#I made this work public so you don't need to have an ao3 account to read it!

[recurringwriter]

It's the Third of October! Happy Marianas Trench Day to those who celebrate! I've posted my analysis of Haven and the Hero's Journey on Ao3 for ease of reading since it ended up at nearly 8k words.

I've been a fan of these guys since about 2015, and in that time the music has really become so important to me. I love story and plot, so I thought it would be cool to do a breakdown of how Haven fits with the structure it's themed around. Check it out if you're interested!

From Esoteric to Common Prose: Exploring the Narratives of Haven by Recurring

[hydrangeyes]

Unnamed

So if you don't know, Yes this already existed, my old account was deleted (accident but I can tell I won't be getting it back), and am reposting my old x male reader works!

I don't know if I saved all of them but here is one that was saved to my AO3 account.

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Shigaraki is horny but you're not giving him any attention, trying to pull you away from work. You think it's kinda funny and have no problem taking care of him right there and then. Shigaraki is a brat and you can't convince me otherwise.

Warning: spanking, fingering, edging, a bit of tears/light dacryphilia, overstimulation, public sex, cock warming

Didn't name this one, and I for sure thought I deleted but what a surprise! I think this was my first reinterest in writing full on smut, also unfinished lmao so it really is just foreplay

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Why were you ignoring him!?

He’s been at this for almost an hour already (it’s been 5 minutes), can’t you see that he was ready to burst!? Calling for you, bending over on the other side of the table, calling you again. Shigaraki scowls from where he was standing besides you just barely out of view in nothing but one of your large shirts and boxer briefs. Today was suppose to be your day off, so you were visiting and were suppose to keep him company with a full day of gaming.

But no, even with the new hideout empty, you were still working!! Paperwork, laptop and all!

You even put back on your pants. that made him let out a displeased whine, no shame with everyone out and not able to see his needy display. He worked so hard convincing you to let him tear off the other pair, where did you get this one?

Shaking his head, Shigaraki creeps closer seeing that you're in the middle of a video call. Tough. Making sure to use only 3 fingers, shigaraki nudges the laptop in a different direction and quickly plops himself onto your lap.

"Shig!"

"Oh good, I have your attention now."

He grins wrapping his arms around you loosely. You're the one scowling now, telling your coworker that it was your cat and he had to clean up the spill, reaching to turn on mute.

"Mmh good~ I really only want you to hear me." Shigaraki purrs wiggling his hips to get comfy. "Oh no you don't." You huff gripping his hips to keep him still glaring. "You think I'll let this slide?"

Shigaraki glares back tensing his arms so you cant push him off. "Today was suppose to be for us. Only us and our favorite games! Not your stupid work." He whines out the last sentence.

You sigh a little, which makes him relax again. Feeling this you quickly flip him to be lying across your lap instead, ignoring is outraged squeak. "My 'stupid' work is what got you that game. I know today was just for us brat, but I needed to be apart of the meeting."

You hum using one hand to firmly keep your wiggling partner in place, the other rubbing down his back and just above the swell of his ass. In all honesty the moment he called out for you, you were distracted. But pretending to ignore him was always fun, his usual lazy behavior changing on the spot.

Shigaraki stops his wiggling at your touch, arching to try and encourage you. He inwardly curses his past self from 10 minutes ago for even bothering with clothes.

"It wasn't going to be long either, but I should have know my cute little brat wouldn't wait patiently." You growl, lifting and giving his ass a firm slap.

"Ah!!"

"Tsk, I really thought you learned your lesson the last time you interrupted my work." Cooing softly as you watch him shudder, you can see the tip of his ears start to turn red.

You don’t let him respond before placing another firm slap, then another and another. Watching as he yelps and whimpers with each smack. Shigaraki arches and moans into it, gripping with 4 fingers each the end of the chair.

Panting and trying to grind against you shigaraki bites his lips to try and muffle just how much he was enjoying this. But you know your brat well, plus you can just feel how much he’s leaking on your leg.

Easing up you hum nonchalantly eyes hooded rubbing his red cheeks, giving him a moment to come back. Reaching to your bottom desk drawer you

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Legit where the draft ended lmaooooooo

[arcane-vagabond]

Do you think you'd ever seriously leave the fandom? Give up Tumblr and just post on ao3?

I definitely don't want you to leave, but curious how you're really feeling with all the drama going on.

I think one day, I will leave the fandom, but I think that's more to do with life than anything else. A new hyperfixation will eventually come along and I'll feel the need to write for that instead of TGM.

A friend told me recently that they think I would be happier in a different fandom, one with more engagement and more fans to read what I have to offer, and honestly, they're right. However, I can't control the hyperfixation anymore than I can control what time the sun sets, so y'all are stuck with me for the time being.

Would I post on AO3 exclusively? I think that depends. If I leave Tumblr, then I'm probably going to give up writing fanfic and try to focus on my original fiction again, try to decide if I want to pick up the story I've been working on for almost 11 years now or start fresh with something new. If I find a new fandom that makes me want to continue writing fanfic, then I might just devote my time to that and do a blog rebrand. I've done it before on my old account. Might actually just shift back to that one if I ever decide to leave this fandom.

And that's not to say that I don't appreciate the people who DO read my work because I absolutely do! But, and I said this the other day, I remember when fandom was more of a community versus content creators against consumers, and I miss that. Of course you had your friend groups, but for the most part, people were just excited about the content! Like, idk how to put it, but things feel very...political (?) sometimes, and that's not what fandom is about at all. I don't want people to feel intimidated to talk to me because quite frankly, I'm not an intimidating person. Annoying, sure, but not intimidating.

But as for the drama? I won't lie and say that there wasn't drama back in the days of old either, but I don't remember it being quite this bad. Of course people disagreed, but people were allowed to and everyone knew that it wasn't that serious. Now, it feels like people are afraid to express an opinion without being screamed at by people using the anonymous feature. Like, why is that necessary? Why are there people on here determined to run others off? What do you get out of it?

