I think I've entered a vicious cycle when it comes to writing my longfic.... Wondering if anyone does this...?

(Don't get me wrong.... I'm currently going through some major medical issues and coming from one family catastrophe into another.... I'm talking family death, another in ICU, and the prospect of surgery to rid me of my oh-so-problematic-and-defective baby-making-box after many years of trying with my husband and a loss last year.... So I already know my mental state is fragile, y'all.)

But I'm noticing that, while I'm loving getting my work on my first longfic posted on AO3 chapter by chapter, I'm having some weird regret after posting. I don't think it's just limited to posting though.... Here's what's happening, and it feels akin to an addiction at this point....

My mental state is rough, as I said. I'm stressed, I'm emotional, and I'm tired, but IRL a new and great work environment (this year) and hubs and writing have all been helpful to me!

I'm new to fanfic. Got sucked into a fandom unexpectedly, as it were, and it sparked a return to writing after 10 years focusing on my career! I wrote a novella fanfic, and when shit hit the fan IRL I fed my energy into a longfic in order to get through on another wavelength.

I feel like getting to tell this longfic story has actually helped keep me focused and moving forward and that's truly great and all! It's part of what brought me back to writing, to finding something different to do that's not watching TV/movies or reading or playing video games and keeps my mind occupied! And I thoroughly love telling the story of my OC in the BG3 fandom and her romance with Astarion and their family and friends with other OCs I created!!! Getting to dive back into their world has actually helped me get my mind off of my own troubles, and practicing writing and feeling progress in all these areas has truly become like a godsend!

So I complete writing and editing a 2-5K word chapter in roughly a week and post about every 1-1.5 wks. Been doing that since I started posting my longfic in Jan/February of this year now that I have more time with my better job.

I get all excited creating each chapter and the prospect of getting this story out of my brain and onto paper to be realized has actually felt cathartic, as you can well imagine given my losses. So I get all geared up, gung ho, and revved, so to speak, and then I post a completed chapter. Over the next 48 hours as it sits on AO3 I am a total wreck. I mean, nervously checking for messages, looking for input, checking hits and bookmarks, waiting for readers to find my work.

Obviously, bots and scammers have scoured AO3 and made it more difficult to tell true readers from the scammers! Still, I managed to make a handful of friends, one IRL who reads, and another on AO3 and Tumblr who reads in spurts and comments. Those have felt like TRUE lifelines.

But until I start my next idea for a chapter and begin writing my next chapter again, this feeling of loss and failure nags at me. And then this addiction-like cycle begins again!!

I feel like I'm losing my mind!! I work in medicine.... I know coping mechanisms and how to coach others - that's what I do! But I can't help but keep feeding this cycle because it's one of the few productive ways I can cope at the moment. I mean, my house is a wreck because I can't bring myself to get up the energy to clean it, and hubs helps only so much before he's lost. And I'm not physically harming myself by feeding this cycle as one would with drugs or alcohol chasing a high such as this is.....

Idk..... I think I needed to know if anyone else writing does something similar? Looking for outside points of view.... 🤷‍♀️ I feel like I'm just needing to give myself time and wait until the downer hits stop coming at my life IRL to actually get a breather!

Edit: wow, thanks to the jerk who downvoted me within minutes of my posting this. You suck.

First time posting a request.... I figured you lovely readers could give some really good ones. I've been catching a few recs from other posts and adding to my way-too-long-to-read-in-my-lifetime TBR list. 🤣

I'm looking for a historical romance with a good twist or surprise reveal about a character's nature from one MC to the other.

Something that completely shook their own ideas of the other person and made them rethink everything and shift.

Preferences:

Only M/F, monogamous. Must have a happy ending or I'm just depressed, lol.

Any spice level, though I'm pretty fed up with YA at my age now that I'm in my 40s and everything seems to be about a teen girl in school-or-similar setting learning about the world and herself and where she fits in. (Been there, done that!)

I also like action, mystery, and paranormal. LOVE time travel stories, though I think that also plays into my love of reveals in the narrative.

ABSOLUTELY NO depictions of SA or abuse as that is triggering for me. Rescuing from near misses or physical fights and injuries are fine for the narrative.

Things I've loved are:

- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - both how it revealed Mr. Rochester's love of her and also his past life.

- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - how Mr. Darcy has acted completely contrary the whole time in regards to Elizabeth.

I read such a wide range of books, most of them about pirates or mermaids, lol, so I find it hard to remember specific contemporary books or historical romances.

Tbh, I tried in the recent 2-3 years watching Outlander and started out loving it and thought about reading the books cuz it was all up my alley... That was until I discovered that Diana Gabaldon has a preoccupation with rape in her books and I can barely tolerate the show now it makes me so ill since just about every other woman gets assaulted and I think they might have toned it down in the show.... Sorry for the rant.

A Discovery Of Witches by Deborah Harkness is on my TBR and I adored the TV series!!

I'm feeling kind of lonely in my little, niche merMay corner of BG3 ... and moody hormones are hitting hard at the moment. I'm sure there are other mer-lovers out there like me!!

I'd love for others to share their own FAVORITE Astarion-related merMay images.

Can be anything, really! All ships welcome!

Legit - I want to see it all.

(It's forcing me to pick a flair, so I will do a diff post about fics recs, but THIS one is for ART! Idk what to identify it as based on what it gives me to pick from so I guess "other fan work"??? If tags are needed, I will update later.)

