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voolfman · 4 months

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Flowers for You

SCTIR fic published on ao3 by voolfman

The first time the stranger was left a message on his new phone with his new number (his carrier sucked), he assumed it was from someone whose number he had forgotten to add.

“Yoohyun-ah, it-i- it's your hyung. You forgot your scarf at home. It's getting cold out, and I saw you walking around without one. Ju-just come home and get it? Please? I'm not mad anymore, I promise. Hyung….hyung is just so, so worried. I love you.”

He should have deleted the message. He should've texted the guy and let him know that his younger brother changed phone numbers. But he was busy; he got the message right at the end of his lunch break and his boss was such a hard-ass about being on time that he forgot. Until, he received another voice-mail a few days later.

“I guess you're not coming back for your scarf? That's alright, it's not a good scarf anyway. Second-hand, you probably want…wanted a nicer scarf. Maybe…maybe you would have stayed if hyung had bought you nicer scarves…I guess there's nothing I can offer you now. Even so, hyung misses you. Please come home.”

Then the texts began to start. And he read them. And listened to the voice-mails. He didn't delete any of them. It felt too cruel to erase the words that reeked of despair and loneliness. As if making them cease to exist would somehow erase the last vestiges of the lonely man. As if the man would cease to exist, never to make up with his younger brother.

“Your guild won't even let me in. I just wanted to drop off some of your favorite snacks… I'm sorry hyung couldn't afford better, but hyung’s budget’s been tight this month. I promise I'll save up better for next time! Happy birthday, Yoohyun-ah.” What a coincidence that Han Yoohyun’s birthday was the same day. And his older brother had decided to cause a scene in front of the Hayeon building that day.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to realize it, but eventually, he had to admit, he was receiving messages for THE Han Yooyhun, leader of Hayeon Guild, from THE Han Yoojin, his estranged and publicly renounced older brother. Which, having listened to the older man's heart broken messages and birthday well-wishes, made a lot of what the gossip-rags and mass media busybodies spread sound grossly out of proportion or just outright inaccurate.

One time, partly out of pity, probably out of morbid curiosity, he actually did answer the phone. It was back before he had known who was calling, back when he'd just had the man under the name “The Sad Hyung.”

All it took was the simple tap of an obnoxiously green circle with an outdated symbol of a phone most children wouldn't even recognize anymore from a screen that was too bright for the hour it was calling at.

There was an answering tone. Then silence. Then the whisper of a hushed and choked back sob.

“...Yooyhun-ah?” It was a desperate wish. A whisper of despair. It was the single drop of rain soaking into the ground of a scorched and barren forest.

But he couldn't reply to the voice over the phone, or the gig would be up. The hyung would know that his younger brother had cut off all contact with him. And then what? Who would the hyung talk to? What would he do to himself? He seemed so alone. At least this way his messages would be left on read. His voice-mails would be listened to.

He stayed silent on the other side of the line.

The voice was breaking. The signal was still strong. “Please Yooyhun-ah, what did hyung do wrong? I hate this. I miss you-” another choked back sob crackled through, “Please, can we meet just one last time so you can tell hyung what's going on? I-I’ll make your favorite eggs! Sunny-side up- just…just like you alw-”

The stranger hung up abruptly. He felt sick, his insides twisted like those balloons they gave to children at fairs and theme parks. A voice-mail was left on his phone a few minutes later. He never listened to that one. It was the only one he would never listen to. He thought he was going to throw up.

There were no new texts or voice-mails left for a few weeks afterward.

And that was his routine for the next few years. It wasn't every day he was sent texts and left messages. There were breaks of days, weeks, and as time passed, months.

It was after years that the texts and voice-mails finally stopped. At first he was concerned. It was a couple of months later, when he saw two brothers happily smiling at each other from the colorful pixels of a live broadcast on a billboard on his way home from work, that he was finally able to delete the texts and voice-mails.

Somewhere, in another timeline, the stranger listened for eight long years. As the messages became more bitter. More tinged with anger. Messages and voice-mails splashed with a deadly amount of alcohol and paranoia. Left with broken hearts and pain riddled gasps of leftover affection parsed through poison filled words and cries.

At one point, he learned that the older brother of Hayeon Guild had been sent to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and then sent to rehab. It was all over the news for a while. And then he was released and media mongers were all in a tizzy until they sniffed out something juicier. That was when the texts and the voice-mails started back up again. And that was when he knew. That was when he knew who's phone number he'd been given.

And eventually the messages became far and few between. And then eventually they were erased. And the stranger was erased. And the whole make-up of the world was erased. And the world was reset. And the messages were erased.

Han Yoohyun was not erased.

#SCTIR #sctir #s class #s classes that i raised #han yoojin #han yoohyun #strangers pov #voolfman #ao3 #sctir fic

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nekoannie-chan · 3 months

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Lonely birthday

Title: Lonely birthday.

Ship: N/A.

Word count: 339 words.

Square: E4 “Spending birthday alone.”

Rating: Teen.

Summary: On Steve’s birthday, everyone was busy.

Major Tags: Birthday alone, failed surprise party.

Additional tags: This is my entry to @cabottombingo Captain Bottom Bingo round 2. CABB2024.

Links: Wattpad, Ao3, Spanish version.

@saiyanprincessswanie

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

I don’t give any kind of permission for my fics to be posted on other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and are not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

My other media where I publish: Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.

If you like it, please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @charmed-asylum @pandaxnienke @real-fbi @Smokeandnailz @white-wolf1940 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @xoxonotme @bluemusickid @leyannrae @Harrysthiccthighss @Marvelatthisone @caplanbuckybarnes @sapphire-rogers @lizzieolseniskinda @notyourtypicalrose @hallecarey1 @nana1000night @talia-rumlow @writingshae @alexxavicry @azulatodoryuga @daemonslittlebitch @chaoticcollectivenightmare @endlesstwanted @chemtrails-club @marigoldreamer @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @Here4thefanfics @theestorm @patzammit @kmc1989 @somegirlfromasgard

Steve was in his apartment in Brooklyn. It was his birthday, and despite the years that had passed since he was thawed out, he still felt a little out of place.

The day started like any other. However, as the day progressed, he noticed that everyone seemed to be busy. Natasha was on a mission, Tony was busy in his lab, Thor was in Asgard, Clint was at his farm, and Banner was at a conference or something; he hadn't understood him, and even Sam wasn't available either.

Returning to his apartment, Steve felt a little melancholy. He looked at himself in the mirror and realized that he still felt lonely at the moment.

He decided to go for a walk through the streets of the city, deep in thought. As he strolled through the places he once knew and still existed and the pleasant moments he had spent there.

He passed by a small pastry shop, so he decided to go in and buy a slice of cake. He was amazed at the immense variety that now existed; in his day, they were very "basic" flavors.

Steve went back to his apartment and lit a small candle on the slice of cake. He sat alone at the table, watching the flickering flame. As he blew out the candle, he made a small wish silently.

