#all your favorite authors are

[jenanigans1207]

any advice for imposter syndrome while writing fic? i know i’m writing for myself at the end of the day, and i do love the idea of posting on ao3 but i feel like nothing i write will ever be good enough to post 😭

So, I'll be honest here in saying that imposter syndrome is a bitch and also doesn't listen a lot to reason.

That being said, for me, I usually try to spend a lot of time reasoning with it and then I force myself to do it anyways. I know that people love reading multiple fics with the same trope, so I shouldn't feel bad about writing a common idea. I know that different writing styles are what bring life to a fic and set it apart from every other fic. I know that I love reading different writing styles, different takes on characters. So why wouldn't other people feel the same? I know that there's always room for improvement, and I can't beat myself up for realizing that I may write this fic differently if I were to sit with the idea and write it some time in the future.

It's a lot of knowing and that knowing comes from a lot of experience on being on the other side of the fic-- being the reader. Like I said, I love seeing different takes on the same characters, seeing people place different reasoning behind the same actions, or give different repercussions to something. It's interesting, it keeps me invested, i love to see it. I love certain tropes (mutual pining, anyone?) to the point that I will read damn near anything with those tropes/tags so I'm thrilled beyond belief when someone new provides me with another fic that I know I'll enjoy. I don't sit there and go "another one?" I get excited for more content that I love.

It's also a lot of knowing that comes from experience as the writer. I will die on the hill that is the fact that we will always be harsher on our own work than anyone else. And that we can't really appreciate how our work will come across to others because we're so close to it. It's hard to see it as something other than a compilation of sentences that you had to struggle through. It's hard to read a sentence that has a word you're not quite satisfied with and think of the impact of the sentence instead of what the fuck is the word I'm trying to remember? I've written enough in my life to know that those things don't ever go away, as much as I'd love to tell you they do. But it does mean that other people won't think of my writing as negatively as I do because they have fresh eyes and no previous association to what they're reading. We don't have that luxury, so it's hard for us to see.

But no matter how much I know these things, no matter how much i experience them from both sides of the fic-- I still have to hype myself up sometimes to post, too. And yeah, sometimes I go "what's the worst that could happen?" and that's enough to give me the guts. Sometimes I remind myself that people haven't liked my writing before and I've survived, so I'd survive if it happened again.

But I will tell you this-- there is nothing more rewarding that someone leaving you a comment about how much something you wrote touched them. While I am a firm believer that we write for ourselves, there is no denying the connection that is made between writer and reader, and there's no denying the impact on the author when a reader is touched by their work. It's this sort of breathtaking feeling, knowing that you poured some of your heart into something and someone found value in that.

I have read many fics that have pulled me out of dark places in my life and given me a reason to get up every new day. And the knowledge that something I wrote might be that for someone else is often enough for me. Even if one person finds joy in what I wrote, it's worth putting it out there. We write for ourselves, sure, but we share it for other people.

And I don't really know if this is helpful at all or just a lot of rambling. But I guess if I had to summarize, I'd say this: imposter syndrome sucks and doesn't listen to reason. Try to reason with it anyways. Remind it that people want this. Hell, talk to your friends about what you're writing so they can want it first! Having someone close to you, someone trusted share your enthusiasm goes a long way. I've only scraped to the end of projects because of my friends many times in the past. So reason with it. Remind it that people want this, that people will enjoy it. Let people in your life tell you that they want it and enjoy it. Remind yourself the benefit that fic has had in your life and then tell yourself that you'll be giving that same benefit to someone else's life. Think of the rewarding feeling of people loving what you write. Remind yourself that the internet is kinder to you than you are to yourself (hard to believe, I know).

And if all of that fails, say that it's perfectly fine to be scared and just choose to do it scared. In my experience, the first time is always the hardest. So close your eyes and press post and know that it gets easier from there, every single time you do it. And allow the world to help you fight that imposter syndrome.

