Aaaand we're done! \o/

Well... "done" in one sense of the word since I just did a very quick search and apparently there's like another 140 chapters of side stories and counting. Possibly post-epilogue stuff??? Didn't look too closely since I don't want too many spoilers if I can avoid it. I already saw one vague spoiler relating to 49% Dokja's side story. 😢😢😢

Though at least now with the main novel+epilogues finished all of the mysteries have been wrapped up (as far as I can remember).

I guess I'm still curious about the Library, but even if that's never touched upon in any side story chapters, I think I kinda get it with my theories and how he broke up into many, many different Dokjas and/or was two different Oldest Dreams?

Oh, and the stuff with Dokja & 1863's Sooyoung's blurry faces, I would have liked to have seen that resolved. There were mentions of Dokja slowly getting less blurry that were kinda glossed over but nothing concrete ever popped up for why his face was blurry or if/when it fully stopped being blurry? Unless I just missed some subtle thing?? Like I guess the epilogue did mention that Sooyoung had fun writing in stuff about him being the Ugly King but I don't think she made him ugly, that was just her memories of him?? Either way, poor Dokja. 😭

idk maybe I'm the only one obsessed with things like that. (I literally eventually started a separate section in my ORV Scrivener notes just for all the times Dokja's looks are mentioned in any way.) So maybe it just wasn't deemed important to "resolve"? Or, again, it was but I totally missed it.

Or maybe there's still something about the Library and his looks (and other mysteries I may not be currently remembering) in the additional 140+ chapters out there?

Unfortunately, English translations of Chapters 552+ don't all seem to be in one place, or at least I wasn't able to quickly find them in my first search. I'll keep looking, though. Might just have to cobble together the chapters one by one from various sources. If anyone happens to know where I could possibly find them...

Though I'm honestly not certain if I want to immediately jump into them or if I want to give it a moment to breathe. I actually am a little bit disappointed that I jumped right into the 40+ chapter epilogues right after finishing the main story since I feel like it stole some of the impact from him finding his two separate ■■.

Even if I was really happy to see how they continued living on in the system-less world and how Dokja felt after losing all of his companions to be Oldest Dream. Seriously you never get to see those sort of things after the "happy" ending.

And I did love seeing how it all tied back together with Sooyoung being the author and ORV itself being Dokja's story (which Sooyoung also wrote!) which in turn is our story and getting to see Secretive Plotter and the 999ths again and poor Joonghyuk just not knowing what to do with himself after losing his purpose as a protagonist and him and Sooyoung wanting to save their precious Dokja more than anything and both of them coming to understand Dokja better and so on and so forth.

But if nothing else, I do really want to finally read some fanfiction and otherwise engage with fandom now that the big mysteries are solved. And if I can make one final prediction it's going to be that the top fanfic is some kind of modern, no powers gamer AU or something. Because that's just how these fandoms seem to go. 😂

Anyway, I think it should be obvious from my many, many ORV posts but I really enjoyed the novel! I am very happy that so many things were so well foreshadowed, so much was so carefully planned, so many loose ends were tied up in a very satisfying manner, etc. It's very impressive for such a long, looooong story. I mean, just the fact that you could get inklings that something was up with Secretive Plotter before we even hit Chapter 100 yet not have the reveal come until much later is impressive just on its own.

I guess if I had one complaint it'd be that I didn't quite vibe with the whole "multiple walls to open the Final Wall" thing. Like, I totally was into the idea of Dokja's Fourth Wall being the largest fragment, and I actually thought that Jang Hayoung's wall was pretty clever since it's all about commenting/texting others when Jan Hayoung was created due to Dokja's comments.

But I'm not quite so into the Wall of Samsara and Wall That Divides Good and Evil. Like, I do get how they relate to the story, what with Dokja literally reincarnating into multiple worlds himself and the fact that a lot of Dokja's main theme was that he didn't nicely fit into a box of good or evil. I mean, his literal Modifiers are Demon King of Salvation and Watcher of Light and Darkness. Not to mention, Dokja went through a ton of the novel saying that just because they were evil in one turn doesn't mean they're evil in the next and vice versa, as well as the fact that the had companions on both sides of the spectrum.

So I'm not saying that they just came out of nowhere, but personally I find something to be a little off with them when compared to the other two walls? idk these are just my initial thoughts and I might feel completely different once I re-read the novel and can better appreciate things.

Which, speaking of, I'm debating with myself if I want to do the truly ridiculous thing and start this entire novel over right from the beginning in true Dokja fashion or if I want to be good and maybe give some other universe some love. I was looking at The World After The Fall but...uh...

Not to say that things with tiny fandoms aren't also good!!!

But it does make me kinda side-eye it a little and wonder if I shouldn't just read Solo Leveling...

...or read whatever side stories I can find, aaaaaalllllll the fanfic, and then read ORV all over again. 😂

We'll see.

FYI when I do start reacting to the side stories I think I'll use the tag "orv side story" if anyone wants to block it preemptively to avoid spoilers.

After looking into the writers predicament and how it all led to the strike it made me realize that perhaps one of the reasons for the decline in quality media is becuase writers have been given less and less incentives to create good content, do you have any thoughts?

I don't think it would be exactly incentive. I would think in a certain amount of cases it would be down more to demotivation. Generally, writers for film and TV and such genuinely WANT to make a good story and, much like fanfic writers and fanartists, will do their best for very little thanks simply because it's what they DO. But not ever show or movie is going to be a passion project, in fact most of them won't. And if you're working for Disney especially, who owns 38% of all film (not counting TV and other media) so you most likely WILL end up wroking for Disney, you are going to have a TON of studio meddling on every level of writing.

As I mentioned in the other post, Mr Rick And Morty (sorry I don't know his name and I'm too lazy to check) wrote the story for the Dr Strange and the Multiverse of madness at LEAST twice when the movie's FIRST story and script was scrapped by a previous writer. The first script he wrote was heavily rewritten and changed and reworked by the studio. and then the studio just THREW OUT that script and he had write a brand NEW script 2 weeks before shooting started using all the props, sets, outfits and CG segments they had already made. And the thing is this is now STANDARD PRACTICE in working on a big budget Disney film.

Part of the reason the Barbie movie is written as well as it is, is because Mattel were almost completely hands off with the film's writing. (the only changes I heard about was them censoring one Barbie saying the word "Motherfucker" which they censored in the film by putting a Mattel sticker over her mouth) and various other things like the removal of a narration in one scene and one or two jokes were cut. You know! NORMAL screenwriting practices!

But Disney is so paranoid and controlling with literally everything they put out it is a death sentence for any kind of creativity. Even ignoring the fact that they hire brand new writers who they can control and push around easier, I imagine even if you were NOT a new writer just happy for a big break, it must be extremely demotivating to try and write a good story when you know Disney is just gonna shred it to ribbons.

This is absolutely not the ONLY reason of course. Velma's writing is so godawful because people who had only worked in live action cable comedy thought they could do the exact same thing for an animated show and it would work without knowing anything about the medium they were working in because they were arrogant, lacked restraint, and had gotten where they were thanks to being friends with the right people. HGS is so badly written because Raye Rodriquez had shopped around his story idea to EVERYONE and got rejected by all of them until Crunchyroll needed fodder to justify opening up its own studio to create "originals". Many times modern cartoons are badly written because the actual people writing the show are animators who haven't had any formal training or education in creative writing.

There are a thousand and one reasons for WHY something ends up badly written. But as for why we have gotten SO MUCH that is badly written recently I would chalk up to studio execs and the business side of Hollywood choking the creativity out of the writing process in an attempt to maximize profits in the short term.

That's an EXTREME simplification but that would be my opinion. Hell the only reason AI writing is even a conversation regarding film and TV is because it's the kind of thing these studio execs are SALIVATING over the thought of. A writer they have 100% control over that they don't have to pay and don't have to deal with all that "creative vision" or "artistic expression" bullshit which they don't like because it represents risk to sure fire income.

because most Studio Execs are businessmen who have no concept of creativity whatsoever, have no idea what being creative even means, and yet they think because they know how to make money in a corporate sense, they know how to monetise creativity to maximum efficiency.

It's like a fisherman getting rid of all the fish in the sea because they're getting in the way of him monetising the ocean.

Anyway this ask is a mess because this is a complex issue I am trying to express a simplified opinion on. But I hope you get what I mean.

Shipper Tag Game

I was tagged by @ginoeh , thank you so much!

And also: I’m notoriously bad at doing these and still have many, many in my inbox I will eventually get round to answering (thanks to everyone still waiting), but I thought I can do this one since it will be a lot easier to write off the cuff because:

I don’t really ship; I don’t find it particularly interesting, sorry 🤣

Having said this, I’ll still try to answer the questions, so here goes…

What ship were you completely obsessed with as a teenager, but now you don’t care about anymore?

I don’t think I was ever obsessed with any ship, not even as a teenager, because I tend to like characters and their stories, but I don’t really ship them other than what’s already in canon. So very mildly, maybe Batman/Bruce Wayne and Catwoman/Selina Kyle because they never truly ended up with each other? But even that one was meh…

Which ship would you consider your first one?

Hm, again, too mildly too really care, but maybe Aragorn and Arwen from LOTR?

Your first fanfic was about which couple?

Written: Erm, despite having been a writer for aeons, I only wrote my first fanfic in 2022, and that was an OC x canon. So if we’re looking at canon x canon, it was Johanna Constantine x Rachel Moodie/Sandman.

Read: I’ve honestly no idea and can’t truly remember, but I’m fairly certain it must have been a Batman one.

Do you remember the first couple you saw fan art of?

Fairly certain it was Bruce and Selina.

Have you ever gotten into ship discourse?

When I was a teenager, people were fighting over whether Bruce/Selina or Bruce/Talia were the OTP, but we weren’t terminally online, so ship discourse in this disproportionate, unhinged way wasn’t really a thing. I stayed out of it back then and still stay out of it now because I think everyone is free to like whatever they like. I have opinions that I occasionally voice, but that’s rather about general fandom trends (misogyny drives me up the wall) than specific ships. So as long as no one tries to ram their ship down my throat, it’s all good.

Did you used to have a NOTP or have one currently?

No ship is generally NOTP, but the way some people ship can be annoying. I have to admit that Dreamling has started to get on my nerves a bit. Not because I have a general problem with the ship or people who like it (many of my mutuals do), but rather because it’s everywhere, it’s hard to filter, and certain people need to make every discussion—also the ones that have zilch to do with it—about it and literally claim every corner of the fandom.

I don’t mind if people ship them though, I just don’t constantly want to get bombarded with it. So I guess what I’m trying to say is: Have your fun with it, but leave other people who don’t like it out of it, and stop constantly encroaching on creators to make it “real”, and above all: Stop inboxing people hurtful crap. In short: Don’t be an entitled arse with OTP goggles about it.

Who were the last couple in the last fanfic you read?

