#I'm not really gonna tag this as any fandom

[feyd-meowtha]

@middlingmay's Fic Rec Questions

I saw this list and thought it would be fun to give it a go!!

1) Fic that's made you laugh the most

He May Be The Reason by @c-goldthorn. It's a Clegan Notting Hill au and it makes me squeal with delight. So cute that I got distracted while reading it and missed my stop on the train.

2) A fic that made you cry

my kingdom for a kiss upon your shoulder by pillar of our community @swifty-fox. I'm sure most ppl have probably read this one but it's such an amazing post-show continuation that really doesn't pull it's punches when it comes to both PTSD and the realities of being gay in the 40s

3) Fave comfort, silly fic

It's a little rogue but I'm gonna say Awake, Alive by the wonderful @whirlpool-blogs. It's a pet sematary au so not exactly what you would call traditionally comforting but the ending makes me so happy and the whole thing is just a joy. The fact that this came to mind when I thought 'comfort fic' is probably pretty telling about me as a person....

4) The fic that made you try a genre or trope that you don't usually read

This is also a bit rogue but it was tricky since I'll read anything, so I'll go with Strings of the Strings of Life by the lovely @weimarweekly, not because of any of the content but because I don't, as a general rule, read Dune fic that was written after Dune 2 released. I've bored everyone to tears with my complaints about that version of Feyd but it is what it is so I tend not to like any fics written about that version of the character BUT the prospect of a feydpaul Berlin techno au was too delicious to resist and the whole fic is so fun. It makes me miss Germany sooo bad.

5) An author who has inspired your own fic writing

This one has got to go to the anonymous author of both Close And Yet Closer and The Replacement. Both of these fics are god tier and their character psychology and willingness to allow their versions of the characters and relationships to be ugly and messy are so inspiring to me. They were also the first person in the John/Hausman tag on ao3 which is currently just me and them. I think about the replacement all the time and it was a HUGE influence on 3am Eternal. If I can ever write half as well as them I will die happy.

6) What are your fave underdog authors? Those that you feel are underappreciated and deserve a bit more love

Hmmm, this is kinda hard cus the MOTA fandom is pretty small so I feel like a lot of stuff gets decent buzz. Imma shout out @whirlpool-blogs again and especially their fucked up clegans fics, I have read and reread all of their works and they're always so so good. I will also add @steeseman for Up In Our Bedroom. It's another great post-canon fic and while it has a lot of hits, I don't think I've seen anyone talking about it on here.

7) What's one thing you wish writers/readers did more of when it comes to fanfiction.

The obvious one is comment, it really does make my day when I get a nice comment, even just a couple words or an emoji mean a lot. The other thing I would say is writing curt/Kenny fic, there's not much out there and I want more please. Also more fics where characters relationships are like genuinely kind of fucked up and toxic. I love that shit.

8) What's one thing you wish writers/readers did less of when it comes to fanfiction.

Oh man, I really do not know. The only thing I can think of is that I hate the word 'yap' or 'yapping' so if I see it in a fic I shudder. Hmmmm, I guess I also wish that there was a little more consideration when writing Gale's dad as an alcoholic because it's often treated as the basis for him being a shitty person. Addicts aren't automatically bad people and I sometimes feel like it's portrayed that way. @blixabargelds wrote an excellent post on this

9) I'm adding an extra one and that is current WIPs I am reading

Sympathy For The Devil by @blixabargelds, it's a modern ghost hunting AU and the set up is AMAZING. I will also throw Superstar in here even though it's not releasing main story chapters yet, everything Frankie writes is so tailored to my personal tastes it's crazy and I am so excited to read @mildharm's John POV chapters too. Literally foaming at the mouth thinking about it rn. When it starts being released fully, I fear it may kill me.

Love Song From A Dog and The Heart Is A Muscle by @swifty-fox. I've only just started THIAM but I'm so hyped for their take on the tattoo shop/flower shop au.

Hit Me Where The Heart Is by @london-cowboy makes me legitimately insane. I jump for joy whenever there is a new update, these versions of the characters and their stories are, as Paris Hilton would say, beyond. I do not have the words to say how much I am loving this fic. The characters and setting feel so real and it's just so creative. AMAZING.

I need to get around to starting let us not desert one another; we are an injured body and also the time skip fic whose name escapes me by @irregularcollapse and also catching up with @weimarweekly's rodeo fic, Looking For Eight

Writing this was very fun and I encourage anyone reading to give it a go if they fancy it!!

