#new superwholock or whatever

[disgruntleddemon]

It's a hard time to be a fan of wwdits who's not intrested in ofmd or good omens 😔✊

[bakatenshii]

ok not to get more deeplore and i know i just said i wasnt gonna take this seriously oopsies (I’M NOT I PROMISE) but

[foe-of-fate]

Once a Superwholockian always a Superwholockian

[hazmatazz]

maybe you were the real superwholocker this whole time

fr i love middle aged white men...

[galacticglitterglue]

it’s so fucking annoying getting recommended blogs and I’m like “oh sweet! a new fun blog to follow that posts ST things and other cool stuff!!” and then I’m immediately hit with the “I hate Billy Hargrove and if you stan him get the fuck off my blog and stop defending him and stop shipping him and stop trying to change canon and if you post anything about him or ship him get the fuck off my blog and LEAVE!!!” bullshit

girl… if a fictional character causes you that much fucking damage I suggest perhaps maybe filtering his name or blacklisting the tags, you don’t gotta straight up throw a fucking fit about it ???

theres plenty of fandoms or ships or characters I don’t like or don’t give a fuck about, and you know what I do? I just filter that shit out and go about my life. do I ever in my life wanna see content about Hamilton or SuperWhoLock or whatever? No!! do I rage about it and tell people to fuck off?? No!! I just block the tags and let people vibe with whatever the fuck they want to. Even in the ST fandom there’s characters and ships I don’t care for, but do I give a single fuck if people post about them? Hell no!! I just block the tags or filter posts that are focused on things I don’t care for.

The features are free and easy to use, AND you don’t have to be a dick about it either!! Like did we forget this is a fictional universe full of fictional characters that is a tv show and not real life??? Did we forget that these characters have no actual impact on basically anything besides the way you choose to let your ideas of them affect you??

I know this is literally just me screaming into the void, and it really means nothing, but all I can think about when I see people get super fucking pissed off and ANTI (insert whatever here) is this:

[bitethedevil]

What annoys you about fandom culture

Oh that’s a spicy question.

Had you asked me a couple of years ago, my answer would be very different from today. I was a proud member of the SuperWhoLock fandom on here as a kid (I still shudder to think about it), and that was usually what I first thought of when the word “fandom” was uttered.

I think I’ve had a pretty negative view on it for a very long time. Mostly I saw fandom culture as cringe. I later got diagnosed with autism and found out that many of the things I found awful and cringe about fandoms, was me internalizing the insecurity I had about my own hyperfixations and I was projecting that onto other people who were obsessed or passionate about certain subjects.

Now “cringe” is a term I’ve tried to kill in my own life. It has been difficult for me to be really unashamedly into something, but you’re on this blog, so you know I’ve certainly gotten somewhere with it lol. I also first and foremost would never put someone else down about their interests, no matter how borderline obsessive they might seem and how they express that obsession. Because if it happened to myself, I know how things like that would crush my enjoyment when I was younger. It’s a very “let people enjoy what they enjoy”-sort of mind set I’ve tried to develop.

Now, if there is something that annoys me, a part of it is related to the statement above: don’t yuck other people’s yum. It’s not too bad on tumblr (in my limited experience). A few negative posts might make it into the tags every now and again, but I don’t mind that too much. You’re allowed to hate the characters I love.

Any kind of media should be open for whatever interpretation the viewer/reader gets out of it. I even like reading Raphael-hate sometimes if the person has some arguments that I haven’t heard before. As you might have noticed from my humongous list of analyses posts, I like picking things apart, and I like seeing other people doing the same, even if it might be in a negative light.

What I don’t like is when it’s: “fuck this character! how can anyone like this character”. Like sure, fair, but don’t tag that specific character (I know that my examples have been pointed towards Raphael, but I know that some Raphael fans have done the same the other way around). I don’t particularly like the Emper*r, but I’ve tried my best to make sure those posts don’t end up in their tags.

