how to say "I missed you" without saying "I missed you."

You know who wouldn't have wasted bones?

Hi, I made a silly....

I’m not meant to work I’m meant to be part of a werewolf pack and be so very eepy and snuggly with all the other omegas in a big cozy nest all day >:((

I think my most toxic trait as a Zenos enjoyer is wanting to 1v1 everyone who says that Zenos actively wants to kill his opponents

Like, completely disregarding that it is actively ignoring the text even in StB there (and that he consistently wants the WoL especially to live), he, uh, is written as having a desire for more the opposite to happen. Very, very consistently. His drive to live is solely linked to brief moments of pleasure-from-struggle and when that drops he explicitly wants to die so he can preserve the moment (and like. *looks at the end of 6.0* if he wanted to kill the WoL he would not be disappointed when they fall before the game allows it, nor would they have lived after given his will was strong enough to bring them back if they bite it). He wants struggle and lacks the ability to give enough of a shit to hold back if someone walks up and says they're going to go for his head.

Like, death is a side effect of what he's after, it's not the goal and he explicitly considers it a waste of life. Even fighting isn't the goal, the goal is to struggle, to need to put effort in. The WoL is just the only person to put him in that state as he currently is, hence his obsession.

chocobo ranchin'

Wait wait what did your boss do with the sweet potato??? I'm trying to imagine how you'd eat a raw sweet potato, they are so solid. You could shave bits off I guess??? Did they microwave it?

he slowly sawed it in half with a plastic butter knife, put one half back in the lunchbox (presumably for tomorrow) and then microwaved the other half

In one hand I hold Akane in zero time dilemma and in the other hand I hold Ryuki in ai nirvana initiative and I put them in a box called “fucked up characters that could’ve been so much greater and more fucked up with their impact on the narrative but they were shoved into the corner” and I shake the box angrily

everytime i rewatch black sails, i find myself like vane more and more ngl. the first season really tries hard to trick you into thinking he’s just unnecessarily, banally, and uncompellingly an asshole (in the overwhelmingly compelling asshole show), whose one redeeming feature is that he’s kinda pathetic too. but geez s2 really nails home everytime that hes the best and the coolest and the most honest (maybe even most compassionate) of the mcs up until this point, barring anne of course. and on top of that i actually kind of think he has the best pre-s3 speeches. like obvs s4 flint is yknow s4 flint. and s3 max is so insane i actually cant handle it. but oh my god charles vane’s letter and his fuck your legitimacy eleanor speech and his hanging speech are so good. and fuck what i said earlier isnt even true. bc his s1 speech while hes looking in the eyes of the little boy he used to be is actually like the bestest. like fuck ok. charles vane is the best actually. #1 anarchist boy. 10/10 would want him in my commune. hed point blank refuse to help with the dishes tho so 😬.

There will come a day when people that aren't into A/B/O will find my "omegaverse slurs" post and realise they're not real. That they're for fictional people, in a fictional world, and have nothing to do with real-life-humans. Like, at all. And that their usage is for fictional usage only, and not meant to target any one group (not even misce people).

And that most importantly they're not framed as a good thing to use? They're meant to be used in unfavorable depictions of characters and societies in fanfiction. Not as cool hip-with-the-youth slang lmao.

This day is still far into the wishful thinking time-space though. One day, however, we may reach that level of awareness.

i wanted to weigh bad faith readings vs how clumsy the writing in Weapons Factory actually was to make people dislike luminara so much and. wow. she literally falls to her knees and despairs when she thinks barriss is dead.

Why do people act like art/entertainment taste is the equivalent of morality??

Because seriously, "good" or "bad" taste is only subjective and it doesn't matter at all. We all like different stuff and we have our reasons for it, but unless your reason goes hand in hand with actual actions trying to hurt others, it doesn't matter.

♡ 14 Days to Fall in Love ♡

with: @mokacheer

↪ Day 5: Only for you ✦ Iris Zero

Final touches | Next

now that we know for certain the whole lin kuei attack on the tea house was staged (also of course it was), I wonder how painful it was for bi-han to have to hold back after kung lao hit him in the back of the head with his stupid hat

how long did it take for your fanfiction to start getting some recognition? did you "advertise" it or "promote" it in any way?

i know that people say this doesn't matter, but i feel like even if you love writing the feeling that you're just talking to yourself gets pretty exhausting at some point. so i'm not talking about having thousands of readers but rather like. what's your advice to have readers at least?

- someone who hasn't even started writing their ideas yet...

LONG POST INCOMING.

First I want you (and everyone else reading who may be struggling with this) to know I'm absolutely with you and generally think 'it doesn't matter' is a horseshit answer. It's this weird thing we do in fanfic that we generally don't apply to other artforms that I've seen. If you're a painter, a playwriter, a novel writer, and you say, 'I want at least a few people to love my paintings, I want some people to come see my play, I want my novel to be published and do at least ok' we all support them, we nod, we agree, we talk about how they can do that successfully. It's considered normal to want some amount of success. But hold up fanfic instead and it becomes, 'how dare you want that praise, you're being egotistical, you should be writing only for yourself'. I'm not saying you can't do that - there are some who do - but it's definitely this bizarre switchup to say there's this single artform in which we can't want attention on our work and that there's something wrong with us if we do. That can be an absolute creativity killer depending on what kind of writer you are (hi, extrovert writer here who only gets writy writy juice from social interaction - aka comments and discussion. So I totally get it being exhausting just doing this on your own).

So let me say this categorically: you're allowed to want things. You're allowed to want kudos, comments, and hits. You're allowed to want messages and asks. You're allowed to want some readers you can talk with about your story.

You. Are. Allowed.

Ok, now that that's out of the way.

