#let me come back to tumblr by posting my fucking novel of a fanfic
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Happy valentine's day, fellow perverts. This is my greatest gift to the fandom.
#ffxiv#emet-selch#final fantasy xiv#happy valentine's day#luciposting#i'm sorry y'all#a smart man would be like#let me come back to tumblr by posting my fucking novel of a fanfic#instead i post this#big brain
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⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆ ⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆
TO SPREAD SOME HOLIDAY CHEER (AND AN EXCUSE TO ESCAPE YOUR IN-LAWS, OVERBEARING EXTENDED RELATIVES, SIBLINGS, and/or PARENTS)
LETS PLAY A LITTLE GAME
𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞, 𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠
thank you my beloved @munson-blurbs for tagging me 🤍
𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭...
𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: my true favorite is being used somewhere else on this list so I shall go with the runner up. Harrington!reader sticks up for Eddie after Jason calls him a freak
𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜: As You Wish, Part 1 (older!eddie x babysitter!reader)
𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜: St. Patrick’s Day Party
𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: Top This, I believe. It was Easter and I decided I wanted to post an Eddie Easter fic and bam, somehow it came together very quickly.
𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎: Where the Heart Is, Part 4. My God there was some serious writers block trying to get that one done
𝚏𝚒𝚌 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚜𝚔: my small collection of older!eddie stories that started with this ask about Eddie putting reader into subspace
𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: Steve. He just doesn’t spark my creativity like Munson does
𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: Eddie my beloved
𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛: never say never
𝚂𝟻 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜?: tears. Lots of them. Mostly from me. Max will come back, Dustin will be a wreck, Will is gonna open up to Jonathan and/or Mike, hoping for at least an Eddie cameo, and I’m a stancy truther so I’m already planning the wedding
𝚔𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚠𝚑𝚢/ 𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝?: I think so, but I’m not sure they’ll necessarily call him kas
𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚢 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚠𝚑𝚢/𝚠𝚑𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚝?: God yes, please. They’ve both grown so much and are better suited for one another now and I don’t care what anyone says, Steve never stopped loving her.
𝚊 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎: gonna be completely honest and say I have no idea which blogs are considered bigger or smaller ones
𝚊 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚛𝚋𝚘 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎: @icallhimjoey is where I always know I can go for inspiration!
𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖: the first ones I remember reading were by @luveline!
𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚜𝚝 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖: @munson-blurbs cuz I’ve had a tumblr crush on her since day one
𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚎: it’s gotta be
𝚐𝚘𝚊𝚕𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚟𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛: Completed my first series on here. And in non-fanfic writing I successfully finished the outline for my first two novels!
𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛: 17.5k for Where the Heart Is, Part 5
𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚎: idiots in love
𝚜𝚖𝚞𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚕𝚞𝚏𝚏?: it depends on the mood I’m in
f̾u̾c̾k̾ ̾m̾a̾r̾r̾y̾ ̾k̾i̾l̾l̾
𝚝𝚎𝚍, 𝚖𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚢 𝚘𝚛 𝚖𝚛. 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚔𝚎?: fuck Ted because a certain bff of mine wrote a fic about exactly this and made it hot. Marry Mr. Clarke cause he got that steady paycheck coming in. Kill Murray because I couldn’t not handle that man for long periods of time
𝚓𝚘𝚢𝚌𝚎, 𝚔𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚗, 𝚘𝚛 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚊? (𝚍𝚞𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚗’𝚜 𝚖𝚘𝚖): fuck Karen because hello billy had the right idea. Marry Joyce because she’s Joyce frickin Byers and I would do anything for that queen. Kill Claudia I am sorry but at least she shall be with mews
𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛, 𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚞𝚗𝚜𝚘𝚗, 𝚍𝚛. 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚛? Fuck Hopper because yes daddy but also I could not live with that man lol. Marry Wayne Munson because DUH he’s Wayne and I would happily be his wife. Kill Dr. Brenner because f u papa
𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚢𝚕𝚎, 𝚓𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗, or 𝚔𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚑? Honestly this one is so difficult. Fuck Argyle, marry Jonathan, and kill Keith. I have no explanations for any of these
𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚎, 𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚛 𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚢𝚕𝚎? Fuck Stevie boy. Marry Eddie because he is the love of my life. Kill argyle sorry bruh
𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚋����𝚝, 𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗, 𝚟𝚎𝚌𝚗𝚊? Fuck a demogorgan cause that seems like an adventure. Marry Vecna because in the words of JQ have you seen Jamie? Kill demobats cause they hurt my Stevie and did unspeakable things to my beloved Edward
no pressure tags: @eddiemunsonsmum @hellfire--cult @joejoequinnquinn @silkholland @wheels-of-despair @ghost-proofbaby @word-wytch @storiesbyrhi
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Thinking a lot about that one post about "make your OCs a hotter cooler version of yourself" and I want to show y'all something:
I'm writing a novel right now that started as fanfic, but got so distant from the original source material I admitted to myself this story is now it's own beast.
On the surface, it's erotica about polyamorous witches harnessing magic via BDSM. But it's also about taking your agency back from oppressive governments, family legacies, and your own traumatic past in order to become a more whole, alive version of yourself.
These drawings are of one of the three main characters. On the left is how he starts the series, and on the right is how he ends it.
He begins the first novel In a Bad Place. He's been exploited and institutionalized for several years and essentially turned into an instrument by having his own desires used against him. This has eroded his sense of self worth quite a bit and a lot of his arc in the first book is about relearning the basics of "you are allowed to say 'fuck that' about shit you don't want."
By the third book, his arc becomes, "Living for yourself, even when it makes other people uncomfortable, does not make you selfish, or unworthy of the things you want."
Now, none of my characters are complete self inserts, and none of them have the exact same problems I do. But one of the most effective ways I have found to write characters that feel real is to channel shit I've felt, gone through and experienced through another lens.
So, Story Time:
--CW: domestic abuse, emotional and verbal--
About two years ago, I got my shit together and left an abusive relationship that really devastated my self image and my ability to trust other people. My partner, who has a lot of trauma themselves and I think coped with that by being manipulative as hell, was very good at using my shame against me, and playing a game of ping pong with my emotions---I could rapidly go from their dream come true to the destroyer of their heart, often in the span of a few days, or even hours. In a single night, they could make fun of me for my gawkishness, my clothes, my inflamed skin, and also berate me for a stranger flirting with me without me catching it.
--end the abuse bits--
It was rough.
Since leaving that relationship, I've been doing a lot of what I'd call, "catching up" in terms of owning my own dreams for myself and reshifting my life to put me at the center. It's been really difficult, especially as shitshows unexpected have made me a primary caregiver for an aging loved one. But it's also been incredibly freeing to let go of trying to be someone who is lovable and just loving myself.
As I go through this novel, a lot of T's character growth stems from him needing to figure out what "being himself" looks like outside of being useful to someone else.
Part of being himself includes taking care of his body.
Traditionally, especially in romance genre work, I feel like the "glow up" a character whose struggled goes through is often about them getting more conventionally beautiful. For men, that often means getting leaner, more ripped, and more manly.
But (as I've seen many folks on tumblr point out) often times healing means getting softer and yes, fatter. And that is beautiful too.
This is a T4T4T love story, and the trans woman in this series starts the series fat and stays fat, and she is loved and desired the entire time.
In T's case, he starts the series with a lot of chronic pain and fatigue, and while he is thin and muscular, he doesn't have stamina to really enjoy the things he used to love. Regaining weight over the course of the series is about him regaining connection with his body and strength. It also is him literally learning to take up space again in his life, regardless of what other people think of him taking up that space.
(and yes, admittedly I do love men who are built like refrigerators, and writing what you love, especially in romance, I think is a key to making work that's enjoyable to read)
And the funny thing is, writing T this way is helping me as I go through my own healing. My body has changed *a lot* thanks to choices I've made, and even as I feel the fear of "will anyone else want me" I am compelled by how much more comfortable I am in my body and how much I find myself desirable in ways I never did before.
And writing a character going through similar changes, letting him get bigger and louder and bolder as the story goes on, and writing a life for him where that makes him more and more desirable to people around him, yes is a wish fulfillment fantasy. But also, it makes that fantasy feel much more possible.
T is a weird little guy who loves bugs and carrion birds and scavengers and likes growing plants and singing offkey as he gyrates in his kitchen. He's kinda clammy all the time and his skin gets green around the edges and he's got a pudgy belly to match the thighs that wear through his jeans. He also knows who he is by the end of the series, in a way that makes him the sort of confident that gets beautiful people to sidle up to him from across a crowded room. He's also funny and caring and fun to be around in a way that makes his lovers travel across the country to get him back when he's snatched up from their bed.
He's messy, and he's loved. Just as I wish to be. Just as I am capable of being.
Just as you are capable of being.
So I dunno, maybe have fun with your OC, let them be a hotter, cooler version of you. But don't let predetermined ideas of what hotness is control that.
Dig around a little, push against the ways you've been shamed into feeling ugly. Feeling too much.
Let your character be all those things you were made to feel embarassed about.
Let them be that even more than you allow yourself to be.
Then imagine a world where they're even cooler and sexier because of those things.
#writeblr#writerblr#hermes rants#stories#Kodd community if you think you recognize this guy you absolutely do#I did not try too hard here#my beautiful gremlin son rooting around in the underbrush for bugs#body image#weight gain
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I genuinely liked all the obscure Sonic Facts that Greeny would post about! It sucks, but I found them really interesting!
However, the constant Ian Flynn bashing was really annoying. I understand not liking his writing style, it’s not perfect and can be criticized. But I swear to fuck, he would complain about the tiniest things!