These are things across characters though, but it happens within a specific fandom too. I’m not a huge fan of the posts that are like “this character would never (insert statement)”. I don’t like when a version or an opinion of a character becomes canonized through the fandom and presented as fact. This ties back to the thing about me liking to hear about multiple interpretations and that I think all of people’s personal interpretations are valid. It makes it so that media becomes set in stone and then you are unable to gain anymore from it. It ruins it. You don’t agree with a specific version of a character? Then don’t read it. Or do, and maybe gain a new perspective.

My other points would be those that are obvious: don't harass voice actors or any other real life people because you like a specific media or character. Don't be silly.

I also want to be fair and say that this is the first fandom that I have been super active in in years, and I've said again and again that I love this fanbase for how open and kind it is. I think it's the perfect fit for me tbh. I have dipped my toe in other, more popular fandoms but I have quickly found them too overwhelming, because you have to cater to very specific interests in order to even be heard if you are making content, which quickly creates a very limited eco-system and thus some of the problems above might emerge. Here there is a little bit of everything and when you type in the "raphael bg3"-tag, it isn't loaded with thousands of pages of content anymore. That makes me more curious about things I wouldn't normally be into and that broadens my horizon a bit. I like that.

(Thank you for the ask <3)

[doomsdaydicecascader]

my problem with postcanon jade was that it said she was a cis girl before fusing with bec. i took it as the same "true in a transmisogynist way" troll as transmasc roxy

like, truly, i miss transfeminine roxy every day, and my house is fairly glass when it comes to things here considering i'm writing The Butch Lesbian Jane Comic, but like. the way homestuck fans exert ownership over the text of homestuck is fundamentally what the homestuck epilogues and post-canon are about. act 7 is about the dead calliope saying "fuck canon" and making her own, and she does not know how to care for the characters in question. i genuinely believe reconciling these facts, that what homestuck wants to be and what fans want homestuck to be are tangibly, ideologically opposed, is what post-canon is about

"fans read this character as X identity" is fine and good but that's paratext at best, and making demands of a text that has no obligation to respect them at worst. the epilogues are cashing in that desire to not respect them. homestuck has always been shaking off its readers who exert too much ownership, feel too comfortable with it. this goes way back as far as act 5 act 2 - the author commentary describes switching between walkaround sprites and hussnasty mode in such close proximity as a means of saying "if you always get what you expect, you will become complacent and that's no way for a reader to be", the "come in, go away" routine of homestuck is so repetitive now that i'm surprised basically nobody's caught on - homestuck is always doing insane flips to try and shake people off of it.

and now homestuck is doing that with your headcanons. like, this is a thing i see genuinely, all the fucking time in fandom over the past 15 years or so, people hype themselves up on paratexts and pretend the paratext is the source. the worst i ever saw of it was people having full blown self-harm threatening panic attacks because klance was not endgame in voltron legendary defenders. genuinely, i remember this so well - i think there were still two more seasons of the show after that event too, but i didn't watch it.

i only looked on from afar because what i saw of season 1 wasn't especially novel. castiel was never gay, no matter how many times he was caught leaking omegamusk in walmart or whatever, i'm stealing valor with this joke i was never a superwholock omegaverse girlie. there's so many fandoms i'm not a part of, it's unreal.

anyway, my point is people get really invested in their reads on characters and pretend it's real for the same reason a normie's sports team is gonna go the distance this season. and when they don't, they riot. this is literally just sports fandom 101. we may as well be talking about fucking inflategate here. i also don't go to sports. it's basically just homestuck for me these days.

i imagine this is what it's like to run my little pony before bronies came along: the show was negligible in relevance beyond its capacity to show off the new toys to play with. but the difference is that my little pony is about the toys, it's about encouraging that kind of play, it's fundamentally a set of toys they made a show about, as opposed to homestuck, which was always niche art for webcomics weirdos that caught on, quite literally, with the brony audience. i remember the first time i ever saw dave strider was on fucking ponychan, chronologically it would have been mid-act 5 act 2. it was an image of dave ransacking the lohac stock exchange, which is an a5a2 thing, it was before season 2 started, etc etc.

this is one hell of a tangent to say as far as the text of mspaintadventures is concerned, problem sleuth characters have gender signifiers that are more similar in nature to drag and performance of gender roles than any actual sexual dimorphism. homestuck characters are built atop the gender expression of problem sleuth. jade was a 13/16-year old girl, and that's the only information there was. over time, this changed.

