#i literally live and breathe the niche fandoms or niche shit in a fandom and i make art of em coooonstantly

[lorddeathofmurdermountain]

So I just finished Dungeon Meshi. The manga.

I am yet again blown away by the amazing story. I am also blown away by the fanfiction fandom and it's incessant need to ship anyone and everyone. I get it. You think some of the interaction are romantic. They aren't. That's not what any of this is meant to be. But I get it. Romance ships have their own place in the ecosystem and any healthy community has a dedicated group that really likes to ship anyone and everyone.

It becomes less healthy when I go to AO3 and you can go through pages and pages only finding like two or three fics that aren't ENTIRELY "Two random characters have the sex" with occasional romantic undertones. Of those three that aren't just that, two are instead "cleverly crafted AU but the focus is still on the secks". People I get it, it's nice, it's got, and by god everyone is horny for the Faligon x Marcille ship. I get it, I do.

But the story has so many interesting aspects to it! I'd go as far as to say it's a modern day Lord of the Rings! I really fucking would, and I love LotR like no other story on this fucking planet! I'm barely holding back from gushing about it right fucking now. I'm taking deep breaths.

Look, my point is, it's an amazing story about friendship and genuine camaraderie, the sort of thing that sends the message of "people can forget extremely strong bonds without having the hots for one another." The story, beyond it's generally tasteful comedy and the repetitive but reliable skits, is chock-full of meaningful messages, pondering and it has some of the most beautiful and tasteful conclusions to story arcs I've seen in a while! I'd go so far as to say it's fairly innovative as well, not unheard of but you don't see something this good all that often. You really don't. I usually obsess over just sticking FromSoft protagonists into everything to have them fuck around and mess with everything but for once I'm genuinely unappreciative of the idea. The conclusion to the story is perfect if very traditional in a certain sense and all in all it's got very few real flaws. In the end, a very simple, kind and good lad alongside his party of misfits saves the day and everyone gets to live happily ever after.

So why the shit is almost everyone only ever thinking about hot ladies or hot men fucking each other? No, actually, forget the distinction, it's irrelevant! Why is sex with a side of corny romance the only thing everyone is doing?! Fuck, make literally anything else! I get having a niche but for Christ's sake expand your horizons or something! FF doesn't even have the damn tag for the setting yet, AO3 is just porn and SpaceBattles only has Vs discussions and one single story ideas thread that I myself also sperged out in while I was only halfway done.

Christ, there are so many ideas in my head it's actually hard to focus! What about a serious setting examining the end of the story and how it could have gone on? Remake it into a tragedy, or just a feels-good epilogue that's only slightly longer than the story. How about tossing someone you KNOW would mess up the story into the story, but have it be so messed up it loops back around to the same end? Why not just do something really stupid and see where it leads? What if Laios and Kabru switched places? What if Laios and Falin were in Utaya when they were young (they're still the same people inherently just with a more tragic backstory) while Kabru is just some country schmuck that no longer has a tragic story to spur him on to the Dungeon? Does Kabru actually become even more of a textbook hero type? Would the Touden siblings let their past bog them down and make them gloomy or would it only make them more aware of the world around them and thus more willing to look at the other? The story establishes that they're inherently selfish people - they are of course also selfless, but the initial drive for the story is a selfish one for pretty much everyone. Laios just wants to look at and eat cool monsters. Falin wants to tag along and experience new things. Marcille wants to research ancient, forbidden magic. Chilchuck... Uh... Wants to make money and not be constantly scammed at best and backstabbed at worst, I think. Senshi just kind of wants to vibe. Izutsumi wants to stop being a beast-person and is by far portrayed as the most openly selfish in everything she does and decides.

The whole story is really about people being selfish and realizing that's no good, realizing that the people around them are PEOPLE and they should maybe consider each other more. That's how Laios learns to take responsibility, for instance. Oh sure some characters end up not ACTUALLY bring selfish at all, some of them right from the start even, but narratively until told otherwise we start off thinking everyone in the main group are first and foremost in it for themselves. The unifying moment and first instance of selflessness comes when they decide to immediately go rescue Falin - well, Shuro and Namari didn't but we don't know that right away.

Look what I'm saying is there's so many fucking themes in this story and what everyone is focusing on is sex. My argument isn't "sex bad", in fact. It's that the porn with plot - or even the tasteful romance stories - would be even better if you had some other nice fics alongside them. After all, if you eat the same thing the whole time it's bound to become boring eventually, but have a good spread and every part of the meal will be all the better in combination with other parts. If I just ate soup I'd be kind of disappointed, but make some simple rice and cook some simple meat for AFTER the soup and now both the soup and rice and meat feel so much better based on the other things I ate alongside them. Fics are the same. Please. I beg you. Give yourselves some diversity.

[jeonqkooks]

I missed you too!!! 🫶 haha I bet. It was the universe bringing us back together again 😌 I've been alright, nothing out of ordinary happened lately so that's cool. Working (except for today and tomorrow cause I had a few days off), been spending some time with my little nephew- he's 3 and such a cutie 🥰 I almost got baby fever but then I came back to my senses lmao.. but yeah, that's what I've been doing, ohh and I also have to move out of the place where I live now, in march 🥲 it is what it is..

Idk what's been happening with your blog or the people around here but my best advice is to just ignore them.. not sure if you're aware but we're kind of a mess rn, everywhere you look on sm, in this fandom, someone's always fighting 😶 Maybe do what you think it's best for you. I don't like it either when someone's trying to control my every move like "you gotta do this, you gotta like that, you cannot! say stuff like this" , ofc interactions wouldn't even be fun anymore so what's the point of having this place dedicated to something you like if *some* people are acting up.... If you feel the need to step away from it for some time I wouldn't blame you. And you can still enjoy whatever content you like without someone always breathing down your neck, you know. See now I started rambling and I don't even know the context of your anger 🤣🤣 but my advice is still the same> just ignore them..

