Chapter Text
Read the winning fic!
The Girl From Room 208 by odaatlover
Episode Artwork by Chantal Zeegers
odaatlover's Desert Island Fic selection is: 'The Last Flame' by igotopigfarts
Episode transcript for the Deaf/HOH/APD by ApproxTenCats
Ep 230: Season 2 Finale
[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically
[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim
MUSIC : Write My Story by Olly Anna
ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the Earp Fiction Addiction , a fan podcast all about Wynonna Earp fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the Wynonna Earp fandom.
MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb
DARKWICCAN: Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the season two finale episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction , the podcast dedicated entirely to Wynonna Earp fanfiction, and with me all the way to the finish line is my delightful co-host...
DELAYNE: Hi, it’s Delayne.
DARKWICCAN: [pause] I forgot to introduce myself. I’m DarkWiccan.
DELAYNE: That’s what I thought. I feel like we’re missing something here.
DARKWICCAN: Well, it’s been a long season and i think I’m allowed one moment where I forget who I am.
DELAYNE: [laughs] I thought that was the amnesia fic.
DARKWICCAN: Oh you’re right, well a missed opportunity there. It just came back around. You weren’t with us for that one. So this is your taste of that episode.
DELAYNE: I was not. I appreciate you bringing that back around.
DARKWICCAN: You bet, absolutely. So holy moley, another thirty episodes in the can. Wow.
DELAYNE: Ughuhhuh. Can i just make random noises?
DARKWICCAN: You can absolutely make random noises. [CONTENT CENSORED. PLEASE VISIT EFAPODCAST.COM FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT] Phew, those were a lot of words that I just spoke, those were a lot of words.
DELAYNE: [applause] Good job.
DARKWICCAN: But I understand Delayne that speaking of words and counts of words, that you actually sat down and figured out not only how many fics we read this season, but how many words we read this season so I am bracing myself because I don’t know what this number is you guys, this is going to be a genuine reaction from me. Hit me with it. What are the details?
DELAYNE: No I’m going to build up.
DARKWICCAN: Oh god, you’re going to drag this out? Just remember we don’t have a lot of time because we’ve got a thirty minute long audiobook to get to.
DELAYNE: So, for point of reference we talked about 89 fics last year. I had 44 lines but that didn’t include the series, some of the series had seven fics, some like 80s Mixtape had 39 fics. Are we counting the first one? I’m going to discount the first one. So I’m going to count 38.
DARKWICCAN: That was in season one.
DELAYNE: I’m just going to count the 38. Total that makes 93 individual fics.
DARKWICCAN: So we read four more fics this year than we did last year.
DELAYNE: So keep in mind since we are discussing the challenge fics today. This does not include the 50 challenge fics.
DARKWICCAN: Oh jeez. So we read 143. Wait, is my math right there? So we really read 143 fics. Oh my god, we’re crazy. Not counting the challenge fics then, how many words?
DELAYNE: Caveat here of course is that I did not count the words of the Twitter fics.
DARKWICCAN: Oh, okay.
DELAYNE: I counted the three twitter fics on the total fic list but I did not count the words on them so not counting those, we had 2,828,982 words. That’s only for the 93.
DARKWICCAN: [whimpering] Are you kidding me?
DELAYNE: So, including the Twitter fics, over 3 million.
DARKWICCAN: You’ve upset my dog. Like… wow. That’s a lot of words. That’s a whole lot of words. Well, you know, those are all the written words. I don’t even want to really think about the spoken words. We spoke a lot this season and our poor transcribing team had to transcribe all of our many words. I actually can tell you, within the last, up to episode twenty five, because of course as you guys know we record about a month out, so up to episode 25 we have spoken over 234,000 words, and our delightful transcribers, our beleaguered transcribers, our incredibly generous transcribers have transcribed all of those words for us. I have to send a big thank you to @mrsbluebacon and @approxtencats, they’re our lead transcribers, they are the ones who have cranked out all those 234,000 plus words. And then on the other side of things, the behind the scenes things where we’ve got bonus tracks we’ve got @khevzs and @happicheese. They have been transcribing those tracks which are in addition to those 234,000 words. I don’t have a count on those bonus tracks.
