#and the niche ones are all on livejournal

[neon-danger]

In all other fics, I’m not super picky. Poor grammar? Sure. No Paragraph breaks between dialogue changes? Annoying but I’ll get over it. Awkward dirty talk that goes on for too long? Sure whatever

But then I get to jalex fics specifically and I’m like “no”

[isinuyasha-art]

[revenantghost]

It is so wild to me that the Trigun manga was just on the fringe of the fandom before Tristamp, with ‘98 being the main focus.

I can see how it happened--when the anime was airing, anime was way more niche than it is now, and not everyone would have had easy access to buying it. And if you wanted to read it online... good luck, as someone who was in those forum/Livejournal/Yahoo Groups trenches. Someone on translating your favorite manga was so much work, and it was incredibly uncommon for people to scan officially released manga back then. And from what I hear, the first scanlation was awful, willfully mistranslating things and painting the story and characters in a terrible light. By the time the full manga was released, many of the original fans probably moved on. It’s very different from the first anime, and for the younger audience that likely saw it, maybe a bit too much!

But now that Tristamp has thrust us all into Trimax hell, I deeply understand why Trimax Vash is one of the most common Vashes I see popping up in fanart and such. I love and am feral for ‘98 and Tristamp, you’ll find no slander for those here, but the manga stripped me down on an molecular level and rewired my entire brain and all my emotions. That story and those characters haunt me. Sometimes I’ll see a panel from the manga, not even one of the most impactful ones, and I need to take a moment to recover. I think about it daily. Though I just think about Trigun all day at this point who am I kidding. It’s so good. It’s too good. WHO GAVE IT THE RIGHT TO BE THIS GOOD.

Anyway, if you haven’t read the Trigun manga yet, go check out @trigun-manga-overhaul​ because you’re missing out on one of the best stories ever written.

[duckprintspress]

Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale

A guest post by Aeryn Jemariel Knox. (@jemariel)

Ah, the citrus scale. It’s like a cryptid roaming the edges of modern fandom communities. Long-tenured veterans speak of it with affectionate mockery while newcomers google curiously. A relic from a bygone fandom era, the citrus scale saw a brief resurgence in 2018 during the Tumblr porn ban, suggested as a way to avoid the new bot censors trawling for posts with the NSFW tag—though never, I think, in seriousness. 

That may have been jocular and short-lived, but it does point to the reasons why the citrus scale was created in the first place. Certain fandom activities have always had to fly under the radar to one degree or another. Whether you’re trying to evade legal action or simply avoid deletion based on explicit content, a certain level of obfuscation is sometimes worthwhile.

It’s not hard to find the generally agreed-upon definitions of the citrus scale’s levels. According to Fanlore, KnowYourMeme, and others, this is more or less the “official” citrus scale:

Orange: Light stuff, kissing, nothing below the waist or under the clothes. 

Lime: Groping, implied sex without details, fade-to-black, no intercourse or intimate contact.

Lemon: Sex, in full detailed glory. Woo-hoo! Regardless of the actual acts performed, if you can tell who had an orgasm (or, perhaps, had an orgasm denied), how, and where, it’s a lemon.

Grapefruit: We’ll get into this later.

But these tidy categories are clear thanks to the benefit of hindsight. In the Wild West of the early internet, it was not so easy to pin down exactly what you might be getting into based on which term was used.

At its origin, the citrus scale wasn’t a scale at all. It has its roots in hentai (and was always more popular in anime fandoms), stemming from a specific early hentai film by the title of Cream Lemon (1984). Hentai being what it is, this led to certain subculture communities referring to any story with explicit sexual content as a “Lemon.” And for a while, that was the extent of it. Then came fanfiction.net purging explicit content (2002), Livejournal suffering Strikethru (2007), and other events that pushed burgeoning fandom communities out of their growing hubs and back into smaller, isolated communities centered on a single fandom or pairing. In the relatively sparse early ’00’s internet, anybody could spin up an Angelfire website, pass the link around to their friends, and get a reasonable amount of traffic.  Websites devoted to the works of a single author or small group were common.

I mention this to describe the landscape in which fandom lexicons grew and evolved in the early-mid 2000s. Each pocket community had its own rules, lingo, and expectations; venturing outside of your home pocket could lead to some pretty major miscommunications. 

“Lemon” was established early and its definition has hardly shifted. It means that the labeled content (art, fic, mood board, etc.) includes sex. Intercourse, bumping uglies, etc. However, some yaoi fandom niches used it specifically to mean gay sex of the male variety. In some communities, “lime” developed as a corresponding term for feminine gay sex, while other communities brought it up with the usage that eventually “stuck,” “not quite a lemon.” Given that lemon and lime often go hand in hand when discussing actual flavors, the fact that we had some divergent term evolution is not surprising. But coming in from a different pocket of fandom and seeing “lime,” thinking you’ll be reading semi-softcore sexual tension and instead being confronted with graphic sapphic antics? Bit of a shock, I’m sure.

A more dramatic example is the rating level of “Grapefruit,” which occupies two completely different ends of the scale. In some circles, grapefruit was defined as “less intense than lime,” G or PG-rated stories that were more soft or cute than sexy. In other circles, it was used to mean the exact opposite. Kinkier than kink, smuttier than smut, grapefruit art and fic was where you went to have your eyebrows singed off. Some communities were even more specific, using grapefruit for stories featuring non-consensual sex. This was where darkfic lived – in modern day parlance, your “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” works. To say that this usage difference caused some disagreements would be putting it mildly.

Nobody really worried about orange. Orange just existed, not bothering anybody.

When these terms were coined, the internet was not an assumed aspect of everybody’s daily life the way it is today. There was no Tumblr, no Facebook, no social media to speak of. There were no large repositories of internet lore and knowledge such as Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme. It was a playground. And what do you do on a playground? You make friends! The citrus scale, like so many fandom tropes and concepts, was defined by groups of friends that created them ad hoc to meet their own needs at the time. No one could have predicted that it would become so much a fandom history that it’d be enshrined, nor that I would be writing a blog post about it two decades later. From the common source of lemon, people extrapolated what the rest of the scale might look like, and there was no authority to tell them they were wrong. (Except other fans. That hasn’t changed.)

