#everyone look at this. i'm using the actual share function on ao3 for once

[starswallowingsea]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Amagi Rinne & Tomoe Hiyori, Amagi Rinne/Shiina Niki, Amagi Rinne & Shinkai Kanata & Tomoe Hiyori Characters: Tomoe Hiyori, Amagi Rinne, Shinkai Kanata, Shiina Niki Additional Tags: Mentioned Jun Sazanami, Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Hiyori comforts Rinne after Niki gets in an accident, that's it that's the fic, Kanata is there Summary:

“Now why are you so worked up--” “Niki-kun’s hurt.” “What?” “Niki-kun got hurt. The hospital just called to let me know that he’s been admitted but they won’t tell me more over the phone so I have to go and talk to the police and--” “Okay, let's take this one step at a time."

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

02/21/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Cast & Crew Sightings; Rhys Darby; Samba BTS; Vico Ortiz; Ruibo Qian; HowToHelp; Petition Embed; Queerties Last Day; IRL Outreach Assets; New Watch Parties; Visual Rep of SaveOFMD Effort; Fan Spotlight; Collages; OurFlagMeansBooze; Articles; Morale; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Tonight's Taika;

Wow everyone, crazy day again. Day 2 of BTS Darbygeddon. I'm actually going to set a google calendar reminder for tomorrow between 1-2 in case Samba decides to drop another doozy on us. Hope you all had a good day. Here's the highlights-- there's more I would have liked to add but I need to get permission first, so I'll hopefully have them up tomorrow. As always, please let me know if I missed anything <3

== Cast & Crew Sightings ==

= Rhys Darby =

Back again with another Cameo is Rhys for our lovely crewmate @Kellykat53 over on twitter! Thank you so much for sharing this with us Kelly, it's a lovely little inspirational video, definitely gives us plenty of Vitamin RD (as @scorpiostarseed would say). Check out the Cameo

= Saint Samba Schutte =

I've seen several people mention that Samba is a Saint (sorry not sure who started it to attribute it) so going forward, that will be his name. SO MANY BTS pictures and videos. My goodness. Has it even been a day since the last Merstede dump? It has, but damn, here we are with the BOYFRIEND video, and the nipple scratching, and oh look it's Buttons from the Cryptid Factor! As always, if you have access to instagram, please check out these posts on Samba and Rhys' posts/stories.

Videos on Tumblr:

Boyfriends - ty @blakbonnet!

Merstede - ty @kiwistede!

English Jacket - ty @kiwistede!

Cursed Jacket - ty @kiwistede!

Steard Nips - ty @kiwistede!

Rhysently Granted Reunion - ty @kiwistede!

= Vico Ortiz =

Vico voiced the new novel "The Diablo's Curse "by New York Times Best Seller Gabe Cole Novoa! I know some of you are huge Vico fans so wanted to mention it, you can purchase the audio book here. Src: Vico's IG

= Ruibo Qian =

Are you in New York? Our Pirate Queen will be at the #TonyKiserTheater NEXT MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26 at 6:30PM for a one night only reading of On The Evolutionary Function of Shame, by D.A. Mindell - For more details visit here.

== How to Help ==

Hey all! We're adding some things to the daily task lists (and taking some off). Here they are!

= Petition Embed Code =

Looking to easily embed the petition link in your AO3 fic, or maybe your email? @sonnetforbonnet was kind enough to provide us with some embeds you can use! Please visit the repo for the codes!

= Last day for Queerties! =

Please remember to vote! Today's the last day!

Best TV Comedy

Best TV Performance

= IRL Outreach Assets =

== New Watch Parties Coming Up! ==

The Pirates! Watch Party! This is a family friendly movie so bring the kids! Or the adults-- or anyone you know, really, as long as it's not against their will! Sunday March 3rd, 3 PM EST, 12 PM PST, 8 PM GMT!