At that moment, his phone rang, but he decided to ignore it. It was time to enjoy his cake; maybe tomorrow would be a new day, and maybe the others wouldn't be so busy anymore.

“He's not answering," Natasha said for the fifth time.

“Rumlow, you should go get him," Tony suggested.

“I'm not going; I told them it was a bad idea to throw him a surprise party; no one bothered to be with him to keep an eye on him," Brock complained.

“You and Rollins could have been..."

“We had to train the new guys, who, by the way, are useless."

“Stop fighting; I'll go," Clint offered, heading for the exit.

#cabottombingo #cabottombingor2 #steve rogers

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comicgeekscomicgeek · 2 months

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So this is just me rambling, but I read a lot of manga these days and am either fandom involved or fandom adjacent to a chunk of it (even if that’s just sharing stuff on tumblr), and one thing I struggle a bit with is my reaction to a lack of… I guess you’d call it “consistency” for fandoms where the source material doesn’t originate in English (I’m mostly using MHA here in my examples because that’s my main fandom).

How does a work get referred to? Is it Dungeon Meshi or Delicious in Dungeon? And how should it be categorized on an archive/site (AO3 splits the difference by including both in the name, but files it under Japanese name first)

How about spelling? Is it OchaCo or OchaKo? And what about additional U’s? Is it Shoto or ShoUto?

Name order? Should it be Midoriya Izuku or Izuku Midoriya?

Honorifics or no honorifics? (Not helped that different publishers have different takes on this and the previous)

My own personal first thought is to defer to whatever the official translation uses, if one exists. But second thoughts kick in and I think about how a) some of that is my own natural deference to authority talking (Something I know i really struggle against. Like, part of me literally says “we’re being told what’s correct) and b) how some official translations tend to take a good bit of Japanese cultural context out of a work. We’re no longer on at the “jelly donuts” level of localization, but the name order thing or removing honorifics do make a work a little less Japanese, remove some nuance, and do a little dumbing down so English speaking readers don’t have to try and grasp new cultural concepts.

So maybe not great.

I have no real answers, but as someone who reads a lot of fan fic and has seen these go all over the map depending on the writer, it’s just thoughts that can go through my mind. The same goes for here on tumblr, with how works or characters might get tagged.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening to me ramble.

#manga #anime #fandom #tumblr #translation #translations #localization

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somewhereapart · 4 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you for tagging me @revolutionsoftheheart! 💋

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

230

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 1,851,307

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently: SVU (EO), MCU/Marvel (Steggy), Once Upon a Time (OQ) (shut up, i'm calling it current bc I intend to continue, I've just been taking a little break....)

Over the course of my fandom life: Battlestar Galactica (Lee/Kara), Private Practice (Charlotte/Cooper), CSI:Miami (Calleigh/Eric), and if you count all the writing I did in notebooks during my teenage years Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series (Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike, Angel/Darla).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Couches (SVU)

Breaking In (Once Upon a Time) (** This one would absolutely have the top spot if the OQ fandom had made the shift to Ao3 sooner. Baker's Dozen would probably be in the top 5 as well, so... honorable mention. lol)

Lip Service (SVU)

Convalescence (SVU)

Mistakes Were Made (SVU)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to respond to every single comment, years and years ago. Now I am terrible at responding to comments, for a number of reasons. 1) I just don't have the spoons I used to have, and oftentimes I will start out replying to all the comments and then the day will pass and the next day I maybe don't have the time/energy for it, and then I worry people will think I'm intentionally ignoring their comments, which I am very much not, so I kind of adopted an "if I can't get to everybody, I just shouldn't do anybody" mentality which is probably not the greatest and I am trying to work on... 2) I tend to keep the tab open for my latest fic/update for a day or two to see what comments roll in but then after that, I close the tab and I forget the inbox on Ao3 actually exists so I'm reliant on my email alerts to know when there's a new comment, and I don't check that email every day so sometimes it's dayssss after someone leaves a comment on a not-quite-brand-new work before I see it. And then I feel like I've accidentally left it too late? 3) I feel like I should have more to say than just replying to everyone with "Thanks!", or I feel bad when I have more to say to some reviews than that (because they ask a question, are more specific about something, etc.) but then reply to some of the others with only "Thanks!" Like I feel like the people who just get "thanks!" are gonna feel like I don't value their reviews as much as the people who get a longer response, and then they'll feel bad or like they wasted their effort reviewing and then I'll feel bad bc that is very much not the case. (See above re: "if I can't do it for everyone, I'll just do it for no one.") This is the (one and only) downside to me of the Ao3 comment reply format vs. FFNet review replies -- I LOVE that the Ao3 comments format lends itself better to conversation, but the FFnet review replies went to people's DMs so nobody knew if they got a "Thanks!" on this one and someone else got a paragraph. 4) I feel like it pads the Comment count? Like it looks like the work got double the response that it did, it feels a little like I'm cheating? So in summary, I have Comment reply anxiety, clearly lol. But I love receiving everyone's comments, and I hoard each and every one like a dragon with their treasure, and I appreciate everyone who takes the time to leave one. Maybe in 2024 I should make it a goal to reply to all of them idk...

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Mmmmm.... Hexes, maybe? I was scrolling down the OUAT fic memory lane last night and hit OQ Angst Week, that had some doozies. Maybe Sing A Song of Forgetting, that one was rough.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Baker's Dozen, probably. (Which, fun fact -- I put the OG version back up on Ao3 a few years back "temporarily" and then forgot to take it down, so if you have that and the published book version, now you can compare, I guess 😂)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not much these days, but I have a few times in the past. The one I got the most hate on is actually not on Ao3 because when I moved over my Private Practice fics from FFnet, I didn't move anything incomplete that I wasn't expecting to finish. But it was a Charlotte King fic that dealt with her fiance coming back into her life (before we actually met him on the show) while she and Cooper were broken up, and I was very clear that it was a Charlotte fic not so much a CharCoop fic, but oooooh people were mad that there was a love triangle going on and it was unclear who she was gonna end up with. LIVID. FURIOUS. That's the fic that made me turn off anon reviews for the first time bc I had someone who would just troll me with hate reviews and blow up my DMs. It was a time....

