#it’s like a living breathing fanfic

[dimandjuicybradfordchen]

Thank God for Aaron Thorsen and deciding he needed to ride with the detectives all of a sudden

[justsumtransdude2000]

The 'she never would've let you leave if she didn't have a spare' trope genuinely haunts me. It keeps me up at night. I truly wonder deeply and profoundly abt it every single day. i haven't even read Choices yet the label of spare haunts every single interpretation I will ever have of regulus arcturus black. he can never not have a brother, even when he doesn't. even when he responds "barty and evan are fine, thanks for asking.' even when he feels like his brother will never forgive him for the sacrifices he has had to make. every word he speaks, every thing he does every breath he takes is all through the lens of being the safety blanket for a loose cannon of a sibling and it haunts me.

[eddith]

LOL This is me with damianfinch on ao3, i love their smutty fics so much and zosan are always so on point, the characterization goes crazy in their fics.

[oh-wow-im-still-here]

Aspec shen yuan in a relationship with a bingge learning he doesn't need sex 24/7 to have a happy and fulfilling life is the superior binggeyuan dynamic btw. It's like the succubus x aspec ship dynamic except dialled up even more (somehow) with some abandonment issues on the side. Comedic but also angst potential abound. Delicious.

[ghosts-of-love]

writing passionate love declaration scenes in fanfiction is cute and all but also lowkey sad sometimes

[giacarem]

it's supposed to be fun, turning seventeen

"Zuko's birthday!" Aang called out. "Zuko, you didn't tell us it was your birthday? We would've celebrated!" "It doesn't matter," Zuko said, his voice commanding, if not a bit squeaky. "I've never really celebrated my birthday, so it's not like I'm missing anything. Please, just pretend that this is a normal day." Hopefully, they would forget all about his birthday. … Hopefully. Or; The Gaang find an old calendar among the mountain of memorabilia that Zuko is burning at the Ember Island holiday house and make a startling discovery. Zuko, on the other hand, begins to believe they are hatching a plot to kill him.

7,323 words of Zuko angst and hurt/comfort that you can read here!

[theoldaeroplane]

I'm over 10k into this rivals-to-??? Revalink thing with no end in sight so I'm posting some bits without context in hopes of scoring a dopamine boost to push through it haha. if you like what you see, comments do a lot for me in terms of motivation!

---

His demands turn into an outraged squawk when Link pauses near a dark alcove, judges it appropriate, and grabs Revali by his scarf; he goes silent when Link slams his back to the wall, pinning him by his skinny shoulders with one arm. Not because of any startle or fear, but because Link has grabbed his beak to hold it shut.

Link's Hylian sounds at least as strange to listen to as Revali's. He much prefers to sign. Speech is painful and his words come out with their own harsh, uncanny cadence. His voice grinds and sticks, and he's been told it makes him sound like he's on the brink of death. But while it's good for very little, it does have some uses. Intimidation is one of them. "You will be ci---ivil to Mipha," Link says, heavy and final, like a portcullis falling shut. The Master Sword still hangs on his back, and he's well aware that Revali can see the hilt of it over his shoulder. "Or we'll see how well you fl---y without feathers."

---

[...] it's not the same as he remembers how he once had such feelings. There is nothing sweet to it, nothing innocent. He wants to pin Revali to the wall again and feel his heart pounding. He wants Revali to knock him to the ground and dig those claws into the flesh of his thigh, he wants to drag Revali down after him and bite down hard on his neck. He wants to devour him and be devoured in turn.

More than once Link wonders if this is some kind of twisted response to the years of cold shoulders. If this new strain is the only kind of affection he can crave now. More than once he decides it doesn't really matter. It's not like he's going to do anything.

---

"If I come back and find you two at each other's throats again, I'm plucking Revali and using the feathers to tar Link," Urbosa says, which pulls giggles from the other women. "Find ways to occupy yourselves. We'll be back."

It's a testament to Link's distraction that he doesn't realize he is once more alone with Revali until the very moment the box seat's door slides shut behind. If he were not already drenched in sweat from the lava-baked air, he would have begun to become so at once.

"Occupy ourselves, hm?" Revali says, pushing himself up from the edge of the balcony, and the willow sound is once more in his voice. He saunters purposefully toward Link, and stops in front of him, stretching out one wing---

"Let me see the sword."

Link blinks, twice, and squints at him. "No," he signs.

"I'm not going to try to steal it from you," Revali says, rolling his eyes. "I just want to see it."

[...]

"A magic sword," Revali says with disdain. "I suppose that should have been obvious. Tell me how a magic sword chooses its wielder, then."

Link does not want to tell that story. "I found it on an altar in the woods," he signs after settling the sword to lean against his arm. It's his usual explanation. It's not untrue.

"What woods?"

"The woods by my house?"

Revali glares at him. "Oh, naturally," he snips. "I suppose it made you a master swordsman as well?"

"Yes," Link signs, face devoid of expression. "In that finding it ensured the rest of my life would be nothing but training for that."

"Oh, come now. A few years in the royal guard can't be that bad."

