#I need fanfic recs stat

[sillybar]

decided to start watching Lioness in an effort to escape my obsession with tragic lesbians only to be forced to obsess about more tragic lesbians but in a new and very specific way

*cries*

[almostempty]

sorry I forgot how to use words

Play With Her

Explicit - 18+ Minors DNI

A sequel to Play With It

Words: 4k

You and Joel have fond memories of the last time he called you from work. But a slight misunderstanding leads to some fun with your neighbour, and to you ( accidentally) fulfilling one of Joel’s secret fantasies.

Warnings: SMUT, people. So much. Smut. Oral (m and f receiving), phone sex, mmf (kinda), Joel talks his girl through it like a gentleman, surprise Frankie, Joel’s a little shocked but he is very into it, voyeurism, exhibitionism, dirty talk, Joel being kinda soft dom again.

You hadn’t forgotten Joel’s antics in his car in the middle of a workday, but despite a particularly explosive afternoon immediately following, you hadn’t had the time to properly get him back. It hadn’t been either of your faults, just that work continued to be relentless, something went wrong at the site, materials weren’t delivered, the vendors got mad. You developed a little twitch in your eyelid. Joel came home rubbing his neck and shoulders and turning the kitchen upside down trying to find the heat pack.

You knew there was love there, that there was passion. You weren’t worried about it, even though you missed him. You knew that it was situational. When the air cleared, you’d get back to taking each other apart.

--

Joel woke up early again, groaning as his muscles ached like they hadn’t had any rest at all. You were in bed beside him, and he knew that you’d had a late shift but you’d managed to rack up enough overtime that today you had the whole day to yourself. He was so proud of you, his little worker bee, and even though he was disappointed your schedules hadn’t aligned so that he could enjoy the day with you, or on top of you, he still knew it was good for you. He left a little note on your bedside, telling you he was gonna call around lunchtime. He marked it with two x’s and two o’s. For a second he imagined actually peppering your skin with kisses.

‘Soon, baby,’ he said, to your sleeping form. He was quiet in his socks on the carpet as he left.

On the way out the door, piece of toast between his teeth, he looked over the front lawn. It was getting out of control, and he’d been meaning to cut it, but he just couldn’t find the energy on a weekend, and as the days were gettin’ shorter as the weather changed, he was leaving in the dark, home in the dark. He didn’t like the look of the lawn, worried that the state of the grass was a direct reflection of the state of his aging body, of his bone-deep fatigue most days. That the neighbours would twig he was getting older, purely by the weeds spreading their tendrils over the path to the door.

‘Morning, Joel,’ he heard a voice call, and he glanced over to next door’s patio, where one such neighbour was standing with the newspaper in his hands.

‘Frankie,’ he said, nodding his head. He got on well with Frankie, even if he wasn’t 100% sure he trusted him all the time. He had a kid he had over every other weekend, who Sarah adored, and other than that he lived alone. Ex-military, he reminded Joel of Tommy, and he tried to be sensitive knowing some of the shit he must have seen. He didn’t seem lonely, he was handy and knew how to get Joel’s truck going when the engine was on the fritz, and more than anything he treated you respectful, tipped his cap when you walked by, and Joel liked that. Appreciated the manners.

‘Early start,’ Frankie said, and Joel sighed. He rested a hand on his hip.

‘Too early,’ he grunted, and the younger man smiled knowingly at him. As Joel moved to the truck he limped a little, his hip bothering him after he carried some lumber the wrong way on the site a few days ago.

‘You ok?’ Frankie asked. Frankie noticed everything, Joel knew. It would have kept him alive in his last job, he supposed.

‘Yeah, just gettin’ old, getting’ tired.’ Joel nodded to the lawn. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘Could help you with that, got the day clear today and…well, don’t have other plans.’

Joel had seen Frankie out on his back porch drinking on his own, sometimes with a couple of other men who all looked a similar age, similar previous occupations. He didn’t mind so long as they kept it down and didn’t catch your eye too much.

‘Can’t ask ya for that,’ Joel started, but Frankie waved him away.

‘You’re not. I’m offering, hermano.’

Joel nodded. It might be a nice surprise for you, he thought, to have the house reclaim some of its street appeal. Lord knew it didn’t have much to start with.

Sitting in his truck he fired off a quick message to you so you wouldn’t be surprised by Frankie on your front lawn. ‘Organised a sruprise 4 you, baby xxoo,’ he wrote. He was going to be late. He sent it without too much thought.

--

You woke, lifting your arms up over your head and listening to the pops of your joints as the stretch moved up your spine. You couldn’t remember the last time you had a day off. You had no idea what you were going to do with your spare time.

After a second or two of blissful cotton-headedness, you noticed a droning sound from the front of the house. You stood on achy knees and padded over to the window. Surely Joel hadn’t taken the day off too, with the worksite being so crazy lately?

You sucked in a tight little breath when you saw him. Shirtless, with his curls poking out the side of his ballcap, pushing his lawnmower over your unruly grass in the late-morning sun. You scrabbled for your phone to check the time and also to try and orient yourself, to make sure you hadn’t accidentally fallen through a wormhole in your sleep, as though Siri would be able to tell you one way or the other.

You saw the message from Joel. A surprise? You glanced around the room, looking for any clues. Eventually your eyes fell on a scrap of paper on your bedside, and you read that, too. For a second you stood, confused, trying to put the pieces together. He had organised a surprise, there was a half-naked man on your lawn, and he was going to call you at lunchtime. And you remembered exactly what transpired the last time he did that.

Your felt your brows shoot up to your hairline as realisation dawned. Did he know you’d had a crush on Frankie since the moment he’d moved in next door? How could he know, you’d been so careful not to stare too long, not to smile too much. You’d felt the sparks, and you’d poured cold water of them well enough, you’d thought.

But nothing got past Joel. You couldn’t believe it, but also you definitely could.

A surprise for you? No. This time you were going to be one step ahead.

--

Joel didn’t like to eat his lunch in the truck, never fully able to get the tang of egg salad out of the upholstery after, but this time he made an exception. He’d pulled back around to where it was quiet, knowing some of the guys on site liked to pump the tunes during their breaks, set up a little jerry-rigged tailgate to try and while away the 40 minutes they had to themselves. He thought with a shiver about the last time he’d snuck off to park somewhere quiet. He let himself wonder for a moment if you’d be up for something like a repeat. He grinned a little as he dialled. He didn’t think he should push his luck.

