#it makes it really hard to find fics in the fandom

[cilil]

Hi, do you have any advices for budding writers on AO3 or here?

Hey! :)

I've given this some thought and compiled what I hope might be some helpful pointers, but if there's anything else or anything specific you want to hear more about, feel free to ask again. Also I'm assuming this is about the amazing craft of fanfic and not, uh, building a platform or whatever (I wouldn't be very helpful with that, I'm a nobody x)).

Share what you feel comfortable sharing.

So since you're asking about budding writers on AO3 and Tumblr, I take it you're at a point where you feel comfortable sharing your writing online, which is amazing. Nevertheless, I feel the need to once again mention (just for anyone who may be in the same or a similar situation) that it's completely alright not to be comfortable with it (yet) or not to share everything you write. I share almost everything simply because I'm annoying and it makes me feel accomplished and since I've grown pretty comfortable with it, I might as well; but not everyone feels that way and feelings also change. It's completely alright to write just for yourself or a small circle of friends.

Don't worry too much about "being good".

I will be the first to admit that I deeply relate to struggling with perfectionism when it comes to writing (and other creative pursuits). However, as someone who's been reading fic for many years, tends to be into quite niche and obscure things sometimes and is rarely spoiled by big fandoms' abundance of food, I want all writers, especially new ones, to know that you don't have to write the most amazing, perfect, publishing-ready pieces. What matters is your passion and creativity, which will show in your writing regardless of skill level. Not to mention that fic is free and in fact a tool for many to experiment.

That's not to say you can't strive to improve or be good - by all means, I find it admirable if you want to hone your craft and make progress as you continue to write. Just don't let perfectionism ruin your fun and stifle your creativity.

How to get better without trying overly hard.

Aside from just writing, writing and writing (that is the most important part though), how do you improve without making it a point to do so? Well, if it works for you to read/watch guides or you enjoy specific writing exercises, that's great, but one thing that I find gets overlooked a lot in writing spaces is simply: Reading. Just reading for fun.

I find that I often discover little things in other people's writing that I really like and then I think to myself "wow, that's really neat how they did that, maybe I could take a page out of their book" (pun intended) and make it a point to pay attention to these things when I write. Essentially, it's like creating a nice patchwork blanket which is your style, made up of your own voice and preferences as a writer and cool stuff you picked up on the road.

Let me just name some examples, which, yes, are also an excuse to shamelessly blow some writer friends of mine a well-deserved kiss of appreciation. @sauron-kraut writes incredibly polished short stories with beautiful wording and atmosphere that have a lot of little hidden things to discover and dissect, and I want to steal her ability to set the stage and hide those easter eggs. @a-world-of-whimsy-5 is an absolute legend when it comes to writing medieval and medieval-adjacent stuff, and I learned so much from her fics. @i-did-not-mean-to has a way of writing with such esprit and wit that I always end up in a good mood after, a style of narrative voice I've adored for over a decade, and I've greatly improved my humorous writing in particular thanks to her. @crackinthecup has the marvelous ability to craft extremely emotionally evocative scenes, which have encouraged me to be more courageous and experimental in my sentence melody and structure. @tragedybunny has a way of writing that reminds me of coming home to a warm and comfy place, and I will find out how she did it and how I can do it as well.

So as you can see, it can be super helpful to compare notes with your fellow writers. Never be discouraged by someone else's ability; instead learn and expand your own.

Feedback, criticism and community.

Let me just get one thing out of the way: You don't have to take criticism from everyone. Or at all. As far as I understand, the fanfic community has come to to agree that we're doing this for fun and don't give criticism unprompted/when we aren't sure it's wanted or welcome. As a general rule: Take criticism from those you would also seek advice from. Ask for feedback if you feel comfortable, and if not, that's a valid boundary to have and I will gently smack anyone who presumes to pick apart writing that was made for fun and generously shared with the community for free.

The community aspect, however, should be taken into account on other fronts. While I won't tell anyone they have to interact and believe that, in an ideal world, everyone's writing would just speak for itself, it is helpful to engage with the community. Things you can do (both on Tumblr and AO3 if also applicable/possible) include: Respond to people interacting with your works, interacting with other people's works (for example while you're doing your reading sessions and looking at other writers' styles) and just overall being present, being talkative, going with the flow.

Again, this is not a must. But I will say that pretty much all of us want positive responses and interactions on their work and that just won't work if you expect everyone to show up for you all the time and never show up for anyone else. Engagement, passion and community are our "currency" in the absence of money and reciprocity is an important element of that. A lot of friction and complaints in the fanfic community regarding lack of interaction or entitlement are rooted in misunderstandings of this fundamental principle.