But what does it mean "someone from inside the house"?? There's more tea??? 👀 *drags the chair closer*

Also, just so you know, anger issues aren't any better even if you're 5'6..... I'm the type of person to try to be calm and hold it together for as long as possible and then one day I just explode and almost bite everyone's head off 😮‍💨 that's on unexpected tmi 🤪

- 🎃

“but then i came back to my senses” PUMPKIN 🤣🤣 you’re too real for that lmao. you’re moving out in march? how’s the apartment hunting going?

yeah tbh lately i’ve been pretty quiet on this blog so not a lot is happening in terms of broader fandom interactions so thankfully no one’s fighting on the blog as of late (knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood). so yeah things have been simmering elsewhere (starts with obs and ends with something that rhymes with “murder” lmao) for A While and honestly i had unresolved feelings about that that i’ve just been trying to brush off (bc it’s literally over the stupidest thing) but smth just really set me off this past week lol. then i found out even more things to be mad about

you build a house with rooms for everyone to cater to their own shit. then you renovate another room for you to do your niche lil thing and people demonize you and burn your fucking house down and scurry off to another house that they built god knows when (god does know when) and still question why you’re not making more effort to put out the dumpster fire.

saurrr yeah, that’s been my past few days :D (and if we’re being honest, since october 23, 2023 too lmao)

[viviraptor]

yall really be doin this huh

[incarnateirony]

My dude, I’m excited about what all this is shaping up to be for deancas but I think it’s gross frame Eileen as a reward. She’s not a ~prize~. Just saying.

Oh for fuck’s sake don’t drag this drama to my board. I’m talking about narrative structures. Heroes’ journeys have rewards. If Sam’s reward is to go and live a full life with kids and grandkids and freedom to build his own family, that’s not whatever you’re... trying to paint the statement as right here. *gestures vaguely over the ask* She’s also a full character, no shit.  But one thing she is not, is a real human being that is wandering around of her own volition on script pages without a purpose in a story structure, none of them are. It’s tantamount to getting offended for me saying Sam serves as a passive protagonist. Or going bonkers if someone says that Cas is part of Dean’s reward (and frankly, Dean is part of Cas’), if finally answering their question about preferring peace or freedom (why not both?) and reuniting with the people he’s lost.

If you can’t address and understand contextual address of narrative structure my blog is not the place for you.

If you want women to be treated equally in story as much as respecting the value of their character we need to understand the value of their placement to the sum of a story and be able to talk about it without someone trying to manipulate it and make it a topic we can’t discuss. And yes, /a huge chunk of that story is her association with and importance to Sam./

Part of that is that, sorry, she is not a lead character. She’s a great character. She’s a much better match for Sam than a cardboard cutout of an idea like Jess. She’s a disability statement where she found her niche to still be powerful. She’s a lot of things. But she is not the one we are following a full Heroes’ Journey for. That’s how this works. If we were in an AU called UltraNatural with main character Eileen we follow the journey of and Sam brought back to rekindle with her, then Sam would be part of her reward too. But we’re not in that AU. We’re watching Supernatural. 

She’s not a real person being treated as a rEwArD expected of a gUY to GET but she IS LITERALLY FRAMED IN THE STORY AS A CENTRAL PART OF HIS DRIVE AND INEVITABLY HIS RESOLUTION. Unless you want to sit and argue with me that it ISN’T what Eileen’s central plot placement is so far, and we can sit and have that discussion. You can even not like that it’s what she’s there for, that doesn’t matter to me. But we’re not going to pretend the body of text is a living breathing thing to get offended on the behalf of, that’s absolutely not something we’re going to do on my blog, I’m not here for that.

Now if you want to have an ethics debate about “just bringing Eileen back for her central plot to be Sam’s romantic potential, because that’s devaluing to women”, we can do that, but you have to realize respectively on that front you more have to argue with the creators; and there’s intersectionality here, as one of the key gripes about disability representation is that they’re almost never afforded romances, they don’t get happy endings. If I’m not mistaken, that was actually part of the discussion at the SDCC panel shoshanna was part of. So you might have to argue with her, too. Which seems to really miss the point in the end, doesn’t it?

And of course it’s ironically devaluing the complexity of her character and what she could work out with Sam to assume, for example, this means she would just be a housewife instead of a still independent character -- which is implicit in the subtext of the subtext of this accusatory ask. Sam and Eileen already have agreements and already do field work together. So let’s not also try to vault to that indirect accusation against the authors either.

I don’t know why people try to throw this performative woke stuff at me when it never works out, my literal 40 hour a week day job is in progressive politics, my hobby is in following intersectionality in media and media history (because of FORMER career path pre-disability myself). I promise anything someone learned to yell about on tumblr is going to find itself falling on its ass. Please, guys, seriously, spare me the headache and the effort of essentially having to look like a bitch to point out how ridiculous the fandom circus points are at all corners. 

I’m open for legit asks like gnostic mythos or how production elements work, but please by all things holy, to my new like 20 followers in the last day if you learn any lesson, please learn this one, I’m not here for this kind of drama distracting from actually discussing our text.

[ao3feed-erwinlevi]

by TastefullyIlliterate

Armin was six when he found his new home. It didn't feel like it at first, but he and his new dads chipped away at the parts that felt too new to him, they ran their fingers over the grooves and niches in the new parts until it took shape in many more than three people, and felt much more familiar.

Armin is home, now. And he'd like to stay here- just a little longer.