[tizeline]

Now that 2024 is coming to a close:

1) Of everything you've made this year, which ones are you the most proud of?

2) What are a few of your favorite things (art, comics, fics, etc) that someone else has made this past year?

Ooo fun ask!

1 - So in general I'm just really happy with how the entire Separated AU developed throughout the year! I created it almost exactly a year ago now (the anniversary is on the december 26th btw, might have something planned for that). And I've mentioned it before but I really wasn't planning on developing into a proper story originally, I thought of the basic concept one day and thought it was neat so I just wanted to put it out there. So I made a SINGULAR post and that was all I initially planned to do, but then I came up with more and more ideas and before I knew it the AU got fucking SECOND PLACE IN THE TMNT AU COMPETETION!? HELLO?? Yeah turns out people like my silly little AU, to this day I'm constantly blown away with all the positivity I recieve from this fandom and it means the world to me ueueueu 😭💕

I've made quite a few TSAU comics over the year, but the first TSAU comic I made that was longer than just a page or so was the Cell Talk comic and it still holds a special place in my heart for that reason. (Also it's where the whole bit about TSAU!Leo being a huge Shadow fanboy originated from so that's awesome)

There's also a certain project I've participated in and made art for that I'm really excited to show you guys, but I'm not really supposed to talk about that yet so uhhhhhh 🤫 you guys are just gonna have to wait for that one lol. Either way, I'm proud of myself for being being part of that :D

2 - OKAY ENOUGH ABOUT ME, time to give some other people the spotlight!!

First of all, special shout out to anyone who has made fanart of my AU, I love love LOVE you so much!!! 💕

The art that the other participants of the tmnt fashion competition made was also absolutely amazing, that event was so fun!! Kat especially, she totally deserved that win her art was so good!

I've been a fan of the Empyrean Weeping AU by cupcakeslushie for a while now, but it's just been getting better and better, the recent comics for the AU have really been absolutely fantastic, I adore the art and story!!

I've been absolutely obsessed with The Canary Continuity fic series by qolden recently it's driving me insane. Donnie is one of my favorite characters ever which means that of course like any normal person I love seeing him suffer! :D I was actually a bit worried that the story was gonna be a bit too angsty for me when I read the tags, but turns out it was just the right amount angst for me, and also it's gonna get a happy ending which is great, so yeah I'm having an absolute blast reading it!

[fereldanwench]

I think I'm just about done with my impromptu blog clean-up! I'm still sorting some tagging systems out, but I've got the fandom and personal stuff squared away at the very least, which was where I really wanted a little refresh.

For those who are also organizational enthusiasts, these are a few of the tools and methods I used to make it a little easier to sort through over 25,000 posts accumulated over about 8 years. One major caveat is that most of these have to be used on a PC browser.

Tumblr Tools

Your Tumblr Mass Post Editor This is Tumblr's native mass post editor; the link is on the right-hand sidebar on your blog page (right under settings). It's very limited without any extensions, but you can do some batch actions like deleting a ton of posts or changing tags.

Your Tumblr Blog Archive This looks very similar to the post editor, but you can actually narrow down the posts by tag, which is super helpful. You can access this by going to your blog.tumblr.com/archive (e.g. fereldanwench.tumblr.com) but you must have custom themes enabled to view it (you can find that under your blog settings).

Tumblr Secret URLs Okay, they're not that secret, but they aren't readily accessible anywhere either and you have to manually enter them. There's a list here with the most helpful ones.

External Tools

Tumblr Tag List Generator This web tool will let you generate a list of the tags it can find on your blog. It's not 100% accurate--The "tags to exclude" option never seems to work for me, and it does miss stuff--But I love using this to find posts with random tags or tagged with a typo.

Tag Replacer There are a few different tag-replacing tools out there, but I like this one a lot because it'll let you play with different combinations of tags to delete, replace, or amend. For instance, I wanted to separate my community OC tags from just "other's ocs" and organize them by fandom: with this tool, I was able to search for posts that had both "g: cyberpunk 2077" and "other's ocs" and then I could replace those tags with "g: cyberpunk 2077" and "ocs: cyberpunk 2077" without replacing all the posts that also had "other's ocs."

Xkit Rewritten & New Xkit Browser Extensions These are increasingly less reliable without regular updates, and you can't even get New Xkit on some browsers right now because it's been flagged as a security risk (so obviously, use it with caution). Xkit Rewritten has a mass private tool for posts, and New Xkit adds a tag search in the native mass post editor--It's pretty glitchy and limited, but it helps.

