#added my reply to a commenter

[chloesimaginationthings]

sorry if you’ve already been asked, but what’s your favorite FNaF game?

I’m a “Pizza Simulator” truther, it’s just the best one, though I’ll be honest “Help wanted 2” has really risen through the ranks for me, its probably my second favourite (that might update if the DLC pops off)

Sister location and FNAF 2 are close behind, they were OG faves

[thestarseersystem]

Okay I came across this stupid ass opinion not too long ago about someone saying "you have to work towards fusion" and it can't happen "accidentally", this is something I want anyone to answer if they have experience with it. Is that true? Do you agree or disagree? And why?

In my experience, fusion will happen if an alter is unstable and cannot handle being alone/their own part, often right after they leave dormancy, or to integrate memories of some kind. It can kind of happen naturally for those reasons. But I don't think any of us have actively worked towards fusion within therapy (mostly because we have to raw dog trauma processing on our own, and therapy's expensive).

Let me know your experiences and how true any of that is, and let me know if you're a polyfragmented system, if fusions kind of just happened on their own.

[theaxolotl-god]

"Roll call again, I think I missed some ciphers.."

(see if yours has been added!)

[crossbackpoke-check]

the pics of morgan and joel are from travis sanheim's wedding this weekend!

^^^me experiencing the one-two knockout punch of “oh they WERE each other’s wedding date” followed by the realization that sanny finally got married 🥹😭 cheers indeed!!!

[w3llf4ll]

Is anyone else getting what looks like bots/scams asking for comms in dms with a fully empty profile, or asking to message them for one??

[dataframe]

well my emotions have been thoroughly destroyed. i'm going to channel this into my fics now

[cosmogyros]

.

[dndmilf3]

the problem with posts breaking containment from queer and freaky nsfw tumblr is that I am now getting the worlds most confusing replies that I truly have no idea what these people are trying to say

[littlecello]

Lazarus responses all in one place for better readability wahoo

belphegor1982 Holy cow, we really dodged a bullet there. Thank you for the write-up! I hadn't heard of Lazarus at all before. And now I'm very thankful that the fandom still exists and thrives! 💜

WE REALLY DID LOL. You're very welcome, glad to have been of service! And omg I feel the same ahhh! It's made me really appreciate the little space we built for ourselves over all these years 🥹

-

bisexualroger Was lovely to meet you and fern too! 😊 I definitely agree with this. I’m really glad I went for the experience, I’d have been gutted to have missed it, but ultimately yeah the shortcomings (especially with regard to how they handled the politics of the police 😬) mean it’s for the best we never got Lazarus the show. 

AHHH YES!! Seriously you all made my entire day 🥹🥹🥹 And god yeah, I am also genuinely glad to have been there, because the questions and forever-wondering would have killed my fandom-mojo I think. But now it's done the opposite and I am ENERGISED! I want to re-establish the best parts of the fandom as opposed to what we witnessed in that room! Seriously, all those cis-het men laughing so hard at all the bad jokes made me feel so uncomfortable.

-

youstupidplonkIt was so wonderful to meet you!! You’ve put this into words so much more eloquently than I have managed so far. I really do agree that the way they joked about current politics, both in the police and around the climate felt very out of touch. As you’ve said especially because the main demographic keeping this fandom active is young (from what I can tell) liberal people Thank you again for saying hi to us and taking the time to write this wonderful analysis ❤️❤️

LIKEWISE AHHH!! Your outfit was fantastic btw!! And I'm glad you feel my analysis hit the spot - hearing all the laughter around us and stuff made both Fern and me feel really lonely and out of place at times ghfkjgs. We're both really glad we aren't alone with our sentiments 🥹

-

fleurdeneuf oh wow, thank you for sharing all of this! i'm relieved the show won't be happening.

