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drabsyo · 3 months

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Hey drab! Idk who else to ask about this, but do you know what happened to Aucune Defense Pour Toi? I can't find it for some reason

Hey anon! Oh, I adore that fic! One of the first fleurmione fics I've read after I found Crazy Little Things by dreiser, which is a lunamione fic. So it's kind of one of the reasons why I grew to love fleurmione.

I don't know what happened to Acune Defense Pour Toi by D. Geheimnis. All I know is it isn't on AO3 anymore. It was either taken down by the author or marked as a private work. I can however, send some links to some crumbs I found online. Again, I have no idea why it was taken down on AO3. These are just the first few things that pop out of my google search after I tried looking for it. Here's what I found :)

ADPT by D. Geheimnis on fanfiction.net. This one is posted by D. Geheimnis so it's safe to assume this was the original post of ADPT on ff.net, published on 2008. However, I'm only able to access the first chapter. The page goes blank when I try to access the other chapters. The same goes for the comments/reviews or most of the clickable links here. This is some sort of archive website of fanfiction.net, I think. I found this D. Geheimnis on a different fanfiction.net with the same username, but ADPT wasn't under the list of works, so maybe it got removed there.

ADPT by D. Geheimnis on LiveJournal. I did some digging and found that this was the original post of ADPT by the author before they moved it to ff.net and then on to ao3. All 36 chapters can be found here. Chapter 1 was published on 2007, updated throughout 2007-2009. 'Chapter 27: The Portkey' is mislabeled as chapter 1 on the subject entries. I don't know if you know how to navigate LiveJournal, it's my first time on this site so it's a little tricky for me as well, but head over to the 'View All Archives' on the left side of the screen, and you should be able to view the chapters of ADPT there, based on the month + year the author posted it on, along with their other journal entries.

EPUB and MOBI of Aucune Defense Pour Toi. Reddit! This one was posted by reddit user reddog44mag as a comment on one of the r/HPfanfiction threads by user Jeffardi. I've tried it, and the link works. I'm not able to access the files on mobile (maybe that's just my phone. I'm on android.) so be sure to access the link on a PC first and download it on PC. You can then email yourself the EPUB or MOBI copy, open that email on your phone, and save the file on your phone or Kindle.

No Defense For You by dreiser on AO3, which shows some of Hermione's POV of Acune Defense Pour Toi. It's really good too, so I suggest giving it a read. There's a link in the notes to ADPT on fanfiction.net but as far as I know, that link isn't working.

Summary: It's the seventh year at Hogwarts and Hermione discovers she has no interest in boys, only in the new Professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

On D.Geheimnis' fanfiction.net account, there was a mention of an episode on Allaine's BlogTalkRadio show 'Femslash 4 Fans' where Aucune Defense Pour Toi and No Defense for You was discussed. I tried finding it but came up empty.

Hope this helps!

#fleurmione #Acune Defense Pour Toi #D. Geheimnis #hp wlw #fleur delacour #hermione granger #No Defense For You by dreiser #asks

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elliot-olivia · 1 year

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hi! do you know if there’s like a centralized location for e/o fics that’s not ao3 or fanfic.net? i know for a lot of older fandoms there are other sites/pages that were used but i’m not sure how to find those lol. or maybe a good fic rec blog for older stuff? i’m looking for specific themes i guess and i’m just not finding them on ao3… if you’re able to think of anything that would be awesome!! thank you!! (and also i love your blog hehe i come for like Weekly Updates gkdjdj)

hey!! first of all i'm glad you like the blog 😭 i'm happy to provide weekly updates <3

second of all, eo fic has kind of a funny history. there used to be a site like what you're talking about (svufiction.net) but it got shut down years ago and a huge chunk of fic was lost. there's some that were saved (people had downloaded them before the site shut down) and those are scattered across like, dropboxes and other file sharing sites. i've spent the last couple of years trying to collect what i can, and with those i made this:

which is just a bookmark collection housed on ao3 that gives little blurbs of older fics and links to where you can find them. it's still a work in progress (it takes forever so i do it in spurts lmao) but i saved the fic files to my own fileshare thing so they wont mysteriously be deleted or locked (which is what happened to the old popular collection of purged fic) & i try to only bookmark fic that hasn't been uploaded anywhere else. it's not perfect but !! you might find what you're after there.

this literally doesn't matter at all but i think it's interesting so: ao3 wasn't really used for eo fic until recently, which is why a lot of the older stuff isn't there. i literally remember the svu tag in 2015ish only had something like 1,000 fics and eo was maybe the 4th most popular pairing? they had like ~300 under their tag. ao had the top spot until barba/carisi kicked off iirc, then rollisi n barson etc etc. grew in size. and now ofc it's eo bc of the renascence lmao.

anyway. there was an attempt to revive svufiction but it didn't really take off (you can find it here though). there was also a blog on here (eofanfiction) that linked to a lot of old fic but i just checked and it's gone now too 😭. here is a twitter thread with links to all known eo fileshare boxes (but keep in mind a lot of them were made recently when everyone thought ff.net was being shut down, so a lot of the fic is from there.). other than that i'd say fucking around on livejournal might be worth your while! i know that's how i found most of my favourite fics... here is a link to an eo community's fic tag that imo is a good place to start <3

#faq #ask #me reading this answer back like lol. nerd.#but anyway if there's something i do not know about please let me know <3

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spiraldancing · 2 years

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you know, i’ve been watching the whole explosion over the AO3 board of directors voting thing and what really really really gets to me is all the antis who are trying to decry AO3 over and over for the fact that it hosts “pedophilic” content or “it has rape/non-con fic!” really not understanding it.

yes, i know antis are stubborn and that you can point out over and over and over that just because people write or draw this stuff does not mean that people want to see it happening in real life. i myself have written non-con & incest & very gory things over the years. but does that matter to antis? no. because i like to write/read non-con & incest fic, it obviously means that that’s something i actually support in real life. it obviously means that i am someone who should be told “go kys” as i have seen antis do over and over. i’ve never seen a proshipper harass someone; i’m not saying it hasn’t happened, it possibly/probably has, but the discrepancy here is that i see antis being the ones to throw around death threats, harassment, and more much more often. the amount of times i’ve read “proshitters” by this point just has me sigh so loudly.

but here’s the thing.

the reason why the whole thing with Tiffany G is so fucking huge for we humble peddlers of our ships and wares is that it is indeed a fucking censorship run. i know that many antis are too young to remember the purging of FF.net when they suddenly struck down the whole notion of NC-17 fics ( though you can still absolutely post them on FF.net the site is a wasteland and i return there only to reread really old favorites of mine ) and now those fics must be posted as M. or, hell --- the whole fucking thing with livejournal which was also censorship. there were many communities on livejournal which i loved because they had such great content.

and then the banning of queer content began to roll out.

why did that happen? russia bought the rights to livejournal. and we know that russia has a very deep seated history of censoring LGBTQ+ content. they host the servers, they declare what can and can’t happen on the site even now, and it is very literally proof that a foreign nation can absolutely influence the way a website is run and dictate what is and isn’t allowed on it. and if that means that queer content is going to be sanitized from a place that had hundreds of communities of all kinds, from fandom to writing to roleplay and the sharing of doujins and ships and more? well, that’s a big reason why it’s so concerning.

i used to love the community weepingcock on livejournal which was a hilarious place to go read professionally published writing that involved smut. it was great. i have no idea if it’s still alive or not but the point is that when russia acquired it, there were justifiable fears over what it meant for the sake of censorship. those fears panned out as well. there are many dead and defunct communities on livejournal now. i haven’t ever looked at dreamwidth which is where i know many livejournal users migrated, but the point here is is this.