Then he would talk about Flynn stans and how they sucked his dick constantly. I’m sorry to say this, but Greeny was hate-sucking Ian’s dick constantly!!!!
I don’t usually follow drama in the Sonic Fandom, since I’m too old to be getting angry over stupid things. I just stay in my lane, occasionally read fanfics for my ships, reblog theorizing/positive posts and cute fanart. Like, I think fandoms should be fun, so I try to have fun.
I followed Greeny since, as I said, I like the trivia they posted about and wanted to learn more.
At some point though, I think I became embarrassed to like IDW Sonic because of how much Greeny and their group would criticize Flynn and Evan. I took a break from the comics because the zombot arc had exhausted me, but I think reading the constant criticism made me not want to pick it back up. I still haven’t picked IDW Sonic back up.
I also feel like it’s gotten worse over the years. Like, I don’t remember seeing this type of stuff, or at least not as much complaining, back when I first started following Greeny.
Eventually, I stopped having fun and enjoy my time with Greeny’s posts. I felt like it made me more ashamed of what I enjoyed, and that’s not how I want to spend my time. It wasn’t even thoughtfully negative, it was just mean-spirited.
I recently stopped following Greeny, I think before Frontiers came out. He had made a post bashing the Flynn’s dialogue in one of the leaked cutscenes at the time (when Sonic first encounters the voice). Then he made another post translating the Japanese of that scene… and it was literally the exact same fucking sentence!!!!
I realized then that I was done with Greeny, that he was going to criticize the English dialogue for the entire fucking game. And I didn’t want to deal with it.
I wanted to try and enjoy Sonic Frontiers with being ashamed!
Sorry for the super long rant. Didn’t expect this ask to be a novel. I know you weren’t really talking about Greeny, but I’ve been holding this in and I just needed to air out my grievances.
You don’t have to answer or even post this ask, I just needed to get this off my chest. Again, sorry.
Honestly anon, I'm glad you posted this because my experience was very similar. For a long time I followed Greeny because they had good insights and made good posts, and even thought they acted cunty sometimes and had opinions that I thought were outright ignorant, I generally let it slide because things were relatively civil
But then yeah, the Zombot Arc brought out the worst in her and a lot of people, including me. God going back to my posts from that time is exhausting because I was furiously debating every one of these people and we were all being brick walls about it, and I could feel the discourse get naster and nastier.
It was around that time I remember her and the other people in her group just getting meaner in general and becoming very hateful towards Ian specifiaclly. Like they didn't like him a ton before but it became downright vitriolic and it felt like even discussing the guy in anything other than a negative light was a reason for them to jump down your throat
Even after the Zombot arc ended, shit remained so toxic that it was one of the reasons (well that and just my focus shifting from Tumblr in general) I just kinda left this site and didn't really look back, because it was getting to the point where I was dreading every issue coming out for the inevitable fucking discourse.
From the looks of it, it seemed like it only got worse with time, especially with the release of Frontiers.
Here's my ultimate fucking take. Greeny is entitled to her opinions, however crudely worded or wrong or bad faith they may be. But people are also entitled to call her out on her opinions and attitudes or just flat out ignore them, much as they are with anyone else's opinions, including mine.
The only reason I got involved in all of this shit was because I vented an opinion on Twitter and it got out of hand. Most of the time, I'm like you and just content to vibe in the fandom and talk about whatever, and I'd like to go back to that. I'd much rather be talking about my fucking OCs and my verse than dumb fandom drama bullshit
But like I said, I'm glad you sent this both to get it off your chest and to give me the chance to do the same. At this point I've just had so many bad experiences in this fandom (some of them of my own doing I will freely admit) that it's hard to care anymore. But I don't think anyone should be afriad to speak up about anyone in this fandom, even someone like Greeny or Crusher or a popular artist or whomstever the fuck
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Announcement + Short break?
For the last few months, I've been thinking about whether writing fanfiction and "owning" a Tumblr blog is normal and/or healthy for a 27 y.o. lonely, sad, single girl.
And the answer is, I have no fucking clue.
Before you read more, please note that I am not judging anyone in this most and you do what makes you happy. I am not making fun of anyone. It's about me and my struggle in life and trying to figure out what to do.
I love that it makes me want to write and be creative. But there I this voice inside my head saying "it's lame, you are obsessed with a fictional character, it's unhealthy". (I mean, the voice sounds like the girls from my elementary school that used to mock me for writing fanfics).
I always try to think about it as a way of practice before I am ready to write my first novel. And yet I find myself, thinking about how unhealthy this world is for me. But I love this. I love reading all those amazing stories and I love to hide here from reality. And then I realize that this hiding is holding me back.
I have these moments when I am stressed by not being online, present and writing fanfic. I then think I don't have time for anything and have to write and it's just... anxiety the house, I guess.
I fear that this whole world is holding me back.
I am 27, never experienced having a bf, never dated, and don't have a lot of friends and I think it might be because of this..?
I need to overcome my laziness and shyness and start doing something for myself. I want to focus on myself and try other new things. I need to focus on my health and my dog.
So, here's what's going to happen:
I WILL finish Vendetta - one more chapter to go. I also have a bonus chapter in mind and I will also work on that. I want you to know that I will try to post the last chapter asap and the bonus chapter might come later (in a few weeks). If you want to know more, click here: VENDETTA MASTERLIST
Otherwise, I won't be reading your stories or be present here at least until the end of August. After that period, I will come back and have a look, tell you if I wrote something (because I missed it) and post it here.
I planned something. Unfortunately, I don't know whether I will post it here in a few months or not.
Alright, I am rambling.
I need a serious break. It may happen that I'll be back in a week or two.
At this very moment, I know nothing. I want to cry, to be honest.
I'm not even sure if these are the right words I want to put out.
I am lost.
And, as you can read, that's why I need a break. If anyone will actually read this.
Thank you for reading and I will see you later.
If you have any advice on life and how to stop living in my shell and be more social, let me know.
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I need caffeine, mental stability, and my least favorite thing to admit to need, help. MOST of my Tumblr posts are jokes or my art, BUT I am also a writer... er, more I want to be a writer. I've written short stories, fanfics, poems, and auto-biographical cathartic word vomit before, but now I'm trying for the big guy, a real book. A real, full novel. All original characters, setting, and storyline. And, I've done quite a bit of that already. I have a solid idea and base for the story and the characters... but I could still use some help here. So, basically, I wanted to throw out some of my ideas and plans and I wanted you guys to give me opinions and things you might like to see come of the story if you were to read it.
In this world, there are the mortals and the immortals, different races fall into different categories, immortals like elves, fae, and nymphs, are typically unkillable, one can only be felled by a weapon of magical origin. And since the war between all the races a thousand years ago, the immortals tend to keep to themselves, hidden away in their magic cities. One day a seemingly mortal man is found unconscious and bleeding out with an arrow through his shoulder just outside elf territory. The elf that found him took him in and with the help of others nursed him back to health. When the man expressed no interest in going back to the other human and even exhibited fear toward the prospect of going back, the elf offered to let the human stay was him as he had the space anyway. Slowly the elf and the human get to know each other and start to fall in love with each other. The elf teaches the human how to read, write, and fight. They spend almost all their time together. Through the skills, the elf thought him, the human learns that he is not in fact human, but chooses to keep it to himself. Later the elf and the human get into a fight and the human reveals that he is not in fact human in a desperate attempt to get the elf to see that he would be fine, but it only makes things worse. They separate after the fight and the "human" gets captured by the people who had imprisoned and tortured him before he'd been found by the elves. Once the elf comes to terms with the new information, he goes to save the "human" from the actual humans, and take him back home. They have to adjust to their new life together, but they get their happily fucking ever after. Because gay boys need a happy ending goddammit.
Also, just some extra world information that fits into the story without really being plot, but the elves are a gender non-conforming race, so the main elf character is actually trans masc/afab/ftm and there are also non-binary, gender fluid, trans fem/amab/mtf, and agender elves, it's just a normal thing for them. (yes, there are still cis elves, but the point is as a society, it's perfectly normal to change your gender identity) (I basically ctrl alt deleted transphobia in elven society)
I have fully thought out all the details for the main three characters (the elf, the "human", and another character I intentionally left out of my brief description to keep things vague) if anyone wants to know more about them.
Other than that, any questions, ideas, opinions, or encouragement that you guys have I am open to and would love to read and possibly incorporate into the story. Any help you can give is appreciated, even if it is just liking this and telling me you want to read more, sometimes all I need is encouragement and to know that people actually want to read what I'm writing. Thanks!