Watch Party Hashtags:

#OurPirateCaptain

#SaveOFMD

#AdoptOurCrew

== Visual Representation of Fandom Efforts to SOFMD ==

Remember our friends that had the in person Matelotage Processional? Well they're back with a funny video illustrating the fandom efforts of Save OFMD!

Fangirlfoto's Instagram Don't have instagram? See the video on the repo here.

＝＝ Fan Spotlight ＝＝

Thank you once again to @wndrngnomad on twitter for all their awesome collages dedicated to the Cast and Crew! Day 21: Calypso's Birthday! Perfectly timed considering the lovely Boyfriend themed BTS we got today! Catch-Up: Day 2: Madeleine Sami!

= Our Flag Means Booze! =

Our absolutely brilliant crew-mate @quiet-compassion over on tumblr has been designing OFMD Themed Drinks since the show was dropped by Max!  These not only have super fun and creative names you'll all recognise, but an amazing array of flavours too! If you're 21+ (in the US) or the appropriate age for drinking in your country, feel free to try them out! As always, please drink responsibly! Are you celebrating with Moonglow Manifesting? Why not try the "Moon Glow" cocktail for the end of the event! Want to see ALL their concoctions? Head on over to the repo, they're all there!

== Articles ==

17 Facts and Easter Eggs about OurFlagMeansDeath That will Get you On Board - 17 Fakten und Easter Eggs zu „Our Flag Means Death“, die dich ins Boot holen - ty @AddieH on twitter

Max: The 34 Absolute Best TV Shows to Watch

==Morale ==

Hey crew. I've been hearing some scuttlebutt around the deck that people are starting to worry again about whether or not s3 is going to happen. The love notes section is already pretty long so I'm not gonna go too crazy up here too -- instead I'm going to just point out that David Jenkins, while not active and posting things for us right now, is sneakily poking around in Samba and Rhys' BTS comments. He's still there, he's still watching, and I think he can tell we're all feeling the high from Samba's releases. Don't give up hope, these things take time. They're gonna get there. I'm gonna add the trends to this section today because I think it's important to see what we did today:

== Love Notes ==

Hey Lovelies. I know I've said it before, but it bares repeating since I know a lot of you are struggling right now.

Just a gentle reminder that if your brain is telling you that there's something wrong with you, or that you've done something wrong or embarrassing -- it's lying to you.

There's been so much dopamine from all the excitement lately with the BTS, that it has to come down at some point, and when it does, your brain will sometimes over-compensate and you start feeling maybe worse than you did before.

This is totally normal, it really is. Our brains are glorious complex pathways of unmeasurable brilliance, and yet a simple hormone change can make that same brain tell us that we're not enough, or we're not worthy.

I am here to remind you, you are so very much enough.

No matter what is happening in your life-- in your job, in your personal relationships, in your family, in your school, anywhere--

YOU ARE ENOUGH, EXACTLY HOW YOU ARE.

If you feel like you've failed, or you've let someone down, just know you are STILL enough. We all fail, it's how we learn.

We pick ourselves back up and we try again, and if we fail again--

We're STILL enough, and we are still worthy of love and comfort.

Eventually you will succeed. You will get there, and all the while while you work on it, YOU. ARE. ENOUGH.

I know it's so hard to see when you're feeling small, but I see you all every day, and I am awe-struck at your constant ability to band together and not only find love and support, but give it so freely and lovingly.

A simple @ to someone, alerting them to something they'd like

A love note in dms or on a tumblr post

A gif or picture or video brought to tumblr from some other platform so others can see them.

Writing a fic or drawing a picture.

A reblog with tags, goofy or not

Anon Asks showing people you support how they feel about a given topic

Liking a post.

These are all love notes. No matter how public or private, they're all there and they all add up eventually to form this wonderful community and you've been kicking ass at love.

I know we all look like we're having a good time, but a lot of us are struggling silently, and yet we're finding ways to reach out to one another and spread love to help us all get through. Love isn't always positivity, it can be commiseration, or frustration on behalf of someone. You all are finding the best ways to help your crew, and I'm so very proud of you.