The call connected almost straight away, like you’d been waiting for him, and he felt a little flutter in his heart. You were so sweet to him. He needed to take you out somewhere special soon, make you flutter for a little while.

‘Hey baby,’ you said, your voice high and breathy, and he guessed you were still in bed.

‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ he said, teasin’ you.

‘Mmm,’ you said, ‘no cameras this time?’

‘We can if you want, baby, but I was just calling to check in on ya.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, and to make sure Frankie’s doing his job,’ he said, chuckling a little.

‘Frankie’s doing just fine,’ you said, and you sounded weird somehow, maybe a little out of breath?

‘You ok, baby?’ he asked, and you hummed in response.

‘Wanna see you,’ you said, and he felt a shiver up the base of his spine. He knew that tone. He felt the smirk appear on his face.

‘Yeah, you sound like ya do,’ he said. He took the phone from his ear and connected Facetime. He heard you doing the same.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see. He’d assumed you were in bed, so he was surprised to see you were up, standing in front of the big picture window overlooking the front lawn. Your cheeks were a little flushed, and you looked a little sweaty. He wondered if you’d been for a run.

‘There’s my girl,’ he said, because the sight of you always lit something up in him, and you smiled at him, a coy little thing.

‘I got a surprise for you,’ you said, a dimple appearing on your cheek as you arched a single brow at him.

‘Oh yeah?’ he said, feeling his cock stir. Maybe you were up for a repeat after all.

‘Mmmhmm,’ you said, biting your lip. You were holding the phone up with one arm, but he could see your other arm held fast in front of you. Were you touching yourself in the living room?

‘Show me,’ he said, and you grinned at him. You panned the camera down, slowly, so that first thing he saw was the straps of your camisole, one hanging off your shoulder to hover just over the swell of your tit. You lowered it again, over the belly, where you had shucked up the hem and he could see some exposed skin, your little belly button he sometimes liked to tickle with his beard just to hear you squirm and squeal.

Then a little further down. Angling the camera so that he could see down your body, to your feet on the carpet, and to the man on his knees between them.

Joel blinked. He was sure his heart stopped.

‘What…’ he started, but he couldn’t finish his sentence because he was too distracted by the man hitching one of your thighs over his shoulder and opening you up, teasing the lips of your pussy apart to properly latch to your cunt. ‘Oh my god,’ he uttered.

‘Oh my god!’ you gasped, as Frankie sucked your clit between his teeth. ‘Oh baby, he’s so good,’ you groaned.

‘Baby, what are you doing?’ Joel asked, trying not to overthink that his cock was rock hard while he watched another man lick a stripe along your seam.

‘Surprise…’ you gasped. ‘Got a head start.’

Joel’s hands were shaking. A head start on what? He watched as your hand gripped Frankie’s head, his ballcap on the floor beside him as he grasped at your hips, pulling you down harder on his face. You were squirming there on top of him, as he huffed out little exhales into your skin.

Your breath was starting to get faster, coming in little pants, as your thigh clenched around Frankie’s shoulder. For a brief moment you worried you were going to suffocate him, and then he ran a finger up the inside of your thigh and teased at your opening and you simply didn’t care.

You angled the phone back to your face, your eyes fluttering shut so that you didn’t see Joel’s slightly shocked expression.

‘Such a good surprise, baby, thank you,’ you said, and Joel felt his belly flip in on itself. You were blissed out, he could see just by your face you were half gone already. Your little whimpers were sending electric shocks to his cock. He couldn’t deny it wasn’t one of the hottest things he’d ever seen, or that he had wanted to see it ever since Frankie appeared next door. He just assumed you’d never be into it, and now looking at you writhing he couldn’t remember why.

He swallowed on a dry throat. You cracked open an eye, noticing he’d stopped talking. You saw that he looked a little pale, and worried for a second he was regretting it.

‘He’s not better,’ you said, trying to form words to reassure him while Frankie was pushing any sensible thought out of your head with his tongue. ‘He’s good, just as good. It’s just different.’

You were shuddering a little, Joel could see that you were trembling from the pleasure the other man was wringing out of you. ‘Yeah?’ he grunted, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Because he didn’t want to take this from you when you’d accidentally given him something he thought he would only ever dream of, not when you were feeling so good, not when you had apparently read his (dirty, filthy) mind. Because he was enjoying it, if he could tame the beast that was howling mine mine mine every time you whimpered under Frankie’s tongue. Because, ok, this wasn’t what he had planned for the day, but it was so much better.

His cock was already so hard it was almost painful. His beautiful, dirty girl. ‘He eatin’ it right, baby?’ he asked, and you moaned a little in response. He heard Frankie grunt a little from beneath you. ‘Show me,’ he said.

You angled the phone down again, this time reaching to put it closer to your cunt, so that Joel could see the way Frankie was suckling at your cunt, the way his tongue was working his way in and out of you, how at some point he had slipped two fingers into your cunt and was pumping them slowly, angled in the way Joel knew you liked, the way that made you stutter.

‘Fuck…’ he groaned, as Frankie huffed out an exhale.

‘She’s good, man,’ Frankie said, pulling his mouth off you for just long enough to force out the words. ‘Tastes like a warm spring morning.’

Joel could feel his cock pulsing, could hardly hear for the pounding of his pulse in his ears.

‘You treat her right,’ he ground out, his jaw ticking. He could feel the furrow in his brows, knew he was almost glowering at Frankie. ‘That’s my girl you got there,’ he added, feeling the need to remind him. To remind himself.

‘She always get this wet for you?’ Frankie asked, and Joel practically growled. He was about to tell Frankie you could practically drown him every night when he noticed your thighs were trembling, your hand in his hair moving to his shoulder to try and get purchase.

‘Lay ‘er down,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t let her fall.’

The camera moved, blurred as Frankie got up off his knees and pulled you over to the couch. He heard you sigh as your muscles relaxed, Frankie lying you down and settling between your open thighs.

‘Thank you, baby,’ you whispered to Joel. He swallowed.

