Gotta check the hot sheets

AO3: *goes down*

Everyone:

This is an appreciation post for the fanfic authors who aren’t included on rec lists

For the fanfic authors who don’t get art of their fics

For the fanfic authors who can’t get to 1000/500/100 hits

For the fanfic authors who don’t get comments/reviews

For the fanfic authors who write for small fandoms

For the fanfic authors who write rarepairs or gen fics

For the fanfic authors who get hate for the ships/characters/fandoms they write

For the fanfic authors who write in English despite it not being their first language

For the fanfic authors who don’t write in English

For the fanfic authors who don’t think anyone reads or likes their work

For the fanfic authors who aren’t big name fans

For the fanfic authors who don’t get requests in their inboxes

For the fanfic authors who can’t write stories that are more than a thousand words

For the fanfic authors who only write one ship

For the fanfic authors who are just starting

For the fanfic authors who have been writing fic for years

For the fanfic authors who use fanfic to practice writing

For the fanfic authors who write self-insert fics

For the fanfic authors who write about their OCs

For the fanfic authors who write to vent or cope

For the fanfic authors who are just waiting for their big break

Keep creating, I love you ❤️

yes hes my comfort character, and yes he does beat the shit out of people. he multitasks idk

Billy: FoUnDiNG fAtHeRs, thats what you sound like.

Boy would the world be a boring place. Let’s take a moment to thank those who came before us. Thank you for enriching my life in ways I would not have thought possible before. And thank you to those who continue the work they started so long ago.

where would we be without those 60s housewives and their gay little kirk/spock fanzines. where would we fucking be

Alternately, has anyone experienced roasty toasty in bed on a cold night. The best. Do recommend.

has anyone heard of Cozy in bed…lifechanging

just a reminder that people who create fanwork do not owe you anything. writing fanfiction, drawing fanart etc is entirely voluntary and something that should be done for fun!! putting pressure on someone to put out the next chapter of their fic isn't helping anyone, especially since most fandom creators are students and/or have a job, and also just. have a life. they have friends and family and things to do. and to people who create content, thank you!! you're appreciated!!

A worrying amount of my brain is taken up by these exact thoughts as well.

That spring, Steve’s mom finally gets tired of getting cheated on and files for divorce. His dad is a dick about it and hires a bunch of lawyers to ensure that she basically leaves with nothing. Worse, he fights her for custody of Steve and taunts her with the fact she’ll never see him again - because why would any teenager want to give up everything, just to rough it out with their train-wreck of a mother? But jokes on him cause the judge basically leaves it up to Steve, and Steve would rather stomp on his own balls than get stuck with that asshole. Even if it means having to leave the big house and his car and starting over in a new place where nobody knows him.

Steve never met his mother’s side of the family in California. All he really knows is that the family disapproved of her marriage. There’s a story about his aunt coming to visit once on his birthday when he was like five, but she got in a fight with mom and she’s never been back. So Steve doesn’t even think about them when he tries to imagine what he and his mom are going to do on their own. He imagines her selling her car and the other gifts dad put in her name over the years to rent a decent apartment somewhere, maybe in Indianapolis or Chicago.

He’s really shocked one night when she announces that she’s been in touch with her family, and she she asks him about how he feels about moving to California to some sleepy little town called Moonwood. She tries to enthuse him about it by going on about how beautiful it is there, right at the edge of the national forest, but Steve’s more concerned with the fact that they’ll be living with people who hate them - and in the sticks too! Its two hours to the nearest mall! How’s he gonna find a job in this place? And what about school?

But Steve looks around at the hotel they’ve been staying in and the paper thin smile she fixes on her face to try and hide her broken heart from him and how fucked everything is, and he just wants her to be okay.

They move to California, and the one bright side is the relatives turn out to be not all that hateful. There’s awkward tension and a shit load of history there for sure, but from the minute they pull up to his grandparents house the door is thrown open and they’re welcomed with open arms. His grandpa seems a little stiff at first, but Steve gets the impression its because he doesn’t know what to do with himself as Steve’s mom and his grandma hug each other and cry. The weirdest part is when they start speaking in a language Steve’s never heard his mother use before.

Later his aunt tells him it’s lythan, but she just laughs when Steve asks if that means they’re from Lithuania. Apparently lythan is a very old language that started in romania and is only spoken today in two places. Here, and some village in romania that an ancestor immigrated from.