Your work will improve your fandom. It will provide happiness. It will fulfill people, get people to talk about it, share it, reread it when they're having a bad day. This isn't speculation. I am absolutely certain of it. No fandom gets worse with more content made lovingly. So write it for yourself, and then post it for other people and know that it get easier and that it's worth it.

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[doverstar]

can't express accurately how happy it makes me that c.s. lewis did not leave room for many interpretations in narnia. it's christian and you can't get around it. susan chose to care more about worldly things than what matters and he said what he said. the lion is Jesus. evil is evil and good is good and people have to choose. and that makes some readers angry because it's nearly impossible to ignore and they want to ignore it. they want it to be something else and they can't make it something else without making it not narnia. love that. that is doing it right

[deimosatellite]

like idk it just seems actually nefarious to take one of the very few widely known instances of queerness in older history being a symbol to show queer people that we've always existed and aren't alone for CENTURIES and taking away the queerness from it. like. i know some people say that ''the queerness isnt important in the book" which i mean in my opinion i could go off for 10k words in an essay as to how basil's love for dorian is integral to the story BUT EVEN APART from that its really just. having a real explicitly queer character in such an old and widely regarded classic novel is HUGE for queer history and this is just. literally like. its 2024. why are you doing queer erasure to DORIAN GRAY

[demelzathemer]

WHY are dead boy detectives fanfic writers so MANY and so TALENTED??? I CANNOT KEEP UP (I am making a collection of the best titles, by hand, and another collection of the best writers, just so I can remember to go back and read the rest of their stuff later)

[arcane-vagabond]

I think it’s discouraging to a lot of creators on here when we try to put forth fics with actual plots instead of just smut (no knock against smut. I seek it out too sometimes), only to receive very little meaningful (likes do not count as meaningful) engagement. Then people complain about there being nothing but smut to read???

Like…my loves….you’re only engaging with the smut. What else are creators supposed to think here? You’re not showing love to the fluff or angst or plot and lore filled stories anymore, so of course you’re only going to receive smut from creators. You’re not watering what you want to survive, so of course it’s going to die. Show love to the stuff that has minimal smut, if any at all!

I speak from experience that it’s frustrating as hell when I run polls to see what people want to read more of and the winning answer (by a large margin) was more fluff stories. Meanwhile, the only stories getting comments and asks are the ones filled with smut. Do you see why that’s confusing and frustrating? There’s hardly any love for anything on here that’s not straight up smut.

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[insteading]

As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

[gloriousmonsters]

update from my mxtx renaissance is that I somehow never read the Shang Qinghua extra from SVSSS and i just finished it and

[tennessoui]

girl your hanahaki au is absolutely wrecking my shit i--- I don't ever read ongoing fics and this is why. I just cannot wait?!? But the waiting somehow makes it better too?!? I'm literally dead bro I can't I love it so much

hahah omg thank you !! I’m really happy to hear you took a chance on this wip and that you like it so much!

not to get on my soapbox or anything but you have given me a great corner to shout from

as a disclaimer I totally understand why people will choose not to read wips and I truly think you know your mental health and what you can stand to wonder about/think about/obsess over/NEED to know a conclusion for better than anyone else

BUT as a writer who almost exclusively posts in wips, people reading them before they’re finished is my life blood and I am so grateful and it makes the writing process so much more fun for me because I know at least someone else is invested in my brainworm of a story?? someone else is enjoying it and thinking about it and I’m putting a small amount of good into the world??