DELAYNE: It’s a lot. It’s amazing.
DARKWICCAN: I’m so sorry you guys and thank you so much. Alright. So before we get into talking about what we’re trying to lead up to as quickly as possible I’m going to drag it out a little more, I apologise everybody. Obviously this is the season finale, exactly like last year’s season finale we are going to be featuring an audiobook of the winning fic from our fic challenge this season, but before we do that I want to talk about next season. Okay, here we go. Yes. There will be a next season, we are already planning it, we’ve already got it scheduled out, we’ve already started coming up with episode titles and we’re selecting fics to go along with themes but as you know the past two seasons we’ve done thirty episodes, season three will only consist of twenty episodes.
DELAYNE: And why is that DW?
DARKWICCAN: Well, it’s not because we’re running out of fics to talk about, not by a long shot. It’s because I won’t be able to record more than twenty episodes... because...
DELAYNE: Because...
DARKWICCAN: Because my wife and I are having a baby.
DELAYNE: Yaay!!!
DARKWICCAN: More specifically I’m having a baby and my due date is in November so we have to wrap recording in October. Normally I’d be like, “hardcore, let’s not even take a break between seasons, lets just keep going.” I am so tired you guys. I need a little break. So we are going to take a few weeks off before we start recording season three. And I can tell you we are going to have a very special guest for our season three opener. I can’t tell you who it is but trust me you’re going to want to tune in, it’s going to be amazing. But yeah, we’re going to start recording in late June and our first episode for the season three is going to go up in late July 2019. And again we’re recording twenty episodes, if you can count weeks you’ll know that, well gee, that’s more episodes than you have weeks if you’re going to stop at the end of October. Well that’s when we stop recording, I’ll continue to post episodes, with a baby in my arms the following four weeks through the end of November. So that is the plan. This is the first time I’ve said anything out loud about this, to people who are not Delayne, and Laragh, and my wife. But here’s the thing, by the time this episode airs it will already have been public for about a month so this will probably be obvious to everybody.
DELAYNE: [laughs] But I can see you’re very emotional speaking it out loud for real.
DARKWICCAN: Yeah, I’m a little nervous. Can you hear that i’m nervous talking about this? This is very nerve wracking for a butch like me. “Yeah, I’ve got a baby in me, this is weird.” I just knocked my microphone which is totally unprofessional. So yeah, that’s happening so we definitely will have a season three. I am optimistic that I’ll be able to figure out a way, as a planner that I am, that I’ll be able to make a season four happen. Don’t be surprised if there’s a bit more of a hiatus between the end of season three and future season four but season three is happening. The dogs are very excited about this.
DELAYNE: Oh, I love their cameo this episode, this is great.
DARKWICCAN: Right? Normally they are very very good, and very very quiet puppies but not today. Um, and so yeah that’s happening. Yay. So let’s not talk about that anymore. [laughs]
DELAYNE: Let’s talk quickly about the winning challenge fic, how does that sound?
DARKWICCAN: Oh, so incredibly quickly. So this season’s fic challenge was to write a fic based on the prompt “toothpaste.” We had a total 51 entries...
DELAYNE: Actually 50.
DARKWICCAN: Right, it is only 50 because the one extra there is my post saying, “hey, this is the challenge fic thread.” So yes, we had 50 entries and out of that we whittled it down to 16 finalists that then went to a public bracketed vote off across four weeks. Those fics were voted down to our final two and the final two were The Way to Found by coldmackerel and The Girl From Room 208 by ODAATlover or One Day At a Time Lover. And I’ve got to tell you Delayne, the competition was insanely close, it was so close.