Words: 3717, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F, M/M

Characters: Levi Ackerman, Erwin Smith, Armin Arlert, Eren Yeager, Jean Kirstein, Connie Springer, Sasha Blouse, Zeke Yeager, Original Female Dog Character(s), her name is cute you'll see, Hange Zoë

Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith, Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir

Additional Tags: found/chosen family, farmer au, Farmer! Levi Ackerman, Teacher Erwin Smith, they basically adopt armin at 6, the walls never broke, but armins grandpa died of old age, just them living in the walls and sitting on a farm, its all the healing i wanted to give them, levi and erwin have a family and that family is a child with anxiety and like six other gremlins, Nonbinary Hange Zoë, they literally only come in to commit violence its great, Domestic Fluff, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Fluff and Humor, the chickens are the real menace to society not jean and eren, zeke is like fucking dinkleberg from fairly odd parents, hes just there to be slandered, i beg of u not to spoil the manga for me, i watched up to s4 part 1, just let me have my cute gays vibing on a farm with chickens, POV Armin Arlert, Armin Arlert-centric, but mostly his dynamic with his gay dads, and eventually eren, Childhood Friends to Lovers, poet!armin, by God i will make that a tag, erwin is very sappy, and a bit of a little shit when it counts, hes also a very good dad he is doing a great job, armin has a stammer, but like a realistic one, zeke doesnt even do anything he just breathes occasionally and levi beats the shit out of him for it

[words-writ-in-starlight]

JEAN/SCOTT FOR THE MEME PLEASE. if i'm allowed to send multiple i WILL be asking about other fandoms later but like. I LOVE THE KIDS.

The kids!!!!!!  This turned into kind of the Jean hour.  Please enjoy this puree of Comics I Enjoy, ft exactly nothing from the comics of the last twenty to thirty years.

Headcanon

This is actually straight up comic canon, but I love it so much that I have to expand on it a little.  In that...niche, that plateau, when Jean is Phoenix but hasn’t quite tipped over the event horizon of power, she becomes the only person who’s seen Scott’s eyes since he first gained his powers.  She’s never quite clear on what she’s doing, she doesn’t know and has an alarming thought that she might be in his brain far more literally than usual, but he smiles at her thoughtlessly.  Jean can feel that he’s a little dazed by the experience, he touches her face with poorly-concealed wonder, and then his hand lands in his hair and he says in delight, “Your hair actually is this color!”

“Of course it is,” Jean laughs, halfway to sitting in his lap with his glasses dangling from one hand.  “What, did you think ‘redhead’ was metaphorical?”

Scott flushes a little at the teasing, but he still has a lock of her hair between his fingers, turning it in the sunlight like he’s never seen it before.  His glasses are as transparent as anyone can make them, but Jean knows that he still sees the world through a film of scarlet, half because of the quartz, half because of his own uncontrolled powers.  It’s tricky to keep his optic blasts leashed, takes more of Jean’s concentration than she’d like, but it’s worth it to see the way he smiles at her, warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners.

Heartcanon

Jean writes Scott a letter, in the handful of hours that she’s--herself, that she is Jean Grey, who grew up in New York and likes riding in convertibles with the top down on the highway and sometimes makes herself peanut brittle at three in the morning so that she doesn’t have to share, and not Dark Phoenix, beautiful and terrible and hungry.  Those hours of sanity were hard bought by the X-Men, by her family, and so she petitions Lilandra for paper and pen, and she writes Scott a letter.  Jean already has plans for this trial by combat.  She’s sorry about those plans.  But she can feel the fire chewing at the base of her skull, she can taste the iron-sweetness of a dying star on her lips, she wants--

She’s got plans.

The letter isn’t long, not really.  One page, unlined, with the polished cursive handwriting that Jean had drilled into her in middle school marching neatly across it.  It’s all the things that anyone ever wants to say.  I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t like this, it’s not your fault.  She underlines it’s not your fault until her pen rips through the paper and marks the glass-smooth desk underneath.  Scott won’t believe her, but God, she wishes he would.

I could make him, Jean thinks idly, tapping her pen against the desk as she wonders what else there is to say.  I could make him believe me.  I could tell him, and explain, and he would understand, and then he would stay with me, I could make him stay with me, I could keep him forever, it wouldn’t matter what else I did, I could keep him--

Jean lets out a shaking breath that tastes like ash and hydrogen, and writes one more sentence.

I could never have lived with myself if I did anything else.

She signs it Love, forever, and writes her name for the last time.

Gutcanon

Before everything goes horribly wrong, Jean forges a mental rapport with Scott, a permanent link, one that will let her find him anywhere, let him call for her as easily as if she was in the next room.  It’s what finally lets him drag her free of Mastermind’s illusion, of Jean as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, much too late to make a difference.  It’s what lets him taste blood in his mouth when Jean’s control snaps and Phoenix’s teeth bite through her lip.  It’s what lets him feel the billowing heat of the star she swallows down, and what lets him say with assurance that Phoenix cannot kill what Jean truly loves, and then--

And then she’s Jean again, herself, tearful and shaken by what she’s done, what she’s become, and the rapport is closed.

It stays closed until the last moment, when she’s already given away her plan and started her suicide, and then Jean’s mind comes crashing back like the tide held away through sheer force of will.  It’s all fire and savage rage and joy and hunger and love, and Scott can’t tell what’s Jean and what’s Phoenix and what’s both--

The silence afterward is worse than anything he’s ever felt.

Junkcanon

Jean is the kind of person who leaves fights with a lot of left-over adrenaline and tends to crash like a motherfucker if she doesn’t handle it somehow.  Scott is an extremely good sport about this, although he does enforce a very strict policy about even semi-public sex, so Jean has mastered dragging him into closets or bathrooms to kiss him dizzy before he can protest.  She has a very fond memory of managing to pin him to the inside of a vault door in a bank, one time.

