in this sanctuary's Rites of Death. The Jackal, who was raised by the priests, has many memories of such services, which he, like the other orphan boys, was given no choice but to participate in. The sling was donated by a later orphan boy grown up, who once used the sling to pitch stones at the priests' house, out of anger at the priests for what they had done.

[Translator's note: The life of one such orphan boy takes an unexpected turn in Blood Vow.]

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