Dream x Calliope/Sandman.

Currently, do you have any OTPs?

Yup, the one I’m writing, which is a canon x OC pairing, sorry. Other than that, I don’t. I usually can’t get over why pairings don’t work in canon, hence I write OCs. And if they work out in canon, they already have everything they need, so I don’t feel particularly tickled to write about them. It’s sadly how my brain works. The only ones that currently get remotely close are Dream x Calliope (because of second chances) and Dream x Johanna (because they’ll be a complete fuck-up, but in an interesting way). But I still wouldn’t consider them OTPs.

Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting into?

That question doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but maybe I’m missing something? If I can’t get into it, it’s for a reason, and that’s not a loss or something to get mad over…

Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they’re kind of interesting?

Nope.

Do you have any ship that, in the past, would have been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

No because again: I don’t really ship. Unless it’s a =>

What is your favourite crack ship?

I am one of the main instigators of “Murphy and His Cool Hat”, so of course it has to be Dream x Helm.

What is the couple you read the most fanfics about?

None in particular. I either like the tone of something or I don’t. It’s probably easier for me to say what I don’t read/tend to avoid…

What do most of your ships have in common?

Byronic men who are shit communicators 🤣

What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

Nothing outright? I can get behind a lot of tropes if they’re crafted well, the plot is solid and the writing is good. If I had to pick one thing it’s power-over-dynamics. I abhor them in real life, and I don’t feel a massive desire to write them or read about them (as in: specifically seek for them or make them part of the plot myself). But even so, I have read fics with such dynamics and it didn’t massively bother me because the story and writing were good. Another thing I’m not massively keen on is enemies to lovers and/or lots of forced arguments just so people can angry-fuck. But hate is a strong word—again, if the story is well crafted and that’s not the only thing that’s going on, I wouldn’t drop a story just because of that.

I'm no-pressure tagging @rey-jake-therapist (shipping, friend, it’s about shipping 🤣), @marlowe-zara, @tickldpnk8 if you want to, or maybe just point me towards your post if you've done it already?

hii! i know you probably don’t want to here about this any longer, so I’ll try keep my message short it probably won’t be short..

fanfic writers should be able to create whatever kind of story they want to and should be able to post it without getting criticized or constantly being demanded for more or for smut or for ‘better’ or wtv tf.

you’re doing a great job and i love all of your works so much 💗 you truly are a god at writing any genre wether it be angst, fluff, or smut, it’s just all really amazing and you put a lot of thought and effort into it. i’ve only read the first 2 chapters of your recent series, and so far it is sooo good! it’s got me hooked and i can’t wait to read more when i have the time. i just love dad!spence 😭

you do not owe anyone anything, the right people will find you and support you and some of those people already have. it’s upsetting to see that those mean people have gotten to you..

don’t feel pressured to write smut for a certain fic if that’s not what your feeling just because it’s what other people want. it’s your story, you are allowed to take it in whatever direction you want. this fandom can be a little bit much (a lot bit much) at times..

if you never write for CM ever again, i totally understand, but just so y’know i think you are the literal best at characterizing all the characters so accurately, and that goes for every character you’ve wrote for not just CM ones.

sorry if this all just sounds like gibberish to you, it’s really late where i am, i forgot half of what i wanted to say, and i’m not the best with words 😭 anyways.. i hope you have a wonderful day/night Sunny! take care 🫶

thank you so much for this really kind message! it does mean a lot to me that if I receive a few negative messages, there is an outpouring of support and love - sometimes even if there is bad, the good people can outweigh it and really remind me why I started posting fics in the first place <3

I don't know if I will ever write for CM again - after I wrote Burn The Witch in 2021, I swore off writing for Criminal Minds completely, but then I watched the show again and fanfic ideas started crawling around inside my brain and I could help it. so it might be one of those things where I tell myself that I am never going to write for CM ever again, but then - I just can't help what kind of ideas my brain leads me too. But I do know for certain that I am going to need a very long, extended break from the fandom.

anyway - thank you so much for your kind words <3 messages like this really do mean a lot to me and I am thankful that you have taken the time to write me a message like this. I will look back on this when I'm feeling down

I just read through In Terms of Rain and I found it exceedingly beautiful in illustration AND writing (tf how do you do that). It really captured what I like in a lot of Death Note fan creations, which is some abstractness and ideas left up for interpretation. That being said, I would really love some insight and analysis on your end of certain choices you made while creating it. Just any meanings from certain pages or your general thoughts would be incredible for my plebeian mind <3

ohhhh anon thank you so much. this is so kind of you- thank you for reading it and enjoying it. and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk at length about this thing i've made HAHAHAHA i'm rubbing my hands together like a little creature (i'm putting this under a cut)

listen i think about death note too much. like, too much for what it is. it's one of my favorite things ever but i'm hyper-aware of its flaws. that said, i think a lot about L and light and how the creators managed to make this really crazy story about being known and what we hide from others. it's so romantically tragic to me. it's so romantically violent to me. i wrote about this more on my substack but i'll keep going with some more specific death-note-lore sort of analysis (i guess i'm a person who links their substack unprompted. great).

L is like, one of my favorite characters of all time? i read a lot of death note fanfiction (i know ok) and my favorite hobby is analyzing people's interpretations of him. literally a year or so ago i was reading so much fanfic and it was kind of rotting my brain and i had this sudden wave of inspiration/wrote the whole script of this comic in one sitting. i kept starting this comic since then and the visual style never felt right until i managed to land on this one.

L makes me very sad. i both relate to him and watch him from afar as an omniscient observer. i wanted to capture all these feelings he gives me at once; it's a really L-centric comic. the tragedy of living a life in so much isolation. the tragedy of living life not exactly for beliefs or morals or justice, really, but because it's your job, and all you have, and you're good at it, so you do it. whatever. shrug, shrug. you do it. if you die, you die. apparently i also for some reason fixated on the thing about L being adopted by wammy and being raised to be this child prodigy. a gifted kid narrative, etc. that makes me sad. i think L and light have this parallel going on where they both feel misunderstood by most people because of their own making, maybe, but also because of how they were raised and because of their ""intellect"" and their superiority complexes. light's complex coming more from privilege, of course, and being more analyzed in the source material. both of them jaded by and cynical of the world and its extreme violence.

i wanted to hone in on that loneliness. L and light are very lonely characters. they are very internal and thoughtful and weird and express this in opposite ways (but they're the same! of course!) hm. i like thinking that L was raised in a church. dropped off in that movie-orphan way as a baby during a snowstorm or something. how did wammy find him at eight years old and adopt him like that. what does a child have to see and do to become a "detective prodigy" at age eight. canonically, the whole wammy's house thing is fucked up. canonically, L is the first and best. what does a child have to see and do to become the First and Best. does intelligence make a child more mature, more able to "handle" anything thrown in their line of view? some people seem to think so. i think it's creating a sort of ghost that haunts you when you're old enough to look back and see it behind you.

also i wanted to explore religious [catholic] imagery. albeit in a more earnest way than the source material but yeah- i imagine L grew up around catholicism. wammy's house with its big cross on it! i think sometimes when you've been lonely for a long time, or your whole life, and you have never felt truly seen, there's this euphoria that arrives with the person who finally Sees you. you know? sometimes that feels like religion. sometimes being known feels holy. sometimes it feels like being loved. shrug, shrug. sometimes it feels like dying.

i've always really loved that L likes that light could be kira. is. i think it's so insane and endearing and personal to me. light hates that L knows him, has never been known before, translates this feeling into violence. L is like, i get this guy completely, he's a mirror, but somehow he's like no one else i've met before and it's still exciting! i'm laughing at him (i'm crying.) i like that light hides all strong emotions deep within and that L occasionally releases strong emotions with, like, a detached acceptance. he's not exactly afraid to be vulnerable but more picks and chooses what to let people see. plays off of something real, sometimes. is willing to play a character for fun. light just doesn't show anything real at all. is very uncomfortable with any vulnerability. is also very afraid of death. in some ways i feel that L seems to halfway accept his death. he's like, yeah, i'm dying now. this is where my life has led me. i lost but it's out of my control anyway. with in terms of rain i wanted it to feel like this foggy reflection on a life from a ghost, i guess? hence all the references to specific years or cases/the opening part. lol. won't explain the one hundred years of solitude reference but i feel as if the stars aligned with that one.

hopefully this is interesting to SOMEONE? LMAO?

and as for certain pages, the only ones i think i want to point out are these two, which are references to B and A respectively because i actually love the los angeles bb murder case novel with like. a fervor. even though i don't think it's actually good but i also think they really nail something with it. i just think about beyond birthday a lot. ugh. DEATH NOTE. I USED TO LAUGH AT BEYOND BIRTHDAY AND NOW IT'S SERIOUS TO ME

thx bye.

15, 21, 23, 31, and 35 for the ask game, please

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for? I don't think I really have one? BTTF is the first fandom I've ever posted fanfics for. As a kid, I wrote bizarre stories about the Care Bears, where they were all mischievous and evil and went around the world causing havoc. Does that count?

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) I'll give the generic answer and say Doc and Marty, lol. They're such a great duo; delving into their friendship in my writing is always fun. Oh, you know who else I love writing? Marty and Verne. One of the elements from the cartoon series that I really enjoy is the close bond they have, and I like incorporating that into any interactions they have in my fics. There's a little bit of the big brother/little brother dynamic between them in "Harborage", and I'm actually finishing up a one-shot that focuses on the two of them right now.

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas? For the most part, I prefer independently coming up with ideas. Prompts can sometimes be helpful in nudging me in a certain direction, but I don't use them often. Challenges tend to intimidate me, which is why I've never attempted any of the BTTF-themed writing challenges that have gone around.

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them! I don't have any that are prominent enough to talk about. If I create any original characters, it's usually only to have them in very small roles or just sort of in the background. My only real OCs that come to mind are like... John (the guy who ends up owning Doc's garage) and Mrs. Clark (the librarian) in "Despite the Distance." John is literally only briefly mentioned just for plot convenience, though, so he hardly counts. I do kind of like Mrs. Clark, though. She's the one who had to ban Marty from the library unless he was with an adult--because of the big brawl he got into there--and so she's suspicious of him, but she also has sort of a soft spot for him? Listen, I only gave her a couple of lines, but I decided that she sees him as a stray, feral kitten and wants him to get his act together and live up to his ~potential~.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! Okay, okay, so, I'm nearing the end of my current fic, "Because of the Barriers," and have already got several upcoming fics lined up that I'm excited about. As mentioned above, one is kind of Verne and Marty-centric and is basically done. I literally have just a couple of sentences left to write at the end. It snowballed one day from me having this scene stuck in my head of Doc and Marty walking in the woods around the Brown property (the farm that I headcanon Doc moves to outside of Hill Valley post trilogy) and led me down the rabbit hole of, "Ok, but why are they walking in the woods? What's the story here?" Ultimately, I came up with a fic where Verne has run away from home, and Doc recruits Marty in helping to find him. It's not a long fic, but I found I had so much room to not only include some great Doc and Marty friendship stuff but also take a look at Verne's role in the Brown family (being the outcast and "black sheep" of sorts, which is pulled from his characterization from the cartoon), the brotherly connection he and Marty have, Doc being intensely in Dad-Mode, and just general complicated family dynamics. Idk. I had a blast writing it. I don't know if this will make any sense, but Marty is peak Marty in the fic. Like. He is so Marty.

