Deleted ContentOriginally on AO3

2018 Monthly Prompt series

Yeah, these were... me running short on time and posting tiny random things. And yeah, obviously, these don't fit the AO3 inclusion criteria.

Still glad I did it, in that one of them inspired three ficlets. And I had, in fact, attempted to use the site mechanics to post prompts, but got literally zero reaction to any of them, whereas my Monthly Prompt series (most of which were in fact ficlets of various stripes) in total inspired at least 16 items.

April:

“Mr. Reese. I’m afraid I must ask you to stop that -- immediately.”

From this simple line of dialogue, write three variations.

May:

“It shouldn’t be a big deal, it’s just that… well… I’ve gotten so used to doing it the other way.”

A habit that's become routine gets disrupted.

(Alternate Prompt: Flowers, but not for the normal/obvious reasons.)

May's prompt got a couple kudos from close fans, but otherwise no engagement. April's prompt, however, inspired three fics, which I would like to link to for the sake of my memory, but I'm not sure if the authors would appreciate being mentioned on a separate site, so I'll just say they were by Li, ta, and Fr, two of whom are fans and one of whom is a fellow fanfic writer who I look up to. And I got comments from el and Ti.

July Prompt 2019Push Outside Your Comfort Zone

Apparently game art and bead art are insufficiently transformative for AO3, oh well. The prompt did inspire three fills: an actual doll (currently residing in my bedroom; he's over a foot high and I love him), a piece of photo manipulated fan art, and a teen's first fanfic.

Here's most of the original text (minus some bits that no longer apply):

Just like last year, I challenge you to create something in a medium you're unfamiliar with, unskilled with, or don't commonly use. Look inside for suggestions, and to see my beadwork version of Jotun Loki as well as Sims 3 versions of the Person of Interest S1 cast.

Stretch your muscles, step outside your comfort zone, and create something in a medium you don't commonly use. For fic writers, this could be as simple as fan art. For artists, you might have to stretch a little further -- though for those not used to writing, fanfiction totally counts!

Early Deadline: August 31st
Primary Deadline: Halloween

So that's four months in which to submit fills. Getting them in by the Early Deadline counts double! (You get twice the votes, and it counts as two fills toward my stretch goal.)

Stretch Goal

If I get a dozen fills, I'll make pixel-art sprites of Loki, Thor, and a small handful of related cast members. [Note: There were nowhere near a dozen fills that year.]

Rewards

If you submit a Fill before the deadline, you get three (3) votes toward which of my fics I'll put more time into. (If you submit it before my birthday, you get six (6) votes.) You may also suggest a fic for me to consider recording as a podfic, and suggest a piece of fan art (see End Note for content limitations).

One set of votes per person per type of fill. So if you post a piece of fan art, a podfic, and a recording of you and your friends acting out your favorite scene, you qualify for nine (9) votes, or eighteen (18) if you got them all in before my birthday. However, if you post three crocheted hats, you'd only get three (3) votes total (or six (6) if you got the first one in before my birthday). This is to promote variety and get people to think outside the box, which is the whole point of this prompt.

Generally speaking, if you've published a bunch of fics, fanfiction doesn't count; if you've published a bunch of fan art, fan art doesn't count; if you've published a few podfics, podfics don't count; etc. The idea is to push you out of your normal creative style and into a medium that you're not as familiar with.

Collaborations

I assume that if multiple people collaborate on the same project, they each earn a set of votes. I hope this won't prompt people to game the system; I reserve the right to change this criteria if I think it's being abused. But if e.g. Bob and Alice post them acting out a scene, Bob would get three (3) votes and Alice would also get three (3) votes.

The cameraman or other behind-the-scenes content creator would also qualify: You don't need to be on camera to be participating.

Zaniida's Limitations

I am slow as a slug through molasses (wait… does that make the slug slower, or faster?) when it comes to updating my fics. I have a dozen Open Chapterfics in the POI fandom alone, not counting a few other POI projects that wait for updates. And I've been thrown headlong into a new fandom (Loki and the MCU), which drove my Muse to hijack my brain and sent all my POI work on hiatus for a few months there.

So whatever promises I make need to be understood in terms of "Zaniida is scatterbrained and slow to update."

This was a couple years before I realized I likely have ADHD. Fun thing to be figuring out in your 40's.

However, I do take the votes seriously, and try to focus my efforts on those pieces that have been voted to the top, which is why my current POI efforts are going toward the next chapter of On the Other Side of the Mirror. I've been batting my head against Mirror for a couple of months now, in between Loki fics. Got not quite half a chapter written, and then also realized that I need to change a couple major elements of the chapter, so… well, I'd hoped to post it before July, but so much for that idea.

