#btw italics don’t transfer from docs to tumblr so. ao3 will have all that but you won’t find it here lol

[hannie-dul-set]

hi! i notice you often talk about using google docs to write and ive seen a lot of other writers do it, is there a particular reason that you guys use google docs and not just tumblr draft or whatever? is it beneficial in any way or just preference 😭 (love your works btw!)

HELLO!!! google docs is just a very convenient platform!! i can’t speak for every tumblr writer out there HAHHAA but allow me to enumerate a few reasons why:

autosave!! if you‘re on wifi, you don’t have to worry about losing any progress by forgetting to save or if your device suddenly shuts down. i’ve been traumatized by writing directly on tumblr before in my early days of writing 😭😭 gdocs automatically saves everything you’ve barfed so it’s just very convenient.

formatting!!! your text formats on gdocs (bolds, italics) automatically transfer over to tumblr/ao3 whenever i paste them.

ease of access!! u can access ur shit on any device as long as u have ur google acc HAHAHAHHA.

apart from this, i’ve just been using google docs for everything including my acads. a few writers also use fiction-writing specific tools and apps for writing, but i prefer to have all my brain vomits (fanfic or not) in one place HHAHAHAHAHA.

[artieistired]

the lighthouse

alastair carstairs fic

inspired by this song || read on ao3

and i’m glad i met the devil ‘cause he showed me i was weak / and a little piece of him is in a little piece of me  -‘the lighthouse’ halsey

---

Alastair learned early in his life how to put his feelings behind a wall. 

He liked to imagine storing them in a lighthouse. They were safer like that, all tucked away behind bricks made of rage and spite and whatever else he could cobble together to shore up the weak spots—he was safer like that. In quieter moments, when the waves of life calmed and he was alone, he would take them out, one by one, cradle them like the most precious items in the world. He’d let tears slip down his cheeks, let his lips quirk up in a contented smile, even allow himself a few moments to feel truly sorry for the person he’d become.

But then came time to put those feelings away again and let a cool mask—a wall—of indifference take its place. It was this mask he wore to retrieve his father from pubs, to tease first-years at the Academy, to snap at Cordelia to leave him alone. The mask was important. The walls were important. They kept him safe.

The mask wasn’t infaillible, though. Sometimes, it slipped.

Sometimes, it became real.

---

It takes less than a minute for them to find him. His mother picks him up from under his arms, crosses her arms over his chest and holds him to her as Risa tends to his father.

It takes less than a minute for them to find him. His mother picks him up from under his arms, crosses her arms over his chest and holds him to her as Risa tends to his father.

It takes less than a minute for them to find him. His mother picks him up from under his arms, crosses her arms over his chest and holds him to her as Risa tends to his father.

Sona whispers in his ear and smoothes down his hair as though expecting him to cry—but he doesn’t. He can feel the tears at the back of his eyes placed there by fear and uncertainty, but he pushes against them now, and the first brick slides into place.

Later, when his father is laying on the couch and breathing steadily, Sona sinks to her knees in front of Alastair and explains it all in a low voice. She tells him about the drinking, the gambling, the reason they move from place to place so frequently. She tells him the most important thing about it all is that Cordelia mustn't ever find out.

She shakes him a bit as she says it, as though it will lodge the fact in his brain for eternity. He nods, wide-eyed and scared, and swears to her that his sister will never learn of it. He means it with all his heart.

---

The mask slips after Clive Cartwright dies. It’s Alastair’s first experience with this new emotion—this sort of disappointed relief, a breath of fresh air he knows he doesn’t deserve—and it terrifies him. It’s difficult to hide as he doesn’t know what it is.

Of course Thomas Lightwood notices something is different—it’s just Alastair’s luck. Thomas attributes it to grief, though, for which Alastair is thankful. He doesn’t much feel like explaining himself.