I will be much briefer about the other fics because that was a lot of rambling already. One is my attempt to finally jump on the "Stuck in 1885" au bandwagon that so many others have been writing about, and I can't wait to get to it. It's only in the outline stages currently.

Another is a multi-chapter focusing on those "missing" scenes from 1955 in the first movie--basically, what Doc and Marty were up to in the moments we didn't see on screen. I've always wondered what it was like for Doc as he got swept up into the whirlwind that was that week spent with Marty. There's something about that scenario, Marty being a stranger to Doc while Marty already has such a deep bond with him, that I've always wanted to take a look at. It will definitely be slice of life, and I already have a chapter and a half done.

I'd also like to try writing something inspired by the "Time Travel Memories" kit that was released a year or so ago that contained that letter Marty wrote that revealed he told Dave and Linda about being a time traveler at some point. I think there's a lot of potential for a story there; I just have to work out the details of where I want to go with it.

Thanks for the ask!

Considering you are a fanfic writer and having issues with Owl House, did you ever consider possibly making a rewrite fanfic of Owl House?

Okay so A: I have both the Crow House and Little Miss Rich Witch that could be seen as that. However... Both of those works were started and conceptualized as celebrations of what I liked about The Owl House with tweaks that made them able to be more to my style and interests. Despite Crow House being a swap AU, I didn't bring attention to how Boscha's strength is actually a problem for her. Actually hurts people. I just used what is Willow's defining trait in my opinion to amplify Boscha's aggression and make it a tragedy. For Rich Witch, I literally made less than three weeks I got into the fandom because I liked themes I was playing with but canon straight up got in the way or was a little too unclear for certain aspects to be explored fully in Power of Love despite just how large that story was and was going to be. One of those big aspects was Amity's friends so Azu's relationship with her friends, especially Igni who is the stand in for Boscha, is important to the story and so is her becoming a better friend and person in general.

B: Frankly I think a straight rewrite of TOH from me would look a lot like like The Power of Love, especially as it was written before S2 mostly so was playing with the potential of the characters before that potential was damaged irrevocably, but even more bloated so as to include things like the introduction of the world, extending Amity's arc out more, including Eda and King some more, etc. like that. Part of this is because, as I've talked in the past, you can't really change a lot about TOH without losing its core identity. Would you recognize something as TOH without Hexide? Without Eda and King and their plot (which is Rich Witch effectively with a main character swap)? It is way easier than you think it is to just make an entirely new story even with similar elements.

C: I... Just wouldn't want to. I HATE fix it fics and that's what most rewrites come down to. Making a different twist like a Swap AU, especially an extensive one, is different from a fix it fic but at this point I think a rewrite of TOH from me, at least in fanfiction form, would come as too angry. Include too many changes frankly so at best it would just be an original story that isn't written as well because I'm leaning on the elements that make fanfiction easier, or it's just my blogs but turned into a story that would very quickly turn into a giant circlejerk and I don't like doing that. The closest I've truly come to a fix it fic with TOH is that there's a chapter in Power of Love that I wrote right after Escaping Expulsion because I had to wash out the taste of canon Odalia with my Odalia. And even that kind of worked to show an Amischa moment, love between Amity and her mother and the stresses that becoming the new Emperor's Coven Head (something that never happens in the show and is a personal pet peeve of mine pretty severely), even with changes that led to Lilith also being the EC head again alongside Odalia, so it wasn't just bitter and angry even if those emotions fueled it at first.

D: It would never get finished. Not because of my normal mental health stuff but because I cannot write something I hate. A fix it story is always motivated by anger. That works for a one off or a single chapter. Honestly, it feels like some of the motivation for TOH where there's a very real feeling of "Wow, these writers just HATE the fantasy genre, don't they?" For how I write though, where I have to connect to my emotions genuinely, thus triggering my anxiety and depression half the time, anger can't last. Not for as long as a rewrite of TOH, a series that to be rewritten properly would take hundreds of thousands of words, probably over a million (guess how I long I think Rich Witch will be by the end of its run) and that is a long, LONG time to be angry. And it would bleed into the writing. The characters would be angrier. More easily upset. More volatile. It wouldn't be fun for ANYONE.

Hell, as a side note, I've explicitly said that it's not anger that fuels me to make all these blogs about TOH. It's that TOH is genuinely interesting to talk about and good for teaching. Yes, anger is what brought me here theoretically but I do try to be fair to the show because pure vitriol over and over again isn't useful for anyone, just pure praise isn't either.

E: Even if I did a strict rewrite, followed as much of the show as I possibly could... My writing style is just antithetical to the show. I talked about needing to tap genuinely into my emotions after all. That makes my writing INCREDIBLY sincere. I cannot half ass my writing much of the time. My worst chapters usually come from my brain going "Let's wrap this up because the characters actually wouldn't act like this or go the direction we originally planned so we'll need to figure something else out." This also leads to some of my best chapters I think but it's the exact opposite of TOH's meta commentary and shifting characters hard just to make a concept work. I could literally never write Wing it Like Witches because I WOULD NOT ever write that Amity, Luz, Eda and Lilith are ALL capable of being sports stars. That's too homogeneous and is actively against at least half of the character's cores that are involved.

It all effectively means that even if I tried to rewrite TOH, it would just come across as a distinctly different story. And if I'm gonna do that, I'd rather just throw off the shackles of the show entirely and write my own. Almost like I'm an original writer or something alongside my fanfic work.

===========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

💥

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

[note: i wrote out a whole Thing after automatically assuming this was thor-related, so if you were hoping for a CO-related answer, sorry </3 the answer there is: die sequel die die die and/or he would not fucking go to lse.]

okay so i've gone through a long list of petty and non-petty complaints, and the one thing i eventually landed on is: i wish they had been braver with thor's characterisation. like, i love thor as he is, i don't want him to be a DIFFERENT character, but i wish certain parts of him had been explored in greater depth.

specifically, i wish that they a) had let him show greater depths of negative emotion (while treating him with respect.) and b) leaned into his moral greys/complexities more.

on the matter of emotion: one thing that comes back to me a lot is that in t1, thor, odin and loki all cry; in a1, only loki cries; in t2, tears are only ever implied offscreen (again, loki's tears); and by t3, even implied tears are out, with the closest thing being loki making this face -> 🥺. and like... yes, increasing stoicism is definitely a genuine part of thor's character, but at the same time, i also think this is about like. marvel not wanting to be seen as Cheesy and Over-Earnest. and this hits thor particularly hard. loki gets to be a brooding villain/antihero, but thor has to be an action hero, and it's really suffocating.

on the matter of moral greys: this is, like, 50% the same thing as above, and 50% about them straight up being uncomfortable with the fact that mcu thor isn't really A Hero.

re: emotions again: looking closely at thor's moral greys also means looking closely at his fears, his guilt complex, his child abuse trauma, and his vulnerability in general. he does questionable things for a reason.

re: heroism: thor genuinely isn't a Hero, in my opinion; he's just a protagonist.

first of all, regardless of his medium of origin, he literally isn't a superhero - he's a prince and a warrior, he was born into both roles, and he (mostly) acts legally in interplanetary wars (ie: opposite of a street-level vigilante).

second of all - the story as laid out in old thor is deliberately undermining itself, esp wrt hero/villain/mentor roles, and because thor's hero mindset is inextricable from the role of asgard and the allfather in the nine realms, as Authorities and Protectors by Divine Right, we're meant to question his heroism itself! thor being controlling and overly dutiful in his personal life is not separable from thor being aggressive and reckless-to-the-point-of-self-destruction in his political life.

i'm getting away from the point here, but essentially, it's hard to sell a deconstruction of a hero narrative AS a hero narrative. though t3 damn well tried. (and it gets halfway to making many good points - i know i mostly complain about it, but i genuinely LOVE the destruction of mjolnir - but then it always kind of shies away again.)

a lot of my currently unwritten fanfic is focused on pushing thor's morally grey and sinister sides further while trying to keep him a sympathetic and understandable character. it's a fun challenge, and there's a lot of subtle/subtextual stuff in canon to draw on! i just wish canon had embraced and resolved it instead of just kind of abandoning it.

fanfic writer ask game 💖

Hello! For the end of year writing ask, please can we have G, L and N?

💛💛

Hi lovely! Thank you so much for asking!

G - Where do you think you grew the most ths year?

I am terrible for writing in fits and starts. I just can't keep to a schedule. But with Starman I did. Every week except for one when I had exams. So I proved to myself I can do it haha

Also I think my general understanding of the fundamentals of fanfic has got better. I've joined and am active in a few subreddits now and people there who have been writing fanfic for decades have helped me understand certain things.

For example; I generally write reader insert because I'm a horny bastard who loves to play with the Pedro characters. But someone pointed out to me that I write reader insert in the past tense which doesn't make a lot of sense since it's supposed to be immersive. That's why I re-did the first few chapters of Come Home. It's something so basic, but I hadn't realised I was doing it. And now I'm deep in Chapters 5/6 of Come Home I'm realising I should have done this as a third person OFC. There's A LOT more angst and hurt and trauma in there than I had initially planned on and the smut is a decent way away so I think going forward I'll keep the reader inserts for one shots and do more writing for OCs.

Always learning!

L - Which character did you write most about this year and why do you like them?

I took a LONG break from writing after Starman. It was so well received and I got so attached to the world that I needed a little distance from writing in general. I also started a new job which left me less time to write too.

So the two characters I've written most for this year are probably Ezra and Joel.

I love writing Ezra for his dialogue. His speech is so rich and I love finding the right words for it to flow properly. Eugene from The Walking Dead is my guide when I get stuck. I can always hear his voice and its a good basis for Ezra's I've found.

Joel....I've been in love with Joel for a long time. I watched playthroughs of TLOU before I ever played it and that VOICE holy crap! I love Joel for his duality. Joel gushing incoming!

When we first meet him he's a youngish father of a teenage girl. That life gets unceremoniously ripped away and we then see him two decades later as a rugged, damaged and brooding man. Except...he still has that capability for affection and we see it in glimpses with Tess when he cleans her wounds and when he refers to himself jokingly as "the romantic type" and she replies more seriously that "you have your ways".

Surviving has pummelled him and punished him but he's still standing, and the main way he's managed that is through bloody mindedness and literal brute force. But once he trusts someone, he shows he can open up.

