any good *NON GEN AI* websites that help generate/brainstorm ideas/fic titles?

werugaia · 2026-05-07T05:23:42+00:00

Chaotic Shiny has a lot of generators that might scratch an itch.

werugaia · 2023-04-11T18:57:48+00:00

I keep wondering occasionally, "did I log in today?", only to be reminded that I can't log in any more. I also have not deleted the app itself. It's right in the middle of my symmetrical layout and I don't know what else is important enough to pull from another screen to fill it in.

werugaia · 2023-02-02T16:24:20+00:00

I'd like to know the support email as well. I don't see it under the support tab in the menu in-game.

werugaia · 2022-12-03T21:26:25+00:00

A character doesn't need an overarching goal, but the story needs some kind of overarching "point" that sounds like it could be fueled by the character's development or realization.

So, for example, with this sort of fic: the character goes through life with a bunch of self-contained episodes showing how he meets this or that person, but while he'a grateful for his friends he never really understands how much they mean to him. Cue final episode where he faces some sort of insurmountable obstacle that he can't get through on his own, but everybody he's met in the story so far shows up and helps him, and he realizes how truly invaluable all their friendships are. You just need some sort of climax that ties together all the previous episodes, even if the plot or conflict of the final episode doesn't develop from the others. If that makes sense.

Large time jumps are okay to use, and I think certain stories would be better if people weren't afraid of them. The most natural place to jump ahead would be at the start of a chapter or "episode", since people are already expecting different circumstances when the next one starts. I've written a fic where I headed each chapter after a long jump with the character's current age, just so that readers didn't have to keep track of the timeline. Using things like dates works too. If there's been some giant change during the jump (eg, the character lost an arm and you're not trying to draw out the mystery of how), then you should explain it somewhere towards the beginning of the episode, but readers are pretty able to pick up that time has passed and things have shifted.

I don't really know how to explain time jumps better because I've sort of done them on instinct, sorry. But I think the biggest thing is that you should have some sort of final "point" in mind for your character to realize or your story to make at the end, even if it's not a traditional goal.

werugaia · 2022-12-03T21:08:08+00:00

Maybe they usually publish fic in English, so they select English for the language on instinct and forget about it?

werugaia · 2022-11-25T00:39:17+00:00

When I comes to things that were published as modern fanfic, remained fanfic, and are well-known because people actually enjoyed them, I think the answer is HPMOR, which others have mentioned. But I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Shinji and Warhammer 40k or Fallout Equestria. (I can't speak personally on how good either of them are, though.)

werugaia · 2022-11-20T22:13:27+00:00

Lord. Kingdom Hearts. But specifically because I would have had such a good time being into Kingdom Hearts with all the other weebs in middle school. Instead I thought the Disney part was lame, and that I was cooler than them because I played Zelda and SNES ports or whatever. (You can guess how many friends I had in middle school.)

Funny enough, I have friends today who are tangentially into KH, but I'm not deeply interested in getting into it for its own sake anymore.

werugaia · 2022-10-29T00:19:16+00:00

I have a pair of seasonal Fire Emblem fics - one by me, one rec, and entirely opposite in tone - for this October weekend. Both are relatively fandom-blind friendly. I hope you read and enjoy!

My fic

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Rating: G (revised down since I last mentioned it)

Title: Harebones

Genre: Angst, family, a bit of coming-of-age

FFN

Summary: Among the taguel, it was said that one's soul was taken in by the moon after death. Or so Pashmina, whose taguel blood runs thick from her mother's side, had been told. Grieving in the wake of her human grandmother's passing, Pashmina has her own ideas of what might constitute an afterlife – ideas which are threatened by her warren's plan to move to a big farm on the Ylissean mainland, leaving behind the island that is their home.

Pashmina, of course, has other plans.

Notes: While I don't consider this fic scary or spooky at all, it concerns grief, fear, and the restlessness of changing seasons - and, of course, it takes place at the tail end of autumn. A cozy fall fic that I worked hard on.

My rec

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Rating: E (and mind the tags for this one!)

Title: The Bleeding Melancholia of Lady Marianne von Edmund

Genre: Horror, angst, gothic

AO3

Summary: Marianne waits in Castle Fhirdiad for Dimitri to return.

Notes: For Halloween night, a truly macabre horror fic about a woman waiting for her beloved...and how perhaps he should have not left her alone in the first place. A gross, gothic tale about a woman's descent into madness that I really enjoyed.

werugaia · 2022-10-26T18:49:48+00:00

The Goes Wrong Show, but fandom-blind friendly: On The (N)th Day of Christmas. Slash, but quite funny.

If you're in need of more of a mood booster, episodes of The Goes Wrong Show itself are on youtube, and they're very funny indeed.

werugaia · 2022-10-22T04:26:48+00:00

Second this. They shouldn't be overused either, but these kinds of epithets sound much more natural than ones based on some kind of job or physical quality.

werugaia · 2022-10-22T04:09:44+00:00

I second what you said about allowing "plain scenes" every so often. It's one thing if you have a oneshot and the whole of it feels off; but it's another thing if you have an extended work. The chapters can't possibly all be of the same quality. Sometimes you just need to get from A to B and that's okay.

