#i don't want to like. write a whole fanfiction. i have an outline in the works and i theoretically COULD. but.

[iiboronii]

Me upon realizing that I can just have an AU instead of writing an entire fanfiction about an idea I had in my head once:

[late-to-the-party-81]

Answer the questions and tag five fanfiction authors you know!

Thank you @metalbvcky. NPT for @mrs-illyrian-baby @doasyoudesireandlive @km-ffluv @labella420

🍓 How did you get into writing fanfiction?

As a teen I was a voracious reader and tried to write my own stuff based on other books I'd read. I also loved ST:TNG and wanted dearly to be in an episode and had lots of the books. I wrote my own ST stories with OC's (gratuitous self inserts), but they never went anywhere. In my late teens I read some Xena fanfic on the internet. But that was it for a great number of years.

At the beginning of 2021 I sat and watched the entirety of the MCU films in chronological order (I'd seen most of them before and was mainly a Thor gal.) I fell down the Stucky rabbithole. Deep. I decided to look up fanfic. AO3 was now a thing! I wrote (a very poor) Stucky fic and here we are, almost 3 years later

🍇How many fandoms have you written in?

As my ST stuff never made it further than my parent's old PC in the days of dial-up, I won't count it.

I've written for MCU, various Chris Evans and Seb Stan Characters and one fic for RWRB. I've been toying with writing a one-off Criminal Minds fic as a gift for a friend.

🍈How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

Three in July since I first published anything on AO3.

🍎Do you read or write more fanfiction?

I try to balance it out. If I have a period of hyperfocus writing I try to then go through a period of reading. I read on both Tumblr and AO3, so try to keep that even as well.

🍌What is one way you've improved as a writer?

Getting betas to pick me up on tense changes, overuse of words and rogue commas. Reading more. Practising. Writing outlines for longer stories so I don't go off-piste.

🍑Do you have any bad habits as a writer?

Getting bored half-way through a long fic, especially if the first few parts haven't had a lot of interaction. Which is why I try to write the whole thing before I start posting.

🍍 What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Engineering courses at MIT and, for a separate fic, Violet wands, including the ways to use them and the differnt types of accessories you can use with them. I even watched a Youtube video.

🍉What's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Any comment! Anything that gives me the validation I need!

🍐What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

I wrote a transformation into Tsum-tsum fic that was both cracky and smutty. That's pretty niche.

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

Action scenes. I loathe them. I'm constantly wondering if they are long enough, and make sense.

🍏What is the easiest type?

Short things that are either PWP or fluffy slices of life.

🍑Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

Mainly on my elderly laptop on G-Docs, and in every moment I can - normally afterwork before dinner and on Mondays when I don't have work.

🍋What is something you've been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

There are a few characters and ships I haven't written that I'd like to. And I suppose I'd like to write a proper long, over 100k fic at some point.

🍇 what made you choose your username?

When I made my AO3 account I felt as though that at 40, and only really starting in Fandom in this way, I was late to the party, so that is who I became.

[rollercoasterwords]

fanfiction being bad is actually a good thing

sorry that one post has just put me into a musing mood abt like. the way people respond to "bad writing" in fanfiction. so i have written a little essay xx

anyway. first off, any measure of "bad writing" is going to be inherently subjective, whether or not people want to acknowledge that. no matter what critera you use to try and claim that ur measure is more "objective," you will still be able to find published fiction that does not meet those criteria, which is part of the reason that i think it is ridiculous in the first place to act as though "book" and "fanfiction" are two diametrically opposed categories of literature in which "book" = good writing and "fanfiction" = bad writing such that the only way to express a book is bad is to claim it's "more like fanfiction than a book" and the only way to elevate fanfiction is to claim that it's "more like a book than fanfiction." and of course there are all the underlying issues with classism racism ableism etc when buying into the myth of the meritocracy of publishing.

but even acknowledging that any measure of "bad writing" is going to be subjective, i don't think it's unfair to cultivate your own standards for what makes writing good versus bad. everyone is going to do that anyway, so what's more important to me is that a person understands what factors are influencing their measurement and acknowledges the subjectivity inherent to this sort of critique. and i do think, generally speaking, that media which exists within a profit economy is fair game for critique as to whether it is "good" or "bad," as i have talked about before on my blog. and i think depending on what criteria you are using to define bad, there will be instances where it makes more or less sense to make normative judgments about the popularity of such media. for example--if someone says "marvel movies shouldn't [normative judgment] be so popular because the writing is cringey," i find that a less compelling argument than "marvel movies shouldn't be so popular because they are military propaganda."

but i don't think that sort of critique about whether writing is "good" or "bad" has a place in fanfiction spaces. aside from the fact that fanfiction exists primarily outside of any profit economy, the reason that you will likely encounter more "bad" writing in fanfiction is that it's a space where many people are actively learning how to write--and that's a good thing. the only way for someone to become a good writer is to do a lot of bad writing first, so i actually think it's great that there's a bunch of shitty fanfiction out there on the internet--every bad fic u come across is a developing writer who's honing their craft, and they've found a perfect space to do so.

and yet i see "bad writing" get brought up a lot regarding fanfiction in two specific ways.

1. the idea outlined above, where people devalue fanfiction as a whole and act as though "fanfiction" is synonymous with "bad writing" or somehow an inferior medium.

i see this happening both with people who scoff at fanfiction and with people who try to redeem or elevate fanfiction by placing it in closer proximity to published books (i.e., THIS fic isn't like those other, shitty fics! this one is as good as [insert classic novel/published author/etc here]!!").

quite frankly i think this is evidence that these people have bought wholeheartedly into the publishing industry's myth of meritocracy, something that we should seriously question. but if anything, i also find it sad because i think it is a very limiting way to view fanfiction, which is its own unique art form in my opinion. fanfiction has its own conventions and strengths independent of published fiction, and there are many stylistic and structural elements unique to fanfiction that just don't really work in published books. for example--those 15k oneshots you'll come across every so often with lowercase song titles and prose that kicks your teeth in. that is a style of writing that is pretty unique to fanfic. or those sprawling, 400k+ works where tons of time is spent meandering through characters' lives and relationships--those, too, are somewhat unique to fanfiction, as in published books stories tend to get pared down more. i think those who want to convince people that fanfiction is good should spend less time trying to place it in proximity to published fiction and more time considering how fanfiction functions as a unique art form that is worthy of merit thanks to its uniquity

2. people who throw a fit when they see a fanfic with "bad writing" get attention and praise. usually i see this happen if a fic gets some measure of popularity--suddenly, people will begin to pop up talking about how the fic has "bad writing," and therefore shouldn't be popular.

i think that what gets me with these folks, aside from how obviously their own subjectivity regarding what makes writing good or bad has gone unexamined, is how....vindictive they seem. as if the idea that something they deem "bad" writing could ever be widely enjoyed is personally offensive to them. and i just think this sort of behavior is so stupid for two reasons--first, of course, there is the obvious issue of subjectivity. even if you think something is badly written, your opinion isn't somehow more important to the world than everyone else's. if other people are enjoying a fic, clearly they do not agree with your subjective opinion, and that's fine! you don't have to read a fic if you don't like it, and you can let other people enjoy the story. they are reading the exact same writing as you, and they can draw their own independent conclusions about how good or bad they think it is.

but second--you are not doing anyone any good by screaming about how bad a fic's writing is. like. i think there is perhaps this idea of like "oh this writer is bad but their writing is popular and everyone is telling them it's good, which means they are going to think their bad writing is good and keep writing badly forever." which, again, disregarding the obvious subjectivity, i just....don't think is true. like--if someone is writing badly, and people are going "hey i like this story keep it up!" what will most likely happen is that that person will keep writing, developing their skill the more they write and becoming a better writer. like, it's pretty difficult for writing to just remain stagnant; your writing will change the more you write, inevitably. especially when it comes to fanfiction, where many people are, again, developing their writing skill. but if someone is writing badly, and people are going "boo this sucks!" that writer is much less likely to do the actual thing that would make their writing better (keep writing) and instead more likely to just. stop altogether. in which case it's just like--congratulations on removing some more art from the world! cunt.

anyway. the conclusion i am trying to get at here is that i think people need to stop being so preoccupied with "bad writing" in fanfiction spaces. it's impossible to objectively measure the "goodness" or "badness" of writing in the first place, and trying to do so for any purpose other than making personal decisions about whether you want to read something or like, discussing in private groupchats with friends, usually just results in driving developing writers away from writing entirely and promoting the myth of meritocracy in publishing such that we reify the book/fanfiction dichotomy in which fanfiction will always be assumed to be inferior.

[nautilusopus]

Do you have any advice for anyone trying to get into writing?

Not really a motivation thing or anything, just for improvement. Your writing has captivated me, and I felt like it's better to get advice from an author that is reachable than reading a ton of articles online regurgitating the same steps.

Aw, thank you, I'm honoured!

Apologies if this is kind of a mess, I mostly went through stuff I come back to a lot that helps me. Also tumblr seems to have removed the ability to do indented bullets. Fucking great.

In General:

When I'm first starting out writing a story I'm excited about, I usually don't do things in order -- I'll instead pick one scene I can see extremely clearly and am super excited about, one of the things that made me want to write the story to begin with, and then build the entire outline out from there to set it up (what needs to happen to set the scene up exactly how I want it to be? How do I justify that stuff? What would happen afterwards that would add to the scene even more in retrospect?) This not only helps keep the energy going for parts of the story that might not necessarily be fun to plan, but will inherently cause you to start building a story that is either circumstantially or thematically building to something. It can be something as small as a single conversation but it should be the bit that you personally want to see realised most strongly.

On that note, people like when they can see foreshadowing! That's what it's there for! This has been said by other people plenty, but I'll restate it here: the audience potentially being able to piece together your twist after a while is not a failure in writing, it means you put information into a story that allowed them to engage with it and conveyed something that made sense.

I personally sometimes (but not always mostly due to laziness and because I do try to approach shit chronologically so I don't have to double back and do massive rewrites, also due to laziness) like to write big keynote moments of character arcs in full in advance once I have the whole plot more or less laid out. That way, I know what's coming emotionally speaking and can have characters start clearly building up to things, do stuff like plant specific phrases that come back in big ways or are recontextualised later on, and it makes the story feel more cohesive as a whole and helps the scene hit a whole lot harder when you do get to it. Like I said though I'm lazy and I also don't like creating more work for myself if I don't have to, and if by chance the story doesn't shake out the way I thought it would by the time I get to that moment then god is it a pain to rewrite that sort of thing.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mostly I find it helps keep me focused on where it's going. It's a late stage thing though, I don't start doing this until I'm sure I know how the story will be laid out more or less chapter by chapter, which brings me to:

GO BACK AND CHECK IF YOU HAVE A MIDDLE OF YOUR STORY. ARE YOU SURE? GO BACK AND CHECK AGAIN. This is like the number one pitfall I see basically everywhere across any genre, both with fanfiction and professionally (and in movies always winds up manifesting in reviews as "the movie gets kind of aimless after a while/the third act kinda starts out of nowhere after a really slow part). People have an idea for a strong beginning, the rising action and the big dramatic moment when the stakes are raised, maybe a quiet moment in the middle reflecting on all the tension of the plot and how it's reflecting on the characters, a thing that sets off the end, probably an idea how it ends and how things resolve, et cetera -- and they will forget that at no point did they actually create any connective tissue between their plot development points. Travel! Character beats! The actual events in between big beat A and big beat B, no matter how barebones! Go back and check if you've made any!

As someone that writes a lot of heavily character-driven stuff I'm very biased here, but: in my opinion, if you have good, solid characters, they can carry even the most barebones dogshit story because they are the lenses that the audience is experiencing the world from and through, and whose actions are potentially shaping the course of the story, and of course who the reader is getting attached to. Conversely, even the richest, most lavishly detailed world and story is going to land with a thud if your characters aren't any good and don't have any more to them than making various political developments happen, because at that point you don't have a story with different elements interacting with each other to create events and tension, you have a lore wiki, which is not the same thing as a story. Maybe you could use that for a tabletop RPG, but people aren't necessarily gonna want to read it.

RELATED: JRRT was a linguist and historian first and a writer second. Lore is great and all and can help your world feel like it's a living breathing place, but think about if it's a good detail to include onscreen or not, or if it's just there to "flesh out the world". Stop to consider if this actually has a demonstrable effect on the things happening in front of the reader or not, and if anyone would notice if it were removed outright. Can some things be assumed? What might need to be explained?

Keep an eye on narrative voice versus character voice! If I stripped the dialogue tags from your story, could you still tell who was talking? Does everyone just talk like the narration? Like each other? Like you? Everyone is gonna sound like you at least a tiny bit because you're the one writing it, but at least try to keep an eye on how much you're doing that. It can be pretty boring to just listen to one guy talk the entire time across multiple mouths haha don't look at how long this post is getting shhhhhh

Any story (but especially horror, and especially especially cosmic horror), lives and dies by its suspension of disbelief. The rules don't need to be realistic because it is all made up, and they can be any rules you want, and if you establish them clearly then the audience will buy in as best they can because they want to engage with your story on its own terms (or they SHOULD grumble grumble but that's another discussion and not really something the author can control), but then once you've made them you need to stick to them, or when you do break them it should wind up meaning something.