With Ellie it's more difficult because of the obvious parallels with Sarah. But once she breaks through and he realises that he loves her too, nothing can stop him from protecting her and wanting to be close to her. Which leads to his downfall and the tragedy of TLOU2. I won't go into that except to say that I REALLY hope they do another series or 2 dealing with TLOU2. The scenes with Joel and Ellie at the museum for her birthday are some of my favourites in anything ever. I love seeing them as father/daughter. I love how fiercely they love each other and how giving and generous he is and how he's determined to give her some semblance of a childhood that she never got to experience. I love the way he looks at her, like her smile is the reason he gets up in the morning.

I think the lesson here is don't set me off talking about Joel Miller lol

N - Anything you were planning to write that never got written?

So much. I have notebooks full of ideas. I half wrote a Din and Grogu oneshot that had a kind of GoT/Robin Hobb Assassin books feel and I started to write a Fairy Tale Triple Frontier AU and then realised I actually want to smush them together and write it as an original story not as fanfic. So that's on the back-burner for now.

Tips from a Creative Writing grad student: Concrit on Fanworks.

So you want to leave critical feedback on that fanwork? You're under the impression that because it is posted for free on the Internet, that gives you the right to throw your opinion out there?

Alright, say I buy that. Say we look at Archive of our Own as a big ol' open workshop. Something writers use, by the way, as they're writing/editing their manuscript (the workshop not AO3 lol). For fan authors, this usually comes in the form of the fierce, powerful beta.

Here's some tips on how to give constructive criticism from someone who is literally a term away from having their Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.

First: authors who are wanting/needing feedback will seek it out, usually by participating in workshops or enlisting others to read and give said feedback.

None of which happens in already posted fanfic world unless the author otherwise specifies in their notes. But like I said, let's pretend it's a big open workshop and it is your job to help your fellow writer improve.

So now it's time to leave that feedback! So, in every single one of my classes in which we had to provide and receive feedback on original flash fiction, or pieces of our thesis, the number one rule? Be kind!

Yes, you are absolutely allowed to voice your opinions on parts that rubbed you wrong! But there are ways to frame it without insulting the author or the work. And if you have an issue with a line, or a scene, or a character, what that criticism MUST be accompanied by is constructive actionable feedback.

That means, if you're going to tell the author what is wrong with their work, you must absolutely recommend ways to fix it. You don't get to just say, "this doesn't make sense." Nope. You have to delve deeper, why is it confusing? And what could the writer do to clarify things? A little more descriptive narrative? Changing the dialogue? What?

If it bothers you enough to voice it, then clearly you know a better way to convey it and must share that information, otherwise you're literally just filing a formal complaint.

Most concritters would get an F in my classes.

Next: for every negative comment, there must be a positive one. "I didn't like X, but I loved Y." Most of the time, the unwelcome concritters will claim to have liked the work, but rarely do you see any commentary on the bits they did like.

Anyway, my personal rule of thumb is the Oreo method, two compliments for every critique.

At the end of the day though, if the author isn't asking for said constructive criticism, it is not your job to provide it. Trust me when I say, every piece of fiction goes through some sort of workshopping process, whether asking a friend/partner/family member to look it over, or dutiful betas. The fact of the matter is, through the writing and editing process, everything is looked at under a microscope and do things get missed? Absolutely! But by the time the piece is published, or in this case, posted to AO3, it is done. Finished.

Now any commentary given is either a good or a bad review. So if you have nothing nice to say about that fanfiction you just read, you aren't providing concrit or feedback, you're leaving a bad review.

Because the thing is, the story is finished. You aren't capable of providing constructive feedback because it's no longer in the editing or writing phase. It is done. I mean, Neil Gaiman isn't rewriting Coraline because someone who read the published book had issue with buttons for eyes: "How do you see?!! Explain the biology here!"

And that fanfiction author you accosted is not going to rewrite what they just put love, sweat, and free time into.

But just for fun, let's give you an idea of how much time writing and posting fanfiction can take:

I wrote a 1900 word short fix it fic for OFMD the other day. Less than 2k, and you know how long it took me? Writing it took 3 hours, editing it took an additional 30 minutes, double checking lines by rewatching certain scenes took another 30 or so minutes, and then setting it up to post on AO3 and share on SM took another 40 or so minutes. Almost 5 hours for a less than 2k fic. Imagine how much longer it takes for a fic that is 40k? 60k? 100k+??

So, what's my advice, if you're just dying to leave concrit on someone's fanwork?

Don't. Got nothing nice to say? Then move along. Your commentary doesn't make an author better, writing does. And we are much less inclined to write if all we get is negativity and "constructive" criticism.

She-Ra S5 E08 - Shot in the Dark

There might be spoilers for the rest of the season in this post!

I absolutely LOVE this episode, and at first, I couldn’t really put my finger on why I liked it that much. And then Noelle tweeted this:

And yeah, that’s what it boils down to. This is the first *happy* Catra episode since... basically since “Once Upon a Time in the Waste” - and back then, the happiness didn’t last long.

(I also just think that story of AJ being so worried about Catra and Noelle reassuring her with every script is so adorable. I love to see how much they all care about these characters.)

Now let’s get into the episode!

- “Why does space hate me so much?” Yeah Glimmer, as I’ve said before, your powers don’t work in space because otherwise things would be way too easy and this show would be over way too quickly.

- “So, your plan is to, what? Ram through an armada of ships?” “No! ...Maybe!” 😂 I love Adora.

- The way Catra’s hands are shaking when she tells Adora they’re going to get caught... oh, baby 😢. And how Adora suddenly looks so worried... gosh, these two.

- Catra and Adora playfully arguing over whether or not Catra ‘defeated’ them in the past is so cute. I love this kind of ‘former enemies’ bickering and it’s why I was so glad they didn’t wait until the very end of the show to redeem Catra.

Bow: “Adora, Catra’s right.”

[Everyone’s eyes go wide.]

Bow: ... “That felt weird to say.”

😂 Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Bring on all the ‘former enemies’ bickering, please!

- So, is this just because Wrong Hordak’s “brains were scrambled”, as Bow put it, or do all the clones randomly blurt out that Horde Prime has a weakness whenever they hear someone ask about it? I’m going to assume it’s the former. Also, the way he keeps blurting out more and then denying that Krytis exists is super funny.

- I like how they set Krytis up before with Catra having visions of it back in Taking Control - still pretty convenient that just hearing the name lets her make the connection, but I’ll take it. (Is it meant to be some lingering effect of being connected to the hivemind that she’s having visions of it again now, or is it just her remembering what she saw before?)

- I love the detail that Darla’s information on Krytis is locked and they need administrator clearance to access it. Shows again that the First Ones aren’t that different from Horde Prime - they were also ashamed of their failure to conquer Krytis and tried to hide the information on it.

- “In- In- In- Incorrect. It is located nowhere, because it does not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed it.” I honestly think this line should be a meme. When you want to hide something from someone (but you know it does exist), just quote that exact line (kind of like “There is no war in Ba Sing Se”). I once said it to my sisters when they asked about certain fanfics I wrote as a teenager. (“Nope, they are located nowhere, because they do not exist, because Lord Prime destroyed them.”)

- Changes in the opening: Micah, Spinnerella, Scorpia and Mermista are now standing mind-controlled around the Heart of Etheria in the villains’ shot. They’re also all missing from the final heroes’ card. In that final shot, Perfuma and Sea-Hawk both look sad now, and Netossa looks angry.

- Catra touching her neck when she sees the spire on Krytis... 😢. I’m here for the angst, but I also just need Catra to get lots of love and comfort after everything she’s been through.

- Can we talk about how absolutely ADORABLE her space suit is, though? Bow is absolutely right to coo over those ears. And when she tries to take it off with her foot? And Adora laughs about it? And Catra smiles when she sees her laugh? ❤️❤️❤️

- Wrong Hordak still denying that Krytis exists while currently being on Krytis is absolutely hilarious to me. It reminds me of flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers, or people who try to deny Covid exists (while others are currently dying from Covid) - not that any of those are funny, of course. I just mean that wrong Hordak nicely demonstrates how ridiculous they can sound.

- Catra calling out the Best Friend Squad on how dumb their plan is and then reacting with “Honestly, what did I expect?” is absolutely iconic. They really were missing her as the team’s braincell all along.

- Bow and Glimmer teasing Catra about her “first mission”, Catra grumbling that she’s going to kill Adora’s friends, Adora responding with a really calm “Please don’t” - everything about this is perfect. 🤣

- Also, small detail, but I love how Catra has a hard time walking in her spacesuit because she’s not used to wearing shoes.

- The remaining rebels looking around the destroyed camp is really sad. Frosta immediately trapping Castaspella in ice and checking her neck is great, though. That’s what they should have been doing all along. Why didn’t they also check Shadow Weaver’s neck, though? I know she’s intimidating and all, but there was no way of knowing if she’s chipped.

- “How did the rebellion lose so many of our finest members and yet we’re still stuck with you?” Castaspella’s asking the real questions! I like how literally no one in the rebellion likes Shadow Weaver. (Though honestly, I’m also glad she’s not chipped. Imagine how hard fighting a chipped Shadow Weaver would have been.)

- “But if you try anything, I won’t hesitate to strike you down.” Castaspella said ‘I won’t hesitate, b*tch!’

- Every single part of Wrong Hordak’s existential crisis (and Entrapta’s handling of it) is absolutely hilarious. I’m not going to quote all of it here, but pretty much every line of it is comedy gold. My favourite moment is probably “It seems Wrong Hordak has begun to question the meaning of life” (and everyone’s annoyed expressions at his crying) 😂😂. (On a more serious note, though: As much as it’s played for laughs, Wrong Hordak turning his entire worldview around in such a short amount of time is also pretty epic.)

- Catra just cutting through that door - damn, she’s strong! And I love Adora’s blush! (Yeah, the door was probably just an illusion, but my point still stands. She’s at least strong enough that it doesn’t seem completely weird that she'd be able to just cut through a door like that.)

- “You have an arrow that turns into a magnifying glass? I can’t believe we were losing to you guys.” 🤣🤣 Catra realizing the people she was fighting are actually idiots will never not be funny.

- It goes hand in hand with Bow realizing Catra is actually a cute kitty with an adorable sneeze. Good stuff. And the way her tail gets fluffy when she insists she’s not cute? D’awww. (Bow saying “The angrier you get, the cuter you are” reminded me of that scene in Steven Universe where Peridot loses her limb-enhances at the beginning of her redemption arc and Steven calls her cute and “an angry little slice of pie”.)

- Castaspella’s cape getting stuck in tree branches and the like is pretty funny, ngl. This is why Edna Mode said “No capes”.

- Shadow Weaver saying that her gifts are “far subtler” than mind-control is very fitting. Her thing is manipulation, after all. She doesn’t need to control people’s minds when she can just manipulate them and raise them in a way that’ll make them do what she wants. It’s scarier than mind-control in a way because it’s far more realistic. Mind-control doesn’t exist in real life, but manipulative parents (or just manipulative people) who will mess someone up emotionally? Very realistic.