You all are capable, creative, gifted, beautious piles of stardust smooshed together into one wonderfully unique package, and you are so very loved.

You are enough,

You are loved,

and THINGS WILL GET BETTER Lovelies.

Get some rest <3 You got this.

= Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika =

What can I say, I literally can't not include this Rhys gif today. It's physically impossible, please forgive me. Good fucking lord, I'm going to Costa Rica now. Also, sorry I tried to get a matching Taika gif, but I have run out of brain cells. Hopefully this one will suffice.

Rhys - Courtesy of @bizarrelittlemew

Taika - Courtesy of @studiomoon

[russeliarat]

Please give us your Four thoughts! We'd love to hear them!

@bloodybloob @factorialrabbits so this turns up in your mentions

I'm evilly tapping my fingers together right now because this took a few days to write (also I don't know if you mean physically not with it, but if so, hope you get better soon hun!)

Shadow works a bit differently too, so I might make another post for him if people want.

Post gets a bit long-ish so I’ll put it under a cut. Might as well.

So back when I first joined LU, there was some discourse over whether Four could have had Dissociative Identity Disorder or not - I think most of the fandom's chilled out by now tbh it was like a year ago at this point. But basically, after reading a fic that featured Four and a few other characters having DID (Atmosphere on ao3, I'll link it if I can find it), I looked at both sides and said ‘why not have both?’ and made two version of Four.

I think for now I’ll only get into the version of Four that doesn’t have DID and maybe make another post about it if anyone wants to hear. I think I’ll have to plan it out a bit more to coherently get all the ideas together and do last-minute confirmations.

The non-DID version of Four basically has a bit of a symbiotic relationship going on with the Colours residing in Four’s head just chilling until the Four Sword’s pulled. So essentially, to sum it up because it’s very complicated; Four is a blank-slate reflection of the original Link before he split into four pieces. Link unknowingly lent duplications of his body to the Colours and shared aspects of his personality between them to allow them to function properly as human beings. This is because the Colours are a bit like vocal fragments of personalities and impulses when inside Four’s mind. They were quiet at first like little whispers of vague sounds and voices but once finding their humanity after splitting, they kind of found their voices too. Once the Colours eventually re-merged for the first time, they thought Green was the original Link due to Four taking on most of his traits, though realised otherwise when this new Link actually seemed to take on more of Vio’s traits and privately expressed some of Red’s and Blue’s. This was actually because he knew he had to hide away that he was now a person of five in order to not be called insane or something. 

There was a lot of anxiety and finding themselves at first - a lot of the fear came from rejection and it still seeps through to the more recent parts of the story. He was so fearful of rejection and the notion of the anxiety that came with it, he moved away from his father to live with his grandfather. Vio provided a heavily locked emotional and mental barrier that prevented anyone from getting close enough to figure it out essentially - Green was far too loyal and outgoing to keep it secret for as long as they all planed, Red was far to friendly and really bad at keeping secrets because he trusts people so easily, and Blue is very brash and short-tempered, too much to handle his own emotions sometimes. 

So because they all realised Four is a separate human, they decided to call him by a few names. In his mind and in their split bodies within privacy, they’d call him ‘Light’ due to light being comprised of an entire rainbow and his previous hero title of Hero of Light. Within public and split, masquerading as friends or the like, he would be known as ‘Link’ like everyone else knew of him as. Shadow liked to call him ‘Rainbow’ because he eventually grew a fondness for the Colours but still had a deep-set fear of light and hated being reminded of it. When eventually joining the Chain, Four took on the name Four to keep his secret safe until the right time.