Suspension of disbelief in horror or fantasy can be trickier, especially when it's something weird and the rules aren't even mechanically sound in their own setting. In that case, the important thing to preserve is emotional stakes the audience can buy into, about how this situation might feel to be in, or if there are any things in real life it might feel similar to. This one's more intuitive than you'd think. Sure, you might not know that the veil of reality is flimsy and all it would take to destroy it all is to get noticed by something much vaster than you could ever imagine; but you probably DO know what it's like to be one missed rent payment from losing everything and realising your safety was really all that never sound. I don't even flinch if someone's head explodes into gore in a movie, but I'll always wince and look away if someone has their fingers crushed or their eye pierced, because even though the violence is lesser I can imagine that happening to me and I don't like it one bit!

Horror can potentially struggle with this pretty badly. Unless you're writing a slasher where the point is to watch some dumb teens bite it, your movie won't actually be scary unless the audience can in some way feel endangered, and they won't be able to do that if what is going on is too disconnected from anything a human could experience. Writers tend to get fixated on making a Really Gross Scary Thing(TM) or Biggest Evilest Threat Evar(TM) and assuming their job is done.

There's no one right or wrong way to do something, but be aware that sometimes things tend to come up in stories a lot for a reason. The tools you have are just tools. Complaining a story has tropes in it is like complaining a tree is made of wood.

That said, if you're thinking of your story entirely in terms of which tropes you want to use, it may be time to take a step back and think about what you actually want to accomplish rather than mushing the same paste into the same holes for the 800th time (more on that later).

Dialogue. If it's something you struggle with, remember that chances are you're a person that knows how to talk, and so you inherently know how to create dialogue. The biggest pitfall I see is people overthinking it trying to "Write Dialogue in this Story" rather than just typing an idea the way they know inherently that it would be typed. If you wanna try and capture a much different voice, spend time listening to people -- and I mean really listening. People double back, correct themselves, trail off, change their train of thoughts in the middle, do more or less of these things when they're in a certain emotional state depending on their personality.

Frankly I'd spend time listening to real people anyway. Spend too much time online and characters wind up sounding like Twitter threads, or worst case scenario you wind up with perfectly articulated ideas and Therapy Speak. A character might not have the vocabulary you, someone who has been online for eighty to ninety years (est) would to convey specific ideas, and not everyone is perfectly self-aware about what they're saying. Someone's probably more likely to say "fuck you I had a bad day" than they are to go "gosh i dislike how much your own success reminds me of how my own mother held me to impossibly high standards so i have very high rejection sensitivity which is why i'm lashing out". Or, again, if someone does talk like that make it mean something. It could be a good example of someone either being insincere and going through keywords to shut someone up, or someone that's very socially awkward giving a rehearsed speech, and those are all potentially interesting ways to then take a story.

(Sidenote because I see this come up sometimes: Hate to single out a single genre here, but anime and by extent video games but mostly anime is a bad place to learn to write dialogue from -- if you're listening to a dub, they had to translate stuff from Japanese and then make it fit lip flaps on a screen, and if you're watching subs, not only were the subs translated but anime trends heavily towards melodrama and Japanese people typically do not speak that way.)

You gotta know the rules before you can break 'em! Read books. Actual books I mean, not just fanfic. Broaden your horizons. When you start breaking rules it will be because it's what you want to do.

Personal nitpicks, some fandom specific and some not. I'm aware some of these are basic but also you never know who might need to hear this stuff so:

Hentai is not a good place to learn about writing actual sex. It's a great place to learn about sex that is following pure porn rules, in which case go nuts and godspeed soldier, but unless you want your scene to come off as either unintentionally rapey or full of nonsensical leaps of moon logic when you're trying to write an otherwise somewhat grounded setting, you should probably read actual books meant for actual adults about fucking, or pull from your own experiences if you're able.

* This isn't advice but I want it known at this point I've seen at least three fanfics clearly written by a middle schooler that's never fucked before and honest-to-god genuinely seems to think some degree of omegaverse is how actual sex works. So that'll be interesting to encounter going forward. If you aren't committing to porn rules (there's that "the rules can be anything you want so long as they're internally consistent" bit again!) do research is my point.

If you started your character creation with their outfit and can tell me their star sign, bust measurements, the four shirts plus jacket plus socks plus shoes they're wearing, the kind of weapon they can summon, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, height and weight, their agility score versus their magic score, and their favourite ice cream flavour, and yet you have one paragraph about "personality", your focus might not be in the right place and you are making an MMO character. That's fine for something you're going to be staring at the back of for 200 hours but maybe not for someone you're going to need to live inside the head of. Start with personality, and you can tailor all that fun back cover dossier stuff around who that person is and how it would inform the way they dress.

Bad child dialogue is my biggest pet peeve personally and I will immediately put a book down when I encounter it lol. A bigger portion of people are around children than you think and will notice if you've never interacted with a kid before. Children are not cavemen and do not talk like them. The gaps in their vocabulary tend to come from them having a limited amount of it and adapting new phrases into the few existing frameworks they have. This carries over to their psychology, by the way.

Specific to cosmic horror: you can't just make a Gross Thing, your horrors need actual motivations. Nobody cares how big of a squid you can invent, and going "uhhh it's so scary I don't have to bother can't describe it" can only work so many times and is not an excuse to at least not try to describe something. How it makes the characters feel, what the experience is like, whatever. Now, you don't ever have to tell the readers directly what the motivations of your old gods are, but you the writer should come up with some to shape their behaviour so the readers can see the inscrutable ghosts of clear patterned actions that almost make sense yet remain just outside human comprehension oooooooooo. Also readers can generally tell when that's missing and all you have is Large Squid Scary doing random gross shit so it's not an excuse to skimp.

Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. We have pronouns. We have context clues. We have sentence structures that convey what is going on to the reader. We have nouns. If you are going to constantly refer to your character as The Brunette it better be hugely massively goddamn significant that her hair is brown or it's gonna become clear real fast that you just ran out of ways to phrase things and it's gonna take people right out of the story. If the only way you can think of to describe your character in an intense emotional scene is "uhhh this is the one with the brown hair remember I hope you didn't forget" then that's code fucking red. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets.

And the two biggest bit of advice I can come up with for people trying to improve their craft that I give out every time:

1 Have a point. Have a clearly identified reason in your mind about what you want to accomplish with this story. This will help you get your thoughts in order when you are stuck, it will help you outline the story if you're not sure where you want it to go next, it will help other people troubleshoot with you if you aren't sure how to start solving a problem, it will help you make decisions about what and what not to include to help it feel complete, and it will help motivate you when you start to lose track of why you even started this project. Saying "well it's a Vampire AU and I want to do Hurt/Comfort with an ambiguous ending and a BAMF!Scrongus with Soft!Cromgle" doesn't tell me a damn thing, either as a reader OR as someone potentially trying to help you whip the thing into shape. That's a bit like asking, "How do I write a Cute yet Cool character?" like bitch I don't know it's your story there are a million ways to write this stuff and yes that is a real question I got asked once.

Instead, have an actual, identifiable goal that is personal to you, what you want to write, and what you have to say. That can be anything from "I have a lot of strong opinions about why gender is, across the breadth of experiences possible with human consciousness, a zero sum game that must be internally and deliberately engaged with before one is then able to determine their own relationship to it" to "oh man i love the idea of Mark from Accounts Receivable one day going apeshit and beating Jake from Auditing half to death with an office chair and the fallout that would generate and maybe also someone FINALLY FINALLY asks him for the first time 'hey dude are you okay do you wanna talk'" to "god it'd be so hot if this guy were bent over a pool table drooling onto the velvet and i am going to do everything in my power to facilitate that somehow". Either way, clear mission statement and goal that isn't just telling me what tags you're slapping on the finished product! If you have that kind of clarity of vision it will come across in your piece and resonate with people because it's a complete thought that the work is able to deliberately showcase, instead of just churning out Content™ that fits certain templates that are popular, even if you like said templates. What do you have to say? Why did this idea stick in your brain so hard you had to write it down and tell the world about it? What parts of it especially did you want to convey so badly? Show us!

2 Writing is vulnerability by proxy. Until we get the technology for brain uploading, you are only going to ever be you in your own head with your own thoughts, experiences, biases, and worldviews. If you think you can write something without exposing a lot of really revealing shit about yourself to an audience that notices it, perish that thought now. Quentin Tarantino and HP Lovecraft weren't slick about it and you won't be either. This is neither a bad thing or a good thing, it just is, and whether it affects the work for better or for worse is honestly dependent upon how you engage with that fact. I will say trying to back away from it generally leads to problems (unexamined prejudices showing up in stories, worldviews that it turns out most people don't share going stated simply as fact rather than being supported by the writing around it). It can also lead to a stronger story, though, if you're willing to engage with it. Engaging honestly with what scares you and why, what you find comforting, uplifting, upsetting, et cetera. All of these require vulnerability, and allowing other people to see that, and it's going to happen with or without your consent because you're the one writing the thing, so you may as well make peace with it and lean in. "But what if it's cringe" too late baby most things are cringe and that shouldn't be your focus. You are fighting a losing battle. We are all cringe. But we are free.

Hope this helps. I just know I've left half a sentence fragment in here that I said I'd come back to and then forgot oh god

[irisbleufic]

i’m so new to your dm fic and i can’t fathom the sheer volume of work you’ve put out! it’s amazing and i’ve so many questions for you!!! how was the writing process for caldera? did you have everything written before posting? was it ever daunting just how much you figured you could write for these two??? i see you’re a novelist so this may be light work for you, but as someone whose never written over 40k at once, would you have any advice for writers who want to write something as long as your series one day? thank you so much for sharing your fic! it’s wonderful :’3

Hi there, anon! Thanks for giving me a fantastic ask to focus on between fits of grading and writing on this rainy, rainy afternoon. I'd be glad to answer your questions here; I'm so happy to hear you're enjoying the stories across my Devil's Minion series. It's been an absolute thrill to write so far, and it continues to be.

The writing process for Caldera is ongoing. I didn't have everything written before posting; I never write that far ahead even if I have a mental outline or a running file where I dump broader series plot-related notes. Over the years, I've developed an incredibly compulsive average daily writing quota. The rule is that I can spend that time on whatever kind of writing I'd like, and when I'm between projects for publication? That is always, always fanfiction. So, I manage to clock about 2k words on low-output days and 4k-ish on high output days. In a fanfiction context, 2k-4k is, for me, the average length of a fic chapter. Between that and my baseline unusual hyperfocus for writing in particular, that's how I'm able to manage those daily updates (and, if not daily, certainly every other day or every couple; at the moment, the main reason for those rare gaps has been shaky health).

It used to be daunting to me, when I was a younger writer, when I started to realize how ambitious my plot arcs for fandom writing series were turning out to be. The first fandom series project that reached around 200,000 words was my last year as an undergrad, and that was almost 20 years ago. I'm right around 40 now, so to say that I've spent literally half my life working out what I can do and what I can't do is no understatement. Spend enough years persistently writing, fuck-ups and all, and you will eventually get to the point where you can say, all right, this pairing, this fandom, this is going to be a long-haul for me. I have a lot I'd like to do with it, so let's buckle in and see what happens. I realize that not all writers get to this point; it's different for everyone. But many writers who write daily for years on end will usually find that whatever once daunted them, whatever that happens to be, no longer daunts them. And that's when you can really, really start to have fun. It's still work, but it doesn't feel like work anymore, if that makes sense.

My advice to you would be: take a look at where you are right now. How many years have you been writing? If not years, then how many months? What are your writing patterns? Do you manage to write daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly? If so, start charting these finer details. Get a handle on how often you tend to write, or how often you can find the time to do so. How much do you manage to write in a session? How many sessions does it take you to reach a completed project of 40k? If you can start to understand what your patterns are (look, I'm deeply Autistic about this whole process, but I suspect you'd gathered that by now), then you can start to assess what you have the potential to accomplish. You can start setting concrete goals for what you'd like to accomplish. If you're not sure how to break an ambitious series arc for which you don't yet have all the details down into beats, maybe just start with the first quarter of it. Gauge how many stories you'll need to get that far. Then, once you've reached that point, do a continuity re-read and reassess. My method is a combination of organization and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, although I admit that I can get by on pantsing alone if I really want to. You start thinking on your feet; you start writing reactively to your own content. And experience will make this easier.

I hope that some of this resonates with you, and if it doesn't resonate, at bare minimum I hope it makes sense. I wasn't the kind of kid anybody ever expected to become a writer. Nobody thought it would be possible. A lot of things weren't supposed to be possible for me. But I stubbornly latched onto something I learned that I loved; stubbornness and love can get you farther than you'd think. Be stubborn, and just...love them. Love the characters and the worlds you find in your hands. That's why most of us end up in fandom in the first place. So many kinds of love in the world fail us, but loving the imaginary lets us create even when other forms of love do not. Sappy as it sounds, that's a literal miracle.

