State of the fics

[soc_puppet]

Part 3 of Him/Me/You/Her is going pretty well at the moment. It might be finished as early as tomorrow night, though I'll still probably want to wait a day or so after finishing it before posting, if only for editing's sake. It helps that I had it almost entirely blocked out before I was even half done with Part 2 9_9a

Part 2 itself was pretty well received, as far as I can tell. I really do want to have Part 3 out there sooner rather than later, since it ended more suspensefully than Part 1. I told myself from the beginning that I wouldn't post Part 2 until I had Part 3 almost ready to go, just because I knew when the break would happen, and also know in intimate detail how my attention span does (or rather, doesn't) work. I'll admit, I didn't expect to be mostly done with Part 3 before Part 2 when I made that plan, but if it works, it works.

I definitely want to dive back into Metamour or Less after I'm done with this. I've been re-reading what I have written and squeeing ridiculously over my own work, which is totally the best. Even if the outside world never reads it, I'm having a lot of fun writing it, and won't regret it. (That said, the outside world probably will see it, but only if it gets the okay from my yet-to-be-recruited polyam sensitivity reader/beta. I feel like I'm doing a fairly decent job with it, but I don't know the negative tropes and stereotypes at all, and want to make sure I'm not hitting them too hard (or, preferably, at all, but at the very least not without pushing back against them).)

...Here's the first few paragraphs (as they are now) from Metamour or Less, as a treat just in case anyone actually did come here after reading my fics on AO3:

Teaser:

Marinette stared at the assignment in front of her and willed herself to concentrate. Since she'd started being a superhero, her time to work on assignments outside of class had dwindled dramatically. Between regular patrols with Cat Noir, fighting actual akuma, and her duties as class president, she'd found herself hard pressed to keep up her grades. Her solution had been to cut her lunch breaks short and return to school early to get some extra work and studying in, but today her efforts seemed to be futile.

The night before, Cat had been his usual flirty, irreverent self. To her horror, however, Marinette had not found herself responding as she usually did. Outwardly, she still brushed off his over-the-top compliments and returned his banter with her own, but inwardly she was noticing her heart start to skip at his words. Moreover, when she thought about it, she realized it had been going on for some time now. Marinette had to face facts: Somewhere along the line, she had started falling for her silly, loyal, pun-loving partner.

The problem was, she hadn't fallen out of love with Adrien. As often as she imagined falling into Cat Noir's arms and kissing him in the heat of rescue (or vice-versa), she still thought of cuddling up with Adrien on a cold winter night with hot chocolate to share. And any time she imagined tagging along with Adrien on a photoshoot to a romantic location, thoughts of asking her partner out for ice cream after an akuma attack popped in her head.

Worst of all, perhaps (Purrhaps, Cat supplied in her mind, and her mental Adrien snickered,) was imagining spending time with both of them at once. Playing video games together (and reaching around each other to sabotage one another), or Marinette teaching them to bake (Cat sneaking some cookie dough and Adrien with a dusting of flour on one perfect cheek), even of groaning while the boys tried to out-pun one another (Adrien's terrible sense of humor had been a recent discovery, and Marinette was certain Cat Noir would love it). Not to mention the other things they could all do together - which she probably didn't want to think about while she was at school, or she'd turn into the world's first walking, talking strawberry.

(It's not like she was sure either of them would be interested in each other like that, and she wasn't ready to jump into bed with anyone one way or another, but she had a healthy imagination, and her two crushes were, frankly, unfairly attractive.)

"Hey, Marinette," Alya said, sliding into her customary seat next to the girl. "How's studying going?"

Jostled out of her daydreaming, Marinette looked down at her notebook, where she found that she'd only gotten a few new sentences of her essay written. Groaning, she lowered her head to the desk and beat her forehead against it.

Alya hummed sympathetically. "That bad, huh?"

Marinette whimpered into her schoolwork.

Her friend patted her on the shoulder. "Cheer up, girl. We can meet at my place after class and we'll knock this shit out together. Then we can--holy crap, Rose? Juleka?"

I'd estimate the fic's around half done, with two-ish scenes left to be written, and some extra work to be done on the one in the middle. I am happy to talk about it, though, if anyone wants to know more :3

At any rate, Him/Me/You/Her needs to be finished first, but I'm excited about both of them, and also whatever comes after :3

Comments

[alexseanchai]

ha, nice title pun

[soc_puppet]

Thank you :D I knew I wanted to do a play on metamour pretty early on, and am reasonably pleased with what I came up with. I was originally thinking of calling it Metamour-phosis or similar, but it turned out that someone else already wrote a pretty popular fic named Metamorphosis, so I scratched that idea.

(I'm not even done with the fic and my brain is bugging me about a sequel. If I do ever get that far, it would be something along the lines of "Polycular Expansion" or similar. Shows me right for even thinking in terms of hypotheticals, really.)

/rambling