ketilsfarm

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the incredible child-rearing continues

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how it should be for all of us

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the romantic animations are genuinely so ridiculous i feel they would call themselves slurs if they saw this

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this can't seriously be the animation for making a friendship bracelet....

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The dark secret of why I, the dastardly Vincestsaga, make up so much of the AO3 tag (REAL) (NOT CLICKBAIT) (doctors HATE me)

Here we go, here's the reason my ships and favorite characters are so high in the ranking and yours are eating shit:

what I do is, I open up a text file and I write down a story I want to tell about my ships

a lot of other people don't do this

see you next time!

But seriously, here's the problem.

First: When you say "there should be More Fics About X," do you mean you want to read those fics, share them with other people and tell the authors they did a good job, or do you mean you want More Numbers to brag about without ever opening a single one? There's a difference.

Here's the rest:

This is a tiny fandom

Writers are treated like shit compared to artists in just about every fandom

Here in this one, people complain about authors and fanfiction in ways they would never do for art. I've seen more than one person publicly complaining that EVERYTHING written for X ship is garbage. That doesn't encourage writers to stay active in this fandom and spread the interest to their writer friends.

Engagement for writing sucks. It's shit. It's garbage. You don't get engagement like you do with art unless you hit the jackpot. That Twitter page for fandom events hasn't done a writer-artist collaboration event in a while, but if you scroll back far enough, you can see the problem for yourself: the artists got a minimum of 50 times the engagement of the authors they worked with. The art and story were equal parts of the final product and both parties put in the same amount of work. The fanfics were posted as replies to the artwork, and without fail, the art would get 20 RTs, 75 RTs, 150 RTs within a matter of days. The other half, the fanfiction, would have 9 likes on the tweet. If you clicked through to the fic itself, there would be maybe 4 kudos, all from other people who were part of the exchange. The hit count would show that almost no one else clicked through at all. If that happened to me as a writer, I would never, ever participate in an event like that again. I might kill the next person who complained about the tag being too small.

I've never been part of a tiny fandom where so many people's main form of engagement is simply complaining that there's not enough of what they want. Sometimes this is about their absurd ideas of what the canon story should waste its time on, and very often these people are not paying the author a cent.

But a lot of these complaints are about fanworks. I've never seen this kind of ratio before. Usually, people in tiny fandoms can count the other people around them and have realistic expectations. Here, there seems to be an expectation that writers are obligated to produce free material in order to serve the fandom by making numbers bigger. There's Not Enough Of This. Not Enough People Write That. Plenty of people make it clear they're not just jokingly wishing the fandom was bigger; they voice their complaints specifically in reference to me. Why aren't writers making More Than Vincestsaga? Are the writers in this fandom stupid? Why don't they appreciate this ship or that character enough? Or maybe it's, Of the small handful of people who have made something for this ship I love, all of them are stupid philistines who write it wrong. The numbers on AO3 are Bad. Let's draw and quarter Vincestsaga about it.

Askefinn. Everyone else pretends to hate them, but you're all following a minimum of three Askefinn artists who post the ship regularly. You retweet them all the time. You see their shippy drawings too. Are you not tired of this?

Anyway, their path to success is that, while the guard has shifted several times since 2019, there are always a small handful around who talk to each other, hype each other's work, give detailed feedback, cross-pollinate ideas, illustrate fics or write companion pieces for art, and so on. That's what a productive microfandom looks like. If you're on AO3 regularly, you saw their recent event week where they jumped to the number one ship because: people wrote for it! That's how the numbers go up. Me personally, they're either the only ones I can trust here, or they have the same weird superiority complex about Vincestsaga that everyone else has, to which I say, as politely and delicately as I can: put down the crack pipe. Your family misses you.

Regarding Me. Everyone acts like I came into their house and took something from them by writing about what I love. Well, little Timmy, maybe I broke into your house or maybe I didn't. But your laziness is not my responsibility. If I never wrote a word for this fandom, there would be 200 fewer fics in the tag. That's all. There wouldn't be a single extra fic about the amazing thing you want to see. My favorites have big numbers because I sat down and I wrote about them. Every time you want to whine about me, go to the AO3 post page and type up 100 words about your ship. That's a story. Post it. Go ahead. You can do anything. You can post every day. You can literally defy gravity. You can jump off a roof and fly.

