5 and 13? :D

 5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?

I have two partly posted WIPs that I desperately need to finish; hard to say which one is first on my list. The Abyss Gazes Also has been going since October 2015 (it says posted July 2016, but that’s just when I added the prologue that registers as Chapter 1) and it would probably be good to finish it before Infinity War comes out, considering that it will probably clarify what the relationship between Loki and Thanos was in a way that’s incompatible with what I’ve written. (I was afraid Ragnarok would do that, but so far I’m in the clear.) Here’s an excerpt from the next chapter, which I just started working on:

Getting everyone back onto the Quinjet after this
family quarrel was something of a complicated affair. Fortunately for all of us, Thor and Rogers
had inadvertently cleared an area large enough for the Quinjet to land. The difficulty was that I was still on the
crag above where there was certainly nowhere for the Quinjet to land, and they
needed to find a way to bring me down to the clearing below.

Thor volunteered, of course, but
Stark was having none of it. “How do we
know you won’t just take him and fuck off back to Asgard?”

“I give you my word that I will
return Loki to your custody.”

“Your word? You just dropped in
from the sky, I don’t know you from Adam, and I’m supposed to take your word for it that you won’t abscond with
our mass-murdering psychopath.”

Thor was confused. “Who is Adam?”

And the other one that desperately needs finishing is First Things, an entry that I stuck into the middle of my Thorki series because someone asked for it. It was supposed to be short and easy to write, but it’s kind of gotten out of hand, and then of course I was delayed by my dissertation submission deadline, job applications, etc. Here’s an excerpt from the next chapter of that; the background is that Loki has challenged Thor to a quarterstaff match, and the loser has to wear a butt plug to the next High Council meeting. (This is some high literature here, folks.)

The brothers were well-matched
in this kind of contest: they were very nearly the same height, with a similar
reach; and while Thor could put more power into his swings and keep up such
effort for longer, Loki was quicker at dodging blows and darting in for
targeted strikes. But the advantage Loki
had in this instance was a mighty determination to win this wager, which he had
reason to suspect Thor lacked.

If Thor was deliberately
letting Loki win, he was at least gracious enough not to be too obvious about
it; he made Loki work even for what might have been a foreordained
victory. An audience gathered to watch
the princes match their considerable skills, both soldiers who wandered over
from adjacent practice courts and nobles (many of them ladies, Loki noted out
of the corner of his eye) who had been passing by when they saw the cluster of
soldiers ringing the one court and came over to see what they were all so
attentively watching. Perhaps some of
the soldiers or nobles had also sent quick messages to summon friends who might
not wish to miss such a match.

When Loki was, at last, the first to disarm Thor
and level the end of his staff at his chest, he thought the murmur that rose
from the crowd sounded mostly disappointed—though some genuinely enthusiastic
cheers also emerged from the hubbub (notably from a certain subset of the
ladies). When Thor smiled wickedly at
him and proposed, “Best out of three?”, the much louder cheer from their
audience told Loki that he could hardly say no.
He lowered his staff and leaned a little closer to mutter “Cheater” loud
enough for only Thor to hear even while nodding for the benefit of the
crowd. “Just taking a leaf from your
book,” Thor murmured back. Resentment
flared briefly in Loki’s stomach at the accusation, even though he knew Thor
had a point.

13. Aside from fanfic, are there any other fan works you’d like to try creating? Fanart, or fanvids, gifsets, or podfic?

Nope. I can’t draw, can’t gif, can’t edit videos, and I’m pretty sure no one wants to hear me read my fic out loud. Just fanfic for me.

Thanks for the questions! And here’s the list again, in case anyone is curious…