I'm honestly so surprised I haven't gotten more hate anons in recent weeks, but I have opinions on that that don't need to be made public. However, I shouldn't have to choose between "falling in line" with the status quo and sitting here every time I post an opinion, waiting for someone to send me a nasty message about how I think I'm so great or how I'm the most annoying person in the TGM fandom or whatever other bullshit they come up with without even knowing me.

And of course I'm so grateful for the friends I've made on here, and I love chatting with them about their works or my works if they don't write themselves. I love coming up with new stories to tell, but I have found myself wondering if I should try poking into the Marvel fandom or write for the Boys. After all, this blog was originally supposed to include those two as well and then my hyperfixation stayed on TGM.

Anyway, TL;DR: I don't know, Nonny. There are several factors that go into that decision. Do I want to leave? No. Not yet, anyway. Will I post on AO3 exclusively if I do? Probably won't post at all at that point ngl, but it is what it is at this point, and we aren't at that bridge yet.

[xenon-demon]

WIP Weekend! 🖋️

So I've been tagged in various WIP games this week by @stobinesque @penny00dreadful and @steves-strapcollection - thank you all Very Much for the tags!! <3 (even if the tags were because I am an Enabler Of Fic, I recognise my true calling is to be a hype man and writing is my side gig lmao)

Anyway I have a reasonably free weekend this weekend and a BURNING DESIRE to get something ao3-ready. Also FYI these rules are a slightly modified version of the ones Sam (penny00dreadful) is using, because I am using the "Fuck It We Ball" approach and cobbling together all the various WIP games into something that will work for me.

🎆 Rules 🎆

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

I am listing my WIP names as a poll; the poll will run for 24 hours and at the end I'll do the maths on how many votes each WIP received. I'll then set a goal to write 100 words per vote* for each WIP, and make a post of the vote breakdown for accountability! (*I may change this to be more than 100 words per vote if I don't get many votes in total.)

Snippet from "steve overstimulation projection manifesto" (SOPM) under the cut!

So yeah. Eddie can’t handle sudden change, big deal.

Steve can, for the most part; he's a lot more adaptable. No, Steve's weakness is people.

It took Eddie a while to realize it, and even then, he didn't truly understand until after they'd started dating. After all, how could the former King of Hawkins High possibly find socializing difficult? Eddie remembers all those bitter glances he used to shoot King Steve's way, jealous of how effortlessly he commanded the court of public opinion - not that he'd ever admit to it. But then Steve fell from grace, underwent more character growth than Eddie thought one man was capable of, and now Eddie knows the truth: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. (Eddie is forever in debt to his freshman year English teacher for pointing him in the direction of the battered copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare in Hawkins Public Library. If only poor Mr Collins knew Eddie was only interested so he could use it as inspiration for D&D campaigns.)

Steve is absolutely charismatic; he knows how to tell people exactly what they want to hear, or make them feel special in a way that keeps them coming back for more. The catch is it's an intentional act. It's a mask that Steve used to be terrified he could never take off, as he mournfully confessed to Eddie one night while sharing a joint in the trailer. As it turns out, Steve just needed better friends; with Robin, with the kids, with Eddie, he finds it so easy to just be himself. He doesn't have to censor himself or fret over what image he's presenting to the world, and can instead relax and actually enjoy the company. Steve's joked around with Eddie before that it's actually kind of good for their relationship that Steve used to have to try so hard - he knows how to flirt without even consciously thinking about it. What Steve doesn't know is that he could go into graphic detail about the shape of his toenails and Eddie would still be listening with hearts in his eyes.

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And now some tags, both for visibility and as an invitation to join in if you'd like to/aren't already doing a writing game for the weekend! <3

@sailing-through-hawkins @onirislanding @inairbinad @eriquin @scarcrossdlvrs @patchworkgargoyle

[vamp-ress]

heyy, some 2 days ago you made a post recommending the fic The Fall, by Idrilia, on live journal, but I've only ever used ao3 so idk exactly how to use this one, because every time I try to to read it, it asks for my login, I created one, and then it just says that my access is denied.. do you know why that'd be? if you don't that's alright, it's just cause it happened before once or twice and I still don't know what happened...

Since AO3 is going down for maintenance today, it's probably a good time to answer this. So all of you who mainly hang around on AO3 have a little project to tide you over.

AO3 was founded in 2008. The basic idea behind AO3 (apart from being an all-inclusive archive) was to provide a safe fandom space free from companies and ad revenues. That there are users today who apparently cannot navigate a fanfic space apart from AO3 should be sign enough that AO3 is succeeding at its goal, giving enough fans enough access to everything they might want to read and more.

But: Of course, (internet)fandom existed before AO3. When I started reading fanfic in 1998/1999 most of it was hosted as static html on Geocities or Angelfire sites. If fans really meant business they bought their own webspace (I still have mine, though you can't access it). When I became enamoured with LOTR (and subsequently LOTRPS fandom) fanfiction communities were fragmented, small and were catering to different tastes. You could go to ff.net, to several specialized automated archives or Yahoogroups/Egroups (please read this article by @dawnfelagund if you'd like a deep dive into the history of archives). A lot of the adult parts of fandom happened on journaling sites like Livejournal and Dreamwidth. They were easy to set up and you could "police" who accessed your journal.

Why is this still relevant today? A lot of fannish spaces have vanished over the years - because the people inhabiting them moved on or because the space itself ceased to exist. Some fannish spaces (I'm now talking about LOTR and LOTRPS) have moved to AO3, like LOM or HASA. However, a lot of fannish spaces have disappeared (like Mirrormere) or they sit abandoned where no one will find them, because no one coming to the fandom now knows about them.

Two of those spaces are LJ and Dreamwidth. Livejournal was where you usually did your reading when you were into LOTRPS. After strikethrough in 2007, many fans moved to Dreamdwidth. Both sites use the same code, they work essentially in the same way. What you need to know:

These are journaling sites! Basically, they are blogs. "Normal" people would use them as a blog, chronicling their life or writing about their hobby. Fandom, though, always was a big part of Livejournal. Fans would post their fanfiction there, because they could decide who was allowed to read those stories.