[mannatea]

Fanfiction writing and posting culture has shifted so much over the last 20 years. Every time I read anything on r/fanfiction, not only do I lose brain cells, but I feel like a huge, huge part of fanfiction culture has moved toward reading only completed works and avoiding engagement at all cost, but particularly until a work is finished. There was a post yesterday by someone celebrating the fact that a fic they had on alert updated because it had "been so long" since the last update: it was a wait of one and a half months.

That isn't that long for a writer with a spouse and/or children and/or a busy career and/or someone busting ass at school and/or a life outside and off the internet.

While a lot of comments did chastise this person for their perceived idea of a long wait for an update, there were also a few comments from readers proclaiming that this was why they never read incomplete works.

Heck, there were one or two (upvoted!) comments about how writers should simply pre-write everything if they wanted feedback.

Don't get me started on the posts by people that read hundreds of fics a week and yet never comment. "Gosh, I wish I there were more fics for xyz." As if there's not something they can do about that by simply commenting on the works that do exist to show the authors the content they made has an audience!

As a fanfic writer specifically, I find this weird attitude toward the creative work of other people more than a bit discouraging (and sometimes deeply uncomfortable). Fanfiction, like fanart, is a social experience. I create a thing and then others engage with it to encourage me to do more of the thing. I am not a machine and I do not exist for your entertainment or pleasure, but the way fandom leans these days would lead you to believe authors and artists exist for the purpose of consumption.

I am a whole person and doing this costs me my time. For a long story, many many hours of time.

I don't think it's asking too much for people who took the time to read a story (and in particular those who enjoy it) to engage with it.

This doesn't even touch the weird "I only read completed fics" mindset and how it feels to see that sentiment echoed as an author.

"Just write it all in advance before posting it then." Do you even know how long it takes to write a story—to write a longform fic with a plot to completion?

Break Open the Sky was 102,000 words long (and this is short compared to a lot of longfics, so keep that in mind). Even if you assume a writing speed of 1,000 words an hour (generous, because some difficult passages will be much slower to write), that is a whopping 102 hours. That doesn't include the time I had to spend to go back and re-read to continue the story. That doesn't include outlining. That doesn't include note-taking. That doesn't including mapping out locations and distance for travel. That doesn't include editing or formatting to post, either, which took hours per chapter.

I have to sacrifice something else to be able to write. No video games, no movies, no books, no television, no nap, no goofing off online.

Comments become a big motivation, especially on a WIP. It doesn't feel like a waste of time then, to get a little less sleep or take a little less time for yourself; it gives the writer something to look forward to: interaction and socialization with fellow fans. And I don't think the cost is that high for a reader compared to the hundreds of hours it might have cost me to be able to show it to them in the first place.

But nope, r/fanfiction is really out there complaining that fics don't update (even though they didn't bother to comment) and that longfics aren't finished before they start being posted (even though they still don't comment as the story is being posted) and then complaining that there aren't enough fics for [ship]/[trope] even though they are really out there refusing to engage in fandom in a meaningful way that might encourage authors whose work they enjoy to continue to create.

TL;DR: creation costs time.

[badbatchposts]

🎱 🍓 🌵🔪🪲. I reblogged the ask game from you, so I wanted to be courteous and send you an ask! I'm honestly curious about these.

Thanks for the ask, friend! It's really nice to be able to reflect on some of these things!! Sorry in advance for the super long responses lol.

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats:

Works: 2

User Subscriptions: 6

Kudos: 204

Comment Threads: 84

Bookmarks: 67

Subscriptions: 51

Word Count: 67,351

Hits: 4,652

I honestly have no sense of how these stats compare for the usual fanfic writer, but it makes me happy to see how many people have subscribed to my longfic, especially since I don't always get a ton of comments on new chapters. But it seems people are reading! And definitely more people than read my dissertation, lol.

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

I used to write a lot of original work in high school and early college, but then as things got busy--and as I convinced myself my writing wasn't good enough to be worth it--I largely stopped. I always felt guilty about it. I really enjoyed writing, but didn't think I was creative enough or had the right amount of stamina that it took to complete a long work, and I had this perfectionist idea where it felt like it wasn't worth doing if I couldn't be the best at it.

Then right as the new Bad Batch season came out this year I was struggling a lot with burnout and found that I was spending a lot of time thinking about the show, and decided that I might as well start reading some fanfiction--for the first time ever--and felt like writing it would be a nice creative outlet that might help me recover from my burnout. It really has been great, and some of what's made it so good is actually exactly the sort of things that used to make me think writing fanfiction wasn't worth it. Namely: it's not professionally publishable.

That is, legally, I will never be able to professionally publish and profit from any of what I write--it can only be posted and enjoyed. This actually just took so much of the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfect--it doesn't even have to be very good, because that's not what it's for.

I started thinking of it more as an exercise for working on my writing skills (things like, okay, in this chapter I'm going to practice writing dialogue, or in this next one I'm going to work more on establishing an interesting setting). As a result, I'm now thinking more about the writing process and improving my storytelling, rather than worrying about trying to make it perfect or good enough to publish or feeling competitive or down on myself when I encounter writing that I feel is much better than my own. It's been really freeing.

All of this happened over ten years since I stopped writing in college, and the other great thing has been seeing that my writing skills didn't disappear. In fact, they've gotten better and grown as a result of the learning I did in the meantime. I'm now much better at envisioning narrative arcs, outlining, getting myself to write consistently instead of just waiting for inspiration to strike me, and a whole load of other skills. It's really helped soothe a part of me that worried that I had abandoned writing, that it was too late for me to "do" anything with it, or that I only would have gotten worse.

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

Parasailing in Rio de Janeiro with a Caipirinha in Your Hand

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I've been spending a lot of time researching historical kitchens on sailing ships and historical brothels for the Pirate AU that I'm working on. Once for an academic paper I was working on a novel that depicts a (non-sexual) human-animal relationship but through very intimate and erotic terms, and I accidentally googled a combination of terms that came back with information on bestiality while on my university's wi-fi.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

The most recent thing I wrote for my Pirate AU (I'm skipping ahead SEVERAL chapters to inspire myself with the steamy bits haha)

“I hardly think I can get into much trouble here. Your crew have been perfect gentlemen.”

Hunter’s eyes glinted in the half-light of the lamps. Though he didn’t move, all of a sudden she was all-too-aware of how close he was, how easy it would be for him to reach out and touch her. “And what about me?” he murmured. “Haven’t you heard from the ladies in port? I’m a scoundrel. A very dangerous man. Maybe you ought to be afraid of me.”

Thanks again, this was a lot of fun!!

[msmargaretmurry]

What is writing advice you would give to someone just starting out?

ohhh you know i love to talk about WRITING. this is mainly geared at people just starting out writing fanfic but most of it can probably be applied to original fiction and other types of writing too 💕

first of all: be patient with yourself. like all other skills, writing is something that takes practice to get good at! i've been writing for YEARS and am still constantly learning and growing as a writer. if you're just starting out and you find yourself getting frustrated that the stuff on the page doesn't match the stuff in your head, it does NOT mean you're bad at writing. it just means you need more practice. do you think the first fanfics i wrote were good? no, they were incoherent and you will never find them.

write about things that you're excited to write about. whether this is the most popular pairing in the fandom or a rarepair you made up on your own, go with your passion! i know this can be hard because everyone wants the higher amount of comments and kudos that comes with posting popular pairings, but i promise that writing something you're excited about is like step one in getting yourself to write regularly. literally if you read a story you love and think "i want to write a story like that" then write a story like that! figure out how to take the things you loved in it and make it your own. drop the author a note and say they inspired you!

take all writing advice with a grain of salt. i watch a lot of writing advice videos on youtube, and i read craft books and articles on writing craft, and i've learned a ton of stuff from those over the years, but i've also learned that it's totally okay for me to be like "actually i think i disagree" and do it my way. (this does not apply to basic punctuation and grammar tho. please learn those, or get a beta reader who knows them really well. and then you can tactically decide if/when you want to break the rules sometimes.)

everyone has their own writing process. you can watch a million youtube videos on outlining but if outlining just doesn't work for you, videos aren't going to fic that! i used to outline a lot and now i mostly discovery write (i find the term "pantser" so unserious, lol). it took me a long time to develop a writing process that worked for me, and it'll take you some time, too, so don't be afraid to try new things and then set them back down if you're not working for you.

READ. read read read!!! do not just read fanfiction. do not just read the kind of thing you want to write. read WIDELY. and think about the writing while you're reading! if a fic or book is doing something really well, think about what's making it work. if it's doing something that you don't like, think about why it's rubbing you the wrong way and/or how you would fix it. i always say that even if i wind up not loving a book, i always learn something from it, craft-wise, so i very rarely feel like i wasted my time.

TALK about writing with your friends!! i know this one can be tough if you don't already have friends who are into writing, but i am so serious about it. buddy-read books or fics together and then get together afterward to talk about how you felt about the writing, the plot, the characters, the story as a whole. find someone(s) who will let you bounce your own writing ideas off of them, and who will read as you write to cheer you on and help you with tough spots. do the same for them if they want it! writing is such a solitary act that you have to be deliberate about building community around it, and having that community is so worth it.

on feedback: yes, having someone beta read your story can be pretty nerve-wracking. i have (once again) been writing for years and i still get nervous sending something off to be beta'd. but! having a beta reader you trust is so good for your writing. sometimes it really does just take a second set of eyes to spot typos, find plot holes, call you out on writing quirks and habits that you can't see for yourself because you're too deep in it. and it definitely helps to have a friend whose taste and skill level you trust to help make your story better. have a conversation with your beta beforehand to discuss what kind of feedback you're looking for, the timetable for how long they think the beta reading is going to take, how harsh or gentle they should try to make their feedback. if you're nervous about getting a lot of suggested edits, ask them to point out things they really like in the story as well.

OH ALSO. it's totally fine if you're struggling a lot with a story to just set it down for a while and work on something else. as you keep writing, you'll get better at figuring out what kind of writer's block you can beat by pushing through and what kind you need to deal with by just giving a story time to percolate more.

ok i think that's all i've got tonight. 💖

[ivyblossom]

I used to be a pantser, but now I'm a planner, and I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of everything that's going to happen in every chapter of my story. The number of chapters I have planned is how many chapters AO3 says the story will have, which is how many rows there are in my outline spreadsheet.

But what keeps happening is that I plan to have certain things happen in the story, but then doing just the one bit of the plan ends up taking up much more space than I expected, probably because I decided to linger at random in some unnecessary places in the story for no apparent reason, but then it turns out that like that unnecessary place so it stays, and then the whole thing gets longer. I love that fanfiction is all about doing what you want and screw it if it's unnecessary, right? My pantser tendencies are still a factor even when I have a very clear and solid outline. I am a feral creature and my movements cannot be anticipated.

Lately every time I write something for this story I stop myself and think, "this feels like a really big departure from the rest of this story, do I really want to take it to this place?" but it's all in my outline, it can't be that big a departure, and I decided to take it to this place months ago. So I don't know what that means.

This chapter introduces Susan Pevensie to my weird, canon-respectful but now a bit canon-fighty story. Because what happened to Susan was never okay, and you can't write a story like this without trying to make it right. We love Susan in this house, and she will get her happy ending even if it kills me.

Some random story-related observations:

Every narrator is unreliable in their own unique way.

Weird memory tricks remain one of my favourite things.

Peter Pevensie is my favourite person to give genuine 1940s slang to, it is the highlight of my week to write his dialogue. Apparently I have decided to give him ADHD, because he keeps blurting out super offensive things that he then needs to apologize for saying, which makes him seem like a dick, but I mean, if you're going to be a High King and a swordsman and all that, you're going to be a bit headstrong, amirite, and why not through impulsivity in there while you're at it? He rips everyone a new one at all times but he loves you a lot, can't you tell?

Edmund has oral fixation in this story and he has had it this whole time, it in of my original outline, you can see it there if you look. He got himself in trouble by asking for Turkish Delight, and he still wants to put things in his mouth, it's just who he is, sue me.

Edmund starts out as a dick, but he's actually the loveliest person underneath that, but Eustace Scrubb starts out as a dick and is always a dick, no matter how redeemed he is by the fancy lion who undressed him and threw him in the pool. He always rushes to judgment and we should always doubt him, because in his weird little Mormon heart he is very much still a dick.

Lucy's a lesbian and keeps hooking up with uninhibited women with shaved heads OR mer-girls. They all fall in love with her in ways that permanently change who they are as people because Lucy is a life-changing experience, but she gets bored faster than even she wants to and ends up moving on to the next one, causing much life-shattering and heartache.

I'm having a very good time writing this story.