#writing#writerscommunity#writer things#writers on tumblr#writer inspiration#please help#i need heeeeelp#writer problems#book writing#fantasy novel#romance novels#novel writing#trans male#transgender#trans guy#trans man#trans pride#gender nonconforming#non binary#gay#gay pride#gaypride#loveislove#pansexual#transgender pride#trans mlm#gay mlm#mlm concept#mlm books#mlm writing
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i’ve been going through your’s (and others’) posts about americentrism in fandom, particularly about the rising popularity of east asian media - cdrama, mostly, but anime and kpop too - in english-speaking circles. but i couldn’t find much on fic-based racism for kpop, so when i saw you’re a fan of BTS and did extensive research, i hope you can give me some insight:
(this is a fanfic-specific question) what are your views on if xianxia AUs of kpop or anime are racist; or if it’s not a binary, what are the pitfalls?
see, i’m confused (esp. w/ kpop, which is mostly an rpf genre) because of:
1) the thorny real world political situation between s.korea and china— the chinese gvt’s bans and accusations of historical cultural theft; racism from both sides about idol nationality,
2) the historical racism from The West (‘all asian cultures are the same’) which manifest particularly strongly with the recent cdrama and donghua boom - fans calling donghua ‘anime’ or manhua ‘manga’
3) the confusion of terminology from korean-to-english and chinese-to-english, neither culture having had the wide reach of anime.
i’m sure lots of examples of those come to mind.
coming back to xianxia— the genre is so steeped in chinese culture, language, and aesthetic history that i worry about casual racism especially in kpop rpf, which is the fandom i’m thinking of making xianxia AUs for. people already confuse hanfu/hanbok, and korean shamanism is less known than japanese shintoism or chinese taoism, and afa i can find, the concept of ‘xian’ only exists in taoism.
obviously european-based fantasy AUs for kpop and anime (and cdrama, but i didn’t check AO3 for those) exist, but high-fantasy-as-descended-from-tolkien is a) familiar to english-speaking fandom, b) versatile enough by virtue of being depicted a long time and thus experimented upon, that c) is able to exist, more or less, separately from its european roots. so there is less chance of someone shouting ‘racist!’ or ‘cultural erasure!’ when a BTS fic is a D&D-style fantasy.
but xianxia is a new genre to lots of western fans. wuxia/xianxia/xuanhuan is poorly translated into english as a whole, and its core concepts are difficult to translate, and i worry about misappropriation or appearing as if i believe the sinosphere to be an undifferentiated and interchangable cultural blob if i put kpop groups into wuxia/xianxia AUs.
(s.korea does have wuxia/xianxia novels, but reddit tells me those use a lot of hanja, so obviously borrowing exists in wider culture, and china also has media that’s distinctly japanese, e.g. 阴阳师, as well as manga that are set elsewhere, e.g. Akatsuki no Yona, and Magi, but those are original IPs)
for context, i’m 2nd-gen chinese diaspora and can read the language but did not grow up immersed in the culture. i can find mandarin material on my own and to some extent i can spot the cultural symbols, but reading up on korean and japanese culture in mandarin has an upsettingly high chance of coming across han-supremacist texts. ...so, apologies for the essay, and ...thoughts?
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Hoooo boy, this is already long and it's going to get longer... RIP everyone's dash. This is a rare time that I really wish Tumblr would let me do nested readmores like Dreamwidth does, but it won't, so everyone will just have to deal.
I think the very, very short version of what I have to say is that 2nd-gen Chinese diaspora are exactly who cares about this so deeply you can't get a word of fic out while everybody else is blundering happily along, doing whatever offensive, dumbass thing they like. (Or else wallowing in equally useless US white guilt while writing only things that are "correct" according to one specific BNF's primer or something, and still getting everything hilariously wrong.)
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I will trust fandom to figure out when xianxia AUs are racist at the point fandom can reliably tell that The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity is not fucking xianxia, and its protagonists are not "cultivators".
Or, even better, at the point that fanfic for every historical/fantasy setting from Les Mis to The Untamed stops being modern coffee shop and college AUs that are blatantly American coffee shops and colleges.
[Insert rant here about Korean coffee shops and their magnificence vs. the anemic, boring-ass coffee shop culture found in BTS fanfics. WE HAVE YOUTUBE FOOD BLOGGERS, PEOPLE! YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS!]
----POINT ONE: Chinese government = bag of dicks----
The current mainland government being asshats is not a reason to do anything. Period. Historical cultural theft? By Korea from China??? Are you fucking kidding me? Korea was a tiny satellite being stepped on by the might of one of the most powerful empires in history. Korea was certainly influenced by China, and from there, the influence made its way to Japan, but neighboring countries experiencing cultural exchange is not "theft". Why are you listening to the Chinese government anyway? That's like listening to Trump.
As for people being racist about idols, like fans within South Korea not liking group members who are not South Korean, that's sad, but it's not the fault of other fans who aren't assholes. Why should it dictate what fanfic AUs someone writes?
It's commonplace and perfectly fine that the fantasy genre traditions in the sinosphere have been influenced heavily by China just as folklore itself has been influenced by Chinese folklore. Should you, a Chinese-American or Chinese-Canadian or whatever not be allowed to write Marvel AUs or enjoy Disney princesses beyond Mulan because that would make you too "white" or something? Come on!
I'm not saying there's zero potential for offense here, but it's going to mostly be about the execution and/or just be in the eye of the beholder.
----POINT TWO: Loanwords----
#2 there is especially pointless. I'm all for teaching fans what the Chinese words for things are, but you know what the word manhua is?
漫画
You know what the word manhwa is?
Well, okay, between Korean not using hanja much and various historical factors, it's apparently 漫畵, but still.
You know what Japanese manga is? YOU GUESSED IT:
漫画
I'm not saying we should entirely conflate these or fail to give China credit for the comics that come from there, but this extreme preciousness about creating two new loan words makes me roll my eyes. If someone calls it "Chinese manga" or something, they are not some racist monster.
This reminds me of weebs getting their panties in a bunch over how ~manga~ is a sacred category that is different from "comics", a word which means "not Japanese"... meanwhile like 50% of the manga I own are from publishers who stamp "comics" all over the spines of every volume. Manga/manhua/manhwa in their original contexts are cognates that just mean comics, from the US to Belgium to East Asia.
If you want to see this in action, go to the English-language article on "comics". Click the sidebar links to Japanese, Chinese, and Korean and see what you find.
Chinese 'donghua' isn't a cognate with the Japanese and Korean words because... uh... those are just "animation"--a loanword from English! But 'donghua' too is just a word that means all animation, regardless of origin, in its original context.
Now, that doesn't mean we can't make more specific loan words that mean something slightly different from the original form of the word. Those languages do it with English all the time. But being extremely precious about these words instead of addressing larger issues of dumbassery about Asia is not actually that woke, and it's certainly not helpful.
----POINT THREE pt. 1: There is no default----
Now we get to the real meat of the argument, and nonnie... oh my god... Where do I start?
First of all, you have made the most elementary Western dumbass mistake, which is treating the West as a default. I was going to say "white" dumbass mistake, but then I finished reading your ask. Wow, you're giving off big White Guilt energy right now, nonnie. I feel like maybe you need more... like... other Chinese diaspora kpop nerds to hang out with or something? This feels like you're getting all of your input from the most fear-mongering, dutyfic-writing, debbie downer parts of fandom. But anyway...
There is no default.
English-speaking fans are more familiar with Tolkien, so a Tolkien AU erases less South Koreanness than an Untamed one? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???
Yeah, playing it "safe" by making everything as generically US as possible is fandom's usual move, and it's less likely to get you yelled at, but that's only because the form of racism--or really cultural hegemony--it represents is so pervasive that it's impossible to pick a target and most of the yellers are guilty of this one themselves.
Let me give you an analogy from vidding that I've been thinking of writing meta about for a while:
A lot of vidders in the narrow Vividcon type vidding space, which traces its roots to Escapade slash con and back to ye olde Media Fandom vidding and Kandy Fong, are concerned about using kpop to vid cdramas. Is this insensitive? Is it conflating cultures?
But...
Not only is using Panic at the Disco to vid any source neutral, but so is using ABBA.
I have never, never, never seen a single English-speaking vidder treat ABBA as anything other than a universally-available default that is part of all of "our" culture and available for any use. And I agree that ABBA is generally treated like that by myopic United States culture.
Yet ABBA's choice to sing in English is no different from BTS' recent all-English songs. It was a calculated move to win Eurovision and to be competitive in an international market, and not just an international market of native English speakers but a European market that was receptive to English as a lingua franca.
I don't have any fandom friends from Sweden (well, that I know of), but I cannot help but imagine that how Swedish people see their most famous music group of all time and how Americans view yet another famous pop group singing in English is... somewhat different.
Yes, things like the movie Mamma Mia! have let us complacently think of ABBA as "ours", but half the Korean shit I like turns out to have Korean-Americans involved in its making, and ABBA is not American at all.
[See also: all those times Greek anons have sent me asks saying that no, actually, they're not cool with their mythology and culture being "everyone's" when their modern people are erased and hated.]
This myopia is a combination of seeing white faces and thinking "default" with thinking that appropriation from or erasure of European cultures is 100% neutral and fine.
So yes, nonnie, you would be safer writing a Western high fantasy AU than an Asian-but-not-Korean one, but only because the fans around you are both ignorant and racist.
----POINT THREE pt. 2: Research is fun----
I want to get back to this quote specifically:
b) versatile enough by virtue of being depicted a long time and thus experimented upon, that c) is able to exist, more or less, separately from its european roots.
Like I said above, I think c is straight up bullshit. Looking out at a sea of Western-flavor AUs does make people feel like Asianness is being erased, and some European things appear divorced from roots to one white Western person yet not to another.
But b is also worthy of digging into because it is simply untrue that xianxia is new or hasn't been experimented upon.
I know you meant within an English-speaking Western context, and you're right, but think about it: If you wanted to write your xianxia AU "right" or if you wanted to expand beyond an Untamed AU to a more general xianxia one, how would you do it? (I know you didn't specify Untamed, but that's what lots of n00bs are writing.) It's pretty obvious, isn't it?
You look to Chinese writers.
Not only can you just consume more xianxia canons, but you can also look up the many primers explaining genre tropes and their origins in Chinese folklore, other genres, traditional medicine and religion, etc.
I was familiar with a lot of East Asian stuff before I watched The Untamed, but I wasn't familiar specifically with xianxia, and I was a little lost at first. I looked up general info, and it was very helpful. (I think my biggest confusion was the core transfer, which was cleared up by finding out that cores aren't usually a literal physical organ like that, and that's just a MDZS bit of worldbuilding. It seems like cores are more commonly treated how I'd expect from traditional Asian medicine, martial arts, etc.)