Friending The profile of any given journal will show this journal's friendslist. Mine looks like this (my journal is completely public, though, there is no friends-only content):

These people will see my new posts in their journal. It works like it always does on social media. They subscribe to me, thye friend me, they become my mutual - whatever you like to call it. These are also the people who will see content that I post only for this circle of friends. This is what that looks like on DW:

Since a lot of (especially adult) fanfiction on LJ/DW is friendslocked, the owner of the journal needs to add you to there friendslist. Usually, by going to someone's journal with friendslocked content, you will only see a sticky post asking you to comment to be added. It might look something like this:

(From Silvan Lady's DW)

(Form Akasha Elfwitch's fic journal)

Sometimes, a user is extra-nice and gives you the info you need already on the profile page.

(From Chaosmanor's profile page on DW)

How to get added: First, you need a Livejournal and/or Dreamwidth account. Theoretically, you could access both with OpenID, but I'm not sure whether anyone still uses those. So, if in doubt, sign up with the service where the journal you want to read is hosted. After that, go to the journal in question and find the friends-only post. Comment on that post. It usually helps to tell the journal owner why you want to be added ("I want to read the fic!" or "I''ve heard about your fic, please add me"). And then you wait.

Caveat: Many of these people have moved on. Many of these journals are not in use anymore. Some people cannot access their journals anymore, which means that it's quite possible no one will answer and you won't be added. It's a gamble. But I've managed to get added to some LJs only last year, so it's not totally impossible. And I tell you, it's worth it! Especially when we're talking Viggorli, you're seeing only a marginal amount of what this ship was about on AO3. Of all the private journals and all the many comms, the only one that was transferred to AO3 (to my knowledge) was the Viggorli Secret Santa. You will definitely want to try and get access to some of those old journals! And who knows, maybe the writer in question will be totally thrilled that someone wants to read their fic so many years later. Stranger things have happened.

(If any of the oldies want to add something, please do! Though, I've purposefully not digged into the whole LJ-issue or why people left LJ to begin with. That's fodder for a different post. If anyone has questions, shoot!)

[according2thelore]

just found your tumblr account and thought id give you the comments i never left on your fics. my top three are: I. “swallow my breath and take whats mine” nothing to say about this one except i live for feral sam, the fear for dean’s death and acceptance of letting himself be cannibalized just because he doesn’t want to lose him and at the end the contempt for john, for how far he’s willing to go just to train dean (his inability to understand that it is NOT normal has a whole other special flavor). it was short, lovely and heartbreaking with a je ne sais quoi in sam’s feelings towards dean. 10/10. II. “and its you that i want” this was more lighthearted, not accounting for the breakup between dean and girl X, the best part was sam needing to be used, his desire to be just a vessel for deans pleasure. also i love EVERYTHING that depicts sam’s discomfort with his size with his need to be smaller. overall the smut is so sexy and intimate and also i love the fact that theyre obsessed with each other even in another universe. i love every smith/wesson fic because i love to imagine their reactions when confronted with what they would do with each other when not being stuck with whatever inhibition theyre battling with. 12/10 just because it has smut. “souls tied intertwined by our pride and guilt” NO. WORDS. it is my most read fic on ao3 in the whole seven years ive used the platform and it was published less than a year ago. i love everything. every word, every emotion. the fic starts with the voyeur moment, dean’s guilt at the idea that it was sam’s worst terror and sam’s fear that he may have revealed too much and everything its now out in the open. “the dark side of the moon” is already a seriously angsty episode by itself, but your spin on it with their guilt, their shame and the continuous misunderstandings is lovely.

dean’s overthinking about when did he become so overwhelming to sam that he was TERRIFIED of his big brother, when did he become something that sam needed to escape from leaving for college? sams line that said he “always lived with it” had dean spiraling with guilt and shame and fear so much that he left and “threw” away the amulet. sam on the other hand is full of shame for his biggest desire is out there, the crippling need to have his brother, so debilitating that he had to escape, not from deans leering as he may think, but from his fucked up needs, his perversion of their relationship, of him feeling like he twisted up something genuine and good so much that his brother is now disgusted with him (i love when one of the two seems “disgusted” leaving the other feeling dirty and a pervert) overall i never found a fic that fit all of my reading needs as well as this one. you took a basic misunderstanding trope and spun it in a whirlwind of suffering, dejections, inhibitions and the best part GUILT AND SHAME.

i have no more words 100/10 i live for it. keep up with your writing because i live for it and eat up every single work you produce.

sorry if some bits are grammatically incorrect english is not my first language.

much love<3

anon...oh my god anon...anon...

okay so i'm thinking an autumn wedding? how soon do you think we could book a venue?? i mean, we could always elope.

but seriously, anon--holy shit. this ask made my MONTH. i don't know what i did to deserve such lovely and incredible people on this blog but i am so GRATEFUL!!!

just little responses to the comments:

EEP! thank you! desperately devoted winchesters are delicious! we see series!sam being incredibly unhinged about dean/his safety, so i was interested to explore how a pre-series!sam would navigate a situation like that.

heehee i'm glad this one was good! charlotte beta'd the first half of this fic in public, and it was quite funny to watch her (a lesbian who is also new to A/B/O) give it a read. servicetop sam is something that i love that i also don't see a lot of, so i loved being able to add some in this universe where their power dynamics are slightly shifted (in the corporate ladder sense and also alpha/omega lol). a +2 for the smut!! hell yeah!!! thank you ! :)

okay, small guilty pleasure moment, i LOVE misunderstanding tropes. admittedly in big, long pieces of fiction (fan or otherwise) in the 40k+ category, i can get tired of it, but misunderstandings are such a great way to understand and explore the interpersonal and INTRApersonal strengths/weaknesses/flaws of characters and their understanding of the world they are in. i was afraid everyone was going to hate this fic on sight bc it's written for me (and charlotte) specifically (and i've found from some very vocal and angry people that they hate misunderstandings (not on this blog, thank goodness, everyone has been lovely!)), but i am SO INCREDIBLY HONOURED AND GRATEFUL AND GLAD that you like it!!!!! i don't even have words for how much all of the comments, but this one especially, meant!!! all of your comments breaking it down made me smile wider and wider!

i hope my work continues to be entertaining, and THANK YOU again for this lovely ask!! (ps, your grammar is stellar!! much love!!!)