‘Look after you,’ he said, fumbling with his fly. He was rock hard and worried as soon as he held himself in his hand he’d nut like a teenager. He wanted to ride this out with you, wanted to be present for all of it, wanted to stave it off as much as he wanted to chase it down.

‘Oh, he’s got his fingers in me,’ you said, gasping. ‘They’re so thick, just like yours…’

‘He hittin’ the spot?’ Joel asked, as you angled the camera down your body and he saw Frankie hovering over your cunt, lips once again suctioning at your clit.

‘Mmmhmm’ you replied, breathless. ‘He’s good, baby, he’s so good.’

Joel couldn’t form words for a second, gripping the base of his cock to try and regain some sort of control over it.

‘Wish you were here,’ you said, as you pushed your hips down onto Frankie’s face.

‘Yeah?’ Joel asked, wincing as he drew his palm over the weeping, sensitive head. ‘What’d you do if I was there, baby?’ he asked.

‘Want you everywhere,’ you groaned. ‘Want you in my mouth, in my pussy while he sucks on my clit. Want you in my cunt while I suck him.’

Joel gasped, his eyes slamming shut as his head tilted back on his shoulders. You were going to be the fucking death of him, and he would happily go if this was how you’d go about it.

‘Want your tight little cunt, baby,’ he grunted, pumping now, not able to help himself, the want for you overwhelming as Frankie raised his head a little to eye him through the camera. Your hips were bucking now, involuntary and fast. ‘Play with her,’ Joel said to him. ‘Don’t let her come yet, not ‘til she’s earned it.’

He heard you whimper, a desperate little cry, and watched as Frankie pulled back. Joel watched as his face glistened with your slick.

‘Joel!’ you cried, and he sniggered a little.

‘Ain’t what I meant when I said you could cut my grass,’ he said to Frankie, who grinned at him.

‘Not my fault your girl’s got a delicious cunt,’ he said, shrugging.

‘Let me see her,’ Joel said. He held his breath as Frankie took the phone from you and angled it back towards you. He saw you, splayed out on the couch for him and for Frankie, one leg on the floor and the other held fast against the couch, your slick spread over your thighs as your pussy grasped at the air, desperate for something to lick it, to suck it, to fuck it. ‘Jesus,’ Joel said, staring at your folds.

‘Don’t know how you leave the house with this waiting for ya, hermano,’ Frankie said. Joel shook his head.

‘M’a damn fool,’ he agreed. He saw you giggle, and he smiled.

‘Get on your knees for him, baby,’ he said, and watched as your smile fell, shock and want painting your pretty face.

‘You sure?’ you asked, so quiet he almost didn’t hear.

‘You wanna be good to our guest, right?’ Joel teased, and he watched you smile.

‘I’m a good host,’ you said, and he smiled.

‘The best, baby. Go on now, make him feel welcome.’

‘Oh fuck, Joel,’ Frankie muttered, as you got up on your knees on the couch and crawled over to him, your eyes on the younger man’s cock.

‘Just wait ‘til you see what she can do with that slutty little mouth,’ Joel said. He was holding himself by the base again, almost holding his breath in anticipation. Frankie angled the camera down his body so that Joel could see your hand as you reached out to hold him.

‘It’s big,’ you said, looking up and straight at Joel through the camera. You could see how far gone he was, how much he was holding himself back. You felt more arousal pool between your legs just at the look on his face.

‘You can take it,’ Joel said. ‘Make it good for him, baby.’

You watched as he mirrored your smile. God, you loved him. Even now, with another man’s cock in your face, he was the love of your life and as soon as he was home again you’d tell him. Show him. Never let him doubt it for a second.

You extended your tongue to kitten lick at Frankie’s tip, tasting the pre-come that had gathered while you and Joel encouraged each other. You heard the twin groans of Frankie above you and Joel through the phone. You hitched your mouth over the head, gathering saliva and letting it run out over the sides. Frankie was big, but so was Joel, and you breathed through your nose as you slipped your mouth over him, opening your throat and trying to calm your racing heart.

‘Oh, fuck me,’ Frankie said, as Joel held his breath. You hollowed your cheeks, a bolt of want shooting through your cunt as Frankie stuttered, groaning low and heavy in his chest. He smelt faintly of Old Spice and grass clippings, and you tasted the salt on his skin of his exertion. Joel smelt of pine and lumber. Between the two of them they were a symphony of delicious masculinity.

‘Can you reach her tits?’ you heard Joel ask, shivering. Frankie grunted his ascent. ‘Reach down, if you play with her nipples she’ll soak the couch.’

You whimpered, breathing out hard through your nose as you worked Frankie further into your throat.

‘Look at me, baby.’ Joel instructed and you opened your eyes, letting them travel up Frankie’s glistening tanned body to catch Joel’s eyes. You could see he was working himself again, panting and squirming in the driver’s seat of his truck. His hands were trembling a little, causing your view of him to shake, and it matched the tremors that were coursing through your body as you sucked Frankie down.

You felt his hand grope at your tit and you rounded your spine to try and give him more room, sticking your butt out into the air in the process. You kept your eyes on Joel, fighting the urge to let them drift closed, wanting to watch him watching you with another man’s cock in your mouth.

‘Doin’ so good,’ Joel muttered and you preened under his praise. ‘Put your hand between your legs, rub that little clit.’

You whined, following his instruction, a little lightheaded from the heat and the desire and Frankie halfway down your throat. ‘Such a pretty girl, my beautiful girl,’ Joel prattled. ‘Love you like this, baby, throat all stretched out taking on another man.’

Your eyelids fluttered as his words hit you in your core, Frankie’s hips starting to roll as you eased your finger over your clit and started rubbing tight little circles on the bundle of nerves. Frankie pinched hard at your nipple and you gasped, sucking in air through your nose and trying not to gag in the process.

‘Oh fuck, she’s squeezing me with her throat, hermano,’ Frankie muttered.

Joel watched, almost completely out of his mind. He never wanted to look at anything else ever again, wanted this view of you tattooed on the inside of his eyelids so he could see it anytime he wanted. Your eyes were starting to water, your skin glistening with sweat, as your hips shuddered under your own touch and under Frankie’s.

Joel was so close he wasn’t going to be able to stop it. He knew he had only seconds left, and by the looks of it, so did you.

