Umbramatic

Good thing it's over, then!

Haha, sorry about that. Glad you enjoyed the first installment, anyway!

Some people don't like the anime. There's nothing you can do about it and no point in worrying.

No problem! Hope you enjoy the stories. The Morty ones come up a little later in the series, but you don't really need to read everything in order if you don't want to. The first one is here. A word of warning, though--Morty/Will is the pairing Renn Ireigh explores in this series, and it's an incest pairing, so if that's something you'd rather not read, you might want to take a pass on the Morty bits, actually. XD

I'm so proud.

Not... very. I really need to get on that. x_x

Ah, thanks! I've actually read most of that one already.

Heh, I actually haven't gotten around to reading any award nominations (that I hadn't read already). It doesn't look like I'll manage to vote this year. But I've been meaning to check out Context Switch for several reasons, and I definitely will now! Thanks!

And yeah, I read it.

What's the fic you wanted to recommend me that you beta-read, by the way?

Sure. I'm not horrifically picky.

Sure, no problem.

Ah. It's just the way she specifically talked about how she didn't get why humans like romance, which I thought implied she thinks of it as something specific to humans. Shouldn't be hard to fix.

And yes, adorable platonic friendships, please experiment with those. A lot.

Glad you enjoyed it.

As I say, I like to write about death, suffering, torture, misery, and adorable friendships.

Does that mean that the characters will break out into song every couple scenes?

Two other fic projects? Oh my, that is ambitious. I've rarely had three at a time, and one of those would just be an article on Pokemon which are quicker to make anyways than multi-chaptered fics, haha. Good luck with juggling all those projects though!

That's cool. I'm not planning to write it for a while yet anyway.

Thanks! It's kind of an unusual fandom mashup, so I didn't know if there was anyone who'd be interested in reading it.

Ah, cool! Good luck with that. But how silly is very silly?

Bugger with busy tiring week. I can relate to that...

Woo! *high-fives* I like smash too (even if I have not played it in a good while whoops), although fic for that would not be easy, haha.

Thanks! Yeah, it's actually coming more easily than I was afraid it would. I guess writing that silly fic first really did help me get to grips with things. That and I've spent way too long thinking about the main character involved for reasons unrelated to the fic anyway, so I probably shouldn't have been anywhere near this worried in the first place.

Regarding what you mentioned in the Mafia thread (since I don't really want to derail the thread by replying there), I actually don't think I want to quite reach the point of never having to consciously think about the actions of a character that isn't mine. I worry that if I started doing that, it'd only be because I've slipped away from their canon self into an ever-so-slightly-different fanon version of them that only exists in my head. And that would be baaad. Like I said, I don't actually mind having to consciously check a character's actions against my understanding of them, because it's fun! Usually it's not even to correct myself - it's just to confirm what I'm writing, like, "Yes, I am confident they would act in this way to this situation, because of X, Y and Z from this part of the canon".

(And you're not being pretentious at all! You are a perfectly competent, visibly improving writer who has every right to give advice to someone if he thinks it'll help them. Besides which you probably have more recent writing experience than me, anyway. =P)

Oh, awesome! Happy birthday! Did you get anything nice?

No problem! It's all about striking the balance between both. Of course, we can't ever give them equal weight even if that's the ideal (in that I might like characters more and you might like plot more), but it's just a matter of letting one contribute to the development of the other.