[snugglesquiggle]

i feel a lil bad asking this right when a lot of people are excited for hostile takeover, but for financial reasons, i might need to start putting some of my energy into more serious original projects again.

i'm not pausing HT — i don't think i could stop thinking about those lezbots if i tried — but being able to take breaks to work on other things tends to be good for my energy levels in general.

and honestly, when i first started, i thought HT itself was just going to be a quick break from those projects, and now i'm four months in and my plans keep growing >.>

anyway, the purpose of this post is that i wanted to gauge interest. i know most people follow me for murder drones stuff, but do any of the original stories i'm considering interest you?

more detailed pitches for each of these can be found under the cut. honesty is appreciated.

a note before i pitch them — when i write original fiction, i post it to my site and a site for original fiction called royalroad. i'll probably reserve my ao3 account for, yknow, fanfiction.

the plan is that while the stories will eventually be available publically, supporters to my patreon will get to read several chapters ahead of everyone else.

Aurora Moonrise

It is the nature of comets to dazzle and destroy. These eldritch spirits from beyond the stars grind kingdoms to dust with joyful ease. Only the power of a daughter of the moon can repel them. There are none left. Aurora knows she is different. Her father is a plain man, and her mother is a mystery. Her prismatic hair, her divergent mind, her inability to weave common enchantments — it must come from her mother's side. But her mother is gone and no one will say why or where or anything. It's enough to make her want to fight someone. And Aurora fights — people, animals, spirits, it doesn't matter. She doesn't want to hurt them, but it's thrilling. She'll just have to become a knight — knights get to fight things, right? And knights get answers to who their parents were. When a cursed storm leaves Aurora glowing in the light of the full moon, she awakens new powers she can't control. Powers unheard of, except in those old stories. But the word on the lips of churchmen is witchcraft — communion with unnatural spirits that spells doom. Will she defend humanity? Or is she a threat to it?

pitching this one is hard, because the most interesting thing about is a twist reveal at the end of the first arc. at first, you can see it's framed to suggest — and Aurora initially believes — her mother is a "daughter of the moon", but of course, she's actually a comet.

as the poll option suggests, her inhuman heritage makes urges her to fight and hinders her ability to understand the basics of human social interaction.

this would be a long story, lighter in tone than the others, and structured like a fantasy trilogy, about Aurora journeying across the land doing what she thinks heroes do. along the way, she picks up several party members with their own weird baggage. all of them girls, of course, and it gets very gay by the end — but it's slow going because, yknow, aurora doesn't understand romance, either.

i'm very excited about this project — just thinking about it is enough to get me bouncing. you can actually read a four chapter teaser right now, and i have over 70k words of notes past that, with the whole thing outlined start to finish.

Thy Wretched Mask

Everyone wants to peel off their skin and scream into the night. You're just supposed to keep a handle on that. Beca's trying. Now on the run, she'll just have to get it right in a new town. She's got nothing to her name save a pet raven, but a little pickpocketing will change that. Maybe a burglary or two. As long as she doesn't tear someone's flesh apart in broad daylight, she could keep things controlled. It's a lonely life, but friendship is only temptation. She should just keep to herself. So why does she listen when the woman from the shadows talks? They're making an offer that could lift her off the streets for good. The catch? She has to kill someone. Again. That's definitely too much temptation.

once again, the most interesting parts of this are a surprise. Beca isn't human; she's saddled predatory instincts she doesn't understand. the "fungal possession" comes into play several chapters in. it gets intense enough that i believe it's one of the few times i've teared up while writing something, and it's so far the first and only time i've written something that explores topics of plurality, which is pretty personal to us

i say HT is the first time i've written romance (and it is), but TWM came close, and would have gotten even closer if i continued it.

i've already written over 20k words of this (unpublished), but due to the writing exercise it began as, it requires substantial rewrites; i cringe when i try to reread it, and it honestly makes the prospect of returning a bit unexciting.

this would probably only about the length of a novel. (original projection was novella length, but i think i want to flesh it out more.)

of all of my potential projects, i think this one is probably the biggest thematic overlap with Hostile Takeover. but uh, it's dark enough to make that look like a sappy romance >.<

Running Out of Skin & Time

Tomorrow, a lord will be flayed alive. Once his flesh, freely given, is woven into a vast frame, enchanted scars will turn him into a living portal, a gift that could turn a blightstricken town into a bustling trade nexus. Apnoe has woken up beside the same dead girl three nights in a row. The lord's flaying is tomorrow — same as it was for the last three nights. She's the only one who's noticed. Assassins lurk in the flaying festival's crowds, and when they strike the lord dead, the whole town watches their dreams crumble, and then Apnoe wakes again as if from a dream. She knew this quite well; on the first night, she had killed him. Scarred flesh grants magic. How deep a wound did it take to make every living soul in the city relive the same day? It wasn't Apnoe's, and she doesn't know why only she remembers, but then again, most scar magic treats her differently. After all, she's dead half the time. Apnoe would kill to end this nightmare — but it seems the only way out is saving a man who'll die tomorrow anyway.

of all the options, this story is the least well flesh out (no pun intended), but it has a lot of potential. a "time loop" where a character relives the same day over and over is something not enough stories explore well

(if it means anything to you, the inspiration for this fic was literally just thinking "what if the Shibuya Incident was a time loop?")

i call this "superhero fantasy" because, while i havent figured out the tech level (it's industrial, but how modern?), the magic system gives everyone unique and specific abilities that are easiest to imagine as superpowers.

the time loop effect itself is the rube goldberg interaction of half a dozen powers, and part of the fic is puzzling out just how it works, as well as puzzling out how to overcome the various powers arrayed against the lord.

it would be a very complex, cerebral fic, all about power progression and fight scenes, but at its heart, i want it to be the story of two dead girls who love each other enough to unravel fate itself

A Chimerical Hope

Duskroot is destroyed. A minor stronghold, its enemies were cunning and coordinated and its allies didn't lift a hand. As vultures at a corpse, mercenaries hunt for survivors. Awelah escaped Duskroot. She lost everything. Vengeance drives her, but can she kill a angel beyond death? Ooliri's mission is to aid the refugees. He has to prove he belongs in a family of medical geniuses. But healing isn't enough — can he bring the dead back to life? Makuja seeks safety among the refugees. Death and servitude leaves her gaze empty. It's easy to be a follower, but is there a purpose worth living for? First, the three need answers. A grand scheme is unfolding, and Duskroot was only the first step.

unlike all of the others, this isn't an idea for a story, or a plan for a story, it is a story, one i've written 100k words for. you can read it here

it's set in an expansive setting i've spent literal years thinking about with giant insects empowered by virulent mutant bat blood and cold black corruption pouring out from a hole in the sky.

it's also, shamelessly, only avoids being called naruto fanfiction by dint of sheer weirdness

Aurora Moonrise may be the story i'm most excited about, but ACH is the one with the most ambition and purpose behind it. if i could only ever tell one story in my life, it'd probably make it ACH. it might be over a million words if i ever finish it

but i also think it's probably too weird to get very popular.

And so on

if you can't tell already, i have a LOT of story ideas. before i ever watched murder drones, would you believe i was literally already working on a story about killer lesbian robots on a inhospitable frozen planet haunted by a creeping cosmic horror?

and i'm kind of tempted to work on a story about modular mushroom creatures that live underground. or a fricken pokemon mystery dungeon self-insert i've already finished one chapter of.

and of course, i have several other stories i could continue working on.

but like, the stories i've listed are the ones i can honestly say i might work on right now. and, practically speaking, the stories that might genuinely takeoff, if i dare hope.

[voltstone]

…about the clementine comic (again): why is she illiterate?

I've already written an exhaustive essay about the Clementine comics written by Tillie Walden, and that was before the first book was out. It was more of a discussion of what was already seen from the teaser, Walden being an…interesting choice to write this, but more than that, it was to preemptively stake the claim that no, it isn't canon. Not in the way that's just "ew I hate this I refuse," but more so, "the games (and character) by design and functionality do not allow for single interpretations to adequately continue the story."

These comics can be…a canon. But not the canon.

In the same way as The Walking Dead Game's (TWDG) fanfiction, like my own where I'm writing only my canon interpretation, the others who do the same, and so on.

(This right here is the essay, by the by.)

It has been a couple years since then. I have read both comics, and there is a lot I can say about them. I may one day, but not right now.

Instead, I want to direct attention to how…weirdly anti-apocalyptic it is?? Because it bothers me. A lot. That I'm watching a Clementine as a character get reduced to a kid who doesn't know how to read or write, doesn't know how to dress and care after a wound...

All things necessary for survival—the reading especially within an apocalyptic setting. Which. No. I'm not kidding. I do mean that.

Before I really indulge in my grievances, however, I will start by outlining the world that TWDG has established, and what it actually takes to survive within it.

(And yes, this is another lengthy post.)

[Surviving the Apocalypse]

Throughout the games, we ultimately see the apocalypse under two overarching eras. The initial stage is calamity. The walkers swiftly overrun what people upheld as a stable, and very secure way of life. And the fact that it only takes one factor to destroy the "we're untouchable" notion, it's terrifying. (Which, on that note, though the undead is an extreme, we did maybe learn this post-COVID. Ergo, stories like these may resonate a little bit better than they had before.)

What's different about The Walking Dead (TWD) as a universe is that…, the true calamity arguably doesn't hit until later, because the dead themselves aren't what really destroys the untouchable mindset as before. In most universes, such as The Last of Us, it's something contagious that you don't want. However, it is also something to overcome and fix. Though the dead in TWDG's cousin is far more brutal, if you isolate them, or find a way to vaccinate…, there could feasibly be a future where the fungus is more akin to rabies or the black plague rather than a devastating change in society.

Because that's how diseases like these work. They will never go away, especially if humanity mishandled their responses to them. Rabies is still out there, because it is a violent disease (am also under the impression that walkers is very synonymous with rabies, but I digress). The Black Plague? That whole thing? Yeah, the plague itself is also still out there. The problem was solved by nature, where a fire torched all of London.

But since then, we have vaccines. We know better (…I hope) in how to appropriately respond. And…that's the best we can do. Pathogens will always dictate life.

Of course, this isn't to undermind what outbreaks as seen in those other stories do to the world. They evidently are a turning point, if not the end, of humanity's way of life. The reason why, however, falls more in-line with a society being greatly unprepared, and a virus, fungus, whatever being the perfect amalgamation that spreads rapidly. It's what we as humans have gone through, will go through, to an absolutely extreme. Complete annihilation. That kind of deal.

Here's the thing about TWD, and I honestly could go on and on with this (and why it's my favorite apocalypse I've seen in fiction):

The bite is not what does it. Everyone is infected.

And the longer you think about it, that in itself will not end. I'm in the camp that it would be maternally passed-down given how blood circulation works within pregnancy, so. You know.

The point here is TWD as an apocalypse is very unique in this one change. It fundamentally breaks how people approached these kinds of stories. The walkers are not particularly fast because they don't have to be. They are a looming presence. As they deteriorate, because they're so slow-moving (as apposed to clickers), they manage to tell their own stories in how they died. You can see if they were bit, or starved, or shot… List goes on.

They are representative of nature reclaiming the world, and on top of that, a dangling threat to anyone who has the gall to think they're above it.

Because they're not. So either make sure your head is shot, or deal with walking around like a mangy pile of rot.

It changed how people approached this because rather than a devastating outbreak, this feels like a sort of damnation. There is a very bleak sense of finality to this universe—to the point where… Yeah. They could live on, try to find a cure, but this is it.

This is the true calamity of this world—not the walkers themselves, but the fact that they are there to stay, there is no going back. At least, for a long, long, long time. You can't just isolate them. If someone dies the wrong way, there could be one in the room right with you. Hence…making sure your head is shot.

And as with in the games, it is such a bleak reality that it forces people to just move on.

Which they do. The way to survive this initial era is, amongst a wide scope of things, to accept the fact and carry forth.

The characters that don't, and are simply too rooted in the past, like Katjaa… Well, they don't make it, do they? There's a reason why we don't see that many unable to let go after the first season, because they don't last. If they do, like with Tenn, it's because they got lucky and had a community to fall back on. Regardless, given what we see with Katjaa, Season One (S1) is this time.

The second era of the apocalypse is seeding. Both in the literal sense, and symbolic.

I'm not talking established communities, no. The closest we get to that is the boarding school, given they do have established practices. But, with how many things need to be done, the schoolkids are still within this second era.

Season Three (S3) is arguably the first season of the four solidly within the second era. Sure, there are still scavengers, but there are also several communities at once—enough so that the conflicts between end up being why they fail, not purely the dead. This leaves Season Two (S2) to be the fitting chaos that ensues between the eras, where much of the world is scavenging, they're reminded of how cruel winter is actually, but there are already solid efforts in building communities; then, Season 4 (S4) as well within the second era, with clear signs that there is the gradual chance of establishment.

The second era requires not only what the first proposes—moving on—, but also a sense of ingenuity. They're left with the scraps of the past world, but that past world also grew out of the earth, so they can cobble those scraps and earth together and make something out of it. We have Prescott on the airstrip; that is the epitome of cobbling things together. There's Richmond, and Howe's Hardware as well, where it's making use of the scraps left behind to establish proper farms. Then Ericson's as a meld of both—the kids have their structure, but they needed to feed off the land. (Not quite at the farm stage like the others were.)

