Never occurred to me BUT. I guess am I now open for beta-ing business. Get in line motherfuckers. Ur Spider fics are gonna change lives, starting with mine.

love random not even logged in readers just dropping their 'constructive criticism' on your 100k+ story that you're putting online entirely for free. this is just a rant btw

"You obviously have a great talent and I think you should work on honing it some. As much as I’ve enjoyed the story, there are a few things that stand out that you might consider looking at. I feel like the story isn’t sure what it wants to be at times; is it character driven or plot driven? It doesn’t flow smoothly because sometimes we have these wonderful character vignettes, like Illumi and Kalluto on a road trip or Kite/Leorio/Gon/Killua in an apartment where plot doesn’t really feel important, followed by what feels like heavily plot driven beats, like Kalluto and the spiders. In addition, it contributes to confusion because sometimes we see established characterization turned on its head. Especially the weird way everyone all of a sudden just sort of was OK with Kalluto being a spider and then working with Illumi when they just went to all that trouble to escape him? It all kind of feels forced and not natural. You know?

Anyway, I’ll definitely keep reading and look forward to seeing what happens."

first: love you trying to sound legitimate with your "in addition" like this is some kind of writer's workshop. second: in what way would I, the writer, think that an incomplete part of my story in which the reader does not yet know most of the main motivations (they are only hinted at so far) feels forced and not natural when I know what's happening, where it is going (and where I haven't had other readers comment with confusion about that part)

and moving on. don't do this. also like i said this is a wip in and no, no one is cool with Kalluto being a spider and no they're not cool working with Illumi, really. it was already established that some of them /have/ been working with Illumi before this~ he's someone that they know. like have you never been in a seriously dangerous situation that you just have to get through before you get back to what you want?*** also at this point Chrollo's real motive hasn't been entirely revealed.

Killua keeps changing his mind about what he's doing because he's a scared kid whose self-hatred is destroying him from the inside out. the POV is so tight that I have to keep dropping reminders that what is stated in the narrative is often not true! Illumi's POV, for example, keeps showing Killua as really loving him and being happy he's around but struggling with a desire for freedom, while with Killua's POV he's terrified of Illumi most of the time. like how is that not obviously a distorted POV where you can't trust the narrator?

"where plot doesn’t really feel important, followed by what feels like heavily plot driven beats"

this part is especially irritating because it's like yeah that's how I want to write it? this isn't a published novel. I don't have to commit to making sure every scene is important to the plot. I can spend time writing a full scene about someone drinking a glass of water and then 13 chapters in a row that are for moving the plot forward. I didn't even tag it as a novel... I did tag it for unreliable narration and I keep getting annoyed that people keep ignoring that.

"I feel like the story isn’t sure what it wants to be at times; is it character driven or plot driven?"

it's both??? it's neither??? it's a fanfic??? why do I keep getting comments lately where people are expecting me to adhere to like fucking publishing standards. this keeps up and I will write a chapter which is entirely about a minor character drinking a glass of water. watch me. I'll write one about phinks drinking a glass of water and you'll like it*

"Overall, the story is good and presented a compelling alternative to CA. Look, each fan has their own opinion on CA and I know I didn’t like it. I think it was a product of what Togashi was going through as he began to experience health issues and then finding himself right back where he said he wasn’t going to be mentally after he ended his earlier manga. We can never know for sure, but it certainly had a “watch it all burn vibe” to it near the end. I honestly believe he wanted it to end with the finality of Gon’s suicide as a capstone statement, but was probably convinced to go a different route, which kinda of left a jarring feel in the narrative and culminated in a rather unsatisfying end to Gon and Killua’s journey. Despite that, I am very reluctant to read fics where the events of CA are erased or grossly modified and honestly yours is really the first long AU/alternate timeline I’ve enjoyed"

okay first of all, I love the CA arc. but I had to split a point off where Kite was going to survive. why do you have to leave this whole paragraph about how you think Togashi was or wasn't going to go with the CA on my fanfic? I didn't even write this as 'oh look at my alternative to CA bc I hated CA' I don't really look forward to hearing comments about how random people didn't like so and so aspect of the story that I'm basing my story off of. I've never written fanfic for a story that I didn't like (except for some things that I don't have published I wrote at a request for friends for a fandom they were into that I wasn't really) and yeah I've wanted to 'fix' aspects (like tolkien's treatment of women for example) but I am not looking for your 'this is what I hated about the source material' comments on my stories

tired of getting comments with little 'oh I didn't like your style at first but now I do' or 'here's how to fix your story!' unsolicited advice from people who aren't better writers than me (I don't even want it from people who would be better writers than me on stuff I'm just doing for fun and for free)

when did stuff like this become normal? at least don't be a coward and be not logged in so you can't even get a response notification. like girl they aren't cool with it! why do you think everyone is on guard standing around like they're in a fucking hostage situation? how do you see such wildly different interpretations from different character's POVs and think it's not intentional? what part about Kite watching Killua like a fucking hawk makes you think he's going to let Illumi take him after this?

like if you've never had to smile and pretend to be cool with your abuser (pretend to love them) or someone who was threatening you to keep someone else safe then good for you! it fucking sucks! also don't know how to explain to you what a child who is growing up in an extremely isolated abusive situation goes through (though I keep writing about it in this story you should catch on...) but it's a million back and forths with emotion and feelings--especially if their abuser does (to in some way or to some degree) love them. and it is often blaming themselves. I'm not letting my years of studying human psychology and child development go to waste here**

is this story perfect? no but I'm not gonna hire an editor for a fanfic. and everyone's interpretations of characters will be different. especially with child characters who are going through huge changes in the world around them and their personal lives. part of the appeal of fanfiction is 'who would they become if this happened instead?' *sorry I keep writing about starving and not having clean drinking water but I will never stop because that's what I grew up with and it's hell. also phinks drinking water would be compelling since I assume he'd have harder access to clean drinking water

**hunter x hunter is also one of the only stories I have encountered with characters who have backgrounds as fucked up as mine and Togashi's interest in human psychology really stands out.

***like good for you but that was most of my life and you sometimes just have to shut up and get through it. and no I will not put my notes in the right order bc I'm not being paid enough****

****I'm being paid nothing

To be taken care of

Pairing: Din Djarin x AFAB!Reader

Summary: Spotchka makes Mando show his desire to take care of you.

Word count: 4k

Warnings: Bounty Hunter!Reader, soft!Din, set before Season One, smut!!!, little plot for context, but also FLUFF!, v fingering, no gendered words used, no y/n, alcohol, dirty talk, drunk sex, hint of praise kink, mirror kink, feelings???, reader is clueless about them tho, kind of sinful use of the helmet sorry armorer!

A/N: Hi!!! This is the first time I’m writing for this fandom OMG. I have little experience writing fics and I’m not 100% happy about this, but hey I had fun while typing smut at work! Also English is not my mother tongue and I have no Beta only Grammarly, although I edited this thoroughly, so sorry if this is awkward hehehe, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it!

You both probably had exceeded your tolerance limit with the spotchka that the kind people of Sorgan had gifted you on your last visit to the planet. Everything started with an excruciating hunt that had taken a toll on you and your bussiness partner. When the trandoshan male you’d been persecuting for weeks was finally frozen in carbonite, both of you sighed in relief and then your gaze met with his behind the visor. Neither of you were very talkative, your silences sometimes speaking louder than words. In addition, you both where extra grumpy that night because of the tiredness. Limping because of your sore muscles, provoked by hiding lying down on the hard floor for hours, you went directly to the spot where your provisions were. He tilted his head, curious. Normally after a hunt, you run to the shower to clean the grime accumulated from the days on the run.

Mando's questions were rapidly resolved when you triumphantly showed him the blue bottle and two metal mugs you used for everything. You must be a minimalist in a ship like the Razor Crest, which was definitely not designed for habitability. You also showed him the reusable straw you got him so he could drink in front of you on the field without worrying about his Creed. He fixated his helmet on you and finally nodded, so you poured him the spotchka filling the cup to the brim and then did the same for you. Next you let yourself slip down the metal floor with a heavy thump, too exhausted to stand for a minute more. He followed you and soon you found yourselves toasting lazily on the ground and drinking in silence.

“You did great today, mesh’la.” He said after emptying his mug for the first time that evening. You downed your beverage on your lap and looked at him as if he had gone nuts. In your time with him, he’d never praised you for your work. It was just expected that you gave your 100% in your hunts, right? You were after all partners, business partners. Associates. That sometimes fucked, alright. But you both kept things professional. So why did his praise affect the color of your cheeks that much?

“Thanks, Mando.” You muttered after finishing your spotckha too, offering to fill his mug again by raising the bottle towards him. He nodded and his gaze didn’t leave you this time. The truth was that Din was impressed by your performance in this last job. He knew you were a capable bounty hunter, of course, or he wouldn't have asked you to join him in the first place. It was only for one job initially, but you’d been so resourceful and worked so well along with him that he had to request you to join him full-time.

In the field, you always had his back, saving his metal ass more than one time, and your perception and ability to read people’s intentions was incredibly useful. Even though you weren't Mandalorian, he respected you as a warrior as if you were one of them. Not only respect, he felt admiration towards you.

And then it was the other side of your partnership. The one that occurred in the dark, rushed, your flushed skin against the cold beskar and soft sighs fogging his visor. The first time occurred after a near-death experience, the adrenaline ended in you being pressed against the wall in some alley by his beskar-clad body. He discovered you weren’t only outstanding at bounty hunting, but in other disciplines too.

Your intercourses would usually happen after a hunt gone south when both of you were especially frustrated and needed to let some steam off. You had three unspoken rules about them: you never talked while fucking, it was always done in the dark, and you never mentioned it afterwards. And of course, the helmet stayed on. You could never have imagined that you'd break all of the rules the current night.