DELAYNE: I never did actually look at the numbers. [laughs]
DARKWICCAN: It was really tight, right up until the last second when our winning fic had a bit of a surge from it’s supporters and created a bit more of a spread between the two. But it was really a razor thin line of separation for almost the entire week and so both of these fics definitely deserved to win. I would say all 16 who ended up in the finalist bracket deserved to win, they all deserved to be there. But these two fics were absolutely stand outs. And the ultimate winner who emerged victorious was The Girl From Room 208 by ODAATlover and we are very excited to be presenting to you the audiobook today in just a couple of moments and of course we will be chatting with them about this fantastic story after the break.
[CONTENT CENSORED. VISIT EFAPODCAST.COM FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT]
BEGIN AUDIOBOOK. VISIT https://archiveofourown.org/works/17652644 FOR STORY TEXT.
END AUDIOBOOK.
MUSIC: GREENPATH BY CHRISTOPHER LARKIN
DARKWICCAN: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Earp Fiction Addiction , the podcast dedicated entirely to fanfiction. I am still your host DarkWiccan and with me is my wonderful co-host...
DELAYNE: Delayne.
DARKWICCAN: And we just got done listening to the audiobook of The Girl from Room 208 , our winning fic for this season’s fic challenge written by the fantastic ODAATlover who is with us to chat about the amazing story that they’ve written. ODAATlover welcome to the show.
ODAATLOVER: Hello, thank you for having me on.
DARKWICCAN: Well thank you for writing an awesome story my friend.
ODAATLOVER: Oh, you’re welcome, any time.
DARKWICCAN: So I can send you just random prompts now?
ODAATLOVER: Oh yeah, anything, especially if there’s unicorns and you know. Especially if Waverly and Nicole are involved, I’m all into that.
DARKWICCAN: Okay, well we are heavy into Wayhaught here on this podcast. And now that I know that I can slip you a prompt on the sly I just might take you up on that.
DELAYNE: [laughs]
ODAATLOVER: I get like 35 by the end of this sentence...
DARKWICCAN: Exactly [laughs]
ODAATLOVER: I’m quitting my job, I have to write fanfic now, sorry guys.
DELAYNE: That sounds awesome, can someone pay me to write?
ODAATLOVER: Right?
DARKWICCAN: [laughs] That would be great because then we would all be published authors, which would also be nifty. But then we couldn’t...
DELAYNE: But then we wouldn’t have time for podcasts.
DARKWICCAN: That would be no good.
ODAATLOVER: Look at us creating jobs.
DARKWICCAN: And immediately taking them away again.
ODAATLOVER: Yeah.
DARKWICCAN: Well, that’s the way a market works. I’m kidding.
ODAATLOVER: And that’s the end of this podcast.
DARKWICCAN: [singing] Duh de da de da, great season everybody.
DELAYNE: [laughs]
DARKWICCAN: Okay, let’s get down to bid’ness here. So the prompt that we set out was “toothpaste” which I was super-dooper stupidly excited about because I thought it was so incredibly clever of me. So I have to ask you, when you first envisioned this fic, was it always going to be from Waverly’s point of view or did you play around and go back and forth a little bit before you settled on her view on things.
ODAATLOVER: It was definitely from Waverly’s point of view, and in fact now that I think about it any time I conjure up a Wayhaught story, where they’re meeting for the first time I always see it in my head from Waverly’s side. And I think that has to do with the fact that in the show when the relationship is first budding in season one we saw all of that from Waverly’s point of view. Which makes sense because she was one of the Earp sisters and one of the main characters and of course we would see it from her side more than Nicole’s. Also because I feel like her side was a little more important to show just because her feelings that she was experiencing were all new to her, and she was just discovering herself. And Nicole was already pretty confident with who she was so I think it was more important to show all of that from Waverly’s side. So at this point I can’t even imagine seeing that from Nicole’s point of view when we see their first meeting, even though in The Girl From Room 208 Waverly isn’t exactly discovering herself. But anytime I see them meeting up I see it naturally from Waverly’s side, and it’s just kind of more fun to write it from her side because Nicole is so cool and smooth and Waverly is this nervous mess who just rambles and it’s so cute and so relatable I feel. So it’s definitely more entertaining to write it from Waverly’s point of view, for sure.