I also have a bit of an idea of a headcanon for his familial situation. It’s a bit messy (is it because we all secretly love to rattle around our favourite characters or am I just projecting? Who knows!). Four’s mother never really wanted him and neither did his father, he was basically an accident (same) and so for a lot of his pre-teen years, he spent more time with his grandfather than his bio parents. His dad swiftly vanished for reasons Four knows not of other than he wasn’t wanted, and his mother rarely spent much time with him. Though one day, his grandfather told him that his mother had found and was going to marry another man, who served as a knight. Apparently, his soon-to-be step-father asked to meet with Four despite his mother not wanting to. Four’s grandfather encouraged him to meet his step-father and stay with them a short while, to which Four reluctantly agreed, but to make sure, his grandfather told him he was always welcome to come back at any time. As it turns out, Four’s new step-father was actually an incredibly kind man and genuinely loved to be around Four, considering him his biological son. Four quite liked his step-father and soon just started calling him father. Throughout a lot of Four’s life he was passed between staying with his grandfather at the forge and his parents in a quaint house in Castle Town, but one day, Four’s mother just up and left, divorcing his step-father and leaving Four in his guardianship. Later into his life, Four would be told by his father that his mother was suffering some pretty bad mental issues and felt so guilty about not treating Four right that she couldn’t take it and left entirely without warning. No one actually knew what happened to her since she just abruptly left and couldn’t be found no matter who attempted to find her.

Pretty messed up, I know.

My personal favourite part is thinking of the mundane, different lives each boy would live - all five of them.

Blue is brash, short-tempered, and overall has an almost protector role within the group, though goes about it by being very loud and a bit demanding. But he’s also very meticulous when it comes to things such as physical appearance, clothing maintenance, and general wellbeing of the other Colours. He’s very much the stern mother-hen of the group and kind of defaults as a secondary leader once Green isn’t around (obviously once he’s learned to work more in sync with the others, he had barely any leadership skill beforehand), though at first he was very hurtful as he thought by going about leading the way he was, he was toughening up the others and getting shit done properly to protect them. Yeah, they didn’t like it very much and he knew it later on. But he’s also terrible at looking after himself, very much prioritizing the others over himself. As a way to calm down, he does general sewing and embroidery tasks; patching up tears in clothing, fixing loose embroidery thread, washing clothing, repairing damaged boots etc. It’s a craft he finds very therapeutic and sometimes he just grabs a random bit of fabric to embroider into. Red has at least three other tunics just covered in embroidery Blue has mindlessly done and Red refuses to unpick the threads or bin it.

Red is a lot more capable than people give him credit for - he’s very good at fighting and is quite the peacemaker, though prefers not to fight at all, gets scared very easily and has a hard time expressing how he feels before it all topples over into sobbing. He’s the one trying to find himself the most since he’s the most impressionable person in the group bar Four, but was recently introduced to painting and artistry by Vio to help control his emotional issues. Vio introduced it as a way for Red to get down and let go of his feelings before they bubble too much and simmer over, or he could give the artwork to him and he can find a way to get through to the inner meaning with Red, sorting out the issue directly. It’s helped quite a lot since he’s actually improved his mood tenfold, and it’s directly helped with the Colours learning Red’s boundaries and emotions so he doesn’t start furiously weeping for seemingly no reason. Though, Red likes to focus a lot more of the creation of pigments and paints because he’s a very tactile person and likes the feeling of mulling paint.

Vio is the most calm of the group and often masquerades as keeping the Colours in line when really, he’s doing whatever stupid shit the others are doing but quieter. He’s incredibly academically smart from all the time he spends with his nose buried in a book, but he’s also street smart, yet not in the way that Green or Blue are. He’s street smart in the way that he can bullshit himself out of any situation fairly unscathed and then do whatever he did to get into that situation again. He’s emotionally constipated by choice. He’s totally not dating Shadow. He’s a master of Uno. He makes the decision to read upside-down What can this boy not do, other than act normal for two seconds? Joking but I’m not, he’s generally just a real devious boy disguising himself as a collected, sane person, but he’s just as stupid as the others. He’s a master of the languages (he writes upside-down and very fast) and does a load of calligraphy in his spare time, generally because he always hates the way his handwriting looks when he writes the right way up (maybe because he writes upside-down all the time). Vio also dabbles in art and painting occasionally and it was how he introduced Red to it. 