You both had emptied the second round by the moment Mando spoke again. "I'm glad you accepted to be my business partner." His voice through the modulator caught you off guard, as you were lost in thought at the moment. He wasn't looking at you this time. You wondered if he was already drunk because he was behaving so off-character.

"You only say that because you love my stew." You chuckled nervously while pouring another mug for yourself. He asked his to be filled too and half of the spotchka was already gone. You could feel your palms against the glass sweaty: this opening-up-with-Mando thing was new for you.

"No…Yes, I mean… I do love your stew." It actually was the best he'd tasted and a great change from the ration packs he'd usually consume while on the Razor Crest. Mando played with the metal straw in his drink as if it was filled with your star recipe. "But what I'm saying is…it's nice to have you around." You looked at him quizzically, without a clue about where this conversation was directed or what was he referring to. Like he enjoyed your presence? Impossible. You rarely even spoke and didn’t know a lot about each other. Just enough to know you could trust your partner in the field. Maybe he was referring to sex. You knew he enjoyed it, as you did too. It was hot and somewhat felt forbidden. But anything in his cryptical tone indicated he was talking about sex, and it would be a first between you. Finally you decided he must be speaking about your job, you worked well together for sure.

"I suppose…we make a good team." Your half smile was timid and Mando surprised himself when his heart skipped a beat at your smile, but he was a bit disappointed. That was not what he was referring to. Sometimes he wished to be as talented with words as Greef Karga. He nodded and sipped half of the liquid courage remaining in his mug when he heard you giggling.

"What?" He asked drily. He almost felt hurt, where you laughing at him after dodging his attempt to tell you how he felt? You tried to stop but the alcohol had started to take a toll on your self-control. Especially on your empty stomach.

"You…you look so…so cute with your straw." He now fixated his visor on you, and although you tried to stop your laughter with your hand he only made it worse by looking deadly while sipping his spotchka.

"So you bought it in order to make fun of me?" You couldn't discern if he was joking or not but you started to be too drunk to care. He was marveled by this relaxed version of you, looking careless while sprawled on the floor. Even during sex, you'll keep it together, always looking composed. Was a bit of spotchka the one thing it took for you to get loose? If that was the case, he'd buy supplies for ages on the next planet.

"No dummy, I got it because that time you got dehydrated on Tatooine! You scared the shit out of me." Mando hardly remembered how that hunt ended, since in fact, he ended up fainting because of the lack of liquids due to being glued by the hip to you all the mission. It was certainly embarrassing. But what really made his cheeks flush was the endearing tone you had used to insult him.

"I appreciate how you always take care of me." His voice was softer than usual and the impact it had on you was totally unexpected. You stared at him frozen. Was he dehydrated again? You looked at the bottle of spotchka confused. Sure, it was a bit stronger than usual, but not that much.

"Mando… Are you drunk?" You asked carefully, and then he rotated all his body towards you.

"I want to take care of you, too." His voice came strained while he ignored your question. Your face couldn't be redder and your heartbeat started to go out of control. This couldn’t be happening, right? Where you reading well the room?

"Well, I could really use a massage. You know, my boss had me laying all day in some kriffing hole as if I was his personal sniper and my back is killing me." You said nonchalantly after a long silence, avoiding his face on purpose. He sighed in defeat and lay again in the position he was before, his long legs stretched on the floor.

"Your boss looks like an asshole." You could hear now a smile behind the helmet in his voice that warmed your heart.

"He's a tough bone, but he ends up growing on you." You winked at him and then got up, feeling suddenly how drunk you actually were. You stretched your arms over your head and then your neck and Mando could hear the crack of every one of your bones.

“I’ll give you that massage.” You weren’t expecting that he’d taken it seriously at all. He was no stranger to your body, but this new behavior of his was getting on your nerves. You had already spoken more than in all the month you were on board the Razor Crest. Slowly you nodded.

“Let me shower real quick first.” Without further notice, you locked yourself in the refresher to have the fastest shower in history, leaving The Mandalorian with his thoughts while you replayed your conversation in your head, trying to figure out his intentions.

After refreshing, you looked through your possessions, finally finding the small bottle of scented oil, and then returned to the hull while drying your hair a bit with a towel. The shower hadn't diminished your drunken state at all, and you were feeling feisty now. Thinking about how Mando was going to give you a massage had ignited your desire. And you could work with that. Because even though emotional intimacy wasn’t your forte, you new plenty about the physical one.

Mando was in the same place you had left him, now his back against the wall in a relaxed demeanor. He looked at you and then he was thankful you couldn't see his face. Of course, he had seen you in your undergarments before, but always in a non-sexual way like attending to your wounds or just a glimpse here or there. When you fucked you’d both keep most of your clothes on. He’d never appreciated you in all your glory towering over him like this. He gulped and felt his pants somewhat tighter.

You then sat nimbly in front of him, your back facing his front, and left the oil in your right so he could reach it. You noticed that another quarter of the spotchka bottle was missing.

"Confiscated." Giving him a mischievous glance, you twisted your body to reach the bottle and opened it to have a sip directly from it. Mando still hadn't moved a millimeter. A single drop slid along your throat and suddenly he wished he could lick it so badly. He had noted that your demeanor had changed, no longer nervous but confident in your body and sexuality. And that kriffin made him snap. His large hands snaked around your hip bones, dragging your body closer to his chest in one movement You gasped at the sudden contact, but this was familiar. Rough Mando, pressing you from behind against the nearest surface.

His long, muscular legs were spread around you, and you couldn't but appreciate his width and strength, seduced to caress where the beskar wasn't covering them. The time started to go slower as you stroked his skin through the flight suit. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that under all the metal a living red-blooded man resided. And said man was shivering now under your soft touches, praying that you didn't notice his neediness. He was a warrior with a task.

"Mesh'la, let me take care of you." His voice was gentle and raspy when he spoke next to your ear, and if he hadn't been wearing a helmet, you could have felt his breath tickling your skin. The tone in which he pronounced the foreign word made you feel a lot of things, some of them directed to your lower abdomen. You heard the tap of the oil and goosebumps of anticipation covered your skin. When the first drops slid down your column you were the one shivering this time.

When you felt his hands over your skin, you melted. You hadn't noticed when he’d removed his gloves. He rarely did it, and feeling them on your abused shoulders was like warm honey. You almost moaned from the touch of the rough skin of his big palms, his strong thumbs working on the knots that always formed over your shoulder blades. It felt heavenly.

“Is this okay?” If you didn’t know better, you’d swear his voice sounded a bit shy, but it was always difficult to tell through the modulator.

“S’ perfect Mando.” Your tone was breathy as you started to get a bit much worked up by his touch. He hummed and continued with his ministrations in silence. The moment felt fragile: you’d never had this intimacy together before. You noticed he was taking his time with you, feeling every muscle and curve of your strong back, tracing some scars scattered here and there. The alcohol and the massage were finally relaxing your tensed body, and then a moan you couldn’t stop escaped from your lips. His hands, which were working on your lower back at that moment, stopped and you could feel his entire body tense.

“Is this turning you on mesh’la?” All shyness was gone in a second, now his voice was thick with lust, a timbre you did recognize of him. His hands now had a harder grip on your back, like he needed to hold onto something. Sex with Mando was familiar ground, you felt relieved.

“Why don’t you check yourself?” Spotchka made you cheeky like that and you could hear Mando taking a heavy breath, confirming that your words had the effect you desired. Without warning, he dragged you towards his chest plate, the cold beskar biting your back while he positioned his helmet resting on your shoulder. Your heartbeat started to accelerate with anticipation. In this position, you could feel his chest rising every time: he was as worked up as you.

Painfully slow, he started to go over your outer thighs with a feathery touch with his calloused digits when then abruptly, he grabbed them and separated further making you gasp. The heat between your legs was unbearable and the thing you wanted more was for him to touch you. His grip on your inner thighs was almost painful, not that you minded, but you couldn’t stand more teasing.

“Mando, please…” You begged.

“Please what?” His fingers were now hovering over your clothed core, the fabric drenched in your slick. It wasn’t like your business partner hadn’t fingered you before, but it was always as a preparation for you to take his girth, never in this unrushed, lazy manner. Although you were going to explode from anticipation, you were loving every moment of it.

As Mando was too. The sensation of your plush skin filling his hands, your body pressing against his and dank farrik, your smell. It was driving him crazy, so much that he wanted to remove his helmet so he could appreciate the delicious smell of your wet pussy. His head was starting to spin and he couldn’t identify if it was for your fragrance or the quantity of spotchka running through his blood. He decided that the teasing was over then, and unceremoniously hooked his thumbs on your waistband and slid the piece of underwear down your legs, the soaked spot in the middle so evident it embarrassed you and turning him on even more. But he wasn’t still touching you where you needed him most. You were so done.

With your smaller hand, you grabbed his and placed it in your cunt letting go a snort and leaving Mando stunned.

“You wanted to take care of me? Then go on.” You said sassy, but your face was redder and hotter than a Sith’s lightsaber. He kriffing grunted and your breathing stopped when he finally put one of his thick fingers on your entrance to collect your slick. He amused himself at the fact that you were dripping because of him, feeling between surprised and a little proud about it. Then he started tracing lazy circles around your clit while spreading your pussy with the other hand. Mando relished himself in how soft and warm you were, imagining your flavor between his lips. In the confine of his flight suit, his cock twitched, impossibly harder. But today was about taking care of you and he was a man of his word.

His middle finger started tracing your slit up and down and you can’t help but waggle in his lap, feeling the pleasure spreading through your body. You inhaled hard when you notice the prominent bulge against your ass, growing only wetter at the sensation, and Mando could literally feel how your slick slid down your hole. While still rubbing your clit, he took advantage of the dampness to slide one finger inside, looking at that magic spot in your entrance that made your skin tingle. You moaned louder and he licked his lips under the helmet. An all-consuming desire was growing inside of him, the alcohol inside his veins whispering to him that he should indulge in his fantasy. You moan again in his arms and he’s a mess. Needs to taste you, to smell you to see your pussy drenched because of him. Every part of his body is in contact with yours, his helmet against your cheek. He’d love to bite your shoulder and mark your neck, and his need grows stronger while fantasizing about the idea.