this was an explicit change, too - it's in the change to act 6, passing through the fourth wall, that these characters, who fundamentally are game pieces, that homestuck starts to contend with the fact that people are emotionally invested in them as people. people don't like dave or vriska in the same way that people care about problem sleuth or nervous broad, and this comes out in the text. we get a lot of the best stuff in homestuck out of that change, too, like. the retcon only works because of that emotional investment, and i go so hard for the retcon. the retcon is the coolest thing ever.

and with that change, now, in 2024, she is explicitly a 39 (? i think she's 39.) year old woman with a penis. she didn't go from "cis woman" to "trans woman", she went from game piece to human person. there is no "cis jade" to be overwritten. you're assuming a "cis is default" worldview of a team of transgender and/or nonbinary people and thats just like. its not ideal, really

[lovand4vamp]

I am SO close to completing the superwholock circle. And so incredibly late yes

To further explain myself I joined tumblr for sherlock in like 2016, and a new world was discovered. I new about the other two shows in the triangular fandom reign of those days, but only superficially, I didnt really now much about them other than their titile, main charcters and a very foggy idea of what they were about. I never developed an interest, sherlock was a full time job at the time, remember season 4 was about to come out, the theories were wild.

Then, like yeeears later, came the pandemic, and I, much like everyone else, had too much free time on my hands, and spent quite some of it here. So I new the last season of supernatural was airing, and I randomly decided to watch it, without any context whatosever, just straight to season 15 because why not. We all now what happened, and there it went the next few years of my life being fixated on this old show, and the continuous drama was just that good.

Some time early this year, when i was finishing my months non stop The x files first watch, yes all through its 11 seasons and 2 movies, I needed something to fill that gap (and distract me a little bit from whatever those last txfs seasons was), so I put that show people here were talking so much about, Good Omens, without much expectation. And well, well, well, guess what happened. Anyways, thats how I came upon two amazing british actors, and let me tell you, yall fans were right.

So, now im watching all of david tennant’s work in chronological order (and michael sheen’s, but his I havent found an organized made list with links like the ones I found of dt) and I’m a few short years away in his career from doctor who.

Rip me I would have loved 2014 tumblr.

[torchstelechos]

I need to watch House M.D. or whatever it's called, my buddy made a Tumblr account a few days ago and it's literally all over his dash which tells me it's tumblrs horrible little new superwholock dlc edition show with wet little meow meows taking drugs and blorbos that would diagnosis me with gay, so yaknow, it fucks

[biihanka]

I think the reason why Izzy dying is bothering me so much is bc OFMD is one of the shows that came out right after the superwholock queerbaiting era was ending, and for the first time I thought that "it's okay if my old fave characters didn't had a happy ending bc new characters are coming and it's possible now"

If you where on the fandom back in the day you know what I'm talking about, like it was queerbaiting all the time on these shows. But then Good Omens, OFMD, WWDITS, IWTV came and this new generation of openly queer series and characters took over my life and I was "okay I think I found my safe spot here".

I never cried as much for a characters death like I did for Dean, at the time I even felt relieved that he died bc this bs show would be over and I would never have to go trought that again. I was very wrong. Having showwriters dismiss and treat your faves bad bc of whatever reason, budget cuts, limited episodes, idc is no excuse for bad writing.

In Izzy's case, it literally felt like a deja vu to Dean, spending a whole night crying when there's work the next day, the sadness as if it was a real person who died, almost same circunstances for them too, either from bts problems or show storytelling, it was rushed, it was stupid, it was abusive to characters that finally had a chance at a happy life... either way I could be here all day now but it won't change shit.

I already said why Izzy was my fave and I don't want to sound like a broken record but damn I thought it was gonna be different this time :´)

EDIT: I'm gonna add a little something here that I forgot, sorry I'm really not doing well, but:

The worst of all too is that Izzy is an openly queer character! When I say Izzy's death devasted me is because it felt like I was being queerbaited again!

Yes I know, Lgbtqia+ characters can die on stories and it's okay, I agree, but when you come from a background like this, and literally one of the firsts new gen queer shows pulls these same tactic as the other previous one who traumatized you, well we can feel a little betrayed.