It’s nice, he thinks, to not have to hide himself around Thomas, to not have to secure that suffocating mask of rage and indifference. Thomas doesn’t seem to care that Alastair isn’t his usual self. He just trails quietly after him like always, and his presence is almost comforting.

That is, until Matthew Fairchild comes bursting in.

The walls slam down, alarm bells going off in Alastair’s head as he fumbles for a foothold in this conversation. There’s Matthew, standing there, his venom green eyes narrowed to a point as he spits about Alastair’s hair, his friend, his father.

His father.

Alastair’s heart stumbles, clenching at the mention, and he can’t explain why it hurts so much for someone else to acknowledge what he’s known for so many years but it’s enough to make the anger he let form his walls come seeping out.

This part, where the mask becomes real, where he feels every bit of the cold malice he projects, might be worse than anything he’s ever felt.

Tongue in his teeth, his being cements around that cold, hard, cursed rage.

He deserves it, really, when Matthew punches him.

---

It’s like drowning, what comes after. Like sinking to the bottom of a lake.

His sister is the first to pick up on it. Her footfall behind him as they weave through the forest is louder than she realizes, but Alastair doesn’t mind. It isn’t until he hears a snap accompanied by a short cry that he turns to scan the brush around him. Cordelia stares at him, dark eyes wide and terrified, and there’s an apprehension there that nudges its way under his skin and settles uncomfortably close to his heart.

He lets out a sigh, checks on her, leads her back to the house.

We’re all of us alone, in the end, he tells her. She narrows her eyes and lowers them to the ground, unconvinced. When they get back, she stomps through the house, relocating all the daggers she can find to the training room. 

Alastair leans against the doorway and watches her. There’s an innocence in her mistakes. She shifts her feet as she throws, raises her shoulder a bit too high, releases the blade just a moment too soon. Things she’d quickly learn to fix at the Academy, if not from the instructors then from the ridicule of other students.

The droning thud of knives in the target board does little to ease the roiling waves of Alastair’s mood. He doesn’t know what to say, He’s sure he could scream and no one would hear, so what does this moment, right here, right now, matter? Who’s going to remember it? Who’s going to care?

So he corrects her stance.

He’s not sure how that leads to talking about the Academy.

Green eyes fill his memory, the ghost of pain flitting across his face.

His parents never asked why his nose isn’t quite straight anymore. He wonders if they even noticed.

Stay with me, Layla, he pleads.

She does.

---

Years pass, and a second set of green eyes joins the first. Same shape, same shade, but filled with a different kind of poison: the kind that charms before it kills. 

Being with Charles changes Alastair. Their relationship pokes at him, tests those walls and shows him where he’s weak. Charles shows him where he’s weak, makes a point to drive it home whenever he sees fit.

But, oh, Alastair so wants to let it slide. He wants to stay here forever, he decides one night in Paris, twirling red strands of hair between his fingers.

He lets himself believe it’s enough when Charles whispers soons and somedays and promises in his ear. Even when Alastair hears the news—from his own mother, of all people—that Charles has engaged himself to one Ariadne Bridgestock, he simply steps further into the shadows and lets his walls grow stronger.

---

The sun starts to rise when he leaves Charles. It feels like freedom in a way he hasn’t known in years.

---

It’s not as easy as he remembers, this being alone thing. It feels better than drowning, though, and drowning felt better than being with Charles, so he’ll take it.

He watches from afar as Cordelia engages herself to this man she’s loved so long—he’s held at arm’s length from their happiness, an insurmountable distance placed there by his past choices.

Charles comes back, looking for reconciliation, and it’s all Alastair can do not to let waves of rage crash down on him. It’s almost more than Alastair can handle: the letters, the cornering, the endless stream of apologies even as he traipses around with Grace Blackthorn hanging on his arm… Well, just because Alastair chose to be alone doesn’t mean he particularly enjoys it.

At a certain point, he stops bothering to tell Charles not to send the letters. They form a pile on his desk, and he entertains himself by throwing them in the fire and watching them burn. He’d rather not kick Charles while he’s down, even if he’d love to laugh in his face at the utter audacity of the whole thing.

