#like I've been feeling nostalgic recently and I'm going back to read the BIG fics for every fandom ive been in

[bitseventimes]

you could not pay me to watch a marvel movie again or ever come in close contact to the expanded fandom but still I gotta admit they really popped off with not easily conquered like i think it messed with my brain chemistry the first time I read it because the emotions I'm feeling are disproportionately intense. got me sobbing over an Ave Maria

[entamewitchlulu]

hi there, coming from ao3 (user featheryDragons if I ever end up commenting - I'd leave this all as a comment but this is about your works as a whole) - I recently got back into yugioh after a long absence from it (not because I disliked it or anything I just easily get obsessed with new fandoms out of the blue and put old ones on the backburner until I stumble ass backwards into an old one again. like in the case of yugioh), specifically gx but to a much greater extent arc v, and as part of my search for Content I've been reading a lot of the 'classics' which includes slowly binging through your arc v (and gx) works! Which leads me to here and what I wanted to say, which is that I'm really enjoying your stuff - I love the way characters are written, how they interact, the fun worldbuilding (in the case of AUs), the prose in general, everything about them (sidenote: thanks for having stuff where Zarc isn't a complete jackass lmao). honestly, it's just a big comfort to read through your stuff, because I was really into arc v and the fandom when it was still airing (and I was in high school, christ), so it's a little saddening bc I remember when the fandom was a lot more active (though I'm still thankful that even if there's less clicks, there's still content being made on tumblr and ao3. and twitter far as I can tell, though I don't go there), but going through your works is a huge comfort by letting me revisit the characters and world of arc v, and in the case of some of the fics, a bit nostalgic in a way since I'm rereading the stuff I read from another era of my life.

lmao this got a lot more rambly than I thought it would, sorry for the giant paragraph. I guess what I'm saying is - thank you for all of your yugioh writing! Regardless of whether you've stopped writing (for yugioh or in general), or if you're just taking a break, or if you're still writing (which in that case godspeed but remember to take a break!), I wanted you to know that your works did and currently are getting me through some lonely times and have made me really happy! I'm currently working through some of the shorter works, and I really look forward to rereading some stuff and starting on fics I never read (the hippodrum and dispersion fics come to mind - how did I never see those?), and if you don't mind comments on years old fic, I guess you can expect to see some comments? (assuming another fandom doesn't completely take control of my brain in the intervening time. sonic and pokemon unfortunately released new games) thanks again, and I hope 2023 goes well for you!

oh geez, this was an extremely lovely surprise to find in my inbox ;w; i'm so glad you've been enjoying my backlog, and welcome back to the yugioh corner! (i get ya on the fandom switching haha, i have been there myself lol) (and holy sheez....has it been that long since arc v aired?? that hurts lol)

I'm so happy to hear that my works can still give you some of that arc v dosage; i feel the same about how the fandom has definitely quieted down over the years, but we're still here puttering away - and at least it's not so loud on the ppl complaining front now, haha.

i know it's been like...oh my god has it been so long since i've updated anything?? T-T but i'm definitely not abandoning anything! I want to finish all the stuff I have up right now, and I have plenty of other ideas and things, I've just needed I guess a much longer break than I thought. getting messages like this really does help refill that motivation fuel gauge though, so thank you so much for taking the time to share!

I definitely never mind comments on fic no matter how old it is; i truly hope ao3 lasts a while and that the things i write can help make ppl happy for a long time to come and it's always gonna make my day to see a comment. thank you so much again for sending such a sweet message and i really hope you have an absolutely excellent 2023 too! <333

[dawnbrigade]

"tag people you want to get to know better" meme

(via: @queenlua -- THANK YOU MISS LUA, this was a lot of fun to fill out!! we will have to talk more about Maya Fey afterwards \o/)

Favorite color: partial to red! it's beautiful, color theory be damned, lmfao

Currently reading: Open City by Teju Cole, Hard to Do - the Surprising Feminist Theory of Breaking Up by Kelli Maria Korducki (shit's been rough, okay), and (sigh) American Psycho by Brett Ellis, started for the meme but unfortunately it's proven to be a genuinely enjoyable piece of writing. all great reads but I do feel insane after typing all of that out lol

Last song: "Give Up Baby Go" by Peach Pit, their very specific genre of melancholy party songs has been Speaking to me lately & this one has been on repeat for the past few days \o/

Last movie: "Do the Right Thing" (1989), I am NOT a big movie person but I've been trying to change that recently and good lord this one was good! strongly recommend, especially if you like big ensemble casts & ethical dilemmas

Sweet, spicy, or savory: same answer haha, savory and spicy are strong contenders here (❤️) but I really have no sweet tooth whatsoever

Currently working on: man, it's been a very surreal, transitory period of life for the past few months re: new job, new house, and... kinda new everything, lmao, so I'm just trying to survive right now 😭 I've been trying to get back into writing, but it's all just original off-the-cuff stuff rather than fic. playing disco elysium and some nostalgic sims spin-off my kind coworker lent me, and reading a lot, but other than that I'm just trying to reconnect with old friends as much as possible and just !! yeah. live. the tellius replay is coming soon, I swear to god

tagging people: IF you're feeling It, no pressure! thanks for reading!! @clockfighting @stonerzelda @goblinsdirect @bass47 @theprimeministerofamerica @em0revival

[kimikotsuki]

Fandom discourse and culture has changed a lot over the years and I always try to err on the side of caution whenever possible.