Also, telepathic sex!  I have a lot of thoughts about it.  Safewords are for people who don’t have a continuously open door into their partner’s brain.  They do Stuff With Blindfolds because Scott finds it reassuring to know that he’s harmless.  Jean enjoys sensation play because...*gestures to the entire Dark Phoenix saga* she just does, that shit’s canonical.

Spleencanon

I have to believe that Jean and Scott were able to raise Rachel for at least a couple years.  Please let these two raise one of their kids.  I understand that they’re the Skywalkers of the Marvel universe, but just let them! Raise! Their! Kids! In! Peace!

On a related note, AU where they find some assorted clones of Jean, courtesy of Sinister.  They’re all half-grown, five girls with bright hair and hard eyes--the oldest is maybe twelve and the youngest can’t be more than two--and Scott and Jean stand there for a moment, looking over the lot of them.

“We’re not perfect,” the oldest says in a clear, cool voice.  She reports her name to be Six.  “So we weren’t finished.  I was the closest--the most recent.  So he put me in charge.  Who are you?”

//I’m going to kill him,// Jean says silently, and Scott grabs her wrist before she can march back to Sinister and crush him.

“Let’s--okay,” Scott says.  “Let’s slow down.  I’m Cyclops.  Scott.  This is Jean.”

“We’re going to take you away from here,” Jean says, with the kind of absolute confidence that implies and god help you if you say we’re not, Scott Summers.  “You’re Six--how many of you are there?”

“Just us,” one of the middle girls says in a shy whisper, the one holding the little girl on her hip.  “I’m Four.  One didn’t--we’re not sure.  She didn’t make it.”

//All right,// Scott allows, on his private link with Jean.  //Maybe we do kill Sinister, actually.//

[icannotweave]

250 followers!!!

whaaaaatttttttt?!?!?!? 

🥳💕🥳💕🥳

ok. Huge Deal cause i never thought i’d ever have more than like....half a hundred followers??? i am SO Flattered. Delighted. i shall endeavor to Feed my followers with incoherent, sporadic content with no rhyme or reason between my interests!!! keep enjoying my hyperfixations as much as i do!!!

mutuals i Love & always will & are Far Too Cool!!! 💕💖😍🥰😍💖💕

@amidalis - Kiki, you rainbow-infused space unicorn, you Scream so wonderfully about your passions!!! it inspires me to scream about mine!!! you’re sweet, you’re positive, you’re an infectious spirit - a confetti bomb on my dashboard!!!

@dumbassrights - Magali, you take No Bullshit. your opinions are Valid & it makes your Brain Huge. you are so self-possessed & yet unafraid to be vulnerable when it matters, which only makes you seem stronger to me. it’s absolutely amazing to have such a Proud & Unapologetic Pansexual in my ranks. you make me more confident about my sexuality & i can never thank you enough for being in my corner. 

@royharper - Eli!!!! an Icon??? they are a Lesbian Icon! an Indigenous Icon!!! a Non-Binary Icon?? A GENIUS TALENTED ARTIST!???! how?!? i have Loved this person from day one & their aesthetic and content is always Bold & Beautiful & Raw & Funny. you’ve been Utterly Too Sweet to me since i worked up the courage to talk to you about joyfire head canons & look where we are now!!! you deserve all the fucking happiness in the world.

@elphaba - Mercedes, holy shit, i could not BELIEVE when you followed me back one day out of the fucking blue??? WOW. *stars in my eyes* your blog has the BEST random-ass content and you know what, bitch, that’s what i live for??? whenever i get a notification that you reblogged or liked something i posted, i feel so Glad!! you are a woman behind the shadows of a *chef’s kiss* blog but i am STOKED we are mutuals!!!

@lovewithagirl - Siobhan, you are another peep i cannot even BUY i am mutuals with??? anytime i see your stuff on my dash, i get a thrill of positivity. i either come away from your blog informed or comforted and often both. i’ve learned a fuck-ton from you & gotten drawn into so many fandoms cause of your enthusiasm for them!! you’re a beautiful & heartening presence & you continue to do what you do to be so goshdarn ethereal!! 

@imblessedtoexist - Gach? oh? a league of villains bitch? a naruto bitch? you mean an ICON???? she is a SCREAMER of niche opinions, which are Valid As Fuck, all of them, and also makes me wanna scream MY niche opinions too!!! i love her vibes, her impeccable, chaotic vibes. you are COOL and your ART! IS! STUNNING!! you are rad as hell and please Never! Stop! Being! That! Bitch!!!

folks i follow!!! who! are! brilliant! 💕😘🤩🥰🤩😘💕

@batmanisagatewaydrug - they are the definition of Big Dick Energy. advice? stellar. vibes? affirming as hell. aesthetic? aspiringly chaotic. a lovely sex witch, cackling into the void, we are so glad for such benevolent and mischievous a figure!!! 

@thesweetpianowritingdownmylife - first peep i ever followed on this hellsite, holy shit i was So Lucky it was them. i learned So Much from them. social justice & sexuality & fat positivity & all the New, Frightening Shit little ol’ me didn't dare think about. from afar, i always am grateful for how much i learned & still learn from them. 

@haro-whumps - you wanna talk about High-Quality & Tasty whump??? holy shit, their original content is So Fucking Good it legit inspired me to write whump & start a sideblog. has been so fucking encouraging to me on a writing & personal level. thx, Haro, from the blackened corners of my heart! you individual of mysterious and indistinct gender, you are Cool & Kind as Fuck, PLEASE never stop writing. *devil grins*

@ibuzoo - their aesthetics are. What. I Mean. Major Jealous, they crank out such absolutely STUNNING content. as someone who fucks around with aesthetics, this blogger is a HUGE inspiration & their frankly flawless content makes me wanna be be just a little bit better at my moodboards. 