DARKWICCAN: Well, I don’t know, I think it would be really funny to see a Nicole POV story where Nicole somehow manages to come off as smooth and cool when she’s in front of Waverly, somehow. But the rest of the time she’s just a complete disaster.
ODAATLOVER: Yeah, you know what I actually sort of added that at the end when they kind of ask each other out you sort of see Nicole a little nervous but she’s trying not to show it. But we know that she is a little nervous. And I feel like she is like that, like she tries to be cool and she does sort of come off a little cool, but on the inside she’s freaking out a little bit. Yeah, you’re right, that would be very entertaining. Someone go write that. It’s not going to be me.
DARKWICCAN: You can get your friend igotopigfarts to do that. By the way, tell your friend, that name is both hilarious and annoying.
ODAATLOVER: I know, I never say it, I’m just, “that person.” You’re not going to get me to say it.
DELAYNE: I would call them “pig” but I actually have a dog named that now so. [laughs]
ODAATLOVER: What if it actually is your dog? Your dog is a fanfic writer.
DELAYNE: Well, heelers are very smart so you never know.
ODAATLOVER: Yeah, you’re like, “pig, you’re never around anymore, what are you doing?”
DELAYNE: We are going off the rails, let me get us back on here. So the prompt, toothpaste, were you entirely inspired by toothpaste or was this an idea that you then put toothpaste into.
ODAATLOVER: I would say I was zero percent inspired by toothpaste.
DELAYNE: [laughs]
DARKWICCAN: Oh man, shot through the heart.
ODAATLOVER: I’m sorry. I mean it was a good idea for a prompt but I don’t know why, it was so difficult for me to put it in. That was a lie, it wasn’t that difficult. I don’t know, it was tough for me to try to figure out how to fit toothpaste into a Wayhaught fic I guess? But the idea kind of started, I had the idea that I wanted it to be a college alternate universe because I hadn’t written that before, and I wanted this to be something that I hadn’t done before because it was going to be something that was fun for me to write, you know. And I thought that would be fun and cute and I just sort of had this idea of Waverly to have a crush on Nicole and that she would awkwardly bump into her somewhere and it would be this super-dorky but adorable situation right? And that’s about as far as I had let myself get before thinking, “okay I have to somehow throw some toothpaste into the mix here without it seeming random or weird,” so I thought to myself, “okay, i have two options for a setting here, this could either happen at a grocery store where they’re buying toothpaste, or it could happen in a bathroom.” And of course I chose the bathroom because it seemed like the more entertaining option. Just imagining them bumping into each other in the bathroom versus the grocery store, I don’t know, it just sounded more fun to write. So I was like, “okay, I have to get some toothpaste in here, I’ll just have Nicole ask Waverly for some toothpaste,” and that’s all I had as far as planning before I actually started writing it. And it’s funny because I feel like people think that I have this whole outline planned out when I write a story or a chapter, and that is not at all the case. Most of the time, yeah, not at all, most of the time I just have this idea that pops into my head of the beginning, the middle or the end, but it won’t usually be two of those things, and it’s definitely not all three, it’s usually only one of those things. And then I’ll start writing that part and then based on what I have written things just kind of flow naturally in the moment and I kind of like that because even though I’m a thorough planner when it comes to most of my life, whenever I create stuff I never want to overplan because I want it to feel more natural and I want it to go somewhere where it feels like it should go in the moment, instead of trying to force it because I had planned it beforehand, you know. I definitely never planned out the dialogue or anything, I just put myself into the minds of these characters and just let them sort of do the work themselves. So with this story I started to write the beginning and when I got to the end of the first scene, because that was all I had planned so far, I thought, “okay, well where is this going to go next?” Well naturally I felt like Waverly would go and tell someone, and that person was Wynonna, because you have to have some Wynonna in a Wynonna Earp fanfic alright? Even though it’s a Wayhaught fic you have to have Wynonna in, she’s just so hilarious, she’s like the comic relief. And then I had that whole scene with Waverly talking with Wynonna and after that because of the conversation they had I knew that next was her actually going to go ask Nicole out. And as I started that scene I had originally planned to end it there with them going into the dorm room and that was going to be it. But then I thought I actually want to show them getting together but I don’t feel like I have enough words left in the word count that I was given by you guys. But at that point I didn’t feel like I had enough words left to write their date, because I just thought I would over do it so instead I thought why don’t I do a time jump to them after their honeymoon because that would show so much of their relationship without me actually having to write it because naturally you can just sort of guess where it went during that gap, because now they’re married. You know. Obviously it worked out for the best. And in general seeing married Wayhaught, it’s just so adorable and everyone loves a married Wayhaught. So when I got to the ending I knew I wanted to incorporate the toothpaste into that scene because I always have things come around full circle so I wanted to start with the toothpaste and I wanted to end with the toothpaste and I never thought I’d have to say that in my life. [all laugh] That sounds really weird and odd. But I knew I wanted toothpaste to be something significant and not just thrown in there because I knew it had to be. So I definitely wanted to end it with that you know and I was just really happy with how that went, and I say that like I’m not the one who wrote the story, like I didn’t come up with that. The characters write the stories, I feel like they have all the control and I’m just sort of along for the ride. If that makes sense at all.