“Mando…another finger…please.” Your voice was labored and so sexy he needs a sharp inhale to bring his brain the oxygen he needed. You were a beautiful mess. Your lips parted, cheeks red with lust and a sheer layer of sweat making your skin glow under the lights. This was nothing like taking you from behind in some cantina bathroom. He was done.

“Wait for a second mesh’la. And don’t turn around.” You nodded obediently, at this point you’d do whatever it took to be touched by The Mandalorian. Then you heard the hiss, you panicked a moment, knowing what the helmet meant for him. But inside you couldn’t deny the excitement from the anticipation about what he was going to do. Soon you had the answer. With a loud clank, he let his helmet rest between your spread thighs and then he breathed heavily, finally inhaling your sweet scent. It seemed odd to you that he didn’t choose another spot for his helmet, but then it hit you like a ton of bricks. Filthy bastard.

“Keep your legs spread for me.” His bossy tone made your pussy clench, you were used to his dry commands but in this context it made you drool. His unmodulated voice was like his hands, rough and gentle and warm at the same time, just like him. You found yourself wanting to hear more of it.

Mando’s hands traveled south once again and then he was spreading your lips, totally messy and wet. “Dank Farrik mesh’la look at you.” And you looked. The helmet, well-polished, silver beskar. His position between your legs wasn’t unintentional. You looked at your cunt at display, his large fingers caressing it like it was the most precious thing in the galaxy. You felt embarrassed and your first reflex was to close your legs. But he wasn’t having it.

“Mando, you’re shameless!” His strong hands didn’t let you close your legs but he spread them further. And when he had you like that, his fingers collected your slick determined to finally taste you. You could hear how he sinfully licked every finger and a more sinful, hoarse moan. You’d never hear him make a sound like that and it turned you to putty.

“Your cunt tastes as delicious as it looks.” Now, that was shameless. Who had imagined the reserved, soft-spoken Mandalorian had such a filthy tongue? His fingers were toying with your clit while he explored your hole with the other hand. Pleasure was filling every cell of your body and tiny moans were scaping more frequently from your lips, more aroused every second you looked at his movements reflected on the beskar surface.

“I’d love to taste you too Mando.” You teased grinding your hips on his cock, provoking a delicious sound from him.

“Another time mesh’la, I’m taking care of you today.” His voice was thick with drunkenness and desire and you couldn’t get enough of it. Then a perfect place stroke made you arch against him, leaving your neck at display for him. That delicious-looking skin was calling for him. A sharp bite startled you, provoking a loud moan from you. Even though he had removed his helmet, you didn’t expect him to use his lips on you. It looked like he was sporting a mustache and facial hair. Somewhat, it fitted the mental image you had of him and you siled internally. He continued sucking and biting all over your shoulders and neck, taking his time in your pulse point and you were a panting mess between his thighs, at this point, your slick even pooling on the floor.

His pace on your pussy was faster now, and you could feel and see how his fingers were knuckles deep in your insides, curved toward that delicious spot you could only reach with toys but he easily achieved to stroke. Dank Farrink, he did know your body. You realized he had to be paying more attention than you thought during your intercourses and that somehow made you hornier.

“Mando, I’m not gonna last much more…” Your voice was small, all your cheekiness from behind gone. You felt raw.

“That beautiful cunt’s gonna cum? Lemme see it mesh’la, give it to me.” Mando slurred as worked up and drunk as you. His words sent electricity directly to your pussy and your walls clenched against his fingers. “Kriff your body is amazing…you’re amazing.” His movements over your clit were now frantic and your vision started to blur. You succumbed to the sensation letting it hit you and then you were cuming all over Mando’s tan fingers with a loud cry of pleasure. He kept touching you until you shivered from overstimulation, dragging his fingers slowly from your puffy entrance. The vision was totally sinful. He started drawing lazy circles around your lips, caressing them. Your breath was still heavy while you came down from your high.

“Mando that was…” You didn’t have words for what had just happened.

“Do you feel better now cyar’ika?” His voice was soft again, even sleepy.

“Yeah, thank you for…taking care of me.” The alcohol and your orgasm were making your body drowsy, and you let yourself sink into his arms.

“Anytime.” He then kissed the point where your shoulder met your neck, something he hadn’t done before. You shivered at the sensation of his facial hair against your own skin and couldn’t help but smile fondly. In his odd way, he was sharing this private part of him with you and surprisingly your heart fluttered at the idea. He started then to drag his nose caressing your shoulder, it felt prominent, his mustache provoking goosebumps. You relished in his tenderness and at that moment you didn’t care anymore that this felt too intimate, wondering how it’d feel to kiss him. It was probably the spotchka why you were indulging in these thoughts and the reason you sighed like a teenager when his cheek leaned on yours. Probably tomorrow everything would be back to normal when both of you were sober, but for now, you’d let yourself enjoy how it felt to be taken care of by The Mandalorian.

Incomeless; will proofread your fics! (Or anything else.)

I'm not sure how to head this with a snazzy, attention-catching image given I'm not offering an obviously graphic service like art commissions, but let's give it a go...

Hello, I'm your friendly neighborhood disabled unemployed transgender queer on the internet. I have not posted a great amount about the details on this blog for privacy reasons, but I am currently in an untenable familial/financial living situation, which I am actively working to get out of. My primary barrier to disentangling myself from the pertinent parties is a lack of income. I've been unable to pursue traditional means of work due to being multiply disabled (slash chronically ill, slash treatment-resistant, et cetera...), but I do not qualify for SSI or unemployment, so I am stuck trying to find other ways of making money.

This is where you come in... If you'd like to help, you can:

$$ Hire me $$ to proofread your fics, essays, and more!

Click below for info! (I also may add separate posts for diversity reading and/or other writing- and editing-related services.)

For $0.00855/word *OR BEST BID*, I will vet your work of writing before you publish it, checking for mistakes in spelling, capitalization, & punctuation, missed words, inconsistencies of tense, formatting, & POV, and miscellaneous grammatical errors. Never again need you fear posting a finished chapter and discovering a slew of typos after the fact; no matter how sleep-deprived or late at night the state of writing, I will ensure your text is ship-shape. Or, if you happen to be interested in having other types of writing proofread before submission--essays, comics or webtoons, letters, transcripts, compositions of a personal nature, so on--I will happily take these on at a comparable rate.[1]

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in English with a minor in writing

Initiate of international collegiate honors society for English scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta

Active member of the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors (IAPWE)

Former lit editor for award-winning university literary arts magazine

Prior employment in tutoring and teaching English, as well as copy-editing and content writing

Nearly 20 years' writing experience

Previous experience as both fic writer and beta

Incisive eye for typo-hunting and tenacious attention to detail (I have high standards and will make those everybody else's problem... now for pay!)

I will read for content of any genre and all ratings, and am broadly[2] open to any subject matter, kinks, et cetera. I'll also post more detailed guidelines (booking process, any exclusions, additional criteria) on a separate, unrebloggable post so that any edits and updates are always current.

Message me via the chat feature on Tumblr, or send me an e-mail (I will post it on my more info post) to request a quote, bid for a slot, or just to see what I can offer for whatever project you have in mind. And please feel encouraged to share or boost this post! I am in urgent need of any income I can get, and every share counts 😭🙌

. . . . . . . . . .

Proofreading Full Details · Other Services · Support Me (alternatively, Tip this post!)

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] There will be some exclusions to this, such as academic assignments/papers that have style guide requirements; i.e., I will not be your online MLA style checker or anything.

[2] As with anything, there will be sporadic exceptions to this as well, but I will always be up-front about such cases.

Only tangentially related to the post you made but I think the reason I find the dual attitudes of fanfic being the same as classic literature but also impossible to critique in good faith so funny is because they really seem to think that classical authors were never, like, challenged or censored or edited. It would be one thing if they were discussing fanfic which had gone through critics or editors, or had been in the works for years and undergone significant changes, but fanfic writers will knock out 200,000 words of the worst first draft I've ever read and then act like THAT'S of equal artistic merit to Dante's Inferno. It's very good

I think the most productive definition of fanfiction for this discussion is that it is a particular type of relationship a fan can have to art that is enclosed by intellectual property law. fanfic is “knock off” “unofficial” artistic articulations of a fan author’s interpretation of a text, which only makes sense in the context of privately owned and enclosed art. It’s not that amateur hobby writing has never existed, it’s not that people have never written derivatives of an original text before - those things have always existed. fanfiction is only historically noteworthy in the sense that it is constructed by a particular relationship an audience has to media IPs.

So like, yea fanfic is real art! that is a given. It is also not the same as professionally produced and edited work, which is good to remember when both criticising it and praising it. the only response fic tends to get is reactive - that is, there is no standard feedback mechanism that happens until after fic is written and published (betas/editors do exist but they are not universal or even common). and because of general hostility to critical or constructive feedback of any kind in the comment sections of AO3/FF.net (framed commonly as “well it’s too late to bitch now I already wrote it! What are you complaining about, you got free art!”), fic authors enjoy a very tight bubble of overwhelmingly happy, positive responses to their writing. Which is FINE, I don’t post fanfiction with the intent to get an essay back from people about what needs to be edited or changed, I wrote it for fun like everyone else, but that also means it exists in a very different social environment from commercially/professionally produced art, and as a consequence I’m not going out and proclaiming that I’ve written the next great western epic in the form a star wars fanfic, and if I were to do so I would be asking for a much larger public audience, an audience who is not going to consume my work as fun hobby writing but instead as serious literature, and respond accordingly

Planning to publish your story online?

Don't post it just yet! 

You may think you have edited it enough, but trust me, you haven't. Typos will manifest out of nowhere right after you post that chapter.

