the last post you reblogged about not being able to predict reader's reactions--how would you say shifting together has faired in terms of how you expected readers would react versus reality

My uncertainty with sharing Shifting Together was I did not know how they'd be received with how OC heavy it is. I was not expecting the Rob Love. Or Sarah love, but especially not the Rob love.

A thing that stopped me from sharing those fics for a long time was-- well, primarily that I needed to get orsumfenix's blessing to do so because they're very blatantly based on their fic. But after that was because they are OC heavy, especially JT. There's something much more vulnerable about sharing OCs rather than fic with just established characters. We already know we like the established characters - it's why we're reading fanfic in the first place, to get more of them and their dynamics and relationships. OC's throw homemade blorbos into the mix and they do have a bit of a stigma; an unfair one, I think, but a stigma nonetheless for being self-inserts and Mary Sues and generally disruptive to the characters and dynamics fic is being read for in the first place.

What I expected from readers was... a tolerance. An understanding of what I was doing with my OC's to use them as an outside POV for a specific lens with which to look at and explore our Hargreeves. I love outside POV for bringing attention to weird shit we've gotten used to, and then their step away from the Main Plot let us have a different angle on characters, what was happening, and the plot in general. I started with HIT specifically to minimize OC presence. We have our Hargreeves and we start in their (Allison's) POV, rather than diving straight in with Walters' POV, like JT does. I was hoping dipping readers toes into Rob and Sarah with HIT would get you guys to like them enough to be willing to read much more of them in JT to see what Number was doing the two and a half years prior to HIT.

What I didn't expect was the pretty immediate love and thirst for Rob and the warming to Sarah that happened in HIT. I will say - I get the Rob love. I adore Rob, he's my special little Just A Guy. And he really gets more of a chance to shine in HIT than Sarah does because of his relationship he develops with Five. JT is Sarah's show. So, in retrospect, I Get It. But it's also just Very Special that you guys embraced Rob and Sarah, and Number to a lesser extent, so much that there are people who want to write fic with them, who have drawn fanart of them, who think about them on their own. Those are my guys! I made them up! And yet! They're off existing in your guys' heads! Wild!

In general, I wasn't expecting Shifting Together to be as big as it feels like it is. I didn't expect there to be a community around it. Hoped, obviously, as I've spent over two years writing it all, but didn't expect it. It felt too a little too niche, being an AU fic of an AU fic, and, with JT, too... unstructured? with it being slice-of-life.

It was strategic that I shared HIT first and JT became a prequel rather than the first in the series as I had originally written it. It was strategic that I shared the first three chapters of HIT within a week. I was desperate to hook you guys. See? Allison and Luther are here! See? Five is here and he has a big fight! I'm teasing that we'll get Other Five later! Just begging and hoping you guys would tolerate my OCs enough to hang around and see this story I'd written and was very proud of.

Over a year later and almost finished with JT, I see now I didn't have to be that nervous and desperate about it.

Thanks for the love, everyone <3

stuck in the rain.

Another sibling au featuring megumi (they finally met and sukuna already made yuuji cringed)

Also happy new year!

Part 1 | Part 3

I enjoyed every second of this quest

[This art has platonic intention. Thank you for not tag ship!]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

I had to turn the boops off (sorry!), so here is a little Malleus for you all to boop instead! he has no thoughts in that little brain of his!

curious about what's in store for you for 2024? :D

Let AO3 decide!

(Updated from 2023: Up-to-date tag bank, opt-in tag categories, optional dark mode! As always: proceed with informed consent.)

drawings from paleo expedition to dagestan, done right on the trip. sometimes messy when it was cold and rainy, but i won't correct it. i think it's cool to leave it just the way it was done, and not retouch it after. there will be more drawings later, but those will be done from home

Funk branch au

Au and branch design by @bbc-trolls

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

STILL NOT OVER THESE OUTFITS OF THEIRS AHGGGFFFDF

They are very much in love

enhypen's dancers congratulating them after their 3-day concert 🎉🍾

OCs

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

I enjoyed every second of this quest This art has platonic intention, please don't tag ship

Damn. Well, I suppose that will be all right, seeing as you won't be playing. I will. You'll be watching... on the sidelines.