DARKWICCAN: Oh yeah, that’s how it is for me when I write, I know a lot of other authors have said the same, the characters just sort of dictate through their fingers and that’s what’s going on.
ODAATLOVER: Yeah, I actually don’t do anything, it’s all the characters, I’m not even writing this, it’s just Waverly and Nicole, and a little bit of Wynonna. They’re really the ones who won this challenge.
DELAYNE: [laughs] We’ll send them ribbons, congratulations.
DARKWICCAN: We will, yeah.
ODAATLOVER: I’m here on their behalf.
DARKWICCAN: So the title of your story is The Girl From Room 208 , and I got all excited for a second because my brain short circuited and I confused dorm room numbers and for a hot minute thought you were pulling a reference from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But Buffy and Willow’s dorm room was room 214 not room 208. I do have to ask, was there a significance to the room number or was it just kind of random?
ODAATLOVER: It was definitely random. Next question, no, just kidding.
[all laugh]
DELAYNE: Coincidentally I like 208 because it’s the area code for Idaho. So I was like, we got a little potato reference going on. [laughs]
ODAATLOVER: I knew that because I like potatoes so naturally… No what? Originally the room number was going to be 2B because when I was in college our dorm room numbers were a number and a letter. The number was referencing what floor you were on and then it was letters A through H I think. So for whatever reason 2B popped into my head and I was just, “okay, yeah, this is it, this feels right.” But here’s the thing, I am a musician and sometimes a song or something will pop into my head, like a melody, and I’ll turn it into a song and I’m like, “oh yeah, this is good,” and later on I’ll hear that melody playing on a radio somewhere and then I realise it wasn’t actually something I had come up with on my own, it was just my subconscious jamming out to a song I had heard sometime in my life. So I don’t actually trust myself when things pop into my head so I was afraid that 2B was some sort of room number that might have been something significant somewhere and I just feel like, for some reason that just feels familiar to me, it just seemed like a common thing. So I googled it, I literally googled “The Girl from Room 2B” and a couple of children’s books came up with the title called “something something Room 2B”, and it’s not a big deal if I use that, but I like to be original. And I didn’t want a room number that was already out there for something somewhere, so I thought, “okay, a new plan, I’m just going to close my eyes and imagine a door and whatever number is on that door I’m going to use.” So I closed my eyes and the number 208 popped up, and usually when you see room numbers that are just numbers and no letters they tend to be three digits, like a hotel or something. So I saw that three digit number and of course I kept the number two there because for whatever reason I just felt like Nicole was a two kind of gal in her dorm room number. And I think the eight just came from the number eight looking similar to the letter B cause I was stuck on 2B still. And I was mad that someone took it from me, like they stole it from me in the future. They stole it before me, anyways, I’ll let it slide. So then my brain just threw that zero somewhere in the middle. So I came up with 208. And I did the same thing as before because I didn’t trust myself and I looked up “The Girl From Room 208” and nothing significant came up with that number so that’s what I ended up sticking with. So definitely it’s nothing significant at all.