that for every anti going and saying that people who are very pro-fiction and pro-ship and more are overreacting to this? no, we’re not. i remember livejournal. i remember ff.net. i remember them both thriving and then the censorship began to roll through and that is why the Tiffany G situation is so concerning. just because you want to strike down those fics holding such content and you want to sanitize it doesn’t mean that that is going to ever stop those from being written. it doesn’t mean that we’ll ever stop making the works we want to see.

the fact that she is also basing her platform on very easily disproven lies is something else as well. i am very aware that media in china is strictly controlled and that the Great Firewall of China is very much a known thing; the fact that people from China are speaking out against Tiffany G should say everything in how they believe she’ll enforce the censorship. censorship is how people want to enforce the ability to control things. i don’t mean by fic in general. i am talking broad strokes here; there’s a reason why there’s always lists of banned books circulating around. there’s a reason why books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lolita, Maus, and more are on those lists. these are books that are beloved and books that involve subject matter that can and does make people in positions of power uncomfortable.

but just because you think that the censorship should be enforced or that the fics should be taken down doesn’t mean anything. all it means is that the works which get removed start with what’s seen as “socially unacceptable” and it moves on from there. if the censorship strikes down our works, then it will strike down your works too. and if you think that your way of doing things is so much better because you claim that you’re morally superior for the fact that you condemn someone for wanting to see two fictional characters kiss? then i am sorry for you. i am sorry because you are deliberately remaining insular against so much potential.

i understand there are likely many antis out there who may feel trapped into things, that they want to get out of it - and you can. but for those who want to remain stubbornly in their position? please, go experience life. there’s so much more to it than trying to berate people for what they enjoy consuming in fiction.

life is so much more nuanced than people want to believe. fic and art explore those nuances. i fully respect anyone who looks at something and goes “that is not my cup of tea” because, let’s be honest -- everyone will have different reactions to the same movie or show or story. that’s the beauty of creativity. the ability to see the nuances of how someone has interpreted something is brilliant; it’s a wonder to behold. and censorship would strip that away from us. AO3 is a godsend of a website. it is wonderful for archiving things. there has been so much fic lost out there because archives have gone down. there has been so much artwork forever vanished to the sands of time because websites have died.

so even if you disagree with the site, even if you disagree with the content that’s hosted on there, even if you want to yell and scream about AO3 and the things you can find on it? you should at least respect it for what it represents, especially to those of us who understand the very real danger of censorship and the removal of things from the internet. because if it can happen to us? then it can and will happen to you.

#ao3 #anti-ao3 #pro ao3 #i am a very vocal supporter of ao3 #but i think that people need to remember that this is not a good thing #but i'm just blasting this to both sides because I Am Tired

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canmom · 2 years

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it's so weird to have gone through the shift from 'the youngest generation who nobody understands' to 'the generation that fondly remembers how things used to be' with regard to, of all things, the internet. without even noticing it was happening bc it was so gradual.

except of course the old internet hasn't actually gone anywhere - nothing is stopping you hosting a static html website - in fact it's easier than ever with static site generators and free space on CDNs - or making a webring ir talking on IRC (many networks are still active) or even using Usenet (though it's mostly used to host pirated media nowadays lol). what of the first generation of 'platform' websites where you could upload stuff? while Flash may be dead, Newgrounds still exists. while Livejournal may be dead, Dreamwidth still exists. hell even Wikipedia is actually pretty old, still not run for profit, and holds up a different set of values. the forums are often ticking along still, even if nowadays you'll take your tiny RP group to Discord rather than Invisionfree. in some cases we really do have something better - AO3 solved the question of the fanfiction archive far better than almost any of its predecessors like ff.net. and the truly dead websites are caught more often than not by the heroic efforts of archive.org. many of those old static websites still stand, even if your browser will slap your hand for not using https.

but the social media platform websites - even this one - just have such a compelling draw on attention in the stream of posts, always updating. the search engines will point you to a bland Bootstrap-adjacent website that has the same corporate minimalism as every other website. meanwhile the aesthetic moment of geocities etc has passed so when you invoke the symbols of the old internet, you're invoking nostalgia, a frozen form, an indulgence still surrounded by suffocating professionalism. when you make your neocities website, where do you link it? fucking twitter.

it's not all bad, and i imagine one day people will look back as fondly on the chaos of discord servers. though damn, isn't that sad - the only place we can still breathe is the shelter of a hidden corner of an Electron app that's "IRC for gamers".

#internet

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hkblack · 2 years

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Beta Blog Spotlight Week #2

Continuing the Beta Blog Spotlight this week is something completely different that I think is fascinating to discuss as a beta reader. @tickety-boo-af's Clematis Bloom: on fandom, memory, and queer resilience (G, 4316 words)

The AO3 Tags Include: Essays, non-fiction, Fandom, Self-Reflection, Resilience, fandom old, I'm not even that old, in my thirties, cw emotional neglect, finding beauty, fandom made me queer, Therapy, somatic therapy, Healing

Clematis Bloom is a Personal Essay reflecting on the importance of fandom in youth, the relationships formed in fandom, what it means to return to fandom after a long hiatus, and the healing and discovery that can happen from a strong and positive fandom community.

My favorite line:

We built a world of our own, grafted onto a fictional story, and it was a space of extraordinary possibilities: one where we could explore who we were and what we wanted to be.

More thoughts on this gorgeous essay and the process below!

About the beta-read: I'm going to go into some more context here than I would for a fanfiction piece because I think it's very important. This was not the first thing I beta-read for tickety-boo-af. We worked together on a DIWS gift exchange fic whose number will surely come up one day for this spotlight. (I'm gonna laugh so hard if the fates decide that day is next week). We started chatting during that beta-read process and realized that we were both fairly newly back into fandom, having both left in the early-aughts with college and real life tugging us away from the fandoms that anchored us as teenagers. We bonded over the mutual weirdness of trying to find where everyone went what with livejournal and ff.net being more or less gone, and how odd it was to get used to Discord. My early fandom was Harry Potter, tickety's was The Matrix. I had remembered enjoying pieces of The Matrix--but I also remembered my father being absolutely in love with the badass action sequences and me quickly deciding anything he liked clearly was not meant for me. I recently realized this was wrong and decided to watch all four Matrix movies in one day after chatting with Tickety.

Yeah. You read that right. All four. One day.

Tickety got the live reactions for all of it. I'd apologize, but apparently I was the highlight of some Matrix fandom-spaces for all of my reactions. So it was worth it.

After that intense day, tickety asked if I would be willing to work with them on this personal essay. Of course I said yes.

I share this background because I think it's important to establish the trust that is inherent in beta-reading. To be quite honest, a 500 word crack piece can go to any beta-reader as far as I'm concerned, but personal essays or longer fics that cover a topic or a story near and dear to a writer, you have to trust the person on the other end. It's so important to have someone who knows how to tell you something isn't written well without making you feel like you've had some personal failure (read more about that here), especially when the piece in question is something so personal.

Which means I cannot stress enough that as a writer you should never feel guilty for telling a beta-reader "thank you, but no" if you don't think they're the right person for the job. And as beta-readers we must not take that personally. If someone is looking for a particular style, or a particular touch, or is hoping to find a beta-reader who has specific experience so that they can relate more intimately with that story--we have to let them tell us no. We must also respect what they are asking for. If someone says "I need this specific type of beta reader who has this specific experience" we should never jump in and say "I don't match those criteria but I'll do it." Asking someone to beta-read for you, especially if its a piece that's meaningful, can be a vulnerable thing. And it is really hard for some folks to say no, especially when they are saying no to "I can help!" and they are trying to be more comfortable with asking for the help they need. It is better to let someone who does match the criteria to offer first. If you see a request languishing in public for a few days with no response, and you feel you can do at least half the ask, then I think it's appropriate to ask them if they've found someone and say things like: "I have that experience, but my SpAG skills are rough--happy to lend a hand though!" or "I haven't had that experience, but I'm good at the Flow check you're looking for. Let me know if I can be of use!" But if you don't match any of the requirements, let it go! There will be other asks you can fill, and other readers who can help that reader.