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Indeed, and pretty much... whatever's clever. lol I need more specifics on the last question.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Not really, no.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes! Someone swiped a chunk of one of my EO fics and reused it like word for word (with the names changed, obvs) in their Jopper fic this summer! And someone linked me to it and I blew up their Comments section on the chapter and they deleted their entire internet presence, it was wild.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, because every time someone asks me for permission to translate one, I say no, bc I am very protective of my work. lol I don't like not being able to vet the translation and know that it comes across the way I want it to. I've talked in the past about having a friend of mine do a Spanish translation of Baker's Dozen, but she literally does translation for a living and she's so familiar with my writing and my writing process (and I'm so familiar with hers) that I can trust the end result would be what I'd want it to be. Also, in my experience, folks who want to translate my work also want to repost it somewhere themselves, and I haaaaaaate that. I'm a control freak about my work, I want it to be where I want it and have control over the managing of it at all times. (I get annoyed when people repost my work to other fic archives/collections, or have it bound in print for themselves, etc. I don't like that. What if I want to go back and change something? Just leave it where I posted it and link back to there, please and thank you!)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, but never to completion.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? It's like choosing between children, I can't.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

If Every Road Led Back Home (the aforementioned Charlotte King fic). Everything else, I am still convinced I'll finish it someday. lol (But if we were gonna be less optimistic than that, What Happens in Vegas, and L'ébauche probably)

16. What are your writing strengths?

Porn with feelings. lol Sex scenes with what I call "heightened realism" -- it's probably consistently better sex than real-world sex, but never so much that it seems implausible or too exaggerated, and I like to include little mishaps, or imperfections, or the real things that often get skipped over (hey condoms, hey lube, hey peeing after sex) because when you've been writing sexy fanfic for two decades, quite frankly it's boring when it's perfect and shiny every time. I have a Steggy fic planned for sometime this year that is basically "their sex life has one consistent and inconvenient obstacle and here's all the ways that works out (and sometimes doesn't work out) for them." I haven't flexed my angst muscles in a while, but I used to absolutely love writing stuff that wrecked people until they were yelling at me in the comments. I miss doing that.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Rampant abuse of grammar (I know I'm doing it, I just don't care), overuse of the word "just", and too many parentheticals. Also knowing when to stop. I will use 18 words when 3 would do, and I can very easily write myself into the weeds instead of staying on target and writing every scene with intent toward a goal. (Hi, Breaking In.) Also, finishing things. (Hello again, Breaking In, and every other unfinished WIP both on Ao3/FFnet and in my Google Docs graveyard.)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If it fits the fic, absolutely, but only a language I can find a native speaker to check and correct for me before I post it. I don't wanna be the one out here with the wonky Google Translate French that makes people who can actually read the language cringe.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first fanfic I ever published on the internet was a Spuffy fic that is now lost to the ages because it was on some fic archive that no longer exists, but I did a lot of pen-and-paper BtVS fanfic writing in middle and high school.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

I'm gonna go with Breaking In, because it's my baby. My Beast. The big guy. My Everest. And also Baker's Dozen because it's Baker's Dozen.

tagging in a no-pressure way (and sorry for any double tags): @goodthingscomeinthrees @behindthelabels @rahleeyah @roboticonography @doctorhelena @lyricalviolet @audreysl0ve @ninzied @somuchwhatever and anyone else who wants to do it!

#writing #memes #writing memes

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clare-with-no-i · 6 months

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20 questions for fic writers

Thank youuu @isahorcrux for the tag! it's been so long since I did one of these omigoddddd

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

37!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

392k. a bit crazy that the next chapter of theogony will put it over 400k. wauw!!!!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

publicly? Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. privately? I have an entire folder on my laptop called 'other shit' which is just one-shots for about fifteen different fandoms which I will never publish <3

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

god. this is really making me look at my statistics page which I actively try not to do lol. but it's one long day, I will carry you, color theory, foreigner's god, and growing pains. what can I say, the ppl love the they lived AUs!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to but I'm terrible about it which is a personal failing. I am so sorry. a new strategy that helps with this is that with my WIPs I try to respond right after the next chapter is posted so the person gets a nice lil notif and they have something else to read!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh hmmm. I guess the derelict art of letting go ending was angsty, but the whole thing was angsty. the end was bittersweet. maybe Invictus? ok new problem is I can't remember what I've written

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

foreigner's god! it's always clare why did you write all of that sad stuff into foreigner's god clare why did you write their deaths in such brutal detail clare I made my roommate read this and now she won't stop crying blah blah and it's never hey clare thanks for that nice ending scene where they're just married and lying in bed and vibing!!!!!!!!!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

yeah I do and I think under viking law I'm legally permitted to fistfight the commenters!!!!!!!!!!!! step up cowards!!!!!!!!!!!!

9. Do you write smut. If so, what kind?

god. lmao. yes I do! not often, though, I'm afraid. I tend to write an extremely narrow niche which is just exorcising trauma through sex and personal intimacy. I have no chill :)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

no I actually usually dislike crossovers lol. like theogony is a fusion of the outlander premise but I can assure you that James Alexander Malcom MacKenzie Frasier will not make an appearance. crossovers stress me out and I like to keep my little fictional words separate, if I can. ok edit: on further review I've concluded that I enjoy premise swaps (these are just AUs lol), but I can't deal with characters from multiple pieces of media interacting. it's too much. stay in your lanes, my god. this isn't super smash bros.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not a whole fic but someone basically copy and pasted a bunch of lines from NAR into their story and then a bunch of drama ensued. it sucked and I don't like looking at NAR because it reminds me of it. I still think about the anon who told me about it, though. they were so lovely and so caring and kind to me. I hope they're doing well.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! both with my permission and without. ha ha.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

babes I can't even finish the stories that I'm writing by myself

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

percabeth or zelink! or any doomed/short-lived/five seconds of screen time couple in a tv show or book. seriously idk why but I always fixate on the less important characters

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I renounce this question in the name of christ. amen.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I exist not with writing strengths or weaknesses but instead a secret third thing (stupidly recognizable style)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

see above

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I actually have a WIP where James lives in Spain to play quidditch and he speak Spanish in it :) eso me asusta mucho pq no he practicado mi español hace muchos años pero…sea lo que sea

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

percabeth! my ffnet account is still out there somewhere with ~four percabeth stories that are terrible :) just very bad :) no good :) horriblé :)

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

theogony or foreigner's god! or suze's bday fic but that's because I have never tailor-made something for someone quite like that fic and she was so sweet about it eye can't deal

tagging my internet wife @thequibblah bestie...knocking at ur door...standing outside with an edible arrangement...

#clare is tagged #this was s'cute tysm isa!

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booklovertwilight · 3 months

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I'm really sorry about what happened to your fic. I'm sorry if it's a stressor or anything (You don't have to answer this if you're not in the right headspace for it) but do you have any idea why they might have targeted that fic in particular? Judging by AO3's TOS, there's absolutely no reason they should have done that. I'm just worried that if it happened to you, it might happen to other people too.

Thank you for your sympathy. It is in fact a major stressor, even so long after it happened... that fic really mattered a lot to me, and I often came back to read the nice comments people had left on it when I was having bad days. Those are all gone now.

I don't know exactly why they took it down, but I have a guess. The idea came from an orphaned fic, and the first few chapters were very similar (before it diverged around chapter 4). In a way it was a fanfic of Death Note and also a fanfic of another fanfic. However, I wasn't able to credit the author with the inspiration, because I had no idea who the author was. Orphaned fics work like that. I did link to the inspiration fic in the notes, but... I guess that wasn't good enough...?For a long time I was confused. I all cited the sources of my story. I tagged it as a divergence. What else was I supposed to do?