Possible Options

Again, my original prompt from last year [2018] gives a lot of detail on possible projects, but here's the short form:

Fan Art

Last year, Lisagarland put together some fan art and some photo manips. Pretty cool! All forms of art are acceptable, so long as the fandom is recognizable. From painted masterpieces to stick figures. Notice that Lisagarland's photo manips are just a small set worked like a comic, with minimal editing. Doesn't take much effort to make something creative!

Fan Comics

Last year, merionees put together a POI comic that also filled another prompt I'd made (John playing hopscotch… more or less). Push your art forward to create a little story using multiple pictures. (I fully recommend getting Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and/or Making Comics from the library.)

Arts and Crafts

Last year, Fringuello created some knitted squares. I was quite impressed! Any medium counts: sewing, knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, paper art (e.g. quilling), paper mache, bead work, what have you. Even food art (look up "awesome bento box" on Google image search).

Recipe Book

Put together a little set of recipes related to one or more characters. You can create the recipes yourself, or just link to them online. Up to you if you also write a little fic around the meal (or drink menu) you've concocted.

Poetry

If you don't usually post poetry, you might give some a try. There's plenty of poetic forms to choose from. (Free Verse, btw, is more than just putting random breaks into prose, or making prose sound weird. It involves some level of attention to sound and repeated elements.)

Cosplay

Dress up like one of the characters, and post a photo.

Acting for the Camera

Record yourself, plus or minus a couple of friends, acting out one of your favorite scenes. Could be a scene from a fic, or from the canon material (the show or movie).

Voice Acting

Along the same lines, but nobody shows up on camera -- it's just the audio.

Podfic

Record yourself reading part or all of a fanfic.

Fanvid

Pair some footage from the show with audio from a different source. Or audio from the show with footage from a different source. I've been running across a lot of mildly animated scenes with pics of Loki and Thor set to audio from various memes or clips from other shows. Pretty amusing at times ^_^

Filk Song

Last year, Fringuello composed The Ballad of Team Machine, riffing on the theme to Gilligan's Island. Write a song about your fandom. Posting the lyrics counts as one fill; recording yourself singing the song would count as a second fill. Can be original or a parody of an existing song.

I will also accept as a fill any piece based on one of last year's monthly prompts. Whether in the Person of Interest fandom or reinterpreted into the MCU or a different fandom.

Bonus Thought: Consider picking a charity that you think your favorite character would favor, and donating to them. This has nothing to do with the prompt or the fills, but is a nice thought.

E.g. John Reese might contribute to the Wounded Warrior Project (to help veterans), while Natasha Romanova might contribute to a charity that reduces child trafficking in Russia; Root might support Girls Who Code, while Bruce Banner might support the Big Brothers Big Sisters program (to support at-risk children in need of a good influence in their tender years). Just consider which issues might be close to the character's heart, then figure out what sort of charity would deal with those issues.

Request Guidelines

Nothing sexualized, in any fashion; I won't draw or record sex-related material, even, like, gay bars (and I don't consider nudity inherently sexual, but I won't draw nudity right now, either). Nothing particularly gross or gory.

Since I'll likely be posting any podfics on my YouTube channel, no swearing. I appreciate swear words used occasionally, to make a point, but my channel is meant to be mostly family-friendly; I even censor the word "crap," thanks to one of my nieces.

Keep it relatively short: 2000 words or less, though you can make a case for up to 5000 words.

POI votes would be toward any of the Open Chapterfics, or you can cast a vote toward me putting more time into podfics (I have multiple podfics recorded that need post-processing (cut, splice, get rid of background noise, etc.) before I can post them).

When it comes to Loki fics… well, my brain is bursting with them -- well over a dozen ideas that haven't yet seen the light of day, in addition to updates on the fics I've already published (Festering and Unforeseen Friendship have more chapters to come, and Acceptable Loss is on hiatus (like Best-Case Scenario is) in the status of "feels complete for now, but more chapters are planned").

So, given that the fics my Loki-fan readers might be voting on are mostly unpublished at this point, submitting a fill gives you the opportunity to hear about upcoming projects! We can find some way to get in touch privately (email, Discord, Pillowfort, Fanfiction.net, YouTube comments section, etc. -- I even have a sneaky way to give you a quasi-private message here via the AO3 comments section), and I will lay out for you the ideas I've been working on, and you can cast your votes toward any of the pieces in my head.