In conclusion, it’s best not to take the citrus scale too seriously. At best, it’s a cheeky way to avoid censors who try to bar a community from engaging with explicit works, but it’s also varied to a fault and open to interpretation. If you and your community have come up with a use for it that suits your needs, then congratulations: you’re part of a fandom tradition stretching back to the roots of the internet. Just don’t try and tell anybody else that they’re wrong. You might start a flame war.

References:

Prokopetz: Orange and Grapefruit

She’s Got Plans: What is the Citrus Scale in Fanfiction?

Unwinnable: Lemon and Lime

Past Fandom 101 Posts:

Everything About A/B/O Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but were Afraid to Ask)

How to Diversify Your To-Be-Read Pile

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

[genericpuff]

I feel mean criticizing an author's old work that they've deliberately buried, but sheesh the dialogue in Rachel's old stuff is really stilted. As awkward as LO's writing is, it honestly does show some improvement, so like...good for Rachel I guess?

I mean, it hasn't really improved though? Normally no, I wouldn't criticize someone's older work because by the virtue of something being old, it will naturally be improved upon and shouldn't be judged against what's created in the present (trust me, as someone with work from 10 years ago that hasn't aged well, I get it LOL).

But what's in the present... has all the same issues. I think it's easy to convince ourselves LO's writing is "better" because it relies on Greek myth to piece itself together, but when you aren't filling in the blanks for her based on assumptions made from the source material (which you shouldn't have to do) her writing in LO still doesn't have much to offer. Like, can we really call this an improvement?

If anything the writing in LO got even worse over time because it started to feel like ChatGPT was writing the dialogue and the narrative was crumbling under the weight of Rachel's lack of foresight / planning ahead.

I mean, just to get my point across, let me ask you one simple question: What is the actual theme of LO? What is the conclusion it comes to by its end to contribute to that theme?

This isn't me trying to minimize whatever improvements she may have made between the past and present, I just don't see those improvements, and there's a lot more to suggest that she was a lot more prolific 20 years ago as an artist than she is today. All of that stuff about Persephone / herself being a "workaholic" is based on stuff she went through 20 years ago that she doesn't even put on display now because it's all buried in deactivated Tumblrs and LiveJournals. But that's besides the point.

I think at best the "improvement" simply boils down to "at least she finished this one". But that's not necessarily a good thing because it's clear LO went on longer than it ever should have and that the only reason she even made it this far was because she was bound to a contract through WT. I guarantee you if it weren't for the success that WT's gave her through constantly advertising LO everywhere (and the fact that LO fit a very specific niche that was popular at the time) she would have ended LO ages ago, because just about every series she's done up until this point have been passing fancies that she's bounced between while still retaining a lot of the same tropes and crutches she always has.

LO is about a naive valley girl with mommy issues who goes to school to better herself. This is also the plot of The Doctor Foxglove Show. And while comics like Castle Castle, Woman King, and The Maiden don't involve school settings, they do still center around "girlboss" characters who hate their parents. LO isn't really an "improvement" among these tropes, just another rehashing that's hidden way better because 1.) she put it behind the veil of Greek myth and 2.) she's done everything in her power to hide the fact that she's been writing about the same pink-haired girls with mommy issues and trauma from evil men "except for that one guy who's perfect in every way" for 20+ years now.

And that issue of stilted dialogue goes way beyond even the comics. Read transcripts of her interviews or the Q&A from the end of the series that she did in her Discord and you'll see she has a really hard time finishing the thought she started on. I'm sure a lot of this can be chalked up to her ADHD / dyslexia, which is totally valid, but it just goes to show she hasn't done any work to actually improve her work in spite of her hindrances. She doesn't know how to separate Internet trolls from valid criticism and she seems to absorb any and all criticism as "proof" that she's better than everyone else, actually, and it's not her fault that other people are stupid and don't get her "vision". And I'm not pulling this assertion out of thin air, she's displayed this exact behavior before both within the LO fandom as well as her pre-existing fandoms around her other series.

Like, I can totally get the sentiment that "hate mail is a sign of success" and turning a negative into a positive, but there's a difference between deflecting hate mail from trolls and deflecting genuine criticism that's meant to identify your weaknesses and help you grow. That's what makes it all the more telling that she's built an audience around protecting and enabling her weaknesses rather than celebrating her strengths and empowering her to do better. She can't fall back on Webtoons as the only excuse for why the writing in LO is bad, her writing has always been like this and I feel like that's half the reason she's trying to hide it.

[coraniaid]

Slightly niche question, but does anyone know when the fanon idea of Faith and Buffy sharing some sort of supernatural/psychic connection first started to become popular? I know it goes back a long time -- I've seen it mentioned in fics written almost twenty years ago, in ways that imply the author assumed the audience would be familiar with the concept -- but does it go any further back than that?

Was it something people were talking about even when the show was still on the air? And is it an idea that one specific person came up with, or is something that's close enough to canon (e.g. we know that Buffy and Faith share dreams occasionally; we know the Slayer is supposed to have the ability to sense the presence of vampires; there are several plot points in the show that make rather more sense if Buffy, Faith and Kendra had the ability to supernaturally locate a fellow Slayer) to have been independently invented multiple times?

I mean, presumably this all played out online -- on Usenet or LiveJournal or some old long-abandoned PHP web forum -- and it would be nice (but I realize, it probably isn't the case) if any of that still existed publicly somewhere in a readable form.

[glassprism]

Hii!! I found out about trading an hour ago and am a bit confused. Like, how do you even find the bootlegs if not on youtube? Also, why trade instead of posting publicly?

I have a YouTube page where I post slime tutorials and the like of shows I have watched or proshots I have downloaded. Why gatekeep? I'm literally just curious, I don't mean to offend.

So, the thing that I really, really want to emphasize, because I feel like it'll make everything make more sense, is that bootlegging is illegal. It is against the law, people can and do get arrested for it, and there have been many recorders (mostly filmers) in the past who have been caught and simply disappeared, taking with them any unreleased boots and all potential boots they could have filmed in the future.