[le-fandom-prince]

Oh wow, this blog's got such 2013 vibes <- major compliment. I used to have a superwholock +mcu blog back then xD

ayyye!! thank you!! you bet!! just a little escape from whatever crazy crap is happening irl! no shame in enjoying some fandom chaos! old or new!

[poorlittlegreenie13]

you as a sydcarmy writer manifesting lesbian syd is so funny to me but also real af to be honest lmao

😭. Listen—

Spoilers for season 3 below the cut

Season three honestly killed something in me lol. I hated it so much. And I hated Carmy’s behavior toward Syd so much. Just my personal opinion. But the sydcarmy lover in me is taking a little break because I’m so angry at this new version of Carmy who apparently doesn’t respect Syd for shit… not *my* Carmen Berzatto, that’s for sure. I would never have shipped that version of Carmy with Syd honestly. I think a key aspect of Carmy’s personality is that he gets overloaded, lashes out, & then feels overwhelming shame & guilt afterward. Which is a classic trauma response. But this season it’s just all explosions, no shame/guilt. I don’t personally think it’s a realistic depiction of his trauma/character type thus far, as someone who grew up in a similar environment. I also just think he respects Syd enough not to treat her like he did this season, and I think she has enough self respect not to tolerate it! Season one Syd would’ve been out the door. She quit after much less from Carmy in season one!

I could go on and on. Essentially I think they ruined their own show bc they were so mad about people interpreting it differently than they wanted. I think Chris Storer threw a little bitch fit & was like ‘fuck you guys :( you want my complex characters to have sex, I hate you :(‘ & purposefully sidelined Syd & Carmy’s partnership/friendship/whatever it was intended to be to try to squash the shipping which is so bizarre to me. I don’t even really care if Syd/Carmy canonically happens, I grew up in the golden age of Superwholock, no amount of anti-sydcarmy quotes will sway me. But it’s sad bc with this season, part of my enthusiasm for them as a couple faded; I want Syd to be with somebody who respects her on a professional & personal level. It honestly just makes me a bit uncomfortable to think about her being with Carmy atm in the context of season three because I feel his verbal abuse of her & his total dismissal of her as a partner were way out of line.

So, as a lesbian who loves Ayo, I’m currently rooting for lesbian lmao.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just my thoughts.

I still love Syd & Carmy in seasons 1 & 2 so I’ll finish my fic soon, just taking a little break atm.

[thatbeluga]

Wet Sock 2x09: Womb Builds a Destiel Bomb

Season One / 2x01 / 2x02 / 2x03 / 2x04 / 2x05 / 2x06 / 2x07 / 2x08

Wombat did a double triple backflip frontflip and landed expertly on his marsupial toes. Rad was launched out of Ohio and slammed face first into the dusty road, but pushed off with sheer chin strength and righted herself, also striking an Epic Pose. Then Misp came tumbling through, about to form an Epic Pose, when they tripped on their Crocs that were still sticky with Grimace Shake. They smacked into their brother and mom, sending all three sprawling onto the ground.

"Misp you fucking dweebus," Womb groaned, struggling to his feet or paws or whatever. Rad rubbed her head, looking up.

"Where...when... are we?"

A giant election map dominated the sky, clouds proclaiming that putin was stepping down. A darkened town surrounded them, the remains of a former Superwholock empire. The distorted notes of Wendy Williams on the Masked Singer performing Native New Yorker echoed across the ruins.

"We're in November 5th, 2020," Womb said, glancing around at the empty houses. Misp screamed, pointing at something on the ground.

It was a piece of fishing tackle, left in the middle of the road. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be holding a pride flag. Misp walked toward it, eyes so wide they could make Y/N jealous. Just before they could grab it, Womb swatted it away.

"Hey!" Misp kicked Womb. "I was gonna get it."

"You don't want to touch that. I read about it in our grandparent's secret tomes," Womb said, pointing to another abandoned fishing lure further down the street that was wearing a rainbow sticker. "It's... oh god... it's queer bait."

"No!" Misp said, stepping back. "That can't be true! Queer bait isn't real!"

