#i feel like the climate here on tumblr is a lot more cozy for silly AUs in general

[determunition]

Hi so I’ve curious, (Been nervous about starting my own AU) When you first started posting OFH (on twitter/ao3) how did you get the courage to post it? Were you ever afraid of getting called ‘cringe’ or ‘weird’ or anything else negative? If so how were you able to get over it? (Btw I do love this AU with all my heart!) Sorry if any of these questions are too sensitive!

hi!! thanks for the questions, i'm flattered to be considered a source of wisdom about this x3

OFH/retyrement, like most fandom things i do, started as kind of a silly shitpost thing; i love human AUs, and when my buddy squid_hug made that original text post about the retirement home it tickled me too much to ignore. objectively the scrybes being human old people bickering in a retirement home is a goofy, silly idea, and that's how it started as an AU, down to the written fic. i think that in itself made it a bit easier to post about

however! even with that, when i started posting the first pieces of art it was definitely a "do it scared" situation lmao; i don't remember where i heard this, but in some cases it takes even more courage to do something new when you're already known for something than it does to start something new with no presence at all, and that was definitely true with the retyrement AU. it was my first contribution to the fandom too! i was definitely worried it wouldn't go over well with anyone bc it was so damn niche lolol

my main piece of advice for getting over this fear (besides just doing it scared until you're not scared anymore) is to get yourself a hype squad lmao; though maybe the more accurate term would be a mutual AU ecosystem. i had squid to develop a lot of the AU with me at the start and we bounced a lot of silly ideas off of each other, and now i have a lot more folks around to crack jokes and hype each other up about our art and fics! also at the beginning i had a point where i was feeling a little self-conscious about continuing to post (the AU had a painfully small amount of engagement at the beginning lol), but as soon as i got one (1) ask saying "i wanna see more of this" i took that as my green light to get as silly with it as possible lmao

so ig my TL;DR advice is: don't take shit too seriously, remember it's all in good fun, and surround yourself with folks who enjoy funny lil AUs as much as you do! the second thing can be hard, as it involves uh, putting yourself out there in the first place, but embracing that discomfort is a necessary evil for having a good-ass time! if you can successfully kill the part of yourself that cringes then you'll never be cringe again

godspeed on your own AU endeavors, the digital world is always better for having another crazy creative alternate universe in it <3

[suspendrs]

thank you to my very best friend @moonlightlouie / @moonoodledoodle for making this lil comic.

one last story before i go:

i started writing fic when i was 16, after my very first heartbreak. i didn’t even know i was queer back then, but i had my very first internet friend, and we were as close as any two ‘straight’ larries could be. We talked about everything without actually talking about any of it, we were each other’s safe space, and it was, to this day, the most special relationship i’ve ever had with another human. even though i don’t talk to this person anymore, i wish her all the best in the world, and i think about her every single day of my life.

when this specific friend stopped talking to me, i went into a depressive spiral. i didn’t know at the time that i was experiencing my very first heartbreak, or that the weird infatuation i had with that girl was probably my very first love, but i know that not having her anymore ruined me. i didn’t know what to do with all of those feelings; i couldn’t eat, i couldn’t sleep, all i could do was stare at the wall and think, and think, and think.

the very first fic i ever wrote, the oldest story on my ao3, is by far the worst thing i’ve ever written. it’s sloppy, it’s poorly written, it’s overly sexual and probably really problematic in a lot of ways. i am not proud of that fic whatsoever, and yet, almost five years later, i still cannot bring myself to delete it, because it reminds me of that girl i lost, the safety and the security she used to bring to me that every day when i got home from school, i’d have her to escape to. i wrote it for her, because of her, in replacement of her, and now every time i think of her, i think of everything she gave me.

if i hadn’t spent the week between christmas and new year’s in 2014 with a pain in my chest so troublesome i’m still surprised it didn’t kill me, if that pain hadn’t driven me to make one last desperate attempt to keep even the tiniest part of a person that meant everything to me and to whom i meant nothing, i wouldn’t be anywhere close to where i am today. i know that there’s a .000001% chance that you’re seeing this right now, Em, but thank you. for everything.

when i posted that first fic, i never expected anything to come out of it. it was for me, the equivalent of an old sleep shirt i stole from the girl who didn’t love me back, and i never thought in a million years that i’d even write another fic, let alone 42 more. in the first night that first fic was up, it raked in a little over a hundred hits, and exactly 15 kudos, and i was on top of the world. 

validation wasn’t something i was terribly used to at that point in time. i was bullied a lot as a kid by the group of girls i was supposed to be friends with. i never knew i was being bullied; i thought i deserved their cruelty, i thought it was something natural, something inherit about me that made me That Friend. some climates are warmer than others, some fish are predators and some are prey, and someone in the friend group must always be chosen to play the unwanted dog in every game of house.