‘Oh fuck baby, look what you did to us,’ he said, and you let your eyes drift from Joel’s to Frankie’s face as he grit his teeth, his eyes staring down at you, just barely managing to hold onto the phone as you sucked him.

‘So good,’ Frankie said to you, ‘can’t…gonna…’

You groaned, taking him out of your throat and reaching up to jerk the shaft while you sucked hard on the head. Still circling your clit with one hand you reached the other up to gently roll his balls in your palm. He cried out, the shock of the pleasure making him finally drop the phone. It landed, face up, just by his knees and angled up under your chin as Frankie shot his load into your mouth, gripping your tit in one hand and the other coming to rest on the crown of your head as he pumped his hips, his come shooting into your mouth as you rolled it over your tongue. Joel had an obscene view of it, watched as Frankie’s come spilled out of your mouth and onto the couch below you, nearly splattering over the lens. It was too much, finally too much, Joel shooting come into his hand and over his shirt as he fucked his palm, imagined it was your mouth, your cunt as you sucked Frankie’s come down, imagined he was inside you and also beside you, holding your head up as the younger man painted your throat.

He came as you did, gasping and whimpering for the other, your voice calling for him as he grunted out for you, and he recovered just enough to watch as you shuddered, your body shaking and rolling with the pleasure of it as you rested your face on Frankie’s heaving belly, sweat plastering your hair to your head, come dripping from your lips, as you rode out your high.

‘Fuck, baby…’ you whimpered, while you fought to catch your breath. Joel could see you collapsing, the pleasure wringing you out, leaving you shaky and spent. He swallowed, collecting himself enough to instruct the younger man.

‘Washcloths are under the bathroom sink. Make sure the water’s warm.’ He took a second to breathe, trying to clear his vision enough to be able to drive. ‘Wrap her up in a blanket, there’s one on the back of the couch.’ He watched as Frankie nodded, listening hard. ‘Hold her ‘til I get there,’ Joel said, his heart thrumming again, an ache building in his chest to be with you as he fumbled the keys into the ignition.

‘Hold my girl for me ‘til I’m there,’ he said, again.

[letteredlettered]

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

[elfwreck]

I have a friend who isn't anti-porn but it makes her sad that fanfic has a reputation for being porny and usually not very good. I'm fine with both those things and my views mostly align with that of AO3. I disagree with the idea that porn and badness are treated as equivalent, but for most people that's just how they think. But I was wondering if youve ever written something about this?

There is a lot of smut at AO3.

There is a lot of bad writing at AO3.

There's a lot of badly written smut at AO3.

...None of those are problems except for the people who think there is something wrong with those existing, or that there needs to be some external value that "balances" those that make those acceptable to exist as unwanted side-effects of "the good stuff."

The badly-written smut is also "the good stuff."

It's part of the reason AO3 exists. It's not intended to be an archive for "the high-quality fanfic that could be published if it weren't about characters that someone else wrote first"; it's an archive for "what fanfic writers want to write." That makes the terrible writing and the tacky porn and the badly-written tacky porn part of the reason the archive exists.

Tangent 1 (I'll connect these points later): Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud." He was more-or-less referring to the science fiction field in the 50s, but it definitely extended to politics, business, and writing outside of science fiction.

...He was talking about published books in the 50s. Turns out, a lot more than 90% of writing is crud when there aren't any gatekeepers between it and the readers. But also:

Tangent 2, from the book "Art and Fear":

[A] ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

You don't get to "quality writing" without going through a lot of crappy writing.

That doesn't mean the crappy writing is garbage to be thrown out. If you make 50 pots or bowls or vases, and only one of them is The Good One... most of the rest are okay. Maybe not sale-quality good, but your-kitchen-table quality good. Maybe some aren't that good and are kids-toy-in-the-sandbox level good.

Bad writing has a purpose for the writer: they can use it as practice to get better. It has a purpose for the reader: It can serve as inspiration ("I can do better than that") or grammatical instruction ("that...does not work; why doesn't that work?") or just as entertainment ("eh, so it's missing a few commas; I can still understand it").

Smut and porn writing works the same way. It's of some value to the writer, and some to the readers.

It's not of value to everyone. That's what tags and filters are for, and why there's a summary and list of stats (like word counts)--so you can figure out if you're one of the readers for whom this piece of writing is useful or interesting.

But AO3, like any library, is not there to take the top 5% of Excellent Writing and provide it a showcase. It is absolutely for all 50 lbs of pots.

If your friend wants to read the good stuff, there are rec lists and collections to help her find it.

If she already manages that, and is just annoyed at how much of the not-good stuff (however she defines that) exists... she's picked the wrong battle. She's arguing with the ocean that it has too many kinds of fish and some are poisonous a lot of them are ugly.

[renton6echo]

Echo-centric fanfic recs!

I am in need of some Echo-centric fanfic recs stat!

The lack of Echo content in The Bad Batch is making me want to write and read more Echo focused stories. If you have recs please add to this thread.

Here are a few I love and adore:

Art of War by Moxibustion

The Echo and the Shadow and Sing Me A Song by @floundrickthewayfarer

No Better Version of Me by antonomasia09

In the Shadow of His Brothers series by lazlazonwords

You’re Calling Me Home Like a Ship That Got Wrecked by @the-bi-space-ace

And that is just naming a short few that I can remember. If you have more please add! I need more Echo in my life.

[sorcerly]

This is SO niche I need some Anders x Fenris fanfic recs stat

[andydeejo]

Need Fanfic recs STAT

I'm in a writing drought.

I have deadlines that are coming up by the end of the year. Yeah that sounds like a long way off but in the world of writing and drafts and sending it off to your editor twenty million times.... yeah that is not that long off.

So in order to enable my procrastination I am in need of fanfic recs.

Anything in the order of Flash (Coldflash if you please)

Hannibal ( love me some Hannigram )

Deadpool & Wolverine

Maybe Beetlejuice

... can you tell what i have been binge watching?

[hamsteriffic]

Miraculous Fandom Stats

Cloudy with a chance of Miraculous

As mentioned in my previous post, the ML fanfics on Ao3 can reflect changing opinions and theories. I wanted to look at this in a more qualitative manner using Ao3 tags, starting with The Miraculous Big Bang (methodology below the cut).