All of what I've discussed thus far, however, is on an overarching scale (and isn't exactly exhaustive either). It can be extrapolated and used in reference to an individual's survival, but there are ways to better articulate an individual's survival than just…get the fuck over it, and build a farm.

And what's interesting is there is a vast difference in requirements depending on how they choose to survive.

With a community. Or. Alone.

The benefits to a community is you yourself don't have to encompass the three traits to survive. (Oh, yeah, this essay will have three primary traits of surviving on an individual scale; obviously there will forever be more nuance, but…shush. I'm typing.) Within a community, you can rely upon others that do encompass the three traits—and it doesn't have to be all in one person. The people within a community can specialize in skills.

And the schoolkids best emulate this.

Tenn and Willy, though they have their own skillsets, are example of those who need to rely on others. Both have the school, though they are closest to Violet and Mitch respectively—those, if asked, would likely be considered the closest thing to caretakers that either boys have.

And right alongside them, Louis, because my man…would like to say he's allergic to work, but really, it's the self-doubt. Now, if not a person who is reliant, he is good for raising spirits. He knows games to play. He brings entertainment.

There's Marlon, who's the well-spoken leader. Ruby, who plays nurse. Aasim, who…writes? Writing's important and stuff in the apocalypse, right?

(Yes. It is. Again, we will get to that, so, hush-up.)

Rosie. Dog. (This is also very important. You can pet her!)

Mitch was likely the muscle, or something along those lines. Omar, the cook.

I would say Brody sits near the "needs to rely" camp, given her anxiety, though, she does actually pull her weight, ergo, support. You can task her with anything. She'll likely be able to do it, such as with fishing and hunting.

Violet was also probably another support, though it is difficult to really tell at the beginning because she's withdrawn from the rest of her people. (I've always felt the Violet we meet at the start isn't who she was before the twins left. Of course, Violet is Violet, but… Depression, and stuff. Probably BPD stuff.) Here's the thing though: come to find, Violet is also another thing.

That being deputy. She can step-up and play leader when need be, but will step down because that isn't quite what she is—hence why the leadership ultimately goes from Marlon to Clementine by the end. This has Violet be the ultimate support. She can do whatever, fill in the leadership role, so on and so forth.

As the community develops, the others will find more nuances in themselves like these. Beyond what I've outlined, and the present nuances already in S4.

The thing with this line-up to understand is there's huge variety here. Not only in the nature of each role, but also their complexity. Because…, turns out, there's a lot to living.

Which. I mean. All of that is no shit, Sherlock. Because yeah.

When I go on about, say, Violet, it's to explain a very specific concept that one word is not going to do. There's a specific reason why I say deputy, and not second-hand; there is a thing where roles will and do change depending on circumstance, and time. (As with Willy (and Tenn) when he grows up, and when Louis becomes more confident.) But this doesn't mean it's more important. When I say "Omar, the cook," or "Ruby, who plays nurse," neither are to designate either as lesser roles.

They're actually crucial. Because no fucking shit. You need to eat. You need to learn how to mend yourself.

It's why those roles are so…simple. Because title alone says everything.

Certain roles, like Violet's (which…may or may not be ironic), are very community-centric. Others, like Omar and Ruby's, are fundamental to just life. And what you see is within communities, those fundamentals go from just skillsets to an art or to a science. When you have people who specialize in each, they are given the time and space to truly understand the ins and outs of what they're doing.

Cut to alone.

Those like Clementine.

Surviving alone is difficult because not only are all of these crucial roles in the community on one set of shoulders, there has to be great sacrifice. Of course, a leader or deputy isn't needed because there's just one. The social aspect of a community is not present.

With that social aspect follows specialization of the core fundamentals.

You need to eat. You need to learn how to mend yourself. And defend...

When you are on your own, without the security of a home, you are not given the time nor the space to truly know those ins and outs. So, when you look at those like Clementine, yes. She's not going to know little tricks, or the sciences, in what she does. The stitching for example:

Clean it. Sew the fucking body part shut. Wrap if you can. There you go, you just did stitching.

Which she does. However, S2, part of why the dog bite (oh, and yes, comic people? yeah, there's supposed to be a deep, concerning scar down her left forearm) scarred the way it did is because 1) …um, she was in a shed, dunking-back apple juice in between sutures in my case, getting jumped by a dead dude, and 2) the stitch-work was very rudimentary. Enough to close the wound and have it heal, sure. Then, S3, the same with Javi; Kate upon inspection does mention that she sees it bleeding through, indicating that again, it's very rudimentary. But, we have Eleanor examine it, and she notes that it is satisfactory, so long as it's looked after.

Had someone like Ruby, or better yet Eleanor (who Dr. Lingard complimented this exact skill) done it, they would have known different stitch techniques that not only closes the wound tight, but also leaves minimal scarring. And the other things, like how to adapt the techniques to different parts of the body, because…no, you really can't just stitch a knee like you would a back.

But again, Clementine didn't have the time to really learn the specifics. She's busy learning how to cook, and hunt, and defend, and scavenge supplies, drive, shoot, car maintenance, feeding a child, taking care of the child, protecting the child, prioritizing necessities…

Essentially, in terms of community vs solo, it's an argument between the specialized, and the jack of all trades.

Stay with me now. I'm not exactly done going over what is needed to survive, because there are more. There's the three traits I mentioned. But as I babble on, once the discussion over the comic begins, I do hope it's clear as to why I am going through these things as meticulously as I am.

Now we get to why Clementine of all girls would be able to live in this kind of environment. She's a kid, but like…young adult given the context. (I'm sure the medieval ages wouldn't argue.) She's like…stupid, or something. She only went to so much school, and we all know that only smart people graduate from school. I never met a dumbfuck at college ever! No!

…got a little side-tracked.

Genuinely though, what is it about Clementine?

I'll start this with a curveball:

What is the dumbest thing that she has ever done within the games?

There's room for debate, but the majority will probably point to S1, where she goes on to trust the voice at the other end of her radio—the voice being the Stranger's.

It's the decision that we, as an audience, thought Clementine was above doing even at that age. It's also what ultimately kills Lee.

Here's the thing, though:

Clementine putting faith into the Stranger wasn't just a child being stupid. For one, she is…eight/nine. So. A child. But, two, it was an exercise of her greatest flaw:

"She's a puzzle."

Something that is brought up, time and time again. To my mind, it's most notably done by Katjaa, whenever they're beside the train, and Duck is of ailing health. Clementine sits on her own log. Doesn't respond much to Lee, not until Chuck (as a breath of fresh air) comes to join the party.

See, she heard a voice from the other end of this radio—one of two (including the hat) mementos she has of her family—, and the one thing that she had in way of sanctuary. The Stranger said the right things, so she kept to herself with that radio, and let her desperation flourish.

Finding her parents was the one thing she wanted. So yes, through a child's gullibility, and a man's manipulation, she believed the wrong person.

We see this sort of flaw propagate time and time again. Granted, it does depend on the player's interpretation of her for S2 and S4, given we play as her, but in S3 where she's (quite literally, for the most part) out of our hands, what does she do? She keeps to herself. What happened to A.J? was a question on our minds, largely because of her reluctance to open up. Clementine lies to Javi about the New Frontier, then she turns around and explains her lie…, reveals her branding…, purely for survival's sake, not because she wholeheartedly trusts him.

Of course, in S3 it's understandable that she doesn't just open up to Javi. That game covers only a handful of days—short of a week by the end—, with the exception of the flashback sequences. (As opposed to S1, across several months, S2, a few weeks to a month, give or take, and S4, which sits about the same.)

Still, however. This is absolutely a part of Clementine's character: she's reserved. Without the player, her first inkling is to keep herself from the topic of conversation.

The thing to understand about this flaw, and how it bleeds into the comics, is that…I think(?) Walden acknowledged this part of her character. But…half of it.

The reason why comic Clementine pulled away from the boarding school is because she…, as she does…, kept to herself after her leg, got into her own head, and thusly ran off. I will say, I do agree that Clementine would be an absolute fucking mess with her leg gone because she has to rely on people again. (Which is devastating because of her specific trauma: à la parentification.)

Now…, run away…? Um…

(…it's also this specific trauma that… Um. Yeah no, she would not leave A.J.)

Whatever. Not the point of this essay.

The other half of this flaw, the half that the comics blatantly miss, speaks to quite an…insightful aspect of Clementine:

She is a very, very perceptive individual. Because the thing we see in S1 is that she's not just quiet. She's watching. She's observant. Clementine is quiet, not only because she gets into her own head, but because she's taking in the world, and so she notices things that other people don't pick up on.

Throughout S1, there will be moments where Lee can try to sugarcoat things, particularly after Duck's bite, only for Clementine to say it plainly:

"You don't know that."

Those moments speak to a kid who knows the difference between reality and not, and telling Clementine that she won't get snatched or bit is…not reality. It will likely happen, and it does.

Other moments, she'll notice details in the environment. She can point them out. Help Lee, as with getting into the train station. Make a comment, like in Hershel's barn with the "dookie"/shit/manure.

Or, back in the drugstore, where Carley (…not too subtly) outs Lee as a murderer in front of Clementine. …which, of course, Clementine picks up on. (The trigger for this is to pick up the photo of Lee with his family, hence why it can be before or after moving the desk.) To which, upon leaving the drugstore's office, she'll ask about it, and you'll have the option of being open and honest, sugarcoating it, or just flat out lie.

Staying in the drugstore! Lee asks for something to bar the entrance. Walkers are scratching to get a nibble. And? Immediately, she goes to his dad's cane (cuz that man ain't using anymore!).

S2. Same spiel. Because…, oh boy, incompetence is rampant as it turns out, and as I've stepped into adulthood for myself, I've come to appreciate that season as essentially "Clementine learns why the motel family fell apart, adults are grown ass children, she has to babysit them— KENNY, DOWN! STOP IT! STOP BITING THE RUSSIAN!— throughout a winter."

Because. Newsflash. Adults? About as stable of a concept as a table with a missing leg, then another one of mangled-together cutlery. And I will forever adore stories from a kid's perspective slowly realizing this fact.

(…also, parentification's a knocking. It wants in.)

Then, S3, where she gave up being the hero, but still…, somehow…, rattles off exactly what the player needs to do and where to get the tools when stealing a truck because she just can't help herself.

…okay, I think I've done enough. S4 also speaks for itself.

Point being, Clementine is a very perceptive, very resilient, and very adaptive person. It's why she out of all the kids she comes across is the one to survive.

Sarah immediately comes to mind as someone who really struggled with adapting. She can, but the tragedy of it is that it's not in time. Too little, too late. (Circumstances also don't help.)

With Gabe (if he dies), same kind of thing. He always struck me as someone painfully unaware of how good he had it, and how bad everything else was. And he needed to grow up. Fast. But again, that alone isn't what saves him—his uncle, and/or Clementine do(es). If he's saved at all, anyway.

Duck? Same fucking thing. And it was his death, through Chuck, that spurred Lee to start teaching Clementine the basics.

To which she adapts, and she adapts well. Their first outing doesn't go…all that great. Clementine freezes. But, throughout S1, she does shoot her first walker (with Omid, or in Crawford). If Lee cannot fight off the Stranger, she will be the one to kill him. And then, of course, the whole Lee death scene thing.

The second season starts off with Omid dropping because of a neglected gun. (Clementine freezes again.) Change is always on rocky road—despite the season prior, she still had a lot to learn, and she did throughout said season.

Perceptive, and resilient, and adaptive. To be those is the ticket to survival. Those are the three.

So why…does it seem like the comics don't know?

[VANCOMYCIN]

To anyone unaware, vancomycin is not a random string of letters for Clementine to work her mouth through. In fact, she knows how to read it. Had to, in order to inject this medicine into A.J within S3—whether or not she goes through with it is dependent on player choice.

Vancomycin, to give a better idea of the sheer desperation she was in, is not something to treat the common cold or flu. It's to treat Gram-positive bacterial infections—hence why it wouldn't necessarily work for colds or flu, given most are virus-borne—, and is generally synonymous with more serious infections.

Meaning. A.J was genuinely sick.

(My hunch is bacteria-borne pneumonia.)

I don't know what most of the fandom assumed, but it was not just a little bug. It was…bad. And a legit miracle that he survived (whether it be without the injection, or…with the injection where Clementine poked the syringe through his shirt? Game? Graphics?).

What likely happened was, somewhere down the line, he either just caught something on an off chance (the world hasn't been sanitized), or he got too close to danger and got himself sick that way off of one of the walkers/animals around. (If it was pneumonia, he likely inhaled something.) Regardless, Clementine was at a point where she…just did not have the resources to help him, would not know where to look, wouldn't feasibly be able to scavenge for it, and so she joined the New Frontier (whether or not you had her agree initially) because it was just that bad.