But don't take this in a cynical manner. Seek out what you enjoy, share the joy and passion and you'll make friends just accidentally - which is the part that I find makes fandom on AO3 and Tumblr so much fun! (I don't even want to be a "traditional" author anymore, I want this instead😁)

Find your groove and groove along.

Lastly, make sure your writing is fun for you or else it'll become a chore and eventually get ruined for you as a hobby. This is unfortunately a continuous task as your needs and interests shift - for example you might be in the mood to do an entire drabble challenge one month and during another month you feel so drained that you couldn't do another one. Or you might want to write something different for a change. Or whatever it may be.

Either way, one recent lesson I've learned is that I got too tied up in obligations and it left no space for spontaneous inspiration, so I never got to write what I wanted to write in the moment and it pushed me quite close to burnout. Do yourself a favor and always hold that space for yourself. In practice, this could for example mean that you do one event and on the side write this cool new idea you had, instead of doing three events - which is fun and games until it starts getting too much and you don't have time for your passion projects.

Finding your groove also includes the whole technical aspect, such as which writing programs you use, which device (or none at all), where you write, how to make yourself comfortable, how to get in the right headspace for things. I would also like to encourage all of you to be a bit crazy and whimsical about this: For example I've gone to the perfume store, picked out a scent for a specific character in a specific scene and sniffed it while writing the description several times now. Do what it takes. And say goodbye to your squeaky clean search history - you will research some weird stuff just to get that one line right.

So yeah, these are just my random thoughts on fic writing and what has been helpful in order for me to have lots of fun with this hobby. Happy writing!

[nightmarebunnyking]

For real! I have blocked a lot of people in the Fandom for this, and it is so hard to find some good fanfic that does make wukong look like the bad guy for protecting tripitaka or himself,especially in ao3,everything is always about how macaque the fucking the victims and innocent,when that not true and make wukong a horrible for trying to defend himself and others,it really is annoying and it like the most of the Fandom,so if you a wukong fan,it hard as hell finding good fics/edits/fanart that don't favorite macaque.

no fucking thank you for talking about the “murder” shit between Monkey King and Six Eared Macaque it’s so fucking stupid I block every writer and artist who pulls the

“errrr waaaahh!! I’m being nuanced i am i am!! I’m only portraying Wukong as worse because he’s a killer!! Stop saying I’m biased!!!”

Monkie Kid fans 🤝 not understanding self-defense

A Tale As Old As Time

Yeah it feels like… l dunno, like some people think that you should just stand around and let yourself get hurt? Unironically I feel like there’s a non-negligible number of fans who think that Sun Wukong either 1. Committed cold-blooded murder or 2. Self-defense, which they treat as the same as cold-blooded murder.

It’s like these fans just expect people to stand around helplessly absorbing punches and kicks instead of ever defending themselves in any way whatsoever and I really, really don’t understand this at all?

In what world does defending yourself make you a bad person?

[orangepanic]

Finished Fic: Smoke

It's finally done! My fic for this year's @wipbigbang is one of my longest-running WIPs and also one of my personal favorites. My apologies and thanks to anyone still waiting to find out what happens to Equalist!Asami and her unexpected lover - I hope the ending is both satisfying and believable.

Story Title: Smoke

Fandom: Avatar: Legend of Korra

Summary: When General Iroh is captured during the Battle of Yue Bay, it's up to Asami to extract information from him that will win the Equalist revolution. By any means necessary.

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, major character death, suicide attempt, major character injury

Characters: Iroh II, Asami Sato, Hiroshi Sato, Amon | Noatak, Amon's Lieutenant, Tarrlok, Mako, Lin Beifong, Zuko, Izumi, Original Equalist Characters

Pairing: Iroh II/Asami Sato, other background pairings (some canon, some not)

When I Started: February! February 2021, that is. Eek.

How I Lost My Shit: Most people who know my writing know I'm a die-hard panster, so while I had a loose idea of how this fic would go from the beginning I of course didn't write that. This was my first time writing a real Enemies to Lovers (like literally they try to kill each other a lot) and I found that as a consequence of that I needed to make changes to the story along the way in order to fit the genre. A big decision was to slow down the action to make the romance believable, and another was to flesh out more of the Equalists and their operation in order to avoid a "good guy good and smart, bad guy bad and dumb" dynamic which wouldn't support the kind of story I wanted to tell. All this in turn led to a time skip and whole second half to the fic that I hadn't anticipated followed by a few long breaks myself while I tried to figure out where the story needed to go from there and who with. Mostly because the main characters both wound up killing people I hadn't planned for and so there was a whole legal thing I had to puzzle through that eventually ruled out the original ending I'd had in mind. Nobody listens to me, you know? And I now know an awful lot about immunity and extradition.