@philcoulsonismyhero - a quadruple threat, all four A’s, this absolutely brilliant and positive as hell, autistic agender asexual aromantic Icon!!! their attitude always uplifts me So Much & their hopepunk vibes make me optimistic about a better world. 

@pocmodels - it’s nice to have such a breath-catching compilation of gorgeous-as-hell people. thx for your service. sincerely, a flustered Pansexual. 

@pugszler - Cathy, only the Best and Most Valid BNHA content from you!!! oh my goodness, you’re so sweet & kind to everyone on your blog!!! a lovely little ray of sunshine on my timeline, your vibes are Warm and Compassionate As Fuck!!! love you!!!

@whumpster-dumpster - Red, oh my goodness, her content?? is??? impeccable. incomparable. insanely good & responsible for some of the best whump ideas i’ve ever seen. you’re creative as hell & the output of your content is??? hilariously productive??? congrats. your answers are always so helpful, so detailed & informative, & i’ve learned a ton of super cool shit from you!!!

@whumping-every-day - uhhhhhhhhh, Sara??? you’re writing LITERALLY took the breath out of me & the fact that you allowed me to play around with your characters is such a huge honor. you write pain exquisitely & it’s inspiring. you are so sweet to everyone in your inbox & encouraging to every prompt!!! you are incredible!!!

once again, i. am. living. thx SO much!!! 🥳💕🥳💕🥳

[crowsent]

👶,⭐,💘, and💻. Love you!!

thank you for ask anon! writer ask game is here if yall wanna send in something. still taking asks for these btw

👶- advice for new writers =

yall this is hella fucking generic but PRACTISE. theres a reason almost literally every writer on tumblr gives the advise of “practise practise practise” and that reason is it works. practise doesnt mean ‘oh just write bc youll automatically get better over time’ it means ‘write bc if you dont, you wont figure out what you need to improve.’ did yall know that i literally had no sentence variation in the past? i started every sentence with [character name] or [character pronoun] and i didnt realise until i was 15/16 and i only realised bc i started writing a lot.

i think there’s a fear of failure with new writers. there’s this lingering doubt of  “what if its not good?” and boy howdy i will answer that question right fucking now. it wont be good. when i compare my current work to my earlier work, my earlier work sucked fucking shit. i spelled soldier with a fucking ‘j’ and i had no idea what the hell a point of view was. and thats okay. whoever tells you that youre going to perfect writing is a fucking liar. there is no perfecting writing. 20 years from now, imma look at the writing from today and im gonna think it sucks shit. writing is a process. its a craft. you get better and better over time and the way you get better is by experimenting w different styles, different genres, different ways of writing.

and the only way you can experiment and improve is through practise. in video games, especially rpgs (which are my favourite kind of video games), you struggle in the early game. youre at a low level, you dont have good equipment, you have a hard time moving to the next area. but the only way you progress is by grinding, gaining levels, and getting stronger. same w writing. if youre a level 1 writer, just starting out, no idea what to do, just experiment. fuck around a bit. write crackships, write rarepairs, write niche self-indulgent reader/character fics. at the end of the day, you should write for yourself. its good and cool if other people like your stuff and validate all your hard work, but at the end of the day, the one who should enjoy your writing the most is yourself.

you WILL mess up and you WILL struggle, but thats the only way you can improve. i struggle with pacing the most. still do. but others might have pacing down pat and struggle instead with word choice or pov or something else. cant figure out where you need to improve if you dont write, so just practise and worry about all the fine print later

⭐️- how do you get your inspiration? =

this is definitely not universal, but i just sit on my bed, close my eyes, and meditate. cycle through all my emotions and thoughts and filter them out. then i just toss everything out the damn window. like. id just meditate for a while, focus on breathing, on experiencing the present, picture a field and a tree and myself and breathe. thoughts fly by and i let them happen but dont focus on it.

meditating gives me some semblance of emotional control bc i normally have none, and it gives me kind of this space. this safe space that only exists for me and me alone. so i use that space to let the world drift away. just me and my thoughts and sometimes, those thoughts end up being good writing ideas. but i usually meditate for a set amount of time. like 15 minutes or 30 minutes so i dont write until i finish meditating.

then when i get out of my headspace, i open up my laptop and see what i remember. thinking too hard about something causes it to muddy up. same with art. in digital art, artists flip the canvas to refresh their eyes, see if there’s anything weird or wonky about the illustration that they normally dont see bc theyve gotten used to it. flipping the canvas is like giving our eyes a jumpstart and lets us see what we could do better. in traditional art, its turning the canvas this way and that or repositioning yourself. meditating is like that. a break. a cleanse. a kind of pause where you dont think about anything and just try to process what you already have. you relax and kind of let yourself float down a river of thoughts and sometimes, a fish would jump out of that river and youd go “hey, thats a good idea. i should try that” so when you get out of the river, youre refreshed and ready to go.

same principle with showers. more ideas come to you in the shower when you dont have anything to write with bc youre not thinking about it. youre not focusing on finding inspiration or motivation so ideas naturally flow through you. you know that feeling when you want to do x then someone comes along and says “hey you should do x” and suddenly all motivation to do x leaves? same w your brain. focus too much on “i should be writing” or “i want inspiration” and its never gonna come. just let things happen. at least, thats how i do it. some people might get inspiration by reading or watching tv. everyones different so if thats not what works out for you, dont feel pressured to try my method

💘- what’s your favorite AU? Least favorite? =

magic au. specifically fantasy au set in like a pre-modern era. shows like avatar where theres all this magic and fantastical beasts and so on and so forth. semi-modern like six of crows and nevernight are great too. i want that magic to be woven into people’s lives. harry potter is okay but there’s like this separation between magic and muggle. there’s this feeling of “magic” but like as a tool. like a spoon or a gun or a shovel. i want magic au’s that are INTEGRATED with the world its set in.