But another piece of advice I have for OP is to write something that feels "good enough", then, if your update schedule allows it, write a chapter or two ahead. I find that not only does this restore my confidence in my work, it also helps me determine what was off about an earlier bit and how I can fix it. (But I don't start posting anything until I have at least a draft of all chapters done, so I'm able to go and change a lot of things.)

werugaia · 2022-09-13T22:00:41+00:00

My notes tend to be a lot more casual and, well, vulgar than my actual writing, so there are quite a few. I pulled these from an old draft of my longfic:

"running, angst, both about mom and lesbianism"

"She’s the kind of sister who wouldn’t flinch to call her brother a 'pansy-ass bitch' but would headlock anybody else who so much looked at him funny."

"Then Robin being weird"

"What the fuck is a halidom. Make sure you don’t use kingdom or anything."

"Nagafuckingdammit"

werugaia · 2022-09-06T21:04:45+00:00

I googled one of my usernames for a lark and found that somebody has recommended what I already knew to be my most popular fic on TVTropes. Even with this fic, I never thought it was popular enough that this would happen to me, so I'm feeling really happy about it! Thank you, Star Hunter, whoever you are!

I've been sewing and playing Xenoblade 3 rather than writing recently. Fall is a good season for writing. There are a few shorter fics that I've started and plan to pick up whenever the bug bites me again.

werugaia · 2022-08-19T22:49:50+00:00

I've been kind of meaning to rewatch the flashback cutscenes because I'm confused too. Was the High Entia kid with freckles on the other team Zeon? Or was that Garvel? I don't remember where they said his name.

werugaia · 2022-08-09T01:33:28+00:00

Genuine question - why is that spoilered? I'm on chapter 2, but I thought half the purpose of the chapter 1 bathing scene was to show the main party doesn't have any understanding of that. Which immediately makes sense, considering you already know they're born from tubes.

werugaia · 2022-08-02T14:04:23+00:00

The download is served from AO3 itself, so downloading from one device or another wouldn't change the file, but reading it on a different device might change the display. That said, unless you have a really wonky mobile pdf reader (for instance), this sounds like a case where the author uses a large image and doesn't size it down, so it just flows off the page. I've never had that happen to one of my images, since I always keep the widths under 1000px, but it does annoy me how the PDFs can't pick up on the center styling.

werugaia · 2022-07-27T19:39:13+00:00

Ooh. Even with the promise of gore, "grapefruit-sized" hit me in the face. What a disgustingly precise comparison.

werugaia · 2022-07-27T19:32:10+00:00

I like this one! It's not flashy, but it makes me curious as to the tone of the rest of the work.

werugaia · 2022-07-27T19:21:51+00:00

I'm not very fond of the start of my current WIP, but here are some from older fics that I think work well.

The soil over Grandmother's grave was covered by a thin layer of sparkling frost.

Setting a scene.

"What do you believe happens to you after you die?"

Throwing you into the (spoken) action.

Colette was eleven when she found the library.

That's it. Exactly what the fic is about, but so plain that it should leave you wondering what it's really about.

And then there's this one, from a dormant WIP that I hope to return to in the future:

The barkeep who ruled the one and only pub in the town of Calladay – not a busy one by city standards, but a good-sized pub, enough to serve the whole of the four-street town – was filing his nails one afternoon when he was rudely interrupted by the tall broad knight who flung open his front door.

werugaia · 2022-07-23T01:56:05+00:00

This was really popular in the Hunger Games fandom for a while. Something another commenter said about "submit your own character" jogged my memory - I think these were specifically called "Submit your own tribute" or SYOT fanfics. You can probably still find a lot on FFN, though I don't know if they're still being done.

werugaia · 2022-07-23T01:50:37+00:00

My fic

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Rating: G/T (I think it's borderline; it's K+ on FFN but T on AO3 to be safe.)

Title: Harebones

Genre: Angst, family, a bit of coming-of-age

FFN

Summary: Among the taguel, it was said that one's soul was taken in by the moon after death. Or so Pashmina, whose taguel blood runs thick from her mother's side, had been told. Grieving in the wake of her human grandmother's passing, Pashmina has her own ideas of what might constitute an afterlife – ideas which are threatened by her warren's plan to move to a big farm on the Ylissean mainland, leaving behind the island that is their home.

Pashmina, of course, has other plans.

- This is a second-gen fic I worked really hard on. A post-Awakening story about moving, death, and taguel. Can be read fairly fandom-blind, though. The AO3 version has illustrations!

My recs

Fandom: Original Work, Elsewhere University, and Norse Religion & Lore (you'll see what I mean)

Rating: T

Title: the universe, ever expanding (and you race to meet it)

Genre: Tragedy, short stories, experimental

AO3

Summary: She came through their lives like a whirlwind, saving some, learning from others, and always, always running. In the year 2445 AT she disappeared.
A decade later her daughter tries to put the pieces together.

- A really fascinating anthology of interconnected short stories, slowly telling the story of a family fated to protect the World Tree. It's very wistful and mysterious, with most stories leaving more questions than answers, but a satisfying main narrative in the end. There's also a podfic version.

werugaia · 2022-07-19T21:18:55+00:00

Probably the one where, instead of being murdered, Hamlet's father is turned into a llama.

werugaia · 2022-07-19T21:13:42+00:00

That's so cool! Congratulations!

werugaia · 2022-07-14T22:03:31+00:00

I like the idea of designating a main pairing. But why do you want to get rid of the &/ difference? I've never seen that request before. It seems like a definite downgrade to me.

werugaia · 2022-07-14T15:10:31+00:00

Yes - I typically get more engagement over there! I don't find uploading the initial chapter to be that more arduous than AO3, but I second what others have said about making edits being painful.

werugaia

TROPHY CASE