And I say that because I REALLY want to emphasize that when people, especially filmers, say, "Hey, can you not post these on YouTube or anywhere else publicly?" it's NOT because they are trying to "gatekeep". Many of them are making their bootlegs as accessible as possible by making it available for purchase and/or trade down the line. They are doing it for their own safety. They are risking legal repercussions getting these bootlegs to you and are asking you not to get them into trouble by blatantly posting their stuff on the most accessible video-sharing site out there. THEY ARE TRYING NOT TO GET FINED, ARRESTED, OR WORSE.

Okay, got all that? Great! Now I can answer your questions.

First - many traders, myself included, have trading sites where we post everything we have available to trade. That is a great place to find bootlegs, and even better, people who have those bootlegs and might be willing to trade or (if you're polite) gift them to you! Here's mine. How do you find these sites? Honestly, a lot of times I just stumble on them by Googling something like "[name of show] bootleg trade". What I also personally do is start bookmarking sites of traders that have large collections of shows I'm interested in (like Phantom) or the sites of people who record bootlegs, so that I can easily check up on them every week or so.

There are also many areas where traders congregate! Musical Exchange on LiveJournal is one of the easiest to find. There was a Yahoo board back in the day that has not turned into a Groups io thing. There's Encora Reprise (I don't use it and I feel like it keeps going down but some swear by it). There are also several Discord servers devoted to trading or set up by filmers. Those are also great places to find other traders and newly released boots.

Second, I partially answered your question about posting publicly with the safety issue, but the other answer is, simply, that trading is decentralized because it's illegal. I don't think there's any one person who has every bootleg ever recorded, it's all spread out amongst us, and it's going to be extremely difficult to get everyone to pool it all together because, well, this is also a hobby, not a job, and we just don't have time for that. And even if we did, there probably is no person with enough space and money and time to upload every bootleg in the world and maintain it, because they will not get enough benefit out of it because musicals are a relatively niche interest.

Here's another way of thinking about it. I'm at the point of trading almost exclusively Phantom. I don't have every bootleg in the world, but my collection of Phantom boots alone is 2.7 TB. That is Phantom alone, I haven't even considered every other musical in the world and all their bootlegs. If you want me to have all these available publicly, I would basically need to get my own server. If I want my own server, I'm probably going to pay money. Hundreds of dollars of money. And I will have to maintain this, which will also cost money, with possibly the only way I get money back being to use, I don't know, ads or making users pay money for accounts, and unless I finagle things legally I could also be responsible if the site gets found and taken down, and you want me to do this, constantly, for bootlegs that 99% of people won't download? (You really think some people are raring to get the blurry 1992 video of Jun Sawaki, for example?) Yeah, that looks like a lot of work and trouble for me to do something that probably won't save others a lot of trouble either.

Anyway, I know you don't mean to be rude and I hope the above didn't come off as aggressive, it's just that, well, I've seen these arguments time and again and it never really seems to cross people's minds that, at the end of the day, this is a hobby that is technically illegal, that just about all the rules and limitations around are done for the safety of the bootlegger and not because they enjoy waving the boot out of your reach, and that trading is done because it's the safest, most anonymous way of, well, getting theatre bootlegs, that people have come up with. At any rate, I hope that answers your questions!

[rixareth]

Fanfiction meme

@doreyg tagged me to answer these fanfiction questions; thank you so much!

How many works do you have on ao3?

On my main account, Riona, it’s 234. I also have 130 works across two pseuds on my secondary account, rionaleonhart (for older works and ficlets), so in total I’ve posted 364 works to AO3.

What’s your total word count?

My combined total on AO3 is 1,136,030 words. If I look at the documents in which I keep all my writing archived, it’s slightly higher – 1,266,834 words – because I haven’t posted everything I’ve ever written to AO3.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

My most popular fic, by a long way, is And Again (Danganronpa, Naegi is caught in a time loop, 7,227 kudos). This was the first fic I ever posted to AO3, and I was startled by the way it blew up! For a while I was slightly intimidated to post anything else in case I let everyone down.

The others in the top five: Life Imitates (FFXV, Noctis/Prompto, 5,566 kudos), Vessels (Deltarune, 2,635 kudos), Visitors (Assassin’s Creed/Sense8, 1,607 kudos) and Memory Error (Doki Doki Literature Club!, 1,551 kudos). Most of these were an accident of timing: I happened to post just when the fandom was starting to get big. The exception is Visitors, which mainly picked up readers because it ended up expanding into a vast cowritten series.

Interesting to note that four of my top five fics are gen; I wasn’t expecting that!

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

I used to be very bad at responding to comments, back in my Livejournal days – it was a struggle to think of what to say! – but nowadays I reply to every comment I get, unless they’re outright rude or I suspect that they’ve been left by a spambot. A nice comment can really make my day, so I always want to say thanks! Plus a lot of the things I write are a bit niche, so I’m always excited to have the opportunity to talk to other people in the same niche.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Probably New Game? (Until Dawn): Mike is caught in a time loop, endlessly trying to prevent his friends from dying, and there’s no way to get out.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Hmm! I tend to prefer hopeful endings to outright happy ones; it’s tough to think of an answer that feels right for this. I’ll just say Interweave (Lost, everyone/everyone), which ends with Jack accepting that he’s in love with pretty much everyone else on the island.

Do you write crossovers?

Not as many as I used to, but I still really enjoy crossing things over! I’ve only written one crossover this year (Always Believe, Death Note/Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright defends Light in court), but in total I’ve written somewhere in the vicinity of fifty crossovers (including fusions).

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Fifteen years ago, I received a comment telling me ‘FUCK YOU. SERIOUSLY. YOU SHOULD FUCKING DIE’ on what I thought was a fairly innocuous Doctor Who/Silent Hill crossover. To this day I don’t know what my crime was.

I’ve had occasional negative comments since then, but that’s the only instance I can think of in which someone obviously just wanted to hurt me. A lot of people hated the concept of In Fainter Ink, my Last of Us Part II fic in which Ellie, Dina and Jesse navigate V-shaped polyamory, but most of the negative commenters were at least making some effort to engage with me in good faith. I still think it’s odd to read a polyamory fic and then tell the author you don’t want polyamory! But the commenters were nonetheless people who had genuine feelings about the story that they wanted to express, rather than just throwing hatred at me as a person.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I can’t write explicit sex at all! Most of my sex is fade-to-black. I do occasionally write ‘onscreen’ sex, but it tends to be very vague.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Three times that I know of! And Again, my Danganronpa time loop fic, was stolen twice; it was posted once to ffnet and once to Amino. Seems like a bad idea to steal my most popular fic; it meant that in both cases it was quickly recognised and people came to let me know!