You're welcome!! It would've felt wrong not to do a little report on this, seeing as the event wasn't well advertised and tickets sold out so quickly. We've got to include the whole fandom in this! 💪

-

partywithponies I think it was very shallow as well in that it was almost entirely Life on Mars with barely any Ashes to Ashes to it at all, and coincidentally, Ashes to Ashes isn't as well known overseas. It didn’t feel for the fans, it just felt like what they thought would sell better. Poor Shaz didn't even get a single vague reference the entire event, and Alex, the literal third main character of the franchise, got one passing moment in the entire pilot.

I agree to some extent - they definitely went for what they felt would have the most recognition value. I do however think that they at least set up quite a bit of Alex involvement, seeing as she's the one who hits Sam and Gene in 2024 (or at least it's heavily implied that it's her). As for Shaz, I have to be cynical and say that with Matt and Ashley being old white men... they've probably forgotten about her and/or don't think she's important. Unfortunately.

Either way, I guess we can both agree that it's a good thing Lazarus isn't getting made as a TV show haha!

-

On a personal note, thank you all for your warm reactions to my little report :') I have to admit I was a bit trepidatious about posting it because of my (and our) negative feelings about it, as contrasted to what Fern and I perceived as a really enthusiastic response from the audience that was present... But I see now I needn't have worried. The fandom I remember and love is still here, and I can't thank you all enough for that. 💚

[sonysakura]

Hey, I'm so sorry you went through that with the Big Bang event. I chose not to participate because I remember two of the mods who have been throwing accusations around unfairly, and this spans years. I was hoping that they changed but it's kinda obvious from your experience that they haven't changed at all. It's a shame because they are bringing themselves and their own friends down in the end.

I hope you're doing okay now, and I hope you're not getting any backlash from a small loud corner of the internet. I hope you know that most people side-eye this particular group in fandom, and I hope you know that you're fine and were unfairly treated. This recent puritanical phenomena in fan spaces is getting exhausting and I hope they grow out of it soon.

Ask received on Jul 02, 2024 – 5:25 PM. Context.

I'll admit I didn't know about any previous events. I'm reading the stories a few people left on my post, and I'm horrified. Looks like I didn't even have it the worst!..

And yet. The funny part is that I had my suspicions, too, seeing how these people are either mods or fans of a certain project which posts a lot about how much they disapprove of NSFW or even people writing "wrong" dynamics for Sonadow. I had my suspicions, my intuition was screaming at me, but damn, I wanted a Sonic Big Bang! For years!! And there was nothing in the rules while these people don't usually hesitate to share their views, so I took my shot. Curse me for believing people can be mature and unbiased when organising events "for everyone" 🤷

Thanks for your concern, anon! No backlash for now, and I hope it stays that way 😖 There are people in my notes who seem to be amazed at my bravery and, guys, let me tell ya, I was shaking like a leaf when posting on Monday. And not just because I had a fever I went to sleep prepared for the worst: dozens of hate asks, being blocked by people I follow and by my followers or even my blog being mass-reported into oblivion, hate comments and unsubscriptions on Ao3, being dropped from some of my zines, etc. I went as far as to instruct my server members not to engage if we're raided sdfghjk But nope! The worst I got is a couple of popular artists, who I haven't even been following for a few years now, blocking me, and I'm side-eyeing one of them because bro, I still have your NSFW Sonadow art saved from that time we shared a private server... what are you blocking me about... 👀

But otherwise, this situation in the fandom truly is exhausting. Thank you for your kind words and hey, much strength to both of us 🫂

[lacewise]

YouTube comments remain a cesspool.

[not-poignant]

Hi, Pia! I am thinking of going the same route as you - free chapters on AO3, then Patreon - for my historical m/m romance projects. Could you share a little about your journey, and how did you manage to gain visibility within the originals section of AO3 (I know it's not easy)?

Hi hi!

We've talked a little over at Subscriptions for Authors I think! *waves* :D

Okay firstly, i don't know if any of this is going to be very helpful, because to tl;dr it - I didn't set out to be a professional author when I started this, and I wasn't even trying to be a professional when I started my Patreon (though I did approach it seriously, like I wanted to treat my readers well). I didn't believe I could be one, my impostor syndrome was so epic I literally started an entirely new AO3 account and kept it secret from my main account because I believed all the people being nice to me about my writing were somehow just lying to me because they felt sorry for me.