---

He wants to do more than laugh, sometimes.

Sometimes, he wants to scream.

---

There have been many dark days in Alastair’s life, he thinks. The day he discovered his father’s true nature. His first day at the Academy. Even his first encounter with Charles left a dark stain.

This is different, somehow.

This is indescribable.

Alastair is leaving his house, tucked into his coat, hoping to get a walk in before his mother wakes, when he sees them. A small group of Shadowhunters. Gabriel and Cecily Lightwood, and the Inquisitor. They meet him on the top step, door shut firmly behind him.

The Inquisitor’s voice grates on the hard stone of Alastair’s lighthouse walls as he asks to come in and, after Alastair refuses, tells him the news.

Your father was murdered.

We don’t know who it was.

I’m so sorry for your loss.

Alastair stairs blankly at them, unable to discern if the lack of bubbling emotion is due to their presence and the need to hide it or simply because there are no emotions for this event. What are you even supposed to feel in an instance like this?

The Inquisitor leaves, his face long and troubled, but the Lightwoods stay, insisting Alastair shouldn’t have to be the one to tell his mother, and they can help with any arrangements, and they’re willing to tell Cordelia too if he needs.

Alastair thanks them for their kindness and steps back inside, telling them he’ll take care of everything and sending them off without a backward glance.

Their words are pretty enough. They’ve never made a difference before, though. Where were the Lightwoods and the Herondales when Elias was alive? When he was wreaking havoc on Alastair’s life? Too little too late. 

Risa is there in an instant when Alastair stumbles into the library, needing familiarity and comfort to sort through his thoughts. Telling her is easy. Clinical. He wonders if this is what telling his mother will be like.

No, it can’t be. Surely he’ll be expected to show some emotion, some feeling other than indifferent. His father just died.

His father is dead.

Alastair doesn’t know what it says about him that those words carry little more than quiet relief, like a weight being lifted from his shoulders. There’s a pain there, sure, but there is always pain in adjustment, in change.

Maybe it makes him a monster. Maybe that indifference Charles is so fond of rubbed off on him.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He’s grateful for his walls, though—they seem about the only thing holding him up at this point.

---

He’s been following Thomas. There’s no sugarcoating it or explaining it away. He’s been following Thomas, and he doesn’t regret it, not when Thomas is accused of murder and locked in the Institute Sanctuary.

He’s been following Thomas because he was worried and he couldn’t make himself stop caring, no matter how many times he was faced the threat of the Thames’ icy waves. He’s been following Thomas to make sure he stays safe because the Lightwoods can’t lose another child. He’s been following Thomas because Thomas is hurting in a way that can’t be healed and it makes him reckless.

He has many excuses. None of that matters now.

---

They end up locked in the Sanctuary together until the Herondales can return with the Mortal Sword.

At first, they ignore each other. It’s easy enough: Alastair curls up on a mattress with his copy of The Prince while Thomas paces anxiously.

As the hours pass, though, it gets more and more difficult. Thomas’s presence charges the air, presses on Alastair—it demands to be acknowledged.

So, that’s what he does.

---

Things escalate from there.

---

Alastair finds himself in the middle of the Institute’s ruins, completely at a loss for how to explain himself to Thomas, and can’t help but think it’s only fitting. He’s used to losing happiness at this point—he’s well versed in the staggering rhythm and lonely tune of it all. 

The thing about love, Alastair thinks, is that it’s so bloody unpredictable that he has no way to defend against it. With Charles, he’d thought love would fix them, that love was enough to heal the bruises their relationship left on them both. 

Now, Alastair feels he was tainted by it. He feels stronger, yes, but different. Like he met the devil and took a little piece with him.

There’s no way to describe this to Thomas, so he doesn’t try. He walks away, and he doesn’t look back.

---

It’s getting harder to pretend like he has a life here in London.