- I like that you can tell that something’s off about Entrapta’s voice this time if you pay attention to it.

- “Seriously? How have you guys stayed alive this long?” Yup, the people you were fighting are idiots and you’re the braincell of the team now, Catra.

- I love the creepy music when Entrapta tells them it’s the first time they’ve talked since the last floor.

- Also, I love how Catra’s first instinct is to just launch herself at Melog, even though you could tell she was terrified just a moment earlier.

- I really like the moment where Glimmer realizes there’s magic on Krytis, especially since she doesn’t have her other powers right now.

- Melog bonds with Catra because they have the same sneeze ❤️❤️

- “Are you... are you petting the thing that’s been trying to kill us?” I love this whole moment 😹. I also love how Adora is so protective of Catra and immediately yells “Get away from her!” when Melog seems to get angry.

Catra: “I’m sorry. I got angry. It’s something I’m working on.”

Adora [with sparkling eyes]: “Aww, you are?”

Catra: “Yes! Now can you please...” [deep breath] “Yes. I am.”

I love everything about this. Catra genuinely working on her anger issues, Adora being so touched about it (remember back in Taking Control where she wished that Catra would ‘at least try’?), Catra having to hold back her anger because she realized Melog responds to emotions - perfect. ❤️😂👍

- Catra is so sweet when she calms Melog down. And the moment where they form their bond is really nice.

- So, can Catra understand Melog because of their bond, or because they’re both cats? I’m assuming it’s because of their bond?

- Melog’s backstory is really sad. But Adora offering to take them to Etheria is a really sweet scene.

- I like the parallel between the Best Friend Squad realizing that magic is Horde Prime’s weakness (and that the only planet he ever failed to conquer had wild magic) and Shadow Weaver telling Castaspella that the First Ones weakened Etheria’s magic and they have to set it free.

- “Stop me if I try to take the power for myself.” I’m not sure how I feel about that line. I like how SPOP has very much written Shadow Weaver as ambiguous so far. She’s not a good or nice person by any means, but is she at least on the side of the good guys and really trying to help now or is she still only after her own selfish goals? I very much did not want Shadow Weaver to get any sort of redemption or forgiveness, and I’ve always interpreted her as still being power-hungry. So, I have mixed feelings about this line. I like that it canonically acknowledges that Shadow Weaver is still tempted by power and might actually try to take the magic for herself, but asking Castaspella to stop her if she tries makes her look more selfless and like she’s taking precautions against it. (But then again, could Castaspella even stop her if she tried? I’m pretty sure Shadow Weaver is the stronger one of the two. So, you could still read this as Shadow Weaver being a master manipulator and only saying this so Castaspella will feel more inclined to trust her and go along with her plan - while knowing full-well that she could easily defeat Castaspella if it ever actually came down to it.)

Glimmer: “So, just to make sure I get it - We’re going to go running through a Horde blockade while relying on the magic of a creature we just met?”

Catra: “That about sums it up, yes.”

You know what this means - Catra’s a part of the Squad now!

- “Punch it, Darla!” I still love that the ship’s name is Darla. Also, all of their expressions when they fly through the blockade should be a “draw the squad” meme.

- Catra holding Adora’s hand and getting embarassed about it ❤️❤️ (while Adora is dumb and doesn’t even notice).

- I did not expect us to get a Glitra cheek kiss this season, but I’m not complaining! Also, Catra complaining while Glimmer and Bow are hugging her is such a cat thing; I love it.

- “We made it. We’re home.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is actually the first episode this season that ends on a happy / hopeful note and not on some kind of cliffhanger. And I really like that. This is where the “space arc” of season 5 offically comes to and end and I’m glad it has its own little happy ending. (And as much as I like the final episodes of the season, the space arc is still probably my favourite half of it.)

I love this episode, mainly because of what it means for Catra. She’s finally happy, she saved the day, she’s bonding with Bow and Glimmer and constantly flirting with Adora, and she has an amazing therapy cat now! I loved all the bickering between her and the others and how she’s starting to open up to them. Also, Wrong Hordak was absolutely hilarious in this episode and I commend Entrapta for having the patience to deal with his existential crisis. This was a really nice way to wrap the space arc up and bring the Squad back to Etheria.

[Previous episode]   [Next episode]

Hi Yume! I wanted to tell you that I love all your writings and that you are a truly fantastic writer! Sorry if I seem indiscreet, but I'm curious to know what pushed you and / or pushes you to write your sinfics. Don't feel pressured to answer at all, everyone has their own reasons and everyone has the right to write what he/she/they wants. Sorry for the inconvenience and be safe and remember to drink enough water!💕 (In addition English is not my first language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes) Hope you have a good day! 😘✨

Hello~! ♥︎

Don’t worry, Darling (〃ω〃) I don’t feel pressured at all, I’m actually pleasantly surprised that you asked this question! You’re going right into Yume’s origin story now lol (๑･̑◡･̑๑)

I started writing fanfics myself when my taste was getting a little too…specific.

I think I mentioned once here that I get easily bored this is such a mean word, I’m sorry of anything I was once interested in if they’re not constantly doing things to keep me entertained lol So, I used to read A LOT of fluffy fanfictions, once that makes you rot and squeal— no smut, just very ｐｕｒｅ vibes (U w U) You know, like the typical teenager that I was lol I couldn’t even read any smut at that point because I view them like the ✨spawn of the devil✨ and it ✨ｃｏｒｒｕｐｔｓ✨ the characters I loved or something 👁👄👁 and also probably because I was a minor But oh how things have changed…Yes, I was that pure kid in school who didn’t know JACKSHIT about anything sexual \(//∇//)\ Bruh I remember covering my eyes every time I see a pp in my science textbook lol ☠️

…To tell you the truth, Yume once wrote a now completed fluffy fanfiction of a certain show and posted it on Wattpad _:(´ཀ`」 ∠): Yeaahh, I’m not gonna elaborate more on that but the fic is still there with a million views holy shit and it’s still haunting me every night that it still exists.

But then, I started getting bored of fluff because— it’s just the same trope over and over again and yeah, yeah… (c" ತ,_ತ) So, I decided to expand my taste a bit more and boom, look what I found— The ✨ｙａｎｄｅｒｅ✨ trope 👁👄👁 Ever since then, I became OBSESSED with these kinds of fic because with these kinds of fics— It doesn’t really…give a shit about what is wrong or what is right so, you can literally write anything you want with it (((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o)))♡ It’s the kind of love that ｐｅｒｓｉｓｔｓand I love it because you don’t know where a yandere fic can go most of the time, you know? That keeps me hooked and wanting for more! ♥︎

And finally, when I turned legal— HAHAHA, We all know where this went lol ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I started reading ｓｍｕｔbut not just any kinds of smut, no no…ｙａｎｄｅｒｅ　ｓｍｕｔ(O w O) And that was a start of a beautiful friendship— ♥︎

So, I started wanting more, yeah? I discovered new kinks and realized I…liked the most fucked up ones?? Lol Even I don’t know exactly why I like Non-con so much— When I see a fic that doesn’t have any non-con in it, or anything fucked in general because im hornii I get less motivated to read it lol Maybe because I was so sick and tired of seeing two characters falling in love that seeing only ONE character fall into an unrequited love is so fucking spicy and a lot more interesting to me— like, where is it gonna go (O w O) I’m interested!

Bonus points if their love never gets returned through out the story and they become even more obsessed with their Darling until they decide to just…snap and neglect fuck everything else— HAVING DARLING IS A MUST （╹◡╹）

So, yeah— I basically read almost all Yandere Non-Con fics in existance at this point (°▽°) But it just wasn’t enough to quench the ｔｈｉｒｓｔ in me and I was honestly disappointed because there was always this one fic idea in the back of my head with very specific ｙｉｋｅｙ tags that I wanted someone to execute but never found one in my time of reading fanfictions （；＿；）So I just kinda…started writing them on my own lol the ultimate fine ill do it myself moment lmao At first, it was just for self-indulgence and never to be revealed in public because the content is so yikes, yknow? I have that fear of getting judged like— Why would anyone like these kinds of fics…lol

And then, the pandemic came and I was bored as hell— I discovered tumblr and decided to just fuck it, what’s the worse that can happen lol Thus, Yume was born and I was soo happy to see Darlings saying that they like my fics! (๑>◡<๑) And I finally felt liberated like, holy hell— I wasn’t alone with these kinds of kinks lol I started to not give a damn anymore and write whatever the hell I want, pushing my dark fantasies into each coming fics that I actually started calling them…Sinfics lol im a sinner and im proud

And I think that’s what pushes me to write more lol I absolutely LOVE talking with other Darlings who shares common interests with me!

Sorry for the long post, by the way~! But at least, you now know just a little bit more about Yume, yeah~? ٩( ᐛ )و Love you all, as always ♥︎

thoughts on Bela///Donna?

What a lovely can of worms you've placed in my inbox, dear nonnie. I cannot wait to open it and lose followers (regardless of what I actually say).

Since this is, uh, a subject of some debate among RE8 fans, I will be inputting my thoughts on the idea of the ship (and the possible controversy), as opposed to doing HCs or something for it (which I recognize might be what you were asking for, despite the excessive /s).

This is all based on my playthroughs of the game, as well as what I've managed to double check on the fandom/wiki for it. I know that a lot of people who read fanfic for the game haven't actually played it, likely having been lured in by Tall Vampire Milf, and so I hope that some people will be open to a reminder of, like, canon vs fanon? I've mentioned in a previous post that there's a lot of details for RE8 that are not made clear, and I feel the need to reiterate that in this post. Capcom left a lot of stuff up to people's imaginations, or kind of just hinted at in game or in concept art.

But more importantly, regardless of what game we're talking about, regardless of the conclusion I come to (and the one you come to) at the end of this post, I want to say that I absolutely understand the need/desire to have your own perspective/take on the characters from the game, as well as their dynamics. If a ship makes you uncomfortable because you see the characters as being family members, it's totally okay. Block the ship tag, or filter it out when you look through fandom stuff, don't follow people who post for it, etc, etc.

If you think of characters as being family-family (like, not just "we got married and are now a family" but, like, "we're siblings/parent and child") and still ship them? uh. sorry, bruv, maybe think of hitting that unfollow button. No, seriously, hit that unfollow button. This blog is anti-incest, thank you very much.

The last thing I'll say before putting it under a read-more (for both length and major RE8 spoilers) is that I recognize that I might have missed something, either in game or developers talking about things on social media, and so if you read through this and go "god, J, you're such a dumbass for forgetting *critical piece of media*" or even just "okay but have you seen *small but meaningful piece of media*?" please. Just. Please. Tell me. Link me to that shit. I WANT to know if I'm wrong. I've literally avoided talking about this for as long as I could in order to TRY and make sure I have all the context I need.