Then, after a while, I realized (while publishing another work) that there was an easily-overlooked little checkbox in the work-creation menu, "this work is based on another work". I wondered if, perhaps, I should have checked it for What I've Done--if that would have solved the problem and kept the mods from coming after me. I certainly would have checked it, if I'd known it existed. But that wasn't a mechanic on FFnet, where I started writing fanfic - what we did back then was just link to the inspiration fic in the summary. (Which is what I did!)

Not a clue if this would have fixed it, honestly--maybe not. And, even if that is the problem... well, it's weird. "This is too similar to another work" is a weird criticism to level against a fanfiction. The whole point of fanfic, and the whole reason for AO3's existence, is that fanwork is too similar to one or more existing published works. If my speculation on the source of the error is correct, I should never have had to speculate: the mods should have told me about it in their emails. And, while they're at it, their interface should be more friendly to fanfic-of-fanfic writers, since fanfic is their whole thing.

But anyway, that's the story. If the error is generalizable, it is "failing to tick the little checkbox in the work creation screen". I will certainly not be making that mistake again.

I would put the work back up, now: someone wrote a sequel to What I've Done that now lacks its relevant context. But I worry that if I did so, the mods might just delete my account in its entirety. They do seem to be capricious like that.

This whole incident has put a sour taste in my mouth regarding fanfiction in general and AO3 in specific, so that's one reason (of many) that I haven't been updating my other fics very much. Sorry about that.

Thanks for asking about this. It makes me happy that people still care about this story. And, just in case you don't already have it, here is the google doc where you can still read it.

#letting go of what i've done #fic update

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purlturtle · 1 month

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🍓🦷

Thank you for asking! (list of questions)

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

Hah! Long story, I'll try to keep it short.

So I was never really *in* fandom, as a kid, teenager, adult - I knew that FedCon existed, as a German convention for Star Trek fans, and I knew there had been a letter-writing campaign for Star Trek in the 60s, but beyond that, fandom was just not on my radar, much less something I shared with others. I did not know that there was such a thing as fan fiction, either! 😱😅

I don't even remember how I learned about fan fiction, but I can tell you that I was in my thirties, because it happened after a breakup - I was deeply hurt, and found a lovely escape in marathoning Voyager. And for the first time in my life, I felt the urge to write something; a self-insert for Voyager, as it turned out. I joined AO3 in 2012, through the invitation queue because I didn't know a single person who was on AO3 and could send me an invite code. I started posting my fic there, and got lovely comments, and that repeated itself when I started posting Warehouse fic, but I still didn't really feel like I was part of fandom; the interaction I got there was such a small thing.

But yeah, back to fan fic: the impulse to write came because of escapism and a massive crush on Kathryn Janeway and my huge urge to write a self-insert that would put me on Voyager. The last piece of the puzzle happened when I read an official Voyager novel and found it so... well, not bad, but mediocre? that I remember to this day thinking "I can write better than that." Even as a non-native speaker, even as someone who hadn't really written a lot before. The amazement that someone had written this and got it published and got PAID for it, that was the last push I needed to write down my story myself.

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on

Oh wow! Deep question! I think the one thing that has always been my biggest help is the fact that I am on my own side. 100%. I might be miffed with myself at times, but I always know where that shit comes from, and I'd never put myself down. I've also seen this described as radical (self-)acceptance, and in effect in means that while the world might be shit, and life might be hard, at least I don't have to deal with being my own harshest critic, or constantly being dissatisfied with myself, or worse. I am in my corner. I *like* myself.

Star Trek has helped a lot with that; in two ways, both coming from awesome female characters: Deanna Troi telling her mom "I'll never be lonely; I'll always have myself," and Beverly Crusher telling herself "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe." Those sentences and mindsets have stuck with me, and have given me a lot of self-confidence and self-worth.

The third bit of wisdom I gained from an Elder Lesbian, with whom I shared a hospital room after my very first ever heartbreak gave me gastritis: "If they don't want you, they don't deserve you." As in, don't fight to keep someone in your life who makes it clear they don't care about you. Let them go and good riddance. Including any sunk cost (see: Sunk Cost Fallacy) you have already put into that relationship. If they don't want you, they don't deserve you. Seek out those who *do* want you - and in the meantime, just like Deanna Troi, know that you'll always have yourself.

That was fun! I hope it is interesting to read too!

#ask meme answered #thanks for asking!#long post

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bard-llama · 6 months

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20 Question Fic Writer Game

Thanks for tagging me @chickiefoo!

How many works do you have on AO3? Today, 450. Probably will go up in the next few days, though, because I enjoy posting daily when I can and I have some new content (vs new chapters to published stuff)

What is your AO3 word count? 2,177,884 🤯🤯🤯

What fandoms do you write for? Primarily, I write for the Witcher, but I spent the last year writing for Avatar, the Last Airbender. Honestly, I've written for a number of fandoms, but most of it was when I first got an AO3 account in high school and college, before I stopped writing for several years. The Witcher got me back into it, and since then, it's only been that and atla. And maybe possibly the DND movie a little bit, but I don't actually have any words on paper, so I don't think it counts.

What are your top five fics by kudos? 1. Fire and Water (atla) 2. A Second Chance at Family (atla) 3. Five Times Geralt Frotted Against Jaskier's Ass and One Time He Fucked It (TWN) 4. 5 Dinners with the Lioness (Plus 1 with the Lion Cub) (TWN) 5. Death Rites (atla) Kinda funny that I have more Witcher Video Game (esp Iorveth/Roche) fics than any others and yet none make the top 5, but honestly, I think it's just because atla and TWN have bigger fandoms with more people. And technically, I do mostly write a rare pair... (they have 744 works now... but 146 of those are mine...)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I try to, but honestly, I get overwhelmed really easily and I figure people would prefer if I focus my effort on writing vs trying to respond if it's a choice between the two, so...

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hmmm. See, the thing is, endings are.... not something I get to that often. But the first thing that came to mind was an atla fic where Zuko gets his hands chopped off and his feet fucked up and then has to learn how to recover. In general, though, I have to write endings that are at least hopeful, if not necessarily happy.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Uh. I don't even know how to measure this???? Maybe Bitter Victories (Witcher)? That one starts out really angsty, but ends in the afterlife with a happily ever after (but like, kind of a bittersweet one bc they're alone in their afterlife, all their friends still alive).

Do you get hate on fics? Unfortunately, I had a fic fairly recently that I really did get a lot and that was rough. But also, when I mentioned it in the author's notes, people were really, really sweet and supportive in response. So if you get hate: delete it and seek out validation from people, because you deserve to know that the hate is bullshit. And also, the back button exists and if you're old enough to be on the internet, you're old enough to know how to use it.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I have 103 Explicit fics on AO3, so... yeah. Um. The kinky kind???

Do you write crossovers? Not really? Well, I guess it depends on how you define it. I do a lot of like, crossovers between different Witcher mediums - but it's all still the same universe. I dunno that I'd ever branch into doing a whole different universe (though, just saying, Ciri's power was made for universe hopping).

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge. I hope not?

Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! It's so cool! I had a fic get translated into Russian.