I didn't do this because I wanted to do some guilt-ridden ass-covering. I did it because I'm a nerd and I was interested.
Research is fun!
Or at least, it can be if you treat it as such. If you look shit up because you're curious, it will inevitably influence your writing, but I don't think you should have to pass some high bar of Correct Woke Knowledge because that kind of gatekeeping means far less fic, and what does get written may still sound "wrong" to lots of readers. There is no magic pill to level up your cultural competency like you're a cultivator who needs to fight a boss battle.
There is no Woke Seal Of Approval that will guarantee your fic is perfect and can offend no one.
There is no such thing as "safe".
I'm not saying you should go be racist on purpose or that you should never incorporate feedback into your next fic, but ultimately, making art is about taking chances and not endlessly revising old work or stressing about every single viewer response.
----POINT THREE pt. 3: Taking up space----
Honestly, the vibe I'm getting is that you are afraid to take up space. Why do I, a white girl, feel perfectly entitled to write about Asian things? I'm sure some lurkers will be going "LOL, because you're a racist bitch", but the way I see it is that I'm willing to assert my right to an opinion.
You, as Chinese diaspora or just as a human who likes both kpop and xianxia, have a right to an opinion.
Are you "authentically" mainland Chinese? No. You're authentically yourself. If xianxia speaks to you, then it's a perfectly acceptable type of AU for you to write. As an Asian diaspora person, you know perfectly well that different parts of Asia are different. If someone else assumes you're conflating them, maybe that just shows their own lack of knowledge and desire to lord it over you.
In the US, we conflate our locally oppressed minority issues, which include Asians, with our stealing native culture issues. But our Native population is relatively small and their cultural output relatively easy to drown out on a global scale. Overall US culture can easily pretend American Indians are all dead and gone. Our history of slavery means that most black people here don't have a direct link back to a specific African culture, and the culture white entertainers steal from is that created by black entertainers here. These are the contexts cultural appropriation discourse springs from and is most applicable to. (And I still think we go overboard on cultural appropriation discourse and misuse it to make art more boring, e.g. by whining about non-US rap even when it is respectful, but at least some form of it makes sense in this original context.)
But East Asian cultures are a very different matter. South Korea isn't the biggest or most powerful, but kpop is media made primarily by and for an ethnic majority speaking a majority language in a geographical region where they're top dog. Yes, some idiots can't tell the difference between China, Japan, and Korea, but these are places with their own geographical territories, languages that are not endangered, and healthy media industries. Idols already get to celebrate their own culture just fine.
I'm not saying put zero thought into all this, but from the sound of things, you're currently putting in way too much.
Your Chinese heritage is not in danger from you getting it wrong. It has all the other Chinese people behind it. South Korea, while less powerful, is still a pretty powerful global culture, and you're certainly not getting it wronger than a bunch of white girls writing coffee shop AUs.
Basically, if you silence yourself, you're decreasing diversity and joy, not serving cultural sensitivity.
----YOUR ACTUAL QUESTION----
Okay, your actual question was about the pitfalls and how to do it better instead of worse. This is exactly the right question to be asking.
I honestly think the main thing you need to do is tag it 'xianxia AU'. Having that tag demonstrates that you understand that you are picking a specific genre. If people assume you don't know what xianxia is or that you don't understand it's not Korean, that's on them.
The second thing I would do is lay out a few rules in an author's note if you feel you can't make them clear enough in the fic. You don't need to be tediously didactic about it. I'm thinking of something equivalent to those notes on a/b/o that are like "In my a/b/o, betas have [specific thing] and aren't just regular humans". But if your fic makes it clear how the world works, then you don't need to do this.
If you want to adapt the principles of xianxia to an ancient-but-fantasy Korean setting, go for it. If you want to set your fic in ancient fantasy China, go for it. Your research process would look slightly different in each case.
In terms of research, I'm still thinking about this bit:
people already confuse hanfu/hanbok, and korean shamanism is less known than japanese shintoism or chinese taoism, and afa i can find, the concept of ‘xian’ only exists in taoism.
Here's the thing: a person who can tell a Tang Dynasty outfit from a Ming Dynasty one probably won't confuse either with a Korean outfit. Someone who knows fuckall will have a hard time with swathes of historical Asian dress. The same thing is true of European historical dress.
Refusal to treat live humans as having multiple cultures is the problem. Period.
Someone saying 'hanbok' when they mean 'hanfu' or having trouble distinguishing styles of "historical" outfits as interpreted through modern and possibly fantasy media is a red herring. It might be a symptom of genuinely conflating the cultures or it might be a slip of the tongue.
It's super interesting to me that you mention shamanism because I'm actually researching it right now for an original book I'm writing. I want sources on Korean shamanism, and I'm not finding much that's easily accessible in English. I haven't looked at journal articles yet though, and that's where I expect the better info is. For the moment, I'm rereading The Catalpa Bow because I found my old copy in a box. It's about Japanese shamanism. Not Shinto: shamanism. In fact, the first chapter makes a big deal about how dumb Western scholarship insists on treating "Shinto" and "Buddhism" as two entirely separate strata of Japanese religion, but to look at shamanism, you need to accept that it's a huge mishmash of syncretic folk religion that is both/neither and that different areas of Japan have completely different forms.
Shamanism itself probably ultimately derives from a Siberian origin, coming down to Northern China through Mongolia. This flavor of Tungusic shamanism shows up in all of China, Japan, and Korea. It's the flavor that usually starts with a mysterious illness, possibly lasting years, and a near death experience cured by initiation, dedication to a god or gods, and routine spirit possession. Honestly, the best sources I've found in English tend to be random Youtube videos and podcasts by people who've been initiated in the modern day.
Sidebar: the most interesting thing I found was a Korean-American lady who'd finally gotten initiated to cure her long term mental illness. She lives and works in NYC... Apparently, many of the clients for Korean shamans there are Russian because there aren't any Siberian shamans to be found, and the Russians are like "Close enough, I guess". It makes sense, but it was a very "WHOA!" moment for me.
Sure, xianxia principles are a little tricky to explain if someone knows nothing about any principles of Chinese esoteric thought, traditional medicine, mythology, etc. But...
There's no inherent reality to xianxia any more than there is to what counts as a/b/o or high fantasy. It's a genre of fiction. It's fantasy worldbuilding by specific artists.
Yes, it is steeped in Chinese culture. Yes, there are plenty of ways to go so far outside of what the genre is normally that you really can't use the term anymore.
But if a bunch of Chinese authors decide to add some element that becomes a big trend in xianxia, that's now also part of the genre.
It's not like saying "The historical record only shows X in the Tang Dynasty and not Y" where reality is hard to know, but at least it exists. Xianxia is a set of genre conventions people made up. Sure, 'xian' is a Taoist thing, but... like... you don't honestly think that the for funsies adventure novel version is exactly the same as the religious/esoteric/folkloric version that existed prior to these novels being a thing, do you? Tolkien ripoffs are not exactly the same as European mythology despite being heavily derived from it.
If you want to do fantasy worldbuilding, you start by looking up real mythology/history/culture and seeing what other people do, but then you... you know... make shit up.
You synthesize from other sources. You make a version that is cool and fun and meaningful to you.
The debbie downer side of fandom focuses way too much on things like xianxia as expressions of some unified Chinese authenticness and way too little on them as individual writers' creativity.
It's a subtle, but I think very real, form of erasure. Chinese culture did not spontaneously manifest xianxia. Specific writers who wanted to write a rip-roaring adventure tale made up cool shit they thought an audience would enjoy. It's like those posts talking about "historical costume" vs. "fashion" and how the former can erase individual agency and creativity.
You're an individual, creative person wanting to write a Chinese-flavor fantasy AU about some Korean singers. I think you should go for it.
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1,5,6,8,&19!!!
9. First line of a WIP you’re working on.
This is from a request for Ben Park I had gotten literally a year ago, i am so fucking sorry anon, feel free to post a shit emoji in my inbox cuz i deserve it.
Around midday on all days excluding weekends, a tolling chime will play across the city. High schoolers with neatly pressed uniforms will pour out of buildings in hordes, speaking fervently about the best arcade game to play that day, whether a friend had enough won to eat at that new fried chicken place down the street, or whether it’d be better to snack in a café.
1. Favorite place to write.
When I write, I don't often find myself anywhere other than at my cluttered desk. There's always a wall I like to stare at while I contemplate different ways to describe how a smile can be devilish, without using the word "devilish" for the fucking fifth time in a row.
5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most.
Holy crap, the list would be huge. No joke, I consumed books like nobody's business when I was younger, then fanfiction when I started feeling unfulfilled with YA romance novels. Let's see, the most recent ones would be:
1. TLOZchik - (Quotev link: HERE ) INACTIVE
Those of you familiar with my ongoing, on-haitus piece known as FOREVERMORE may have heard of this one. This writer has seriously written the most intricate LOZ fanfic I've ever read, and I still stand by that. Her characters are amazing, and everyone comes back to contribute to the plot somehow. 100% recommend.
2. Daniel Keyes - (Website link: HERE )
I don't know much about his personal life, but I often find myself pondering the lessons I've learned from his book "Flowers for Algernon." It's a painfully gorgeous book that details the sometimes repulsive, sometimes contradictory, elements of being human. I try to incorporate those things into my writing, which leads to a lot of angst and hurt.
3. smallpersiankitten - (AO3 link: HERE ) INACTIVE
For my very beautiful (and very patient) "Stride of Luck" fans, here is the author of the piece who inspired me to create my fun, multi-chapter series. Smallpersiankitten wrote a ONE-HUNDRED-AND-THIRTY-SIX chapter fanfic called "Must Love Animals," which features some Undertale characters. I aspire to be like her!