those first fifteen kudos on a fic i didn’t even know that anybody would find meant the entire world to me. finally, someone could see me, someone appreciated me, someone thought i was good at something, worthy of a written notice of praise. it was fucking life changing.

i started writing more, i made some new fandom friends, i made a lot more meaningful connections. i made new friends in real life, ones that seemed to care about me more, and then when it turned out that they didn’t really care, either, i made some different new friends, and even more after that. i kept posting stories online, making more and more friends all over the world, gaining respect and receiving feedback and pouring myself a foundation to begin growing as a person, building myself up brick by brick until i learned to respect myself as much as i wanted other people to respect me.

and then, october of 2015. a friend of mine i don’t talk to anymore from a group chat that isn’t even active now asked me to write a youtube au, something cute and fluffy, not too serious. i took the prompt gladly, wrote a silly little thing modeled around some youtubers i really loved, and put it out in the world just like i had the other couple things i had written so far. within a few days, the tumblr post already had almost 2,000 notes, and the fic itself had nearly 10k hits, almost 1,000 kudos, and climbing. i was awestruck. suddenly, it seemed like everyone in the world was talking about my fic, about me. my other works gained a little attention, but nothing like the youtuber au, nothing like that euphoric feeling of having done something good, something great, even, something people liked and loved and wanted more of, holy shit, i had real people asking me to do more of something because they liked it, and by extension they liked me. My friends were proud of me, and suddenly i had even more people wanting to be my friends, wanting to talk to me in any capacity, and it was absolutely exhilarating. 

none of the stories i posted after the first part of the youtuber au ever gained nearly that amount of attention, but as time went on, i grew to be okay with that. i moved away from writing things that i thought other people might want to read and started writing things that i thought i might like to write, and somehow, people kept reading. every time i posted a fic, people would say lovely things, compliment my writing and tell me they were excited to read more from me, and somehow that was even more exhilarating than my 15 minutes of fame with the youtuber au. i kept writing stories that i loved, and people kept loving them, too, and then, suddenly, four years had gone by, i had written over a million words, and i was a different person entirely.

writing fic got me through that first heartbreak, but then it kept getting me through everything else, too. it got me through realizing i was queer, and then it got me through my high school friend group dumping me because they found out i was queer. it got me through deciding my college major (english and creative writing, obviously), it got me through my first relationship and my first break up, and then my second relationship and my second breakup, and a lot of weird and awkward and bad times in between. writing got me through my homesickness when i moved to london, and it got me through my depressive episode when i got home from london, and it helped me through all my stress and sleepless nights and self-destructive behavior last semester when i thought i was going to fail out of college in my junior year. writing fic has always been my escape, my coping mechanism, and my favorite hobby, and i owe more to it than even i probably realize.

as much as i credit my very first internet friend, love interest and heartbreak for all of this, i need to credit Harry and Louis, as well, for the endless amount of love and support and security they have unknowingly provided to me over the past few years. without them, none of this would have happened to me. ff there’s a .000001% chance that Em is reading this, there’s a 0% chance that Harry or Louis is, but i’m gonna say it anyway: thank you, thank you, thank you. no matter what the truth is, you two have given me a home. you’ve given me something to belong to, you’ve given me a family, and a purpose, and a sense of direction. you’ve inspired me endlessly, you’ve opened doors through time and space and given me a way out of whatever i was going through, if only for a little while. you’ve given me an identity, or at least the tools to find it on my own. you’ve given me an entire world and a baby’s-first-tool-kit to go out and conquer it. thank you for being everything i never knew i needed. 

and to you, reading this, whoever you are, thank you, too. ff you’ve made it this far, that means you must care at least a little, and i cannot thank you enough for that. i never thought i’d be the type of person that other people could care about. i thought i would always be alone in the world. thank you so fucking much for proving me wrong.

i’m gonna go do some things now. i’m gonna go work on making some dreams come true, like graduating college, writing a novel, traveling the world and hopefully finding even more dreams along the way. i’m not leaving the fandom, not entirely, but i’ve gained enough self-awareness over the years to understand that, at this point in my life, my being in this fandom is doing more harm than it is doing good. i don’t mean to say that i’ve outgrown the fandom, but more to say that i have outgrown the person that i am in here. it’s time for me to poke some holes in this eggshell i’ve been keeping cozy in, to let some light in and breathe some new air. i think i’m ready to do that now.

thank you, one last time, for everything. there isn’t a single thing in the world that i don’t owe to this fandom. thank you for allowing me to contribute, and for letting me grow, and for all the other things i can’t even begin to comprehend. i know what love is now, and suddenly, it is all i can feel.

thank you, and goodnight. xoxo, liv