Hi

This is the first time I've written pretty much anything.

I've always been a reader, lately I've been getting some ideas for stories but never actually taken the leap to writing them down.

I guess we'll see how it goes. I'm predicting 'not well'.

I'm open to constructive criticism. However if I'm being totally honest flames will more than likely make me want to hide under a rock and never come out, so... take mercy on me, please.

This is probably a weird place to talk about this, but I find myself in a bit of a quandary and thought this was the best place to work it all out...

I started having these really tangible ideas about humorous/sweet situations between a kid!Skye and members of the Avengers/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D team and decided to start writing them down. As I was going along though, this whole AU started to develop about how a Skye who had grown up within S.H.I.E.L.D would be different and how it would change the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (also as the tv show developed, so too did my ideas about the possibilities of 084 Skye and what this could mean in regards to her heritage/possible powers, etc).

The further I fell down this rabbit-hole the more this AU became necessary to understand these (I guess you'd call them future oneshots). So then I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of needing to write out and develop this AU before I could post these other plot bunnies. I've started and the response from readers has been pretty positive, but I find it slow going as I'm having to take the 'facts' of my AU and find plot to properly express them and this is taking a lot of brain power (probably more than I can afford).

So now I'm tossing up between waiting until the story has eventually reached the point where these (already written) oneshots fit in to the story, or just saying 'to hell with it' and posting them separately as a collection of 'outtakes'.

The other issue I'm grappling with is the timeline. On one hand I want it to be consistent with the MCU, but on the other hand I love me some SkyeWard. Hmm, dilemma. I think my solution to this is to say that 'Plug it in' should hopefully follow a fairly consistent timeline to explain kid!Skye and set up her character and the AU. The meetings/interactions between kid!Skye and the Avengers (which will be posted together as a set of tentatively connected oneshots that take place in the same AU) happen in a foggy time period in the few years leading up to the Avengers movie.

If I work it all out satisfactorily and people like the end result I might progress to taking this different incarnation of Skye and then placing her into the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D timeline. This would require some timeline manipulation as well, otherwise she would be about 9/10 years old and (as previously stated) I'd like to work this characterisation of Skye and Ward together (you know, romantically, wink wink). Perhaps we could just imagine a time jump of about 10 years between the Battle of New York and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?

As you can probably tell I am both a nervous virgin writer and a cynical, exacting veteran reader of fan fiction. Sorry if my anal-retentiveness in regards to consistency and overthinking the timeline issue is off-putting. I totally understand, honestly I'm irritating myself.

I'd welcome any feedback and suggestions. As you can probably tell by this beast of an A/N I need all the help I can get.

I guess all that's left to say is... enjoy? Maybe? Hopefully?