Edit: more below the cut cause I didn't realize the length of this on mobile

TRT definitely didn't get popular overnight. The first four chapters were sporadic, and then I took a hiatus due to life things for a couple years. During that time, it kept slowly ticking up bit by bit on AO3, with occasional comments. Iirc it was hovering somewhere around 700 kudos by the time I came back in Jan 2021 - and that's a awesome! It's big! But it's also a number that was gained over a few years, to put it in perspective. It absolutely took off after I came back though, and over the past 2 years both TRT's popularity and the stats of my one-shots in the fandom have grown. Part of that's just the time frame (TRT's been up about 6 years), but it's also due to a couple things that I think built up TRT's popularity.

Building a tumblr presence was huge. Ironically I didn't really intend to do it for advertising; I just wanted a place readers could ask questions or we could all freak out about Matt or I could post some drabbles or updates on the fic. But considering the fact that AO3 and tumblr are the top fic sites online, I wound up promoting my fics unintentionally just by being a friendly, happy tumblr user and fandom goer. All I did was follow the courtesy rules I knew - post stuff regularly, reblog, comment, make friends with other writers, just be friendly in your neighborhood because you love the lady with the gif flower shop on the corner or the wise old pizza maker who serves hot fandom takes all day long. I built familiarity with my writing and name by posting short fics, and by taking part in challenges and prompt lists and short requests for drabbles if I saw them, though that's something that's hard to do if you don't have time (I've got less time now, but I started this blog in the early pandemic so I had aaaaall the time in the world to write and was using it to stay sane). I tagged religiously because I LOVE tags, but that helped, too. Tumblr's search system is half broken but the half that works means people CAN find your writing even if they aren't following. Doing all this over here got me a huge boost over on AO3.

I will say that if you can have a fandom tiktok presence, there's a lot of fic reviewers, edits, and good stuff that can get your fic some readers (I've had some people do this on tiktok for TRT and it sent a surge over). I personally haven't done anything there yet, in part because while I'm on tiktok I try to keep my actual, real person accounts separate from my fic/fandom accounts and i haven't bothered to make a second account solely dedicated to the Pasta name yet.

Longfics on AO3 have the advantage in fic stats in the sense that every time you add a chapter, it gets bumped to the top of the front page and you get seen again. Eventually a lot of people will click out of curiosity. They may not, however, give you a lot of user subs or add to your other fic stats at first, whereas if you do a bunch of oneshots you're more likely to get user subs but less hits on each fic. This is a decision you'll have to make, and I know folks in both camps who built their followings using different methods on each. Either way, it helps if you're posting regularly, either in a long fic or one-shots. I call this the Stephen King method, who said he just writes a ton and throws it all at the wall, and eventually you get enough good despite the bad that you start building a following.

Learn learn learn. This is standard fic advice I always give, but it's still relevant. I think one of the reasons imo TRT has done so well is that I've spent a lot of time over the years learning how to write and edit - I read a ton of books (sometimes just to figure out HOW good authors structure their stories), I took a lot of English classes, I've taken some creative writing courses in my spare time. That two year hiatus was heavily spent doing a lot of research and practice around an original novel I want published one day. And I used ALL of that in TRT, just to see what it was like to put it all together. Be hungry for knowledge, be hungry to learn. The more you learn, the better your fic will be, and the more people that will click.

That learning also includes a looooong string of fanfics that started at a very novice level (hello 12 year old me), to fics that were ok and did moderately well but weren't anything huge. Hell, I had a tumblr account for my previous fandoms before I wandered over to Pastafossa, and while those fics did decently, I never had the huge reaction I've gotten here. But I used each and every one of those fics to learn and grow and adapt. Treat your own fics the same way. If it doesn't get hits, try to learn from it before moving on to the next idea a little wiser and a slightly better writer than before. There will always be people who start to follow you along the way.

A small one, but important: I swear to god, do not shit-talk yourself. Not in the summary, not in the tags, not in the A/Ns. I'm not talking, 'this is my first fic!' That's fine. I mean trashing your own work. Shit like, 'ha ha this sucks, it's terrible but oh well' will absolutely lower your stats, because people will believe you and will ditch your fic. On top of that, it's just mean to yourself, and as I said above, you want to be a good person in the fandom neighborhood. That means not breaking the windows of your own house.

People generally think of summaries as a side note, but a shitty summary can absolutely tank your stats. Treat it like the rest of your fic - this is the trailer before the movie, and it's a huge element of what gets people interested in the first place.

Lastly, like I said at the top, the biggest factor is time. There are people who post one fic and explode in popularity, absolutely. But far, far more little followings are built on the bones of time, of abandoned fics, of muttering and highlighting phrases in books in the middle of the night, of trying and trying and trying until we have at last have a breakthrough and then drag that breakthrough forward with us to the next fic. TRT is absolutely one part lightning in a bottle - the biggest success I've ever had anywhere with my writing, a confluence of fandom factors and world events that gave people (and me!) time to write and read. But it's also standing on the back of whole lot of fics I wrote that look like everyone else's: ones with no comments, low interaction, insults; ones where I had precisely zero idea of what I was doing, but wanted to try anyway. And the way I got through that, as a writer who needs interaction in order to create, was by building friendships in fandom so that even when a fic didn't do all that well, I still had friends I could talk to about the characters, the world, the fandom itself. I asked friends to look them over and give advice. I had friends being my cheerleaders. And if you're an extrovert like me, or just a writer who needs that to create, then those connections are vital as you build up a following.

That's a lot of what I've done. I know there are other ways to build a following, but this is generally what I've done, what I've learned to do, and it seems to have worked. Just remember that there are no bad fics - just learning opportunities. Learn something, and that fic's a success, and work as hard as you can to make those fandom connections to carry you through the process.

I absolutely hope to see your work around one day, so that I can be on of those followers!