The Miraculous Big Bang is a fandom event that has been running for several years where people collaborate to write fanfics and draw fanart. These collections provide a good snapshot of fanfics written at a particular point in time.

🖤 Word Clouds

The Miraculous Big Bang was run in 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, which covers a period of six years from Season 1 to Season 5 (see below the cut for more details on the methods).*

2017: There were a lot of tags that mentioned Season 2 spoilers, which suggests that these fics are based off mostly Season 1 content. This collection of fics had a lot of Historical AUs (Sample size: 32) [1].

2021: By now, Luka Couffaine and Kagami Tsurugi feature prominently in the tags for Miraculous Big Bang 2021 (Sample Size: 43 fics) [2].

2022: There are a lot of darker undertones in this word cloud (Sample size: 34 fics).

2023: Noticeable jump in fics labelled for Sentimonsters as well as LGQBTI+ tags (Sample size: 37 fics) [4]

🖤 In summary

Judging from the 2023 big bang, fics were written in the six months prior to posting, so this would cover a pretty sizeable timeframe. For example, Season 2 was aired between December 2017 and November 2018; and introduced rival love interests Luka Couffaine and Kagami Tsurugi.

Luka Couffaine was tagged an average of 10 and Kagami Tsurugi 7.7 times across 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Interestingly, Lila Rossi was introduced in s01e26 (Volpina) and was tagged 8 times in 2023, excluding other tags such as Lila lies, Lila manipulation, Evil Lila Rossi; while tags for Chloe Redemption remained constant (3 fics each in 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023).

* credit to @miraculousbigbang and clairelutra who ran the initial ML Big Bang in 2017, and @mlbigbang who ran the subsequent 2021, 2022 and 2023 Big Bang events.

📈 This Data is a snapshot of the posted fics on Ao3 on

🖤 Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to @miabrown007 and @ryanidious for their help in providing me with information for the mlbigbang 2017!

🖤 Methodology

Sample Collection

Looking at all this quantitative data is fine, but I want to go a bit deeper (but not too deep, I don’t have time to read every single fic). A good way to get an idea on the content of a fic is through the Ao3 tagging system.

I need a way to look through the tags used over time, but this seems like too a mammoth task in Ao3 (more detail on that below the cut).

The good news is that Ao3 has a feature within collections that does that for me!

My instant thought went to the Miraculous Big Bang. It’s perfect because it is an unbiased collection (e.g. if it was a birthday gift or personal collection of recs, the fics would be tailored to the person’s tastes and preferences).

Word Clouds

Word clouds are an interesting tool to quickly look at recurring words. However, major criticisms of this method is that you can lose the context the words are used in. This is a good article to describe considerations when using a word cloud [5]. However, the nature of Ao3 tags is that the context is either inherent or are merely keywords.

Data Cleaning

Now unfortunately this word cloud needed some cleaning to remove commonly used tags. When I first did this all I got was a big image with the words Miraculous, Adrien Agreste, Ladybug, Chat Noir and Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and Miraculous Big Bang which I think you can see is not very informative.

Removed Keywords: Adrien Agreste, Adrienette, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Ladybug, Chat Noir, Miraculous, Miraculous Big Bang

When these were removed, I put the tags into a free word cloud generator such as https://www.freewordcloudgenerator.com/generatewordcloud.

There is no natural language processing so I have hyphenated common phrases. Ao3's word cloud has already combined the common keywords and enlarged them, so I had to manually check how many times they appear to add them back. It's not exact but it works.

References

[1] Miraculous Big Bang 2017: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/miraculousbang2k17

[2] Miraculous Big Bang 2021: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MLBB_2021

[3] Miraculous Big Bang 2022: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MLBB_2022

[4] Miraculous Big Bang 2023: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MLBB_2023

[5] https://www.betterevaluation.org/methods-approaches/methods/word-cloud

[likelightinglass]

Fic Stats Tag Game

Rules: Give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words.

Thanks for the tag @danpuff-ao3 this looks fun!

Most Hits

In which Severus is stressed and needs Daddy to treat him like a dumb little cumdump. We're both gay and obsessed with tender, intimate kink; moved, we wrote this fanfic

Summary:

Severus spends a morning serving Daddy like a proper little cockslut, since that's what he's good at. Lucky for him, Daddy loves him that way.

Yeah I see all you perverts out there. So many hits on this one and comparitvely so few comments and kudos--and twice as many private bookmarks as public!

I think this may be the fic of mine people seem most ashamed to have read. But I hope people enjoyed it nonetheless haha.

This was so fun to write and it was a hoot to explore some very niche kinks. It was a blast to cowrite with the wonderful alhaz and that excellent naming convention was my crazy idea. I still get such a kick out of it whenever I see it.

Second Most Kudos

World Enough, and Time

Summary:

Soulmate clocks start ticking when you first lock eyes, and count down until your time with them is over. Harry’s starts ticking on September 1st, 1991. He has only six years, eight months, and one day.

This is secretly my favorite fic. I wrote it all at once stream of consciousness style while out shopping. This fic brought to you by eating fast food in my car in a parking lot.

I love the soulmate trope and I loved this take on it. And I am quite pleased with myself that I took the angst and managed a happy ending anyway!

This one had a recent popularity spike due to the amazing podfic by Cailynwrites!!! I am so grateful for it.

Third Most Comments

What Comes Next (and How to Like it)

Summary:

A choose your own adventure fic!

You are Severus Snape. You survived against all odds, and now it's time to take life into your own hands. What will you do with this gift of a second chance, and how will you find your happy ending?

Your happy ending is pretty much always Harry Potter, but there's so many fun ways to get there.

I was so inspired by @lizzy0305 's Choices that I just had to write my own choose your own adventure fic. I am so insanely proud of this one although the plotting was a bear haha. It was very fun writing basically a bunch of mini fics and using so many different tropes. And I got to give Severus over a dozen different happy endings. It's what he deserves.

I feel like this one doesnt get as much love--maybe the interactive nature of it can be off putting? But its one of my favorite things that I have ever wrote and the fic i tend to self rec the most. Most of the comments on this are telling me what their favorite endong was and its so nice to see! Especially since several have been recieved unexpectedly.