the best analogy I’ve been able to come up with is like:

when you read a finished fic you’re eating a whole meal and that’s great that’s so amazing (especially if you tell the cook you liked it after you’re done). and you’re literally always welcome to eat that meal whenever you want. finished fics are like standing dinner invitations: I am always happy to have you and I mean that very genuinely

but if you read a wip, you’re keeping me company in the kitchen while I cook. and that’s sort of priceless. in some instances, you can even tell me the food needs more spice and I’ll think about it and listen!!! you’re sitting on my kitchen counter as I bustle around my space and we’re talking about what I’m doing and also how I’m feeling and maybe how you’re feeling and it just feels like community more than anything else I’ve experienced in any fandom. like you’re with me in my space as I’m creating food I hope you like. we’re both invested and it’s amazing

and I think in general that’s why wips are a lot of fun and also maybe why the waiting between chapters is fun for you - you’ve suggested that I add paprika to the pot and you’re waiting and wondering if I will, and I’m laughing and hoping you like the soup either way but also wondering if paprika will work with the recipe, and if I can add a bit to it just for you while staying true to the dish I envisioned at the get go.

[hanzajesthanza]

I saw a take that was like “Lady of the Lake” is a complete mess and barely even a Witcher book because by then Sapkowski just wanted to write Arthurian legend fanfiction and write and essay about meta text into the book

are you me?! lol, because i was on r/fantasy a couple of days ago and saw witcher catching stray bullets there too 😭

anytime i do hear this take, i want to say: “… and what’s wrong with that 😅🥲 and what’s wrong with that?!”

because, to be honest, i also didn’t really care about any of the arthurian stuff… but then i actually went and read his opinions on why it’s important; which turned out to be just as interesting as the book, so i see it as like… own author analysis of his characters and world… like this is the kind of thing you typically beg authors to explain about their series and he just did it 🤷🏻‍♂️

the problem with my take is that i didn’t read it when it came out in 1999 (probably due to not being born yet) so i have no abilityto judge it as it was “in the moment”. i also didn’t even read the series chronologically, and played witcher 3 before i read the books, so i suppose the ending had a reduced effect on me…

however; i was a mess at the ending… so i don’t want to know how i would have reacted had i read it free of spoilers… i probably would have been like the ‘99 fans and been pissed all the same. i get the frustration: “our heroes are dead and you’re prattling on about some old legend…”

but i feel like lady of the lake is a fine wine for how it ages well. well, maybe not the… library bit, or forest gramps bit. but it ages well if you reread it and do so with patience.

the nice thing about writing and reading is that it’s asynchronous. you have all the time as a reader to pause. if you don’t understand the references, use your time to look them up. you don’t need to understand it perfectly, you don’t need to be like sapkowski and become an arthurian fanboy.

you just have to understand what he was getting at: that in his view, the arthurian myth is the genesis of all the modern fantasy genre, and by not only intentionally writing parallels to it in his work, but writing his character into that world, he is humbly (hehe) submitting his work into the fantasy canon and sending it off after it's been completed; like ciri with her parents. if you understand it this way, it becomes very beautiful indeed. it’s not just “arthurian fanfiction” because in his view, ALL fantasy writing is “arthurian fanfiction.”

(and this is even more interesting from a cultural perspective btw to me because… well it’s better explained by paulina drewniak in her thesis, but arthurian legend (in welsh and anglo-saxon forms) is “western european”, same with the modern fantasy genre being english-dominate. and witcher is… well, poland is in central europe (look at a map), but characterized as “eastern” for socio-political, historical reasons. so witcher is absolutely insane genius because sapkowski took this western format and myth and mixed it with some polish history and sensibilities of the ‘90s audiences, as well as influences from polish romanticism, making something that ends up being intriguing to many more cultures than just the one. the internationality of the witcher began way before witcher 3 snagged game of the year 2015! hehe, also geralt as a character taking from american genre fiction—hardboiled crime, western genres. and at the same time he became a polish hero. (bold claim maybe, but i mean it like… well, i’m working on the essay for that now, so you’ll see i suppose 😅)

witcher is just so damn unique for this reason. i think many works try to stay monocultural, but witcher is like this big soup that sapkowski throws a bunch of different ingredients into—and skillfully, not randomly. anyways this paragraph is really off topic but i think this was really cool :) i’ll write more on this later, at some other time. but to connect it back to topic: what i mean is, the arthurian legend makes witcher all the more richer. and then for me as a “western” reader reading it, it’s like this big full circle (even though idk crap about arthurian legend before i read the witcher :’D ))

i think that lady of the lake made me a better reader because i realized that fantasy and genre fiction, aka what i understand as "entertainment" and "reading for pleasure" is much, much more similar to "high literature" and "serious reading" than i had initially received it to be. sapkowski said it something like: “all writing is literature, everytthing except the tv guide and A to Z nutria breeding.”