4. Riful26 - (Tumblr link: HERE ) ACTIVE
also see her tumblr here! @i-want-all-the-cookies
Riful's writing was a godsend for me when I got into Weak Hero. The fandom was so small and sad that I was almost sure there would be no content to please my stupid picky ass, but her work scratched the itch I had AND inspired me to write my Jimmy Bae fic, "Devil is Always Cold." Her writing is a good blend between romance and drama. I like it, picasso. check it out.
6. Favorite character you ever created.
Probably this one oddball guy in "Stride of Luck" named Adam. I know a lot of the readers don't quite like him right now, but I promise he has a redemption arc later!!
8. Favorite trope to write.
Everyone knows this this!!! It's all over the place, in my tags, in my descriptions, up my ass!! Say it with me people, BAD. BOY. TROPE. From old school cool-guy classics like Dave Strider to new-age Webtoon brawlers like Wolf Keum, I abso-fucking-lutely love the distant and aloof, arms-crossed, "huh, you looking at me?" type of guy. (And it seems like you guys like it too ;) )
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Newsletter #55 - The week of Saturday March 6th 2021 - Saturday March 13th 2021
What’s new this week? Mainly zine updates and a bit under current. Go forth, have fun! Create much!
I have had a question or three about the Big Bang - rest assured it’s not shelved, merely pushed along for a while due to RL intruding (how very dare it?!). Updates will be shared as soon as they are known.
Good Omens Celebration 2021 [OPEN: Suggestion form open!] - Set your calendar alarms to May for a month long celebration of Good Omens.
Good Omens Bingo 2021 [runs the entire year of 2021] (note that I am affiliated with this event) SIGN-UPS ARE OPEN
Jukebox Event - (no deadline)
We’re On Our Own Side - weekly prompts (no deadline)
Good Omens Fic Rec Bingo - (no deadline available)
T-RECS Tuesdays (GO fanfic recommendations) (no deadline/ongoing)
#ButterOmens (ongoing multi media event(writing/art/whatever you want))
Encourage good feedback (no deadline/ongoing)
OPEN for sign-ups
[NEW] Our Size Zine Pride 2021 - SIGN-UPS OPEN! (close March 26th)
The Days of Their Lives - SIGN-UPS OPEN! (close March 19th)
In Love With My Car (Closes March 8th (extended) LAST CHANCE
OPEN for mod/help applications
Celestial Harmonies Zine - MOD APPLICATION - Closes March 18th
INTEREST CHECK
[NEW] Hellish Omens - INTEREST CHECK OPEN (crossover with Lucifer)
As always, when entering a discord server, follow its rules, check out the dos and don’ts and don’t harass the mods or your server sibs.
Ace Omens Discord Server - Click here for information post (link updated feb 13th)
Do-it-with-style - runs various events. Takes all ages.
Fuck Yeah Good Omens Characters - give the other characters apart from Aziraphale and Crowley some love. Takes all ages, NSFW optional.
Good Omens Fic Writers (you don't have to be one to join! Direct link to server)
GO-events (this server runs various events)
Good Omens Party House (18+) - Click here for information post
Good Omens Stitch-A-Long (ever wanted to learn how to stitch?) - Click here for information post
Good Omens Whump (18+) - Click here for direct access
Ineffable Wives Discord Server - Click here for direct access
Soft Omens Snuggle House (18+)- Click here for information post
It unfortunately seems Pillowfort is still having some issues and is thus in read-only mode at the moment. But the links are back up and working.
Book Omens (book) - This is a community for the novel Good Omens, by Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. There are communities for tv!omens, specific GO ships, and mixed book, radio and tv content, but we've been lacking one that's focused on just the book, so here we are!
GoodOmens - A community for the book by Neil Gaiman & Sir Terry Pratchett and its adaptions to radio and TV with an extra large helping of Ineffable Husbands/Wives/Partners.
Good Omens (TV) - Community for the TV version of Good Omens
Ineffable Husbands, Ineffable Wives, Ineffable Partners - A community solely for Aziraphale and Crowley from the Good Omens book/radio adaption/TV series being in some kind of romantic or platonic relationship. =) Please read the "Rules and Info" section before posting/reblogging here!
Community Calendar (Trello) can be viewed here (it is updated through the week if I hear of any events to add and will often have some more information on the events/zines etc.).
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If you have an event you want to add to the calendar and the weekly Newsletter, don’t hesitate to let me know either in the asks/PM or via ineffableplanner (@) gmail dot com.
Also, feel free to share this post. This blog is NOT for reblogging of events, but for listing and perhaps making it a bit easier for everyone to keep track of these events before they’ve come AND gone ;)
This newsletter is mirrored on pillowfort and tumblr and announced on twitter.
* This is something tumblr never learned but PF has adopted from the old LJ format - if anyone wants a PF invite, just ask - we get 3 per week anyway to give away and there are pillowforters who will happily share invites.
Disclaimer: I am not running any of these zines, events or servers (in the few cases where I am involved in the mod work, I will make note of this). Please use your common sense and if you feel you’ve entered an event/zine/server/community you feel uneasy about, do not hesitate to step away from it. You may let me know if there’s a problem with one, but please know that I am not able to police every single one of them, nor will I play God in other people’s domains. I will let the mods know there is a problem (without mentioning your name and if it’s grave enough, take the link off), but please do not expect miracles and do not use me as your tool to get back at servers/server mods for personal reasons. I abhor being pulled into fandom wars and kerfluffles.
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ask from the lovely @lynnpaper from these prompts! Sorry in advance for the long post, but I love talking about my writing!! ❤️
F - Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
So this is a little snippet from my college au from a chapter I haven’t posted yet (or edited yet, for that matter)- I just love writing Anakin’s and Ahsoka’s friendship so much and I think this captures their dynamic well (at least I hope so!):
The small screen of Anakin’s laptop lights up the corner of his dorm room, a scary video game compilation playing on youtube. Ahsoka makes grabby hands for Anakin’s box of Cheez-its, and he reluctantly hands her the box, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. This has become their destressing ritual; Ahsoka always jokes that there’s nothing more relaxing than being scared shitless in a dark room at two am, and Anakin kind of has to agree. He does sleep better after watching Ahsoka lose her shit giggling and screaming for an hour.
The character onscreen makes their way through a nearly pitch black house, flashlight practically useless. Anakin’s stomach is clenched, a jump scare has to be coming soon.
Then, out of nowhere:
“So, are you going to ask him out?”
Anakin’s neck almost cracks, he snaps his head towards her so quickly. “What?”
She talks around a mouth of Cheez-its. “Oh, c’mon, you and Obi-wan. You clearly like him, and it sounds like he likes you too. So,” she shakes the box and shoves more into her mouth, giving herself chipmunk cheeks “you gon’ass’im?”
Anakin snatches the box out of her hands. “Absolutely not.”
Ahsoka sighs out of her nose and finishes chewing. “Why not? No-” she holds up a hand at his shriveling look “-hear me out. You really like him, Anakin. And I know we’ve never really talked about it, but I get the sense you’ve never really had a boyfriend before, and I don’t want you to pass this by just because you’re scared.”
Anakin is quiet for a moment, absentmindedly watching the video. “It’s not just that I’m scared. Well, I am, but it’s…” he shakes his head, grappling for the right words. Ahsoka watches him, patient. “Listen, my mom doesn’t know that I’m...that I like boys. And so I’ve never had the possibility of something working out with someone before, because I’ve always lived at home. And like, what if it works out and I fall in love with him, and then I lose him?” He closes his eyes at the emotion threatening tears, his honesty unlocking little bits of himself that he had neatly tucked away. “What if I fuck it all up? And the holidays are coming up and what if he wants to meet my family and what would I tell my mom? God, what if he doesn’t even like men and I’m just pining over someone I can’t have? Besides, why would he ever want someone like me?”
Ahsoka considers this all carefully, her lower lip pushed out in thought.
Anakin, eyes still closed, feels a sharp poke on his cheek: her finger. He startles, ready to admonish her, but she beats him to it.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
He looks down at the Cheez-it box. “I know, but-”
“And you deserve happiness, okay? Anakin, you deserve to be loved. I’m sorry that your mom doesn’t see eye to eye with you on this, but I’ll always love you and support you, no matter what, okay?” She reaches out and squeezes his bicep. “Go after him. You want this.”
Anakin can’t look at her, his eyes welling up in tears at her honesty, her love, her friendship. He is so lucky to have her.
She grabs the box back, takes a large handful into her mouth. “If you don’t ask him out, I’m gonna tell him about the time you farted when I cracked your back.”
He winces. “It was one time, please, let me forget.”
“Never. It smelled so bad.”
“I mean, I could probably go for one right now,” he presses on his stomach, and grins devilishly at her, “if we’re gonna talk about how bad they smell.”
Her eyebrows jump up, and so does she, racing for the door. “No, absolutely not, goodbye and goodnight, I am going home.”
“Come back, I’m kidding.” He’s laughing, deep belly laughs that are working to cleanse him of the sadness of their conversation.
She eyes him warily. “Pinky promise.”
He holds up his pinky. “Pinky promise.”
When she lifts her hand, he grabs her wrist and pulls her into his side, trapping her in a hug.
“Thank you, for, y’know...being my friend.” He mumbles into her hair while she squirms against him.
She stills. “Anytime, loser.” Her arms thread around his middle, hugging him back. He can smell the lingering Cheez-its on her breath. “I mean it, you deserve love.”
G - Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?