You can also go feed an author you liked A Comment™️. This costs no money. It's a free thing that anyone can do. It may have benefits. Me personally, while I appreciate the people who do leave me kudos, I'm paid primarily in bullying and disrespect. I write because I have to, out of love for my ships and favorite characters that you will never ever feel in a hundred years of life. Your mild fondness is like an ant before what I feel. I know this because there's a new batch of little idiots whining about me every six months, and they tend to move on once a new batch shows up. That ship they supposedly loved so much will never get mentioned again.

Several years ago, hoping to encourage other authors, I made two Twitter bots that posted a daily randomized ship with a prompt of some kind. One was set up for the mundanes, with characters like Olaf and Ketil removed and all the kinks/tropes carefully pruned of any problematic hints. The other had all characters included, and most of the problematic stuff from the famous List of Kinks, minus the racist parts. They posted daily, and people could also @ either bot for their own prompt as many times as they wanted. No one ever used either one. Not once. No one wanted the prompts. Not much I can do about that!

I also spent a significant amount of time and strain translating information that was only available in Japanese back then. My hope was that people could enjoy gaining a greater understanding of the original work. Some people were appreciative, but the main commentary I got was people reposting my work without credit so they could piss and moan about their yaoi ships not being canonized. For obvious reasons, I won't make the mistake of trying to help out like this again. This is completely unique to VS fans, by the way. I've translated for other small fandoms before, and only here, oddly enough, are people this rude and entitled and whiny. Steven Universe Syndrome at work, perhaps.

Your ship isn't gonna get anyone showing up who's capable of pumping out 150+ fanworks while getting dumped on regularly by every hypocrite in the fandom who needs to distract people from their own noncon kink. I'm one in a million, baby! So if you really do want to see more fics for your ship, you best get to work making them yourself. Make it something you can be proud of before the nukes start flying and you guys all die in WWIII. Not me though, I'm smart.

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Another narrow escape from death for little Astrid, as Torgrim, Atli and the nanny they hired all stood motionless in her room, ignoring her soiled diaper and critical status in several different needs. finally Torgrim rallied to feed her some food, and she shed some disgusting tears about it. her randomly rolled traits are all amazing save for being a Picky Eater. EA Games: supporting your incest babies.

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Atli had to beat the ass of an ecoterrorist trying to attack the household. bottoms together strong!

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despite a series of increasingly terrible outfits, Torgrim and Atli passed a loving, passionate valentine's together after the birth of their daughter.

get that shit AWFFF.

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the parenting challenges continue. i asked Torgrim to play with baby Astrid. instead he chose to deposit her on the floor so he could play with the toys himself.

i believe someday we can get there.

the game doesn't know what to do with Atli's cheekbone genetics. regardless, the love is real.

even if interacting with his daughter is a drain on Torgrim's Fun need, we push forward, always to the sky.

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first parenting challenge: basic interactions. Torgrim and Atli struggled mightily with even accessing their toddler, whether it be in the crib or after they left her on the floor to fend for herself. in the end, i relocated the crib closer to the middle of the room.

next challenge: a diaper blowout! i asked Torgrim to do the logical thing and clean his child. realizing that there was no bathtub in the house, i helpfully installed one right there in the nursery.

Torgrim found this so convenient that he dropped baby Astrid on the floor and took a bath himself. i woke Atli from a nap to clean the baby and collect some laundry. could he rise to the challenge?

no!! he also walked past the baby and took a bath! fortunately, Torgrim finally intervened to feed their daughter, who has escaped death... for now.

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Atli's genetics are coming through strong, and i think i can say we beat the sameface toddler allegations with a vengeance. plastic surgery will be minimal because we practice self love in this house.

both parents love their adult-faced toddler very much. Atli has a much higher relationship with her despite Torgrim giving birth and providing most of the care. i think he is seen as the "fun uncle", which of course, he literally is.

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THE PROOF OF THEIR LOVE: BORN. Atli immediately walked out of the room and left anija alone to deal with her.

since babies are mere objects, i had Torgrim age her up immediately. he too moved on very quickly from the miracle of birth and left her lying on the floor.

she has daddy's hair and daddy's chin ❤️

she was also born a furry with a genetic love of electronica music.

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they still make time for each other ❤ just Atli, Torgrim, and the Torgrim down on the left experiencing a completely different emotion

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in the final days of his pregnancy, Torgrim was afflicted by the events of canon. i might give him ptsd about it, haven't decided.