You need a fresh pair of eyes to go over your manuscript. And for that, I got you covered.

I just opened a Fiverr gig, and I offer more than your average beta reader. I can be your all-in-one alpha reader, editor, and proofreader.

Not only will I review your story through the eyes of a reader, but I will also give you my honest opinions as a writer. I will point out what works and what doesn't, reacting live via inline comments.

And depending on the package you choose, I can edit just the grammar and minor mistakes of your story, or go all-out and look at your story as a whole. I can give you feedback on plot coherency and structure, themes and implications, character arcs and development, and more.

If you buy the Premium package, I can also do line edits, checking the flow, tone, and style of each sentence. If you struggle with sentence variety and natural-sounding dialogue, I can help you with those, too.

Edit: This service has been updated. Find the new one here.

Why should I use a service specifically for web novels/fanfiction?

In choosing someone to review/edit your story, you must pick one who understands its genre, format, and audience. You can’t have your Omegaverse story edited by someone who has no idea what alpha, beta, and omega mean. (They’re not just Greek letters!) And you can’t show your Xianxia story to someone who has never read the genre before. They’ll only end up praising the cultivation elements in your novel as a unique magic system when it’s actually nothing new. 

I've been reading web novels for years and fanfiction for far longer. I know the tropes, the format, and the rules, so I know when to bend and when not to.

It's just a story I'm posting online. I'm not gonna publish it as a book. Do I even need this?

Don't put yourself down like that! Web novels and fanfiction are not inferior to physical books. You spent just as much time and love on it. Your story is not any less just because you wrote about your blorbos kissing. Your readers deserve a polished story as well.

Do you accept fanfiction from any fandom?

I only accept fanfiction if I know its source material. Otherwise, I won’t be able to provide relevant feedback. Contact me first to ask if the fandom you're writing for is okay.

I already edit my work. That should be enough.

I beg you. Get an editor (me). If you’re serious about writing, having a professional look over your work will immensely help you improve. Friends and family can only give you superficial feedback, like pointing out typos. You need someone who is also a writer to point out areas that need reworking.

Don't let your readers end up like this guy:

Shen Yuan literally died while cursing the author of a crappy web novel. To make things worse, the universe also decided to transport him into the world of said web novel so he could fix it himself.

So unprofessional. Your readers shouldn’t be fixing your plot holes. Do better.

Been meaning to pick your professional brain a bit, so... Tell us about rewriting/drafting/editorial pass! What happens when you read to edit? How is it different when you read someone else's work vs your own? What do you look for, what do you notice differently from when you're in writing mode? Any advice to get better at the whole editing thing, and what typical advice that we often see (kill your darlings, never do x, always do x, write for yourself, know your audience...) do you think could use some nuance or explanation? And maybe most importantly, what advice would you give a starting beta reader? What makes for a good beta reader and/or editor, especially when there's no monetary transaction involved and it's all donated labor? What are some of the essential skills?

Hello my friend!! Thank you so, so much for asking me about editing!! I am over the moon. I love this part.

I'm lucky because while it's been my job for quite a long while now (often among other responsibilities) work hasn't ground out the joy of it. I prefer to edit fiction, of course, over corporate copy and advertising, but am honestly happy to dig into either kind of project. The point of it is to bring the right words to the forefront of whatever the written material is, I think. To make the piece the best it can be, and at the same time show the writers how capable they really are. (: So let me dive right in! (THIS IS LONG, by the way, so under the cut! The irony is not lost on me about wordiness and editing and then producing this LOL but it's alright. I'm a chatty person online and this is more or less conversational.)

What is an editorial pass?

There's several kinds of editing. What I do most for paid corporate work is proofreading -- which is catching typos and grammar mistakes and correcting them. This is usually a first pass of any given project. This pass doesn't usually suggest changes -- things are left as is except typos and grammar mistakes. This is sometimes also called copyediting, though copyediting is the next step up and also checks for style consistency, among a few other things, especially in academic and corporate work.

Next is line editing -- this is more checking for word choice at the sentence level. We're looking to make sure things flow together nicely, and that we're cutting the fluff out when necessary. When things get too wordy and there are cleaner ways to phrase something, a line edit pass will catch these things.

Next past that is content editing -- this is done on a full manuscript or story to check that the ideas are complete and the story flows together logically. This should be paragraph and chapter level and should also check for consistency in tone and authorial voice.

After that is my personal favorite, which is structural editing. This is actually technically what you should start with if your manuscript is already complete. But we'll get into the difference between having work beta read and having work edited below. Anyway structural editing is going to check for, well, structure -- organization, flow and quality of the book in its entirety.

There will be notes regarding concerns and big picture issues with the story. These usually won't include detail-level edits, though some professional editors do offer multiple passes on the same manuscript. If your structural edit is mostly glowing praise with few key concerns or suggestions, you can move onto more detail oriented edits to address those specific concerns.

And an even higher level editing that can happen even before a manuscript is complete is Developmental Editing. I like to think of this as an outline critique or consultation more so, as this pass won't be rewriting or doing any sort of detail work. The editor takes your idea and helps ask the right questions to make sure you're organizing your ideas to the best of your ability. They help an author to see the book as a reader would see it.

What happens when you read to edit?

Reading for enjoyment is actually as important to editing as it is for writing. The key takeaway is that an for either, you need to have a extremely solid grasp on the components that make a good story. For an editor, especially so when the 'rules' might be broken purposefully by an author. Honestly, a lot of it is still opinion based. Two different editors, generally, will have different insights for you reading the same manuscript, biased by how much they read and what their specialties are. Most editors, too, will have an ear for grammar which nobody wants to talk about but it's true. You don't need to memorize every single tiny little grammatical detail to explain in full to your authors when you edit and catch errors. But an editor usually can hear when things are off more or less and can provide resources if a mistake is noticed as a consistent issue.

Mostly when you're reading to edit and I'll use structural editing for an example here, you're always thinking of how things flow together and how the story threads intertwine and connect. You're thinking through how the story will land for a casual reader. There's a lot of work in the background in this case, and it takes practice to be able to point out when elements fall flat. You as an editor should also be able to suggest ways to fix the flat parts of the story -- and to do that you need to have read widely in many genres. Read for the sake of understanding how stories come together. Read while taking extensive mental notes as you go. Each book is a learning opportunity.

How is it different when you read someone else's work vs your own?

I actually just reblogged a post about this that sums it up pretty nicely. When you're writing you're so close to your own work it can be hard not only to spot errors but to let go of work you've written. It can also be difficult to see where your work shines because it's not how you envisioned it in your head. Writing is an entirely different process, even if you can go back in with good editing eyes, again it comes down to perspective. You're too close to your own work. You've spent so much more time with it. You know every detail (presumably) and might not be able to see beyond that. The editor, on the other hand, and also a beta reader, will be able to shift perspectives a bit based on their own biases and specialties and help spot things that weren't obvious in the thick of the project.

For me I know I am not as strong a writer as I am an editor for this exact reason. (Regardless of what others think of my writing, this is still true lol) I get a sort of tunnel vision on what I'm attempting to get on paper. A second set of eyes helps point out what needs more attention. An editor should be a project's biggest cheerleader because our goal is to bring out the best an author can do. We can see the threads of greatness as we go through a piece. When we suggest things, it's always to make the piece stronger and for the story beats to hit harder. So this piece really comes down to perspective. When I read my own work, I still am very much mired in it. When I read someone else's work, I get to experience it without it having lived in my head for x amount of time. It's a fresh view of the text, and that can often be invaluable.

What do you look for, what do you notice differently from when you're in writing mode?

This kind of plays off the last few questions, more or less but here I'll switch to self-editing. It really is a mindset change and it's incredibly difficult on one's own writing. Usually I need to take a day or two to let the chapter (for instance) I'm working on simmer and move on to the next thing to get my mind out of the weeds about it more or less. Then I go back in with the goal to proofread and do line level editing.

Because I am the author, I'm always trying to keep in mind overarching structures and plots. (I'm a planner rather than a pantser/discovery writer normally though there are exceptions when I add to the plan later.) This does make "editing mode" a little bit easier for me, besides being a professional editor. I'm actively trying to keep the threads together in editing mode, and actively looking for accidental repetition, places where fluff can be cut out, areas where the words sound off/discordant and can be improved, and personally I am always trying to be sure each line of dialogue or inner monologue SOUNDS like the point of view character I'm working with. This comes from asking the right questions of your work -- "Why would x character respond this way?" But that's a whole other topic. Someone could ask me about how I handle character building another time if they'd like (: But it's all part of the editing process.

In writing mode the goal, at least for me, is to get the idea out of my head and into a draft / on paper. I have the bones of the story in my outline and now I need to get the words out. First drafts are incredibly important and are not -- I repeat -- are NOT garbage. These are the rough foundations and the effort is not wasted. You can't refine anything if there's nothing on the page. The first draft is gold. It is the authentic creative writing experience. The rest is editing. (: And the revision process, the editing, helps bring forward the gem of an idea you had to begin with.

Any advice to get better at the whole editing thing?

The two biggest pieces of advice I have for this is to read widely and to come to your work with fresh eyes before you attempt to edit.

Reading widely means to read outside of your preferred genre as often as you can. This can also mean reading craft books -- ie things that talk about the writing process or even the editing process -- and it can mean consuming other kinds of media with a focus on storytelling like video games, ttrpgs or movies etc. It also means paying attention while reading, always keeping an eye on your own answer to the question: "Why does this work so well?" or conversely "why do I hate this?" (: Reading critically is a habit that not a lot of us innately have. You do have to put in the work just like with writing to read closely in a way that benefits you as a writer and an editor.

Now for the next part -- walking away from your draft entails two things. One, that you've written all you could before you turned on editing mode and two you've given yourself a day or two to do something else (or continue writing) before you return to what you want to edit. It's so much harder to catch what you're missing when you immediately turn back and edit what you've just written. (With exception.) You can catch more typos, and fix the fluff or underwriting when you've given your mind a second to rest.