That's...

That's a whole lot of impostor syndrome insanity. But I've always been pretty honest about having mental illness so....

Re: my journey...

I started out in fanfiction. I started writing Rise of the Guardians fanfiction (a two part serial called From the Darkness We Rise & Into Shadows We Fall) and it went viral (I did not expect this) and I put in several original characters to flesh out the world, because I added a Seelie/Unseelie Court element that wasn't in the original movie or the books.

Two of those original characters had roles as semi-significant ensemble characters. One was a terrible villain who is defeated by the other, who is the Seelie King (also defeated by the main characters of the fic but *coughs* anyway).

I started getting people asking me what was going to happen to those two characters, especially once people found out they had a relationship history together prior to the events in the fanfic. I mostly put those people off - I fully intended to keep just writing fanfiction - until finally I decided to write some fic of those two characters. It was like...revenge hatefucking, lmao. I wrote three chapters of that, and then more, and then finally realised I couldn't give them the tragic ending I'd planned to, and that I'd have to actually figure out how the hell to save them from their own machinated doom.

And that became the first book in my original Fae Tales series - Game Theory.

It was my amazing readers who asked me to make this Tumblr, my amazing readers who asked me to write that original story, and they were the ones who asked me to make a Patreon (and then a Ko-Fi), and so in a way, they were the ones who let me know when I was ready to try making this work in a (slightly) more official capacity. They were the ones who believed in me enough to keep me doing this, and they still are. *waves to you all*

They were the ones who gave me visibility, I don't know that I did anything specific to make that happen, except writing the stories, turning up, and listening to them.

It's a very weird way of doing it and I don't know that anyone else has ever done it quite that way like this. I feel like a massive outlier in that sense. I don't relate to anyone who is starting out in professional subscription with no readers because I could never do that, my lack of confidence wouldn't let me. But there's aspects I think any author can replicate: I reply to all my commenters (except the trolls), because they're great and I want to support connection, community, and conversation. I embrace fandom and love all transformative works, and also, like 99% of my writing is free on AO3. (You don't have to make everything free, but it certainly doesn't hurt on AO3).

I mostly finish my serials and folks can trust my happy/hopeful endings and they can trust my hurt/comfort. And I'm pretty communicative! As you can tell by how much I'm rambling right now x.x I intentionally provide a safe space for queer people and neurodivergent people as much as possible, and write a lot of representation for us. I set out to make a space I would personally feel comfortable in. That might not work for everyone, but it works for those who stay.

From there though, I'd say a lot of visibility came from word of mouth, writing chapter by chapter over time (serials naturally pick up readers simply because they're often at or near the top of a tag or fandom category on AO3 - there is NO algorithm there), sometimes sorting by kudos, and me just posting about random stuff on Tumblr with good tags.

I still write fanfiction on another account (my impostor syndrome account) that has also had some people trying my original fiction. There's quite a few people who came directly from fanfiction to the original fiction because the themes were the same!

I didn't have the confidence to intentionally try and be a professional writer. When I started writing that fanfic I was writing it because I was depressed, sad, and I'd quit an unsatisfying job as a professional artist (I loved the art and my clients, I could never make the income part work). I didn't want to be a professional writer. I was writing as hooky, as escape from my real life, and as 'oh god I just need some hurt/comfort and I can't find what I want so I'll write it.'

To this day, I still write fanfiction as an escape, it's partly why it's now on a separate account to my original stuff (but even plenty of my original fic is indulgent and self-escapist in nature, which is maybe why other people find it escapist and cathartic as well).

In writing, financially, it makes more sense to publish books, or do serials-into-books, and develop a backlist of novels alongside the serials. I don't do that. I should, I plan on starting soon. I can point out a lot of the things that I either did wrong, or that I can see a way of doing better, because I didn't set out to be a professional writer, and I still put 'keeping it fun' and 'the readers' ahead of 'making money.' I'm not very mercenary and I make financially not great decisions in favour of 'but I enjoy it more this way.'