I've posted fics in a handful of other fandoms. Of the fandoms that I'm still at least somewhat interested in creating for, there's Welcome to Night Vale, Stardew Valley, ElfQuest, Saints Row, Criminal Minds, Star Trek, and Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Some are in fic or podfic form; others are videos (SRIV, SDV) or cover versions of filk songs (EQ).

I'm open to votes for these projects, with the understanding that it takes more time and energy to create a video, podfic, or cover song than to write a fic. A Fugitive in Stardew Valley is quite time-intensive, hence why it's on hiatus.

Anyway, the votes don't need to be toward a single fandom; you can split them up however you like. Just go forth, create, post your creation, and earn some votes!

Last Year's Outcome

Last year's stretch goal was a dozen fills: If that happened, I'd make an updated version of my Squirrel Reese and Chipmunk Finch fan art. Sadly, by my count, we didn't make it. I even gave a secondary prompt past deadline -- anyone who made a doll Nathan to go with my Unseen Things project would still count; unfortunately, the only person who seemed likely to accomplish one wound up too busy to complete it.

So, it's unlikely that Squirrel Reese and Chipmunk Finch will get an updated version. (Though, as usual, if anyone wants to create something based on my work, feel free!)

July Prompt 2020Corona Creativity!

My nephews and I filmed some videos -- script readings and acted scenes from Marvel, Harry Potter, and Person of Interest (though I never got around to posting the latter). Here's how that went:

Just because we're mostly stuck in isolated pockets doesn't mean we can't come up with cool one-shot projects that stretch our creative ingenuity!

(Note: The Person of Interest pieces have been filmed, but I haven't yet had the time to edit them for posting; I wanted to make sure that both my major fandoms saw this prompt, hence the tag.)

It's that time of year again! Each July, I put out a call for people to try something in a creative medium they're unfamiliar with or not yet skilled in. So let's get started!

It's pretty much the same as the past two years: Think outside the box, find some medium you haven't used before or aren't very skilled in, and give it a shot! Pretty much anything counts, so long as it's creative and fandom-related and isn't in a medium that you're already skilled in.

Primary Deadline: Halloween! That gives you a good four months.
Short Deadline: August 31st. Kudos if you manage to get something done that fast!

As before, I'll be offering votes to those who complete a fill for this challenge. The votes basically create/modify a Priority List of my fics; it's not a hard-and-fast Top Priority sorta thing, but it helps me focus and try to update and/or complete those projects before many of the other projects I've got going on. The Muse doesn't always listen, but I try.

P.S. I've been listening to a podcast from the makers of Welcome to Night Vale, called Start With This, which is about the writing process. The episode I just listened to, The Possibility of Failure, contains useful advice and perspective for anyone debating about trying something new and outside their comfort zone. I recommend giving it a listen; it's about half an hour long.

So! What new and exciting thing have I gotten up to this year? Acting! I got my nephews to act out scenes from the MCU and from Harry Potter, and I played camera operator (and Darcy Lewis). Have a bunch of videos (note: some may not have loaded by the time these links go up):

Acted Scenes:

I found scripts for these films with earlier versions of key scenes. Sometimes I think it was an improvement, as with the Laufey scene; my nephews even streamlined some of the lines:

MCU: Loki bargains with Laufey

For the Laufey scene, I've got a mostly unedited portion, so you can see what it's like just spliced together, and then a color-shifted version that's all in one take, no camera changes.

HP: Harry faces Snape (not yet uploaded)

(I hope to add a Person of Interest scene to this, but we didn't get it filmed during our get-together. Possibly my other nephew will help me this week.)

Script Readings

We didn't have time to practice all the scenes and try to act them out in multiple takes, so we ended up doing these as basic script readings, which is still fun. The HP scene and the Avengers Trio scenes are the canonical filmed versions; "Epic Fauxpology" is a lengthy excerpt from Mikkeneko's Laughing As I Pray, wherein Thor gets schooled in how apologies work.

HP: Passing on the Marauder's Map

(Fred and George give Harry their most precious possession)

MCU: Avengers Trio

(Tony, Steve, and Bruce discuss what Fury might be up to)

MCU: Epic Fauxpology

(Thor must learn how apologies work if he's ever to reconcile with his brother)

Outtakes

And then there's the clips I pulled out of all the weird things that kept happening as we filmed. Have some outtakes!

Lines

Insult Yourself!

My nephew keeps forgetting his line, so I have to prompt him

Failed Reprimand

"That's not funny" + uncontrolled laughter = mixed messages

Body Language

Clearly we need to work on more than just memorizing the lines.