Fourth Most Bookmarks

So actually World Enough, and Time again but it is SO CLOSE to More Than Dark, I'm cheating a tiny bit in order to pimp this one out

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31757209/chapters/78608503

More Than Dark

Summary:

Severus is imprisoned in solitary confinement in Azkaban with no idea of who won the war. He is ill, underfed, and slowly losing his mind.

When Harry eventually takes him in and nurses him back to health, he can scarcely believe it's real.

My white whale. My magnum opus. My only published WiP. It haunts me every day that it remains unfinished. I promise its not abandoned, I love it so much and I've written and outlined so much of it but its going to be novel length (in a thousand years when its done) and its been over a year since the last update. I am pouring my heart and soul into this one and its jjst taking a really. Really. Really long time. But if anyone likes WiPs, please try it. I think its one of my best.

Fifth Most Words

Sly and Songful

Summary:

One of the those animagus fics, in which our heroes would rather secretly spy and pine instead of just have an honest conversation.

But where would the fun in that be?

Everyone lives AU, in which you will encounter birds, foxes, pining, stubbornness, falling in love, and scars.

This was one of my first ever fics and it was a birthday present for the magnificent @bleedcolor .

I loved working on this and feeling like I was finally writing a "real" fic with a plot and everything. Its got nightingale animagus Harry and fox animagus Snape and gnarly scars and its very soft and probably a little out of character and amateur but I love it very much.

Theres also a sequel to this, A kind of love called maintenance that I am particularly proud of.

I also commissioned art of this one from Madfantasy! I will reblog it now so it appears right above :)

Fic with the Least Words

AITA for not going down on my boyfriend?

Summary:

Severus takes to the internet to determine if he is, in fact, the asshole.

This was inspired by my obsession with Reddit's Am I the Asshole? And a conversation with Zalil after her spectacular fic where we agreed her fic's Severus was an incredibly selfish lover. It still makes me laugh, I added a couple "in charachter" comments and encouraged others to do so, got some hilarious ones back! If anyone reads this, please comment in the style of AITA hahah.

Tagging: @bleedcolor @perverse-idyll @coconutice22 @givereadersahug @lizzy0305 and absolutely anyone else who wants to!!!

[theflirtmeister]

🎱🛼🥤🍬❄️🪲

post your AO3 total stats

describe your latest wip with five emojis

🌳🐇🍌🍑🍆

recommend an author or fanfic you love

i have been reading such GROSS fic recently that I'm afraid to rec anything, but!!! shut off the lights, we don't need them to dance by beloved monty!! vampires! vampire sex! mind meld!

post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

lawrence is a dick and we need to stop pretending he's an uwu repressed soft boy, my man has been cheating on his wife for months

what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

i've spoken about this fic before but perez + strahm being small town cops and meeting hoffman post bear trap who is living in a discarded house looking like a CREEP, and i would want any of the bnf hoffstrahm fans to write it <3

add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

spoilers!:

Lawrence had shown Adam alpha porn, recorded on VHS like it was the fucking 90’s, and set in dark basements that screamed danger, stay away. The alphas back in the day had been purely men, broad-shouldered, covered in hair, with giant cocks with knots that were bigger than Adam’s fists.

[deelaundry]

ao3 stats game

Rules: Give us the links to your wonderful words with the most hits, most kudos, most comments, most bookmarks, most words, and least words. (I added Smallest Fandom)

Most Hits and Bookmarks - This Is an Essay, Harry Potter, gen. An autistic 11-year-old girl named Margaret has her first year at Hogwarts. [Margaret agrees with me that JKR sucks.]

Most Kudos - This was This Is an Essay for years, but has been passed recently by Goes the Neighborhood, House MD, Teen, House/Wilson, set after episode 4-9. One month into their permanent positions, the new fellows catch a case on the weekend and have to track House down.

Most Comments - The Private Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson, Sherlock (TV), Teen, Johnlock QPR. WIP in blog-post format, currently 21 chapters, 9,757 words. I need to get back to this, as we have so much more story to cover. :)

Fourth Most Kudos - My Fathers' Son, House MD, General Audiences, House/Wilson, Major Character Death. House and Wilson, as seen through the eyes of their son Jack as he grows up. Written in the summer after S2, this was both my first angst fic and by far my best received fic on LiveJournal in both count and depth of comments (probably the most recced too).

Most Words - My Fathers' Son has the second most words at 25,850; the fic with the most is its sequel Keeper (Agnates in Elysium) at 29,621 words (House MD, Teen, multiple relationships, Major Character Death but not as angsty as My Fathers' Son). House and Wilson’s son Jack passes one of life’s crossroads and makes an unexpected connection. In Keeper, my "MFS" fanfic universe crosses over with another writer's House MD fanfic universe (the "Churchverse" in which House and Wilson's kid, Christian House, goes by Church).

Fewest Words - Exact drabbles of 100 words each:

Two Kinds, House MD, Teen, Chase/Foreman.

Any Afternoon, Stargate Atlantis, G, McKay/Sheppard.

Served Cold, House MD, Teen. AO3 says it's 101 words, but my count is 100.

I'm adding a category: Smallest Fandom - The Awful Daring, Teen, references to a romantic/sexual relationship between a teacher and his high school student, and a priest and a member of his congregation. This fic is for the play Prodigal Son by John Patrick Shanley. In the world premiere of the play Robert Sean Leonard played the teacher (Alan) and Timothée Chalamet played the student (James). (The priest is an OC.) The Awful Daring is the only fanwork on AO3 for the play. Let me know if you know of any others elsewhere!

[jandjsalmon]

2023 FFRC - February ❤️

HELLO everyone! I hope you had a wonderful February! It was a short month so there were slightly fewer stories to read and there was this ghost show that came out (you might have seen it flood your dash) that needed to be binged over and over again so we get a season two - but I still found moments to curl up with some favourite fics and I hope you did too! I was pretty focused on crossing off fic challenge tasks so I felt less enjoyment in my reading as usual. I hope this next month will be better.

Throughout February, I had a surprisingly large number of new followers (a substantial number of whom are not bots - shocking, right?!) and though I'm not sure how you all found me, I'm thrilled to have you here (and happy to see that you're real people and not bots).

As most of you know, I'm a regular participant (and low-key assistant) at the @fanfic-reading-challenge - additionally, for the last couple of years, I've been tracking all the fic I read and I've reported back here once a month with some stats and some recs, and a little bit of boring stuff about my life. (Or not boring - like traipsing after my daughter and her basketball team as they work their way to Provincials - their record is 22-4 so it's a possibility! Go Spartans!)