Anyway! Tickety asked for feedback on style, the order of the paragraphs, thoughts on section breaks, and sentences that needed some TLC. There were other people who were also close to Tickety and knew more of their history and life story who were also leaving comments, and it was really neat seeing us all in the doc at the same time on occasion, leaving different notes, joking around with each other, and in general having a moment to bond with things like "omg same tho ouch"

What I love: honestly, all of it. This is such a vulnerable piece, and Tickety did an amazing job of bringing poetry to their thoughts and feelings that rereading the essay for this post put me a puddle of mush all over again. As a teenager, fandom helped me discover my pansexuality. As an adult, fandom has helped me find my demisexuality too. And as a writer, fandom helps me shove these identities onto my characters, laugh like a maniac and then go "now smooch! smooch so I feel seen in media! SMOOCH!" ya know, like a normal person. ;) But Tickety really demonstrates the power of finding and establishing oneself as a person in fandom communities in this essay and I love that.

If any of this sounds even kind of familiar to you as a person in fandom, I really encourage you to give Clematis Bloom a read. Get a box of kleenex and a cup of tea ready, because you might need it as you process your own thoughts and feels. But if you just need a good reminder of the positives of fandom, of the beauty of online communities and the things we do for completely faceless and weirdly named strangers (she says, after several paragraphs of calling a human "tickety"), this is the essay you want to read.

#Beta Read by HKBlack #Good Omens #The Matrix #Essay

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misseffect · 3 years

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Writing Tag ✍️

Thanks for the tag @otemporanerys :DD

Tagging @shudder-shock, @shretl and @skjeter

How many works do you have on AO3?

Seven, but four of those are from the Normandy Detective Agency series

What’s your total AO3 word count?

27,839 which is wwaaaaay more than I thought actually

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Can You Feel This? - post-destroy ending, Garrus POV ft. Castis and a very pissed-off Joker. Fun fact: I've never played the end of ME3 so didn't realise when I wrote this that the Normandy doesn't stay on Earth lmao

Different - ME2-ish one shot about the first time Garrus gets Shepard's clothes off. Tragically non-explicit. Probably made the no.2 spot by virtue of being the oldest.

Third Time's A Charm (tNDA) - definitely made the no.3 spot by virtue of being the horniest you dirty, dirty dogs

Flux (tNDA) - the first and probably my favourite in the Normandy Detective Agency series so far. The grey morality. The trust. The totally-platonic slow-dancing. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Tinderbox (tNDA) - WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I think it's good manners. If I leave a comment and don't get a reply then I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't have bothered, unless they've got hundreds of comments in which case, fair play. And I just really fucking love talking about Mass Effect.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oooff I don't think I've ever really written one. CYFT probably comes closest, just because it's mixed in with uncertainty about how much Shepard will ever be able to recover.

The next installment of The Normandy Detective Agency is angst-central though, which is partly why it's taking so ffffffucking long to write.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I know how roughly how tNDA is going to end and it's happy because god damnit they deserve it

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

No, never had much interested in them

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. The kind that never uses the phrase bundle of nerves. We have the right to use proper anatomy words and I wish to God we'd exercise it.

idk what the second part means really, but I like to read sex that feels grown-up and intimate and believable so that's what I try to write.

Sometimes I think smut can feel a bit too fanfic-y. It's hard to explain without sounding like a snob, but fic sometimes has quite a specific style of writing (I saw a post a while ago which was a PERFECT illustration and now I can't find it for the life of me - it was part of an article from CNN about, I think, Biden and Obama? Anyway, it was exactly that kind of very fanfic-y style except it was in a news article lmao) and I feel like smut is where that style sometimes becomes really concentrated. There's inherently nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't do anything for me.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Also no

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, but basically everything I've ever written has been co-brainstormed with @shepgarrus c:

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Guess lmao

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Looking For Ilos. Writing a really nasty Shepard was a lot of fun and I think the shakarian dynamic had potential, but the AU concept just wasn't rich and engaging enough to carry the story in between. tNDA really benefits from having the historical setting to anchor it and in hindsight that's definitely what LFI was missing.

What are your writing strengths?

Pacing. I can't stand stories that dawdle (I just finished reading LotR and MY GOD was it a slog) so I try to keep my own writing moving along. Unless there's specific value in watching a conversation play out, a thing that would take pages and pages of dialogue to talk through can usually be zoomed through in a few paragraphs.

And for AU specifically, I think I'm good at adapting from canon - especially keeping the themes, characters and key story elements recognisable in a new setting - and that's definitely the bit of tNDA I'm having the most fun with.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Change. CYFT suffers from this a bit in the sense that Garrus doesn't really develop much from the start of the fic to the end. Shepard is awake and he's talking to his dad more and he's on good terms with Joker, but this is all stuff that just kind of happens to him; he's not really any different in himself. And maybe that's not always necessary but I think it can make a story feel like it's just spinning its wheels. You get to the end and think 'ok but what was the POINT?'

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I have sections of dialogue in the next tNDA installment which are being spoken in German, but I've just written them in English and italicised them lmao

The only context I like foreign-language dialogue is for pet names. That's the cutest shit I've ever seen.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Published? Mass Effect. Otherwise, when I was a kid I used to make up what were - in hindsight - Harry Potter self-insert stories. If I'd known about livejournal and FF.net back in the day, I definitely would've been into HP fic in a big way.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

tNDA. It's just so. much. fun.

I've got a soft spot for Different too, partly because it's my first published fic but honestly some of the metaphor is just so 🤌✨🤌 I can't believe it came out of me.

#tag post #itsa me #fanfic tag #shakarian fic #mass effect fic #i'll talk about tNDA until everybody wants to kill me tbh

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klaineccfanficlibrary · 3 years

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Hi! I’m looking for a completed version of ‘tracksuits and baseball caps’ I read the first chapter on ao3 but it was by anonymous and they included their tumblr except I can’t find the tumblr ‘thestilinskinator’ and I just really want to know what happens to Kurt at the end so any help would be very much appreciated:)

As you mentioned, there is one chapter posted on AO3 as anonymous, and the Tumblr account has been deleted. The author also posted one chapter on ff.net under the user name Emoryems. I then checked out Emoryems Livejournal account, and it didn't make their master list of fics nor was this fic posted there.

Given that this first chapter was posted in December 2011 (that's not a typo; it was almost 10 years ago), I doubt very much that they finished writing the fic. You might want to send them a PM via FF.net to see if it was ever continued. - HKVoyage

#klaine fic #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #fic finder #anonymous

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unadulteratedkr · 3 years

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I was tagged by a trio of awesome people (thank you for providing procrastinating tools, @nire-the-mithridatist, @kurikaesu-haru, and @forbiddenfantasies1) so HERE. All sorts of stuff about yours truly

Name: HI HELLO, Katherine here. Not Kate or Katie or Kathy, just Katherine. Also known as unadulteratedkr as my username on various platforms except ao3 where for some reason I literally cannot remember… I’m dialects_and_costumes. I think I was in college earning my theatre degree when I created the account and I was just... going through it. Ahhh, college.

Fandoms: Ya girl has been a lurker for a LONG time in various fandoms. I started with Harry Potter as a kid, secretly looked at Xena f/f content when I was a teenager, and really didn’t have a fandom home for about 6 or 7 years when all of a sudden Jaime Lannister knights Brienne of Tarth in the most romantic move of all time (look it up, you’ll see I’m Correct) and I was hit with major feels and the rest is history.