With that said, let's examine what context we are given for Alcina Dimitrescu, Bela Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, and their relations to each other. I will be leaving my personal thoughts on Bela///Donna at the very end of this, as somewhat of a conclusion, somewhat of just a "hey, this is what you technically asked me about".

Firstly, let me begin by explaining what I consider to be the 3 tiers of "canon"

In-Game/Direct: The highest, truest tier, the definitive canon. This is everything that takes place in game, excluding certain hallucination scenes (ex: Mia was not really in House Beneviento, but we can infer some things from what Donna made Ethan hallucinate about). Things either happen, or are directly stated by characters. There's some wiggle room for dialogue, as characters can lie, but overall we, as the audience, assume we are being told the truth. At the very least, games usually eventually make it clear when a character has been dishonest. Examples of Direct Canon include the following: Ethan is infected with the mold, Lady Dimitrescu drinks blood, Heisenberg wears sunglasses, Mother Miranda can shapeshift.

Concept Art/Developer's Notes/Indirect: Mid-tier and debatable, the "we think, but we're not sure" of canon. Resident Evil: Village contains lots of concept art that the players can browse through, all of which include notes from the developers about the game, characters, environments, and story. Sometimes the notes make something "direct", but oftentimes they do not specify whether the listed idea is still canon or if it was removed during development. This tier also includes information that is implied/can be inferred from tier 1 information, but is not directly stated. Examples of Indirect Canon include the following: Donna's mother died by suicide, Moreau was going to have his lover fused to his back, Duke was originally a fifth lord, Heisenberg was going to have a twin. As you can see, not all of the concept art ideas made it into the final version of the game, so it can be hard when some information seems like it might still be true (such as the matter of Donna's parents).

Fanon/"False": Sometimes collective ideas in a fandom become so widespread that people start interpreting them as actual canon. Sometimes it gets hard to remember what's just obscure lore and what's fanon. When we get a piece of fiction as overall vague as a lot of Resident Evil: Village is, there's bound to be some confusion over time. That's one of the main reasons I waited to talk about Bela////Donna until after I had recently replayed relevant sections of the game, as I wanted to remind myself of what we're actually told. Examples of False Canon are difficult to pinpoint, but might include things like: Hufflepuffs are good at finding things? The Avengers got along for awhile and all had their own rooms in the tower? There's a number scale for the danger level of ghosts in Danny Phantom?

For this post, I will be limiting the majority of my notes to the first two levels of canon, and will do my best to mark them as such. Now... let us... begin.

Alcina Dimitrescu:

Born no later than 1914, Alcina Dimitrescu was 44 years old when she was granted the Cadou by Mother Miranda. (1st Tier: Canon. Source: A note in the castle basement from a servant is dated 1958, and mentions both Alcina and her children. Secondly, Miranda's experiment notes state that Alcina was the 181st subject, and was given the Cadou at age 44. By doing math, we can then determine the earliest Alcina could have been born.)

Alcina refers to the other Lords as her family once without any disdain (when Ethan first arrives at the castle and is caught, Alcina says "you've escaped my little brother"). In a private journal (located near where she threw the infamous vanity) she insults the other Lords, and expresses anger that she is "treated like a sister to them". She argues with Heisenberg without any hesitation, and seems honest in her hatred of him (per Maggie Robertson's wunderbar performance). (1st Tier/2nd Tier: Canon with a sprinkle of interpretation for the last line)

Alcina openly refers to Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela as her daughters, and wrote in her experiment journal that she felt instantly connected to them (as mother and daughters). (1st Tier: Canon).

Bela Dimitrescu:

Likely born in the 1930's or 1940's, in order to be an adult by 1958 (the first dated appearance of the Dimitrescu daughters). (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Dialogue shows that all three of the daughters do love their mother, and reinforces the bond Alcina's journal mentions. (1st Tier: Canon)

We are not given any information about how Bela feels about the other Lords, or even what she knows about them. Once can assume that she shares the ideas of her mother, either because Alcina tells her things directly, or because Bela (who is eager to please her mother) picks up on them over time. (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Donna Beneviento:

No idea when she was born. If you've read one of my recent posts, then you know that it's almost entirely a matter of 2nd and 3rd tier canon.

Of the four lords, Donna seems to have the most story within the 2nd tier, and has very, very little in the 1st tier. Duke says she's somewhat isolated, and that her "playmates" never leave the house. Miranda's notes state that Donna is mentally ill, and the gardener's diary states/implies (bit of both) that Donna has severe social anxiety. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

Supposedly, her parents committed suicide while she was still a child. This is indicated in concept art/the attached developer's notes. However, the only part that's also directly stated in game is that her parents (specifically her father) died while she was young. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

While Donna only has one voice line in the game (and it's sad), Angie talks a fair bit. Angie seems to disapprove of the other Lords, or at the very least enjoys mocking them, as well as enjoys watching them fight with each other. As Angie is connected to Donna, and Donna has some level of control over her, one can assume that the two have similar (if not the same) opinions. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

Donna was adopted by Mother Miranda as an adult. It's unclear exactly how old Donna was, or what exactly Miranda did as her "mother", just that Donna was excited about it. (1st Tier: Canon)

Other Relevant Information:

Heisenberg refers to the other Lords as his siblings a minimum of 1 time. Similarly to Alcina, however, he openly insults them and seems to hate them. He just, you know, hates Mother Miranda the most. (1st Tier: Canon)

Mother Miranda does not actually give a shit about the four Lords, intended for them to die before the ceremony, and has been manipulating them for her own gain this entire time. Her notes and dialogue make it clear that she only cares about getting Eva back. Somehow mother of the year and worst mother ever. At the same time. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

It's unclear who treats Alcina "like a sister" to the other Lords. Were there cut lines of dialogue that cemented the idea of them being a "family"? Did Miranda call them a "family" as part of pretending she cared about them? I've done my best to dig around, but there's very little in game that treats them as a family of any sort.

As each Lord ruled their own section of the region, they don't have any mentions of interacting with each other outside of meetings with Mother Miranda. None of the notes for any Lord (and their relevant experiments) mention what the others are doing. In game, their environments are very separate, very well divided, though this is likely as much for gameplay as it is for story.

Conclusion:

I do not not believe there is enough in game evidence to suggest that Alcina and Donna consider themselves to be siblings. There's the possibility for a large age gap, Alcina was a fair bit older than Donna when she met Miranda, Donna is a social recluse whose closest bonds were with dead blood relatives and dolls, Alcina openly dislikes (if not hates) the other Lords, they seemingly lived very separate and distanced lives, and Mother Miranda does not enforce the idea of "family". Furthermore, the sheer contrast between how Alcina interacts with/speaks of the other Lords compared to how she interacts with/speaks of her daughters says a lot about her feelings. Even if Heisenberg takes the brunt of her anger, Alcina never once says anything remotely positive about anyone other than Miranda and her daughters.

As Alcina/Bela and Donna are not blood-relatives, the definition of what would count as "incest" does vary depending on who you ask. Personally, I do count non-blood relations as potentially incestuous. For example: Alcina "dating" one of her daughters would be incest, regardless of the fact that she's a mutated human and her daughters are weird swarms of flies.

Now, I do understand how popular the idea of the four Lords being a real, chaotic but still close family is. And as I mentioned above, it's totally valid to not like the Bela///Donna ship, whether it's because you think they're family or some other reason. I don't personally see them that way, even in my definitely-not-canon stories.

Do I personally ship Bela///Donna? Nope. Have I liked art for the ship? Admittedly yes, even if I thought some of it was, like, maiden x Bela because Donna didn't have her veil and I'm a DUMBASS who doesn't always remember to read tags. Would I ever write for it? Yeah, probably, assuming I didn't miss anything in game/that I don't eventually change my mind.

@the-wip-project day 35:

I don't know what today's question is but I gotta write a wall of text about what happened last night because holy shit

I was on the verge of falling asleep and, like I usually do, I decided to hunt for some spicy fanfics to read on my phone. I found one.

All my posts are long but this one is real fucking long. CW for touching on dub-con and injury mentioned in the type of context it probably shouldn't be.

It's time for me to admit that not only am I a oneshot writer, I'm also a oneshot reader. I am drawn to short fanfics. If I click on a chaptered fic, it's (usually) because it's rated E for smut and I'll go in with every intention of skimming it for the spicy bits. I'm not proud of this. I've avoided saying this for years because I don't want to disappoint people who work hard on their very long and well thought out chaptered stories. I have a short attention span, and I know what I want.

But anyway, last night I clicked on a fic with 5 chapters and some amount of words, around 30k? Long, by my standards, but I was tired and I just wanted something to read while I dozed off.

This particular fic hooked me in, though. I still skimmed it, but the writing was so unique in a way that made me writhe with writer's envy and admiration. Whoever wrote this had their own language - nothing borrowed - their own vision.

I guess I should tell the good people who read my posts (ya'll, seriously, thank you) that the fic in topic is called Fault Lines by Recidiva on AO3. I would link to it but uhhhh I may be using my work PC for "extracurricular purposes" right this moment ^^; so maybe when I get home I'll remember to add it.

I skimmed it - like I said above - for the spicy parts. It generally follows the plot of Bioware's canon. Thane begins as possessive and manipulative, likely uncomfortably close to dub-con for a lot of people. He kisses her and knows full well that his kiss will make her willing but intoxicated, and how he will use that to fulfil himself. But as the story progresses, he falls in love. Their relationship is what I'll call "edgy." Both of them are renegades. There's a scene where they get down in the shuttle after a fight and they're both still injured and it borders on downright unrealistic but fuck it, it's fanfic and I bought it. However their relationship develops a certain heart-wrenching tenderness. She asks him what Siha means over and over again, and eventually tells him she thinks "bitch" when he says it. But in that moment they have a playful banter, he knows full well she's probably already looked it up on the extranet, and they fall into bed together. The smut is mind-boggling.

By the time it gets to Shepard's arrest, he's taken up a place on Earth and visits her, breaks into her house arrest. There's a scene where they see each other for the first time in a while, she tells him how much she's missed his mouth and how it's not right how bad she wants him, and wants him bad enough to smother him with affection. She says something to the effect of "if you're looking to die, I'd volunteer to be the cause," implying that her lust is powerful enough to endanger his life. And it was at this moment I realized I fucked up.

It's established that I live in my own headcanon and I'm not burdened with considering the end of Thane's life as part of my fics. And the suspension of disbelief was such that I forgot he doesn't make it. So at this moment in the fic, chapter 4 out of 5, I realized "Oh shit this isn't going to have a happy ending." I skipped to the end right away, I wanted to confirm my fears.

In their final exchange, she asks him to lie to her - something that's repeated in other chapters of the story. I forget what he says, I was reading desperately, but he asks her in return to tell him something true. She kisses him and tells him she loves him, and he breathes his last breath with the lingering tingle of their kiss to carry him to the other side.