"It's very real," Rad said, kicking a stray queer bait into the shadows. "It caused the downfall of many an empire. You don't fuck with queer bait."

"As long as we steer clear of it, we should find everything we need to save Beluga and Fuck," Womb said. "We just need to build a bomb."

"FUCK YEAH! BOMB!" Misp shouted.

Womb pointed to the sky, "Every midnight, Castiel confesses his love to Dean, and this realm is briefly revived. If we harness all that energy, we can build a bomb big enough that Y/N will have to come to fix the damage herself. While she's distracted, we can find Bel and Fuck and bring them back to the estate."

"Or," Rad said, shrugging in her iconic pose. "We could just go home."

"But Mom..." Misp said. "I really wanted to build a destiel bomb. With womb. I mean also save my grandparents from having their atoms torn apart by Y/N, but mostly I wanted to build a bomb with womb, mom."

"Offspring, the queens and kings of the multiverse sing that oh fuck I can't rhyme that much, well actually, Author!Beluga can't cause he's shit at writing poetry on the spot," Rad said, shaking her head, but in fact, she was not dead, and her favorite color was not red, but she wished she could eat some bread, in bed, and then go to the fictional country from Brandon Sanderson's the Stormlight Archive, Jah Keved.

"...whut?"

Rad knelt down, and patten Misp's mushroom head. "If you want to save your grandparents, that's fine. I won't stop you from building a destiel bomb. But I'm not gonna help you either."

"But Mom, it's Beluga and Fuck," Womb said.

"Yes," Rad said. "They handled themselves before. They can handle themselves without our help."

She turned around, and opened a rift back to the Quarter Family estate. She turned back to her kids. Womb shook his head.

"I'm gonna help Womb with the Destiel Bomb, mom," Misp said. Rad nodded.

"Don't get queerbaited."

-------------------------------------------------

Rad walked back into the manor, her head hung. She had no idea how long she'd been gone, but hopefully Elmo hadn't--

"RAD!" She looked up to the ramparts of her estate and saw... Elmo.

And standing behind her, cerulean orbs quavering, was Y/N.

[wendolinblack-blog]

TUMBLR !!!!! I’m finally back and let me tell you all it feels good 😋 this is a new format for me, I haven’t been on officially since 7th or 8th grade. So it has been A WHILE. Back then I only used tumblr on a computer so having it on my phone is a welcomed change. I tried coming back during my marauders obsession era during quarantine (hence the bio, username etc) obviously that didn’t last long. But I’m back this time and I hope for good. I haven’t felt such sheer rush of dopamine go through my body in a long time.

Introductions or Re-introductions are in order

My name is Wendolin, I go by Wendy

Located in the US, Midwest born and raised, (don’t worry I’m blue 💙) . Let see…what else ?

Was raised by One Direction, Louis girl from the start and forever.

I was a superwholock girl, yknow what I still am idc, no shame in the game of OG tumblr.

Also loved BBC Merlin duh, go big or go home right? Of course Harry Potter you can’t go wrong with that. All around interested in whatever was popular on TUMBLR in the early 2010’s. A crazy sentence to say when I’m still convinced 2016 was a couple years ago.

Was on the internet way too young as mentioned previously, now a full grown adult, still loving the things I loved as a teen.

Anyway that’s all for now,

Stay warm

-W

[running-tweezers]

You know, I never really talk about the specifics as to why I’m so cautious about fandom and what I get involved in on here. And also as a result why I’m often really scared to interact with people. But I was recently talking about my experience with a friend and doing a lot of unpacking with myself. And as tough as it is, I think I want to share, in case it might help someone.

CW: threats of death and sexual assault, unwanted romantic/sexual advances, suicide, toxic relationships

I will try to make this as concise as possible but no promises lol

It was around 2014. I was about 19/20. I had recently started being more active in a fandom that will remain unnamed. This fandom was by far the biggest one I’ve ever been a part of, but not a big super fandom, like Superwholock or Marvel or whatever was big at the time. And this piece of media was everything to me. I kept up with new content religiously. I went to conventions. I cosplayed. I have beloved memories with irl friends attached to it. It brought me such genuine joy, and there’s a part of me that’s sad it’s been so poisoned for me that I can’t look at anything related to it anymore.