-lizzy <3

(pps mwah mwah mwah mwah)

[therealesino]

sorry if it comes outta nowhere but i haven't checked into your ao3 account in months and when i did today it showed me that all your works are gone??? i dunno if this is a bug and if not, i probably must have missed an announcement saying you don't wanna post anymore (which is totally fine btw!! you are allowed to do whatever you want with your own works and that includes not sharing them with the public) but i just wanted to tell you your writings really made my days so much better girl 😭 will forever miss each and every one you made (you got me into kross goddammit no one does it like you do boss 🥲 figured i'd say this here since twitter really isn't my thing and i still have literal quotes memorized from how many times i reread your fics like a thirsty mf seriously you're too darn good)

if you rebranded/changed fandoms tho i (and many others i'm guessing) would love to hear what you're now into still! don't forget you are loved no matter what 'content' you provide♡

awwww you're incredibly sweet, thank you!!!!

Unfortunately, for several reasons, I've actually put my account on private, I didn't want to, but it is unfortunately the decision I had to make for myself. So all of my stories are still there, you just need an account to see them now :(

If you are still interested in reading, I would suggest creating an A03 account, here's the queue link -> https://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests

I think the wait list is about 2 1/2 weeks or so.

I hope to come off private again, but for now, this is unfortunately how it will be <3

[causeitsagame]

For the fic ask meme! Literally all of them? I’m so curious

Well, it made the most sense to answer this particular ask and let it cover others!

ANSWERS INCOMING.

Keyboard or notebook?

KEYBOARD. When I write by hand, my wrist soon hurts. (Old tendonitis from undergrad, it loves to flare up.) But my fingers can fly across the keyboard fast enough to keep up with any words as they come. When I get into a groove, I can type awfully fast. My single-day writing record was around 18k words, but uhhhh that has not been approached since.

Now, the risk of typing on a keyboard: the computer has all of those other fascinating elements lurking behind the writing window, and it's just so, so easy to tab over to them. To counter this impulse, I'll often fire up Composition Mode in Scrivener, which takes over the screen and hides all of the other things I could be doing.

Beta or no beta?

I don't use a beta, but I do have a writing buddy. We mutually talk each other through knotty/stubborn structural plot elements of our current pieces, and that's where writing challenges usually lie for me.

In terms of cleaning up the fundamentals, I typically do two things before making anything public. One, I bump the font size way up and/or change the font, to make it look like a "new story." Two, I read every word out loud. I've found this to be an incredible way to catch awkward phrasings, repeated words, run-on sentences, etc. that I'd otherwise miss. (It can also help with pinning down character voices if I go full Audio Book Voiceover and add in some vocal flair for each line of dialogue. But you need to be willing to feel like a little bit of an idiot for that part.)

Plot?

My writing buddy constantly makes (friendly) fun of me for how much I'm into PLOT. I cut my teeth on the Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire series as a younger reader, and those authors fucking. Love. PLOT!

Foreshadowing! Plot twists! Callbacks! The tiniest of hints! The smallest of details! ("No one cares about those details nearly as much as you do, [Miggy]." "DON'T CARE.")

I will say that GRRM's famous Architect vs. Gardener paradigm doesn't fit my plotting style, though. I use what I've dubbed a Road Trip approach, and I'd explain that here, but this is already long enough! I can do it at some other point if anyone's interested?

Smushy or smutty?

I'm fine with smut, I guess, but I prefer it to serve a plot purpose. "These two, overcome with desire for each other, are overjoyed to be reunited" is an example of a place where it could absolutely contribute to the narrative, for example. Otherwise, I'd rather just stick to emotional development and find it to be generally more engaging.

Summary?

Fucking hate them. Ugh. I usually do a quote from the story and then a vague description. Worst part of posting to AO3, truly.

Funniest fic?

Probably something that was lost in my old Livejournal account? I filled an incredible number of anon fic meme prompts there and some of them were actually quite hilarious.

(I miss anon prompt memes so bad. :( That's a huge thing that both Tumblr and AO3 lack.)

Most popular fic?

Legal Partners (Ace Attorney), and it's not close.

Most fun to write?

Probably a poll-driven fic series that I did on Livejournal. I'd write the setup, let people vote on the outcome, and have to figure out how to make it work for the next installment. It was incredibly fun and engaging, riiiiiiight up until some people decided to start setting up a bunch of burner accounts to cheat and managed to ruin the experience for everyone. 🙄

Best and worst?

Worst would definitely be one of the random Yuletide fills I've done. I like the idea of Yuletide, where you gift someone with a fic in a tiny fandom they'd never otherwise get to read. But in reality, the recipients kept adding specific details about romance, timeline, events, etc. that went beyond what they were supposed to provide. As an author, you're technically not constrained by anything beyond the requested fandom and a few specified characters. But if the recipient makes their preferences so very clear, then you're unfortunately faced with a choice between "write the specific thing that would apparently make them happy" and "write a story that you can actually envision, structure, and be proud of." There's a reason I haven't done Yuletide for years.

Best? Well. See. Okay.

I challenged myself to write the stupidest crossover possible. Which meant that I had to make it work. Which meant that I needed to worldbuild. I needed to plot. Weave in foreshadowing. Explain the details. Respect both universes, both in content and mood.

The end result: a Marvel/Glee crossover (really) that a Hugo & Nebula winner has repeatedly encouraged me to file the serial numbers off of, to publish as original work.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most underrated?

Special, the answer to the last question. I've downloaded it as an eBook, and when I've reread it on a plane (or wherever), I do find myself going "man, this IS good."

Strengths?

Plot. :D For the reasons previously detailed. I try not to hold back from swinging at the fences with developments, both negative and positive. At the same time, I want any positives to feel earned and I want any negatives to carry proper dramatic weight, which means not otherwise rolling around in gratuitous suffering.

I just got some great and thoughtful AO3 comments on my current story (need to reply to comments!!!) and this one: "I called it. I FUCKING called that unimaginable agony and pain was coming!"

came two chapters after this one:

"I’m falling in love with these kids so much. Which can only mean we’re in for a whole lotta pain in a chapter or two."