Have you ever cowritten a fic before? Not really. When I was 9 or 10, my bestie and I would write together, but honestly, I like having full control over everything and my muse is unpredictable. It's best to just work alone than to have someone waiting on something I can't promise I'll deliver. That said, my process really depends on being able to talk through and brainstorm ideas with other people. It's very much collaborative, but I - or rather, my muse - has ultimate control.

What's your all-time favourite ship? Probably Iorveth/Roche (Witcher)? I mean, I've written an awful lot of them and they're the kind of characters where even if the story isn't about them, there's still a regard between them, you know?

What's a WIP you'd like to finish but doubt you ever will? I like to believe that I will one day finish ALL my WiPs... as much of a pipe dream as that sometimes seems... (I have over 300 WiPs)

What are your writing strengths? I think I'm pretty good at character voice? And I'm decent at porn. Uh, I guess my muse is really inventive, too? And I certainly have no shortage of ideas.

What are your writing weaknesses? Description is definitely the biggest one. I am not a visual person AT ALL and so I don't really think to describe the scene much??? And I really can only give details if I've actually like, built out the floorplan or made the character design or something. There's a reason I build a lot of settings and characters in the Sims.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I mean, I've done it, I think it can be important for a scene - but I also think it's important for the reader to know what's being said, so I usually put it in brackets next to the other language, so you don't have to jump to footnotes or something.

First fandom you wrote for? BBC Merlin, I think

Favourite fic you've ever written? You expect me to choose ONE!?!?!?! (Honestly, it depends on my mood.)

This was fun! Tagging @lutes-and-dandelions, @moonlights-ordinance, @miahclone, @fantom-flower, @useless-empty-brain, anyone else who wants to???

#tag game #my fics

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doctorguilty · 1 year

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I can't take any more of these "what do you mean 'queer sci-fi adventure' isn't a summary? how can I say anything else without spoiling it? what more do you want to hear other than it's gay?" threads like I'll give you a hint, stop making ao3 your only reference in the world for literature. And I don't even mean you need to read a single book on paper in the entire world (as much as that would probably benefit you) but just google some books and learn by example???

I went to Amazon and clicked LGBTQ+ stories, browsed what's popular in a couple genres.

In Sci-Fi and Fantasy, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune:

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

In Romance, One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston:

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

Do you understand these are very different stories, with different plots, and different tones? Even though they're both about gay characters in with science fiction elements to the story? And the summary doesn't "spoil" the whole story, it tells you what the story is about? That literature isn't meant to be compressed into tropes and tags?

And like, you don't have to write a several paragraph summary like a professional publisher. I could boil this down to, "August doesn't believe in finding love until she meets a stunning punk rock girl named Jane on the train, who looks and acts like someone straight out of the 1970's. Turns out, Jane had a time travel mishap and needs August's help getting back." Those two sentences still tell someone more than "wlw romance with time travel" which could be about, literally almost anything.

Like, please, just take a break from browsing ao3 tags and browse a bookstore or browse books online, learn something, c'mon now

#seth speaks #long post

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thedarkestgreys · 1 year

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✨year end fic review✨

tagged by @muserepeats and @luuver3 💕 thanks friends!

whats your ao3 account?

thedarkestgrey

how many words did you write in total in 2022?

the very stupid number of 252,903

how many fics did you publish in 2022? how many were multichapter vs one shots?

eleven all together. three completed multi-chapters, three wip/on-going multi-chapters and five one-shots.

what was your longest fic? your shortest?

longest : your violent overnight rush (141,867 WIP) shortest: 'till our wide eyes burn blind (938 on-going)

what was your most popular fic? what was your least popular fic?

lol by the numbers we can just repeat the above answer in the same order. YVOR is very, very close to not only being my most popular of 2022 but my most popular of all time by the numbers, in like a fraction of the time? it blows me away tbh. with TOWEBB, like, I didn't expect much from it really, it's less than 1k and it's just a little bit extra from an existing fic. it was still fun to write out a backstory idea from the hades/persephone verse i created though!

what fic didn't perform as well as you thought it would?

i only have one chapter of it posted, but don't you dream impossible things? has under performed from kinda what i was expecting i guess? idk its hard to say these days, a year post the season coming out while in a hiatus until who knows when means that it's really only the diehards still around for the time being, so i'm lowering my expectations here folks.

what fic performed way better than you expected it would?

all of you, all of me (intertwined) Desert!Fexi for sure. It was just a chance for me to write about T-Town and y'all ate that shit up. i think they will make a comeback sometime in 2023 when i'm not so busy with a billion WIPS like rn?

what was your favorite fic you wrote from 2022?

I think at this point we all know how I feel about YVOR. that fic is my child. BUT!!!! the stray lines that unwind you is probably what I go back and reread the most out of everything I've published in this last year. maybe ever actually? it was just a fun little slice of life to live in when i wrote it and has some of my favorite fexi interactions i've ever written.

what was your favorite fic that somebody else wrote in 2022?

oh so many. the talent in this fandom is beyond.

i will scream about And no drugs for Lexi Howard, bye. by @changeyourwholepitch to anyone who wants to listen to me. it's just perfectly smutty and delicious. i think about inspiration point by @actnatural-ly a fucking lot too. and Someone To Watch Over Me by @muserepeats never fails to fuck me up. i would be remiss to not point out that i love so many fics from @myztify. and also to remind @calculated2stagger that she makes me want to retire 😘 (yall its a joke okay?)

tag your friends to do this year end fic review as well!

@sarahcakes613 @takearisk-ao3 uhhhhhh idk who hasn't done this yet?

#okay i did it #year end fic review

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ofmermaidstories · 11 months

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Hi Mermie! I’m a longtime lurker, and I finally gathered the courage to let you know how much I love your writing! Thank you for sharing all your stories with us :)

If I may, can I ask your thoughts on something? I’ve been wanting to start my own writing blog for years now, but I also one day want to traditionally publish an original novel of my own. Do you think the risk of being found out as a “fanfic writer” is worth? A lot of popular authors these days got their start writing fanfic, but I’m curious what your think.

Thank you again! <3

This was the first of two asks I got within a day asking about the fanfic-writer-to-traditionally-published-author pipeline, lmfao, so I’m gonna answer them back-to-back! Like neat lil bookends. 📚

I think it can be! Are you embarrassed by the idea of your fics and your original writing being connected? 🥺 I know people like to weaponise the idea of the fanfic-to-pubbed-author pipeline against writers and books they don’t like, but to be honest I always see it as an inevitable next step for a lot of people LOL. People love the idea of telling stories! I have friends who aren’t writers naturally, that pine about wanting to publish a book—so the fact that so many fic writers find their way into publishing original content doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I do have mixed feelings about filing the serial numbers off of a fic, LOL, but I don’t think there’s any real risk to being discovered as a fic writer these days (unless someone is a plagiarist, of course, which case there is a very big risk and maybe that plan should then be reassessed LOL). It’s so popular! It’s getting normalised, or at least is taking up enough space that involvement in it doesn’t have to be career-ending. There might be legality problems, maybe, but I don’t have the qualifications to comment on that because I honestly have no idea about it. 😭

It just depends, I reckon! On several things! How comfortable you are with your fics and original writing being associated with each other. What genres you’re writing them in. How you write them. How you act on your fanfic blog, vs. how you eventually act online as a traditionally published writer. Like, if you wrote anime boyfriend smut and then write non-anime boyfriend smut, and acted the same on your tradpubbed accounts as you did your fic ones, I don’t see how being pinged for writing fanfic could be that bad. It’s more about consistency, I reckon, than what you’re doing. People love the excuse to be a hater, and under that mentality everything is fair game, so sure, maybe one day someone will try to use your fanfic against you—if you’ve been consistent with how kindly you treat people and the things you like to write, the most it will be is annoying.