(It's forcing me to pic a flair, so I will do a diff post about art, but THIS one is for FICS! If tags are needed, I will update later.)

I'm feeling kind of lonely in my little merMay corner of BG3 and moody hormones are hitting hard at the moment. I'm sure there are other mer-lovers out there like me!!

I'd love for others to share their own FAVORITE Astarion-related merMay recs.

Can be anything, really! All ships welcome!

Legit - I want to see it all.

Hello, all!

It's been so long since I caught the tail end of this movie on a hotel tv....For the longest time, I can't find out what it was....

It's a grainy b&w, 1920s to early 1930s at latest, and it's about a woman who is from the lower classes and is in a city and befriends a high class man. The problem is that his high class g/f or fiancee is digging her claws into him and his friends and family are with her.

The scene I caught was towards the end, and the g/f is holding some sort of party, maybe engagement or something. She was blond and wearing one of those stereotypical form fitting white, silk strappy gowns of the era. Everyone is around her and she sticks out cuz she was wearing one of the only white dresses. She had that typical-of-the-period really short blond hair in tight finger waves.

The guy shows up in tails and is thrown into the mix. (And idk there was like an adjacent board room meeting happening or something that flowed into the party?? I just know it was important for the guy's future. Maybe a double celebration?)

But the love interest girl - she has ear/shoulder length curly brownish hair - shows up and is terribly underdressed - like travel suit or something, I think either she was fleeing the town and decided to see him one last time or something. And the g/f sort of makes a haughty joke against the girl. It makes the party laugh at her.

So the girl flees to the stairs and collapses and lays her head on the stairs, bereft. And then the guy gets mad at her and goes after her.

I want to say when they all cried out his name to call him back, I swear it was Nicky.

I've been searching for this and thought it might have been a very young Cary Grant's face that flashed at me, but it would have been a very early film he was in and may not even have been credited or just someone who looked like him.

I've tried HOT SATURDAY and I thought that might have been it, but it wasn't. Right time period, right mood, wrong movie.

Someone suggested HOLIDAY w Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, again, right mood, but definitely wrong time frame - that's too late in the decade. Wrong movie.

It very well could be pre-code. Not sure.

HALP

BG3 Astarion Siren AU fanfic (M/F) on AO3.... Sequel in process and posting!!

This post is 🐙🧜‍♀️ FOR MERMAY!!🧜‍♀️🐙 I'm writing a sequel focusing more on the siren aspect!!

....Last year I wrote my first ever fanfic for the BG3 community as my return to writing after 10 years. Now, it feels like the sequel is coming along nicely!

If anyone cares to read it, I think it overall needs traction within the mer fan community since BG3 fandom was the first audience I geared it towards, merging it with my love of mermaids/sirens/selkies/etc.

18y/o+ PLEASE- 🔞

{\[Good Things Come \](https://archiveofourown.org/works/62737273/chapters/160611004)\\\\- by Poetsiren}

(pt 1 of All Good Things series) \[https://archiveofourown.org/series/5156251\\\](https://archiveofourown.org/series/5156251)

Astarion lords over the Underdark:

After defeating the Absolute with Tav, Astarion is glad to have his beloved remain beside him. He didn’t expect it to be easy, living in the Underdark with his siblings and the other vampire spawn. Still, a new manuscript detailing vampire spawn has been discovered, and no one could expect to know what knowledge it reveals - about Cazador, about the other spawn.

Tav is a human Paladin, with an Oath of Devotion that has guided her and her companions through the events of Baldur’s Gate 3, saving as many beings as possible and protecting the weak and defenseless, as is her tenet. But she also has a secret that she has yet to tell anyone… That it’s time to tell Astarion …

But there is so much more to it than either of them know.

All things considered, even she doesn’t know how things will end for the two of them.

(Longfic sequel currently at chapter 30 and climbing....

{What Comes After - by Poetsiren})

BG3 Astarion Siren AU fanfic on AO3.... Sequel in process and posting!!

This post is 🐙🧜‍♀️ FOR MERMAY!!🧜‍♀️🐙 I'm writing a sequel focusing more on the siren aspect!!

....Last year I wrote my first ever fanfic for the BG3 community as my return to writing after 10 years. Now, it feels like the sequel is really doing great!

If anyone cares to read it, I think it overall needs traction within the mer fan community since BG3 fandom was the first audience I geared it towards, merging it with my love of mermaids/sirens/selkies/etc.

And now, unfortunately, a shameless self-plug.....

18y/o+ PLEASE- 🔞

{[Good Things Come ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/62737273/chapters/160611004)\\- by Poetsiren}

(pt 1 of All Good Things series) [https://archiveofourown.org/series/5156251\](https://archiveofourown.org/series/5156251)

Astarion lords over the Underdark:

After defeating the Absolute with Tav, Astarion is glad to have his beloved remain beside him. He didn’t expect it to be easy, living in the Underdark with his siblings and the other vampire spawn. Still, a new manuscript detailing vampire spawn has been discovered, and no one could expect to know what knowledge it reveals - about Cazador, about the other spawn.

Tav is a human Paladin, with an Oath of Devotion that has guided her and her companions through the events of Baldur’s Gate 3, saving as many beings as possible and protecting the weak and defenseless, as is her tenet. But she also has a secret that she has yet to tell anyone… That it’s time to tell Astarion …

But there is so much more to it than either of them know.

All things considered, even she doesn’t know how things will end for the two of them.

(Longfic sequel currently at chapter 30 and climbing....

{What Comes After - by Poetsiren})