DELAYNE: But a very detailed story about your process, I love that.
ODAATLOVER: I’m definitely a storyteller, as you can tell by me telling stories.
DELAYNE: [laughs] In your opinion what is it about Wayhaught and the Wynonna Earp characters in general that allows them to fit so well in this college setting?
ODAATLOVER: Well, with Wayhaught specifically I feel like it’s very easy to see them in that younger age. First of all because Waverly is already close enough to college age, right, in season one I think she’s 21 or 22 I don’t remember, but that’s pretty easy to picture them there.
DARKWICCAN: Mhmm, twenty one.
ODAATLOVER: But also how everything came together with Waverly just discovering herself. I feel like it’s easy to see them in that younger age setting, you know college/high school/whatever because that’s when you usually first start questioning your sexuality, a lot of the times. Or even just as an adult, just discovering who you are, Waverly is just so relatable because I feel like we all go through that, kind of what we all saw her go through in season one. But also on the flip side you have Nicole who is already so comfortable, so confident with her sexuality and so we’ve got that aspect for those of us who are already at that point for us to relate to as well. So they’re just so relatable to pretty much anybody, and because of that I can see them in any sort of setting, in any sort of age, it’s just so easy to sort of see that, that relationship start to grow, wherever you want to put them at. And as far as the rest of the Wynonna Earp characters, I really only had Nicole, Waverly and Wynonna in that story, but I could easily see all of them in a college setting because they’re just so close to each other, they’re like a family. We always see them together, I don’t think we actually think of them at the end of the day going home to different houses, or at least I don’t. I just sort of imagine them being together 24/7. I don’t know, I just can’t imagine them, “okay, Jeremy’s going to go home to his apartment, and Doc’s going to go wherever, I don’t even know where Doc lives, he just sort of flits around Purgatory.” Because of that aspect of them all being together and being this family I could totally see them all chilling together in the dorms and hanging out, taking some classes together, maybe they’re on an ultimate frisbee team or something. I don’t know. I could totally see that.
[all laugh]
DARKWICCAN: Wynonna would totally cheat at that game.
DELAYNE: I need that fic now.
ODAATLOVER: For sure. I feel like she’s the one that’s going to show up with a football. This is going to beat your frisbee, I’m going to win.
DARKWICCAN: Nicole is going, “this is not how this works.”
ODAATLOVER: This is how episode seven of season four is going to work out. And they’re drunk. Because naturally.
DELAYNE: [background laughing the whole time]
DARKWICCAN: Naturally, naturally. So you said that you weren’t really inspired by toothpaste as a prompt, which… ouch.
ODAATLOVER: Right, zero percent.
DARKWICCAN: But along with the prompt there were rules, we got rules around here, that need to be followed for the challenge for a variety of reasons. Mainly so that we can fit our audiobook into a thirty minute segment. So what was the most difficult thing about the rules of the challenge for you to follow when you were writing?
ODAATLOVER: Oh, the word count. You guys killed me with that. Well, not literally. I’m a lengthy writer. I talk a lot too if you hadn’t noticed.
DARKWICCAN: What are you talking about?
ODAATLOVER: Yeah, it’s only been two minutes. I write a lot. One of the fics has 63 chapters and each chapter tends to be around 7,000 words long so yeah, I write a lot. And 4,000 may seem like a lot to someone but to me that’s just [inaudible]. I could just write what Nicole’s wearing that day in 4,000 words. And I think I mentioned this somewhere in the notes section of The Girl From Room 208 but so here’s what happened. I started writing on Microsoft Word because that’s where I write stuff but I go between writing on my laptop and writing on my phone depending on where I’m at. And I copy and pasted it over into Google Docs and on Google Docs it’s different from Word right? On Word you just look down and see the word count. On Google Docs, I’m sure there’s a way to see it…
DELAYNE: Yeah, you gotta go to settings.