Start to finish! I usually outline in detail first and then sit down and actually do the writing. The only times I’ll write in advance is if a scene is really bugging to be written or I get sudden inspiration. Otherwise I confuse myself writing out of order- keeping track of all the details in a fic is really hard 😭
N - Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
Oooh yes. There’s this living ship/pirate au that we’ve kicked around on the discord server I’m a part of and I have a vague outline out of it but I have so many other projects going on so I haven’t gotten to it! But I’m so excited for it! I love the premise so much. I wish someone else could write it out so I could just read it 😂
R - Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
Most definitely! I can’t name names but every fic I read I pay attention to the style and prose and definitely get inspired by it and try to work it into my own writing! Lately I’ve been trying to get better at making sure there’s enough detail in a scene so it’s not all prose and dialogue, so I’ve been paying attention to that in fics. But if I’ve ever read your fic, you’ve influenced me in some way.
U - Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.
This is so hard!! There are so many good writers out there!!
Off the top of my head:
@sonderwalker writes great sickfics and hurt/comfort, she makes me literally uwu in my heart
@shatouto has beautiful, lyrical works that i adore
@intermundia - everything they write is gold. my god
@katierosefun has wonderful little prompts that make me smile every time they come across my dash!
@jenjenpup her future in motion fic is one of my favorite right now!
@unpheenix young and menace is going to be one of my all time favs
lilyconrad on ao3 (anyone know their tumblr?) - i’ve read like everything theyve written
@xeniaraven i love everything!!! so good!! i always want to scream in the comments after
WhiteMoose and Ripki on ao3 - wrote fucking beautiful novels for fun?? hello?? their fics are amazing
and so many more omg literally all my friends on here are such talented writers that keep me on my toes! i feel like i have to keep up with them!! if you didn’t get mentioned please know that you should be on here, i just suck at remembering everyone (that’s what happens when you read like 453489 fics a day)
thank you for the ask my dear!! i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!! ❤️❤️❤️
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20 First Lines Meme!
No one tagged me but I saw @cassandra-pentughasst and @red-hot-chili-tiefling do this and it looked fun so I’m pretending I was tagged.
The challenge is to list the first lines of your 20 latest fanfics.
Since I mostly write short fic, my first lines work overtime in establishing setting or mood, imo.
I’ll tag @apostatetabris @lavampira @impossible-rat-babies if y’all feel like it 💗
Untitled UB Goes Camping Fic that I just started today
"Did we bring a map?"
"Yep."
"Compass?"
"It's with the map."
"Tents? Sleeping bags?"
"Yes."
"What about swimsuits?"
WIP that I may never finish of Mason doing some roof pining
Mason tried not to smoke this week. He really did.
Prompt fill: Alone, Finally
The walk from the station to Alma's apartment is an unusually talkative one considering her partner in conversation is Mason, and there's a rush to their steps that she's not sure which of them initiated. It doesn't really matter.
Prompt fill: Sea Change
Alma sits alone on the dock of the lake, and for once- for just a moment- she’s well and truly alone.
Prompt fill: Harsh Whisper
“Are you sure you can handle it?” Aeran asks from Ephyra’s side, the words coming out so quietly she almost thinks she imagined them and starts to get annoyed with herself over them. “There’s an exit on the west side of the building if you can’t get back through this way and I’ll be-”
Negative Phototaxis | Alma Greene/Mason | 625 words
He wouldn’t even look at me. Alma sighs under the weight of her conflicted heart and grabs the fresh pot of coffee to refill her cup.
Prompt fill: Something About [Her]
Ephyra’s heard the story so many times she’s bored with it: during her first week of life, her mother attempted to soothe her crying with a hand gently warmed by magic and the spell broke upon her skin.
Prompt fill
Life at sea isn’t so bad, Effie thinks as she leans against the railing of the main deck, relishing the fine, salty mist in her face. As long as she doesn’t have to walk too far, and when she’s not receiving glares from the crew for stumbling into their work formations. ...And now that her wounds are healed enough for the bumps into the walls and rails to only kind of, sort of sting.
Prompt fill: How Dare You?
“Are you gonna finish that?” Aeran eyes Effie’s last roll. They’re tucked into one of the quieter corners of the Spire’s dining hall, having lunch before they split for training.
Prompt fill
The rural farming community of Gralle is a fucking mess. The formerly well-worn dirt paths are ripped up as if some wayward farmer started sleepwalking while tilling the fields; milk jugs are overturned, leaving rancid clots in the door of one of the barns; a brood of hens and their chicks lay dead outside their hutch, bodies a little mangled but uneaten.
WIP of the BG3 crew
“If I never see a goblin again, it’ll be too fucking soon.” Ulysse groaned as they made for the ruin’s exit on weary legs.
Blood, entrails, and pungent homebrew squelched underfoot, already taking on the stench of rot in the hot afternoon sun. The party couldn’t bother with being disgusted - they were already covered in the stuff.
Prompt fill: A Kiss on the Temple
Julian Devorak is going to die.
Cleo knows this.
Boats and Birds | Cleo Espree/Julian Devorak | 1.7k words
Cleo's eyes blink open to a thick canopy of tropical-looking leaves, shimmering pink-gold light winking through here and there. The air is thick with magic, but there's no real hostility here.
Prompt fill: Drastic/How Dare You?
Cleo came to the market for vegetables, milk, and, if she's lucky, that delicious spice mix from Firent that elevated her stews from "pretty good" to "Cleo, what is this recipe?" She did not come to the market to run into Julian Devorak yet again, but that seems to be a hobby for her lately.
Prompt fill: Crave
Pixies make for decent company, to be sure, but like the rest of the fae folk, they adhere to stiff archetypes. Conversation, though entertaining at times, is predictable but it's all Urianger manages these days since his friends are busy or... reasonably displeased with him.
Prompt fill: Sunbathing
Astarion smiles more in the daylight, Ulysse notices, marble-white skin creasing into lines around his mouth.
Starving | Ulysse/Astarion | 800 words
“You didn’t do it,” Ulysse whispered, fingers combing through recently-mussed curls. Astarion lay on her chest, a novel experience but not an unwelcome one.
Saccharine | Ulysse/Astarion | 250 words
“If you promise not to kill me,” she pulled back with a smirk, hips pressing into his, “you may drink from my neck. I know you want to.”
If his heart still beat, it would’ve skipped at the invitation.
Wayfarer WIP that’s not been entirely posted to tumblr
The tavern is crowded for such a small town, as if every person in a ten-mile radius of this backwater decided they craved cheap ale and the sound of the off-key bard in the corner.
WIP in which Julian moves in with Cleo
"Are you sure you want to do this? I can-" Julian pauses to reposition the precarious stack of boxes in his grip, "I can make other arrangements. Mazelinka really doesn't mind having me around, no matter what she says. Or I'm sure Pasha could make space. And I do have my own place back in South End, you know!"
"Mm, is that so? The landlord just let you skip out on rent for three years?"
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Fanfic 2020 in Review
I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!
1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:
*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*
1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai
nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*
unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:
“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily
“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)
“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives
“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition
“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family
“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting
“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home
“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war
“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single
“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another
“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette
“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father
“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s “Your Presents Required”
“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams
2) Number of words written:
ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.
AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.
3) Your most popular fic:
“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.
4) Your personal fav:
“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)
5) Your fav scene:
aaaaaaaaa
—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)
but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:
Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.
This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.
She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.
There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.
The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.
Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.
Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.
(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)
She walks on.
6) A fic or scene that challenged you:
where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.
there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...
7) A line of writing you’re proud of:
from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:
Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.
okay let me break this down for you!
* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories
* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature
* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers
* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”
* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie
* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure
* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all
* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks
* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?
* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)
8) A comment that touched you:
there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.
9) Something that inspired your writing:
by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami
10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):
so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?
I broke that fucking record!
and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭
11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?
I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!
(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)
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A look back at 2020 - and a thank you to the Zutara fandom
Okay.
So.
I’ve never done this before. I know 2020 has been… a year. To say the least. A messy, sad, hell of a year. I’m not saying my 2020 was perfect. There were many events that were supposed to happen but got cancelled because of COVID. But if you could believe it, 2019 was so much worse for me, especially creative-wise. So I decided to make this post about how my 2020 went, because it went a lot better than 2019!
Never again, 2019. Never again.
Also if you feel like you haven’t been creative or haven’t had the energy to do everything you wanted to do, please don’t take this post as a “haha I did so much better than you guys!” Because that is ABSOLUTELY NOT what I want to achieve. I just want to give myself a pat on the back. Honestly, I think what really helped this year was when I got into a slump for one type of creative endeavour, I jumped to the next. I set myself to start something and finished it. Then, if I felt burnt out about that thing? Like writing a fic? I got into cosplay. Or video editing. Or something else. And then I came back to writing. It was really fun to learn new things and to do multiple kinds of projects through the year!
The Zutara fandom thank you letter is at the end, so if you want to skip my ramblings, you can find the title below!
So anyway. Here goes!
Video editing:
It’s not that well-known on my Tumblr, but I have a Youtube channel! I made myself a video editing challenge back in January - and I crushed it! Back in 2019, I quit video editing for many months because I didn’t have the motivation to continue doing so. But then in December last year, I found a BUNCH of my old (and I mean, VERY old) videos I’d made as a kid. And it re-invigorated my love for video editing because I realized how far I’d come and that I wanted to do it more! So I told myself: one video a month. Twelve in one year. That’s it. Do that. And I ended up making TWENTY videos this year! I’m so proud of myself!
I even made MORE than twenty videos. A few of these just aren’t published. I made a few more “educational” videos because I’m considering making a brand new Youtube channel dedicated to History and pop culture! I don’t know if it’ll end up being… you know… a thing, but hey! Why not?