That's what I'm going for, along with the bad -> good reverse direction, too. (…Usually.) I'm basically a Nagito of plotting. You know: hope leads to despair, and vice versa. I want to elevate the mood before everything crumbles, for the reader will feel even more despondent if everything falls from even greater heights. Or flip it around, and happiness feels like an even bigger relief if the plot previously didn't seem to allow for the slightest scrap of it.

Weaknesses?

I absolutely know that this comes from cutting my teeth on fic: environmental descriptions. It felt weird and repetitive to describe locations that any fan would be familiar with, so that led to me glossing over descriptions of where things were happening. Which is all well and good if it's in an existing location, I suppose; a DR fan doesn't need a loving description of a HPA classroom.

But! While editing, I'll often see that I've done the same thing for some new spot, as well. I'll have an image of this new place in my mind, but that description doesn't make it onto the page with more than a few loosely-sketched lines. That doesn't just harm the story's overall quality, but it also lessens the emotional reaction of the reader as they can't wholly picture the scenes as they happen. It's something I keep kicking my own butt over as I repeatedly catch this pretty fundamental error in editing.

Dirty little secrets?

This 'dirty little secret' is all about how I've tee-heed over some reader reactions.

I think the behavior itself is good! For a story of any real length, I have a cardinal rule that I always, always follow: "every important character has to screw up at some point." No one is allowed to be a perfect cinnamon roll, in other words, while other less ~awesome~ people handle the fuck-ups.

Why it's a dirty little secret: I have giggled a LOT in private over responses I've gotten from clear [their favorite character] stans… because they blatantly ignore how their favorite also screwed up. They've cheered me on for having [their non-favorite] fuck up, and are so relieved that I obviously hate [their non-favorite], too.

Meanwhile, other people have told me the exact same thing... but with the two characters reversed! It's just such a blatant example of how people will have their stan blinders on. It amuses me every single time, even if I never ever mention specific examples outside of private conversations.

(Knowing that I have my own stan blinders is what keeps me using that rule, by the way. My favorites have gotta fuck up just like everyone else. Fair's fair!)

[cal-writes]

Hi! Hello!!! It's so nerve-wracking to type to you haha, Im a big fan. I am in luv with your writing, your style and displays of emotion/characters are so great! I'm totally in luv with your new One Piece writings and I've been a long time fan of your Detective Conan/Magic Kaito works as well. 😊💕

I've been wondering about the works availability though? When I go to Ao3 as a guest, they don't show up to view and I love rereading your works! Is it possible to make them public again?

If not, I'm totally sure you have your reasons and concerns, and I hope this isn't a bother, and I hope this doesn't come off as rude or ignorant. Please ignore if taken as such or if this is a topic you arent interested in, my sincere apologies. ❤️

Thank you so much for sharing your work with us regardless, they're such a joy to read. 💖

gosh thats so sweet of you!

the reason i made a lot of my works logged in only to read was when we heard of “AI” assholes using ao3 to train their bots. i’m not sure how prevalent that is anymore so i’m hesitant to open them all again. if you have an ao3 account you should be able to see them all though

if not i have a bunch of ao3 invite codes lying around so if anyone needs one

thank you for your sweet message!! truly a wonderful thing to wake up to. either way i’ll think about making them all public again

[timelesslords-faq]

FAQ

Where is ____ fic? Why can’t I see it anymore?

Because of reports of AI scraping AO3 works, I’ve locked down a lot of my fics. This means that you need to be logged into an AO3 account to view the fics.

If you’re logged in and you still can’t see it, I might’ve hidden it. Sometimes fics get too much attention or I really don’t like them anymore so I put them in time out (a private collection). They’re not deleted off the archive, but only I am able to view them. I have the option to restore them but may not. It just depends.

Why can’t I comment on some of your fics on AO3?

Some fics on there were magnets for comments that upset me. I turned those off, and then realized I was happier and less stressed out when most of the comments for my fics were off. I left the fics themselves up there because I still want people to be able to enjoy them, but if the comments are turned off it just means its easier for me to not have to think about that particular fic.

I tried to put one of your fics in a collection and you rejected it. Why?

People who maintain collections have the ability to hide works from public view and I don’t want someone else to have that ability over my fics.

Collections are designed for moderated events like big bangs etc., not necessarily personal collections of fics (that’s what the bookmark function is more designed for). So it gives collection owners a lot more privilege over the fics than they should have unless they are intending to use the collection for an event. I have seen authors have hugely popular fics get privated bc they allowed them into collections where the owners didn’t realize that their settings affected the visibility of the fic, which is why I always reject the request!

Why don’t you talk about PJO anymore? Did something big happen?

Nope! Just lost interest and was not enjoying my interactions within the fandom. There was no big dramatic event that made me leave. If anything, it was just a lot of small things over a long period of time that were making me unhappy. When I turned the comments off on most of my PJO fics, I realized I was a lot happier and less stressed out and that made me realize it was better for me to just not interact with the fandom anymore.

Why don't you answer asks about PJO?

90% of the questions I get are answered here, and whenever I answer one it spurs a bunch of people sending more asks with basically the same questions and it's just a mess. I just ask everyone to respect the fact that I don't really want to talk about it anymore.

Do you hate PJO now?

No. I’m still proud of the fics I wrote for PJO but I’m not interested in engaging with the fandom anymore for the above reasons.

Are you ever going to write for PJO again?

Carrie and I have some plans for NSWD that we hope to follow through on. That is the only writing I plan to do for the fandom again.

Why is your blog minors DNI?

I’m in my 20s and I write mature and explicit content. I also reblog mature and explicit content. Also I tend to find that minors are on a different vibe than I am (which there is nothing wrong with!) but it’s not the energy I’m trying to engage with on here. Ty for understanding <3

Why didn’t you answer my ask?

It’s possible that you committed one of the cardinal sins of the timelesslords ask box by sending an ask that includes:

your trauma, illnesses, or deep-rooted self worth issues

come-ons or sexual content

over-familiar playful rudeness

disagreements with my harmless subjective opinions

something PJO related

Or I just didn’t have time to answer. Sorry!