Improvement comes with practice, too. So purposefully trying to edit, and purposefully trying to read critically and building a habit out of these things will lead to a better understanding of the craft in general. All of it translates to writing strong first drafts and being able to revise more effectively. It's cumulative. Nobody is born a perfect writer or a perfect editor.

One last tip that might be a little impractical depending on your circumstances is -- if you want to get better at editing quickly, read your work out loud. It's easier to find clunky areas as you verbalize them.

What typical advice that we often see (kill your darlings, never do x, always do x, write for yourself, know your audience...) do you think could use some nuance or explanation?

I could write about each of these but this post is already long! So I'll pick my favorite. "Write what you know" doesn't mean "Stay in your lane and write about your retail job" for example. To me, it's more like even in a fantasy world, you can bring in things you've experienced and give them to your characters.

Not a single one of us is as boring as we think we are (: I learned this when I was going through the Creative Nonfiction track in my undergrad creative writing degree program. Even something so average told from your perspective can be fascinating to someone else. So apply it to your story -- all your experiences, your emotions, whatever you can throw at the canvas so to speak.

Your character isn't a reflection of you if you don't want them to be. But they can still go through a fantasy version of troubles that evoke the same kind of big emotions that you've been through. It can be kind of cathartic -- at least in my experience, it can be.

What advice would you give a starting beta reader? What makes for a good beta reader and/or editor, especially when there's no monetary transaction involved and it's all donated labor? What are some of the essential skills?

So first, the difference between a beta reader and editor does come down to the donation of time. You're going to get different responses based on the skill of your beta reader and how much attention and time they have to donate. The ideal beta reader will be someone who is in your intended audience and is generally a close reader, even if they're not there looking for grammar mistakes or anything like that. They'll have a working idea of their own personal answers to what they feel works well and what doesn't when they read in general.

Generally a beta reader will be a set of eyes that will catch your grammar mistakes and typos but probably won't be providing line level suggestions. They'll function as a light structural editor or work more or less on a chapter level. Some beta readers (like myself because I am also a editor) might donate more time and effort to the project than others and be able to make professional suggestions, but this is not to be expected or requested.

If you're just starting out as a beta reader, it might be good to practice on maybe a published novella or short story first, low stakes because the author can't see your comments. Begin the process of reading widely and asking yourself "Why (or why not) does this work for me as a reader?" "What makes this enjoyable (or not?)" "What is it about this piece that is done well (or not?)" The grammar practice can come later -- refresh on the rules, but again don't worry about being perfect. The biggest skill you can build is reading critically. Practice, practice, practice. And when you offer your skills as a beta reader, let your author know if it's your first piece. Sometimes a very fresh set of eyes are just the thing a project needs, so don't be shy about saying so.

On the skills needed -- beta readers should not be shy to say exactly what they're thinking in a kind, constructive way. This can take some practice. But if you're going to point out something that's not working, it's good to have an idea as to why and be able to convey that. It doesn't have to be to the level of a suggestion and certainly not to the level of a rewrite or being able to provide comps/resources.

Being able to provide comments of your thoughts in a structured and logical way based on your opinion of what you've read comes with practice, of course. It's essential because an author is generally looking for specific feedback when they're asking you to beta read their work to make sure their story is hitting as intended for their intended audience.

Again having a good ear for grammar is going to be important here, too. You don't have to be perfect about it, either, or memorize every tiny technical detail. But being able to hear when something is off is useful again because while writing, an author is very close to their work and might not catch it.

And last -- remind yourself you are human. You aren't going to be able to catch every error. You aren't going to be perfect. (listen, not even every editor is going to catch every single mistake. Again, we're human!) You are not a machine. The act of being a close reader for an author and donating your time to assist them is selfless. Nobody should be expecting perfection. This is a collaborative effort between audience and author in this case. You get to make suggestions and perhaps change an author's mind about the direction of some things in their stories. Authors can choose not to take advice, too, without needing to explain anything at all. It doesn't mean the effort is wasted. It comes down to having a second set of eyes on the project with the intent to bring out the best.

Beta reader or editor, your job is mostly to be the work's cheerleader and see past the rough edges to the gem underneath, and then show the author how truly talented they are when they've forgotten in the thick of it. These are simply two different levels of the same kinds of tasks (:

22, 39, and 51 for the writing asks!

29. What’s your revision or editing process like?

I tend to edit as I write - most often, when I open a doc I edit what is already there before I start writing again which means that the beginnings of my fics have been edited several times compared to the endings.

About half the time, I send my fics to a trusted friend to beta for me. I always intend to do this more often, because my writing is always better for having that feedback but sometimes I get impatient, or I don't want to bug my friends (which I know is silly because when I get asked to beta things my answer is almost always *grabby hands* unless I really don't have time).

If I've had a fic beta'd then I go through the suggested edits, review the entire doc again myself and then post it. And then, because I tend to post fics right before I go to sleep, I open the fic in the morning and find a bunch of things I've missed after it's been up on ao3 for a whole night 😅

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

I'm sharing something from a wip that I'm writing with @welcometololaland that is currently on pause while we fight with our current wips! I am fairly certain that I'm the one that wrote this section, Lola pls tell me if I'm wrong, but we've gotten to the point where we can't remember who wrote what in some parts of this!

“What are you even doing here, Mom? You never come to these things.”

“I had a meeting upstairs, thought I’d come and see if you actually turned up,” Gwyn explains. 

TK glares at her. He hopes no one else can hear this conversation, because it’s embarrassing. The fact that he works for his mother isn’t exactly a secret, but he usually tries to maintain some level of professionalism when they interact in public. Sometimes it’s impossible. 

“You know the whole point of these events is that you talk to new people, develop new relationships, not hide in the corner with your best friend and gossip.”

TK glances at Nancy who is studiously ignoring him. “Of course, Gwyn. We were just discussing our plan of attack when you came over,” Nancy fibs. 

Gwyn looks at them both sceptically. “Mmhmm. See that he actually talks to someone new tonight, will you Nancy? TK, Nancy’s in charge tonight, she’s your superior after all.”

Nancy grins at that and TK rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“And TK, honey, do up another button, this is a networking event, not a bar.” This time Gwyn does reach out and to brush some imaginary lint off his shoulder. 

“Didn’t you meet Enzo at one of these things?” TK retorts, even as he follows his mother’s instructions and does up one of his buttons. He can see Nancy trying to hold in her laughter next to him as she mutters, “this is the best thing that’s happened today,” under her breath. 

“I did. Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want my son representing my firm at an event looking like he’s trying to pick up.” Gwyn takes a sip of her wine and makes a face. “I can’t drink this. Don’t forget we have brunch plans on Sunday, TK. Nancy, you’re welcome to join us if you’re free,” Gwyn says as she spins on one Louboutin-clad foot and strides away. 

51. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Officially, 434,572 but that includes a bunch of collaborations so I think the actual number is somewhere closer to 340-360kk

PS. I have snippet sunday tags from @iboatedhere @strandnreyes @liminalmemories21 @reyesstrand pls consider this my snippet sunday post too!

HOW DO YOU WRITE SO AMAZINGLY WOULD YOU HAVE ANY TIPS I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF UNPERSONS IT'S SO GOOD

eeeEEEEE thank you so much!!! That's really sweet of you to say - I'm so happy that you're enjoying the story so far!!

This is honestly the first I'm I've even attempted to write anything of this length before, so I'm amazed it's been received so positively.

I am by no means a professional writer, nor have I taken any creative writing classes or been to any workshops, but I'll just let you know what I tried to keep in mind, as that seemed to work for me! Take this with a grain of salt, though :)

When I was in the midst of writing, I was absolutely hyperfixated. The story was literally all I thought about. I only listened to the playlists I curated for it on repeat, even when not writing or drawing concept art for it. It was honestly a little unhealthy lmao but it gave me the stamina and inspiration I needed to sit for long hours and just write.

First things first: I wrote a really rough plan of how I wanted all of the scenes to play out, color-coding the headings by perspective. I even gave each segment heading names that were eventually removed from the final draft of each chapter. For example, here are the perspective titles for chapters 2 and 3:

And here is a random screenshot of some of the plot outline from Chapter 3:

I'd put random keywords in there along with media references and links to concept art etc to jog my brain as well.

This helped me to keep overarching goals in mind when I actually began to write the chapters themselves. I also wrote everything in order - I never skipped over writing certain scenes. That might work for some people, but not me hehe

What's very important to note though is that as I was in the middle of writing each chapter, I simply wrote what felt right. If something seemed to just work better, even if it went against my initial outline, I would write that instead.

Additionally, I constantly assessed my strengths and weaknesses. I feel far more comfortable describing physical and emotional reactions than I do writing dialogue, so I would always pay particuarly close attention to the dialogue I wrote when editing. I would often read whole segments out loud so as to avoid as many cases of "he-would-NOT-fucking-say-that"-syndrome as possible.

Also, I would take frequent breaks. If a scene I was writing just was not coming together, I'd stop writing for a while rather than burning myself out.

I tried to take into account some advice I heard from somewhere else as much as I could, namely to balance descriptions of the environment with dialogue, both internal and external. I tried to catch myself whenever I noticed I was dedicating a huge, uniterrupted chunk of text to only dialogue or only environomental description.

Another thing: I like using figurative language. A lot. Probably a little too much. But I like being dramatic and artsy (a bit like my characterization of Hetch, I suppose), so I would include a lot of metaphors and similes within my writing. I feel like it helps to paint more of an abstract picture and let the reader fill in the gaps themselves with their mind rather than to give too many minute details, as that can get boring pretty quickly.

Lastly, I revised my drafts many times before I sent them to my beta readers, checking mostly for continuity errors, flow, and any grammatical/spelling errors. I'd often do my revisions aloud to myself, as I tend to catch more awkward sentences that way as opposed to just reading it silently to myself!