My Doki Doki Literature Club! fic Memory Error was stolen, posted to Pastebin and shared with fans on some sort of 4chan-adjacent site. I didn’t bother taking any steps to get that one taken down; Pastebin seems such an impractical platform for pretending you wrote a fic that I could only shrug in bewilderment.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

A few times, usually into Russian! I’m always thrilled and honoured when someone wants to translate something I’ve written.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A small handful of times! I don’t recommend attempting to cowrite with me, because my attention span is a disaster and I may lose focus before the project is finished, but I’ve cowritten fics here and there.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

I can’t say for certain whether Nate/Elena from Uncharted is my absolute favourite ship, but it’s always the pairing my mind goes to first when I’m asked about ships I like, so it’s definitely a strong contender. They’ve got such good chemistry!

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There are a lot! In particular, I’ve got a thousand words of a Kingdom Hearts/Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover in which Axel, Roxas and Xion are EVA pilots; I still like the idea, but I don’t think I’m ever actually going to get it done, particularly as I’ve forgotten everything about Evangelion by this point.

What are your writing strengths?

I tend to be good at dialogue, I think, and at pinning down what a particular character would do in a particular situation. I’m also strong on technical aspects such as spelling and punctuation.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I struggle with description and scene-setting; a lot of my scenes end up feeling like characters conversing in a void. I can’t plot things in advance, which means I’m terrible at writing anything long; it’s a lot easier to write on the fly with short one-shots. I find it very difficult to write a good opening; I’m more comfortable when writing endings.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Like many things, it can be done well or badly! It mainly depends on how it’s employed, and on the audience for your fic. If you include a lot of text that you don’t expect the audience to be able to read, it might become distracting or frustrating.

Basically, if someone asks the protagonist of your Spanish fic a question in German, and the protagonist doesn’t understand German, it makes sense to write the line in German. If the German speaker then gets into a long conversation with the protagonist’s German-speaking friend, it might be better for the fic’s flow to gloss over the conversation and have the friend explain it to the protagonist later, rather than writing the whole German conversation out word-for-word.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokémon! When I was twelve, I wrote a fic about Definitely Not Me going on a Pokémon journey with Definitely Not My Friends and Family. There was a subplot in which Team Rocket were abducting people and turning them into furries.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is the latest canon to consume my mind. I’m working on a fic about Andrew and Ashley’s time imprisoned in their home together, so I hope to get that finished before long!

What's your favourite fic you've written?

I’ve written a lot; it’s hard to narrow it down! I don’t want to spend hours overthinking this, so I’ll go with the first fic that comes to mind: Shackles. It’s a Death Note fic about Light and L being incredibly toxic soulmates, and I had a lot of fun with it.

[tagedeszorns]

(Violetbirdie here) I think it's complicated due to a variety of issues. 40k as a franchise is huge, but it isn't the sort of thing that tends to have overlap with tumblr type fanspaces. It also doesn't help that 40k is a fractured fandom featuring tons of different factions, so it's not like a standard fandom where there are main characters and a main story that people will always flock to. The primarchs are the closest thing we have to that, which is why there is naturally more content for them. In addition, fandom itself is in a bit of a flux state and has been ever since the 2018 nsfw ban which caused a lot of people to leave for twitter, which is now undergoing its own huge changes right now (and I just hate twitter on principle).

I suppose the one thing I think would help, would be somehow getting the 40k tumblresque fandom space more consolidated as a whole. Like, somehow have a blog that is popular for all factions that posts headcanons about everything, thus getting people interested in parts they don't normally think about. Because 40k is a huge time investment to learn about. I've been listening to audiobooks for what feels like nonstop for over a month, and even then I could only ever feel confident telling people about Emperor's Children. So it naturally is harder for new people to get into the fandom and focus on some of the smaller things because there is just so much. It's almost how I view your blog. I check it daily for fun art/headcanons/just general character stuff, and you made me more interested in some of the captains and such. But even then, you have your focuses. So a space even more general where someone would reblog art from everything 40k would likely be nice? Maybe I just miss the livejournal days of fandom. As far as more engagement, I think having silly things like character weeks which encourages people to draw or write or talk about specific aspects is a huge benefit. It sets a schedule and makes people feel like they are shouting less into the void.

But as someone new here, maybe its my weird perspective, but I don't feel like things are getting less popular. If anything, from just checking AO3, it seems like things are only getting more popular for less of the reddit type and more for the Tumblr wanting to see hot dudes and their complicated feelings type. Also more people are getting into 40k in this side of the space through rogue trader. Like people I never talked to about 40k are starting to look into the series because they played Baldurs Gate 3, and needed a new RPG to play, and conveniently Rogue Trader is filling that for them. So, I'm optimistic if anything. Sorry about the long ramble! Just kinda dumping my thoughts out.

I love Tumblr because, unlike Twitter or Bluesky, it allows for way longer, way more elaborately structured posts. I love it when artists don't just slap their pics into a post and be done with it, but instead add stuff like maybe "I read this book, here's a quote, and it gave me this mighty need to draw this". Or "please listen to this music here while looking at my pic! It goes perfectly with it!". Or just a multi-paragraph-essay (preferably very unhinged) about the character in the upper left corner.

This in advance, so you can see I'm totally with you on the "miss Lifejournal"-thing, because blogs are so much better than just 500 characters, four pics and nothing else. And why I think Tumblr is a very good replacement for Lifejournal.

The multitude of Tumblr-blogs with their many different angles are such a treat and provide such a rich ecosystem! I follow artists posting exclusively admech-stuff, others solely Drukhari, some writers focussing on just one Astartes Legion ... it's phantastic and the depth of their niche-knowledge is mindblowing.

I agree with you that this will be overwhelming for new fans coming from rather monolithic stuff like Rogue Trader. And the key to keeping those new people involved and making them feel welcome is showing them all this variety without scaring them away.