the way i separated them in my mind was that entertainment books were to just entertain, and serious books were to hold an author’s message, so you should work at what they’re getting at. the witcher showed me that “entertainment books” ALSO hold the author’s message and you should work at what they’re getting at;

in other words, it’s not just about you, the reader, your pleasure; this is a two-way street. this is a game, for the enjoyment of both parties. it’s a bit like charades, or pictionary. the author is saying something, thinking something, it’s your side of the game to figure it out. and i found that figuring that out is much more fun when you also at the same time are receiving a story that you’ve become emotionally attached to and makes you giddy. but it’s not JUST about that story, the joy is not limited to just this world and these characters.

i adored english classes for this kind of game, but because we read stand-alone novels, the characters always felt a bit flat—and of course because most of the time they’re just vessels intended to carry the story. but with the witcher, with this saga, you get the benefit of a “low” work: the stakes which feel personal and intimate, the long standing development of the characters, the fandom excitement and buzz, and also the benfit of a “high” work: the allusions and intertextuality, the hidden meanings, the cleverness and play. it’s really the best of both worlds.

and the hussite trilogy takes this farther because it’s a historical fantasy so sapkowski could include as many historical and literary references as he desired… if they existed by the mid-15th century and were known in central europe. but that’s a LOT of sources to draw from already, pretty much an unimaginable well of context. and did i understand everything, no. i didn’t understand much. but i was pleasantly surprised because i understood more than i expected, and when i didn’t understand i could figure the intended meaning out through context clues. i mean, this proved to me that these references to other works are all just extra sauce anyways, to make the dish a bit richer and fuller…

it’s just nice metaphor, and a lot can be done with this. if you compare geralt to arthur or reynevan to lancelot (well… as HE believes himself to be…) … that makes the meaning sooo much deeper. i like this with “electra” most of all. i think we should all adopt classical or mythological psuedonyms that we feel represent us; these are shorthand for what we stand for and what we believe in, who we are. if you know a bit about just a few myths, you can extrapolate so much from just one name. this is also the case with fictional characters from the modern fantasy genre, so i see what sapkowski was getting at when he draws lines connecting the two.

the only reason i DON’T like it when he does this is because… i do feel a bit like: i went into a library to return a book, but instead of taking my book back, the portly old librarian wordlessly shoved two NEW stacks of books into my arms, then pushed me out the door back onto the street. because andrzej sapkowski is basically the offline version of a guy on forums who recommends you twenty new books every time you mention you enjoyed one. i cannot keep up! so now i have a reading list ten miles long. i think his recommendations and what he intertwined into the witcher will literally keep me occupied into my 30s. but that’s ok, i know what to bring now if i ever get abandoned on a deserted island.

for this reason, i think witcher is both the worst and the best introduction back into reading i could have asked for. if you dig for two seconds are basically handed a road map to not only the entire genre, but the wide open world of european literature, both western and eastern. and american literature too, which i think i’ll be giving a second go…

[seaslimes]

Thinking once more about the F/F AO3 stats issue. Really struggling with the urge to write "issue" there too, LOL.

I know that call-to-action doesn't always go well, and that I exist as a drop in the bucket compared to millions of Tumblrites & AO3 users. But the curse of seeing yet another post which discusses how horri-bad these stats are, when the differences within the individual fandoms is often so manageable. It drives me insane.