Where you post: I had a ff.net account AGES ago where for some bizarre reason the only thing I posted was a very poorly written oneshot songfic for Law and Order: SVU (no, I WILL not be sharing any more info about it, it’s very embarrassing) and I think I was honestly too young to fully understand livejournal when people were posting there, so I went from ff.net to fandom hiatus to ao3

Most popular one-shot: My very first attempt at smut holds that honor! That would be All Full With Feasting, where I basically dumped all of my horniness into One Jaime Lannister and learned that I apparently was not going to be able to write one story and peace out.

Most popular multi-chapter: One of the two fics I wrote for the exchange for the very lovely @catherineflowers29! I Will Put My Faith and Trust in You was inspired by a prompt to get JxB in bed together before they left Harrenhal, and I turned it into a weird sorta threesome with a modern day Brienne getting pulled into other Brienne’s body? Because I CLEARLY needed to make it more complicated for myself. I think my favorite part of writing that (other than providing some much needed frottage content in all our lives), was getting to do a Brienne POV on the bear attack, filling in those thoughts and actions before Jaime arrives.

Fic you were nervous to post: Oh, definitely All Full with Feasting. I was terrified that what I had written was awful, that I’d completely missed the mark on how to write a sex scene, that I had spent too much time describing FOOD for it to be hot, I was wrapped up in knots about it. It makes me laugh so much because now, out of my ten works on ao3, four of them are PWP (okay, one of them is P with a little bit of plot), one of my WIPS without any plans of sex in its outline has a planned smutty one-shot, and I’m just sitting here wondering how the flipping heck that happened.

How do you choose your titles? My “plot? What plot? Why plot when you can have smut?” fics are all part of a series where I pick the title from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets (doin’ my boy Billy Shakes proud), but outside of that… it can vary. I’ve used song lyrics a couple of times, a line from a poem, and for the birthday fic I wrote for Brynn, I straight up just took the word “fairy ring” and translated it into Welsh because I thought it looked cool. (cylch y Tylwyth Teg: TELL ME THAT DOESN’T LOOK COOL. I DARE YOU.)

Do you outline? I think I brainstorm more than what I view as outlining? I don’t know if what I do is organized enough to be called an outline. It’s more like a mindweb of a random internal monologue, depending on the fic. For example, with cylch y Tylwyth Teg, I only had a VERY limited number of actual notes on the plot, but I had the secret message typed out so I could create a sort of thesaurus of words for me to pick from in order to create the acrostic. For My Fair Maiden, I try to make sure I have a good outline of what emotional and plot point beats I want to hit on from the song, along with a bunch of lines and lyrics I love from both Pygmalion and My Fair Lady for me to use as inspiration.

OH. And because I put a cheese mention for @eryiscrye into every fic I write, I always have a note on how I’m gonna do the cheese cameo.

Complete: EIGHT. I was gonna write one quick My Fair Lady AU and duck out, HOW THE FUCK DO I HAVE EIGHT COMPLETED FICS AND THAT’S NOT ONE OF THEM?!

Do you take prompts? Sometimes! I like to use them every so often to tweak my brain into focusing on something else if my current project is being uncooperative.

In progress: I have two WIPs published, and one more I’m poking at every few weeks to see if it’ll cooperate with me. Outside of that, I have good ideas for two or three more fics to follow those? One is a continuation of the canon-divergent fic I wrote for the exchange where Brienne and Jaime go on a quest to find The Mountain for @aliveanddrunkonsunlight, a Brienne as Sasquatch fic for @slipsthrufingers, and a dog-sledding AU that requires I re-read a book before I sit down to write it.

Coming soon: The rest of the tattoo fic! I’ve also got a good portion of the next chapter of My Fair Maiden written, so I’m hoping to have that posted this month as well. I got to do a LOT of writing these past few weeks while I self-isolated all on my own so I could be with my parents for the holidays, and I’ve MISSED it.

#fic writer meme #katherine gets personal

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ruffboijuliaburnsides · 5 years

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Hey, I'm really sorry but I don't really understand all this anti discourse??? What's wrong with not wanting to see pedophilia romanticized in fiction? Like I understand it's fiction and not real, but I guess for me it's just super weird why anyone would want to read that sort of thing. Also personally I won't watch game of thrones, nor will I read it, because I'm super not okay with graphic depictions of rape. I didn't even know it had pedophilia or incest so I'm glad I never got into it. =/

Imagine you’re in high school, if you’re not already. You have a significant other of your preferred gender. You’ve been dating for a year or so. You’re in the same grade, but you’re older than they are. You’re 18 years old. They are 17 years old. You’re only actually 3 months apart in age and you only just turned 18.

Antis are the people who would see “18yo dating 17yo” and immediately start calling the 18yo a predator. I have seen them call a late-20s character dating an early-20s character pedophilia, because of the age gap, which is nonsensical. I can only imagine the names they would call me, who turned 19 days after first kissing my girlfriend, who was 2 years and a couple months younger than me and so who was only 16 for the first few months we dated, even though we were only a grade apart. (we’re now married, fwiw, and have been happily together nearly 15 years)

Antis see adults writing teenaged characters bc they enjoy a canon with teenage characters and get invested in their romantic relationships and ship them because they’re cute together, and call those adults pedophiles. For writing fic that is, essentially, the same as 99% of young adult novels. Which are almost all written by adults.

Antis say that the act of looking at teenagers having an interesting dynamic or potential dynamic and wanting to explore that in a context where those teenagers HAVE GROWN UP AND ARE ADULTS and maybe writing smut of adult characters who are in canon underage? Is pedophilia and child pornography. Stories about characters that happen to have been children at one point but are - this is the important part - NOT children in these fics.

And, ultimately, antis are calling fictional stories about fictional characters “child pornography” and anyone who has concerns about purity policing and censorship as “pedophiles” or “pedophile apologists” and are diluting the meaning of these concepts when ACTUAL LITERAL CHILD PORN AND PEDOPHILES EXIST and what they are doing is doing absolutely nothing to combat it.

They’re not angry about people “romanticizing” pedophilia, because 95% of the time even fictionally that’s not what’s happening. They’re angry because they’ve come up with this idea of what “acceptable” fic is, and they don’t like that people disagree with them. You can tell it’s not actually about that, because you don’t see them trying to get Game of Thrones pulled from libraries, even though it includes incest and sexual assault and a 14 year old girl being married to and impregnated by a grown man (and all this in the very first book). You don’t see them calling GRRM a pedophile.

At the end of the day, it is fiction. It is fictional. No one is asking you to like it, least of all me, but it is NOT. REAL. These are not real people and they are not in real situations. They talk a big game about how fanfiction and shipping will “normalize” these things, but fandom is actually a LOT smaller than it feels, and most fics don’t get more than a few thousand hits at the MOST. And if you just mass ban anything that includes sexual assault or child abuse, you’re going to probably ban the tiny fraction of fandom that is actually really into that, sure, but you’re also going to ban fics dealing with canonical backstory and trauma. you’re going to ban fics grappling with dark themes and condemning the things that happen to the characters. You’re going to ban people trying to heal, or even just trying to have a discussion about it.

We know this because it’s happened before in fandom, look into the LiveJournal strikeout if you want to know more about it. Look into the various ff.net crackdowns. When it comes down to it, if I look at 17yo character and a 23yo character and say “I want to ship them during this canon without changing their ages”, there is no minor being taken advantage of. If someone uses my fic to “convince” a teen that it’s okay to date them in their 20s? That’s on them. they are abusers and if it hadn’t been fic it would’ve been music, or movies, or history, or god only knows what. You don’t get to let abusers off the hook just because they MAYBE could use someone’s fanfic as one of their methods of abuse. There’s… sorry, there’s just a LOT of issues with anti culture. I’m not pro pedophilia or anything, I am just anti whatever the fucking hell antis are doing.