Green is very adventurous, there is barely a single place he hasn’t slept other than inside his grandfather’s kiln. He’s got quite the strong personality and tells himself as a go-getter, energetic kind of person. He openly welcomes pretty much anyone, but is extremely loyal and can hold a grudge for years if left unchecked on and not worked through. Though, he feels a lot of pressure on his shoulders. He’s seen as both the ‘original Hero of Light’ from his adventure with the Minish and as the sole leader of the Colours because people can’t really ever get how he and his friends work. There’s a heavy weight on his back to be the perfect knight and hero, though he’s barely 16 years old of LU (oh yeah I didn’t mention that did I?). He secretly struggles the most with self-esteem issues from it and attempts to hide it away even from the other Colours. It’s hard though when everyone can tell where the impulsive thoughts about not being enough and thinking you aren’t living up to expectations are coming from when merged. The others have been trying to comfort their primary leader of the group. Green, being the active sort, gravitated heavily towards becoming a knight like his step-father and it just so happened that his blacksmithing interest from back when Four stayed primarily with his grandfather came in very handy. He focuses more on knight duties than smithing, but it still contributed greatly in forming Four’s shared interest in the craft. Similarly to Blue, Green does weapon maintenance and his favourite part is decorating the hilt, pommel, and guard of weaponry. He often lets Red come up with ideas for swords during his spare time and he works on them between commissions and repairs.

Four is a bit of a mish-mash man. He’s basically taken on the unwilling role of mediator and ‘the responsible one’ just through the nature of how he works in tandem with the Colours. He doesn’t consider himself a Colour - moreso an extension of them. He can’t physically be in the same space as the Colours at the same time, which is kind of an upside and a downside, because on one hand he’s sick of these guys and wants them to split from him so he can have a quiet mind, on the other he can easily feel lonely and anxious when it does get quiet because he’s so conditioned to having them there. That being said, he takes a lot of interests from combining the others. We all know his main job is a blacksmith - which he tends to whenever he isn’t being a knight thanks to Green - and he takes a great amount of literary and artistic interest in the topic too. He isn’t burying his nose in books of nothing. He has to focus on practicality of his weaponry, but a lot of people don’t know that medieval blacksmiths worked with all kinds of products made of metal; pottery, shields, ornamentation - the entire lot. Thusly, Four is an artistic guy and just fucks around with metal art in his spare time for the fun of it. It gets his hands busy and keeps his tiny body warm.

[sinkat-arts]

Semi-professional data-science-y thoughts from a UX designer re: 10% kudos to hits ratio ahead.

tl;dr: As everyone has already said, it's Not Great. Just read the tags and summary to decide if you want to read something.

tl;dr2: ... and I took that personally.

Alright, no one asked for this, but the post of someone saying they only read fics that have 1 kudos per 10 hits is floating around twitter. Since it's part of my job to pay close attention to analytics to evaluate the success of my designs and user flows, I figured I'd just... info dump. It's aggravating that at least one person is out here using a terrible metric based on a misleading piece of data to ignore whole swaths of amazing stories.

"Hits" is raw data, and that's pretty useless! In the case of AO3, it shows any entity accessing the fic, once per 24 hour period (so if you hit a fic 4 times in one day, it'll only count the first time as a "hit". It will restart your count the next day.). It does not weed out junk/irrelevant data. This includes: - People who keep the tab open for weeks at a time so it refreshes when the tab is focused. - People who visit often to reread. - People coming back every time a new chapter is released. - Authors visiting often to reread / edit. - People who were never going to read because they weren't the target audience based on the tags / summary. - Web crawlers. Bots. Etc, etc, and on and on. What you want are good faith hits from your target audience.

You can only leave kudos ONCE, regardless of how many times you visit.