I was so entrenched in the depth of their relationship up to that point. The level of fathomless love the author conveyed, unlike anything I've ever managed to write before, but more realistic to my own understanding of love as I've experienced it. Not because they're renegades, but just the selflessness with which they feel, communicate, banter, and make love.

When I read that last paragraph, something inside me broke. That sounds dramatic but that's honestly how I would describe it. It felt like waking up from a night terror, when you bolt up in bed from a dream so bad you immediately get up even if it's 4am because nothing feels real and you're so terrified you have to get up and do something - literally anything to take your mind off it, to ease you back into reality. I put my phone down and stared into the darkness of my bedroom and told myself "it's just a fanfic, no need to get upset." And then I started to cry and I didn't stop for 30 minutes.

My husband was downstairs watching Bohemian Rhapsody and I went down there and wrapped myself around him so tight and cried. Bless this man, from the bottom of my heart - bless him - for his unfathomable kindness. I felt like a fucking fool because I was crying over fanfiction but he paused his movie and just listened while I tried to articulate how it wasn't exactly about the character death, or the characters at all, it was just the writing and how it wormed into my brain so convincingly. I felt the loss like it was my own loss. I am terrified of losing my husband. So many feelings coalesced and I realized one day I may be in that situation, kissing the man I love goodbye for the last time, never to hold him again. I'm at work right now and I'm tearing up because it's so hard.

I tip my hat to the author, but I genuinely wished I hadn't read that fanfic. And isn't it kind of funny after that grandstand I took yesterday about not wanting to write the pain of loss and grief, that I ended up reading it instead and probably fucking myself up just as badly, if not worse, than if I had tried to write it myself?

It gets worse, too. Because it got me thinking about my own writing, and how I could never hope to achieve what that author did. So I sat there crying out my painfeelings while simultaneously feeling like a shit writer and like nothing I put out matters. I got up from the couch, sat down at my PC and picked up where I left off in the Omega DLC in ME3 because video games are great for taking the mind off things. It didn't exactly help with the intensity I'd hoped for, but I managed to fall asleep, by 3am.

Fast forward to this morning. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed 4 hours later and drove to work. By some fucking miracle, no one is here right now except our field director. And I'm stewing in how this one fic really fucked me up bad, reconsidering everything. I feel like I've been put in my place.

So what changed?

Yesterday I posted about how I'm struggling to write a plotline. I know what happens, but I'm not interested in the little bits that tie it together. I want to write the romance. I think there's a way to write the plot and the romance at the same time, but it's damn hard.

I started doing this because I wanted to grow my skills as a writer, and I knew it might be more than I could chew. I'm at that moment now where I'm about ready to give up.

Even if I felt like a shit writer last night (and still kinda do this morning), I know that the stuff I've put out has value. We can't all write these epically tragic smut-romance-renegades-to-lovers tales, we'd all be sad all the damn time. There's a time and a place and - I would argue - even a need for lighterhearted fic out there. There are really no rules. I'm confident in what I know how to do.

But the plot. Fuck it, man. I think maybe I'm trying too hard to be something I'm not. I'm trying really hard to write like other people. I may have mentioned before that I saw a post about how many artists spend their time pining for the skills of others, thinking "wow, when I can draw like that, I'll have made it as an artist." That same post cautioned against this, basically saying you already have your own unique style, it's just harder to see through the lens of your own eyeballs. It's fine to challenge yourself but try to acknowledge what you do that sets you apart already. I feel like I have that something - maybe not to the extent that I wish, but I have something.

So what's the point of the plot? Why do I need to tell my readers how I cured Keprals? I'm asking myself important questions here. I like to think I've come up with ideas that no one else has, but as I said above, I don't read a lot of chaptered fics. I very well may have come to the same ideas as other writers and I'm not even aware of it. I don't know if my ideas are unique but I still arrived at them all by myself.

The challenge here - the thing I'm struggling so much with - is how to put them together with the same elegance of my fellow writers. I'm looking at you, shrios fam (yeah I'm calling you that, yall know who you are). I know I can write words, but it's like I have a bunch of pieces from completely different jigsaw puzzles and I'm struggling to make a new picture out of them. I struggle with the transitions between them.

The point here is I have to find my own way. And I have to stop taking myself so seriously. In fact this level of "seriousness" is one of the things that got me into so much angst over World of Warcraft over the last two years. At least I know how to recognize it.

I have to find my own way. I have my own things that are worth sharing. The author I read last night had a language all their own, and I have a language all my own too. Their wordplay was actually more choppy than I would ever write. I've talked before about how I'm scared of starting too many sentences with pronouns, how I maybe write too many run-on sentences, whatever. This author did that with reckless abandon. It worked for them. So if they can make that shit work, I can make my own shit work.

I have to find my own way.

My most current WIP is Thane and Shepard's first time. I've been working on it pretty nonchalantly because I hadn't intended to publish it until I built up to it. It takes place further into my timeline, and it would probably ruin the point of a slow burn if I put it out there now. There are some really memorably moments in this WIP, and there are other moments that need to be smoothed over as well. I never knew what I'd really imagined for their first time but I think I've mostly developed something that's unique in its own right, and I think will be fun for people to read.

I'm just so fucking torn over what to do with it. I feel guilty for working on it. I should be writing "other shit" leading up to it but I don't fucking want to. I actually wrote probably 2-3k words this weekend, which is a pretty staggering amount by my standards. Some of it was for this smutty WIP and some was for something I just threw together, Thane observing Shepard on Horizon and the emotional toll it takes on her. He's seeing her humanity. I don't know if it's worth it to continue but I wrote a lot of it and the words are more precise than usual for a draft, I don't know. I have so much fucking insecurity. Fuck dude. I want to write this longfic, but I don't want to write it. I want to skim to the spicy bits like I always do.

I am wracked with insecurity, of my own making. I know what I can do but I feel compelled to see this idea through. Somehow I have to find my own way.

TLDR I feel like if I don't publish something soon I'm going to burst and I don't even know what the fuck to work on first and fjslfjsojoiejrj

I would be really down for, like, a bunch of hugs and a bowl of ice cream shared over memes and fanservice.

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Rachel Nobel / Rae Lynn

Rachel Nobel, aka Rae Lynn, has 2 fics at Gossamer, but she’s written many more X-Files stories than that. You can also find fics by her at AO3 and various other archives. She’s one of the rare, special authors who’s posted numerous fic during the show’s original run and again in recent years. Big thanks to Rachel for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? Absolutely. I joined a Facebook group for fanfic writers where someone recognized my name and asked about some of my stories that have disappeared from the Internet, and I almost fell off my chair. On the other hand, I go back and read original-run fanfic all the time - the Wayback Machine is my best friend for all the late great fanfic archives. Like fine wines, they get better with age! What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? I was fairly young during the peak of the fandom - I was only 12 when I started watching the show and discovered the fandom online. A few years ago, right around the time we learned the revival was coming, I wrote an essay I called "How 'The X-Files' defined my adolescence," in which I wrote: "If you think about it, 'The X-Files' is a lot like adolescence: You start out thinking it's going to be a little hokey, NBD, and then you end up in its thrall, captivated and occasionally hugely let down. A lot of people behave strangely, and no one gets out unscathed. Mulder, in his own weird way, is the perfect mirror for an adolescent: He doesn't fit in; his life careens between being utterly consequential to the fate of the known universe and being completely pointless; he's socially awkward and can't quite nail it down with the girl of his dreams."