I was just starting to dip my toe into the online fandom aspect of things, and I was looking for people to follow. I saw someone make a post about my favorite character, and I agreed with the take so hard, it was as if I wrote it myself. So I followed instantly. Not long after, that blog followed me back, and sent me a DM. We’re gonna call him G.

G introduced himself and asked me if I followed him because I read his fanfic. I didn’t even know he wrote fanfic. Turns out G was a WAY bigger deal in the online fandom than I realized. He had written what was, at the time, the longest running piece of fanfiction for this fandom. He was what some might consider a “Big Name Fan”. I was so shocked that someone that big wanted to follow me, a tiny blog who was better known for posting about musical theater before getting into this fandom.

We talked about my favorite character for a while, and then started talking in the DMs more regularly after that. I was so excited that I was making a friend within this fandom. And someone so well known! It was crazy! I did read his fanfic, it definitely wasn’t for me, not my cup of tea, but that was fine! I didn’t need to tell him that, that would be rude! So I lied, and told him I loved it. I also told him I loved one of his favorite ships, even though I was pretty eh on it, didn’t care one way or the other. But I couldn’t hurt his feelings! This was a new friend!

That was mistake number one, but also maybe what ended up saving me.

After a while, our conversations turned a little more personal, talking about our lives outside of fandom. That’s when things started getting weird. G seemed like he maybe wanted something more than friendship. I was pretty clear that I was in a serious relationship at the time and not available (which was true, that relationship is now my wonderful husband) and he would back off a bit. But soon he was back on it again, reblogging my selfies with strings of heart eye emojis, sending me ask game responses straight up telling me that he thought I was hot and he had a crush on me, basically pushing things as far as he could without crossing a line.

Never once did I consider unfollowing him, or blocking him though. Because after we became friends I started to see that G was not afraid of calling people out. He had enough sway that he could turn a large swath of people against someone if he talked shit in a post. And honestly, he was ruthless. If I turned him down outright, or stopped talking to him, that could be me he went after next. Thats when I became absolutely terrified of upsetting him. So I kept putting up with his advances, kept praising his fanfic I didn’t like, kept talking all about this ship he loved, kept listening to him talk shit about people who didn’t agree with his opinions, kept talking to him like we were buddies. But I was scared.

It wasn’t until much much later down the line that realized I was essentially in a controlling and abusive relationship with this guy. The fact that it was platonic and not romantic (at least on my end) clouded that for me in the moment. My life revolved around online fandom, the drama, the discourse, and making sure my opinions lined up with his so he wouldn’t get mad at me.

That’s how it went until shit eventually hit the fan. I was gone for a while and I couldn’t get online for a week or so. I remember worrying that he was gonna get mad that I wasn’t answering him. So when I got the chance to go online again I went to check. And G was gone. Account deactivated. I was so confused, so I went digging in the fandom tag.

Turns out G had been exposed for sending very detailed and personal death and rape threats to people who didn’t agree with him. People who didn’t ship his favorite ship. People who didn’t like his fanfic. He had been sending these threats the entire time I knew him.

I have never felt such retroactive fear in my entire life. I was one of the people who didn’t agree with him on everything. I didn’t ship his favorite ship. I didn’t like his fanfic. I just lied and said I did to placate him. If he was sending such detailed and personal death and rape threats to total strangers on the Internet, I cannot imagine what he might have done had he found out I also didn’t agree with him. Someone he thought was his friend. Someone he was obviously romantically and sexually attracted to.

And I realized that just because he deactivated his account, that didn’t mean he was gone. He could very easily make another account. He could find me again.

That filled me with such dread that I quit tumblr. I left this website and fandom entirely.

The next year was what I consider one of the worst of my entire life mentally. Not all of it was because of this, but I think this experience, plus a lot of things about fandom/tumblr culture in general at the time were definitely the one jenga block I pulled that knocked the whole tower down. I ended up trying to take my own life that year. Fortunately that didn’t happen and I got help that I desperately needed.