And honestly? Unless you are absolutely zealous about keeping your identity private, you should always just assume that someone out there will eventually connect you and your fanfic account!! People are nosy and the internet is surprisingly shallow; it holds everything, just under the surface. You either have to make peace with the idea that your writing will be compared (and maybe used against you, because people can be jerks!), or you protect yourself and your future stories and keep a sparse presence, or go ao3 only. 🥺

Ultimately though?? I think it’s worth writing fanfic anyway. Even if you have to take a few extra, cautionary steps—being part of a healthy community is fun!! Especially a writing community. Being traditionally published seems like it can be quite lonely, really; it doesn’t seem to have the same kind of interaction, especially if you start off as a smaller author. In fandom we’re all apart of the same space—we exist as readers and writers together, and we talk to each other fittingly. In the published world that real-time feedback is limited. The spaces readers can gush about a book are reader-only spaces—they’re not for you, as a writer, because now you are separated from them (and rightfully so, tbh, so many authors are proving why the distance is necessary). I know social media now means that publishers like (and expect) their writers to be online and gather and maintain an audience, but that can backfire so easily. Look at how authors shoot themselves in the foot by lashing out a bad review on goodreads! There’s worse things to happen to a writing career than being outed for writing fanfic. As you said, so many popular authors got their start with fanfic! I mean, the Reylo community is thriving, for instance—and the Dramione kiddos are beginning their trickle over, with writers like Olivie Blake.

Even if you have to be vicious about protecting your identity, I reckon fanfic can teach you a lot. Like how to handle (or not, lmao) the rudes; how to refine what you’re writing, and what you’re good at—and what people will respond to, in your stories. The hard part for all writing, fic or original, is finding your people—your audience! Because they need time to learn to trust you and trust the stories you tell, and that can be hard when you’re trying to do it with the weight of a publisher’s expectations behind you, making you do little tiktok dances—or whatever—for attention. 🥺 If you start a fanfic blog and you get popular enough, you’re at the very least giving yourself options, because you’ll have people there that already like your writing, and you. People who might be interested in reading whatever original material you publish, beyond fic (people who might like watching the tiktok dances!!!).

I’m (very clearly lmao) not an expert in the publishing industry, or the general attitude to fanfic-writers-turned-authors. There very well might be an unspoken convention that means they’re more likely to be distrustful of a fanfic writer. Maybe there’s some really severe expectations in monetising that pre-existing readership that was originally there for the love of the story, and the fandom it came from. All this casual gluttony, when it comes to fanfic, might already be effecting (affecting? I can never remember) the industry, as more and more fanfic readers and writers hit adulthood and get Big People Jobs in imprints and as editors or agents.

The only thing you can do, Anon, is a) decide what you’re comfortable with, and b) how best to tell the stories you wanna tell. Whether that’s on AO3 or tumblr or a manuscript in an submissions inbox. I hope you get to write lots of stories, Anon—and that they find their people, no matter where or how you’re telling them. 💕

#ofmermaidstories-asks #i hope you’re having a good weekend anon 🥺💕

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curemoonliite · 1 year

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Presenting: The Big Four Preservation Project (AKA Operation: Release the Vickles-Shaye Cut)!

What if the first four Altador Cup MVPs were all part of a secret society, and the only one who knew was Tandrak Shaye? That's the question Jair Tollet finds herself asking when her team captain uncovers a sabotage scheme targeting the Altador Cups's high scorers and asks her for help. All Jair really wants to do is lay low and train her new apprentice Scout, but when an old frenemy from her Team Maraqua days is linked to the sabotages, Jair finds herself pulled ever deeper into the mystery...especially once the saboteurs begin to target Scout for her own burgeoning abilities...

The Big Four Saga was an unreleased Altador Cup 'verse written from 2010-11 for the Neopian Times. It was extensively advertised on Neopets forums, mainly Jellyneo Forums. Two stories (Jair's backstory Jumper and the intro short story Big Four Minus One) from it were eventually published, but its main series The Vickles-Shaye Battles was never released because, even after massive edits, it was continually rejected by the NT. It has only ever been read in its entirety by one person, a suburban father from Kansas City...until now.

Okay, so I wanted to do the crazy Defunctland-style narration for at least one paragraph to make this sound more important than it is, but putting that aside, I asked you all if you wanted to read my old AC fanfics in their uncut, ninth-grade glory, and boy did you guys deliver! I'd been thinking about doing this for some time since I'll be switching computers soon for the first time in a long time and wanted a way to preserve these silly things that still have a place in my heart, but wasn't sure if I should do it publicly or just add them to my Google Docs and call it a day. Due to extensive work writing and marketing my current WIP Premiere Nebula to publishers, I knew I wouldn't have time to fully remaster the Big Four Saga, but figured I'd leave it mostly as-is (more on that later) so readers could see the progress I've made in 13 years. I'd like to think I've grown a lot since then!

But point is, thanks to all your morbid curiosity (that you may end up regretting later), the full Big Four Saga is coming to AO3, alongside Paging Doctor Sparkle and the rest of If You Give a Little Love from FiMFiction. This will include both published stories and the full, unpublished Vickles-Shaye Battles 10-part series. Finally, someone other than my dad is going to see these! Maybe the people who actually waited for this on JNF will stumble on it and finally get to read it!

To finish this little self-promotion segment, I'd like to preface the release with one thing: this is a finished series that I'm releasing purely so I can have someplace online to preserve it. The Big Four Saga ended over a decade ago, and I have since moved onto other projects, one of which actually exists because of the Big Four Saga! You see, after Vickles-Shaye, I had intended on writing a sequel series called Valkaine, which was permanently cancelled due to continued rejection by the NT and me realizing the planned genre shift from a sports story to a magical girl-inspired sci-fi was a bit too jarring. If the concept for Valkaine sounds familiar to some of you, that's because it was the basis for Premiere Nebula! So hopefully, you'll all get to read some form of Valkaine someday, or at least a spiritual successor to it.