And I'm just gonna drop some deets under the cut about my housekeeping because it's interesting to me:

I made this blog in March 2016; it was my 3rd or 4th account remake since first joining Tumblr in 2010.

(Tangent: 2 of my remakes in 2013 and 2015 were actually because I didn't like having as many followers as I had, lmao. This account has well surpassed those numbers, but Tumblr doesn't have as many active users as it used to, so it doesn't feel as daunting.)

I did not record the exact number of posts I had before I started purging, but it was around 25,000.

It's now down to 16,947!

Most of the stuff I deleted were TV and movie gifsets and non-fandom artwork, but I also purged a lot of fandom posts that no longer sparked joy. I did get a little overwhelmed for some months because there were so many posts and I know I probably removed stuff I would have preferred to keep.

Although seeing some stuff brought on Bad Feels, I also got a huge surge of inspiration diving through my archive, which is great, because that's exactly what I want out of my space.

Cyberpunk OCs absolutely dominated my OC tag--I ended with about 2700 posts for other folks' CP77 OCs. Dragon Age was next with about 800 posts.

One thing I would like to be more conscious of is minimizing reblogging art from "curator" blogs and finding more artists who are actively posting on Tumblr to support. I don't mind the curation blogs as long as they're sourcing the artist, but I'd just rather give love to the folks who are actually here.

My quietest year was 2019, likely due to a combination of a lot of people leaving after the great tiddy purge and getting more into Twitch and by extension Twitter.

April 2019 was my quietest month, which had 3 posts!!!! 3 posts!!! I post like 4x that amount in a day, lmao.

The Outer Worlds coming out at the end of 2019 brought me out of my semi-hiatus.

Not sure exactly what was my most active year/month, but I'd guess either 2022 or 2023. I do vaguely remember going from about 8000 posts in the middle of 2021 to feeling like that practically doubled by 2022. Cyberpunk really got me using this space again (to the point of my own mental and emotional detriment in some cases, but I got better, lmao).

[sunnydayzed]

Working on a fic and i keep wanting to post an excerpt

Some characters working through some feelings together.

I wanna eventually start posting the fic to ao3, but i wanna get together the first five chapters together and beta read.

btw, Alastor is my self insert

"Look, I- I just…" Alastor paused, rubbing his shoulder in a self soothing gesture, looking away from Leo. "I don't know what you want. To gloat? I've been trying to make it clear I've given up. Why come back if all you're interested in is hurting me?"

Leo froze at that, looking down at the man in front of him. Alastor flattened his ears, balling his fists and staring at the ground as the silence dragged on.

"You know, I tried for a really, really long time to figure out what I did that made you hate me. Was it something I said? Something of my past that reminded you of her? Was I not good enough?"

He laughed, though it was high pitched, nervous energy bleeding into empty giggles as Alastor hid his face in his hands. "It took me a really long time to accept I'd probably never be good enough for you." Alastor continued, mirth gone as he frowned, going silent. The words hung between them for several seconds, heavy with meaning, Alastors breathing becoming more shaky as he waited.

Finally, Leo spoke up, his tongue heavy in his mouth with the unfamiliar and uncomfortable words. "I… apologize."

"Oh." Alastor seemed surprised by Leo's statement, stuttering for a few seconds. "...I don't know why you're apologizing." Alastor shifted his weight, his shoulders tensing like he was preparing to fight, but wasn't ready to try attacking Leo just yet.

Leo couldn't help wondering how often this had played through Alastor's head over the years. But as he considered his next words, Leo came to a realization. It felt like someone had just pulled a layer of cloth away from his eyes, leaving details of the scene in stark clarity. Alastor's pose wasn't hostile, it was scared. Defensive, even.

Suddenly the headache, the anxiety, his hands shaking even after Leo had crossed his arms to try and steady himself. It all made a horrid amount of sense. It wasn't his feelings, after all. It was so easy to just forget Alastor could radiate his feelings onto others, like how Lukas could project his thoughts and opinions to anyone nearby, should he choose to.

But it also meant that Alastor was currently terrified of him, and it sent Leo's non-existent stomach turning in knots, feeling like he was back in an all too familiar situation, although this time, on the opposite side he once took up. It took him a few moments to find the words to use, inhaling needlessly to ground himself before speaking them out loud.