ODAATLOVER: But I don’t use Google Docs that often, you gotta go search for it, so I’m not gonna do that. So I’m typing and I’m really getting into it, and I’m writing on my phone at one point and then I kind of stopped and then the next day my wife and I went to Barnes & Noble and we were just kind of working on stuff there and I open my laptop and I continue working on it on Google Docs. And I write this whole thing, I have everything exactly how I wanted it and I got to the very last words, and I think the last words were even “the girl from room 208” or something, you know, just something like that. And I just felt this feeling like this is it, this is 100%, this is gold right here. So I copy it back into Microsoft Word and I look at the word count and it’s like 4,300 words or something. I almost cried. Because it’s like, you spend so much time working on something and you’re like, “this is exactly how I want it.” And to think to have to change any part of it, it’s heartbreaking, that sounds so dramatic, “so heartbreaking!” So it was tough, not even to change but to take out 300 words I was just like, “how am I going to do this?” I just had to take a minute and get over that, because at first I was like, “well what if I just post it anyways?” And then I was like, “no no no, I have to keep it under the word count.” It was only for a split second. So I went in and I was like, okay, it’s fine, I’ll just take out some adjectives I probably don’t even need, add in some contractions here and whatnot. So I go through the whole thing and I think, “this is probably good.” And I look at the word count and it’s like, “4,100 words” I’m like, “urgh I have to do this again, I have to take out 100 more words.” So I eventually did it and I ended up having to take some stuff out, like whole sentences out just to make it work. But at that point I was just like, “whatever, I’m ready to just take out everything, I’ll just make it one word at this point.” But yeah, I ended up, I think it’s like 3,999 words. I just barely made it. I didn’t go up to 3,999 I went from over the limit down to 3,999. So thank you you guys for that, I really appreciated that.
DELAYNE: [laughs] It’s called a challenge for a reason, we’re glad we could challenge you.
ODAATLOVER: You didn’t even need a prompt, you just needed to add a word count. Maybe next challenge make it 200 words and see how many people submit. And you can’t have any contractions anywhere.
DARKWICCAN: Oh man, I would never do that to an author. But speaking of contractions unfortunately our time is a bit contracted today. So Odaatlover I am so thrilled that you actually did go back and edit down to under the word count limit because I would have hated to have disqualified this story because as I was saying before we started recording, this was one of the first stories to post and as I read it I was like, “aha, this is a contender, this is absolutely a contender.” And I’m so thrilled that you made it all the way to the top. So congratulations.
ODAATLOVER: Thank you.
DARKWICCAN: And thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today about your fic and I know that you’re going to be back to talk about some of your other stories in the future so look forward to that from me. But before we let you go it is our season finale and we must ask our season winning author the most difficult question we have. And of course I’m going to make Delayne ask you.
DELAYNE: Alright, you are stranded on a desert island and have only one fanfic to read, what is it?
ODAATLOVER: The Girl from Room …. No just kidding.
DARKWICCAN: That would be [inaudible]
ODAATLOVER: No, totally kidding. Or am I? No. I am. At the moment, it would have to be a long fic, and at the moment the longest fic I’m reading is The Last Flame by you know who, I’m not going to say their name. It would definitely be The Last Flame because I want to finish reading that. That would give me some time on that island.
DARKWICCAN: Okay, well I’ll say the name for you because you can’t so I’m more than happy to. I have the link to The Last Flame by igotopigfarts in our show notes for this episode. Odaatlover thank you so much for coming on today, this has been an absolute joy.
ODAATLOVER: Thanks for having me, thanks for singing the word joy too, I really appreciate that.
DARKWICCAN: [singing] You’re welcome.
MUSIC: DON’T DEAL WITH THE DEVIL BY CHRISTOPHER LARKIN
And that's all for this season of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for joining us.
Tremendous thanks to odaatlover for chatting with us about their winning fic!
Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and to everyone who has helped make this second season possible.
Background music for the episode was:
A Proper Story by Darren Korb
Rainbow on Wheels BY Ryan Ike
Greenpath BY Christopher Larkin
and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan
If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast.
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Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next season for more episodes of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!