This brings me to the one change I will be making to the Big Four Saga before publishing it: Scout's name has been changed. The story explains that she was named for a central figure in the Resistance, but in the original version, her name was Valka. This change comes entirely because the name of the magical girl rebel leader in Premiere Nebula is, you guessed it, also Valka. They were actually the same character for a really long time, but as I developed PN!Valka, she got further and further from the original Valka concept that I thought "why not just name OG Valka something else?" So PN!Valka stays Valka while BF!Valka became Scout, purely to avoid future confusion between the characters should Premiere Nebula ever be published. But for those of you who follow PN, it might still be cool for you to know that Scout was the proto-Valka. :)

#neopets #altador cup #long post #my post #fanfiction

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nekoannie-chan · 10 months

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Fractured

Title: Fractured.

Fandom: Marvel, X-men, Captain America.

Pairing: Brock Rumlow X Mutant!Reader.

Rating: Teen.

Word count: 682 words.

Warnings: Mention of characters death, interrogation.

Summary: You discovered Brock’s past.

A/N: This is my entry to @multifandom-lover, Annie-1018 & square 2:

"I used to be a sweet kid."

You can read it on Wattpad & Ao3 too.

@saiyanprincessswanie

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics to be posted on other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other's people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and are not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

My other media where I publish: Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.

If you like it, please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @charmed-asylum @caplanbuckybarnes @hallecarey1 @nana1000night @talia-rumlow @mylifeispainandiloveit @writingshae @azulatodoryuga @chaoticcollectivenightmare @endlesstwanted @chemtrails-club @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @here4thefanfics @theestorm @patzammit

Brock kept the small locket with your photo; no one but him knew of the existence of that object. That day, maybe it would be his last mission, his last chance to see you. He had a feeling about what would happen, although he could not discern whether it would be good or bad.

He loves you, and he knew that you loved him too, but neither of us dared to take the first step, nor would he forget the look on your face when you discovered who he really was.

He cursed when Steve forced him into the vehicle; indeed, the mission had not gone as he had planned. He knew what would happen, but he would manage to escape.

He had always liked interrogations, but he preferred to carry them out and not be asked the questions himself.

He was sure that Rogers would be the one interrogating him, so he would do everything he could to make him mad and not get any answers. Steve had ruined his life.

Twenty minutes before the door opened, Brock settled into his seat, though he was suddenly confused when he saw you come in instead of Steve.

"It's been a long time," you said, looking at him.

"I can explain," Brock commented, pretending to be disinterested. He wasn't going to let you realize that you had surprised him; he was completely sure that Steve wouldn't miss the opportunity to get information from one of his enemies.

"What are you going to explain to me, Brock? Why were you trying to steal a highly dangerous substance? Or why were you part of HYDRA? " you scoffed.

"Whatever you want, although I guess you're more interested in knowing the former, I guess you're going to record it." Brock's voice sounded sarcastic.

"No one knows I'm here; in fact, no one suspects it, so no cameras," you commented.

Yes, you had used your powers for that; no one would notice that you were talking or anything that happened there. You could even be there for hours and they wouldn't notice it; in reality, it would only be less than a second.

"I know you like me," he said suddenly.

"You don't know anything, Brock."

"I know how you feel about me; I know what you thought about me that day; I saw everything in your eyes; I know too many things... "

"Don't try to be funny, Rumlow; I didn't come here to talk about that," "you said.

"I used to be a sweet kid."

"What? "

"I had a good childhood; my father was military, kind of strict, but still. You know, sometimes things happen for a reason; I didn't expect to be an orphan at sixteen."

"Did that make you what you are now? Is that how you justify everything you've done? "

"Not exactly, but that's how I ended up in the HYDRA facility."

Brock kept telling you everything that had happened in his life as you tried to decipher his intentions. In the end, he was right; you were in love with him, but you needed to know what his plan was. Anyway, it seemed like it was a forbidden love, but how many things hadn't you already done in hiding from the organization?

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"As soon as you said it, I realized, we're not in the cell at the base, are we?"

"Do you really care where we are?"

"No, of course, we could do other things," Brock suggested suggestively.

You smiled. They wouldn't do anything there, but somewhere else.

"Don't worry, I'll show you the plan later, but in the meantime, you must be ready; at any moment, I'll take you out of here," you told him.

Before Brock could say anything else, he was already alone in the room again; however, this time he was smiling. He was going to get out of there, and in the best way possible, with your help.

He looked up when he heard the door open again; this time it was Steve, so he smirked.

#multifandom-lover #brock rumlow #brock rumlow x reader #brockrumlow #brock fanfic #brock rumlow fanfiction #mcu brock rumlow #mcu crossbones

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insecateur · 2 years

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here's a first little trivia post about slawcs. this one will cover origins, inspiration, and background from the pre-rewrite era. (consequently it will be entirely about og slawcs and won't speak of the spin-offs either)

this is mostly for myself and probably like 3 people but i think it'll be therapeutic to write and i like reading about other people's writing and ideas so maybe you do, too! if so, enjoy!

origins

a young man sits at his computer. it just so happens that today, the 30th of october, 2013, is the day he set out to write some angst apparently:

i am so very sad that i don't have any archives of the conversations i was absolutely having back then on skype (ough) about writing this. i did find some old info on my old pokémon blog, so here's what i can recall to the best of my abilities:

i wanted to write angst, apparently because the angst i wanted wasn't being written by others. which is hilarious considering i'm told that as it stands A LOT of prfr fics involve either party dying, but you do have to consider that this was very early on. also it seems people kill lysandre usually? truly the special flavor here is that lysandre doesn't die.

back then, i hadn't published any fic in 3-4 years, hadn't written in 2 years, and had never published anything written in english ever. i had one incomplete english fic wip that only one person other than me had ever seen and that was it. og slawcs was my first foray in publishing in english (fic-wise and, really, story-wise, unless you count my webcomic i suppose.) i had an ao3 account since early 2013; i have No clue why, but it worked out, i guess!

og slawcs was originally a one-shot. i was unsure about this for a while but i found the original post from my old blog that confirms it:

(please forgive my cringiness i was almost a decade younger, extremely socially anxious, and also it was my first time publishing in english)

i have been told that the first chapter reads like it can stand on its own, well there's why!

the original title was Perfect World. i have always disliked it. the long and short of it is that i got to the new work ao3 page, realized i needed a title, and improvised. i have NO idea why "improvising" meant "using a title inspired by a shipname i already didn't like at the time" but it did. i actually never used the actual title to refer to the fic back then; i always called it "sad fic" or "the sad fic." a silly little codename was better than the actual name i gave my fic apparently. nobody calls it that anymore, me included, and the only trace i have left of it is that my slawcs playlist is still called "sad fic" to this day...

the fic was relatively popular in prfr circles at the time. i was actually surprised looking through my old tag for it to find so many people sending me asks about it... this was so long ago and ended so sourly for me (the pokémon blog, not the fic specifically) that i sometimes tend to think i exaggerate how much feedback i got back then but i didn't apparently. (noah even found someone on twitter like one or two weeks ago who mentioned the fic indirectly so it's also memorable i guess ?_?) which does make me feel kinda bad for disappearing for so long also orz

i almost forgot to discuss this since this isn't an aspect that really exists in the fic anymore, but very early on the fic was supposed to have two endings. (slawcs spoilers follow if you care) the actual ending i ended up writing, where lysandre accepts dialga's offer and goes back in time to sabotage his own plans, and a "status quo" ending where lysandre stays and tries to make the world he's destroyed better as best as he can pull off.