Hopefully some of that is helpful :) Honestly, the biggest piece of advice I can give is to just get out there and write. I didn't know I was capable of pulling this off until I sat down and did it. And, most of alll, I was writing more for myself than anyone else. In other words, I just had fun with it! I didn't really care if people would resonate with it, all that I knew is that I enjoyed writing it myself. Thankfully, that seemed to come across! I'm still blown away by how Unperson has been received so far. I'm really looking forward to getting the chance to get back to writing it again!

🌵🕯️🧃🍬🦋

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

I tend to make my own playlists and most of those are private, but I like listening to this when I'm in a Murder My (nonexistent) Husband mood

🕯️ ⇢ on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

-1000, but that's not on the scale so 1 unless it's solely a SPAG check. Idk how to describe it exactly? But basically it's like this: I'm not writing for profit. I'm not writing to be professional. I'm writing to get an idea out of my head that was originally inspired by something I saw/watched/listened to. And when I'm writing for fandom, I don't want to edit scenes/characters because that's not the original idea that I had. I've tried doing it in the past where I wrote things out because a beta thought they didn't work with the scene and wound up liking the finished product much less. And since I'm writing what I want to read, I want to actually enjoy what I put down on the page. If I were writing for professional profit reasons, I'd be much more open to editing.

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

Oh, is it more Alle lore time? I think I've mentioned the first part, but I don't think I've talked about the rest of this, so! My second ever job was as one of Santa's Elves at Santa's Wonderland for Bass Pro Shops. I loved working with the kids, but absolutely despised the parents. They were very demanding and very entitled, and when one of them got mad that there were no more passes to see Santa that day, he pulled a gun on me. I'm fine, the gun wasn't loaded, and he still didn't get a pass to see Santa (I'm pretty sure he's still in prison though), but I was very happy that I was just a seasonal worker with my contract ending two days later.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

Ooh another one of these. Hmmmmmmmm. Again, I don't know if this is unpopular but I see a lot of people talk about this on youtube, so I'm gonna go with it. Jeff Davis never meant for Stiles to be considered as a magical character, and regardless of Deaton being needlessly cryptic, it was incredibly obvious that calling Stiles a "spark" was in the metaphorical sense.

🦋 ⇢ share something that has been on your heart and mind lately

This is a real unpopular opinion and will almost certainly get me cancelled, but I think that the various adult youtubers and tiktokers I see calling out the teenager/adult relationships as problematic have forgotten a) that it's fiction and has no bearing on real life, and b) what it was like being a teenager and wanting to be taken more seriously. This trope (if a type of relationship can be called a trope) didn't come out of nowhere, and watching these people decry incredibly popular ships from the 2000s-2010s because of the age gap have forgotten they're not the target audience (and also I think they're doing a discredit to the teenagers watching the show by assuming they're too stupid to understand they shouldn't want that kind of relationship anyway)

Hello, Dr. Bug. If you don't mind, may I ask what your rewriting process looks like when you write multiple drafts of a story? Just curious. Also, congratulations on finding the time to write six drafts of a fic!

In my experience, rewriting a fic is a two-step process:

Find a beta reader you trust.

Listen to them.

Trust can be achieved one of two ways. Either find a friend who is willing to swap labor with you, and read each others' stories, or find a stranger who's willing to construct a professional relationship with you before having a formal discussion about what you'd like done.

That trust is important, because it allows you to be vulnerable enough to give over something you love and poured years' worth of work into, knowing that it will be ripped to shreds by the time you get it back. That trust is important because it establishes unambiguously that this person will still respect you as a person (either out of love or out of professional courtesy) no matter how much they hate your story or you hate their edits. That trust is important too because it needs to be part of the conversation about the intent of the story.

An example: my beta Cates wrote "this phrase is too British" next to a line of dialogue from my most recent fic; I went "dang it!" and changed the line immediately. Because we know each other well, Cates knew that a) like a lot of kids who grew up on Narnia/Potter/Redwall/Chrestomanci, I often slip into Britishisms when writing fiction, b) I find misplaced Britishisms annoying, and c) I want to know. I was grateful for the correction.

A counter-example: a stranger wrote "this phrase is outdated" about a line of dialogue from a different fic; I rolled my eyes and blocked the person. Maybe the phrase is outdated, but it's one I use all the time, and it's one I'm comfortable keeping in my story. The difference between Cates's nitpick and that anon's is the difference between a stranger going "dude, your shirt and pants don't match" as the first thing they ever say to you, and your beloved roommate saying the same thing before you go out in the morning. Trust means that your roommate's being kind, and the stranger who uses the same words in the same order is being an asshole.

Listening is... so, so hard. Because it's a beloved work that you spent time crafting, and someone was mean to it. But. This is where any beta is always better than no beta, because the experience of reading a story is completely different from the experience of writing a story.

The reader usually only has as much information as the characters, and so the reader's expectations often align better with the characters' than the author's do. Classic example: Once upon a time, a camper stepped outside his tent to pee... when suddenly, a bright light came from the sky and dragged him away. He found himself in a metal room where two claw-winged alien beings approached, telling him that he had been chosen for a— At which point the reader is going "But did he ever get to pee?" and the writer is going "Who cares, the pee break was just an excuse to get him outside!" and the reader's going "ARE THERE BATHROOMS ON THIS FLYING SAUCER OR NOT? Bob the camper is dying over here!!!!" The reader's going to notice and care that Bob never got to pee, because they started this scene with the expectation that Bob had to pee. The writer, who only needed Bob to go outside long enough to get abducted, could reread their story 10,000 times and never even notice that detail because they're too busy tweaking the aliens. So the beta will add tremendous value, just by being a reader who didn't write this.

But we writers don't want to hear that we have to rework the dramatic scene where a sleepy camper suddenly finds himself swept into a vast adventure, just to add a friggin bathroom break. Ergo, it's important to read the feedback in small doses, and to pause in between reading it and responding to it. Take the feedback — that you can't leave Bob's poor kidneys this way — but consider several possible responses depending on what you want from the story. If you hate the idea of adding a pee break at all, consider having Bob instead go outside because he heard a strange noise. If you don't like the noise idea, consider having Bob successfully pee and then get abducted on his way back to the tent. If you don't want a porta-potty on your spaceship, maybe just mention that the whole time Bob is listening to the Call to Action he's also distracted by having to pee. The beta pointed out the flaw; you can decide how to fix it.

This is also where trust is all-important, because sometimes (but not most of the time) you're going to listen to a beta's feedback and go "nah, I'm not fixing that." On a different fic (set in 2000), Cates said "Fireball Cinnamon Whisky didn't come out until 2007" which is true. We talked about it. I pointed out that this is fan fiction, and low-stakes. Cates said that most of my readers probably weren't 21+ in 2007, so relatively few people will notice the anachronism. I mentioned that we both have fond (and regretful) (and fond) memories of Fireball being the go-to alcohol for dumb teenagers, because it's one of the few strong liquors that inexperienced drinkers can enjoy straight out of the bottle. So I kept the anachronism. If a total stranger had said unsolicited, "dude, Fireball didn't exist in 2000" then I would've yelled "aw, screw you!" at my computer screen and never even considered changing it. Rereading my own story, I never would've spotted the error. It took a conversation with someone I trusted to decide what to do.

So, you need a reader to tell you how to rewrite your story, and it doesn't have to be someone with expertise. Just trust. Hope this helps.

Free Fall Direct - May 2023

Hello, it’s me! The bird drawer guy. Now that Free Fall is in full swing after finishing up Chapter 1 - Terrifying Awakening, I have a few things I want to share regarding the future of the comic! So I thought I would make it all “””professional””” and make it a monthly thing where I talk about some BTS stuff going on with this project! Y’know, for those who give a flying bird.

So let’s get into it!

💜NEW WEBSITE💜

This is what the home page of the new Free Fall website looks like so far! There will be many changes made of course (i sure do love the times new roman at the top). This time it’s made in Neocities, which means no filthy dirty Wix watermark at the top anymore (sorry wix ily but you were trash)! This also means the comic will now be presented in the “normal” way, with each having its own page with arrows to click at the bottom to go to the next or previous page. Before, you just had to scroll down, but Wix wouldn’t load the entirety of Chapter 1 that way, so now it’s unreadable in that state (especially on mobile where the pages kept getting out of order), and I don’t have the energy to try and fight with a mediocre website host >:P

💜ARTWORK?💜

This website will contain a couple of new bonus features aside from the comic. One of them is the Artwork tab (a reworking of the “Art Gallery” tab from the last one). This time it will contain artwork I’ve made in the past (THAT DOESN’T CONTAIN SPOILERS), as well as concept art of the characters, locations, and other fun aspects of the story! I hope that will be a fun gander to look through, especially as more gets added to it with time! There might even be some cut content as well... oooOOhhh!

💜OST?? Like, MUSIC??💜

Oh yeah, like music.

One of my biggest visions for Free Fall was the addition of an original soundtrack that would play while you read (as an optional thing of course, and the ost would be available on youtube as well). And the OST tab would be the place to listen to any track at any time! It should be fairly easy to implement now on the new website! I’ll even put the old Free Fall tracks on my youtube under the “Free Fall Beta” playlist in there as a little bonus for that!

💜But where’s the characters tab, Strymes?? You can’t have a webcomic website without the characters tab!💜

And you’d be right! But it’s still gone, only because you can now access the characters’ “bio cards” right on the home page to learn about the cast! Under “Click HERE to learn about the Cast!” I have posted it before, but here’s a link to it if you’ve never seen it. It’s a little interactive archive of every character introduced in the story (or is confirmed to be in the story) so far: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EL9yR7b2e2eOQdZzQreuYrbqPrKfnJPKUGI-Pxh4WUA/edit?usp=sharing So that’s all I have to say about the website so far! It’s coming along and it’s been good learning how to code with HTML. A little daunting and overwhelming and gut-wrenching to get everything working... but good.