"Hey, I'm sorry." He offered, not knowing what else to say, and instead reached out, intending to cradle Alastor's head in his hands, only to freeze as the dragon hybrid flinched away, as if expecting Leo to hit him. Leo froze, that feeling returning swiftly and while he understood why, Alastor's reaction had hurt.

"...Do you want me to leave?" Leo asked after a pause, his voice unusually quiet over Alastor's ragged breathing. There was a moment when neither one of them spoke, Leo watching his every reaction, sure that if he still needed to breathe, he would have suffocated at this point.

"...No." Came Alastor's soft, breathy response, the dragon hybrid's eyes flickering from left to right, darting around wildly. His wings shifted slightly in agitation – they were still tucked closely against his sides, his tail tucked between his legs, though he was starting to stand back up. "...I don't think I can be alone right now."

"How about this…" Leo paused, an idea running through his head, despite Lukas's warning of it being a bad idea. "Just for a little bit… You can do anything to me you want." Leo hesitated, holding out his arms in invitation as he forced down his near overwhelming anxiety to speak again "No consequences."

Alastor paused, staring at him now, his expression wary, and boarding on what Leo could only assume is hurt. "...No consequences?" Alastor asked, after a moment, slowly straightening up fully, his tail swishing against the marble floor, catching on the sitting area rug.

"No consequences." Leo repeated, assuring him, and internally preparing himself as Alastor approached him, looking unsure about himself as he reached out, pushing Leo into the sitting couch behind the god of night.

He was glad he didn't have to breathe, or else the wind would have been knocked out of him with the poor way he handled the fall. By the time he'd recovered, Alastor had crawled onto the couch next to him, and seemed to be judging his reaction before...

Curling up on Leo's chest, white wings wrapping around the ghost's torso like a larger, softer hug as his mind reeled for a moment- He hadn't expected this. If anything, he'd expected rage, hatred, a fight. But instead the dragon hybrid seemed to instead take the chance for physical affection, his face buried in the god of night's mane.

Leo lay there, for a long moment, before finally raising a hand, placing it on top of Alastor's head, and feeling the smaller male flinch with his full body, but not pull away. Feeling like he could continue to press ahead, Leo gently began to pet Alastor's head, slowly feeling him relax with the affection.

"You don't know how long I've wanted to do this." Alastor finally spoke up, his voice muffled by Leo's mane. "And part of me is mad because of it. Mostly because..." Alastor hesitated for a moment before he pulled back, and looked up at Leo with large golden eyes, a small frown pulling down one side of his mouth as he shook his head. "Like… Imagine if your bonded denied you any connection with them. Treated you as if you were nothing more than an insect that'd stain their shoe. Compared you to their abuser. All on assumptions they'd made about you."

Alastor stopped, taking several breaths as he tried to calm down, finally continuing once he'd blinked back the tears threatening to form. "And then they only start to care about you when it's revealed you have some kind of connection with them. Not when you were fighting for your life. Not when you were suffering. No, they only care about you when you have value to them. When their reputation is at stake with you. It's just..."

Alastor took another shaky breath, seeming to curl even tighter into Leo's chest. "The fact that they are bound to you doesn't seem to bother them much as much as what other people think about them, you know?"

Leo shifted, moving from half flopped across the couch to laying down properly, giving Alastor a more steady surface to curl up on his chest. "Is that how you feel we've treated you?" He asked, as Alastor's ears pinned back, the hybrid going silent. "Do you feel that we've belittled you? Do you think it's true that my bondmates haven't thought about you enough, and that the fact that you don't receive their care isn't an issue for them?"

For a moment, Alastor remained silent. Then he nodded hesitantly, and wrapped his tail tight around Leo's waist, nuzzling into the space where Leo's neck would be beneath his mane. He didn't say anything, so Leo decided to keep talking. "...How about I promise never to treat you like that anymore?" He said softly, as Alastor nodded again. "Okay? And that's a promise."

Alastor didn't respond immediately, so Leo gave him some time to collect himself. "...Alright." Alastor eventually responded, sounding reluctant, and he looked up at Leo, eyes bright with gratitude, "Thank you."

[myimaginationplain]

I've come to the conclusion that being assigned the fandom-mandated "sunshine character" is the worst possible fate a character could face

[aprilblossomgirl]

# mood 1 + mood 2 (basically)

[shima-draws]

The real reason I posted palettes...LOL

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner so you know what time it is. Send me a ship and a pose and a palette and I’ll draw them probably maybe <3

(Original Valentines art prompts by @/a-moop, palette challenge by me!)

Please read the tags thoroughly for fandoms I will accept prompts for!