"I was eleven when I found it."

It's not quiet even up here in the private seating, with the muffled rumble from the festival below filling the air. This is all that saves them from a true uncomfortable silence.

---

this thing is going to need a pretty thorough redrafting when it's done but I think it's got legs!

[kyistell]

Hi! Idk if ur still taking requests for little snippets, but is it possible to request a little snippet of NJ helping Loui with his messy curly hair in like- a hot day where humidity is a bitch? 👁️👁️

*🩴*

As a guy with curly hair most times, humidity is such a bitch and happens whenever it feels like here in Jersey, no consistency. So this hit close to home lol.

Hot and Humid (The Worst Combo)

Every door in the state house was open, along with the windows. The Southern States were out barbecuing and the Northern States were suffering, except New Jersey.

It’s not like Jersey liked the heat, it was a pain in the ass, but it did mean he could go swimming and get good southern food, so he can’t complain too much. The problem was the humidity, it was ungodly humid out. Jersey knew humid intimately but this was ridiculous.

Almost every state was either in the pool or on the side relaxing or barbecuing. Almost. The only state that wasn’t with everyone was Louisiana, which Jersey would understand if it wasn’t for the fact that this is weather Loui would absolutely be in.

Jersey was about to go inside to find him when his name was called. Standing in the doorway was Loui, his hair frizzy and messy, looking just as miserable as most of the NE states felt.

Louisiana only had to say one word and Jersey would be at his beck and call. “Help”.

Jersey dragged Loui to his(Jersey's) room, looking at what products he had that could work, he realized he was severely lacking and would need to get more stuff again. He gave Loui a juice box and the tv remote and got to work.

Hair was hard, especially curly hair, it’s hard and annoying at the best of times and at the worst it’s near impossible. Jersey was basically an expert in all things hair but he was definitely wishing that Loui had come to him in the early morning before the humidity got too bad.

It took two hours but Jersey was able to put Loui’s hair into cornrows, that way if he wanted he could go swimming with the others. By the time the two got back outside some of the food was ready and it somehow got hotter and more humid, but at least now Loui’s hair wasn’t a mess.

(And if there was some magic involved to make sure his hair didn’t get affected by the humidity again, then that was between him and the demon he calls his friend).

[hellogoodbyeitsme]

DCU fandom is so funny because everyone is always mad. Feels like living with my parents again 🥰 home sweet home 🥰

[unproduciblesmackdown]

they're so right about the diction of course

they're also soooo right about the breath control from william "holds that 'again' in (acoustic) loser geek whatever for fifteen damn seconds and long enough live that other jeremys just gotta be cutting it down a bit when they perform it" roland like my god the consistency in every moment of these lines. that lowest note being such a crisp & cool spritz & he's sometimes holding it too & it just never falters like my god....the mass effecties are having a great time w/this too, hope it gets around to someone official seeing it, which gets around to will. simply going tf off once again lord....

and the extra mile

[fishyypop]

reading fanfic while otgw plays in the background… feeling like i’m healing ♡

[titanbabyeams]

I have been trying to stop thinking about ‘oh, but if readers prefer this—‘ or something similar when I’m trying to write, and to focus solely on writing what I want to write.

Which is great, yeah! I love it! I’m trying!

But it also leads to entertaining brainrot (/pos) ideas like Single-Dad Edward Elric moving to Japan and ending up with Hawks and Winry.

It’s the image of Hawks and Edward casually hanging out, getting close, and then Winry appearing. Winry, who unashamedly hangs off of Edward and teases and argues with him, like they’ve been married ten years but they’ve instead known each other their entire lives. The image of Hawks seeing their interactions and simply being… curious about the depths of it, of what exactly he’s missing about Edward Elric.

It’s the image of Winry instantly mothering Edward’s child, and Edward doing his best with said child, and Hawks being able to openly observe the growth of decent parents. Of Winry and Edward having a too-close, not close-enough relationship, that they’re still learning how to navigate the boundaries of in adulthood.

Besides, how do you think Hawks would react to having their overwhelming about of love directed at him? Gosh. I love brainrot sometimes.

[bastionbibi]

i once blocked someone bc they said furuya still working in a 2 hour sleep is illogical and im like ok but so many things are insanely illogical in this manga and u chose to talk abt that demented workaholic who can probably hear colours at this point

[bellisima-writes]

Posting for no reason in particular except fanfic authors live on comments.

Feed us…please?

And if you’ve ever left me a comment on one of my fics know I’ve likely catalogued it into my long-term memory. I’ll never let it go.

AO3 Comments are SO SO SOOOOOOO important because you can only leave Kudos ONCE. You add to the hit count ONCE (every 24 hours).

So whenever someone updates their fic, the ONLY way an author knows who their regular readers are is if they comment on each chapter. And we WANT to know who's still reading.

Believe it or not, some of us think about the name that pops up constantly in the comments and go "omg I can't wait to see what they think of THIS SPECIFIC SCENE cuz I KNOW they'll say something about it!!!"

[citrine-elephant]

starts spinning and screaming and possibly even biting

[physalian]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

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Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.