💜CHAPTER 2 NEWS💜

Now for the stuff you’re really here for.

This is a quartet of characters who are going to appear in Chapter 2. Who are they... and more importantly WHAT are they? You’ll just have to wait and see, nyeheheheheee >:3 There will of course be more of your favourites from Chapter 1 as well. I think you’re really gonna like Bella in this one XD Learning what I’ve learned from making Chapter 1, this should be a MUCH better paced romp with better writing that gets more to the point, while still having good clean dialogue, as well as better visuals (which you might have seen improved THROUGHOUT chapter 1, as that chapter took MONTHS to make lol). With that being said, it might not reach as MANY pages as chapter 1, but hopefully it will be a much more enjoyable experience overall with fun new characters!

💜IN CONCLUSION...💜

I think that’s it for now. Thank you for reading this far if you are somehow here lmao. It means a lot to me and I couldn’t be more thankful for even having an audience for this in the first place. So thank you thank you thank you. 💜😊With that being said, I’m sorry for not being as active on my socials as I used to be. I think I have less of an attachment to constantly scrolling through Insta and Tumblr these days (and I don’t have twitter to rope me back in anymore so maybe that’s a plus all around). I can assure you I am working on more art slowly but surely. I still have so many WIPS it’s not even funny, but I want to shift focus to artwork that I can truly call... well... art.And that means not just posting an oc drawing like “here you go” just to make sure I’m relevant. I couldn’t care less anymore. I am perfectly satisfied with not trying to please the algorithm at every turn, thank you VERY much.Tangent aside, thank you for reading. I’ll see you guys in June with another one of these! Weehee!

6 / 17 / 34 for the fic writer q's! <3

Thanks for such interesting questions! <3

6. Do you have your work beta'd? How important is this to your process?

I try to have my work beta'd/edited when I can. With fanfiction it's not always possible or practical. The only beta I have atm is my husband and I write faster than he feels up to editing which it absolutely fair, so usually I post things with just my own editing.

I say that the worst writing advice anyone ever gave me (or anyone) was "you don't need an editor," and I think that's mostly true. Fanfiction is... maybe not so serious, you know? I forgive other writers their typos and mostly just gloss over them and barely notice, but I hate when I find them in my own stories haha. But if you're doing something for publication, even if it's a self-pub — if multiple people are gonna be spending money on your finished product, please please please get an editor. Just my opinion as a writer, an editor, and a bookseller for over a decade. I've seen many an awful self-pub that could have been improved so much by editing.

I think a trusted second eye can make your work better. If I can't find an editor/beta reader I'll usually write something and try to edit it myself, but even though I have experience editing professionally (i.e. for money) I am still catching and correcting at least grammatical errors in my published work even months later, which sucks for the reader (sorry!). It's harder to edit your own stuff because you know what you meant so you tend to accidentally miss errors and not catch things that don't make sense/don't line up just right plot-wise, if that makes sense.

One of the tricks I use is handwriting my story and then, when I type it up I can often flesh out the story better, but that may just be how my brain works. Idk, see if it works for you!

Also, I'm usually willing to beta people's stories if they want me to so just lmk and I'll try to help out if I feel like I'm qualified (i.e. I know your fandom, and if I have enough time).

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

I never ever had writer's block until a few years ago, which fuckkinnnggg suuuuucks. The pandemic messed me up, I guess. I think the best thing is either just sitting down and writing either a set amount of words or for a set amount of time even if I hate every moment of it and if that's too much -- because let's face it, sometimes life/shit is hard — I will ... take a break! I'll either do something totally unrelated and let my brain chill out, or I'll re-watch the movie/film/read essays or other fic etc., just to get excited about it again. This is a lot harder in small fandoms or with things that have limited source material. When that happens I read/watch/find things adjacent to it and hope to find inspiration there.

34. Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer?

I mean, I think and I hope I'll still be writing fanfiction. I hope that in five years things will be different with the pandemic and I'll be able to be more out in the world, actually having wider experiences again. If I ever publish anything, I think it will probably be nonfiction before it's fiction, but we'll have to see. I'd like the opportunity to write for film.

Filing Off the Serial Numbers: Professionally Published FIcs

While texts that we might call fanfiction in the most basic sense of the term have been published in the past (think Wide Sargasso Sea), modern fanfictions have only started to go pro in the past few decades. Fanfiction authors will pull all their fic from the internet, change the character names and other ties to the source media, and publish their works as original fiction. This is a process known in the fannish community as “filing off the serial numbers,” and it’s generated a lot of controversy as more and more fan writers take their work to the professional publishing stage. In this iteration of Fic History, we’re going to explore three of the most well known professionally published fanfictions.

The Mortal Instruments

Cassandra Clare is a household name to any fantasy or YA fiction lover, but you may not know that she also used to be a household name in the Harry Potter fandom. Then writing as Cassandra Claire (peep the i), Clare was a Big Name Fan who was revered in fandom circles for writing The Draco Trilogy, among other fics, which helped to shape how the fandom characterized Draco. She pulled all of her fics from the internet prior to the publishing of City of Bones, but the name of the series that City of Bones belongs to, The Mortal Instruments, shares a name with a Ron/Ginny (yes, incest) fic Clare penned in 2004. 

I want to clarify that The Mortal Instruments is not officially a published fanfiction, but fans have noticed similarities between main characters Clary and Jace and Clare’s characterizations of Ginny and Draco, and a passage from one of her Draco fics appears verbatim in City of Bones, save for a few name edits. Due to the popularity of the series and Clare’s past as a fan writer, I chose to include the series here.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Starting in 2009, an author going by the screen name Snowqueens Icedragon began publishing a Twilight BDSM AU fic titled Master of the Universe. It was deleted from the internet in 2011, and in early 2012, Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was published to international acclaim and revilement. These two texts are the same story by the same author. While Fifty Shades generated a lot of stir in the media for being a doctored fanfiction (something many people had never heard of before), it generated a lot of stir in fandom spaces for a few reasons. One, many beta readers had worked on the story when it was a fanfiction, and those readers received none of the profit (Jamison 2013). Two, the book was now essentially mainstream media’s only perception of fanfiction, and given that it was being heavily criticized for being a poorly written inaccurate (in terms of the BDSM stuff) smut-fest, it gave fanfiction a bad name. 

The After Series

The most notable and recent example of filing off the serial numbers I can think of is the After series by Anna Todd, known to the internet originally as Imaginator1D. You may know the series now as a best-selling set of novels featuring college students Tessa Young and Hardin Scott that received a set of movie adaptations starting in 2019, but the original iteration of After was a college AU that starred characters Tessa Young and Harry Styles of One Direction fame. Harry’s then bandmates were featured as friends and stepbrothers of Styles, while Tessa is an original character. The After series also received/receives a lot of flak from fannish communities for not being a very high quality example of fanfiction, as well as glorifying what many viewed as an abusive relationship between the two leads.

Publishing your fanfic is forever going to be a touchy subject in fannish communities. Some are completely fine with it, and some fans see it as the ultimate fan sin. As Anne Jamison wrote in Fic (see Bibliography page),

“The fan culture tenet that ‘thou shalt not profit from fanworks’ has been, depending on who you talk to, an almost sacred and inviolate, wholly necessary founding principle of fandom. To others within the same community, it’s only been a necessary evil.”

She also notes that the fact that the term fanfiction doesn’t have one solid definition, and doesn’t actually clarify how close the story is to the material it was based off of. This doesn’t even bring into question the ethical dilemma surrounding profiting off of a fic that beta readers worked on for no cost. All in all, filing off the serial numbers will always be hot button issue in fandom, and I’d love to hear what thoughts y’all might have on it!

Happy reading,

KP

Further Reading:

One Americano and One Caramel Macchiato

Part 2/2

Pairing: Bang Chan (Skz) x GN!Y/N

Genre: slice of life, college!au, lab partners!au, loving from afar, angst, fluff, bittersweet, Popular!Y/n, Quiet kid!Chan, first loves, meet cute,

Warnings: none? Please tell me if I missed some or one though !!

A/n: HELLO omg stop I’m so sorry I- stop I swear I was DONE WITH THIS EARLIER BUT I——— 😔 my beta readers were so slow OMF but like I do hope you understand that, I’m so sorry also bc I already edited the last one which was part one and dude…… I FORG,OT THAT ???? THIS WAS A TWO PART STORY OMFFFF??? i tell u i cried lmao, but like PLS IM SO SORRY THIS IS THE ENDING 😔😔 ILY GUYS TY FOR UNDERSTANDING

Part 1

Your door made a soft creak as you opened it to enter your room. Wiping your hands on your sweater, you’ve always hated how your fingers turned into prunes after washing the dishes from dinner. Sitting down on your bed, the mattress dipped which let the letters that you had left, slide near your lap. 

Picking the nearest to fall off your mattress as it slid dangerously near the edge. You sighed heavily, your chest has never felt heavier with regret? Probably the lack of responsibility that you couldn’t figure out why was digging a pit in your stomach. 

You stood up to walk over to your desk. Find some old, barely-used pad paper and some pen in your pen holder. You find your fingers fidgeting with the pen you subconsciously picked, it’s been a while since you’ve actually sat at your desk with nothing to worry about, maybe you still had two things to worry about but there hasn’t been a recent memory of you writing in your diary without a care in the world. Just you in your little world.

Before you knew it something in your chest took over. It wouldn’t hurt to be careless again. If this ever haunts you again in the future just like what the movies portray it to be. You brushed the feeling of worry off as you blew a piece of hair that hell over your eyes. You hadn’t even past your 30’s and you’re worried about your future so much, this was supposed to be the time of your life, no one your age cared about how a simple letter would affect you in the future, hell, if Chan could do it, would that mean you’re worse than him? You’d be considered a coward even if you’ve taken a lot of risky turns in your life. Even if those turns weren’t your choice, you took them anyway. 