ANYWAY - I'm always looking for new fic recommendations, so if you have any stories you think I'll love, please drop me a line or send me a dm. Almost any pairing and any fandom. Shoot me a link!🖤

February 2023

As I said above, I've been plugging along on the @fanfic-reading-challenge. This month I've cracked 3million words and completed 143/309 tasks which means I've completed the "Regular" mode of the challenge. I'm working on the "Hard" mode so I need to do some searching for fics with minorities. Do you have favourite stories with minorities in them? Most of my fandoms appear to be a little lacking in that department - or at least I never think about it (like Inej is a woc - but I forgot about that until right this second). Anyway - I need to branch out - so any suggestions would be great!

As for my recs for you! Let's look at what I did read this month that you might enjoy. Try these:

--*--

Violent Delights by @ozmathegreatand (Wenvier - M 4/4)

Summary: Romeo and Juliet is far from her favorite Shakespeare play. (That honor goes to Titus Andronicus, of course.) But the crypt scene is achingly romantic, particularly the part where Juliet stabs herself. Few of the Bard’s heroines subject themselves to such violence in the name of passion. She wonders what practical effects the drama department has access to and imagines the torrent of blood she could rig.

Why you should read: Valentine's Day. Romeo and Juliet is being performed by the drama department and Romeo Xavier's costars keep meeting untimely ends. SUPER jealous (and hilarious) Wednesday. Mutual Pining. Shenanigans. This is Super Hilarious.

--*--

What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Want You More by sciencefantasy93 (Lucy/Lockwood - E 8/8)

Summary: It was all her fault. All her fault. He was losing his damn mind, and it was all because of her. One move, one second, one heartbeat, and his world crumbled apart like a warm cookie.

Or: Lockwood realizes he's attracted to Lucy, which sets in motion a chain reaction of events as he and Lucy try to take the next step without actually talking about their feelings.

Why you should read: The first steamy Locklyle fic that I've ever read and it did NOT disappoint. Very VERY in character - but also hot? Super good.

--*--

Chrissy and Eddie’s Infinite Mixtape by @little-scribblers-heart (Hellcheer - E 26/26)

Summary: Eddie was right when he told the Hellfire kids that there's no shame in running, which is why he takes a running leap to grab for the floating cheerleader in his living room.

OR: Chrissy lives and fixes what the Duffers broke.

Come for the canon-close Season 4 rewrite, stay for the explanatory chapter notes and the healing.

Why you should read: Epic in scale. Well researched and emotional without being sappy and trite. I should have known it would be amazing because it was a rec from my girl @feelavalanche - who has NEVER steered me wrong in over 10 years of fandom friendship. There is even a chapter named after David Bowie. See - you need to read this.

--*--

Hope is a Waking Dream by @writeradamanteve (Lucy/Lockwood - M 1/1)

Summary: Nightmares, dreams, it was all part of the agent package. Oh, and tea. Always tea.

Why you should read: FIRSTLY (and I shouldn't have to say this to long time followers) - It's adamanteve. You should read it because she wrote it - that should be good enough. Everything she writes is amazing. But then. SOFTNESS. The characterizations are THEM. Their mannerisms are real and their voices are beyond perfection. Comfort and lovely and wonderful. Read it!

ALSO - as I said last month, you should read and then subscribe to the_retro_witch's entire Sweet Nightmare series. It's a post-canon universe where after Crackstone's defeat, Wednesday and Xavier get together before they leave school and now it's grown into this amazing saga with mystery-solving soulmates and psychic and witchy amazingness. The other characters are developed and the plots are rich and fun. It updates pretty darn regularly and every word is a delight. Honestly. Read the series, you won't regret it. Let it be your first foray into Wenvier if you are on the fence. Don't be on the fence. Come ship with me! 🖤🖤

(lastly- I'm a little bit in love with this gif of Xavier waving - and I've been purposely flooding my dashboard with Percy for reasons - so the wave might become a theme for my year).

Anyway -👋🏼 Hiya -I'm happy you're here! I hope you have a wonderful March and I'll see you back here in a few weeks! Happy reading! 🖤

[am-i-dead]

listen listen i love abi and emma. Love them together okay. but ABI X KAITLYN IS SO GOOD. okay okay?! The angst? it’s there. The pining? also there. I need fanfic recs for them STAT.

[real-life-cloud]

:O mind reccing the fics? 👀

Oop I forgot to respond to this 😅 I'm almost certain this is about my tags on the post that was like "ever read a fic that makes you wanna write fic about it?"

I'm reading a fanfic of a fanfic atm and it's soooo good... And incredibly long. Literally the longest fanfic I've ever seen lol. That's part of the reason I even started it, like the summary looked good too but then I read the stats and it had a 1.5 million wordcount and I was like HUH???!?!? I MUST READ YOU!!!!

The Wards of UA by FeckedSpectrum on ao3

And now i will ramble about it teehee

It's an AU of another fic called The Last Resort by hotandcoldsoba on ao3! Which is about Shinsou being sold to this villain organization called The Miasma as a child after his quirk manifested. I've not read that one, and I'm pretty sure it's an unfinished fic? But the author of Wards encourages their readers to read that one as well, since it's basically canon backstory for the Shinou in Wards and is referenced all the time. It's not necessary to read it tho.

Wards is incredibly angsty! Pay attention to those tags and trigger warnings lol. Still, it manages to have a lot of fluff too hehe. It's about Shinsou being transferred from The Miasma to Chisaki, who wants him for his quirk so he can better control Eri. Shinsou becomes sort of a parent to Eri, and they get really attached to each other. The main chunk of the story is about after they've been rescued! They become wards of UA and live with Eraserhead and Present Mic. I'm always a sucker for fics of the four of them as family! It's about healing and trauma and how it's never linear and never the same for everyone. There's a lot of POV changes! And along the way there's a whole mystery unraveling about the Hero Commission and The Miasma. Aaaa it's so good but I don't wanna spoil it haha

I also appreciate that each chapter has a "previously on..." section at the start! It gives you all the relevant info you need for reading that chapter. Which is rly nice with how long this fic is lol. I'm aboutttt 500k in I would say? So not even halfway done teehee. But I would still recommend it!!!