The reasons writers create and share their work are varied and diverse: maybe they're trying to improve their writing and welcome advice, sometimes it's all about the ~ S Q U E E ~ because you loved the show/character and wants them in more situations, sometimes the reason is the ~ R A G E ~ about the direction canon took and you plan to murder it and use it's blood to re-write the story; this is more an illustrative than exhaustive list and sometimes there'll even be multiple reasons at once of course.

And sometimes, those reasons do not match or go well with any type of criticism, even well intentioned, constructive ones.

I saw an post on Tumblr that ilustrated very well another reason why one shouldn't simply assume that con-crit is welcome: if you go watch an amateur performance (in the most literal sense of the word of non-remunarated, regardless of quality of performance), one won't immediately presume afterwards to go to the artist and start critiquing it.

At the same time, I wholeheartedly think that one of the most wonderful, unique possibilities of fandom is the capacity for collaborative work between the authors of a story that is being posted as it's written and it's readers, culminating in an end product with quality that ends up being more refined than otherwise it would've been.

That type of interaction is even sometimes one of the main reasons people write fics, to not only create something, but also to share the act of that creation.

That works almost like making all the readers of a fic into beta-readers and can be a wonderful thing, but the post argued that the work done by betas is analogous to editing in published works, and that such a relationship is based on built trust, so while yeah, that dynamic between writer and all their readers could work, assuming and simply barging in is generally more harmful than productive.

When I adopted that new reasoning, I debated whether or not I should then mark all my bookmarks on AO3 as Private and make them inaccessible to anyone else, but in the end opted not to, mainly because even though I mainly write them for my future self, I also feel other readers can benefit a lot from knowing how the experience of someone who liked a work enough to rec it went, specially if while reading that fic they stumbled upon things they didn't like.

If there's one thing I learned from over 15 years of reading fics is that my tastes change over the years, and sometimes it's not even about the quality of the writing itself or even the progression of how polemic subjects are treated at any given time, but rather the moment that I am in changes how I receive the same work, such that tagging a certain work as one worth reading again later with no contextual information on the vibe I was riding when I did that will inevitably lead to a disappointment that is frankly an overreaction on my part.

That happened somewhat recently with a Frostiron fic I read a long time ago, in a moment where I was squeeing like crazy over the pairing (and it was a work of squee, so we matched really well) and it got on my list, but years later, when I was feeling nostalgic over the pairing and went to read my list of besties, the expectation I had was so great that the dichotomy between my experience back then and the one in the re-read were terribly big, even though it was a well written fic, squee and all, and the only real difference was that *I* wasn't squeeing over the pairing anymore.

And at the same time, I found that, in a way, this managing of expectations I do primarily for myself when I create a rec with the bad points of a fic that I loved can also be helpful for others, because even if it doesn't fit 100% since we're different people, I always thought the best recs I've always found were the ones that stated what were the cons of any given story, because those cons might not be something that bothered me like it bothered them or it even might end up being somewhat bothersome to me, but the pros outweigh them and, because I went in expecting to find those things, there's no disappointment in it, so they end up bothering me a lot less then it could've.

The other reason I eventually settled on not making my bookmarks private was actually because of those authors that seek improvement and welcome constructive criticism from all the readers who are invested in their story and value their thoughts and experiences while reading their work, because while yes, better to err on the side of caution and not go offering advice and opinions were those are not wanted, if we let that completely rule everything we do in fandom there will be a lot of loss in regards of this constructive, dynamic and interactive aspect so characteristic and wonderful to this type of media.

I know authors can have access to the bookmarks made of their fics, but unlike comments, it's not quite a space exclusively dedicated to them or even for interactions between reader/author.

In a lot of aspects, I'd even go as far as saying it's a space primarily for readers: it's not something that will culminate in a email sent to the author's mailbox, it serves mostly for filtering and ordering purposes (like when you're looking for fics to read and apply a filter to show only fics with a certain number of bookmarks or to order the fics shown from the greater to the least number of bookmarks) and also so readers can, reading these bookmarks, have a better idea on what's to expect from a work from different readers with different personalities and world views and ways to pereceive what was written.

And since it's a space the author *can* have access to *if* they want, it's possible for them to look at that place to see that con-crit while, at the same time, not being a place where that con-crit will get shoved in their faces if they *don't want it* and as such it seemed to me to be an overall respectfull and good compromise between those two points that seemed very important to me, and one of the only way I've found of making it known if that type of interaction is welcome, I'd be happy to head over to their comments and talk there.

If I'm marking it as a rec and commenting, I'm doing it because I think that fic absolutely is one of the best stories that I had the pleasure to read; however, the number of characters allowed in a bookmark rec are limited, so if I end up putting into it anything besides an incoherent keyboard smash, those things are going to be whatever points I feel are very important to keep in mind whenever starting to read it so that reading experience is the most enjoyable possible both for my future self who's going to look at that besties list and decide on what to read again as well as first time readers who might have seen the rec and will go in knowing somethings that, by their nature, don't tend to be things we tag for; they will have mostly what amounts to con-crit, so if you welcome this type of interaction or if the rec I made is bothering you in anyway, I urge you to get in contact with me through the fic mail I linked in my AO3 profile.

This post is getting linked there because the profile section doesn't allow enough characters for everything that I had to say about the subject.

As soon as I see the email, I'll either be happy to either tag the bookmark as Private so it won't be visible to anyone but myself if it bothered you or head over to your comments section so we can talk better about the points I raised if this type of interaction is something you welcome.