Maybe this new feature Tumblr is working on, can be helpful here. I haven't read much about it yet, but it seems the "Community"-feature has the potential to bundle stuff in a way that's more approachable for new and old fans alike. Maybe there's room for your idea of having "character weeks" (I like that! Sounds very MacDonald's. I'll have Fabius with extra pickles, please! 😁).

I'm sharing your optimism that both the new games and maybe the new series/movies will bring a lot of new fans over and some of them may even stick around. I am a bit wary that there's the possibility of a MCU-situation starting to build up, but since Warhammer-lore is in a constant state of flux anyways this might just add some spice to the mix.

So, yeah, hope for the darkest of futures!

[ducksbellorum]

whumpuary day two

How did you find the whump community?

The answer to this question is multi-faceted, because technically the answer depends on which one.

Like many of us, I figured I was a special flavor of freak when I was a kid and I came up with all this weird shit on my own. Now, obviously this was not the case, as I found out via the internet. Law of large numbers, it was very probably some degenerate on Horseland who hooked me into fanfiction.net, which is where I was like oh wait I've never had an original thought and also oh my god there are people like me.

From there we graduated to LiveJournal, where I really began to flourish and get involved with writing and community and fandom creation as a whole. One of my dubiously factual brags is that I was there when the deep magic was written (i.e. I was part of the fandom from which the term whump originated at the time when it originated) so I was deep into it then.

I lost a lot of that community in the migration to Tumblr and Ao3, but by then I knew how to navigate fandom whump and I found my niche pretty easily. (My niche in this case consisting of being the BNF in a small webseries community.) And I kinda thought that's all there was.

I honestly have no idea what led me to the Tumblr whump community. I remember the day, August 31 2024, and I remember what I found, @whumpzone's Linden and Colton series. And I devoured the whole thing, unmoving for hours, in complete awe. Because this was not whump of a familiar character in a familiar setting, oh no. This was new. This was whump for the sake of it.

I thought I was done discovering that I've never had an original thought but I was yet again surprised and I can't even articulate why. There are people like me and I mean like me like me, I'm reading stories that could have been pulled wholecloth from my own brain, there are people like me!!

And down the rabbit hole I went and in the rabbit hole I've stayed and now here we are. I am indebted to so many folks who have shown the way and I am grateful to discover yet again that we are many.

Ah shit is this why I wrote Legion fuck hold on

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

What if Bella ran a very successful yet niche meta account on tumblr with hot takes about various forms of popular media called, TheCarnivorousBellaMeta?

Well.

This wouldn't happen.

The Caveat

First, Bella's canonically bad with computers. This isn't her fault, it's 2005 and personal computers for normal people is only just starting to be a thing. She notes having an ancient computer at Charlie's house that she has little idea how to use and prefers not to use. Otherwise, Bella prefers to read books in her free time as well as get chores like cooking and laundry out of the way.

This is not a girl who's running a blog (especially not tumblr as either tumblr doesn't exist yet or else is in its infancy in this time period, if anything she'd be on LiveJournal).

But let's say Bella is an avid blogger with a LiveJournal account.

What's she posting?

I'm sorry, anon, but her blog is not TheCarnivorousBellaMeta.

I imagine Bella's blog is tasteful quotes from Jane Austen's works, tasteful quotes from people who make her feel intellectual, reblogs of famous paintings she doesn't recognize, and maybe, maybe, dissertations on why Loki is a poor blorbo who never did a wrong thing in his life. (It's the wrong era, but I suspect Bella would be profoundly into Reylo, Loki's Resistance, and maaaaaaybeeee Johnlock).

Point being, her takes would be well worded, but given they're what a thousand other people are staying on the site and prompted by nothing she's probably not that popular.

I imagine there's also a few posts of "today I made enchiladas. They were delicious" as she feels the need to fill her tumblr.

Bella's hot takes are people's normal takes and I would expect her blog to reflect as much.

Alright, We'll Pretend

Let's pretend that Bella's the same person except for some weird reason she's running a blog that feels like it's being run by an alien (because to Bella it is).

The beginning of Twilight is essentially unaltered as we're assuming Bella is still Bella, she just runs a blog (not sure what her hot takes are, exactly, but we'll not go into that). She goes to Biology, Edward acts weird, Edward leaves, Edward comes back and acts weird, she nearly gets hit by a van, Edward acts weird.

The difference is in the part where Edward has decided he must know everything about her. Given that he's watching her unbeknownst to her, he sees Bella on her ancient computer updating her tumblr blog "TheCarnivorousBellaMeta" with such things as whether or not Itachi really does love his brother or not or whether Snape is Good or Bad (TM).

Edward is fascinated, as he is with all aspects of Bella, and methodically goes through not only every post she's ever written but every public interaction she's had with other anonymous internet denziens.

From this, he's able to more easily narrow in on Bella's likes, dislikes, how she views the world, and how she might view him.

Edward, who is trying to ignore Bella in public, gets a terrible, tempting, awful idea. He makes up an online persona: AlbrechtWithTheWilis (this is an obscure reference to the ballet Giselle, the tragic storyline being one he associates with Bella as, though she doesn't know it, she's being tempted to join the realm of the dead) and starts interacting by giving a very in depth comment making it clear he's read many of Bella's posts and deeply considered them.

Bella's surprised and deeply flattered. While she's a popular niche blog, she doesn't get these kinds of comments often and er she has a lot of posts on a lot of things. Only a lunatic would read through all of them. Bella responds that she's deeply flattered and moves on.

Edward doesn't get the kind of interaction he was looking for as Bella doesn't reach back out to him and instead answers questions like "What if Itachi was a walrus? Would he murder his entire family then?" (The answer, by the way, is yes).

Edward ends up having to ask questions himself, carefully prepared questions based on what he's seen that Bella will both enjoy and will provoke deep thoughts about herself and the world.

To his mounting anger and frustration, he waits weeks, and instead sees five iterations of "What if Itachi had pink hair?", "What if Itachi was actually in love with his brother for real though?", "What if Sasuke was secretly Itachi?", "What if Naruto was a hallucination of Sasuke's?" answered and none of his very insightful questions.