[pekoeboo]

just thinking again (based on some of this blog's activity)... I felt it was probably worth saying that if you've followed me for Nicktoons Unite or Danny Phantom content, please don't be expecting any more. I have no plans to ever draw it again and while I've tried to be appreciative of the fact that ppl still seem to like that content, it does make me sad that that's the only thing that still gets the most attention on this blog even tho I want nothing to do with it anymore 😔

obviously I'd love if I was only known for my OC content but I know that's not how the internet works, lol. I'm trying my best but judging by the constant influx of activity just for Nicktoons and DP (and the fact that all of the blogs recommended on this blog are phandom-related and have been for 6 freaking years 😭), it seems like I'll never escape that being the only thing most of tumblr associates this blog with. wahhh

anyway. just letting y'all know that like. if you've been following me for a while with the expectation of someday seeing new art within those fandoms, you might as well look elsewhere because I'll just disappoint you ><;; rip

[mileymint]

What if I made a Dandy's World OC. What then huh

[marshmallowloves]

Oh you hate canonically strongly hinted at ships and say "there's nothing" because you're a complete retard who thinks you can date a fictional character who isn't real lmao. Classic. Please wake up to reality sometime kiddo <3

buddy this is a selfshipping blog I started almost six years ago. if you're gonna come to the circus and complain that there's a clown here then you're a little late to the party I think

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I fucking HATE how the fandom treats m.ine. it's so bad 😭

[famewolf]

I'm gonna be a little quiet on here until after I start playing Dragon Age. I don't want to be spoiled and the urge to click on posts that have DA tags blacklisted is mounting. And just like with Inquisition, I want to go in totally blind.

[makerofmadness]

ok I don't normally make posts like this but this like just happened and while I blocked the person I think more people should be aware:

So this person was following me and reblogged something from me (a post by a mutual expressing annoyance at people for making statements about the fnaf lore ending at certain points), and in the tags insulted the people the post was referring to by calling them pedos

Obviously this is a bit extreme since there's literally no correlation whatsoever and throwing around terms like that at people they do not apply to only weakens the power of those words when they get used toward someone who is actually the kind of monster they describe. (Also I know as someone with OCD that when I feel like someone is validating my intrusive thoughts it makes them worse. And POCD is a thing. So yeah this person's behavior really has the potential to cause serious mental harm for innocent people)

So, I tried to be civil by privately messaging this person. The following exchange is what occurred:

I took these screenshots at different points 'Cus I could kinda predict where this was going to go. This person started adding publicly in the reblogs on that post screenshots of our messages acting as if I was looking suspicious.... for just trying to be reasonable.

That person also @'ed me questioning why I wasn't responding to these public reblogs. The answer is that I wasn't looking at my notifications and also didn't want to make a scene on people's dashboards, 'cus this stuff really didn't need to be public.

To my knowledge this person is actually a victim too (at least from what little I observed of the blog that's what I managed to get), which makes this behavior even more baffling to me.

Don't engage with this person. I am not trying to call a harassment campaign (genuinely I've been harassed in the past and it's terrible), all I'm asking is for people to block and ignore, and to be wary of you get any messages from this person.

[halohalona]

so, uh, idk how to say this since this is a tricky topic... but a week ago, i came across a Pearce Joza/Matt Cornett smutty fanfic, and it was just.... it felt wrong on so many levels. I didn't read it fully. I just skimmed through it. I should not have let curiousity get the best of me.

that's it.. i don't want to get into the topic of RPFs and I just hope that the two actors involved won't ever see that fic for their sake.

[bluehairperson]

I don’t want to start drama but I’ve seen some concerning posts floating around about how distasteful and disappointing it is to see certain creators “support” Dorian and I hate to break it to you guys, but if you’ve ever interacted, shared or created anything regarding The Arcana you are supporting Dorian yourselves.

Being in the fandom alone is supporting Dorian by creating engagement, publicizing the game and being part of the audience they’re trying to target.

And even if you were to delete your whole blog and everything you’ve ever posted to enjoy the original game in private you would still be supporting Dorian by bringing traffic to the app they now own.

The one and only way you have to stop supporting Dorian, if you care about it so much, would be to distance yourself from the series entirely and go join another fandom. Never play the original game ever again and never interact with any fan creation regarding it from now on. 👋

[familyofpaladins]

now that monkie kid season 4 is all out now completely, my brain is bebopping between deciding which media to focus on, so help me decide which I should do (first?)