[hislittleraincloud]

Would you link any of your other fanfics you’ve written, regardless of fandoms? I’m a big fan and have read everything you’ve written on your Wednesday AO3 account.

If you DM me I can link you to the last "big" fic/s I did in one of my other fandoms. I did one other 'large' fic (not nearly as big as Afterburn though) that is complete and a whole bunch of drabbles (that were much longer than 100 words, but not long enough for a novella... they're kind of like vignettes). I even have it programmed in audio format, for people who can't see. I would like to make it into its own large story some day because it's historical fiction and it would take very little to fix it up so that it's "mine" and mine alone (in fact, it's a rare case where I COULD make it into its own publication, unlike most fan fiction). 🙂 I wanna say it's probably much more well written than Afterburn since it was before the bashing I took. Still trying to get my vocab/rhythm back, and the Miller's Girl fic is helping with that.

My fic on my Harry Potter one is scattered on it and hard to find/I never catalogued it. I don't want to link it partially because my ex is a bit of a stalker. I've been poking back in their periodically, but my part of fandom seems pretty dead/no one I'm following is posting much.

So DM me! And you'll get a link to the piece that people are still reading and about which someone recently-ish (within the last year is recent for this LOL it's turning 10 in July 💀, but I answered them around Halloween) said

...Also, you dunno how your msg made my day. I've been having such a shit fucking day all day, my feet are killing me, I just wanna cry into my overpriced KFC "chickie bickie" (got me some Winnie Black in me rn). Thank you for your readership. I'm glad you like my work. 💕✨

ETA: No need for a DM, I outed myself in one of my next posts.

[olderthannetfic]

Hello! I don't know who else to asks that knows a bit more about ao3 but won't require me to go off anon. I came across this post recently: icantbebotheredsstuff(.)tumblr(.)com/post/681001917886906368 . I don't know much about maintaining sites so I'm not sure if this is true or not so I want a bit of an explanation (or debunking) of it. I block most anti-ao3 people cause they're usually antis and many of them are already spreading this post but I haven't seen anyone say anything against it yet.

--

Ah, what dumbassery will it be this drive season?

Oh, I see: it's the nitpick the financial reports genre.

If you haven't seen these, they pop up every 6 months and are the more faux-reasonable end of the anti-ao3 posts. People make them because combing through old tax reports to argue about what some particular dollar amount means is tedious, so they don't get thoroughly debunked. In other words, they're sealioning.

2014 was when I left the org because it was too time consuming and I had personal life shit going on. As I recall, it was a fairly wanky period with much worse management than now, and plenty of ex staff had beef, both justified and not. I'm not surprised someone left a salty review, but also... it's 2022, and the org has been through major upheavals since then.

"with how ao3 hasn’t exactly updated their site in a major way in the better half of a decade and the fans over inflate server costs, that extra money has to be going somewhere."

LOL.

That right there should be enough to tell you this person is an idiot. Sites shouldn't be updating in a visibly major way. If they do that, it means they're making a fucking mess like all the social media redesigns we all hate so much.

"But they haven't updated!" is a favorite anti rallying cry. But all sites experience tech debt. All sites need to constantly change as browsers and server software change. I think some people imagine that code just works forever, but that's not realistic when your code interacts with other people's.

Note: This post was made on a dummy account to protect my identity. I will not be responding to this post on any accounts and just want to make these issues public. AO3 continuously makes more money than it needs and that money could be better spent supporting minorities. Have a nice day.

This is also telling. Someone who knew their shit and who wasn't just angry that we're donating to AO3 instead of to them would suggest another nonprofit with similar aims of preservation, free speech, and supporting the arts.

I have no idea what the $13k is. That amount is nothing. It could just be the expenses from an in-person board meeting. I remember the first time we had one of those, and people were beside themselves about how ever meeting in person (like all normal orgs do and like massively helps your online working relationship) was a tasteless luxury. (Never mind that we picked a spot where two board members already lived and housed everybody else in a shitty motel to keep costs down.) The second time, the most suspect expense was the plane ticket from Turkey. Why Can't The Non-American Just Stay Home was the message. Gross.

--

The biggest fallacy in all of this genre of post (and they pop up anew every year) is that AO3 made its drive goals, so it has "enough".

AO3's initial drive goals are always some lowball nonsense designed to make us feel good when we blow past it.

AO3 ought to be expanding to protect fan art more. AO3 ought to have some paid staff because of how this helps with longevity and not putting an unfair burden on volunteers. There are a lot of things AO3 could do if it had more person hours (which are generally more of a problem than cash for hardware).

AO3 has "enough" to keep the site open, yes. That doesn't mean it should stop there. That's what you do if you're running an archive yourself and you ask users to pay you back hosting costs. It's not what an arts organization does.

[luna-rainbow]

There are general elections happening in my country(Brasil) and one of the candidates suggested building an algorithm to predict crimes and stop them from happening and I was just like "Where have I seen that?" And then I remembered where I have seen that and I was like "Oh shit".

You know when I say that it's funny that life imitates art I definitely did not mean that.

Sorry this is random i just felt that I needed to share this with someone.

Thanks for dropping in Nonnie!

I have to say one of the main reasons CATWS really resonated with me (before I ever shipped Stucky or even liked Steve and Bucky much) was that particular theme.

The Chinese communist party has been trying to do this for years. Surveillance of citizens is baked into the party’s DNA from the Cultural Revolution in the 60s, where people were encouraged to monitor each other’s behaviours and report on anything “anti-revolutionary”. Unsurprisingly it led to many spiteful private disagreements turning into public spectacles of humiliation, ostracisation and executions. But from a CCP point of view, the deaths were a small price for “security” and "stability" (oh gee…that’s sounds familiar).