like in atla, earth kingdom people have trains they move with bending while fire nation people have machines powered by heat and steam. both correspond to their bending and makes sense for the world they live in. but if your plot is like harry potter and its less worldbuilding and more action, then there’s this book series called seasons rising (read it. so good) where there’s a bunch of spells but the spells have character. the people using the spells GIVE it character and it feels much more intimate. pokemon does the whole fantasy mixed w reality better. give two trainers the exact same pokemon and by the time that pokemon reaches lvl 50, its gonna have a different moveset, different fight style, etc bc it was shaped by the world and people around it. i like harry potter but tbh it could have been so much better

for the least favourite au, it’s A/B/O i dont like the whole “omegas are only good for breeding hurr durr” and “alphas are violent and aggressive and cant control themselves around omegas” thing and it squicks me out. major squick. i read the original harry potter squick (THAT one. yeah. you know the one) and i still hate a/b/o more. i get why people like it, and there are one or two fics set in a/b/o au that i enjoy reading, but as a whole, i severely dislike a/b/o fics.

the themes are squick, the character dynamics get so messed up, and shipping dynamics (bc a/b/o fics usually have shipping) just get so blown out of proportion. there are so many a/b/o fics that turn ooc or the character interpretations radically change or something else. no hate against a/b/o fans bc yall are amazing for writing/drawing yalls au. there are things that you can only do in this setting and exploring those things can be incredibly fun for people, but for me personally, its not an au i like to visit.

💻- three works of yours that are must reads =

i. dont know what fandom youre in anon or your genre preferences. so ill just rec you one fic for a different fandom each with kind of different genres. ts masterlist is on my side @hufflepuff-deceit and regular fanfic masterlist is on my writing blog @crownonymous 

(BNHA) Viper. its my first serious attempt at fanfic in YEARS and its my baby. currently has 7 chapters, i havent updated it in a while bc im hyperfocused on ts rn, but i love it to bits. its just all of my fav bnha fics crammed into one fic. quirkless kind of villain izuku with stain as a mentor as they work together to bring light to the injustices of hero society and where bakugos bullying has visible and long-lasting repercussions? sign me the fuck up. you can read it on ao3 HERE bc its not on tumblr. kind of fast-paced, has a lot more action scenes than anything else ive written. heavy plot-wise but has a lot of humour and comedy to break things up

(Kimetsu no Yaiba) I Pray To God He Hears You. not related to my other kny fic oleander which is a multichap retelling au. iptghhy is a standalone one-shot and kind of a character study on one giyuu tomioka. i love him so much. giyuu is my baby and i adore him. so of course i wrote a sad fic focusing on him. well technically, the fic focuses on giyuu AND his relationships.  SPOILERS for chapters 130 and 131 of the manga. focuses mostly on giyuu and sabito, but there’s a fair bit of giyuu and tanjiro and urokodaki.  you can read it HERE bc this is also not on tumblr. also deals with heavy things but more emotion-wise since it doesnt have that much of a plot. loss. grief. moving on. survivors guilt. that kind of stuff.  very sad. hurt but with comfort, especially at the end.

(Sanders Sides) Logan’s Birthday Fic: Logicality. just what the title says. i wrote 5 different fics and published them all on logans bday but the logicality one received the most feedback and honestly? the cutest of the bunch. its gonna be crossposted onto ao3 but for now, you can read it HERE on my ts sideblog. theres no plot since its literally just domestic and relationship fluff. and puns. patton is in the fic, theres gonna be puns. nothing but good things and warm feelings bc logan deserves it.

-

thank you so much for such interesting asks anon! i enjoyed answering these. have a lovely day!

[bthump]

If Guts had known Griffith had been imprisioned not long after it had happened, and had been able to rescue him before Griffith had been irreversibly damaged, do you think those two would have been able to sort their stuff out? ps. I love the questions that get asked, your answers, the discussions, everything lol

Thank you! And same ngl, people send such good interesting asks (including this one!) and it’s a lot of fun to discuss stuff with people, I’ve had some quality conversations with other fans here. I feel lucky lol, finding a bunch of cool people in such a small niche fandom.

Yes, I definitely think they would’ve eventually figured themselves and each other out and gotten together. But I mean, I’m of the opinion that it’s nearly canonical that if literally anything other than the exact events of the Golden Age happened, Guts and Griffith would’ve gotten together lol. If a single one of those opportunities hadn’t been missed, things would’ve worked out. That’s just the vibe I get from the structure of the story, yk? Even after the rescue, there are so many moments that basically exist to tell you that they still could’ve been happy together - like eg pointedly putting Guts telling Casca he wants to stay over a panel of Griffith sleeping and missing those words, showing what a missed chance it was:

But that’s just like, an out-of-universe, narrative thing. It’s a bit of a harder sell when you actually look at the characters and all the complicated things they feel and how terrible they are at expressing them lol.

So to get into it in more headcanony detail, I think it would actually be a pretty interesting starting point for them, partly because the fact that Griffith is in a torture chamber because Guts left does a lot of the relationship talk heavy-lifting by default lol. It’s direct proof that Guts was wrong about Griffith looking down on him, and I feel like regardless of how aware you think Griffith is about being in love with Guts throughout the Golden Age, it’s safe to say that he knows he ruined his own life because of his feelings as early as day one in the torture chamber. So yk, it’s something neither of them can deny.

And partly because there’s a lot of shit they have to work through at this point, which makes it interesting. Guts is going to have a huge amount of guilt to deal with - even if Griffith can recover, like at least a few hundred Hawks got killed when he left, Griffith was still tortured, and he’s still a traitor so his dream is pretty fucked. That’s a lot of bad shit for Guts to feel responsible for.