Apologies Are Boring

Don't yawn while you're being educated:

Rock-a-Bye Laufey (July 2nd)

Menacing frost giant kings probably don't rock back and forth all the time:

Wild Gesticulation

Wow those arms just go everywhere:

Compilations

My nephew got pretty enthusiastic about tossing himself to the ground three times per take (when he got hit by spells): Wands and Poses

Notes

So there we go! Roughly three hours of filming, substantially more hours of post-production editing, four good scenes and a wonderful experience/memory for all of us. Hope your projects turn out to be just as memorable!

My prompt inspired three pieces that year:

• Someone's first podfic
• A crossword puzzle
• Someone else's first podfic

The July Prompt is also a time to reflect back on the projects of the past, and all the possibilities for projects of the future. So here's a history of the oddities I've worked on, other than fanfics:

2018

I've been drawing fan art almost since I could pick up a pen (my room is filled with old drawings of Sailor Moon villains and ElfQuest OCs), but it wasn't until 2018 that I posted my first piece of fan art, as part of my July Prompt (that year, I posted a prompt every month). Three people joined me in making random things: photo manips, a fan comic, knitted art, even a filk song!

That year, I also posted:

• my first fic form (in May)
• my first podfics (in August)
• my first Notfic (in September)
• my first filk song cover (in October)
• my first voice acted podfic (in December)

I also realized that my Let's Play of Stardew Valley (A Fugitive in Stardew Valley, started in 2017) counted as fanfiction-ish content, seeing as it's the old-school style of Let's Play, where I use game footage to make an entirely new story. So that became an entry here on AO3.

I participated in back-to-back fic exchanges that nearly killed me (but are still some of the writing I'm most proud of). Then I went ahead and spearheaded my own group project: Unseen Things, which attracted about a dozen participants from all over the world. I also wrote the script for a connected audio file, which got recorded by one of my favorite podfic artists (technically, I wrote two such scripts, both of which DesireeArmfeldt graciously recorded, but only one has gone live; the other contains major spoilers, so it's waiting in limbo until I manage to post the climactic chapter of Unseen Things).

2019

In 2019, I posted a piece of bead art, along with making the Person of Interest main characters as Sims 3 sims. (I've since made several other POI characters as Sims, most of them posted on the Sims Exchange. NOTE: The Sims I made used downloaded content I later learned was corrupted. I have no way to fix this short of recreating the character from scratch. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.)

Two four people joined me (it's hard to keep track when the works don't get linked up right): one writing her first fanfic, one making food art of the Avengers, one making a photo manip for a fanfic, and one sewing up a full-size doll version of Nathan Ingram omg!!! (That's straight from Unseen Things, where Nathan literally got turned into a living doll. The creator sent it to me and Nathan is now a resident of my bedroom.)

Anyway! What else did I do that year? I realized that my Saints Row IV fanvid counted enough to get an entry here on AO3. I got sucked into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with an April Fools' Day piece that turned the cast of Person of Interest into MCU characters. I made an MCU-themed crossword puzzle (in September).

And now here we are, 2020! With everything going... how things are going in 2020. Sheesh. No wonder I'm having trouble focusing. But! I shall persevere! Onward and upward and excelsior!

The Puzzle

The crossword puzzle is still up on my Pillowfort. My AO3 post included a little more info:

By the by, thing I forgot to mention anywhere on the puzzle: The right-hand panel where you can fill in the clues as a word list, that's in alphabetical order (within each size category) from top to bottom and then by columns. So if you are sure on a few of the words, it might narrow down others to make it easier to solve.

Also, you might try the mini puzzle first, and backtrack to the main clues. If you get the words right, you'll have the first letters of several of the clues. The mini puzzle uses the smallest possible number for each letter, so if you figure out the right letter for a big number, you can be assured that no smaller number starts with that letter.

The puzzle was a gift for the two ladies who first supported my Marvel fics on AO3 (I've been a Marvel fangirl since I was a kid, and it was gratifying to find my people straight off):

You were two of the first to welcome me to the fandom, and I offer this to you in thanks for your comments (and as an apology for putting Loki through hell again). Hope you like it!

I really like how this one came out, btw. I figured out multiple points of symmetry and the whole thing pulled together quite well, including the mini puzzle. Go try it out!

Sims versions of the POI cast

Have just learned that if you have corrupted Custom Content (downloaded sims made by others) on your system, you can pass some of the glitches along even if your sim isn't "wearing" any of the glitched items. My uploaded sims are likely glitched. I'm getting rid of all my installed sims, but have no time to sanitize my system, recreate the sims, and re-upload them, so use at your own risk. (I might re-upload them later, but not soon.)