Technology has made this easier in so many aspects. The tools are widespread and unexpected. For example, a lot of the Chinese apps I have on my phone will load data from other apps. A lot of them also demand your hand over your real identity. For example, the JJWXC app (which I haven’t used in a while) is simply for a site that hosts a lot of original fiction (a bit like AO3), including lots of danmei, but asks that you verify your account with a real phone number. It also does this strange thing where if I open it up, iPhone will give me a notification that the app has pasted something from another app I had recently open, usually Facebook or Safari or some other social media site, even when I have NOT copied anything to clipboard. Why would a site that for all intents and purpose function like (a heavily censored) AO3 do this? Or several of the other game apps? And it only happens for Chinese apps. I don't use Tik Tok, but there's been significant concerns about what that app is collecting in terms of user data.

Phone apps give the CCP tremendous amount of data about your location (and where you stop for longer periods of the day, which allows tech companies to accurately pinpoint where your home and work/school is), which users you interact more with, how frequently or freely (and where) you spend your cash, which allows them to rapidly profile your demographic and your preferences as well as your network of people who are important to you (READ: for blackmail or extortion). Depending on the app (e.g. if you use Weibo or Wechat) there's a high chance that specific word combinations will trigger a ban, and your chat history is probably going to be stored remotely for someone to comb through. Overseas Chinese speakers famously use a string of banned words to get rid of spammers social media apps, because as soon as "sensitive words" like "64" (referring to the June 4th massacres) or "Tibetan/Taiwan/HK independence", they get kicked off the internet by their servers.

But phone apps are only the tip of the iceberg. The CCP has set up an extensive CCTV network with the technology to collect facial recognition data (I get the sense a lot of countries are quietly setting this up though) that is able to profile people into age groups and races, as well as matching them to known criminals...which might sound like a useful thing until you remember that you can very much be a political criminal by simply not agreeing with the CCP.

There's been plenty of cases where Chinese diaspora's families inside China get detained by the police for them being vocal on the international front about human rights or other political issues going on inside China. A Chinese person with a strong moral principle would not be shut down by threats to their lives, but a Chinese person whose elderly parents or vulnerable nieces and nephews are threatened may not be able to stand up against the thousands of years of filial duty and say they're still willing to step out there in the public, at the risk of damaging their family's careers or even lives.

So yes...when I say CATWS was probably the bravest the MCU has ever been...this is what I'm referring to. But the CCP wouldn't be the only government pouring resources into something like this.

[zingaplanet]

it’s incredibly creepy to ship real people you don’t even know irl, and doubly creepy to describe their relationships as “canon” as though they’re characters and not actual real people?? literally why just ship fictional characters its not that hard 😭

Hmm ok RPF debates have been ongoing since forever and I absolutely agree that there's a fundamental ethical line in it that CAN NEVER BE CROSSED. Like I absolutely cringe when ppl show the actual people their fanworks of them being shipped with someone else. As well as if fans lost sight of reality and they actually started believing their own stuffs, and even worse, TARGET their supposed significant others, this happened so many times and it's such a toxic culture because it harms so many people and hurt their personal lives.

But on the other hand, I also don't believe that people should be punished for, in its most basic form, basically 'hoping' and 'rooting' for certain people to be together. The thing with RPF is, I think the morale boundary is firm that we only imagine said RP in the capacity of its 'public persona', that is, what they have WILLINGLY shred with us in the context of what they're known in the public for, if they're perhaps an actor, an athlete, etc. My interpretation of someone that I might ship in RPF is exactly only from the media that they operate in, their interviews, their performances, etc, or basically what THEY PRESENT THEMSELVES TO THE PUBLIC, (how they are as a tennis player in the tennis world, as a footballer in the football sphere, as an actor in showbiz, etc).

Precisely because we have NO IDEA what their personal lives look like, nor is it our business, that I believe give RPF a little bit of breathing room. Because the part that is 'fictionalised' so to say is the part of them understood to us SUBJECTIVELY through the medium of our social media, press, television, etc. We can never know what they're really like in real life and we only have access to one section of their world, not the others. In a sense, RPF can also be seen simply as another perspective of interpretation, of this 'public persona'. I believe that the way certain people present themselves in media allow multitudes of understandings, rhetorics, and explanations to be made just as with ANY MEDIA CONTENT, without all of them necessarily being true, or even false.

In this context, I believe it'd be wrong to say that there's no element of fiction in it whatsoever either. Because, as much as we'd like to believe it and stay within the moral safe zone, I don't think fictional works are that safe either. A LOT of fictional works are actually based on real people, and a lot of the romance stories or movies you consumed took major part of their inspiration from REAL LIFE events. The difference is, of course, they adopted this persona under a different name, a given fictional name that the writers gave us. For instance, even Holmes and Watson are based on real people and most of the greatest work of fiction has a large chunk of reality rooted in it.

This also answers why RPF is appealing, because in essence, I believebhumans might love dreaming and hoping, but they crave even more to know that there's an element of truth in it, that this story is embedded in reality and that it can also happen to us. Isn't that the whole attractice premises of biopic movies/ historical fictions?

Bottom line is, I think it's frankly hypocritical to morally discredit people who might want to indulge in a different version of reality, albeit if they didn't hide it behind the jargons of fictional names and places. What I think is critical, however and I agree with you here, is that the separation between fiction and reality ALWAYS needs to stay clear, and we need to respect their privacy in parts of their lives that they don't share to the public, but that's precisely why we have safety measures in fanworks, the locked accounts in AO3, how certain posts are restricted etc.

In layman's term, anon, I give you the example of Rick Astley. When rick-rolling became viral, he initially becane really depressed about people mocking him (which in context might even be more horrible than aggressively hoping he ended up with someone else lol as people literally make him the butt of a joke for a decade). But years later, he's come to terms with it and now fully embraces it, singing 'never gonna give you up' to full stadiums, joking about it, even doing a parody of it and generally having a blast reminiscing his youth.

In his own words, he said, "I finally understood that it might be me in all those videos, but it was never actually about me."

I suggest you watch his interview here, he really has some great insights on what it means for the public to 'fictionalise' your real persona and image

[mtreebeardiles]

The Paths You Take Update

Holy updates, Batman!

Here's to hoping the next few don't fight me as hard as this one did

Chapter on AO3!

Patience was Reyes's strong suit, but even he had his limits. 

Watching the Tempest take off from the Nexus, leaving him behind, not knowing how things were going to pan out with so many unknowns to account for was hitting those limits pretty hard. 