Which means that a better measurement to get accurate conversation would take into consideration only UNIQUE visitors who spent a significant amount of time on the page, indicating that they read at least enough of the fic to indicate that they are actually part of the target demo. THAT'S the number you compare to the number of kudos received. (Note that this is still a bit of a gray area since someone can open the story and just leave it open without reading. Short of looking over someone's shoulder, this is the best you can do... unless AO3 adds heatmaps to our stats page, which I don't see happening any time soon, haaa.)

EVEN IF the data itself were good, a 10% conversion rate is astronomical as a KPI (key performance indicator, a measure of success). So we're clear, a "conversion" is an instance of a person seeing the thing (your fic) and doing what you want them to do (leaving a kudo). Not that you can really compare fic satisfaction to an ecommerce funnel, but your average conversion rate on, say, a marketing splash page is LESS THAN 3%. If you hit 5% on your campaign, you're having a pizza party in the office, guys. And marketing campaigns can be incredibly sophisticated affairs, fueled by massive research efforts, seo work, algorithms based on user behavior and all kinds of creepy ass data collection, etc. Fic promos are... you know. We chuck them up on social media and pray people see them.

So not only are hits as shown in AO3 a very poor metric to calculate conversion, a 10% conversion rate as a MINIMUM bar for entry is just ridiculous.

Clearly, I've thought about this a lot. I've gotten stuck watching my "conversion rate" go down as hits increased but the kudos didn't move. I've felt badly - so badly - about my proudest moment (where writing is concerned), go nowhere after I finished it. Thinking about it in terms of realistic conversion rates helps me, so I'm mostly sharing this information for anyone else out there it may help.

Super cool that that person is happy with their method of finding fics to read. They're depriving themselves of some really awesome stories, though. A far better way to decide whether or not to read something is to use the search function and filters to narrow things down and then simply read tags and summaries.

And if you start reading and don't like the style... nothing is keeping you there. You can bounce (which, hey, a bounce rate is another metric that would be far more handy than a raw hit counter).

Anyway... behold, my absolute failure of a fic (which resulted in wonderful comments that have made me cry because folks were moved or took the time to leave interesting related information or drew things for me or still periodically send me really cute bears).

[jukeboxhound]

Fic Review

tagged by @tirsynni (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

How many works do you have on ao3?

45. I tend to have long periods where I just...can't write for a while.

What’s your total ao3 word count? 

520,114

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3 currently, 9: FF7, FF8, FF13, Dishonored, Avengers, X-Men, SPN, Word of Honor, The Untamed.

Are there any new fandoms you want to write for?

...No? If I wanted to write for something, I would. I just wish I had the executive function to write more often, more consistently.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

this grey house where I come from

Dreaming Electric

While Everyone's Lost (The Battle Is Won)

The Minor Fall, the Major Lift

Eir's Tomorrow

....Huh, the first four are Avengers fics, that's honestly not what I expected.

Which of your fics do you want more attention for?

I'm actually pretty happy with how things are now. I don't feel overlooked but there's none of the pressure of being really well-known, either, both of which are emotionally hard places to be in for their own reasons. 🖤

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try but don't always manage because I overthink my response and get anxious. I'm more likely to respond to direct questions or comments that are more in-depth.

What sorts of things do you normally write? Slow burn? Humor? Angst with a happy ending? Some adventure? Emotionally loaded conversations?

Looking at my AO3, it's pretty much gonna be "found family shenanigans" or "you WILL sit down and process your hurt."

(Would it be a jukeboxhound fic if there weren't any emotionally loaded conversations?)

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

A Kingdom Hearts oneshot from years ago with unrequited love, which was me processing having my heart broken and losing my oldest friend. Fic is often my vehicle for self-reflection, which is probably why I always try to end it happily or, at the very least, ambiguously.

What’s a fic that pushed you out of your comfort zone?

I wrote an ABO for a fic exchange. Who even am I anymore?

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Crossovers, only between Final Fantasies, but fusions, yes! Before I accidentally deleted my old Tumblr account, I had an FF7/Guardian (the cdrama) fusion going on, lmao.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Some lovely folks over the years have done so. 🖤

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope. I'm too much of a control freak to share the narrative helm.