None of this is making sense to him but he’s just happy his mother seems happier and that he has help taking care of her, since she’s still pretty broken up about the divorce. She’s always been a passionate woman his mom. The kind of person who believes in soulmates and love at first sight. She’s always told him that when he meets the one for him he’ll know it in an instant and that he should hang on to that person with his whole heart. Which sounded great and all when he was a kid, but honestly just makes him sad now when he looks at how things turned out with her and his dad.

The first week after they get there, Steve cant sleep and catches his mother, his grandmother and his aunt talking in the kitchen late one night. He overhears her say that she knew it was a risk being with his dad, but that she’d have regretted it more if she didn’t follow her heart. Even if she wasn’t the one for Steve’s dad the way he was for her, she’d always be grateful because she has Steve. But she doesn’t want him to grow up feeling like he has to change who he is and like he always has to be the one giving to someone else just to be loved.

For the first time since the divorce Steve is almost mad at her - wants to shout it’s too late mom! - but the feeling passes as quickly as it comes. He’s just sad, for them both. But he hopes things will be okay here and that this can be a new start. It could be worse right? At least he gets a room to himself. Yeah it’s kinda weird that his aunt still lives at home and nobody seems to have a problem with that, or is talking about what his moms plans are like they expect that she’ll just be there forever now. But he figures they’re all just focused on making up for lost time right now.

And his grandma says that people in Moonwood stay close to home anway, and that most of them spend their whole lives there without leaving. It shocks him to learn that she’s never been further outside of town than to the edge of the national forest.

His second worry, about finding a job, gets resolved by his his grandfather - who runs a soda shop on the beach. There’s not much traffic durring the off season, but in summertime the redwoods draw a fair number of tourists. Steve’s kept very busy scooping up ice cream and making root beer floats while he flirts with the gap year girls who come through in groups, to backpack through the forest. He’s just turned eighteen and he’s never had much of a problem picking up girls so he has a few flings. He gets invited to parties on the beach and ends up doing a lot of hiking that summer in his downtime. But then fall rolls around and with fewer and fewer groups of tourists passing through Steve finds himself at loose ends.

School starts up again and he realizes that maybe it was a mistake not to put more of an effort into meeting local kids and making a few connections beforehand. Schiller High is over in the next district, and Moonwood is so far out the kids have to be bussed in. Steve’s a little nervous about starting a new school in his senior year but he tells himself it’s just one year. One year and then he has no idea what to do with himself after that, but at least he won’t be forced to attend school anymore. Still, he begs his mom to let him take their car to school the first day so that he doesn’t have to be the oldest kid on the bus. He’s pretty sure that’s a social constant even out here in the middle of nowhere.

Schiller seems pretty normal at first. It’s about the same size as his school back in Hawkins was. The school receptionist calls in some guy named Tim to show him around his first day and make sure he gets to all his classes. Tim’s alright, but Steve can see the neon nerd sign blinking above his head and plays it cool. He’s not an asshole or anything, he just doesn’t want to close any doors before getting the lay of the land. Steve just wants an easy year and he’s not gonna get that if he’s hanging out with a bully magnet - sorry Tim. Plus, Steve’s not exactly thrilled about the way Tim talks about ‘moonies’ - which is apparently what other people call people from Moonwood, instead of hicks or whatever. Steve doesn’t bother telling Tim that he’s technically a moonie now too.

His aspirations to plant himself firmly in the middle of the student social hierarchy and go unnoticed for the next ten months involve finding a group - or a pack as his grandfather weirdly put it when he assured Steve he’d find his in no time and start to feel more at home once school started. He asks Tim about the school’s athletic teams because being on a team with a bunch of other guys will basically do the work for him. There’s a swim team that Steve is definitely going to try out for. He’s not sure about basketball. He only got started back in Hawkins because his dad thought it was manlier than ‘playing’ in the pool. But he likes it okay, and Tim says the Schiller team has actually won a few regional titles.

Even though it’s his last year Steve figures it can’t hurt his college applications to be on a winning team for once. He probably won’t to start or anything but he thinks he has a good shot of seeing some playing time.

“I would stick with swimming if I were you. There’s no way you’re getting on the team.” Tim laughs. “The head coach is a moonie and he only ever picks guys from Moonwood.”

That doesn’t seem very legal, but that’s not Steve’s problem. He figures Tim is probably exaggerating anyway, just salty that the coach is giving a little extra focus to the guys from the less privileged side of the tracks.

Until Steve actually sees Billy and some of the other guys from the team.