(This is in part because they're too insightful, they require a lot of thought whereas the others do not, because Bella's never heard of the source material Edward's mentioning or else has no hot takes, and because Edward is following his question with five paragraphs of what he thinks and how what he thinks is absolutely the right answer. Clearly expecting hot take Bella to agree with him.

Bella does not.

So, she doesn't answer and feels increasingly weird about this Albrecht guy. Seems kind of like a smug elitist, clearly trying to impress her, doesn't he?)

As it is, he's prompted to read through Naruto to see what the possible draw is, and he can't figure it out as it's weird foreign cartoons to him. Bella doesn't even have Naruto on her shelf! He searches but all he can find are classics, typically English, like Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Dickens.

There is, in fact, no mangas or animes on her shelf despite Bella referencing these materials near constantly.

She clearly knows it intimately, per her blog, but where is the source material she's even drawing from?

Worse, in real life, she gives no indication she has this blog. At first, he thought of this positively. Bella has a +1000 following on her blog but has not allowed it to get to her head or affect her daily life, except it makes him feel like all his efforts to get to know her don't even matter.

Edward starts giving her a shake down in real life, dropping little hints that he knows about her online persona. Bella tries to brush these aside as AH HA HA HA HA, I'M NOT A TOTAL NERD WITH HOT TAKES ON THINGS. "Naruto? What's that?" She gets increasingly disturbed that Edward is... trying to publicly humiliate her? Despite Edward being super hot and mysterious, Bella finds herself less and less interested in him.

You all know how this eventually goes: Bella gets eaten by Edward.

[alienaiver]

Behind the scenes

the lovely @dira333 tagged me in this and its sooo fun!! the questions are so amazing and id like to give it my best with some in depth answers, since learning these facts about one of my favorite writers here was so fun !!!!! behind the scenes of writing is so good to share!!

Started writing: i think ive always been writing. i remember when we used to have one computer for the entire family in the early 00's and had little screentime, i set alarms to 4-5am (with no concept of what that Would Do To Me emotionally without sleep LMAO) JUST to get some time to write in peace. my first fanfictions i published was on a homemade forum page with a friend when i was 11!

Started blogging: ive had my tumblr since 2009-ish where ive been a rp'er over multiple times and published d gray man and no. 6 fanfictions in 2011-12ish. i was also active on livejournal before i found fanfiction.net !! but this specific blog was made in may 2021!!! the reader inserts came then :3

Followers: i actually JUST hit 300 two days ago!!! which is very exciting. i dont always look at the number, since it doesnt necessarily correlate with engangement, but its fun to see the uptick!!

Communication: i genuinely love love LOVE the social part of social media, and communications so important to me. theres nothing better than reblogs with comments you can bounce off of, asks, dm's and all that! sadly, my disability makes it so hard for me to have continuous contact and im 90% of the time the one to drop the ball when it comes to replying :(( thats why its extra important to me/special with the mutuals who keeps reaching out and dont have the same social expectations about replying. even if im unable to reply the day that i receive the message, it still brings great joy seeing the notif!

Likes: i dont mind them! generally its not that important to me whether or not my followers interact a lot. a like still means the world to me. of course a reblog is much better and engages so much more (+ boosts me!!), but theyre good for my soul, too!

Requests: i get very few requests :( i think i like them, but i havent gotten enough to actually get a feel on whether or not it kills my writing spirit? generally i get very excited to be able to deliver something and it gets me up from the bed to write, but i sometimes fear im not providing what they wanted! its anxiety-inducing in some ways, but i love a good little writing challenge !!

Writing: i loove love love love writing for hours at a time, hyperfixating on it. sadly, my cat snøfle is Very Jealous of both my laptop and pc. giving him a substitution sadly doesnt help</3 so my writing is often limited to specific times of day, and when he gets tired of my keyboard clack-clack-clacking, its time to put on some one piece while he naps on me! i wish i could write more works or just scenes on my phone, but it hurts my hands So Much, so i only write small one shots when im heavily inspired but snøfles in A Mood!!

genre wise im a fluffy type. maybe some hurt/comfort but always leaning towards comfort. id like to write more disability fics to spread both awareness and visibility, but i sometimes struggle with putting in my own disabilities and not make them too personal or too detailed for others to not relate. its an overthinking problem, so i often procrastinate writing them., bcos i fear itll be too niche! but i always get positive feedback (excpet for that one time with inked coffee lmao) so im not sure whats holding me back!!!

i always listen to music when i write, and it differs a lot. when i wrote the star and the earth i listened to a lot of medieval-inspired music, and made a specific playlist for that. but when i write on my modern au's or canon compliant bnha/haikyuu, anything goes!

i love putting in 'boring' every day stuff into my fics, or small scenes that dont necessarily advance the plot but just gives a feel of the characters.

speaking of snøfle ^ i am no longer allowed to write for the evening.... so ill start some apothecary diaries and enjoy a cold soda on this hot and humid evening !!! mwuah mwuah if u read this far thank you, and i love you. i love all of you <3333

no pressure tags as always but would love to hear the answers and get to know u all! @cup-of-fluff @true-deru @mirandabarma @illuminiscentboba @tetsuskei @threadbaresweater @krystalgaia @petriquors @ktsumu @moonbeamwritings @ohtokki

[freyafrida]

i'm assuming the rec they're referring to is this lovely post by @gogandmagog, to whom i must thank for unearthing this fic, lol. i wrote this chapter back in 2012(!!!) so unfortunately i don't remember what exactly i had in mind for shirley and pencil girl (love that nickname), or if i even had more of a story in mind. i don't see myself writing another chapter for arco iris (although never say never?) BUT i did have some vague headcanons and influences so i will share them!

anyway. what did shirley say to her afterwards? i didn't have a full idea for this in my head and i'm of two minds about it! i can see him just ignoring it because whatever, he's not interested in getting his name written up on the side of the schoolhouse and it's none of his business why Pencil Girl decided to, apparently, lose her mind one day after school. i can also see him being pretty straightforward and asking her about it and being completely embarrassed that she's sweet on him and again, having zero interest in getting his name put on a Take Notice.

either way, they both pretend it didn't happen for a few years, but Pencil Girl never quite gives up her little crush on him, and she and shirley grow to be friends in adolescence after he gets over being flustered by her existence. they exchange sympathetic letters during the war, maybe get into wacky adventures as college kids, and fall in love along the way. the end.