How I Finished My Shit: @chocolate-cringymuffin, an existing reader of this fic, incredible artist, and dear fandom friend, agreed to be my artist for the WIP Big Bang. I could NOT let them down. There's really nothing more motivating than fan art from someone who cares about your story. I might not have finished this fic without their enthusiasm. I certainly wouldn't have finished it today.

ALSO CHECK OUT THEIR BOMB-ASS ART!!!! HOLYYYYY CRAP!!! It's so beautiful I'm crying. They're so happy. I also love the choice of scene, which comes at a part of the fic where I think both of them really commit to letting the past be the past and their new life together.

A/N: Thank you so much to the mods of @wipbigbang for putting on this event again! It's a great forcing function. I also want to give a shout out to @alishatheninth who, while not a beta reader, gave me a lot of feedback that I needed to hear about what was working and what wasn't early in the fic and in general has been an invaluable critic and cheerleader on this grand adventure. Alisha, I'm lucky to know you and I'm sorry I killed your favorite LOK character in a truly horrible way. Mostly.

[diospore]

Like I don't get it fr

Half the time the All Might bashing tag fics are like. Things he wouldn't even do

Literally Endeavor is right there just do an au where you write Endeavor into a mentor role for Midoriya and you're not mischaracterizing All Might

I wouldn't be as mad if it weren't so fucking many good fics auuuuuuuugh

Like I sometimes get purposeful mischaracterizing a character for the angst potential but like! If it's all the time I can't really believe half these people are playing with characterization, feels like they legit believe that All Might would be legitimately prejudiced against quirkless people. (??? When he was/is literally quirkless himself??? Y'all fell for his self loathing projection in episode 1 and then stopped paying attention)

And half the time it's bashing him for things Aizawa did or things Endeavor did. While propping up Dadzawa??? Like bruh??

Auuuuuuuugh tell me I'm not the only one who hates that

[psqqa]

yes, yes i know edgeworth’s big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated us all, but listen. listen.

phoenix wright

phoenix “genuinely unable to reconcile the girl on the stand with the girl he dated for eight months, a cognitive dissonance so profound it’s ultimately explained by them being literally two different people, but which he first sits with for five years and does not talk about at any point to anyone” wright

phoenix “don’t mention that name to me. i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t want to think about it. i am just going to keep myself in this state of perpetual crisis mode focus on other people’s problems until eventually i die and get to hang out with mia on the astral plane and never have to deal with any of these emotions ever again” wright

phoenix “overnight loses his career and reputation and sense of identity while gaining an adopted, probably pretty traumatized eight-year-old daughter, and rather than leaning on his friends for help, or getting therapy, or taking any time to process any of this, he *checks notes* spends seven years dedicating all his free time and energy to investigating the weird fucking circumstances around it and maintains a friendship with the guy he suspects was behind it all” wright

phoenix "runs across a burning bridge and falls through it, half a day after the game establishes that he is terrified of heights, because his friend is on the other side of that bridge" wright

phoenix “i sure felt surprised. maybe i had my poker face on” wright

phoenix “looking back on it that was actually a pretty dark period in my life” wright

phoenix “don’t ask me how i got started. i don’t remember” wright

phoenix “only you stood still, your eyes calmly watching” wright

phoenix “sometimes, life just sucks” wright

just

phoenix wright

crunchiest man in the world

and all i wanna do is chew and chew and chew on him

[lululawrence]

x

[crownedwille]

.

[lucreziaces]