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

I once had a Gundam Wing, 2x5, post-Endless Waltz fic that I had started writing but never posted years and years ago called Buddha: Still Laughing, which I still sometimes think about.

What are you currently working on?

Crashing Like Stars (Jiang Cheng-centric trauma recovery)

Glitterhaze (unpublished; Cloud-centric post-FF7R longfic about gender exploration, dance and embodiment, and, yes, also trauma, meant to be a prequel to ANOTHER fic about Zack coming back and giving us some Clack)

What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I'm not too bad with handling the two emotional extremes of humor and trauma in ways that remain convincingly in character, but YMMV.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Extended scenes and pacing in much longer fic, imo. You can tell I'm used to writing oneshots, ha.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Most recent?

First fandom: either Dragonball Z or Gundam Wing when I was, like, 11

Most recent: FF7 for the holiday fic exchange :D :D :D

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Maybe History of the Chocobo Wars (FF7), despite being a Harry Potter fusion, because it still makes me laugh. Or maybe the world has teeth (Dishonored), because of the way it tries to explore what it means for a mortal to be the recipient of a god's...love, for lack of a better word. I adore the struggle of trying to dig into spiritual/existential experiences that, by definition, lack language to accurately describe them.

What fic are you most proud of?

Probably this grey house where I come from (Avengers). It's almost a decade old at this point and I'd probably do a lot differently if I were to write it now, but every so often I still get messages from folks saying that it affirmed something for them around domestic violence, sexual abuse, and/or unsafe intimate relationships. I get emotional with every single one because I honestly, genuinely can't think of a better way to have my fics affect someone. 😭

Tagging: @chofitia, @calamity-butterfly, @arinrowan 🖤

[maglors-anion-gap]

27, 28, 34

-@outofangband

[for this game]

@outofangband thanks for the ask!

27. How do you feel about collaborations?

I love collaborations! The closest I've gotten to a formal collab is TRSB because I've gotten to work in great detail alongside some artists. I really enjoy when people want to chat about their vision, as I think you can tell by our million-word-long dm history. Once you get me going, I will imprint on you like a baby duck, good luck getting me to be quiet. The only thing that makes me nervous about collabs is the deadline/peer expectation type stuff because my executive function dribbles out my ears like engine oil most days. Ironically, external motivators like collaborations and exchange deadlines are the only thing that get me to actually finish my wips so. oopsie.

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

this is in no particular order and as soon as I post this i'm gonna think to myself, damn I totally forgot X and Y and Z and -- anyway. Dialux for being so meticulous in character construction and breathing life into characters that tolkien gave less than a passing glance to, really changed me fundamentally in how I approach minor characters and group dynamics. Arofili for introducing me to trans tolkien fic and giving me the courage to write my own trans fic after years of nail-biting in other fandoms watching trans creators get ripped apart for any number of imagined offenses. findrahil on here (joanofarcstan on ao3) for heartbreak and tragedy, lush prose, and having character interactions down to a science.

34. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

teehee you know my thoughts on noncon/dubcon. to the rest of my readers: at some point i'll curse you with my wip folder.

(below a cut for general discussion of sexual violence in media)

Writing is all about finding ways to let readers know things about characters in a way that seems organic. Chiefly, I think noncon/dubcon is a scenario as a rhetorical device, like any other literary scenario, that a writer can use to explore explicit and implicit characterization. It's an excellent tool to explore grief, fear, indecision, loyalty, betrayal, anger, and guilt.

Different strokes for different folks. Not everyone is going to want to read the same thing or write the same thing. What I find cathartic or honest someone else might find repulsive or sensational, and neither of us are wrong. There was a period of time I couldn't touch the great gatsby or tess of the durbervilles because they were painful to read. That doesn't mean they are ugly sensationalist books that have nothing to say.