And Griffith’s going to be traumatized as fuck, even if his stay in the torture chamber was a lot shorter than it was in canon. Like okay tbf I could also see 2 different options for how he’d consider Guts and his feelings for him, and one is hard to work into a romance. I could see him being extremely resentful and horrified by his emotional weakness and how hard it fucked him and his dream over, and things would be… bad. The kind of bad I can’t actually see leading to a happily ever after, really, like I’m talking Griffith telling Guts he wished he killed him in the duel, Guts leaving, and Griffith dying young in battle because he has nothing to live for and is basically passively suicidal, while Guts keeps wandering mercenary battlefields looking for someone strong enough to kill him, bc even if he has a death wish he still can’t not try to win.

Or, and I think this gets more likely the longer Griffith’s imprisonment lasts and would still be messed up but a lot less bleak lol, his love and need would overwhelm his bitter resentment and self-loathing, he will have realized and accepted that Guts is the most important thing to him (”but now as he shines so glaring within me the junk grows dull” that good shit right there), and that combined with Guts’ own pretty extreme need to be seen and loved by him, plus guilt, would lead to a super intense mutually obsessive relationship. (Tho Griffith would still likely hate himself for his emotional dependency. Like I think he’d be a complete mess for a while.)

I’m thinking about like, how quickly Griffith switched from wanting to strangle Guts to holding his hand the first time he saw Guts again in canon. That’s some pretty hardcore emotion right there lol.

I think at this point even though he can recover and be able to fight again, he’d trade the dream in for Guts. He’s still a traitor, and he’d know that no amount of seducing Charlotte is going to get him the throne as a wanted criminal lol. He’d still lead the Band, they’d start over somewhere else, and they wouldn’t get knighthoods again but yk they’d make a good living.

The like, major issues here imo would be both of them living in pure terror of driving the other away/hurting him, Guts because of his guilt for leaving the first time and the new realization of how much power he has over Griffith because of Griffith’s intense feelings, and Griffith because Guts left once and even if Guts explains why (and I think he would pretty quickly under these circumstances) it’s still a terrifying prospect with the potential to completely destroy him (I mean, canon).

But like, eventually they’d relax and breathe and chill out a bit and reach a sustainable equilibrium. They’ve received a painful lesson in talking about feelings so I imagine they’d be a bit more capable of communication now, especially with Griffith having spent time trapped in his head and contemplating his own feelings. I don’t think they’d ever be the model of a healthy chill relationship between two independent people who don’t need each other to feel whole or anything, but yk, that’s boring to read about anyway.

[caffeineivore]

On Review Etiquette

So, lately, I have been participating in @sailormoonreviewevent and it brings back some of my best and worst memories of fandoms, not just SM but fandoms in general, and the people who populate them. 

Background information: I’ve been around since dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and geocities sites with animated word-art headers and the like were still the norm. In the case of Sailor Moon as well as other fandoms in which I have participated, I seem to always end up in a peculiar sort of capacity-- on the one hand, I’d pretty much stick to a very small corner of the fandom wherein my ship and/or character preferences kept me mostly away from the vast majority of the riff-raff and the fandom politics, but maybe because I have an inherently bossy and super type-A personality, I’d still end up in some sort of organizational capacity. The whip-cracker, as it were, amidst a bunch of creative types. For instance, in Sailor Moon, I pretty much stuck exclusively with senshi/shitennou. I paid very little attention to fanfics not about senshi/shitennou, and don’t really know people outside of that group. However, for all that, I ended up organizing ficathon for a few years, as well as moderating a writing community and planning meet-ups between members. In this role, I get to see a lot of the nuts and bolts which go on behind the scenes, and, unfortunately, also have to play the bad guy in certain sticky situations, which brings me to the point of this post.

Now, as a fanfic writer myself, I can say definitively that reviews make the world go round. Much as we write for fun, and we write to please ourselves, there is nothing quite so uplifting and encouraging as a genuine, sincere, detailed positive review. You know the type-- the ones that tell you exactly what they liked the most about your fic, in such a way that shows that not only did they read it, but it truly had an impact on them-- maybe it made them reconsider a facet of a character they’d never considered before, or maybe it mentions their favourite lines, or maybe it subconsciously reassures the writer on some point or another which they were uncertain about. Obviously, these are like the gold standard of reviews, and somewhat rare and far between. However, you’ll also get a bunch of “omg i <3 this fic MOAR PLZ”, which is okay too. You’ll probably even get a few with constructive criticism, which may sting at the time, but if the reviewer 1. means well and 2. has a point, it’s definitely worth your time to take their words into account. 

However, then you get one of these other types of reviews:

1. “Why did you write about [character] and/or [ship] they suxxxx [other character/ship] IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!”

2. this fucking fic is dumb. you suck. die in a fire. flame flame flame flame flame. trollololol I have no life I live in my parents’ basement and wank over how hard I am even though I need to put people down behind a meaningless screen name to feel better about myself. Not in a million years would I have the balls to say this sort of thing to someone’s face, but on the internet I am a Grade A Certified Prime Asshole and proud of it. [guest review anonymous]

3. So yeah this fic is great and I know it’s marked complete but could you add another chapter? Perhaps with [very specific plot and character requirements to cater into my personal whims] plzkthxbai!

4. Ummm... so why are you writing [characters] in [AU setting] or [different version of canon-- manga/anime/pgsm/etc.]?? MY PREFERRED CANON IS BETTER. WHY CAN’T YOU DO WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO??

5. Update faster plz!!! I need the next chapter NOW!! Actually I needed it YESTERDAY!! WTF ARE YOU DOING WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING?!?!!?!!