I’ve been through that kind of black and white all or nothing purity culture bullshit before. It was called evangelical christianity, and it was (in my case, because of this purity culture shit) deeply abusive and fucked me up royally! I refuse to let myself be put through that again just to please some fuckos on the internet.

#fandom purity culture #honestly anon if you don't get it now idk what to tell you #but you will not sway me on this matter #anonymous #audience with the gods

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toogayforthistoday · 3 years

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hey gabe! can i ask 2, 4, and 9 from the selfship au asks :0???

Hey Benji! Of course you can!

2. Do they prefer selfshipping by inserting themselves into your source, or by daydreaming about you in their own little / personal world, or by imagining you by their side during their daily life?

I think Hiei and Husk would daydream about their own personal worlds, and Hitoshi and Dabi would imagine me by their sides in their day-to-day lives.

4. Do they spend more time on wikipedia, on your fandom wiki, on your TV tropes page? Looking for official content they might’ve missed, like fun trivia? Looking for fanart, for fics? Looking for information and details and references for fics or art or other fancontent they’re making because they want to make sure they get everything right?

Hiei would just re-read my source over and over and over again, trying to memorize everything.

Dabi would have like 6 tabs permanently open to my wiki pages, and Ao3 (FF.Net and what’s left of LiveJournal if he’s really desperate that day)

Husk would be looking for fanart, and has like 4 different forum threads dedicated to finding my merch.

And Hitoshi would constantly be looking at references so he can ‘do me justice’ in his artwork (Artist Hitoshi is canon and I will DIE ON THIS HILL-)

9. If you have multiple f/os (romantic, platonic, anything), imagine them making or joining a Discord server or a group chat about you or your source. Who gushes, who shares art and fics, who analyses everything, who sends memes?

Hmmm...

Dabi, Loki, Hancock, MacCready, and McCree all gush, will just not shut up about me

Compress saw me chop all my hair off at the start of the High School arc and just went “That Kid’s Trans.” Half the server nodded in agreement, the other half weren’t too sure, but still liked his headcanon. High School arc ends and the canon is Trans, and now everyone is either convinced Compress is friends with the author, or is the author.

Husk, Eddie, Varric and Lambert all write x Readers. Varric writes full on smut novels, and the server is still in disbelief that Varric fucking Tethras, a published author, is on this server writing smut about me. If you’re interested, and you pay for printing costs and delivery fees, he will send you a signed hardcover copy of his fics. Lambert writes fluff, but everyone on the server thinks he’s a girl, because he uses a pen name. Eddie writes slice of life drabbles. Husk will absolutely take all the kinky, raunchy requests. Dabi keeps enabling him, and keeps introducing him to more and more kinks to write. But Husk keeps accidentally posting the smut in the wrong channels when he’s drunk, so if he does it again, he’s getting banned. “Seriously dude, there are kids on this server!” Lambert’s a mod.

Hitoshi shares all of his art on the server, and actually streams some of his progress. He’s one of the more popular artists in the fandom. His little sister, Eri, is also a fan, and Hitoshi shares her artwork with the server as well. There have been multiple group voice calls with Eri telling her that her artwork is amazing.

Hiei and Sesshomaru are fans who are really uncomfortable sharing their f/o, so have not joined the server. But they’ve seen Hitoshi’s work, and are big fans.

Compress, Regis and Roadhog regularly get together to analyze what might happen next in my canon, and posit ‘what if’ scenarios to each other

Alistair, Garrus, Aizawa, Mordecai, Maya, Isabella, and Nemuri all get in trouble constantly for accidentally starting roleplays in the wrong channels

Dabi, Hitoshi, Deku, Toga, Spinner, Shigaraki, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Gaige, Garrus, and Vetra are all memeing shitlords.

...Oops that got long, my bad!

~ Gabe

#Thanks for the ask Benji!#really appreciate it #Gabe Answers #Selfshipping AU #There's too many F/O's to tag I'm sorry!#tw alcohol mention #shibuyasreapers

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13eyond13 · 4 years

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For the sleepover ask (and you've probably talked abt this for the 100th time, sorry): What was your first impression of Death Note and how has that impression changed over time? And what was it that made this show 'stick' with you? :3

Ohh that's a good question, thanks for indulging me @trueffelmaiden!

I discovered Death Note way back in like 2007 I think, and it was an extremely random way to find it. I think I just came across an AMV on YouTube or whatever and thought that L looked strangely compelling and liked his energy, so I wanted to know more about his character. I found the anime on a site online and then IMMEDIATELY had L's death spoiled for me by a commenter on the first episode that said he dies in episode 25 ;__; . I had never really seen any anime except for a few episodes of Pokemon and such when I was a kid, so I didn't realize it could be so good! I binge watched the entire thing within about 2 days alone in my room and then couldn't get over the show. I was fascinated and haunted by the characters and the unique world-building and all the possibilities that might have been with little changes to circumstances and everything like that. Nobody else I knew was as obsessed with it as I was either, so I ended up reading a lot of fanfic and leaving rambling comments on the ones I really liked. I hadn't ever been involved in a fandom before either, but I met someone very smart and kind on ff.net ("serria" is the username, you can still find her fic on there now) who taught me a ton about the series and how fandom culture works and everything like that! She was much more involved in it than I was, she had actually read the entire manga and participated a lot in writing thoughtful meta and such on LiveJournal (no Tumblr or AO3 or whatever back then). I attribute her kindness and encouragement toward me back then as the reason I ever felt comfortable participating in the fandom myself, and the reason I have a blog here now!

I was into DN from about 2007 to 2009, then got busy with life stuff for a long while and drifted away from it. I got back into DN in my twenties around 2016 I think? This time I actually read the whole manga, and then I watched the English dub of the anime for the first time too (which wasn't even available to me anywhere back when I was into DN for the first time). I was amazed at how well it held up and how good the entire manga was, better than the anime imo.

Soooo after that long-winded explanation here are the main things I remember about how my impressions changed or didn't change:

-I didn't fully appreciate how beautifully drawn and funny in a dark way the manga was back in the late 2000s, and didn't bother reading the whole thing after L's death, because I figured since I'd already seen the anime I already knew what happened. In a plot sense this is baaaasically true, but I now see that the anime altered the successor arc a lot and made quite a few of the characters from that half of the story more wooden and less interesting and comprehensible than they were in the manga. I was especially surprised by how much I liked Near's character in the manga, because I thought he was boring and unsympathetic in the anime, but he was actually one of my favourites in the manga when I read it all the way through. I also think I liked Mello a bit less this time around because he just came off very violent and repetitive to me in most of the things that he does, and I always sympathize with the characters he is traumatizing more than I sympathize with him (though he's definitely a very cool looking character and I love his design).

-Back in the day my impression of L was based totally on how he came off to me in the Japanese dub of the anime, and I definitely saw him as well-meaning and gentle and a bit naive as well. I remember Serria telling me that she thought he was cruel and I was like ??? Stuff like how he confined the Kira suspects never occurred to me as being shady and I always felt sorry for him because of how Light killed him. Oh yeah and I also hated Light, though I cried a lot when he died. It wasn't until I read some good fanfics that I started appreciating Light's character more and seeing how L was perhaps a bit shadier than I first believed him to be. Back then I was less of a critical thinker and also a bit naive, always assuming people have good intentions deep down no matter what. I also think the anime version of L somewhat alters his character and makes it a bit harder to know how you're supposed to be interpreting him and his actions. I definitely prefer the manga now for everything including L's characterization and dynamic with Light and everything else.