It is a heavy drug. Not only does it give insight as to why Clementine chose to join regardless of your choice for her, it also explains why the group threw her out for even handling it. It's not like aspirin that's easy to come by.

And, of course, there's the pronunciation of it. As with every medical term like this, it looks and sounds convoluted, but as you break it down, it's pretty straightforward.

Keep this in mind as I rattle on further. I find the vancomycin to be a very succinct contrast to what I take issue with in the comics.

Speaking of, the comics.

Hello there.

…Clementine.

The Clementine Comics, by Tillie Walden, read as a hard reset on the series, from S1 onward. Which yes, is the core issue. There was no effort in even trying to continue off from S4, it was just a way to have Clementine still run around, while avoiding the whole Telltale-RPG implications of a continuation.

So, if you're somehow out of the fandom and you're reading this, hi? Welcome. This is why people are upset about the comic, and for once, no, it's not just because this fanbase is being…unhinged. (In a bad way.)

On top of the plot decisions, however, there are things that just prove Walden was not the artist for this project. The artstyle is an interesting(?) fit for TWDG, but ultimately is an aside. There's the focus on romance. There's the dull characters.

And then there's Clementine herself. Very out of character, and that's coming from someone whose Clementine has…made decisions in her life.

What this essay will focus on, however, is the choices made to have Clementine incompetent.

Medically so.

In the first book, Clementine is taught how to clean and dress her amputated leg. I can get behind learning how to wrap the thing properly, because it is a different part of the body, and it's a different angle—on herself, not someone else.

But she asks…why she needs to clean it. Like she doesn't know. Clementine has to be taught that.

This kind of ignorance then follows her into the second book, because she fell ill (and slipped into a month-long coma??), largely due to her not cleaning the wound. Her leg had an infection. And it spread.

…okay. Um.

That's very interesting considering Clementine:

(S2) Got bit by a dog, felt like she needed to take care of it herself due to circumstances, cleaned it, sutured the wound with fishing wire, and then went to bandage it (before getting attacked). (By the way, the scar is not on comic Clementine. So.)

(S2; optional) Can sit beside Rebecca during her pregnancy to help, but then does have to assist with the walker/lurker problem.

(S2) Tended to Kenny's lost eye because he was beaten by a walkie-talkie by cleaning it.

(S2) Probably had to deal with that whole wound in her shoulder, you know, from the FUCKING RIFLE SHOT, either with Kenny, Jane, those at Wellington, or on her own (feat A.J). (No, they did not patch it up because time, and it went clean through. When Jane and Kenny fought, Clementine just had an open bullet hole.)

(S2/S3) Had to take care of a baby. With Jane or Kenny or in Wellington, and/or on her own.

(S3; alone S2 ending) Broke her finger on a car door to the point where she (presumably) had to amputate and cauterize the finger herself.

(S3) THE WHOLE VANCOMYCIN THING. I WILL GET BACK TO THAT.

(S3) Cleaned and sutured Javi's arm after he got shanked (cuz Gabe… never mind).

(S4) Twas a great start. Car accident—boo boo head.

(S4) Had to patch-up A.J cuz he got shot by a shotgun. And was in recovery for two weeks.

(S4; optional) Louis/Violet gets their finger chopped off. Probably helped deal with that.

(S4) Um. Her leg? You know. The one she lost, and the schoolkids managed to get her stable. Willing to bet Ruby would lose her fucking shit if it wasn't cleaned properly.

And that's just what we do see, in regards to Clementine personally.

Do I…have to go on and explain why it's fucking stupid that she doesn't know the basic information she had to learn in the comics? No?

Okay. Good.

I will get back to it, because I think this choice is indicative of a larger issue. We'll get to that weird…bias the comics have with Clementine being negligent and ignorant to all things medical.

Because now, we're here.

Not only is Clementine ignorant medically, she struggles to read her way through a dictionary. There's scenes of her sounding out words like she's in preschool.

For what reason?! Because in a world where people don't have higher education, they just don't read and write?! What?!

Okay, so, no, I didn't outline precisely why reading and writing (more so reading) is crucial of a skillset to have within an apocalyptic setting. I will do so now.

Because it's the crux of this essay. Hence why I've given it its own section. (…that's what this is, by the way.)

Why is it, exactly, "so" important Volt? Society's gone!! You don't need to read!

Listen up, ✨ dipshit ✨ This is an apocalypse. Not a nomadic setting.

Okay, that was a little mean. If you're asking this, you're not a dipshit.

Anyway, I am being genuine here. To the point where even implying that nomads by nature are illiterate is also…wrong. Because that's not necessarily true either, but assuming so falls into such an ignorant bias that people in 1st world countries have. (The same that the comics have.)

And this bias is the reason why I really, really want to have this discussion because the comics really rubbed me the wrong way with this, and, I'm kinda sick and tired of reading other people implying the same thing.

So let's start here:

What distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Why is it we consider ourselves more intelligent?

The answer boils down to one thing:

Our mouths.

We can talk. And in doing so, we can communicate to each other very complex and nuanced concepts that require articulation beyond body language and emotion.

It's why we're able to distinguish things like envy versus just being irritated by someone. Because frankly? They physically feel the same because they are the same emotion. The context is what differentiates envy vs irritability. The why.

"I feel [this] because I want what they have." vs "I feel [this] because they're being stupid right now."

The [this] is the same. The body only has so many ways it can tell you what you're feeling, so it ends up boiling down to very basic emotions, where they can be felt at different extremes, or in unison. So. You know. Think Inside Out. What makes envy special is…you have to take context into consideration. Yes, it is also irritability, but it goes beyond that. And it requires language to communicate such a thing.

When you look at animals, that's why they're "unintelligent." They respond to what they feel the way they do because they don't have a way to articulate it. So they just react. Rather blindly in our eyes. Same thing with babies. They haven't gone through language acquisition just yet—they're in the same boat. It's also why a lot of dog breeds are said to "have the same intelligence as a 3 year old." It's related to language. They feel the same emotions, or whatever equivalent (can't claim I know how their bodies process emotions). However, they physically cannot exercise language verbally. Ergo, they're more or less stunted in the acquisition.

And then you have that we are wired to speak. Our mouths by design are made to verbalize complex sounds. A lot of our brain power is in being able to talk, or at least comprehend patterns in speech if the individual is mute. I for one was a child who rarely spoke for my first ~4/5 years, but I knew what people were saying. (Funnily enough, I was a lot like A.J.)

Beyond emotions, it's also to communicate things rather than [follow me, are you following, I'm looking at you, follow me,] it's "okay, I'm going over here, meet me by this tree." There's immediate clarification. There's a passage of thought between two brains. We don't have to interpret body language as much, we have to comprehend words.

To the rest of the animal kingdom, that makes us already mind-readers. Given that people are honest, and can articulate well, we literally are.

…it's also this emphasis on verbal language that has people be real fucking shit a reading body language, but whatever.

The point here is language is so fucking important. And there's a reason why we started writing things down. Some of the first records of written language, hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, were to keep track of agriculture. We also forget things, so we wrote those down. Heard of the Iliad? The Odyssey? Those were orally passed down for generations, but Homer decided to scribe them so they weren't forgotten. (From what I remember, he wrote those during the Hellenistic era of the mythos. …I want to say the stories come from the Mycenaean times?)

And above all.

Long distance communication. Or. Leaving behind knowledge.

So there would be couriers. There would be scholars who learned from scrolls of scribes decades before them.

(In modern times…, labels on products so that you know what it is, how to use it… Just a thought.)

Language is what makes us different. And by proxy, writing helps us retain that.

It is never something people are just going to abandon when the world goes to shit. If anything, it's going to be the one thing people will grapple onto by the skin of their teeth.

Out of the two, yes, language would come first. There are many cultures that lived (even thrived) without having a true writing system, and did just fine because the culture had such an emphasis on oral tradition, or other ways in cementing their culture to the test of time. A lot of the Native American cultures come to mind. Nowadays, however, there's been an effort to have them written so they aren't lost because…colonialism. I don't really need to explain that, but I do think the history is important to understand (the linguist in me is also morbidly fascinated). In summary, however, the way in which these cultures were torn apart rattled people, and people saw their way of life was evaporating with every person lost. They couldn't leave anything physical behind.

I do bring this contrast to light, however, because there is a detail to understand about an apocalyptic setting, and its relationship with written word: it's reflective of what society fell. If the society before was like a lot of the Native cultures, where their culture was recorded through oral traditions and other practices, then sure, I would expect the people left behind to be "illiterate". …at least, in terms of writing. They're literate in those oral traditions and practices.

But, that's not TWDG. What we have is a society that is reliant on writing. So much of our world is articulated through an alphabet printed onto a surface.

In any case, back to the apocalyptic setting.

Another thing is, yes, we do see language come before writing. In survival, it does land people in situations where it's "I don't have time, I've been starving, I'm going to grab all the food in this place before the books." Of course. Then you have that books are heavy. You're not going to realistically carry a library around. You're going to choose other things that would help immediately.

Like a knife. Or a gun.

Those do better bashing heads in than a book (but a tome wouldn't do that bad).

Here's the thing though. To step back to how reliant our society is on writing, I don't think people realize just how much they read. (Hint: you're reading right now. You had to read in order to navigate this page.) So here's the follow images of things that, in an apocalypse, are pivotal for survival, and requires of you reading comprehension:

Signs. Food labels. First Aid labels. Maps. Manuals. Guidebooks.

You need to know where you're at. You need to understand what it is you're eating, how to cook it, and quality (ex: expiration). You need to understand first aid, what you're working with and how to apply it. You need to know where you're going. If you have equipment (like, say, a car) that you're not privy to, but need it, you need to learn basic maintenance. If you're not familiar with how to do certain activities (how to make jerky, how and where to put your urine/fecal matter), you can learn in a guidebook.

Literacy is about self-sufficiency. And each of these represent different aspects of how to live off of the scraps of a failed society.

Signs are pretty straightforward. They're articulated landmarks, and given how streets are, they're good to follow for navigation. If they're signs for complexes, they're a good way to know where you should scavenge should you be looking for a specific thing. Ex: hardware supplies; you're trying to build a camp. Either it's get lucky, or go over to someone's garage, or go over to a hardware store.

Food and First Aid labels are different things—the way they're organized is very different—, however, they serve the same purpose: those are there to inform consumers how to eat/utilize. Even though each have a very specific language, they are designed so that people not specialized in food or medicine can use them. This also applies to a lot of agriculture. Things like seed packets. Or anything that can be planted. If it has a consumer-base, there's a label on it. If it doesn't have instructions, it will most likely inform what it is.

Maps is where we start to get into more "optional" territory. Do you necessarily need a map to survive? No. It would be a life-saver to know where you are, even away from where the society was established. It would also tell you where the next town vs city is (which, to someone like Clementine who may be inclined to avoid cities, she would know which roads to take).

Manuals and guidebooks, again, are the same. They also fall into the kind of thing where weight now has to be considered.

But. Here's the thing: how many people know how to go camping? How many people were ever in boy/girl scouts? And how many more people didn't have to learn any of that because society promised security and the fact that…we don't need to focus on survival?

Okay sure, go on and on and on about how people who knew those skills already and prepped for the apocalypse would be the ones to survive. Because, uh, don't know about you, that's not necessarily how that works (luck is always a thing, and people surprise you), but also, within TWDG, I can only come up with so many people who would fall into that camp: Lilly, Mark, maybe Larry (military experience), Christa (got the vibe), Pete. Um… …Carver? He talked about, like, sheep and stuff. In reference to people, sure, but like… Uh. Hm. Well shit.

You know all the people who didn't have the experience before the apocalypse? Everyone. Fucking. Else. Including Clementine.

This is the reason why manuals and guidebooks are invaluable. They speak to a luxury because you do have the space and capacity to carry them around, so that you can gather what knowledge they have. And people just don't know this shit. Community helps, because you may meet someone who does, or has read up on it, so you don't have to. But when you're alone? …kinda a really, really good thing to have.

And none of that is going into how important books are in just passing the time. People get bored. Books are nice if you got a bum leg.

Regardless, my point should be quite clear. Sure, reading and writing will not be important in the same immediate regard, and neither will be as prolifically done as it was before. Within an apocalypse, it's not about texting, or emails, or news reports, or essays… None of that. Ergo, they're designated as an investment that weighs heavy (quite literally). It takes time to read. It takes strength and space to lug them around. You may not have any.

However. With all of what I raised, it goes back why it is, actually, so fucking important to be literate to some capacity. And to build upon that literacy. Because these people are not just living in caves. They're not in a place where humans have never gone before—quite the opposite.

Which makes it an apocalypse.

In order to navigate within the carcass of a fallen society, you need to be able to comprehend the very scraps that you're taking from said society. It left behind food, and medicine, and tools, and machinery, and knowledge. To just put that all to waste because you can't read?! Really?!

And what about a life-and-death situation where it entirely depends upon your skills in being able to read and comprehend information given to you?