I also made some unpublished short edits for a possible Instagram account I’d like to create, too! All for Titanic. An example of those short videos can be found here! Again, I don’t know if that Instagram account will end up being… a thing… but I have faith!
Cosplay:
I got back into cosplay this year! And I learned new skills thanks to it! I learned how to work with EVA foam to create my own Blue Spirit mask (using this tutorial!). There’s a few projects currently on the backburner, but I’m sure I’ll come back to them eventually!
I also learned recently how to sew a pair of opera gloves (because haha, fuck you if you want to buy any that aren’t in size small!) for a Rose Dewitt-Bukater cosplay with my sewing machine I bought way back in like… March… but was honestly too afraid to use. But I did it! I pushed through my fear and I did it! I’ve been practicing more and more with my sewing machine as I repurpose old clothes for my cosplay. And it’s going great!
Writing:
I got back into fanfic! I hadn’t written ANYTHING fanfic related in a while, especially not multi-chapter fics. But this year, I finished THREE novel-length fanfictions. My fanfics The Prince’s Bride, my Star Wars/The Princess Bride AU, and Never Let Me Go, my Avatar: The Last Airbender/Titanic AU, are currently all published on AO3! I haven’t been much in the Star Wars fandom since writing The Prince’s Bride, but I did meet @stressedinadress with who I talk about Star Wars and anything in particular! Thank you for being my friend!
My other novel-length fic, All roads lead to Paris, a Miraculous Ladybug/A Monster in Paris/Ratatouille crossover fic is currently being uploaded every Wednesdays! I’ve also written a Titanic/The Great Gatsby crossover one-shot called Make it count; Meet me at the clock that had been living in my brain for years but I’d never had the guts to write it. But then I did!
I’m especially proud of Never Let Me Go. Not that I’m not proud of my other fics, but this one in particular has a very special place in my heart. It’s the longest story I’ve EVER written and made me love Titanic all over again. Zuko and Katara were the perfect characters to be cast as Jack and Rose. I got back into drawing entirely thanks to this fic. I’d been telling myself “I can’t draw to save my life” for YEARS but then I decided to try again and I’m much better than I was back then! I’m so humbled by all the comments, all the bookmarks, the kudos and the love this story has received. We’ve JUST REACHED 5000 HITS!! Before the end of the year!! That’s so AWESOME!!
I’m tentatively coming back to original fiction after writing a lot of fanfic, especially a Greek Mythology retelling (which is, you know, fanfiction but with stories that don’t have copyrights!). I think writing fanfiction really helped me figure out what I love about writing and has helped me tremendously in creating my own style and voice. It’s been an incredible journey and yes, my Greek Mythology retelling was inspired by a Zutara Greek Mythology AU! So you know, I’m staying on-brand! haha
I’m also currently working on another ATLA fic, heavily inspired by my “what I would have wanted for LOK” post you can find here. It’s going to be much, MUCH shorter than Never Let Me Go, but it’s already longer than Not Like Everyone Else, so I’m really happy with this one. A bunch of bite-sized chapters in the POVs of all these lovely characters after the War and my take on where they should have ended up - and the world.
Zutara:
And finally, but certainly not the least, I got back into the Zutara fandom and really contributed! I made metas I’m really proud of (like this one on Katara’s abandonment issues you can find here!). I wrote the aforementioned fanfic Never Let Me Go. I even made a video about Zutara after my latest rewatch of ATLA (you can watch ZUTARA | Zuko x Katara - BATTLESHIPS here!).
I also made friends along the way! @darkcrowprincess, @harharj, @angelsabloom and, more recently, @heavensweetheart. I wanted to thank you for putting up with my weird rants and obsessions! :)
We’re all such a lovely bunch and don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere! I want to thank, especially, @firelxdykatara, @antarcticasx, @my-bated-breath, @peartarts, @pineapple-frenzy and @hayleynfoster for your metas, fics, art, etc.! You’ve been making my 2020 better. This isn’t an exhaustive list, so if I’ve forgotten someone, I’m so sorry!
Also I hope everyone who have been harassed recently, like @babytreehugger, knows that we��re all standing behind you and supporting you.
This is a really special fandom indeed. It took me years before I could rewatch ATLA knowing Zutara wasn’t endgame, but even if it hurts that they’re not canon, we have countless fics, art, poems, animatics, even published authors whose books are basically Zutara AUs! As stated by those same authors! Isn’t that amazing?? WE HAVE A STAR!! WE HAVE A FRICKING STAR!!! Has anyone forgotten that??
And look. I’ve been, for the past few years, in the Star Wars fandom. I’ve been in many different fandoms over the years. It’s been… rough. But I’ve never seen such an encouraging, loving, compassionate fandom. I know it can be difficult outside of our fandom, especially with people fighting on Twitter and Instagram and even on Tumblr with people harassing others. But this fandom, fifteen years later, is so smart, so kind, so positive and so inspiring.
If you’ve been reading up ‘till now, thank you!
Also: You can do whatever you set your mind to! I believe in you! Go do the thing if you want to! And never forget to be kind to yourself.
Happy holidays! Let’s hope (fingers crossed!) that 2021 will be a better year.
thevictorianghost
#me#zutara#zuko#katara#motivation#happy holidays#year recap#i dont know how to tag this#2020 was a heck of a year#im glad its over#but it also wasnt all that bad#so i decided to post this
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I haven’t come to your blog in quite some time... after t100 ended, I lost interest in tumblr for a while. But I was active here once, and we had many a discussion. I came to see if you enjoyed bridgerton, despite the not so accurate clothing and such. I think it’s super cheesy and really fun to watch, and I know you enjoy period dramas
Yeah, I’m still here-- mainly because I work online, so when I break from work I make the rounds of my social media, and tumblr is one of them. It’s less active here because the fandom has mostly disappeared, not that I blame people. I also have a hard time posting about the positive aspects of The 100 because it just imploded so spectacularly. Still a big disappointment.
BUT
I have moved on. I was honestly ready to be done with intense fandom, because it’s just not good for my mental health and I was tired of the negativity. I don’t understand why people get angry when other people enjoy a thing, and think they have to come in and ruin it for them. Like, buzz off, we’re working on coping skills to get through our dumpster fire lives.
AND YES I love Bridgerton.
Actually, I love the book series Bridgerton and it was one of my favorites in the last couple of years.
And this is related to my The 100 fandom experience, because for a while, I wasn’t reading books, I was only reading bellarke fanfic, but then, due to a shift in the fanfic community and my discomfort with the fandom (knowing that a lot of them didn’t like me) I began to feel weird about reading and writing fanfic. Like when I liked someone’s story, was I giving kudos to someone who bullied me on anon? I didn’t know. And at the same time I’d begun ghostwriting romances, so to do research, I started reading published romances.
The first one I read was a secret baby trope, because that was what I was writing, and I fell into historical fiction. I read Kleypas and Dare and Milan and Maclean and yes, Quinn. That took the place of my fanfic reading. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to be a ghostwriter if I hadn’t been a fanfic writer first, because, even though I have writing education and training and experience, fanfic taught me to write for audience, to do it fast without that certain...anxiety about perfectionism, and immersed me in romantic tropes, which it turns out, I really love.
This is a lot of chit chat to say that yes, I saw Bridgerton and I love Bridgerton.
I would suppose that historical romances have taken the place of my the 100 obsession. I read probably one a day. I should keep track on goodreads or something, but I do a lot of rereading. Like I’ll reread a beloved book or series five or six times. And when I forget the details of ones I liked, I’ll reread those too. Also I’m probably dealing with my internalized snobbery about the romance genre. Let me tell you, getting an education in creative writing in college installs some “issues” with genre. Everything is supposed to be lit fic, or it’s lesser. I’ve been kind of pugnacious about the sff genre and haven’t let the snobbery interfere with my love of it, but I haven’t gotten over the romance snobbery, which is not JUST snobbery but also internalized misogyny.
But I mean, fuck it. I am so sick of grimdark and tragedies and “cool edgy” dudes thinking women should be destroyed and tortured and betrayed in movies and sff and fiction in general.
I don’t WRITE historical romances. I write contemporary romances for my ghostwriting gigs (I have one client and I’ve written like 18 novels and novellas for her in the last two years. It’s fun, but it doesn’t make very much money and the deadlines are VERY tight.) However I don’t READ contemporary romances, I read historicals. I like the level of fantasy involved and the distance from reality when I read it, but I am bothered too much buy the imperial colonialism and classism of regency or victorian british settings to write it. Also, that would take so much research to write to my liking. I am involved in romancelandia (romance writing twitter,) but not very active. Mostly I just listen and learn and sometimes comment.
In fact. I follow a woman who judges regency and victorian costuming in film productions. https://twitter.com/BillAndTedTest She has not gotten around to doing Bridgerton yet.
How do I feel about the costuming??? Well, I’m divided. I am bothered by the fact that Daphne never wears a pelisse and always has half up hair. I am bothered by the fact that Simon almost never has his cravat tied properly and has a shockingly bare neck. And the fabrics and stitching are visibly cheap.
But I also feel that except for the cheap fabrication which was an element of budget and time, a lot of the design choices were stylistic in nature. Like, if you look at the background characters, I feel that their costumes were more accurate, but with the main characters, they really went for character over accuracy. They didn’t want Daphne in any of the buttoned up outfits because they wanted her to be a girlish, romantic ingenue. They wanted Simon to show as a dashing sexy rake, so the buttoned up thing wouldn’t work for him, and they gave him the open neck that would be more appealing to a contemporary audience. (although while Simon is very handsome I actually find Anthony more sexy. He’s buttoned up...but it’s holding back all passion inside. BUT THAT’S a story for season 2. I can’t wait. I liked book 2 better than 1 mostly because of the rape, tbh. But I also love books 4,6 and 7 and I don’t know if we’ll get there.)