"You sure you can't come with me?"

"I'm not built for that sort of work, Scott."

An unfortunate truth, insofar as there being other things Reyes was better suited to handle in Scott's absence. Fighting up close and personal wasn't impossible for him, far from it, but he knew his strengths and the sorts of battles Scott tended to find where not in his wheelhouse.

A ship fight, now, maybe we could have worked with that. Reyes was a pilot, a scout, a sneak; he just wasn’t built for the frontlines like Scott was.

Their paths were set before them and maybe they needed to diverge a little but if all went well they'd intersect again sooner rather than later.

"Just try not to get caught, yeah?"

"I could say the same to you."

Reyes wondered if Alec Ryder ever imagined two of his inventions would be utilized for operations directly against the Andromeda Initiative.

He was using the first as he walked away from the docking bay, maneuvering through the milling throngs of people like a ghost. Unseen, unheard, the tactical cloak Scott had gifted to him so far and beyond what he was used to. Sound dampening technology, a longer activation mode than even the nicest blackmarket equivalents Reyes had encountered back home, and it nestled so nicely into his existing shields that rerouting power from one to the other was seamless.

He wondered, not for the first time, what the Alliance had been thinking when they cut Alec Ryder loose.

Someone with his skills, combined with his wife's work…wonder if black ops had ever been an option.

Wondered, too, how he'd managed to sneak his supposedly deceased wife onto the Ark without anyone the wiser. 

So many mysteries, more than Reyes would've considered, before, but Scott's flashbacks raised some interesting questions. Who was the Benefactor, the power and money behind the entire Initiative? Were they still alive, or had they died in the Scourge disaster?

Why hide?

As someone who hid himself, Reyes wasn't sure he liked the possible implications. Wealth did something to people, no matter what species, and he had no doubts whoever was behind the Initiative had more than enough to spare. Whoever they were, whatever they were up to behind the scenes, the fragments of Alec Ryder's memories suggested the man hadn't trusted the Benefactor at all. 

But is that instinct, or is it based on something tangible? Another flare of frustration, and Reyes found himself once again cursing the elder Ryder for playing his own set of games with his son's implant. Locked away until certain conditions were met, what these were and when notwithstanding, all but guaranteeing a fresh onslaught of disorientation, grief, confusion… 

Focus. 

His dislike for a man several months dead was not helpful, not when there was work to do. 

He slipped into Operations with a gaggle of workers, the floorplan fixed in his mind's eye as he made his way to each of the locations he'd worked out with SAM. Trigger points, areas where the networks fed data to one another, public and private and Reyes was determined to capture as much of them as he could -- in time, anyway. If this Benefactor was clever enough to pull so many strings and never have so much as a whisper of their true identity slip, Reyes was willing to bet hacking into the Nexus wasn't going to be as easy as hacking through Sloane's networks back on Kadara. 

He needed to go slowly, carefully, let the virus he and SAM had written do its work in the background.

Patience had always served him well, after all.

[elfwreck]

Honestly the only things I’d change about AO3 would just be a better block feature —- good for filtering out authors who write fics with a million tags you don’t care about but end up cluttering the search screen—-as well as good for “this author has fetishistic/demeaning writing qualities I find untasteful if not offensive” as well as a flagging(?)/“user recommended tags” feature that could be turned on or off by the reader. Tags should ultimately be the decision of the writer—-sometimes some things deserve to be kept private/as twists, sometimes the author favors the aesthetics of a shorter (but accurate) tag list—-but readers should still be allowed to determine if they want to risk reading something where they don’t know “if the dog dies”.

That way it would also be harder for trolls to spam LGBT/POC content because readers would always have the original tags to fall back on as well as the ability to turn off user suggested tags from their view. Most people favor fanfiction about characters and fandoms they know well so a “anti white” or “groomer” tag suggestion on something like a M “Our flag means death” or G “Steven universe” fanfiction looks fake from a million miles away , but a “car crash tw” suggestion would obviously be a more useful or “real” suggestion since “car crash tw” is easily something an author could overlook including and isn’t a tag that too many people would try to avoid (many might find it useful in helping them avoid their triggers but it’s also not going to yank an author or their fic so it would be a weird/bad way to try and troll someone with)

Also maybe an account-wide tag block? So you don’t have to fill out the “tags to exclude” for triggering content every single time.

They're working on better block & mute features. There are some workarounds right now with custom site skins:

Right now, if users want to suggest tags, they can make bookmarks, and they can make a collection to put those bookmarks in. Unfortunately, collections are clunky and bookmark features are limited - they'd need to promote the collection offsite. But they could go through their fandom of choice, bookmark everything and attach the appropriate tags to the bookmarks if they're not in the original.

There is never going to be a "suggest these tags to the author/other readers" feature more direct than that, because there is no way that doesn't turn into a mud-slinging toxic wankfest. People who are worried about "does the dog die?" will need to ask friends to check the works in advance, or talk with the author if they have a public presence somewhere. (Some authors won't answer anyway.)

The problems are not people adding "racist fic" or "groomer Rose Quartz" to fanfics. (I mean, those are potential problems, but those are not the real problem.) The real problem is: Someone decides X author is a Bad Person, and tags all of their works with pedophile, nazi, child abuser, rapist, illiterate grade-school dropout, ugly and fat, only sluts read this, and a swarm of other slurs based on whatever's trendy to hate this year.

The first thing to consider with any new potential feature is: How could someone with absolutely no goodwill use this to try to hurt people?

And what measures would need to be taken to mitigate that?

Right now, someone could add all of that to bookmarks. But bookmarks don't show up on a toggle-switch next to the work's author-made tags. You have to look for them. If they got really bad, the Abuse Team might force the bookmarks to be set to Private (I have no idea if they can do that); they don't have to remove them or argue about the accuracy of the tags in order to keep them from harassing the author or other readers.

A whole new category of tags, visible at the top of the work, would be a new special nightmare.

...But they're working on better block features, and mute features, and I'm hoping there'll someday be "save my search settings" so I don't have to keep excluding A/B/O fics every time I go looking for a new pairing.