I debated coming back to tumblr for a long time. I was gone from online fandom for 8 years. And I missed it. It wasn’t all bad. I missed the joy it was capable of bringing me. So now that I’m nearly 30, I decided to come back so I could join the Redacted community, because it had become such an intense hyperfixation. I figured I had grown, and I knew how to set boundaries and control my time online now. And for the most part I have. There are for sure still times where I see things within this community that trigger old feelings, and sometimes I wonder if coming back was a mistake. But for the most part I’m really proud of myself for coming back and making the experience of being part of a fandom a positive one again.

If you feel like fandom is becoming a place that is hurting you, PLEASE. Set boundaries. Take control of your time online. Nothing and nobody in any fandom is more important than taking care of yourself and your mental health. It may seem so incredibly important but at the end of the day? It’s only tumblr. There is a great big world out there and this is a teeny tiny slice of it. Don’t let that tiny slice ruin everything else, ok? If I can help one single person by sharing this, it will have been worth it.

[coldflasher]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

Tagged by @kitkatt0430 and @softboydepot - Thank you both for the tag :D

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

So I was about 13 years old, I was scrolling through my brand new One Direction tumblr, username "its-a-1d-world", soon to become "curly-and-boobear-stylinson", a harrowing username that genuinely makes me shiver like someone just walked over my grave. Like I'm sure this means nothing to someone who wasn't in the fandom AND an extreme larrie but let me tell you. Imagine the most intensely cringe superwholock url you could have. It's on that level

And I remember seeing what we would soon come to very derisively refer to as a "harry het fic" on my dash. So like, in 1D fandom, you had your standard self-insert Y/N fics, you had the queer RPF where you were shipping the boys with each other, and then you had the "het fics", which is where someone would make up a female character for one of the boys (usually Harry bc that man had and still has an insane chokehold on teenage girls everywhere) to date. If anyone has had the misfortune to read and/or watch After by Anna Todd... that type of deal

ANYWAYS I was totally unaware of fanfic as a concept, which is quite funny because as a little baby writer I'd been writing extremely derivative pseudo-fanfic for quite a few years by that point, like stories inspired by Young Dracula or Narnia or whatever without really knowing what it was. But this Harry het fic floated across my dash and a little switch went in my brain because I was like WAIT. I COULD BE WRITING STORIES ABOUT THE BOYS?? Like this was so exciting to me because writing is like probably my biggest eternal special interest and One Direction was my like, most intense special interest at the time, so I was like WAIT. I CAN COMBINE THESE THINGS. And also PEOPLE WILL READ THEM AND COMMENT ON THEM and I was sooo convinced I was god's gift to writing at the time so I was like well OBVIOUSLY everyone will read MY fics and I'll get super fandom famous instantly.

So I wrote an incredibly terrible Harry het one shot with an original character and literally got crickets. Nobody read it. Very embarrassing. I think I wrote a handful of these and nobody wanted to know, which is fair enough because I'm sure they were very bad. But THEN I was like okay fine, well everyone is obsessed with Larry, including me (though I very much liked it in a "bromance" way at the time, so I'll write a Larry fic instead. This is Louis and Harry for the uninitiated. It was the biggest fandom ship. We shipped all and every configuration of the boys but Larry and Ziam were the hard hitters. I think I wrote a few different one shots for various pairings but then I did my first Larry multi-chapter

ANYHOO the Larry fic was a big hit, I got all the outpouring of compliments and attention that my enormous thirteen-year-old head was convinced I deserved and that was kind of it really lmao. I was hooked. When I tell you I'd update my fics MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY because I was writing so fast and so obsessively, like god idk what the fuck was going on in my head but it was the greatest high I have ever experienced in my life. I also got incredibly deeply involved in the conspiracy theory about Louis and Harry's secret gay relationship and spent the next five years of my life tinhatting obsessively but that's a whole other story

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

In terms of what I've posted to AO3, only a handful—as mentioned, I started off in the One Direction fandom, I've written for The Flash and Legends, and dabbled in Doctor Who. In terms of fandoms I've written little bits for but never shared... so many lmao, the list (as far as I can recall) includes the following:

Batwoman, Supergirl, The Bold Type, The Devil Wears Prada, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Torchwood, Twilight, X-Men, and bizarrely, The Witcher, apparently??? I have ZERO memory of that, but it's in my fanfic folder. No idea what that was about