(That's partly because I am really very ill, and I can't afford to make myself sick through my work, and not enjoying it is the fastest way to do that).

What I do know is how to help create a community, though. And how to encourage and try and care for that community of people. How to respond to what they want and sometimes don't want, alongside what I want and don't want. How to have boundaries in that space. Well, I'm still figuring it out but I think I'm more comfortable with it than I used to be!

I also don't want to make it sound like I didn't know about writing before this. Long before doing serials for 10 years, I did creative writing and scriptwriting (among other things) at university. I wrote very technically correct short stories with sad little tragic endings that won awards and sometimes decent cash prizes. I hated it, and it put me off writing for years afterwards. I felt trapped in trying to write the 'correct' way. I am entirely unsurprised that to this day I reject standard formulas for novel lengths, and that in order to write, I kind of have to break a lot of the rules I was taught.

But I was taught how to write 'correctly' by Australian standards back in the early 00s (very spare, evocative prose). These days I follow a lot of scriptwriting / television drama beats in serials and have always really enjoyed doing it that way. :D

I'm meant to be talking about some of this in the Subscriptions for Authors podcast tomorrow and it's going to be a mess, as you can tell, lmao.

(There's something to be said about the lightning-in-a-bottle moment where I just wrote a fanfic I thought everyone would hate in a popular fandom and people were just ready for that story and it took off. I had no idea how to deal with it and it was very overwhelming and I had a bit of a breakdown a year and a half later over it. It's no coincidence that a year into the Patreon I paused it for 1.5 years and walked away because I couldn't handle it. But then I did some growing up and came back and figured it out.

But yeah I didn't do any of this the right way, or in a super intentional way. The only part I know I did well was supporting a community, and communicating with the people who turned up. And I did that for very selfish reasons - I wanted to be in a community, and I enjoyed meeting people who had things in common with me. I sometimes feel a little like a gremlin who just stumbled into a community and was like 'oh, um, I'm here, I guess.'

It's really everyone else who made it magical, but it did help that I think I am (in retrospect) pretty good at writing a hooky, addictive serial for the right kinds of readers. I cannot understate this enough -> learning how to write serials and exploring episodic television drama can be very helpful).

[sodareaper]

if you watch the video in the tiktok app it could have extra captions, usually auto-generated but they are not saved in the video.

yeah ill just guess what this is about then

[youhavereachedtheendofpie]

not reading wips feels anti-fanfiction to me. and i don't mean that in a "so you're a bad person if you don't read them" kinda way. do what you want. but i also feel, that you are completely missing the point. with fanfiction you're supposed to come along for the ride. the epic highs and lows of highschool football. the comment sections. the conversations. the theories. the "sorry i didn't update last week i was abducted by aliens and then my cat got stuck in a tree." LIKE. if you just want a story that's fully finished and polished go to a bookstore. fanfic is an EXPERIENCE. and ALSO. participating in the process is part of the way you make fanfic writing worth while. it's part of how you thank authors. like why would anyone write fanfiction if no one was going to interact with them until it was done? it again feels like a way that fanfiction is being eaten by consumer culture. you're waiting for your product. but this is supposed to be a club. you don't turn up to drama club like "where's my play bitch?" NO ma'am. we're supposed to paint these cardboard trees together. ok. i may have lost control of this metaphor. BUT YOU GET IT.

[halfbaked00q]

one thing I Always Do as a matter of course that I realize most ppl don't, is check the notes of a post I like. I do this to see what discourse or additions might have happened on the post. This takes a bit more digging with many-notes posts, but like, I still think it's very valuable to peruse the notes a bit first. It's like a fairly path-of-least-resistance sort of fact checking- you don't even need to google anything (yet), just see what other ppl have been saying. also sometimes you stumble on the most insane shit lmao but I take that in *shoving popcorn into my mouth* good fun usually

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)