so, some background: this is very niche, but as a kid, i was very into the boy/girl battle series by phyllis reynolds naylor (which i also wrote fic for in 2012 -- maybe that spilled into arco iris?). i didn't do it consciously, but in hindsight, i think i was inspired by the dynamic between the characters wally and caroline. wally is the most introverted of his brothers, thoughtful and quietly imaginative, while caroline is an attention-seeking theater kid who drags wally into her mischief. they're both annoyed by each other because they're middle schoolers, but they're also both imaginative and slightly lonely because everyone thinks they're weird, and they find they (unwillingly) understand each other on that more fundamental level. anyway! it's not a 1:1 comparison, but i think i was imagining shirley/pencil girl from a similar place. we know shirley isn't totally opposed to mischief (see "well-deserved spankings" in RV) and while we also know he hates to be badgered with chatter per RoI, i was also picturing him as a bit matthew cuthbert-esque, where he doesn't mind exuberance as long as he's not expected to actually respond in kind (that's how i interpret "badgering", anyway).

i was also semi-influenced by the dynamic between kyon and haruhi in the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya, haha. obviously none of this is evident in that very short chapter, but uh, that's the backstory if you're interested, or if it gives an idea of how the rest of the story might go!

i also was actually influenced by the jenny penny section of anne of ingleside! i first read that book as a teenager and tbh i took the jenny penny section and all its judgment about Dirty Houses and Fighting Adults and Not Saying Your Prayers a leetle personally, lmao. i found the blythes pretty snobbish in that story* (this livejournal post is a pretty good summary of how i felt about anne of ingleside at the time). so i also had the loose headcanon of the blythes having to deal with someone a little socially inappropriate, who they wouldn't approve of very much. again, this was way too much to be evident in the actual chapter, but this is where the whole "girl who kisses rando boys in classrooms" concept came from, if you're interested.

anyway that's how shirley/pencil girl would've gone. hope this didn't ruin it for you, nonny, and thank you for reading ❤️

* i mean, upon reread, there are actual issues with the pennys: jenny is a more intentional liar than anne ever was, and the grandma makes di show her her underwear??? weird. but also jenny is, like, the lone realistically troubled child in a book of unusually twee children, and i found her surprisingly sympathetic for that reason. anyway. i had feelings.

[merryshiparchive]

okay heres the entire archive, with their original descriptions in order to the chapter i posted them in.

so if i post a description and its the third one, its the third chapter on the archive, etc.

some thoughts under the cut

based on my impressions here i dont think this is the only east blue polycule fic that exists in terms of older work (in fact, theres evidence to suggest theres way more i havent found, specifically on livejournal and specifically from the time around drum kingdom ish? as the fact that merryshipping was a livejournal community and these people didnt seem to know eachother pre livejournal,

suggesting that it probably was mildly popular at some point on niche internet forums. if i can find the origin of the term merryshipping online i'm pretty sure i'll find more fanfiction, there's also the fact ive heard other people reference things on livejournal I didn't see, in regards to east blue polycule, so eventually this archival project would have to start up again when I find that.

i stopped reading all of them because i started the disassociate and really focus on getting them on ao3, but thats probably for the best I want the sweet comfort of ao3's layout when I read these for the first time (livejournal... specifically the merryshipping community site was unforgiving to my dyslexia)

if anybody knows where to find things on livejournal please hmu

...

theres also the spefific matter of me finding it very funny that east blue polycule shippers have always been a spefific type of person.

see guardian1s (one of the first east blue polycule shippers on ff.net) ff.net profile:

the trend in namis perspective always being a grounding point for east blue polycule shippers is also incredibly interesting, and it aligns with canon so i'm not surprised.

[doublel27]

Hi LL, since I have seen you talking about fandom lately, I want your advice on this. I have been in various fandoms for almost 11 years (since grade 7), the longest is ARMY (BTS), and most recently is Thai BL. I apologize if this is worded poorly because English is my second language.

How to manage your feelings when people in your fandom say they hate or dislike your other faves (not for their problematic behaviors, just general like not vibing with, skill issues, company management issues, unpleasant encounters with fans, etc)? It got better in recent years in K-pop, but I still get a little sad when people who are fans of my faves hate/dislike my other faves or my other fandom. Especially in Thai BL, some CPs are small and niche so I can hardly find fans that like all/ some CPs I like or are indifferent about other CPs at least. A fan account I have followed to get updates for a long time recently said they hate my other faves so sadly I have to unfollow them :( I'm well aware that this is my personal problem and no one is liked by everyone and they are competitors. But still, I'd love some advice on how to navigate fandom with fewer feelings involved since it's not good for my mental health and ruin my enjoyment in fandom.

How to not invest too much and get anxious when your faves are potentially being screwed over by their company's incompetency? Same thing with the above, especially when fans complain and protest the company and the company is actually incompetent.

How do you build a plot to a fic and is there any way to keep track and finish writing your fics? I have an idea, wrote 2 scenes but now I don't know what to do next to make it a full fic?

Thank you so much! Sorry for bothering you. Have a nice week <3

Hi friend! Thank you so much! Your English is great, and thanks for sharing your background with fandom. 💜💜 (ps Sorry I thought I posted this days ago)

1.I have to say my ability to compartmentalize and to not get too invested in others feelings is a couple of things:

One, I’ve had time and experience. Baby fan LL struggled with this a lot, too. The longer you practice feeling your feelings, which are normal. It’s normal to feel sad when someone says something you like is terrible. But there was a definite ship and let ship and My Kink Is Not Your Kink And That’s Okay vibe that existed in my younger fandom era. I think it was also easier to avoid stuff you didn’t want to see because a lot of our fan sites when I was young were much more compartmentalized, with different sites, different forums, threads. Livejournal and Dreamwidth let you have your personal journal but also join community journals.

I think beyond remembering that not everyone has to like everything, it’s important to keep in mind the quote from Wicked (2024) “Everyone knows the best way to unite people is to give them a common enemy” and I think that is a major problem in celebrity & fan culture in general. Many people get sucked deep into their fandom and see other fandoms as competition and threats, which allows them to unite deeper. But you can’t necessarily change that behavior in people. You can only manage yourself.