It’s just before lunch when Steve and Tim have stopped by Steve’s locker. A blond kid in a red and white letterman jacket appears at the mouth of the hall, flanked by two other guys. It’s like something out of a movie the way the hallway clears for them and the other students gaze at them with awe filled expressions as if they’re watching a parade of olympians pass through.

“That’s Billy Hargrove. He’s captain of the basketball team.” Tim answers the unspoken question in Steve’s glance. “Don’t get on his bad side. He’s pretty much the top dog around here.”

Steve doesn’t need Tim to tell him Billy runs things around here. The guy is built like the terminator. Like someone who has ascended above mere mortals and wouldn’t be out of place among the gods. He’s built like a man, Steve finally settles on with an prickle of embarrassment hot in his chest. Steve’s a guy and he doesn’t go out of his way to look at other guys a lot, but he appreciates the things about them that are enviable.

Only envy is the furthest thing from Steve’s mind when he first sees Billy. It’s like time slows for Steve. His mouth gets dry, and he thinks to himself that Billy Hargrove is beautiful, and he wonders what that’s like. Steve knows he’s good looking. This isn’t some self depreciation bullshit, it’s just inexplicably different somehow the way he looks at Billy and thinks he finally understands what real beauty is. The way he instantly wants to get closer to him, reach out and touch. Billy has none of the unfinished awkwardness of a teenager. He’s a poster child for physical perfection that Steve is convinced walked off of a poster taped up on somebody’s wall, and has no business walking down the halls of an American high school. Seriously. How is this guy real?

He spares a quick glance for the other two guys with Billy - Dave & Chet - just long enough to confirm that he’s fucked. If these are the kinds of guys they’ve got on the team, Steve has no chance of seeing anything but a bench all year.

Billy and the other two stop at a locker not far from Steve’s on the other side of the hall, but not before Billy’s gaze does a casual sweep around the hall - very much a king surveying his kingdom. Steve fully expects that gaze to pass right over him just as unimpressed as it does everyone else, but to his surprise Billy’s gaze locks with his and sticks.

A little tingle dances up Steve’s spine and he sucks in a breath. He can’t tell what color Billy’s eyes are from this distance - at first he thinks they are something light, like a blue or grey, but then the corner of Billy’s mouth tilts up in a smirk and the light hits them a certain way and they look almost gold as he runs his tongue over some very white fangy teeth. Jesus the guy has some chompers on him.

Steve’s not afraid of a fight but it’s profoundly unsettling to have some dude literally licking his chops at him like he can’t wait to take a bite of the fresh meat. He’s pretty sure he just landed himself on Billy Hargrove’s shit list and he has no idea why. Fuck his life.

But he figures there’s nothing he can do about it but ignore it and hope that Billy decides he’s not worth the trouble. Steve turns to shut his locker, sending the message with his back that he doesn’t care about the dude giving him the crazy eyes and that Billy doesn’t intimidate him. His sweaty palms tell a different story, but that’s for Steve and only Steve to know.

As he leaves, he can feel Billy’s eyes burning into his back like lasers.

So much for going unnoticed for the year.

I look at Billy and see so many similarities with how I felt about my sister as a teen. It really helped me to realize that while I wasn’t very nice to my sister I was also suffering. Over time learning about Billy’s character and all his nuance I realized if I thought Billy was deserving of redemption then maybe so was I. It doesn’t mean I’m absolved of all my wrongdoing just that I can work to be better and that I deserve that chance.

Just to be clear, I don’t just support Billy Hargrove because he’s an incredibly nuanced character who was portrayed with such sensitivity and died a hero at an incredibly young age after years of abuse, I also support him because I look back at myself as a seventeen year old boy who was battling through abuse while desperately trying to put on a brave face and I think that I deserved better as well

Never in a million years did I think one of my fave animals would be combined with my fave ship. The world is complete now. I think I can get off the internet forever. Thanks so much for this!

In the end, Robin had to be the one to choose the pet for the Harrington-Hargrove household.

Billy and Steve were both very much animal lovers. Both of them cried at least six times watching Bambi, both of them regularly donated to their local animal rescue centre, both of them stopped for any animal stuck on the road to help it across. It really should have been an easy decision, pets. Well, deciding to get a pet had been, deciding on the animal had been a different story.

Both Billy and Steve were ridiculously stubborn motherfuckers who didn’t concede easily, especially to each other, and their pet preferences were night and day.

Steve wanted something conventional. A dog, a cat, maybe a rabbit or a bird. He wanted something he could cuddle with, that he knew would have extensive guidance on how to care for and something that wouldn’t get ill easily and freak him out. Billy, while adoring Max and Lucas’s puppy, would never accept a pet he saw as “basic.”