the reason why i ended up scraping the alternate ending is actually pretty straightforward: the entire point behind having two endings was that i was embarrassed by the time travel/multiverse idea. this seems so stupid to me now but back then i genuinely was like "oh no i can't have my POKÉMON FANFICTION end with the power of love and time travel fixing everything it's too cringe (cringe wasn't as much of a thing back then but it was the spirit of it) so i need to come up with a Serious, Realistic ending to compensate"

then the multiverse was made canon and THEN years later rainbow rocket happened and i was like "who cares actually. if canon can do this why can't i."

i might elaborate on the other ending in another part, we'll see.

inspiration

i have touched on this very briefly in the fic's notes (i think at the end of eclipse?) but i think it would be fun to talk about this some more, so i will!

the premise of the fic (not really a spoiler because it happens mid-chapter 1, but still,) that lysandre is "hallucinating" a dead augustine sycamore, was inspired by an old nbc heroes fic i read when i was a teen. the fic (Imaginary Friend by Fantastic Pants on FFnet) was about, you guessed it, a character hallucinating another dead character.

well, actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. for context, character A (noah bennet aka HRG, for those in the know™) thought he'd killed character B (claude rains) who was a mutant capable of becoming invisible. in the fic, fake B was very much self-aware about being imaginary, and also very much supposed to be a representation of guilt, anxiety and depression. the "twist" of the fic, of course, is that B turns out to have been alive the whole time, and fake B disappears for good when A learns this.

i haven't reread the fic in years, but it is one of the two heroes fic that have stayed with me since then even though i stopped caring about heroes midway through season 2. as you can see, the core of it is similar, though the end result and the context is very different.

in slawcs, i kept the line between haunting, hallucination, and manifestation ambiguous, because i thought it worked better that way, but for me the most important aspect was the expression of negative feelings. i'm very humbled when people tell me it resonated with them: i wrote it based on my own experience with anxiety so I've Been Through The Symptoms and i'm always glad to know it works and feels meaningful!

tl;dr if i hadn't read this angsty heroes fanfiction i might not even have gotten back into writing ever

falling out

as i said in the first section, the fic was very well-received. it was one of the first fic for the ship on ao3 (i want to say it was among the first ten? it was definitely there before the tag was even canonized) so that probably helped, to be fair. people were eager for more! the second chapter was well-received as well, posted the next month. in mid-december, i posted another fic that i've since deleted because i just didn't like it that much (it was the ball dancing one, for those who might remember.) the last post in my old tag for og slawcs was from january 2014, assuring someone i was still working on the fic.

i was! but i was also Going Through It, both in my personal life but also when it came to the fandom. i don't blame anyone for it, really; i had gotten too emotionally involved imo, and also i was starting to grow tired of tumblr and the vibes there in general. so i ended up detaching myself from everything more and more, progressively. i stopped looking at my main dashboard and stopped looking at anything related to the fandom on tumblr. i moved largely to twitter but kept posting fanart for a while. then i just left.

in 2015, i began working on a new fic unrelated to og slawcs. this fic is still on my ao3; it's the one where lysandre gets guillotined. it was partially inspired by an old fanart of mine and my then all-consuming passion for french musicals. when i decided i was going to post it, i first thought i'd also make sure i could update og slawcs as well, because i felt so bad about abandoning it even though i was still very much in the fandom. and so, in december 2015, i both posted a brand new one-shot and the 3rd chapter of og slawcs.

and then i never updated it again for 6 years.

but i did work on it! at the time i posted the original third chapter, i had actually already written the original fourth. i think i might even have had half of the fifth back then. i was sure the fifth would be the last one; then it got too long, so i cut it in half, thinking the sixth would be the last one for sure. then i kind of... gave up.

i don't remember the timeline very well because it was a few years ago and also late 2016 to mid 2017 kind of all blurs together in my mind because it was when i was first getting knee surgery and i was basically at one of the lowest points in my life, but i did keep working on the fic (on top of writing other fic) back then. i fully stopped when i reached the point where i'd have to do the game rewrite, so midway through chapter 6 (sun.) i'm not entirely sure why (apart from bad mental health obviously) i think i was just... worried i couldn't pull it off. i'd watch reference material and then be like, no this sucks actually, this is bad, i can't do this well, and it’s been so long, and nobody will care anymore, and...

then in late 2017 i entered my Yakuza Phase and took a break from pokémon xy. it was still there at the back of my mind (where it always will be at this point i think) but i was taking a vacation from it, i guess.

...until february 2021 happened, of course.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME (yes i'm ending my post on a cliffhanger)

#slawcs

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eyra · 1 year

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Hi! I read your faq, and you state you don’t mind printing your fics on A4 paper, but don’t want people to use a service to get your fics made into books (that is completely understandable btw as it could have legal repercussions for you.) How do you feel about people hand-making books for personal use? I’d love a physical copy of your fics, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.

Ello. First of all thank you for asking the question. Being totally honest I haven’t worked out how I feel about this yet - I do sometimes come across people who have made my fics into hand-bound books and on the one hand I really want to feel honoured that someone has enjoyed my writing enough to do this, but on the other hand I feel a bit annoyed if it’s been done without my permission. A wise friend of mine said “binding an author’s fic without asking is like getting a tattoo without the artist’s permission” and I think that’s kind of where I sit. It does especially piss me off when I then see people sharing the “books” they’ve made on TikTok, because it’s never about encouraging their followers to read the fic themselves - it’s about using my creative work for their own clout. Maybe it shouldn’t annoy me as much as it does and maybe other authors would just feel really flattered by it and maybe it’s hypocritical of me, given that I’m using someone else’s characters in my stories in the first place (although I do think extreme-AU fanfiction using minor characters sits in a slightly greyer space), but that’s just where I am with it at the moment. Maybe I’ll change my mind on it at some point.

There’s also the question of how much control I’m allowed to have over my own creative work. When my fics exist solely on AO3 under my own account, I have complete control over them. I can change them, I can update them, I can delete them entirely. As soon as people start taking them and duplicating them in other mediums, I lose that control, and that does make me uncomfortable.

Aside from anything else, the stuff I write isn’t meant to sit on bookshelves alongside published novels - it’s fanfiction and its home is on AO3, and that’s okay. I’d love to write a novel one day and publish it and have that be an actual physical book, but that’s not what A Brief History of Dragons, for example, was ever supposed to be. If people want to print my fics for accessibility reasons then absolutely go for it, but if they want to make hand-bound books from my writing just because they want to “own” a physical copy of it, that feels like a different thing to me.

I’d love to hear thoughts from other fanfic writers on this question as like I say, I’ve still not quite figured out how I feel about it.

#ask #I don’t know how helpful this answer is

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