So, some of my favorite strategies to manage my feelings include staying calm by breathing, literally grounding myself, doing some physical activity, or taking an internet/fandom break, or even going back and listening/watching your favorite stuff to focus on why you love it, start a conversation with someone who shares your love of the thing, or working on something creative are all great ways to stay grounded and connected. Find ways to engage with your favorite things that are constructive and fulfilling.

2. Oh 💜💜💜 the way I can’t even guess what Thai CP you’re talking about because I read widely and nearly all of the fandoms are all convinced their faves are being neglected by their companies. And like, they can’t all be the most mistreated.

I think if there’s serious mistreatment, like the stuff with Rii7e where the company let fans harass a member, that’s worth fans calling out. Or the cases of actors and actresses in China that are forced to work while very ill, or the guy they cast in an idol contest who wasn’t auditioning and then wouldn’t let leave.

I think when it comes to Thai BL fans, it’s good to think about the fact that there are many factors that go into getting different jobs, be they series, or fanmeets - these take money and time and energy. As much as we would love to be able to make art for arts sake, as long as we live in a capitalist world, people need to make enough money to live and pay people. It it comes to brand deal jobs: there’s only so many jobs for a large market of people, which is fine. Not everyone wants to be doing brand deals or has to all the time. They can choose not to and focus on other things.

I also think people should think on a systems level. GMMTV and One31 and Change5261 are part of a large conglomerate with many resources. Other companies like Idol Factory and YWBP are very small and have limited resources because they’ve leveraged the owner’s capital to exist. Every time I see interfans take Idol Factory to task for not having stuff translated immediately when they’ve relied on small contracted teams of fan translators to do their translating makes me angry because Idol Factory doesn’t spend as much money on like fanmeets as they do on production values for their shows.

Sometimes upsetting things happen, but thinking about why helps. I know there was a big disappointment in the BillyBabe camp over the cancelled fanmeet that was also going to be a musical: but musicals are way more expensive and ambitious than your general fanmeet. They weren’t just going to sing a couple of songs. There was going to be sets, costumes, a script - of course that concept was going to cost more for tickets and be less benefits because you were going to get a larger more involved show. And then because Idol Factory is small and was trying to get a project that honestly was probably to big to handle in that short an out of time…I’m not surprised they bit off more than they could chew that time. They think big.

Again, this gets back to the point above, around a common enemy and acknowledging how all fandoms can get sucked into this mentality helps me. As does reminding myself that most of these artists and companies are run by people. That sometime there are trade offs and mistakes but a lot of decisions aren’t them actually hating your faves. All choices have consequences and everyone who works on something deserves to get paid and people should work however much they want. I actually worry a lot more about overwork than not getting enough work!

And you know, if that’s a lot of what the fandom is talking about maybe don’t add to the noise. Don’t feel you have to join in because everyone else is.

3. Tips for fanfic:

Oh nonny. It’s been so long since I completed something. But I do like to think about where I want the story to go, what is the problem my characters are facing, What am I trying to convey to my audience. Sometimes I go back and watch key scenes of the source material for inspiration and to keep my characters consistent.

Taking quick notes and fleshing them out later. Figuring out if you are a description first or a dialogue first writer.

Reading also helps, fic but also books you love. Listening to music. Taking the time to watch people and places and work on describing them. Using brackets or a place holder sentence and move on rather than get stuck in the perfect thing to say.

Sometimes finding someone to talk your ideas out with helps. Most of my favorite stories I’ve written someone else has read my or pushed me in my thinking.

Much love! 💜💜

[forcebookish]

thank you for tagging me, @ariadnekurosaki!!!

1 . How did you get into writing fanfiction?

uhh, when i was twelve i wrote horrendously bad self-insert inuyasha (and bleach?) fanfic on a now-defunct website that doesn't exist anymore lol since then i've bopped in and out of fandoms under different usernames across many platforms. often, i'll lose the muse in 2-3 year chunks, but get sucked back in for new fandoms.

except bleach. i always come back to bleach 😩

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

oh god, if we count dc, marvel, k-pop, and thai dramas (+rpf) as all their own respective fandoms (ie. not distinguishing between arrow, the flash, young justice, etc.), it's twelve - if we don't, it's almost thirty. a lot of my exo fanfics only reference other groups/solo artists, so i think that's too generous. the point is, it's a lot lol

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

on and off since i was twelve (although when i was five i wrote a picture book about the disney princesses hanging out with me), but probably a total of 8 years actually active?

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

write more. i rarely read fanfiction unfortunately D:

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

i'm less verbose and my voice is cleaner.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

quebecois sacres.

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

when i make someone cry 😈 nah i really love detailed ones with quotations, ones that pinpoint exactly what parts hit them or meant the most to them. but tbh i love short keymashes too!

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

hmmm🤔 i don't think i write anything that out there... yet. i guess i like to write about psychic connections and niche super powers.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

ones with a lot of worldbuilding. and porn lol

10. What is the easiest type?

ones with a lot dialogue and character introspection.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

my office, the tv room, my bed, sometimes outside. i used to write in coffee shops, at the library, work (especially when i worked at the library lol) before the pandemic and i became a hermit. in gdocs, because i write on my pc, chromebook, and phone. all hours.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

there's this one prompt from the bleach kink meme that i've been thinking about for ten years that has the potential to be really gross or really hot. or both. i might write it for the >5k au event in august idk

13. What made you choose your username?

lapmonster: my twitter username for a while before i decided to start posting on ao3 so i made my ao3 to match; it's a pun on rap monster. kairumption: when i started writing exo fic this was my livejournal url; another pun, it's kai + kyrumption (from angel). it's also where my nickname rum comes from. farewellswords: my twitter username changed from lapmonster in 2019 or 2020 because bts got too popular and army were accusing me of being a namjoon anti lmao; it's a chapter title from bleach.

probably should have kept kairumption as all of them, but i like farewellswords 🤷‍♀️ tbh it would have been my url here if an inactive acc didn't already have it. because, i mean, come on.

COME ON

okaaaay let's tag: @pomslices @retiredficwriter @komari-maxx @ellasaru12 @athousandbyeol @bytheforcebook and anyone else who wants to participate! :D sorry if i forgot you!