-I finally fully saw what an excellent character Light is when I revisited the series as an adult. I have read a lot more and watched a lot more and learned a lot more about good writing over the last decade so I have a much better appreciation for when a character and a plot are really well done. I think he is the absolute best part of the entire story now and that it wouldn't work at all without his character as the center of everything, he's the whole reason the story is a classic and so interesting and fun to watch or read.

-I think I was also a bit taken aback by how strongly I still got Lawlight vibes when I revisited the story again as an adult. I didn't care about shipping them anymore and set out to just read the story exactly as it was, because I assumed I had just been projecting a lot of wishful thinking onto things back in the day. But the whole time I read and watched it again I was still like... 👀 jeez hahah they're really hitting it off. I think I used to always see it as L being obsessed with Light and Light hating L back in the day, but this time I saw it more as Light being obsessed with L. The way he continues to think about him and compare everyone else to him years after he is gone is the shippiest thing about them to me now. I enjoy the series for way more reasons than just that, and I do think the fandom kinda goes overboard on this ship sometimes in ways that aren't very interesting to me, but their strange chemistry is definitely the heart of the story to me, and that's something that hasn't changed over time.

#ask #trueffelmaiden #light yagami #l lawliet #p #thx!#lawlight #near #mello

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knightfury1895 · 4 years

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My Stories on Fanfiction.net

My Profile is becoming rather difficult to navigate, so I list below the stories which are complete at this moment. I have done my best to sort them into a reasonable order.

Ratings: Most stories of mine are rated K/K+ as per FF.net’s directions -- the exceptions are Ts, which are marked as such here. If you disagree with a rating I have given one of my pieces, please PM me in order to let me know, rather than reblogging or commenting on this post.

Sherlock Holmes stories (classical)

December Drabbles (complete) - 31 short stories written for the popular Hades Lord of the Dead's December Calendar Challenge of Awesomeness (2013). My first attempt at challenge writing -- due to the nature of the challenge, there is no specific genre.

A Series of One-Shots (ongoing... probably) - Shorts and one-shots, mostly written to prompts. Even I have no idea what might happen next.

The Adventure of Winterbourne House (complete) - Holmes and Watson are very unwelcome guests when they arrive in a little Yorkshire village at the request of a nervous client.

No Such Thing (complete) - Holmes is forced to leave an injured Watson alone on a deserted footpath in order to get help. Is all that the doctor experiences thereafter a mere reaction to shock and fear in his vulnerable state, or could there be a paranormal explanation? This story was written in response to a prompt from Watson's Woes, the LiveJournal community.

The Freezing Moor (complete) - Watson might have wanted to join his friend in his excursion to begin with, but as the slight snowstorm became a vision-reducing blizzard, soaking both himself and his companion and chilling them to the bone, he started to regret it. As, it would seem, did Holmes.

Seasonal Stories (complete) - My response to Hades Lord of the Dead's December Calendar Challenge of Awesomeness (2014).

To Return From Death (complete) - Holmes may not know it just yet, but he is fast approaching the end of his hiatus. All he wants now is to be reunited with his Boswell and walk the beloved streets of his London, but he has his fears and doubts - London may have changed dramatically and Watson may not want to forgive him. Chapter 10 revised 15-09-14 as I have never much liked it. Rated T for drug usage.

The Singular Package (complete) - A package arrives at Baker Street from from overseas. Upon inspection, it is found to contain a blanket which has been wrapped in plain writing paper, as if for protection. Why would anyone send such a parcel?

Toby to the Rescue (complete) - When Holmes disappears without a trace, Watson fears that something might have happened to him and becomes determined to search for the Great Detective. Fortunately, he has Toby to assist him.

Slick Cobblestones (complete) - A walk in the rain turns to something much more unpleasant and Holmes is given a new opportunity to witness Doctor Watson's skills as a physician.

Inexplicable (complete) - Holmes and Watson are asked to look into the inexplicable laming of a gentleman's valuable horses. It should be simple enough - hardly a challenge, for a man of Holmes' powers.

Powers of Deduction (complete) - A beaten Holmes can only be saved by the deductive powers of a friend.

Locked Out (complete) - A short story that I wrote for WAdvent (Watson's Woes, Livejournal). Watson returns from his club to find the keys missing from his pocket. What is a fellow to do?

Tales of December (incomplete - only 16 stories out of 31) - 2015's entries for Hades Lord of the Dead's December Calendar Challenge of Awesomeness.

The Most Winning Woman (complete) - Holmes remembers the most winning woman that he ever met, during one of his darker moments. Rated K+ for mentions of drug usage and general unpleasantness, but no graphic description.

Home at Last (complete) - Sometimes, it is just a relief to come home (especially when there is a kind soul to welcome a fellow and ensure all requirements are met).

Fireside Tales (complete) - My answer to the December Calendar Challenge of Awesomeness 2018, hosted by Hades. This year, I am collaborating with my boys, Paul and David.

Snowed In (complete) - Sussex can be a lonely place in the winter months. Particularly when one finds oneself snowed in, a prisoner in one's own home.

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century stories

Time Shifts (complete) - 1st story of my personal series. A grieving Holmes is ill with influenza and, with nothing to distract him, is forced to face the emotion he has been doing his best to ignore.

One Wish (complete) - 2nd story. Holmes' behaviour and outlook has not improved much since his illness (in Time Shifts) and both Lestrade and Watson are becoming increasingly concerned. It all comes to a head when their friend begins to disregard his own health and safety needlessly as a result.

Whose Idea Was This Anyway? (complete) - Deleted scene from One Wish.

Festivities in the 22nd Century (complete) - A challenge I set myself: a story per day for the duration of December, plus New Year’s Day. This is set at Christmas, 2104.

An Exercise in Tact (complete) - Holmes always tries to be tactful, but there are days that warrant more care than usual. This story is set in the February of 2105.

Experimental Cocktails (complete) - Holmes has decided to experiment with a cocktail of drinks (because he was bored and cocaine is illegal in 22nd Century London). Rated T for obvious reasons - I do not condone drug usage or alcohol abuse.

An Eventful July Day (complete) - The date is the 7th of July and all Holmes wants is to spend a quiet, pleasant day with his Boswell.

Forgotten (complete) - Watson has made a new friend and Holmes is feeling a bit sorry for himself.

Choosing the Right Moment (complete) - The question is a simple one - more a formality or a gesture than a question in itself and he is quite sure that he already knows what the answer will be. Timing, setting and mood are all important factors, however, and Holmes is frightfully nervous.

This is Meant to be Fun (complete) - Chelsea and Lestrade take their fiancés out for a day of fun together. At least, that is the plan.

Passions and Jealousy (complete) - Holmes can be somewhat possessive when the mood takes him. Sometimes, he can shock even himself.

Heart Over Mind (complete) - Holmes is only cheerful! Why are John and Watson so concerned? Surely there is no reason to prove that he has not experimented with any substances since his 22nd Century rebirth?

Doing Right (complete) - Holmes is forced to make a decision which he has been putting off. Providing Beth Lestrade is still interested.

#fanfiction #fan fiction #Sherlock Holmes #Classic Sherlock Holmes #bookverse #Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century #SH22 #KnightFury's stories

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panharmonium · 4 years

Text

just some thinky thoughts about fandom platforms and community that i didn’t know what to do with, so i wrote them down.