I'm going to go back to the vancomycin now.

It's not something the game harps upon, but it is significant enough to Clementine's arc in S3. This medicine, regardless of injection, is why she could not see A.J, and why she had such a resentment for the New Frontier. They said they could help. In her eyes, they instead left him to die.

It is also a significant point of interest as far as this essay is concerned. Because this scene alone encapsulates all of what I'm rattling on about:

The medicine itself is a scrap of her past society. They're not making these anymore, and while I can…question how good that medicine would be by this point in time after the apocalypse (shots do have an expiration date; they also need to be stored appropriately, like in refrigerators or freezers), the vancomycin represents a limited, valuable resource.

Clementine's comprehension of what this medicine is, and why she needs it, speaks to something far from an ignorance medically. She is competent. She even knows to ensure there aren't air bubbles trapped in the syringe (hence why she lets some of the drug out before injecting; air bubbles can lead to…really nasty ways to die).

How she actually knows which drug to use, well… Either someone wrote it down for her, or she wrote it down herself. Maybe Dr. Lingard told her, or she found a resource somewhere and realized that's what she needed. It speaks to literacy, despite the challenge medical terms often have—even for medical professionals themselves.

This…is what it takes to live in an apocalypse. You have to be perceptive, and resilient, and adaptive.

Part of that adaptation is being perceptive of your environment. This environment asks you to read it—because it says everything, wears its heart on its sleeve. Ergo, you have to adapt by learning how to read.

Maybe not novels, or scriptures, but specific things. Like signs, or labels. Maps.

But this comic, it falls into a bias that a lot of people have.

And that bias bothers me. A lot.

[Why Does This Hurt Me So?]

There are three reason why this just does not work for me.

First of which, Clementine's characterization. The continuity of it. I really don't have to go on about this, since if I do, I'd just regurgitate all of what I've established before. For the sake of this section, it's just that Clementine is medically competent, just not in a specialized sense, and she knows how to read to get by. (She even starts to teach A.J how to both read and write.)

Now we'll get to the larger points of discussion.

Secondly...

How the fuck did Tillie Walden get this project?

Say what you want about the artstyle, or the characterizations, or the narrative. None of that is really what this essay is on, but are all viable criticisms down this same line of thought. You have the artstyle being very whimsical…, but…since when has TWDG been about whimsy? Or the characterizations? Which…, by now, we know about that—again, I don't need to regurgitate. Then, the narrative too? Why does it read like a romance by the time the second book comes around, rather than a story of survival?

Actually, that last one may be relevant to this after all.

Walden does not write apocalyptic works. Of course, there is no correct way in writing an apocalypse, but I'd argue this is one of the wrong ways. Not only do these comics misinterpret the bulk of Clementine's character, and precisely why she's been able to survive as long as she has—to the point where her playing the games at all is put into question—, these comics also have a strange notion on basic intelligence, and does the thing where people without school are just…stupid, almost, if not plainly illiterate.

It goes against what I've outlined as a mark of an apocalyptic setting—the survival both within nature, and within the rotting shell of the society it once was.

And, it feeds into this bias that I keep bringing up.

That bias is the third reason, and it's not a comment on Walden herself, because she's far from the only person I've seen/heard make the same assumption(s).

The bias I refer to is what I'd like to call the Modern Intelligence Fallacy. I'm confident that I and this essay are far from the first to comment on this…thing people do.

Essentially, it's whenever people judge the past and/or present group of people for being "dumber" than the current society they're based on, solely because "we're modern; we have technology, and medicine, and schools. And we know how to read and write too." It's when people undermine other cultures and/or time periods because they themselves are ignorant to what intelligence actually means.

Going back to Native Americans, and any cultures alike that didn't have a written structure. I've heard people make comments and assumptions, rather ignorant ones. But the fact is, no. The lack of a writing system is not indicative of intelligence, it's indicative of what the culture valued, and how they wanted to express that.

Part of why writing is such a core element in many European cultures, for example, is because…colonization. Look at English, and why it's such a patchwork language. They had to find ways to communicate long distance, because have of them were separated be countries between. Ergo, they wrote. Nowadays, there's telephone, or video. Then, there are other contexts which beckoned for writing, but I digress.

With a lot of these Native cultures, they valued community. That's why so many of their traditions fall within that, and that's how they communicated and passed down their history. Essentially, they just found other ways to do what the other cultures around the world were doing, and it worked for them, so what of it?

The attitudes behind this fallacy doesn't care, however. This bias does put value on the presence of language in written word in regards to intelligence, and an overall sense of superiority.

Yes, I've gone through and maintained that I do not believe, for a second, that Clementine is illiterate, and I've been defending that tooth and nail. I also do put value in language—I'm a writer, and I love linguistics. Of course I do.

And that's the awkward bent in this essay.

So, I must say, the thing to understand is…it's not really about the language itself. It's the attitudes behind the bias.

You here to argue that Clementine isn't as competent reader/writer like a girl her age would be now? (…present issues with the school system aside,) yeah. Probably.

But then why…does the comic have her be negligent with medicine? To the point where it comes across as, "Yeah, Clementine! Clean your wound! Everybody should know that! And that's just the basics!

"Silly kid in an apocalypse! She needed a grown adult to carefully explain it to her!! Oh boy, we would be so lost without our society now!"

This is why I've also taken note on the medical throughout all this. Because the medical practices aren't really related to literacy. You can be told, like Clementine was in the games, and go from there.

In the comics, however, the moments where she's told about how to take care of her leg, and the moments where she is learning how to read… They read the same. Because they are the same. They're commenting on this weird idea that humans would be stupid without our current advances, which is ridiculous because in order to have said advances…, we needed to be learning this shit before in order to create them.

These moments come from this Modern Intelligence Fallacy, and it bothers me because, let's face it, we're just as smart as we've always been.We have more knowledge. Whether it's we pass them down through specific traditions, or we've written them down to share beyond time and distance. But in terms of intelligence… No.

Do you know how many stupidass people there are out there?

There's tons of them. If anything, there's more of them now because they can rely on their communities to do the heavy lifting. And they saddle themselves right beside the people who need to rely on others, and not by choice.

I'm talking as though I'm not one of them. I don't know. I might be.

I did accidentally melt two plates in microwaves on two separate occasions so. If you want to take my words with a grain of salt, fine.

With that, though, hopefully my point(s) came across well enough.

[Conclusion]

And now I am left here. With…this.

I'm not as resigned as I was of TWDG since the comics came out, because quite frankly, there's so much to these comics where…it just feels like I'm not watching Clementine. Whether it be I'm on a couch silently judging someone else play the games, but nodding along to play nice, or just…this isn't the character at all… Yeah, I'm still stewing on it. But, I have my fanfiction, and I have the games. It is easy to ignore the comics.

The reason why I've decided to write this is 1) I find it interesting, 2) the bias people have is SUCH a pet peeve of mine, and 3) I am BAFFLED by Skybound. I honestly don't know what qualified Tillie Walden to write this, to the point where I'm frankly impressed.

It's one thing to hire someone who's unfamiliar with the franchise in hopes of an objective and new perspective, or an artstyle to try something new and unique...

And entirely another to hire someone who either isn't interested in writing, or doesn't know how to write, the genre. There are so many ways to go about writing in an apocalypse, but at its core, it will always be "no matter what, humans are going to human." This is how you can have stories of hope in an apocalypse. Or have them be bleak. And so on. With TWD, it's always been a meld of both.

Because it's human are going to human, this…bias towards any scenario where people are not traditionally educated gets in the way. Because "traditional education" is not traditional, actually. It's societal. What is traditional is people learning an array of skills to survive, much of which is medicinal, and with writing… That's dependent on the environment. Way back when, in times where the world didn't rely on literacy, absolutely not many people would be literate. But in eras where so much hinges on at least being able to navigate?

Or or, in times where you are relying on a recent past that did write and read as much as it did for survival? Um. Yeah. You do need to be able to at least read, if not write as well, for communication's sake. Which I didn't go much into, but oh well.

And this right here is what TWD is set in. This universe isn't a hard reset. You're effectively just going back a couple hundred years. All the infrastructures and scraps left behind are still there, just not maintained.

So��� Yeah. I don't get it. The most I can fault Walden for is being negligent, but this is just…Skybound, not caring enough about this story to the point where they'll hire anybody for some reason.

I also don't get the bias people have about intelligence, and stuff, but I really…, really don't want to go on a spiel again. It incites violence within me. I've already gone and done a mini spiral over the comics themselves, and they were kinda but not even the point.

Ah well. I'll just crawl back to my hovel now. The links to some of the linguistic concepts I raised are below, if you want to do any additional research. The specific articles are more generalized to give a broad picture, but can be used as a jumping off point should they pique an interest.

I'm just gonna continue to write about my alcoholic Clementine.

Hope you enjoyed.

:)

Linguistic Articles:

History of Writing Systems (1), (2) ; Language Acquisition (1)

Native American Language History (1), (2), (3)

[ardenrabbit]

your work is all so amazing!! do you have any advice for writers who maybe want to start writing longer fanfictions?

Ahh!! Fhhfkf thank you!!! ;^; I don't know how useful or coherent my advice might be, but here's what's helped me in the past:

1. Know what kind of writer you are. If you work better by starting with a structured outline, do that, but make sure to actually start WRITING the scenes after that lol. If you get more momentum by diving in and just seeing where the story goes, do that, but make sure you have a DIRECTION to go in. A healthy balance of planning and discover-as-you-go is the most fun in my experience. (I usually start by improvising and having fun with a concept and then gradually cornering myself into planning lol. By then, planning isn't a chore; it's just satisfying to see everything fall together.)

2. Don't force an idea to be a long fic if it doesn't need to be. If you feel like your concept would be better served by a short fic, do it justice by not stretching it into a shape it doesn't need.

3. If your concept is bigger and does need a long fic format, make sure you know what threads you're weaving together. Write an actual list of themes, subplots, and character arcs and keep track of them, and figure out how you want to pace them in relation to one another.

4. Have resources prepped! Name banks for minor characters; notes/links to articles on the time period/environment/culture you're writing about; pictures that inspire you; songs that hype you up for your story or the characters... Mostly, if you don't like doing research, START LIKING IT. Find joy in researching the symptoms of hypovolemic shock and the native flora of Northern China. Look up multiple sources for each little topic. (I just keep a messy list of links and notes in the bottom of my docs lol)

5. If you get stuck or bored, revisit the source material. Watching/reading the original story can remind you why you got so excited to write fic about it and refresh your ideas.

6. If you're bored while writing a scene, it's probably boring to read. Don't turn writing into a chore. Think about what needs to happen in a scene and why it matters, find what you care about in it, and follow that. If it starts feeling like you don't need a scene and that you were just using it to fill in time, cut it.

7. My favorite thing: don't be afraid to write out of order. Write little blurbs or pieces of dialogue for chapters way ahead, if you have something in mind! Give yourself a goal to catch up to. It'll help you get the big picture of your whole fic and then fill in the scenes you need to get there.

8. Don't let people tell you what to write!! This goes both ways: if people say "it should've gone like [thing you don't wanna do]," tell them to shush and write their own shit. If they say "it would be so cool if [thing you were already planning] happened," do it anyway! You don't have to change just for the element of surprise. Don't twist the story out of place just because someone guessed your awesome idea. Everyone will be happier for it.

9. Don't settle for your first draft if it doesn't feel right. If you're working on a scene and it doesn't fulfill what you need, restart it from as many angles as necessary until you're happy. Seriously, building off a scene you don't like will make you feel dissatisfied and poison everything to follow.

10. Talk about your fic with people who hype you up about it. If you're not used to writing long stories, do what you need to keep you motivated and EXCITED about it. If asking someone to beta read helps you, do it! (I almost never ask for beta readers bc I'm a control freak, but honestly they can be so helpful.)

11. The forbidden tip: if you lose interest halfway through, it's okay to drop it. Do what makes you happy. You don't owe anyone anything and you're doing this for free. Try to finish it though lol, it's so satisfying to see a work complete. Do it for the dopamine at the end.

Disclaimer: I write long fics 1) because I like to soak in them and savor them and 2) because I don't know how to shut up and write short ones lol. I deeply admire people with the skill to just say what they need to say and wrap up a story neatly.

Also, I don't follow my own advice. Plenty of my scenes have fluff that I could have cut but didn't because Mark Twain is dead and can't tell me what to do lmao

I hope this had something helpful in it 😅 Good luck! 💖💖💖

[lusthurts]

for the fanfiction writing asks, 7, 12, and 74 please <3

ofc thank you :)) fanfiction writing asks

7. Post a snippet from a wip. (I'll post a bit from what I think is chapter 9 of Until We Burn Out!)

Sebastian rolls his eyes and turns back around, but Blaine sees him smiling anyway. “I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said this, but you guys are the best friends I’ve ever had. It’s gonna suck leaving next year.” 

Blaine’s heart feels like it’s melting, and he thinks he might cry at Sebastian’s words alone. Trent squeezes Blaine’s hand this time, and Ethan looks like he’s going to cry, too. 