I think about the Shinsou in Wards so often... He's attached to my brain now and l will not let go.. rotating in my head forever....... he's like an entirely different character than canon Shinsou in a lot of ways! He's just been through so much :( I'm constantly thinking abt him as an adult, hopefully doing a lot better mentally and emotionally.. with friends and family and a life..... Reading his POV can be so sad bc his view of things is so skewed and he never truly believes he's safe.. god I love him. GO READ WARDS!!!!!

[booksandabeer]

Hi heloo!! I was just checking through your reclists and TYSM FOR MAKING THEM OMG?? The fandom needs people like you, you've become one of my favorite blogs on here in like the last half day haha! But also while I was reading through your asks and the lists you made, I couldn’t help but notice how LONG most of the fics are? Like there's oneshots with 10k words and so many series and one fic has 300THOUSAND words and is still a wip somehow?? Which don't get me wrong, I love long fics as much as the next guy and won't complain for people writing so much about stucky. Like imagine the kind of time it takes to do that, blows my mind every time. BUT ALSO (and this is where I get to my point lmao sorry for spamming you) how do you have TIME to read ALL THAT and take notes on all of it and sort them into that system you talked about and like.  HOW??? I envy you. I admire you. I fear you a little <3

Hi hello to you too!!

First of all, thank you for your lovely words, I'm quite overwhelmed by the praise & enthusiasm. ❤ Believe me, there's absolutely no reason to fear me.😜 The rec lists are really just my way of trying to give back to a fandom that has given me so much joy (and pain, but I kind of asked for that, so it's ok--one has to be a bit of a masochist to be a Stucky shipper).

I definitely have a preference for long, character-driven stories and slow-burn romances, which by definition, you can't really do in a 5K oneshot. That's not to say that shorter fics inevitably lack depth--not at all! There are writers who are absolute masters at creating whole worlds in just a few thousand words, and indeed it can be a bigger challenge (and a skill!) to tell a decade-spanning story in fewer words and to decide when something does not have to be spelled out in great and sometimes unnecessary detail, and to just trust that your readers will get it. But yes, in the end, we all have our reading preferences, and I just really love to get lost in a long story. If you offered me a well-written fic that features all my favorite tropes and the exact kind of characterizations that perfectly align with my headcanons and you'd say "hey, you want the 5 or the 50K version of that?", I will almost always go with the latter option.

Still, I've actually gotten much better at reading shorter fics over the past year... maybe I should do a rec list for Great Fics under 10K... would anybody care for that?

Now as to your question how I manage to read ALL THAT. I don't know? Honestly, I'm certain there are people who read way more than I do, but yeah, I read A LOT of fanfic, it's true. The funny thing is, I'm not even a very fast reader, or no... the reading itself doesn't take up a lot of time, but thinking about fics, taking notes, writing comments does. The whole spreadsheet insanity was not only born out of a desire to track my reading stats, but also to put down my thoughts and to really ruminate on what I'd just read. Before I got more actively involved in fandom, I didn't really have anybody to talk to about this, but the thoughts and feelings still needed to go somewhere. And now that I've started making rec lists, I'm so glad that I did this because I can pull from them when I'm looking for specific tropes/genres/etc.

Finally, ever since I started beta-reading, I've gained a WHOLE new appreciation for how much thought and heart and time and--yes!--work goes into a fanfic. And all that with little to no guarantee for recognition or even any sort of response at all.

Fanfic writers are goddamn heroes. To borrow your words: I envy them. I admire them. I fear them a little.

Fanfiction Forever. ❤

[runemyth0]

Hi! A few questions for the writer ask game (not sure if you’ve answered these already, so I put four, you don’t need to answer them all)

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

🕶️ What helps you focus when you write?

🧪 Do you research for your fics?

Fanfic Writer Ask Game

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

Yes! I've actually been planning a number of original stories for a few years. There's two main ones which are...

Commoners Die In One Hit: My take on an isekai story where a class of high schoolers and their teacher are transported to a fantasy world. They have to work together to survive in this hostile world.

I actually based this concept off of me being bored and rolling stats for a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Classics characters. The first part of the story is structured like a DCC funnel, where a bunch of characters go in and only a handful of characters come out.

Guilded Cage: Five assassins, each belonging to a major guild, are sent to a dinner to uphold an ancient treaty between the guilds preventing them from going to war. Unfortunately, the guilds all sent their worst members, because it turns out that one of the attendees has to die to uphold the treaty.

It'll probably be a while till I start on either of these (and the names might change along the way) since I've still got fanfiction I want to write first.

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

You know, I was just thinking I needed to update my fanfic rec list. Honestly, there's way too many I want to recommend, so I'll just pick my top three four.

A Witch in Wartwood (and it's sequel) by Discet (@discet)

This fic! Oh man... This is the fic that got me back into writing! It got me hooked on swap AUs! It is the fic of all time.

The Oracle Bakery by freakxwannaxbe (@freakystrashdump)

I never thought I'd be enjoying an OC fic this much, yet here I am recommending it. Most notable for me for having the best Belos characterization I've read. Also, I really like the worldbuilding of Oracle magic, which doesn't have a huge amount of focus in canon.

Moonshadow by A_E_redacted (@a-e-redacted)

Canon divergence ahoy! A fun story about the Collector getting adopted by Eda. I just like the Collector.

Tag Team AU (@toh-tagteam-au) by YogurtHoops

A comic, not a fanfic, but still one of the most fun swap AUs I've read. I mean, I enjoyed it enough to write a fanfic based on it, so... I really like it.

And what the heck, I'll recommend Fighting the Stars by FruitDragon as well.

🕶️ What helps you focus when you write?

Music! I've got a whole bunch of playlists that I put on in the background while I write. I have one playlist full of the Yuru Camp soundtrack that never fails to put me in the zone for writing really angsty scenes.

I also make sure to keep myself hydrated and fed with snacks (my fav is frozen raspberries).

🧪 Do you research for your fics?

Of course! Whenever I'm writing, I'll usually have the relevant fan wiki open in another tab for quick reference. And if anything comes up that might require specialized knowledge, I'll do my best to search it out.

I mostly work with fics that don't require too much research, but it does come up from time to time.