[tl;dr - tumblr is weird, pan misses (certain aspects of) Ye Olde Days]

tumblr is such a weird platform.

like. i love my blog as a personal repository of stuff i enjoy, and i’m definitely thrilled to have met the people i’ve met on here - some of them have even become my friends outside the internet, and that’s been absolutely lovely. but in terms of actual functionality when it comes to trying to engage in a fandom...it’s still weird.

i know people will probably get tired of all the “BACK IN MY DAY” fandom analysis posts that float around on this website, but even having been here for years now, it is still really hard for me to adjust to a place that makes it so impossible to find any kind of actual fandom community spaces.

for me, i didn’t even start using tumblr until i was in my mid-twenties, and that was only because tumblr was where most people from LJ had migrated. i’d been Doing Fandom for over a decade prior to that, on other platforms (fandom specific sites/archives and then LJ), so i ended up here kind of out of necessity - the great fandom migration was already mostly complete, by the time i moved.

so i got here, and i got settled, but fandom on tumblr has been so different from fandom as i experienced it anywhere else, and that’s not the fault of any of its users; it’s just an inevitable function of the way this site is structured.

it is SO HARD for us to connect with people on here!

just, as an example from my own more recent life - i’ve been doing a lot of merlin stuff lately, right? that’s where my head is at and that’s what i’m having the most fun with and i would love to be more interactive with people about it, like - to have folks to geek out with about it, you know, to do the things that fandom is for - and if i were on, say, livejournal, back in the day, i would know where to go to do those things. there would be specific spaces built for just that purpose. LJ comms were places where everybody who was interested in a particular thing could go for the express purpose of posting and discussing and interacting about that thing! people still maintained their own personal blogs, but they also belonged to whichever LJ communities reflected their interests. LJ comms and fandom-specific sites were fandom hubs - it was so easy to find what you were looking for.

this functionality doesn’t exist in any meaningful way on tumblr. big, moderated groups/communities aren’t a thing tumblr truly supports. there’s no way for me to go join the “merlin” comm and just be in community with a large group of people who just wanna talk about merlin. the limited “group blog” functionality on tumblr is so non-conducive to actual usage that community spaces like those just don’t really exist, not like Back In The Day.

fandom on tumblr is so very decentralized. the way things are set up here forces all of us to just make posts on our individual blogs, which then might get picked up and put on other people’s individual blogs, maybe. you can’t like...make something (X) Fandom related and drop it in the (X) Fandom LJ Comm like “hey look, something fun to talk about!” you could put it in “The Tag,” but anyone who’s been here for any length of time knows how useful doing that actually is. and you could post it on your individual blog, but it won’t necessarily reach anybody who might want to geek out with you, not if you’re not already followed by someone in that fandom.

and the only other option is to invite yourself onto someone else’s individual blog, which is a) inefficient, when you’re looking for wider community, and b) not something a Painfully Reserved Person is wont to do.

the analogy that works best for me is this: pre-tumblr, fandom hangouts were community spaces. they were cafés with a sign hanging out front saying “star wars here!” or “kanan/hera here!” or “X here!” if you wanted to geek out about a particular thing, you would go to the café and meet a bunch of other people there.

nowadays, if you want to geek out about a particular thing, you have to barge into a stranger’s house. and not everyone is comfortable with that.

the lack of real, threaded comments is also just...i don’t know how to express how detrimental this is to communication and community. i mean, i understand that tumblr’s entire “reblog” system doesn’t really allow it to be a thing, but tumblr’s entire mechanic as a fandom platform has to be questioned, in that case.

how impossible is it to have a conversation on here, the way tumblr is set up right now? i mean - let’s say you make a post, right? one person reblogs it and adds their own text to it; another person reblogs the original version, but says something different in the tags. a third person doesn’t reblog it at all, but hits “reply” on your original post. a fourth person “replies” also, but to the second person’s reblog, in response to the additional content.

NONE OF YOU ARE HAVING THE SAME CONVERSATION. none of you are even aware that the other conversations are happening. the idea of trying to build an actual cohesive fandom community like that is just...impossible. it can’t happen.

when i reblog posts on tumblr, i feel like i’m a dragon collecting a little hoard of shiny things she likes, only i never actually see another person, because i live in a cave.

everybody here lives in a cave.

and like...this is just philosophical, i guess, but. tumblr’s focus on “follower count” and notes is also a thing i don’t really know how to handle.

having people “follow” me makes me feel weird. seeing that people are “following” this blog exerts a bizarre external pressure, as if my little house here could ever be for anybody who isn’t me. it prompts a tiny 'but should you?’ in the back of my head when i post about something that isn’t what all those people came here for, which is ridiculous, because this was never supposed to be a blog for any fandom in particular; it was just a blog for me. i was the only one here when i started, and i literally never did anything to try and get people to come here and join me. it happened accidentally, because bigger blogs than me picked up some star wars stuff i made and passed it around.

but of course, on tumblr, making connections gets conflated with follower/note count, and understandably so, because besides having a higher follower count (aka wider distribution), how are people ever going to reach the other people who are into the same thing they are?

for instance. let’s say you’re brand new to tumblr. you want to get involved in X fandom. there’s no community space here where a new blog with no followers can go and share their stuff with the right audience and meet all the other people who are also sharing their own work. unless you start messaging strangers, your tumblr time is pretty isolated.

whereas - i remember on lj comms, back when people would post as a newcomer, it would be like, ‘hey i’m so-and-so and i love xyz and here’s a picture i drew of x character!!!!’ - and people would actually respond to that. people responded to everything! like. tiny 400 word fics would have 30 comments, and all those people were talking with each other, not past each other, on the same page.

just for fun, while i was typing this up, i went through a month’s worth of posts on an old lj comm i used to frequent. not a single one of those posts was comment-less. every single post, even the tiniest, most insignificant one-line musing, had some amount of discussion attached to it.

whereas now - i don’t know if this is just confined to tumblr, or if it’s a general cultural shift, because even on AO3, i sometimes see people who have written massive sprawling epics and the comment field is just a desert. i once saw the exact same fic posted on ff.net, where it had 20 comments - and then on AO3, where it had zero.

and like, say what you will about ff.net (there’s...plenty to be said, certainly XD ) but commenting patterns were observably different there. and that’s all part and parcel of a bigger discussion, which isn’t really within the scope of these notes, except to say that it’s probably the source of my forever grudge match with AO3′s kudos button, which i realize is an absurdly silly thing to say and i’m smiling at myself even as i type this, but - i gotta be honest - i hate that thing! i can’t stand it! XD

i say that in the most good-natured way possible, obviously; this is fandom, after all, and it’s all for fun, and i love AO3 in every other way, so this is more a minor annoyance which makes me laugh at myself than anything else - but i say again - in the most fun-loving, self-deprecating way possible - that little button is my archnemesis. XD

i totally get why other people love it! it’s a completely reasonable way to feel! but for me, personally, coming out of an environment where the reward at the end of making something was getting to gush with somebody else, make a connection, talk about the thing that gave us So Many FEELS - the kudos button is so. sterile. and. empty. it doesn’t fulfill my urge to connect with people or share fannish enthusiasm in any way. i’d almost rather not even see kudos on my account, honestly, because it makes me feel more disappointed than anything else - like, “oh, man. look at all these missed fandom conversations we could have had.”

and obviously, this is in no way meant as disparaging to people who use the kudos button liberally. it is ALWAYS lovely to show appreciation for someone who wrote something you liked, however which way you are able, if and only if you are so inclined. nobody is obligated to leave feedback - lurkers are a perfectly accepted and long-celebrated fandom tradition; i belonged to that tradition myself, for most of my fandom life - so showing appreciation in any form is already going above and beyond. nobody needs to be harangued with “YOU SHOULD’VE COMMENTED” or “YOU SHOULD’VE REBLOGGED” - none of that stuff is required to participate in fandom; nobody owes comments or reblogs, and creators have to be okay with that. we can discuss and/or lament the structural factors that encourage or discourage participation, by all means, but ultimately we have to recognize that nobody is actually required to respond to things we make. it’s fandom. we’re all here by choice, and people’s participation levels are their own business.

and anyway, i know that lots of authors actually love getting kudos on their work, so my experience isn’t universal, by any means. it’s just a function of my own personal background, and the communities i used to run in - i speak for no one but myself and my own fannish life.

and besides, the entire debate about kudos/comments and like/reblog disparities doesn’t come anywhere near the underlying issues. it’s sometimes framed as “people not participating in fandom appropriately” (and that’s completely unfair; there’s no wrong way to do fandom when you’re not hurting anybody) as opposed to “what is it about our platforms that encourages or discourages participatory fan culture.” like - the only reason we even need to talk about the importance of reblogs vs. likes is because tumblr makes it so darn hard for a person’s stuff to be seen by the “right” people! reblogs are the only way for someone’s work to spread, and even then it’s kind of like throwing a handful of darts at a board and praying one of them will land in a well-connected spot. if a platform like tumblr were set up differently, we wouldn’t even need to have this conversation - there would be places to post your work where people would be specifically looking for content like what you were making. you could make those fannish connections more easily.