thinking about the dark side of cesare fanning the flames-- or at the very least just not doing anything to stop them-- of the unholy love/desire he and lucrezia felt for each other when he just playfully chased her around the garden after discovering she was watching him fuck another woman, or when he planted the idea that he'd be the only one to care for her heart, or when he implied the love between them was comparable to the love of God, calling it "as all-consuming and pure as the love of God"....an idea she later reflects in season 3 when she says "one touch of your hand and God comes rushing back" (also in the same scene "whatever it is, it overwhelms".) like, yes, okay I do believe lucrezia is probably the one that shifted their relationship into sexual terrority (not on purpose though!!), but cesare is older by a few years. he would've understood it to be wrong before she did, and he could've sat her down at any point in season 1 or 2 and told her "hey, this isn't how brothers and sisters are supposed to feel about each other. we can't lean into whatever this is, okay?" and then made an actual effort to let her go instead of just half-assing it before then immediately beginning the build up of the already thick sexual tension between them until it was unbearable and she was left thinking her husband didn't care about her because he wouldn't sleep with her, so she climbed into cesare's bed and convinced him they should just get it on because no one else could understand them and people already it whisper about them anyway, so "why deny ourselves the pleasure?" very sick and twisted of him. I kinda hate him for it actually. because if he hadn't gone and created this "ideal lover" in lucrezia's head that only he could fit the mold of, she might've found actual happiness with someone else!! 😡 😡

[pencap]

.

[nanamis-bigtie]

"I'm in mood for some Higuruma or Nanami fics, lemme check what their tags offer-"

[tinapaysmp]

I've come to realize that my salmon bias in this fanbase is growing worse and worse as the days come.

[essektheylyss]

.

[honestlyvan]

if you're still doing the writing advice meme, can you do Taion? If not, you can just ignore me, no worries

As a rule, I’m always up for the ask games in my “get to know meme” tag. That’s what that is for :D There’s years worth of stuff to pick from there.

Anyway hmmmmmm he’s actually quite hard for me but I’ll do my best.

He is quite attentive, and as a result also quite sensitive. He’s pretty much always carefully keeping track of whatever situation he’s in, and he has to be pretty intensely distracted to stop being the most observant person in any given room.

Naturally, he’s wicked smart, but in a way where he’s better at putting the facts together into a series of conclusions than discovering patterns and deriving new information from them. Master of deduction, gets very bad analysis paralysis because he’s pretty much always aware that he’s dealing with impossibly large and granular datasets.

Despite that, Taion’s composure is very good as long as he’s allowed the proper emotional distance to the situation. I feel like it’s probably one part natural tendency to feel emotions very strongly (and thus needing a couple of steps back from them to be able to think clearly) and another of having always been in a position where he needs to be able to project a certain amount of confidence to be taken seriously. It’s not that his thinking really suffers from being deeply emotional, it’s more that it’s harder for him to have confidence in what he’s saying if he's feeling too compromised.

The direct result of this is that he can come across quite cold despite being truly compassionate. He genuinely doesn’t like it when people are upset, even when it has nothing to do with him. He’s drawn to Fixing Problems because that’s a more consistently useful than trying to rely on his emotional reasoning to comfort people, although he does understand the value of allowing people to decompress and just sit together with their feelings.

He will never use five words where fifteen will suffice. Economy of language and wit are completely overrated in his opinion, the reason languages have many words for most things is for granularity and preciseness. He's always trying to say exactly what he means, he doesn’t want to leave any room for ambiguity, which of course means that sometimes he will say the vaguest possible nonsense and then get offended of people can’t follow his reasoning.

[crybaby-bkg]

anzai from devils line fic WHEN………

I’ve been writing so much about the Blond™️ that I haven’t taken the time to branch off and write for different fandoms again!!! I did it the summer of ‘21 and it was a nice break from exclusively writing for bnha and I wanna do it again

writing for pretty dead fandoms is a little suckish bc you don’t get as much interaction bc……no one is there lmfao but it’s worth it getting the thoughts down and having someone tell me that they’re glad they found that very obscure idea for an unpopular character lol

[glitchinginhyperfixis]

i’m gonna be honest about something there are still things i’m afraid to post about on here bc i’m always worried about what other people think of me. so if i suddenly start rbing shit from a fandom you wouldn’t expect or a ship you don’t like, please be prepared. i’m sorry but i’m trying to practice self-care <33

[sabraeal]

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

💥find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

If You Dare! My hakizana fics are not usually SUPER popular, but they tend to garner at least a little interest, but that one didn't even get a blip 🤣Too bad, that one was going to get smutty in the next chapter or two. ONE DAY.

💥find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

That would be To My Esteemed Enemy with three whole kudos, which is both surprising and not, because it's a fic with a pairing that is more popular than my main ship in that fandom, but it 1) doesn't have any ship content in it yet, 2) is using canon characterization of Kazama, which displeases the people who want him to be a sexy villain and also the people who want him to be a uwu good boy trying his best. It's easy to say something nice about this, because I spent HOURS poring over Hakuouki lore to get this into shape and was SO PLEASED with the results. It just needs a few more chapters to really find an audience, I think, but I don't have the time right now to put my effort into it.