Alastair tries to tally up the things tying him to this city, but they slip through his fingers like sand in an hourglass, each vague excuse a reminder that his time here is nearly up.

His sister is in Paris. Not that she was really tying him here anymore—she has her own life, her own friends who hate him and want to keep them separated at all costs.

His mother is in the Silent City. The Silent Brothers said all the stress wasn’t good for the baby, so she’s on bedrest where they can monitor her.

He and Charles are done. There’s nothing more to be said on that matter.

Thomas is…

Well, to be honest, Alastair tries not to let himself think about Thomas.

---

Alastair has a plan.

As soon as his new baby sibling is born, he’s going to talk to his mother about moving back to Cirenworth. She can stay in London if she wants, he decides—he’ll be fine on his own. He always has been.

---

He considers moving back to Tehran. He misses it more and more often. Maybe going home would be good for him.

---

Alastair has worn ruts in the floor of his house. It’s been two weeks since Cordelia left. The funeral is in two days. He can’t deal with this.

It doesn’t help when Thomas shows up on his doorstep asking him to go to Paris with him. Under different circumstances, Alastair’s brain might’ve short-circuited from the insinuation. As it is, Thomas is asking him to go so they can find Matthew and Cordelia. He’s looking at Alastair with his heart in his eyes, too, and it’s almost too much to bear, and Alastair has never been that smart when it comes to men with soft hair and kind eyes.

So he says yes.

---

Paris is a disaster.

Paris is everything he could’ve dreamed.

They don’t find Matthew and Cordelia. Alastair wonders belatedly if that was ever Thomas’s true goal. They search hotels, restaurants, clothing stores, even dare to check in with the Institute, but not one has seen a white blonde man traveling with a brown-skinned redheaded woman.

The night they’re set to return to London—the night before Elias’s funeral—Alastair finds himself in front of Thomas’s door. He’s not sure how he got there, doesn’t know what possessed his feet to lead him here, but he knows there’s no one he can blame but himself when he raises a hand and knocks.

It’s a mistake. The best he’s ever made.

It starts with an argument, as it seems most of their conversations do these days, and the argument ends with them sitting on the floor, knees to chests, face to face, talking. The talking leads to understanding, and the understanding leads to something warm and sort of shaky in his heart—something dangerous that makes him want to run.

Thomas doesn’t try to do anything, he doesn’t lean in or demand anything of Alastair. Instead, it’s Alastair who asks to stay. It’s Alastair who damns the consequences and damns his walls and lets it all collapse in on itself.

They don’t do anything, not really. The bed is soft and the sheets are cool and Thomas’s arms are firm and comforting as they loop around his waist and hold him tight. They lay there in silence until their breaths even out. Alastair’s head is tucked under Thomas’s chin, and it’s a whole new kind of fitting: fitting together, fitting each other, fitting in somewhere for the first time in his life. He decides he quite likes it.

---

The thing is, Alastair still doesn’t know how to feel about his father’s death. He just doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. There isn’t exactly a guide for what to do in this particular situation, and Alastair feels a bit like he’s drowning all over again as he scours his heart for an answer.

Alastair didn’t want Elias to die. He just wanted things to be easier.

He doesn’t know how to reconcile the relief he feels with the pain of losing the man who, despite everything, was his father. His Baba. It’s like one burden has been lifted only to be replaced with another, stranger load.

Cordelia doesn’t make it—he still has no idea where she is—and his mother isn’t allowed out of bed, so he’s the only one there to shake hands, accept condolences, listen to old stories and laughs and cries and statements of I can’t imagine how much you must miss him—

Alastair wants to tell Thomas about this turmoil, wants to seek comfort in this new thing between them, but he doesn’t have to words to even begin to explain it. All that comes out when he tries to speak is a faint plea to help him get the hell away from this place.

They go to the rivershore, him and Thomas and this weight hanging over them. Well, hanging over Alastair, mostly. They stand on the shore and watch the waves, and Alastair could almost laugh at how well it fits with this metaphor that he’s always used to think of his walls—his lighthouse walls.