So for me, the fandom is inextricably bound up with adolescence, that feeling of vacillating between desperate loneliness and being on the verge of something enormously significant. Take romance: I was a bit of a late bloomer, and when all my friends were exploring their first relationships I was watching Mulder and Scully navigate this beautiful, complicated, soulful relationship without ever even kissing. That was deeply affecting for me as a teen.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? I started out on mailing lists - there was an EMXC mailing list and one that I think was called X-Angst. [Lilydale note: There was a mailing list called XAngst Anonymous.] This was back at the dawn of the Internet when I only had 10 hours of AOL access a month, and I remember using what AOL called a "FlashSession" to log on, download all the fanfic from the mailing list and log off to read it. I vividly remember the excitement of watching all that new fanfic flood my inbox! Later on I was on atxc. During the long summer between "Gethsemane" and "Redux," it felt like fanfic was at its peak. There was a group of about a dozen women who got together (virtually) to discuss a work in progress by Lydia Bower called "Primal Sympathy." We called ourselves the "Primal Screamers," and we had our own website with fanfic recommendations and other discussions (it cracked me up to locate us as an entry on Fanlore.org). I was still in high school at the time and I was the youngest member; I felt like I had been accepted into a cool underground club. I worshipped these women, who were fanfic writers themselves. They taught me everything I knew about how to be a decent, respectful, enthusiastic consumer and writer of fanfic and fandom. [Lilydale note: I’ve talked enthusiastically about the Primal Screamers here before, including their fanfic primer.] What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? In the '90s, I would have been embarrassed to tell anyone I read fanfic, let alone that I was writing it. Now, I look back on it and realize how talented and smart and passionate we all were. It's something to be proud of. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? The first episode I ever saw was "Shadows," which was on in reruns between the second and third seasons. I don't think "Shadows" is an episode that anyone today would consider thematically significant, but something about seeing those office supplies float spookily through the air - it wasn't like anything I had seen on television, and I wanted in. What got you involved with X-Files fanfic? I've always been a person who, when I am interested in something, seeks to learn more about it. So I guess I got online as a 12-year-old with this new interest and discovered fanfic. It was thrilling to find out that so many talented people were taking characters I loved and bringing them to life for me. When the screen faded to black each week and I wondered, "That's it? What next?", fanfic was always there to fill in the blanks and take Mulder and Scully to the next level. As a teenager, I was self-indulgent enough to think I had something to contribute, too. Most of what I wrote in the '90s would today make me cringe. I remember literally paging through the dictionary in search of erudite words I thought Mulder and Scully would say! But occasionally I'll feel brave enough to read an old story and I feel encouraged to see a spark: a turn of phrase or a fragment of dialogue that I still feel proud of. I write professionally now, but I've never written fiction that isn't X-Files fiction, so it's something that has really allowed me to hone my creative juices in a different way. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Sometimes I feel like the Statler and Waldorf of the fandom, like I'm sitting up in the balcony grousing "Back in my day...!" Because the fandom is remarkably robust, and I've gotten involved with it to an extent on Twitter and AO3, and now all these young whippersnappers idolize Mulder and Scully just as much if not more as I ever did! Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? Not really, no. I've of course consumed a lot of media since The X-Files that I wanted to discuss with others - I'm a huge "Harry Potter" nerd, and I was outraged when Netflix canceled "The OA" - but strangely I've never had the urge to read or write fanfic about anything other than "The X-Files." Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Every Thursday night! I watch a chosen episode with a group of fans on Twitter and tweet about it - #tbtXFiles. That's great fun. There are episodes I've seen dozens of times over the years and episodes I think I only ever watched once, and it's always enlightening to watch them again with a certain critical eye. When I was a fan during the original run, I really idolized Mulder; I loved episodes where we saw him in all his cracked genius glory. Scully was a trailblazer of a character, of course, but I think the fandom has evolved over the years to give Scully her due. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I was fairly stunned when the revival came around and I realized that people were still writing X-Files fic, and that a lot of it was so good. So yes, I do read fic on Archive of Our Own. But my heart is always with the early days of fanfic. In the revival when Mulder says "I've always wondered how this was going to end" - that felt to me almost like a love letter to fanfic authors who had been trying to answer that question for 25 years. Surprisingly, I've never had the urge to read fic in another fandom. Every time I try, it just feels like I'm cheating on Mulder and Scully. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors? My favorite author back in the day was Kipler. Her stories were just like real episodes of the show I could vividly imagine in my mind. I adore syntax6, particularly "20" and "The Birthday Stories," because of the way she perfectly and poignantly captures vignettes that span the entire series. Another favorite is Dawn and her "Blood Ties" series - I started out as a "NoRomo," and Dawn was one of the authors who made me believe Mulder and Scully could have a romantic relationship that really worked. And I always had a soft spot for Profiler!Mulder stories, so to this day I mourn the unfinished state of the great Kronos fic "Ascent to Hell." One fic I always come back to that captures profiling Mulder really well is "Domination of Lies," by cslatton. And then there are stories that I consider classics: "Corpse" by Livengoo, "Oklahoma" by Amperage and Livengoo, the "Revelations" and "All Hallow's Eve" series by Windsinger. What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? I have a soft spot for a story I wrote called "Human Credential." I was attempting, a quarter-century after the first season of the show, to set a story in the very early days of the partnership (which these days is one of my favorite kinds of fanfic to read), and I felt like I nailed it. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? I have been doing both of these, as a matter of fact! Or in my case, they are oldies that made it online but vanished when Geocities went belly-up, for example, that I sometimes go back to and reshape. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As the swallows return to Capistrano, I seem to always return to writing fic at periods of transition in my life. The first time I "retired" from fanfic, I wasn't even in college yet! If one can be nostalgic at 21 years old for something one gave up at 17, I was nostalgic for fanfic, and I picked it back up again in grad school. Then I became a teacher and a wife and a mom and years passed, and the revival seduced me back into it again. But the vast majority of fanfic I've written is firmly planted in the first seven seasons of the show - poor Mulder and Scully never seem to get to grow up in my stories. What's the story behind your pen name? I wrote under a lot of pen names over the years! When I first started writing fanfic, no one knew anything about Internet safety and it didn't occur to me that it wasn't wise to use my real name. There was a period when I would have been mortified if anyone discovered my stories under my real name - now, at least I can write it off as a youthful indulgence! When I finally grew into a more mature writer, I started using the name Rae Lynn, which is almost-but-not-quite my real first and middle names. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? As far as I know, unless my friends and acquaintances have done some sleuthing, only my husband knows I still write fanfic. And he's never read it, though he's kind enough to give me a glazed-eyes indulgent smile if I ever talk about it. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? I am xraelynn on AO3! I have about a dozen stories there - some of them I wrote 15 years ago and some of them are brand spanking new. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Fanfic is a true labor of love. Fanfic authors don't write fanfic for money or fame; they do it because they love it. Sites like AO3 and Tumblr have made it so much easier to show your appreciation to writers (::gruff reminiscing voice:: back in my day, you had to send them an email, and now you can just click the "kudos" button!). I can only speak for myself, but I really thrive on that feedback - otherwise I'm just Mulder in his cramped hovel of a home office waiting for Scully to nag me to shave my beard. Every so often I think about the fact that there is so much high-quality writing about these characters I've loved for decades just available on the Internet for free and it feels like a true gift.

(Posted by Lilydale on May 4, 2021)

Hi Pia!! I love your work and have consistently been reading it for over a couple of years, currently every TIP update u post makes my days a bit brighter 🥰

It is also thanks to you that I started posting fics last year after more than three years not doing so. While some of my fics have been wildly popular in a fandom some others don't seem to have landed as well within the same one, so I wanted to ask, what do you do about those stories that excite you but that don't seem to have found an audience yet, or that they never will?? How do you work through the fear of them not being worth your writing time?

Have a lovely day 💚🍀

Hi anon,

This is a hugely complicated question.

For a start, for writing that is for income, if I think it won't do well, I don't write it (although only to a point, I wrote The Gentle Wolf because asexual representation mattered more to me than sales, but it still hit hard when that turned out to be true). I don't like to mess with things that pay the bills. I hate that I have to look at metrics in that sense, but I do. But thankfully we're not talking about original fiction:

For fanfiction, things are different, and there might be a lot of different things going on.

For a start, almost always, when people ask me this question they are still getting some interaction on their fics, just not as much as they wanted or imagined. It can really help to like, remember to be grateful for every person who interacts, and not just the 'quantity' of interactions.

I think like... I am a big fan of 'write for yourself' but it's also true that I write for interaction on AO3. Just... only you can decide how much of the former will compensate for not much of the latter. There are people out there who are like 'if I was only writing for myself I'd keep it in my computer.' I'm not like that, and I don't vibe that way. I write for myself but enjoy sharing it, in case something that worked well for me, works well for a stranger. Everyone is different and that's eventually going to be what the crux of this post is, lol.

Popularity is influenced by the fact that some fandoms are more dead than others and lack interaction across the board in general (Persona 5, for example, is notorious for this). Some fandoms like certain tropes more than others. Some fandoms are massively popular for three weeks and then die almost immediately. And so on and so on.

Ultimately fandom is fickle, it's loyal to the stories they like more than the authors they like, and you can't predict what will be a flash in the pan and what won't be, and it doesn't always have anything to do with the quality of the fic itself or the tags you used. (This is sort of like how sketches will sometimes get tens of thousands of notes and a 300 hour single piece of quality art will get 400 notes, while a professional artist tears their hair out in pieces).

Sometimes, a fic will be more interesting to me than the reality of fandom interaction and I'll write it. Touching and Melting for Houseki no Kuni is a good example of that. A tiny fic for honestly an extremely quiet and tiny western fandom in terms of fic, which looks like it had a lot of interaction 3 years on, but had almost nothing in the first few months. And sometimes the fic idea won't be more interesting to me than the reality of the fandom interaction, and I won't write it. I go story idea by story idea.

But I've also taught myself to really think about a) the way I talk about interaction and b) to really value every individual that leaves a kudos, or comments, or public bookmarks. When I sort of started out with Shadows and Light, I remember being so bummed when a story didn't do as well, and thinking that meant it was doing 'badly.' Let's be real, Game Theory when it started out had less than a tenth of the interaction of SALverse, and I thought I had failed. If I'd given up at that point, well... all of this wouldn't exist.

And then just looking at fanfiction, it's like.. well, sometimes fics do a lot worse than other fics, there's usually at least one person who will read it and leave a kudos. I remind myself that to that person, the story mattered or meant something, which meant I didn't just write it for myself anymore, there is interaction.

This is much harder on stories that have zero comments, and zero kudos, obviously, no one likes to feel as though they are shouting into the void. But it's also my experience that writers who've had popular fics, don't often have 'zero kudos fics' when they say a fic is doing really badly. They just..maybe need to value the individual interactions alongside how good a 'mass' of interaction can feel, or alongside how good 'quantity' can feel. I do really think that's a skill that a lot of like...enthusiastic fanfiction writers have mastered or at least are learning.

Sometimes it really helps to have somewhere in private to vent to when you feel emotionally overloaded or insecure, and honestly sometimes it can help to re-evaluate.

For some people, writing fic when a certain threshold of interaction isn't reached, just isn't worth it. I can't convince people like that to keep writing. If there's a deep seated 'this isn't worth it' then stop doing it.

If there's 'this is insecurity and I'm not good at valuing everyone and I feel down right now but it'll pass' then...work quietly and patiently and compassionately on strengthening your resilience and your trust in your own writing, and your ability to value individuals who interact and engage on your fics. If you don't do this, you may end up bitter and resentful, and that can influence your entire relationship with fandom, and worse, the people who interact with your fics.

Also, finally:

How do you work through the fear of them not being worth your writing time?

In fanfiction, I do not base whether something is worth my writing time on the quantity of people who will interact with it. It is worth my writing time because I'm really excited to write it, and I want to share it, even if people don't respond immediately, or even if only one person ever comments.

I don't...have this fear that you have based on the things you're basing it on - my fears are different to yours. It's fanfiction. It's worth my writing time because I'm eager to write or fix or alter something in canon or I want to make the two boys fuck because no one else was going to, and because I can generally trust that one person out there will probably read it, even if I go back over 10 years ago and my Livejournal fics were only getting like one comment per chapter. If that.

If your metric for 'worthiness' is 'quantity of interaction' then - I'm the wrong person to talk to, I'm literally motivated to write fanfiction by completely different factors to you. I didn't start SAL knowing it would get popular, I thought people would hate me because I killed Jamie in the first chapter, and up until that point none of my fics had been popular.

I can't convince you on the things that convince me, when our foundational motivations are different. If you want quantity and that's what 'worth' means to you, I don't know what to tell you, I would never have written SAL in the first place if I hadn't been the kind of person to just write fanfic for almost no / or no interactions, and still enjoy that single person who said 'I really enjoyed this thank you for writing.' I didn't spring into being as someone who was writing fics that got a lot of interaction, that came...years later, y'know?

So what is worthy to me sounds like it's also just different to what is worthy to you. Ultimately, there are people only writing fanfiction on the basis of how many people interact with them, and...I don't know how those people keep choosing to write honestly, and I think a lot eventually abandon it, because there's no algorithm to crack in order to be successful every time. Maybe...remind yourself that you've had popular fics in the past and therefore you will again? And that you can't get to that point without less popular fics on the step ladder in the meantime? Therefore, even a fic that doesn't feel 'worth your time' will be a stepping stone to the one that is?

Imho, I think my fics are worth my time because I enjoy reading them once they're finished. And then I think they're worth my time because other people enjoy them. Having a popular fic is fun and nice, but honestly, often a fluke, and doesn't always say anything about the quality of the writing (some of the most popular Yuri! on Ice stories with 10,000+ kudos were like...not always...the most well-written stories, but people were desperate for Content, and it was certainly that).

But yeah, how I think about fanfiction is very different to how I think about 'fiction that has to earn an income.' Ultimately I don't want to apply the latter philosophies to the former, other people do. If you're applying 'this needs to hit a certain threshold of interaction to be worthy' as your basis for writing fanfiction, then...we have very very different motivations for creating content in fandom! And I'm the wrong person to ask.

As I said, it's complicated, lol.