Billy pretty much exclusively wanted reptiles, with a couple of exceptions. He fought with Steve over the idea of getting a snake, a gecko, a bearded dragon. Robin even heard him haggling about the possibility of a stick insect. However, Steve was not at all fond of reptiles or bugs, so Billy’s dream pet was not to be.

It took weeks of argument and Heather genuinely concerned if their relationship would survive but eventually the perfect pet landed straight on their doorstep. Or rather, Robin shepherded it to the Harringtons front porch, doing her best to be gentle and soothing.

It was a fucking opossum. Of course it was. Robin had found an injured one near the road and the only place she could think to take it, because god knows how far away the nearest vet was, was Billy and Steve’s. Despite both being bleary eyed and Billy swaying on his feet slightly, they’d scooped it up into a towel with a grim “we’ll take care of it” from Hargrove.

They did take care of it. They took care of it very well. Then Steve named it Mustard and it never left the house, apart to be walked around the town by Billy twice a day, after somehow managing to gain a permit to keep him.

Mustard quite frankly was a little bitch, but Steve and Billy were little bitches at the best of times, so it worked. Their relationship didn’t crumble apart, they didn’t have continuous long silences about the pros of a dog vs a cat and Robin no longer had to listen to long phone calls at three am about how much of an ass Billy was being. As long as she never had to pet sit (which she was being threatened with increasingly) she was happy. Proud even.

All she needed to do now was make up an elaborate sob story to convince Heather that they needed a fifth cat.

@hargrove-mayfields @shieldofiron @dragonflylady77 @metalscoops @gracegrove @thissortofsorcery @hephaestn @robthegoodfellow @thatgirlwithasquid

Don’t do this. Not everything ever created is for you. Stop acting like it is and shitting on it because it isn’t. Even if it was badly written, everyone has to start somewhere and who knows what your nitpicking and general assholery will prevent being written. When someone hands you a free chocolate chip cookie you say thank you even if you like macadamia better.

Today I saw certain (I hope younger) fandom members doing a thing on twitter where they called out fandom-famous fics and saying how bad they are.

And, no. We don't do that. We aren't rude to each other like that. If we don't like a fic we move on and find one we do like. We do not go slagging it off on twitter to make ourselves look cool.

Authors, artists, video editors, gif makers: all of these people give huge amounts of their time to provide you with content for free. They don't owe anyone anything, and being cruel about what anyone makes is below us as a fandom.

Cali Crew is superior, and that's a fact

I need to have a little vent for a moment. This is going to talk about adult books so if you’re a kid or aren’t in to that don’t keep going. Also I’m relatively new to using tumblr and I think I have all of one follower (shoutout to you!) so I’m not really sure who will see this (because I admittedly don’t know how this works yet). I just need to put this out in the universe somewhere. I saw something earlier talking about how smutty books are becoming more mainstream and that bothered this person because people should be reading more than just “spicy” books. Which to me is a terrible take but okay. The part that really got my goat though was how they made the observation that this has led to more smut books coming out and some of them aren’t written any better than fanfic. If someone doesn’t like smut or want to read fanfic fine. But to imply that a book is somehow supposed to be superior to fanfic because the author had the idea and follow through to have it published? Absolutely not. I have been reading romance novels since 2010 and I have been reading exclusively m/m romance since 2013/2014. In those 13 years I have come across some really terrible published books. Also some of the best most beautiful things I have read were written by fanfic authors about Harringrove, Harringroveson, or Victuuri. I would even argue that to write fan fiction in some ways can be more difficult. To write a story of your own creation while keeping to the minutiae of a character that you didn’t create and everyone knows is absolutely mind boggling. So shout out to all you fanfic writers who I love. I see you and I love you!

AO3 Etiquette

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

Kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished - you kudos.

If you liked it, you should comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it. Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity. Don't ruin that for them.

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLANTONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an implicit rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Avoid deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - orphan it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to you anymore.

This is a creative fanfiction archive. No essays on your insights or theories please. There are other places for that.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

Billy being a little freak? REBLOG

16 Trans Agendas for the Modern Queer

Live to old age.

Enjoy a nice snack.

Cuddle up with my cat.

Demand good healthcare.

Create a chosen family.

Soak in queer community.

Reject any need for cis approval.

Respect pronouns.

Breathe deep breaths.

Admire surgical scars.

Be kind.

Tell my friends that I love them.

Be endlessly creative.

T4T.

Watch the sunrise.

Persist.