In a moment of—he doesn’t know—bravery? recklessness?—Alastair steps out further into the waves. His shoes and socks and the ends of his trousers are soaked in seconds as the waves lap around his calves.

He spreads his arms out—his jacket is long forgotten, stashed on a rock half a mile back—and lets the wind rip at his shirt, hair, trousers, skin—

He lets it rip at his walls, at those lighthouse walls, lets them crack and crumble and collapse to the ground. He imagines the pieces crashing into the sea, sending up the spray of water that’s hitting his face in a sort of cathartic release.

Thomas calls for him, warns that he shouldn’t go out too far, shouldn’t stay too long in the cold.

Alastair doesn’t mind. He’s smiling for the first time in weeks.

tags (lmk if you want to me +/-) @littlx-songbxrd @thewarthatsavedmylife @anarmorofwords @thefoxandthefound @stxr-thxif @ninacarstairss @writeforjordelia @lifewouldbebetteronmars @life-through-the-eyes-of​ @apple-bottom-jeansx​ @writeordie-4​

[esselley]

hi! so i just made an archive of our own account and i don't know what to post first. do you have any tips or advice for posting on ao3? do you have any tips for ao3 in general? thank you!

Hi there anon! Thank you for your question!

First things first: I think to a certain extent, what to post first is going to be entirely up to you. Whatever you feel like writing, whatever format it’s in, you should write it up and post it! Or, depending on how long you’ve been using the site as a guest, you can look through other people’s content to pay attention to tagging, author’s notes, formatting – that kind of thing. AO3 is user-friendly in most ways, and you’ll grasp it pretty quickly.

But, I do have a couple tips to help you out on your first run-through (and actually some helpful tricks I think some more familiar users may not know, as well)! 

BTW since we’re on the topic, if you use the subscribe function on AO3!!! Did you know about the different ways to subscribe to an author, a series, or an individual work?

You can only subscribe to an author from their dashboard or their profile page! If you are in the middle of reading a particular fic, and you hit the subscribe button at the top of the page, you will only subscribe to updates for that fic. Same deal if you want to subscribe to a series, you must be on the series page. Subscribing to a fic within that series will only subscribe you to that specific fic – you will get updates if that story is updated/chapters are added, but not if a new work is added to the series.

I suspect some people are unaware of this, due to the frequent amount of subscriptions I get on one-shots! (But, idk… maybe there’s just some really hopeful people out there laijefliajelsjf)

Anyway, now, onto the rest of this textbook (it got long)!

NEW WORK vs DRAFTINGWhen you go to post your very first work on AO3, you’ll go to Post > New Work at the very top to open up AO3′s drafting tool. From here, you can go through and copy over a work from Word or Google docs or whatever writing program you use, or just write up your fic in the post box itself! 

Either way you choose, you can then decide to post your work right then and there (Post Without Preview), or if you are still editing it, you can choose the Preview option. This will take you to the work as it will appear once posted; from there you can go back to the editing page, which will now have a Save Without Posting option. Use this if you would just like to save your work and come back to it later. Note: drafts are saved for one month only.

HTML vs RICH TEXTWhen you open your drafts/start a new work, the main field for your text has two options: HTML or Rich Text. HTML just shows you all HTML codes in your work. Rich Text is probably what you want to work in while editing, because you’ll only see this bar in that format:

However, sometimes you will want to use the HTML section in order to copy over text from another source that allows HTML format; for instance, Tumblr! I always copy the HTML from my tumblr fics over to AO3 when posting, because it is the easiest/fastest way to ensure the formatting stays intact. Here’s where to find that:

AVOID BACKDATED DRAFTSThis is a pitfall I encountered with my first fic I ever posted. When you create a draft, the date of posting defaults to the date you first saved the draft. So if you are like me and you draft fics way in advance of posting, you need to make sure to update the post date before you actually hit post, or it will backdate your fic – this happened with This Place in the Sky, and it was several hours before I realized it had backdated by a week, and no one was seeing it T.T Learn from my mistakes, younglings

(And if you want to backdate a draft, then you would go in here to alter the date.)