So… 

What’s one more risky turn going to do to you?

~

Dear Chan,

I know you said to throw the letters away once I’m done reading, but I think I’ll hold onto them for a while. Thank you for writing these, really, it may seem unbelievable but no one’s ever written me a letter in my time being here. To be honest, I thought the letters were endearing actually, it’s nice to know what you’ve been up to on those days, it felt like I was actually talking to you. Today was our graduation day and to be frank, ever since I got home, I just flopped onto my bed and it felt weird knowing I had nothing else to do, you know without my extracurricular activities to worry about or the people to reply to. I know you said to read your letters at least a week after, but I was really curious to see what you wrote, and I thought your letters were incredible despite you admitting you find languages and literature arts unbearable. You sounded like a professional writer, it brings my “editor-in-chief” label to shame. Jokes aside, I thought your latest letter was meaningful, I mean all your letters were meaningful, I just thought the last one was like the cherry on top. This might never reach you because I just know you’re probably already done with moving out of the dorms, and you seem to have a bright future ahead of you, and we’d probably never get the chance to meet again, but I’d like to say that, I, too, was intrigued by how you treated me. I must have fallen in love with you as well because of how you, in comparison to everyone else around me, were normal. Chan, you were a breath of fresh air. exactly what I needed within the elite school we attended. Maybe fallen in love as a friend? Or romantically? I will never know because these feelings were something that never even reached the top of my stomach, it never ached my lungs nor tore my heart into shreds. It’s funny because you would have thought I have been in a relationship or even felt these types of feelings towards people, especially with the “exceptionally special” people I was surrounded with. I have felt similar before, but I knew it was nothing more than peer pressure. Do you know that saying? Being the normal one in a group of unique people makes you equally as special? It’s not a widely known saying, Heck I don’t even remember where I had heard it, but I know you made me feel that way, I felt so indifferent but with you by my side? I felt like I was living a normal life, I felt like a student for a moment in my life, and that’s thanks to you. I wouldn’t say this is a love letter to you, but it’s a letter with feelings I don’t usually talk about to just anyone. Does it matter if it’s a love letter? I think letters store a certain feeling in them, whether it is fondness over someone or curiosity or hatred, that’s what makes it a letter right? I don’t think it’s bad to consider this a love letter, and I don’t feel any hatred or disgust for your letters either, yes it can be unsettling sometimes, but your letters didn’t hint at that at all, it was like talking to you and if anything? I’m rather fond of the fact that I got the honor of receiving letters. You may not know this, perhaps no one actually knows this, but I love arts, I love artworks of artists and I love written works from authors, a major reason as to why I wanted to join the school’s paper team. The reason why I’ve never taken up any arts classes or courses was because no one finds that intriguing anymore. No one really appreciates the arts with awe and stars in their eyes. And it's clear that not a lot find it enjoyable, even though you went out of your way and for some reason you resorted to writing letters and not just texting me or catching my attention in class. It has always been a dream of mine to get letters just like in fairytales. How’d you know that I always wanted to be the subject of a letter? I think writing letters to someone or writing a letter in general is one of the most romantic gestures someone could do. I don’t mean romantic as in a courting way, or a declaration of love, at least I don’t see it that way. We do have something called the “Romantic period”

don’t we? It had nothing to do with a plague of lovesick couples and a ton of love letters and unrequited love. It was just the literature of romanticism, it’s all about subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society and the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty. You get what I mean. It’s just known for its intense energy and passion, and never was about romance, not the kind of romance you’d find in the way couples kiss or hold hands. It’s just beautiful to write a letter, to receive one, and to address one. It's a nice change of pace from the odd confessions from a random guy I spoke to once, and suddenly he thinks we’re on our 3rd year of dating. I feel that writing a letter is one of the purest forms of declaration(?)Whatever you put into words on a piece of paper is hard to remove, especially with how much you could have written. It’s just whatever is burdening your heart or pushing you to write about. Nothing can compare to the thought that someone writing that letter was just everything that they couldn’t say to your face. Or it could be everything that they’ve been meaning to explain or say, and the fact that it’s addressed to you, has to be one of the many butterfly-filled stomach experiences one can encounter in their life. Who knows if this is my last letter to you like you said yourself, I don’t know if I’ll keep writing to you, or I’ll forget in the process, or if I’ll ever show this to you when I meet you again. Also, Chan, I’ve always wondered who gave you your nickname. I hear Jisung say your nickname a lot so I also guessed this was something your friend group calls you. Wow, writing a letter makes you realize how empty a conversation is. All I can think of talking about is about my day, and I’m sure you already know how our graduation day went.

Are you mad at me? You should be. The social divide between us was very apparent even from the start and I appreciate that you regardless tried your best to befriend me. I also wanted to be your friend, so very badly. I want you to know that I didn’t and I never wanted to lose you as a friend either, I was just scared. I know it must have hurt for me to just draw away so quickly, and only for me to realize how you never looked at me with hate and spite, but you genuinely thought I was a good person. I’m telling you this now as a way to make up for all the unsaid feelings of yours that I never got to read. Chan, I really do thank you. For the short time, we were friends, you taught me so much knowledge that I value, but if there's one most crucial lesson that you taught me it would be that nothing and no one is perfect in this world. Especially myself. Since then I felt free. You didn’t tell me that, you made me feel, and after 4 years of people telling me these things, actions always seemed to be more meaningful to me. I wish I knew this sooner, I wish I knew better too. In regret, I want to promise you that with the new people I’m going to meet, with the new people I’m going to surround myself with, I’ll know my place and I’ll know better. I know you won't even know of this promise, and I know I might break this promise in the future somehow, intentionally or accidentally, I just want to confide this promise in you, know it’s safely tucked away in this letter makes me feel safe, comfortable, and this feels like something I missed out on in the years of my youth. Regardless, I’m happy to be able to experience it just as we are to part our separate ways. If a miracle happens, and we end up seeing each other again, I hope you won’t look at me any different, and I’ll be sure to ask you to be my friend again.

Oh, and before I forget, my favorite color is yellow. And people meeting each other for the first time ask that question too, I would’ve told you the answer if you asked and if you weren’t so focused on telling me that americanos are just “superior.”

Goodbye Chan. I, too, hope to see you soon.

Sincerely yours,

Y/N.

SMALLETHO WEEK STATUS: PENULTIMATE REPORT

(please let this be penultimate report)

Okay I have 11 hours to get these out in saturday my time zone and i am going to do it, or i'll take my me off and throw me in the lake (it's right there down the street I'll do it.)

You'd think they'd be done by now. You'd think given how many days ago they were first "basically drafted" they'd be done right now. But noooo, some bitch (me) decided the fic "deserve more" and there are scenes "they really need" and like fine yes I still agree but why can't they just be done.

Red Life fic:

the first three sections are about incidents after turning red than made etho go "huh" about joel. they serve their purpose, but currently exist mostly in the form i scrawled down on the back of another fic in my car after the dentist. I could def describe things more, add a little more reflection about their place in the double life ecosystem as they start murdering and burning

gotta make good kiss at end, and the last bits of lead in, and the little bit after

the main issues here is that i gotta go rewatch DL ep 4 from multiple POVs. at minimum i need pearl's pov of dying, and maybe check for some other people's reactions to joel's shit that are not in smalletho vids but in universe they would have heard. (if only i could shove knowledge of every traffic episode fully into my head, sigh. so much content.

so that's not too bad!

fuck me there's 36 [] around words i don't like/phrases that need to be replaced/etc. fml fml fml

LARPer au morning after fic

apparently i'm adding all this backstory, which means i got to take it out o the author's notes, which i hope will make it more appealing. it's mostly about the party that this is morning after, but it's joel pov and *very* focused on getting laid, he's kinda aware that a lot of shit went down for pretty much everyone else

i want to add a very quick awkward bit with joel asking jimmy about the party the night before, currently he's totally succeeding at making joel (who is very distracted) think he's fine. and it's not gonna get explained in this story, but i'm not setting up a giant mystery, it's just more of "joel missed some shit last night". if that upsets people... i'm sorry! i'm actually very new t writing fic but it feels fine? it's a 5k story, alluding to the rest of the world seems fine

then it's just, fuck holding my breath... 40 sets of []. many many many of them, when i have people look at them, they say "that's fine", and it's just me at "will i have a time to struggle for a synonym/rephrasing

Dear everyone who compliments my writing skill (which i love, keep on doing it)

i hope you are not comparing yourself to me. here's some reasons why i probably have a leg (several legs?) up on you

i am very old and have been writing in one way or another possibly since before you could write.

I legit used to teach sat prep in writing, i have been trained in this and made money on it

if you live like i do, when you are my age you will also have a pretty big vocabulary

i usually edit a lot. I get beta, i throw problem sentences and such at friends, i've gotten proofreading from actual professionals. If i published most of my first drafts, well. I might not get as many "well written" compliments (though i think my plot and characterization would be similar levels of quality, my voices not so much - i have google docs for the way people talks and go through my dialogue looking for places to change things. it's actually great. i could share it?)

it's wild that what is my most popular fic by 3x is the one that went from thought of to posted in <12 hours and thus had only quick editing. so, it's not alway from editing

i just never want anyone who doesn't have those things to compare themself negatively to me, y'know? That said I'm a hypocrite, I compare myself negatively to professional writers in other fandoms. So, do as i say, etc

am i avoiding getting back to writing? yes

back to joel talking about asking scott to help him get tarted up

okay one last thing, me being pleased with my writing - i am jumping between my early 20s larper au and my late 20s/30s burning man au, and i think i am doing a good job at giving age appropriate characterizations to similar version of the same characters. my 21 year old Etho feels 21 to me and my early 30s Etho feels early 30s to me. These ensembles are very much based on my own experiences so I've got a lot to work with, 60 year olds would be harder :)