They wanted Lady Featherington to be crass and pushy so they gave her a nonsensical victorian silhouette. I mean. ???? It was SO different from anyone else’s. Weird choice, but for the character it kind of makes her appear to be a more aggressive character type from LATER in time? IDK. Of course Penelope is canonically dressed in awful gowns that are not flattering and I’m looking forward to how they end up dressing her for her book. And praying that we get a season 4. But I mean, the costume choices for the Featheringtons are BASED on Lady F’s bad taste, so there’s some leeway with her not being in style.
So. That is A LOT when you asked a little question. I guess I wanted to talk about it. I’m not allowed to talk about my ghostwriting or the stories I’m writing because I signed a hushhush contract. I’m not accustomed to being in a fandom for reading books-- remember I only joined fandom in the last 5 years for The 100, and then had some bad experiences so didn’t get into other fandoms. I don’t really even know how it would work especially not MULTIPLE books and authors instead of one series, so I haven’t really had conversations about the historical romances, except for a bit of twitter discussion.
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Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.
That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.
But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)
Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.
This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:
There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.
This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.
I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW
I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.
Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.
If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.
I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom
There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.
Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.
(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)
Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.
(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)
Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.
From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!
In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]
I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime
From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).
There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.
I.c. Where are the historians?
Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.
There were years of bad feeling about this as well.
I.d. What kind of fan was I?
Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!
More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.
I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M
Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.
Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.
Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.
Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.
Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.
In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.
While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.
II. AO3 Early Adopters
AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”
I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.
So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.
The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…
But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”
At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.
Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.
III. History of AO3’s Policy
I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.
I was overruled.
Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.
I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.
(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)
I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”
So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.
I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.
If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.
I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.
Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.
That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it.
Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.
Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)
After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.
This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.
IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?
So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?
Not exactly.
I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:
I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.
Most of our members don’t want this.
Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.
AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.
Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.
If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.
If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.
These arguments all make perfect sense in context.
Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.
The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.
OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.
AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.
The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.
The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.
AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.
As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.
OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.
But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.
BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.
Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.
V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?
Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.
But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?
It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:
Schema 1
Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP
Original Work - the opposite
Schema 2
Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher
Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)
Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.
VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time
So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.
On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:
Big US TV fandoms in English
Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.
Americans
On the other side:
Anime fandom
“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere
People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.
People upset about US-centrism in fandom
Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.
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Some Tips on How I Keep Motivating Myself to Write
This post was inspired by a response I recently got from @pastelnightgale and obviously, I’m not an expert (I’m literally on year 6 of a fanfic rip), but I still wanted to type something up about this.
I find that the hardest part about writing is finding the motivation to actually start it . . . and then keep it. You can have all of these intricate fantasies in your head, with twists and turns and even a playlist you made on spotify, but actually getting up and writing it is ridiculously hard.
Especially if, like me, you suffer from perfectionism.
I kinda wanted to write a post about how I personally motivate myself to write, both fanfiction and my own things. Obviously, what I write is flawed and needs a lot of improvement, but I’ve come really far and I’m proud of the progress I’ve made.
So, here’s some tips I’ve picked up over the years. Feel free to apply this to whatever art you personally create, but this is primarily for writers.
1) Listening to Music
This is my number one. Easily. I’m someone who has a lot of attachment with the music I listen to (as most people do, I’d assume). Though I’m picky with the overall sound, I prefer music or artists who really put a lot of thought into their lyrics specifically. Or even when they use certain effects to carry across emotions or add more emphasis to specific lines. It’s why I’m such a fan of Taylor Swift; her songs are basically poetry packaged as pop music.
It personally helps me to listen to music not just because it’s enjoyable, but it helps create scenarios in my head. We all shoot music videos in our head, why not try doing it with your characters? Plus, if the artist you’re listening to plays with words through metaphors or similies or imagery, it’s a massive bonus. I seriously recommend turning to music, whatever genre you listen to, and letting that sometimes paint the picture for you.
2) watching Movies.
This is a massive one for me. I don’t know how high this would be on anyone else’s lists since films are obviously a completely different medium to books, but I find there’s a lot of things that can be useful about movies. For one thing, movies just have better fight sequences. Kinda obvious statement, but I don’t mean in a ‘well you can see it so therefore film is better’ no, I mean, film literally has better action sequences.
Obviously, as a writer, you’re never going to be able to properly adapt the quick pace of fights in movies. But you can adapt the details in how they move. Fight scenes in movies are better then books because they’re choreographed. Now granted, I’m still beginning my journey in reading, but so far, I haven’t been impressed with what I’ve seen. Either the author writes a scene that describes the action, but with no focus on the strain it has on the character’s bodies, or they gloss over the fight completely. It makes me feel like I’m reading fanfiction, but written from the younger side.
It’s just super dissapointing, so I try to challenge myself by studying how the characters moves, the impact of their movements on each other, and then how tired that can leave them.
But also, movies can have other things that I think writers should learn to adapt. Like a character’s mannerisms. Now, I don’t just mean mannerisms as in what they do in their day to day lives, I mean facial ticks. Like, the minute sequences their features will go through as they’re processing news. Or their stances. Or what they do with their hands. Actors are very detailed about how they’re protraying their characters, and I just find myself aching to carry that over in my own portrayal of my characters.
It’s obviously important to realise that film and novels have both their benefits and disadvantages in what they can and can’t portray. But it’s even more important to realise that different mediums can also teach us things about our sense of portrayals.
3) Reading books
This may be surprising that it’s not number one, but honestly, I didn’t start reading actual books until late last year. I kinda used to read some in high school, but those were few and far between. This year I’ve actively been trying to emerge myself in more professional writing, as I do find it a little strange to want to write so badly without taking any infleunce from any other writers.
Previously, I used to take inspiration from fanfiction and fictionpress, which I guess I still do. There’s definitely benefits in exclusively reading them (for instance, I prefer characterisation, romance and comedy in fanfiction) but I personally find books to be better in overall world building. I mean, obviously.
World building and setting are my weak spots, and I find that reading literal books actually helps me easier improve on these areas. Oh, and length. I’m a pretty detailed writer, but it’s sometimes hard to navigate what should and shouldn’t be getting so much focus. Fanfiction is pretty short (typically only a few pages), but books can be a whole lot longer, and how they use that space and length helps me translate it into my own pages. Granted, I tend to write way too much, but it’s still really helpful in navigating what should and shouldn’t be getting focus.
Oh, and bonus points for booktubers. They review a variety of different books, and for me personally, whenever they critique books, it motivates me to write something brilliant so they could maybe read it and smile. My favourites are WithCindy and Dominic Noble.
4) Tumblr—Specifically writing blogs.
When I tell you that I did nothing in my last years of high school but secretly read fanfiction and writing blogs on tumblr in class, I--
Obviously, I’m biased, cause I’ve been reading tips on here since I was a kid, but I really recommend following some good blogs on here. They give such good advice, specifically on how to research, or portray certain emotions and, most of all, representation. Tumblr was actually where I learnt to write my fight scenes—about how to portray the feeling of a quick sequence of events, while balancing it out with your character’s limited view. They write things I haven’t even seen professionals talk about (and honestly, I think they could benefit from reading a tumblr blog).
My personal favourite blogs are: Nimble’s Notebook, and Clevergirlhelps
5) Re-writes.
Okay, this is a massive one I should’ve mentioned in the beginning. Never compare what you have on your word doc to what others have published. Why? Because I can tell you that they did not start off like that. They went through massive amounts of editing and drafting and re-reads before coming out like this clean cut version. Trust me. No one’s that quick. And even if they are, who cares? It could take you two drafts, it could take you four, it could take you nine--we all work at our own pace.
It’s something I have to keep reminding myself when I’m on my first and second draft. Because they are shit. I always feel untalented when writing my first draft--oh, and that’s not a purposeful dig at myself to get compliments, I genuinely mean that. I will never let someone read one of my early drafts because they are literally so bad, and not only that, but those drafts are for me. They’re not there for anyone else yet. Early drafts are just so you can start to build your empire, they’re your foundation. You can reach for the sky the more you keep building.
Don’t get on your own case if you don’t like your first draft. It’s fine. It gets so much easier the more you rewrite it. Trust me.
6) Write Things for You.
This is one of my favourite tips. Oh, and I don’t mean it in a ‘you’re not writing for an audience, you are the audience’ kinda way. No, I mean literally write things for you. And only for you.
If you have a story in your head that you don’t want to write because you know it’s just a phase, it won’t last long enough for you to make something out of, or you’re not confident in it, or whatever, fuck it—just write it.
Open your word doc and type it out. Then don’t post it. Or share it. Keep it on your computer, stored away in a folder you won’t ever share. You might be asking, why would you waste your time on a project no one will ever see? Simple.
It takes away the pressure.
A major hindrance to a writer actually writing is sometimes . . . not feeling good enough. You’re worried that an audience will laugh or mock what you’ve written, or that it won’t turn out just the way you planned it too, or even that the plot is too corny. Well, what I’ve found is that writing for myself stops me from judging myself so badly. I have so many documents on this computer of corny borderline wattpad stories that will never see the life of day. And it feels great. Cause I’m still actively writing and improving myself while eliminating that huge amount of anxiety that plagues me.
This is such a massive tip, please consider it. Obviously, if the story turns out really well, go ahead and post it if you’re super proud of it. But otherwise, just write something with the intention of not sharing it. Keep it to yourself, so you can look back on it with fond memories.
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