ITALICS ISSUESome people have noticed an issue with AO3 that causes fics to have odd spaces after punctuation (periods, quotation marks, dashes). This is a glitch related to italicizing when you transfer over fics from another source. To avoid having to search your entire fic for those spaces, always italicize the punctuation that precedes/follows your italicized words. For instance: 

“No!” – quotations/exclamation not italicized, glitch makes it show up as: 

“No!” – all punctuation italicized, now shows up as:

:D It’s just less of a headache to have to comb through and find all the random spaces, I find, when you just italicize beforehand! A preemptive strike. 

PARAGRAPH SPACINGLet’s look at the variations of line spacing in a posted fic: 

And here’s what this looks like in AO3′s Rich Text editor:

Sorry that is so tiny, but notice the clear difference in spaces between paragraphs while editing! There’s no actual correct way to do this, but! The “regular” option of spacing is the most common on AO3, and also the easiest to read. Avoid the no spacing option at all costs! It can be a huge headache to read, unless you are indenting paragraphs (less common on AO3, but acceptable). I tend to dislike the double spacing option as well because I feel like it breaks up the flow of wording, but that’s just personal preference.

HOW TO AVOID DOUBLE SPACING BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS

Frequent posters may also have noticed a thing AO3 does where it will insert double spaces at random intervals, often for large sections of the fic at a time, for no discernible reason. This happens often when you copy your work over from another source. But there’s an easy fix!

On MS Word and Google docs, find the “Add space after paragraph” option, and enable it for every fic you write. When you hit Enter (ONCE) to go to a new paragraph, it will autospace for you (meaning, you should not need to double tap the Enter key).

Now when you copy this over to AO3, it will read ONE SPACE reliably, giving you that regular spacing option up above. Cool news: if you copy your HTML from Tumblr to HTML on AO3, you don’t even need to worry about this. HTML be chill like that

QUICK HTML CODESAnother thing I see people asking is how to add hyperlinks! But also, did you know you can add links, bolded, and italicized text to your summary/notes as well? You just have to put them in HTML, and this:

ItalicsBoldHyperlink

will show up as:

You can easily bold/italicize/add links in the Rich Text editor, but summary/notes are HTML only and you will have to use the above. These are the most useful/common options you’ll need, I think. Try to preview before posting to make sure you got it right (and haven’t bolded your entire summary and the world with it on accident). 

LINK BACK TO TUMBLRThere’s an easy way to link your stories to Tumblr (or Twitter) that automatically includes your title, tags, summary, and all other relevant information right in the post! Just hit this button at the top of your fic, once it’s posted – it’ll take you to the Tumblr log-in screen, so log-in and from there you can edit the post. This is what I use to make all my AO3 fic posts on Tumblr \o/

TAGS/SYNOPSISFinally, more of a stylistic note! Be thoughtful when tagging your fic/writing a synopsis. In general, try to be clear and concise, so people can see what they’re getting into at a glance. Tag what’s important to the theme and tone of your fic. This really varies from person to person… maybe you want to tag every single thing your fic encompasses! I find really long tags to be overwhelming when browsing AO3, and prefer simple ones. I tend to overtag more for smut-heavy/PWP than I do for longer, plot driven fics.  

Your summary should also be clear and to the point, and describe the content of the fic. You can put any other thoughts in your beginning and end notes; if you are leaning towards saying anything like “sorry this sucks this is my first fic/I am bad at summaries/etc” just leave that out! If you don’t like summaries, use a quote from the fic. You don’t have to apologize for posting, even if you don’t think it’s a Shakespearean masterpiece. You still wrote a fic, and that’s awesome!

This is everything I could think of for the time being…I hope it’s helpful!!