This is especially true when we think of survivors; many people can picture avoidant and withdrawn survivors, while scorning survivors who turn to hypersexuality or risky behavior as a means of regaining control over their life. I think it's fair to talk about how big producers write stories that aren't respectful or accurate, but it's really shitty to come onto a small platform where you can directly contact the author themself, to lambast their work as too graphic or ugly when the theme is a traumatic event that is astoundingly common in its incidence rate. Like please gain some perspective, folks. Lolita gets this treatment a lot, nabokovs' thesis hinging on humbert humbert being a charismatic manipulator who controls the postmortem narrative of dolores via his memoirs as the framework of the book.

This is not just true of how we debate portraying violence (sexual or otherwise) but also of a host of topics. What I want to read or write about the trans experience is not necessarily what others need to read or write.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who complain about noncon or dubcon existing in media that they are going out of their way to look for and interact with instead of self-regulating. I think it can be a self-harm method to look for things one finds unpleasant; when people aren't doing it to self-harm, they're doing it because they're immature. I'm not saying it's not occasionally fun to hate-read/hate-watch something but when it's festering in your head? Put it down and forget about it. There is literally nothing you can do to get people to stop writing something you find objectionable that would not also be a hideous thing to do to someone (like harassment, doxxing, suicide bait etc).

I think people have a hard time wrapping their head around that, when the opposite truth is pretty self evident: that writers who write bigoted things should have to take responsibility for propagating bigotry, and that people who do bigoted things should be on the hook for their own actions. I find there's a lot of muddy water there already too, because I've definitely seen trans people be attacked for writing about their own lives in a way that (usually cis people, but sometimes trans people) don't want to hear about - I'm thinking about Leslie Feinberg the ze/hir transmasculine lesbian but also small tumblr bloggers too. Like "you shouldn't be writing that!!!" except it's like, someone talking about not wanting bottom surgery or having abnormal pronouns; I think the messiest portions of communities, the portions that defy easy comprehension, are the first to be attacked in service of making the community easy to understand or sympathize with. And I think this sort of observation applies to discussing literary content too, that a certain level of scrutiny is going to cause more harm than good, especially to people who are most vulnerable to harm.

My final thought on the matter is that people are really really afraid of being infected with brainworms. I don't know how much of it is the culturally christian "god is watching and he's planning how to best boil you in oil for eternity" and how much is the rampant scrupulosity that seems to pop up in leftist circles. People are terrified of a bad thought getting into their heads and turning them into someone who does bad things. I'm worried about it too!!! In reality, people don't get suckered into doing bad things in a vacuum. Having a strong analytical foundation and media literacy is an excellent way to help people understand the context and themes in a piece, figure out what the literary purpose is, and decide where that behavior fits in their real world ethical map.

Reading Lolita is not going to teach people it's okay to abuse children. Reading Lolita and trying to pick out where humbert humbert's narrative is designed to seem sympathetic, why that is, what he's hiding under his narrative, and how this connects to charismatic abusers getting away with abuse might help people guard against abuse in real life. A major focus in my public health degree was interpersonal, family, and community violence, and the unifying thread in all of this was that people don't understand what causes abuse, what abuse looks like, how to talk about and teach about abuse, or what evidence based things we can do to prevent it. As a society we are allergic to talking about it, and utterly refuse to investigate why we think abusers look like nefarious ugly socially inept monsters while simultaneously reinforcing systems of power that entrench and occult abuse allowing normal ordinary-looking people to commit abuse. No one wants to admit that anyone is capable of abuse. This does not mean that abusive behavior is ready to leap out of every person (a la brain worms theory suggests). It just means that denying a problem exists, refusing to find evidence based solutions, and decrying any attempt to talk about it, is the least sensible thing to do. Knowing how to spot an abuser, or how to spot abusers and manipulation in literature, does not turn people into abusers. I really do not think it is a productive use of time to interrogate the erotic and taboo things people write about or read about, or the things that confuse, frighten, or arouse you yourself. But maybe I'm just more concerned with the state of the real world than niche AO3 dubcon.

(grumpy tone not directed at you, or any of my followers)