*** important to note, too - it’s always worthwhile to remember when reading these “back in the old days” nostalgia posts that pre-tumblr spaces had drawbacks of their own. livejournal was not some fannish utopia, by any means. there were, however, a few structural things from that era that i think were helpful influences on fan culture, and their absence here makes me miss them.

but anyways. those are just some thoughts. and now i’m going back to my regularly scheduled posting, because i DO enjoy this place, even if the platform can be somewhat lacking sometimes - we still have to find a way to have fun, right? that’s the entire point of being in fandom in the first place.

#i've always felt like tumblr was sort of a bizarre place for Fandom Central to have landed anyway #though i do think it's been amazing for graphics editors; gifset-makers especially #i do wonder where we'll end up next #whenever the next big migration hits #anyway back to regularly scheduled posting!#i've got episodes to get through #gotta keep up my momentum so i can GET TO THE END #:D #fandom

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eisforeidolon · 4 years

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i find it interesting how on tumblr/ao3 the most popular m/m and f/f ships are d/estiel and sw/anqueen (ouat), bc sw/anqueen fans are basically the femslash v. of destielers. when ouat was airing, they used to gas up every interaction between emma and regina, were convinced it was gonna be canon even when emma got married/had a kid with hook, wrote reachy meta, screamed queerbait when it didn't happened etc. they were so extra the actresses even had to stop interacting in public. i think this-

-speaks of how much fandom tends to twist or downplay aspects of canon to prop up certain ships, to the point they become blind, esp when it comes to m/m and f/f ships. meanwhile w/ncest is in the top 10 popular ships on ao3 too, but as the show went downhill it gradually fell in position and now it's 9th, and it's never been super popular here. this tells me that w/ncest shippers have creativity and passion and a lot of material to drawn from, but also aren't blind or zealous as destielers.

____________________________________

I’ve always felt like one of the best things about fandom was that it didn’t have to be that closely tied to the canon. Which is why I find the increasing prevalence of entitled brat shippers demanding that the canon has to be rewritten around their bad fanfic or they’ve been BAITED and WRONGED bizarre.

Part of it is that in general, I think the w1ncest audience skews older. They’re more likely to have watched from the very beginning and understood the core of the show, more likely to have uploaded their content to livejournal or ff.net, more likely to have been in fandoms for a longer span of time to absorb older norms, and honestly just more likely to be mature enough to realize the world doesn’t revolve around them and any random eyefuck is significantly more likely to be just for the dramaz and not a super sneakret clue more important than the actual plot.

Also, I don’t know what the fic for sw@nqueen looks like, but last I saw, desti3l was full of wall-to-wall bad OOC AUs these days. I think w1ncest dried up a bit as the show went on partially because so much had already been done and people left and the canon just kind of ... well. Meanwhile, the desti3l crew keeps cranking out mountains of fic because it never had as much to do with the canon characters anyway.

#askboxery #destihellers #mention of wincest #about fanfic #Anonymous

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thefloatingstone · 5 years

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Do you have any advice on how to make a Patreon account? Tips for a writing-based Patreon would be especially helpful, though for now I think any advice would help.

I don’t have a patreon as a writer myself, so maybe others who use Patreon for writing will be better at this, but here are some basics I would mention;

1: focus on lower tiers rather than higher ones.Although we all secretly DO want those patrons who donate $100 a month, it’s honestly a lot less stressful for you to have several patrons at the $1 and $5 tier. This is because if someone has to stop supporting you for whatever personal reasons, you’re not suddenly in a financial crisis because of a single person. Make sure the lower tiers get ample rewards for their time. Whether you decide to charge per post or per month is up to you. I go per month also because of stress reasons but also it gives stability so your patrons don’t get randomly charged every time you post something.

2: Offer rewards that are worthwhile but won’t kill you with extra workThis is the tricky one which I am still trying to learn myself. Because you want your patrons to feel they are getting something for supporting you which others don’t, but you don’t want to kill yourself with extra work and burn yourself out completely.From what I’ve seen of writeblr, a popular reward is to give people WIPs of upcoming chapters/oneshots. Such as giving them access to a google doc where they can see your first draft and can follow your editing as you go (I would make this a $5 or higher tier) or simply giving patrons early access to a chapter or oneshot which is finished. Like allowing them to read it a week or however long you’d like earlier than when you post it publicly.(some youtubers will do this right at the $1 mark. I have this for Time Scar at the $5 mark).

3: always have SOMETHING to give your patrons once a monthEven if life happens and things don’t go as plan, always have SOMETHING to give. Try your best not to skip a month and “make up for it next month” as this is a VERY easy habit to fall into. Rather focus on having SOMETHING. Even if it means one month producing something JUST for Patreon.Your patrons are showing you support and often times a LOT of patience. TIt’s important you show you care about their patronage and you aren’t just using Patreon as some kind of donation thing.

4: have a Ko-fi as wellKo-fi is for donations. Sometimes people simply cannot commit to a monthly transaction. But often a person wants to support an artist in some other way. Ko-fi fills that gap.

5: Make your Ko-fi and Patreon easy to find.Add links to both at the end of posts which you feel are relevant. (such as the end of public essays or oneshots) If your blog has the theme for it, have a permanent Ko-fi or patreon button where people can easily find it. Put it in your faqs, and promote it every time you post to it (something I myself need to get better at too)

6: DO NOT LINK YOUR PATREON OF KO-FI ON AO3!!!!

Super super SUPER important!!!

AO3 is a non-profit organization. This is EXTREMELY important on the legal side, because of the nature of fanfiction. It is a legal way for AO3 to say “we do not make ANY money on our site based on the intellectual properties of others or other companies. Our site is maintained PURELY through donations. None of our users make a profit on their fanfiction through AO3″

This is to prevent some shitty company or person throwing DMCAs at the website and protects ALL the fanfics from getting taken down under some kind of “Copyright”

Please look up “fandom History” on Anne Rice, the purge of Livejournal, and the clean scrubbing of FF.net to better understand this.

ANYONE who writes fanfiction, even if you’re 12 years old and only starting, should be aware of fanfiction history. We only keep ourselves and each other safe by knowing how this whole thing works.

Bottom line. NEVER use AO3 directly for any kind of financial support or transaction. Not even a Ko-fi link. It’s not worth it. Even if you’ve seen other people do it. DO NOT DO IT.

7: Look at other writers’ patreon pages to get an idea of what rewards they offer.

Patreon allows you to see previews of people’s pages who you’re not following. So you can still see what KIND of rewards they offer. I recommend looking at writer patreons who have a good amount of income (if they have that public). It doesn’t help you taking cues for a patreon that doesn’t have any patrons.

If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to add them.

also

⭐️Patreon⭐️☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

#C-Puff answers #writeblr #argentdandelion

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