There's a couple versions of these "wow, M/M fics are more popular and that's bad because of X issue" posts that have screenshots of laughable disparities. Stuff like 500 more M/Ms than F/Fs. That is a genuinely amusing number, because with the help from a fraction of the thousands who share any post like that, this very scary gap would cease to exist.

So, anyway. I'm considering some sort of fandom roundup wherein I have folks vote on a fandom with F/F to M/M "disparity" which I will then run a "break the ratio" event on. Encouraging people to write fics until the ratio evens. IDK, is that something that people would be interested in? I could be crazy but this rubber room squeaks and I think the rats are talking about me.

[ladyramora]

Apparently Nov 1st is "National Author's Day"! Go support your favorite author! Let them know you enjoy their writing, or tell them what your favorite thing is that they wrote! Hoping November is kinder to everyone.

Happy writing! ❤️🖋️✨

[angrycryptidd]

@ranranbolly the only emails I want to receive

[emotionalsupportaudino]

Spoilers for Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays

I can't stop thinking about the bride. The scene with the bride. Spoilers ahead.

These scenes written as scripts itched my brain in a lot of ways. There was something surreal about them, I couldn't figure out if they were telling the future or if they were on another world or if they were Misha trying to puzzle through what was wrong through scripts.

And when I realized what they were like three minutes ago, I realized it was fucking brilliant.

It was a script because it was an AI nanobot of Misha. He was literally moving on a script. Holy shit. Holy shit that was brilliant and such a clever way to explain what was happening without explaining what was happening, I can't believe I missed it at first.

But there is something so haunting about the bride, because she is a horror of, well, straightness. And I feel like there's so many layers to what she says to the guards at Misha's house:

"Lately I've been noticing something strange about the things I do. There's an inertia to it all. Like, I know what's going to happen before it happens, because it's already written."

There's a lot of ways to read that. The obvious: she's literally on a script. But I think, also, The Bride being the one to point that out really speaks to growing up socialized as a woman. So much of life feels plotted out for you, you're expected to start planning your wedding when you're barely old enough to write, kids are given dress up wedding gowns (I had one! It was from a my size barbie). There are so many expectations placed on women, and so many different ways that it feels like you're stuck on a track.

But I am a little haunted by the way I see the scene play out in my head. There's this vicious killing of two guards, this woman in a white short gown with lace sleeves, with a skintight white sequined mask all but glowing in the moonlight. And just utter silence as she lugs away her bodies and unmasks herself and vanishes into the night. This understanding that she maybe didn't necessarily want to do this, as a character. The understanding that, really, she has no wants as an AI monstrosity.

But I can't help but bring myself to have some pity for her. This woman in white who exists in the story for less than ten pages, massacres guards to leave characters I actually care about open for serious harm, and just... leaves, in near silence, passing the plot and moving on. (seriously though i did NOT enjoy when I realized, no, Tara was actually getting hurt I will fight people over Tara for the rest of my life I am love her.)

And I wonder what Misha was thinking when he wrote The Bride. I wonder if the inspiration for her, which had to have been his pressure to be straight, changed over his life. I wonder if being out would make him look back on her and think that it wasn't her fault, like how he told the Smoker it wasn't his fault. I wonder if he would develop more story for her, more reason for her to be the way she is, I wonder what the story for Wedding Night was. I'm imagining him going back and writing a prequel, like X and Pearl where The bride gets a story to be understood.

I am going to be spending so much time thinking about this specific one. Maybe it's because we get so much about Mrs. Why and The Smoker, but I am intrigued by the bride. She terrifies me. I see her moving in a way I can't explain, but I desperately want to.

Nine pages. There's a whole ass novel, but those nine pages. I'm fixated on them. It makes no damn sense.

... Compels me, though.

[blankerthought]

practicing digital art again with my favorite girl, gekkou keisuke, since i’m once again rereading catch your breath