Ethan looks around, trying to pull it together. “Enough of this emotional crap. I’m starting to feel like we’re in a soap opera.” 

“You started it,” Blaine points out. 

“We need snacks or something,” Trent agrees. “The munchies are taking over.” 

Ethan sits up, stretching lazily. “Good call. Thinking about those pop tarts Jeff wouldn’t stop eating.” 

“It was the same pop tart for 20 minutes,” Blaine says. 

“You two should get out, go back to the lounge and we’ll meet you there in a bit,” Sebastian says, nodding toward Ethan and Trent. 

Ethan and Trent glance at each other, then Ethan narrows his eyes at Sebastian. “Oh, I see how it is. Take us all the way out here then kick us out so you two can bone.” 

Sebastian sticks up his middle finger, then unlocks the car doors so they can get out. “If that’s the way you want to see it, that’s your prerogative. But get the fuck out.” 

Trent and Ethan both roll their eyes, and Ethan flips them off, but they exit the Porsche and start walking away while Sebastian leans closer with a mischievous glint in his eye. 

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

I usually start writing and then write an outline when I get to a point where I'm stuck and/or feel the need to map out the whole story. They range in detail a lot - some of them will be just bullet points of the general thing that needs to happen in each chapter, some of them are detailed descriptions of scenes that need to be included, and some don't have outlines at all. I like to allow myself the freedom to stray from them quite a bit, mostly because I find once I actually get to the point in the fic where I'm following the outline, the stuff I had originally planned doesn't fit as well anymore, so I go in a different direction and rework the outline.

74. Do you have a fic you wish got a bit more love?

maybe 'til the veins run red and blue?? it's on the lower end for kudos and comments compared to my other works and it's a fic that feels very short and sweet but I think I wrote the pining well in that one, and it feels very true to canon seblaine to me

[roomwithanopenfire]

random ask where you get to rant or ramble about anything you really want to talk about

Okay I'm ready to talk!!

Ramble will be under the cut it is long. It's about my writing process for my Ronance Fic No Sweeter Drug (than just giving you my love) if you're at all interested in reading, spoilers beware.

So, before i started writing my first ronance fanfic I had not read any ronance fics at all, or at least not any where Ronance was the only ship (I had read a few where they were pretty prominent tho). This was interesting because this is the only time a ship has overtaking me that didn't start with me consuming an ungodly amount of fanfiction, instead it started with me listening to Midnights by Taylor Swift and thinking that Maroon really reminded me of them. And I'm not even a big Taylor Swift fan!! (which is probably hard to believe when I have an entire fanfic based on an album of hers).

But anyways, I started writing it, first with an outline (and because I love talking about writing processes that's what this ramble is going to be about, idc if no one wants to know, i want to share, so listen to me (or don't, idk)).

This is how it started, the first words I ever wrote of this idea.

and it keeps going, with a little blurb for each song. Rereading this, I can see that things have changed, my chapter for Vigilante Shit was originally "fun and light hearted" and ended up with Robin and Nancy seriously considering murder for about 500 words. The ending changed a bit, as I was originally trying to fit each song in there, before deciding that Mastermind really didn't make sense for this fic, and Sweet Nothings was a much better ending. (And let's be honest, Nancy Wheeler did not do any masterminding in NSD). Also Nancy was originally bisexual until I started writing the first chapter and realized my girl was so comphet.

After I do a brief roadmap/outline, i then take each chapter one by one, first writing a more detailed bullet point outline, and then writing the whole chapter. Here's my some of my bulletpoints for chapter 2 (the Maroon Chapter) for your perusal

As I kept going, I eventually stopped doing bullet points and started just writing out the scene blocks more like this (this is chapter 6, the Midnight Rain one)

And then I just write the chapter. Fun fact, while writing the end of Chapter Four (the Snow on the Beach one), I did almost make them kiss too early. In the actual fic we have this:

but when I first wrote it, she did say that out loud. This is what happened:

"I shouldn't have left you on that roof," Nancy says. And Robin is surprised because they've never talked about this before, not outside of that week. "I was scared."

"I know." Robin says. "I'm not really mad at you... not anymore. More sad about it."

"You still...like girls then?"

Robin nods. "Do you?"

"I'm not sure if I'm allowed to." Nancy says quietly.

"It's not about being allowed to or not. It just is. You can like whoever you want to like."

Nancy is quiet and think back to before. When she was in New York, she was still Nancy Wheeler, resident goody-two-shoes. So much of her life had changed after that day. So much had gone wrong. Her whole life was different. And maybe, maybe no one would really care, if Nancy dated a girl. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal. Maybe one day her and Robin could be far far away from here. Maybe Nancy could be happy... just maybe.

"I don't know how," Nancy says, instead of any of that. And she's talking about a lot of things here. Maybe she doesn't know how to do date a girl, maybe she doesn't know how to move on, maybe she just doesn't know how to be happy.

"That's okay," Robin says. "I don't know how to either. We could figure it out together."

Nancy doesn't say anything, just grabs Robin's hand. 

They both slink down to the floor, leaning against the house.

Robin asks if she can kiss Nancy and Nancy says yes and it's soft and sweet, not the same hurried red passion of New York, but something slower. 

"God this is weird, isn't it?" Nancy says.

"Yeah, but it's nice."

"So nice"

You can tell towards the end of me writing it, I realized that this was way to soon and I wasn't even trying with dialogue. I pretty much deleted that right after I wrote it (had to hunt through my track changes to find it). I got swept in the moment writing and the realized I had an outline to stick to! They couldn't kiss in chapter four!!!

Also ew such a shock reading my raw unedited writing. In an ideal world, my writing will go through two editing passes before posting. It all honestly, only the first five chapters got the privilege of two editing passes, the rest got one pass and a run through a spell checker. (Although one pass can be multiple, i just prefer two passes of editing with some time passing in between them)

I'm doing much better about editing the fic I'm working on right now, and I feel so much better about the quality of the chapters when I do that.

The title of No Sweeter Drug (than just giving you my love) was one of the last things I came up with. I didn't settle on it until after I'd compeltly finished the first draft. I was debating between two of them, NSD and (I love you so much) It Scares Me Half to Death and the only reason I didn't pick the latter was because a) I love Tessa Violet and b) I couldn't figure out which part to put in parentheses.

Anyways, I really enjoyed writing this fic and this fic was a different tone then anything else I've tried. The other fandom I write for has a standard for first person writing and I used present tense for my fics there, so this was the first fic I wrote in third person past tense, and I could feel myself growing as a writer while I wrote it.

The only thing is I wish it had more comments 😭😭😭 feels like such a selfish thing to wish for, especially when so many of the comments I've gotten have been so lovely and i've made a couple of wonderful friendships from this fic. But I started writing this fic back in Oct 2022 and didn't post it until Dec 2023, so that's over a year of writing for an average of four comments per chapters.

In reality, I was just spoiled by the first fandom I wrote for—they're literally the best at giving comments and I was tricked into thinking that was the norm. It's just a tad disappointing to be pouring all this time and effort into something and not getting out what you pour in, we all have to be leaders of change in the Ronance fandom and start leaving long and detailed comments on every chapter of each fic we read.

But overall, I really grateful for this fic even if no one had read it, it was fun to write and I'm really really proud of it.

And anon, I hope this was what you were looking for in a ramble and you're required to at least pretend you enjoyed it /j

[ronanceautistic]

do you have any advice for someone whos considering writing fanfiction? (whos never done it before) :)

From the actual posting side. Paragraph breaks - no walls of text like you'd see in a book. Don't undersell your fic (eg. 'the summary sucks, I don't like this one'), I get the urge to to criticise before the imaginary critic can, but it'll make people less and inclined to read and be more critical of your fic in the end because you've planted the idea in their head that it's worth criticising.

You also gotta balance that need for attention with the 'do it for yourself' shit as well. It's okay to want comments, to want feedback or compliments, it's hard to put your work out there and get nothing. But don't rely on it. Sometimes I'd find myself checking my inbox every hour after a post stressing over what people think, so when a comment did come I'd be like "oh, good!". But recently I kinda forgot about ao3 for a while, opened the website and found two new comments and it made my day. They're always better when you don't base your works worth on them.

For the mental side, write for yourself. You're not gaining any money or shit from writing fanfiction, the whole point is to enjoy it and make it your own. Don't stress about a work being good or amazing or the best you've ever done. A lot of times I just have a vague idea and start writing and if it's goes somewhere, then it goes somewhere. If it doesn't, then it's sitting in my documents so I can maybe come back to it later. The first outline of tbtl was completely different to the fic itself, I didn't like it, I came back to it months later and came up with the story I posted.

I saw an interview with Natalia Dyer recently where either she, or her costar, said something along the lines of "actors are just kids playing pretend, but we rely on casting directors to let us do it". As fic writers, we're honestly pretty lucky. We get to play pretend on a document and act out whatever the fuck we want with words! It's awesome. Have fun with it.

[bonesandthebees]

as an adult fanfiction writer myself (i'm in my 20s, too), it's really impressive how much progress you've made with your writing. how do you balance writing with other adult priorities? this is what i struggle myself; i want to be able to write, but i don't seem to have enough time. i recently deleted all my old drafts and most of my outlines so i could focus on writing a few stories in mind. idk if this is the way to go, but i made my decision.

p.s. i'm on my way to read your sbi stories, they sound great.

oooo what a good question!

well, for one thing I think I need to say that I'm technically unemployed at the moment (and technically have been for the past year due to family stuff going on) which definitely gives me more time to write compared to if I had a full time job. but at the same time I do kind of have a job? I don't like revealing too many details about my personal life on this blog, but let's just say I kind of work for a family member (but I don't get paid for it). either way, I do have more free time than the average 23 year old probably does so that certainly helps

at the same time though, I actually wrote more while I was a full time uni student. like, I wrote clinic in 6 months during my senior year of uni. still not sure how I did that one. so maybe it's not the unemployment thing lol

ok I rambled a bit too much on this so I'm going to put it under the cut

either way, I do have a lot of daily responsibilities that I have to schedule my writing around which does present a challenge. I'd say two major things contribute to me being able to write so much: one, I just write way faster than most people can write. And two: I put a lot of effort into recognizing the scope of my own abilities, and try not to put too many projects on my plate at once.

with the whole being able to write really fast thing, that's the result of years and years of intensive writing practice. from the time I was around 13-14ish, I started trying to write almost daily. around 15 is when I discovered fanfic, and once I was actually able to write things I could post online and get feedback on, whenever I sat down for a near daily writing session my goal would be to write a minimum of 1k words. a lot of the time I missed this goal, but it was fine and I just kept trying, not beating myself up too much about it because I viewed it all as practice. I wanted to get really good at writing, which is why I just kept at it, knowing it would get easier with time. and it did!

in short, practicing writing, any writing at all regardless of if it's going to be published or not, will help you get faster at writing. now this is going to conflict with the next thing I talk about, but I digress

now, the easier thing to emulate is managing the projects you work on. in my head I have about 3 categories of wips—actively working on to publish, off to the side dormant that I'm either planning on getting to or I might get around to, and never going to see the light of day but I'm working on it just for myself. if I decide to mentally move a wip into the 'active' category, I need to make sure it's the type of story I'm going to enjoy working on and will be able to complete. then when I have free time, I know that's going to be a top priority and I need to focus on that before other things. if I have a wip in the dormant category, if I have free time and I either don't have anything I need to actively work on to publish (like if I just posted a chapter the day before) or I really just don't want to work on my active wips, then I can take a second look at my dormant wip outlines and see if writing any of them gets the juices flowing. then there's the never see the light of day wips, and those I can write at any time because it's just for me, and yeah I should prioritize the active wips over them and I usually will, but also writing is a hobby I enjoy first and foremost. and also, any writing practice will help you. so even if you don't plan to publish it, writing a self indulgent thing will help you get faster, build stamina, improve your writing—all of that stuff.

so I think what you described with deleting old outlines/drafts makes sense, but also I never delete my old writing drafts just bc I love seeing my progress over the years but that's just me. but either way, making an effort to focus on active wips is a smart move, but also remember that not everything you write has to be published. the more practice you get with writing (and by that I mean literally any writing at all), the easier it's going to be to write longer things and finish them. you build that stamina like a muscle, and it can take a very long time to build it up enough, but it's definitely worth it in the end.

also just experiment with how you outline and plan stuff in a way that works for your brain, because when you have to write around adult responsibilities you have to streamline things as much as possible. despite the fact that I started writing fic at 15, I struggled so much with finishing long fics until I started writing for dsmp when I had just turned 21. and that's because I figured out a new outlining method that worked perfectly for my brain. it was a combination of planning some things, but not everything so that I kept myself interested in the story. experiment with how much or how little you plan your stories, because when you have a limited time to write, you want it to be something you're interested in and able to dive right into writing.

sorry this was so long winded, I really suck at giving short answers sometimes. hope that helps though! remember, the most important thing is that you're enjoying what you're doing :)