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

I think I started in 2011/early 2012, so upward of a decade at this point... eesh.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

Definitely write. I do want to read more fic, but I have a hard time choosing what to read and I am very bad at using AO3's search functions to find what I want.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

I've finally started finishing shit!! Big moment for me lmao

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I read an entire book on public defenders for a fic where Barry becomes a public defender instead of a CSI. I own a copy of a book called Forensics for Dummies which I'm slowly working my way through for fic reasons... I feel like none of these are that weird lmao

7. What’s your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Who doesn't love the mega long comments pulling out random lines the reader liked to yell about them. I sometimes get so excited reading these comments that I lose sleep over it lmao i love them so much

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

Lmaoo this is a very odd one but I once wrote a Larry Stylinson fic where Harry was Slenderman and he was haunting Louis, and either Zayn or Liam was like a Van Helsing type who was trying to hunt Slenderman!Harry down and kill him. Or maybe it was Nick Grimshaw, the at the time host of the BBC1 radio breakfast show. He was the go-to fandom villain at the time

I never finished it but that was a cool time, someone in the fandom actually composed an instrumental piano piece inspired by Slenderman!Harry which is up there with the coolest things that have ever happened to me

In general I don't know if I necessarily go that fringe. I feel like it's somewhat obvious I have a bit of a thing for femdom, and also like. Coldwest/coldwestallen in general lmao, I guess that's fringe-ish

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Funnily enough probably pwp. I feel like smut is generally considered to be just an easy fun time but I feel like my line-editing process is not conducive to smut writing thing because I write the first draft in a haze of feral horny energy and then edit and revise it over and over to the point where I no longer find it sexy at all and am unable to tell whether it's even still hot or if I've totally killed the vibe in my quest to find the most poetic way of describing the way people fuck nasty. It's very frustrating ngl

10. What is the easiest type?

None of them. This is such a cop-out but everything I write is hard because I'm an insane perfectionist and everything HAS to be beautifully crafted so at this point everything is hard. But ngl I find multichapters easiest to draft in some ways just cos I can kinda cling to the high of "ooh a new idea" whilst also contributing to the same project because the "new ideas" are just new chapters, if that makes sense? It's fitting them all together that's the hard part lmao

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

I use a combination of Microsoft Word, Scrivener, and a notes app on my phone called Penzu, which is where I scribble down all the random snippets and ideas and bits and bobs that come to me during the day. The bulk of my drafting and editing is done in Word and I basically only use Scrivener for its notecard function where you can move scenes around really easily, and then I transfer everything back into Word because of Tracked Changes. Does Scrivener have that? Probably. Scrivener has everything

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

Honestly it's never really a case of "too nervous/intimidated" because I genuinely have never encountered an idea where I was like "hmm idk if I can pull it off", I have extreme faith in my own capabilities to an almost delusional level lmao, it's always just "I do not have time". But I do have this extremely long Coldwestallen fic that's inspired by Hades and Persephone, with Barry as Persephone, Len as Hades, and Iris as a soooort of Demeter figure which i know is weird because Demeter is Persephone's mother, but whatever, she more embodies the familial connection of the whole team rather than being an actual blood relative if that makes sense

So the concept is basically Barry as Persephone spending half his time with Len and the Rogues in the criminal underworld (I thought I was so clever for that one lmao) and the rest with Team Flash, and then the lines blur and it becomes coldwestallen-y eventually, but it's soooo long and basically split into four novels that I have written between 25 and 50k for each. It's gonna take me literal YEARS to tackle this thing so I've kinda put it on hold for now but I miss it so much

13. What made you choose your username?

So I wrote a joke in a fic that I genuinely have no idea whether I even posted it or not, it might have been in Aftermath. But basically Barry's suit gets blown up and he gets photographed literally streaking through the city totally nude (you can't see anything bc he's moving too fast but you can tell he ain't wearing any clothes lmao) and there's a newspaper headline that's like "THE FLASHER???" Let me tell you I was very annoyed the other day when I learned they already made that joke on Supergirl

And then I just added "cold" for Len lmao