Annnnnnnnd... you count to ten, resisting the impulse to chuck the phone or computer out the window. Take a deep breath, count to ten again, backward this time, and remind yourself that this is just fanfic. Just fanfic. Fandom’s bound to have a few idiots. You want to reply to the reviewer: “Look can u not” but that would be validating them, making them more important than they should be. You tell yourself it’s just a troll, but nonetheless, it hurts. And when you pick up that fic again, you’ll probably remember that one review in the back of your mind, taunting, more vivid than a dozen “gr8 job hope to see more soon!”’s. 

And it’s sad. So I’m about to give everyone who has experienced this (which, in all likelihood, is everyone who has posted a fanfic in any fandom ever) a voice. A loud, stridently snarky one. 

Reviewers: CAN U NOT?? with the trolling????

Look, I’m so glad that you have the time and the means to sit around and chill and read fanfic. It’s a luxury that requires a lot of first world amenities that not everyone has, so kudos to you. But that means, also, that you have a lot of freedoms not afforded to everyone, such as, y’know, the ability to pick and choose what you decide to read and comment on. There will be fics about every possible permutation of character ships in a fandom. There will be fics in every genre, which run the gamut of writing skill from novice to expert. And pretty much every single fic site, be it something privately owned or some behemoth like ff.n or AO3, will separate their fics into categories by character, genre, length, rating, etc. etc. The internetz is a wonderful thing. You can pretty much find anything with a few clicks. Like you can literally probably search for “I want a fic featuring [character A] and [character B] in a high school AU with angsty undertones and make it a one-shot less than 5000 words because I am on lunch break”, and it will take only the minimal amount of effort to get exactly what you look for to fall into your lap.

We all have our fic preferences. We also all know what we do not like. So, let me ask, why the hell do people insist on not only reading but flaming stuff that they KNOW they’re not going to like?? I am a diehard senshi/shitennou shipper and manga is my preferred canon. I KNOW that I do not ship Rei/Yuuichirou for example, so I won’t go out of my way to read fics featuring them. I’m not crazy about fics which feature tons of violence or porn, or lots of OCs, and I tend to dislike fics which make light of serious issues such as self harm or drug abuse, and I draw a very hard line at rape and sexual assault, especially if it features characters below the age of consent. Like, serious, trigger warning, PTSD, nope nope nope nope at Planet Nope. Now, what do I do if I come across a fic featuring any of these things? 

I DON’T FUCKING READ IT. Really. That’s all there is to it. I scroll down onto the next thing. And in the event that, say, I accidentally clicked on something that I figure out isn’t my cup of tea, it does not take any sort of effort to click right back out. Why give yourself grief? But even more, why give the writer grief? Even if it’s totally not your thing, they put effort into it-- far more effort than you did, clicking on their work. THEY are into what they wrote. 

Now, once upon a time, when I was organizing one of the senshi/shitennou ficathons, one of the submissions happened to feature something that NOPED with me very hard. And as ficathon mistress, I had to read it. So I did. And then replied to the author that it was very well written but I could not review it for personal reasons. Then I sent it off to another moderator to read it and give them an actual review. And that is an extenuating circumstance. Most people would not ever be in the position to have to read a fic that they would otherwise not read, or say anything to the writer of said fic. Even in that circumstance, it is not hard to deal with it in a respectful manner. So, why the fuck would someone willingly and knowingly inflict something they know they’re not going to like on themselves and then punish someone else for it? That makes NO sense.

As far as harassing authors to follow your own niche or write more on a topic or story that they feel as though they’re done with? Dude, write your own fic. You have total control over only one person in this world: yourself. Sure, validating what a fanfic writer does is very nice and gratifying, but they are not trained monkeys there to do your bidding and perform for your personal amusement. Unless you’re paying them good cashy money (which, since it’s fanfic, you’re not), you don’t get to have a say in what they write, when they write it, where they post it (if anywhere), any of that. They are under no contractual obligation to cater in to you in any way. And furthermore, when you try to dictate to them what to write and how to write it, the message is this: I Know Better Than You. Do As I Say. You Don’t Know Shit. What You Do Is Not Good Enough For Me. What You Do Doesn’t Matter. The Only Thing That Matters Is What I Want. 

That’s nothing but a goddamn put-down. And when you put down someone who probably put in a whole lot of thought and effort into something which brings them no possible reward but personal satisfaction and maybe others’ enjoyment, it’s really kind of a sucker-punch. If, say, this was the type of interaction between a boyfriend and girlfriend-- the put-downs, the belittling, the dictating, the insults-- we’d all recoil and call it a toxic, abusive relationship. We’d tell the person receiving those comments to get out of there, to get help, to leave.

So, when you make those types of comments, that’s the message you’re sending that writer. Leave. Get out of here. Go away, for your own good, for your own sanity and health and happiness. 

Now think about it, as you’re scrolling through ff.n or ao3 or wherever, looking for that next undiscovered gem. Think about it, when someone shyly asks you to review their fic, or signs up for the first time for a fandom event such as a ficathon or a big bang or a secret santa exchange. Is that the message you want to give them? That they should leave and never look back?

Now think about it again, and remember when you first discovered fanfic, or your preferred fandom, and wrote your first fic. Maybe it was campy and featured every trope on the TV tropes page. Maybe it was a shameless Mary Sue. Maybe it was ridiculously OOC and featured eye-gougingly purple prose. Maybe it was riddled with typos. Maybe you, yourself, looking back at it now, shake your head at how you could’ve written such a monstrosity. But would you have stayed, I wonder, if nobody at all encouraged you? Countless writers fade into oblivion after one fic, or disappear forever, deleting their fics off the internet. Countless people get fed up with fandom and throw their hands up and dismiss it as a lost cause. These things are going to happen regardless, sure.

But why the hell would you encourage that?