#no other tags i've catered my community perfectly

[mushiemellows]

Uhhhh I just stayed up all night doing edits and I hit post just now before knocking out. idk if I'm going to make a proper link when I wake up, just because idk how much I'm wanting to advertise something so strange across platforms. But the Maximum Freak Nasty Perv Robot PWP is now up on my ao3, titled Handle With Care.

Good Morning. ✌︎ I'm going to bed now.

[skele-bunny]

Hi everyone! It was brought to my attention there's concerns about things I write and my writing language, so I wanted to address that!

I want to say first and foremost, I heavily encourage people communicating to me and criticism! I don't mind it at all, and I'm perfectly fine explaining certain things, or feedback about what I can change.

I honestly, genuinely appreciate these things being brought to my attention! I never intend to make people uncomfortable, and if there's a way to change and fix that, I'll do it.

The term "newborn".

So, I was informed that me using the term "newborn" for ghouls made some very uncomfortable especially in nsfw settings. I totally get that, and I hear you! I'll avoid using the term. I had begun using the title as it was not only a source thing for my system, but a way for me to associate new ghouls separately.

I may start using the term in the far future but strictly for fluff purposes, and it's 1000% retired from sexual situations starting now. Instead, I'll begin using "freshly/newly summoned." Or a long the lines.

Infantizing Phantom and Aurora.

I'm very aware I write Phantom in a "smaller" way, as my backstory for him includes being dumbed down and secluded from outside things. It was pointed out how he doesn't seem like an adult in certain situations, and I'll now start to mature that mentality up. I take full acknowledgement on how I write Phantom, but it was never intended to make him act/speak like a child or give the implications he was anything but an adult. But I assure, my language revolving around him will start changing.

As for Aurora, that was completely unintentional. I can understand how it may come across as that, and I'll start taking greater care to see my language revolving around them both in situations.

Fetishizing Rape.

I am a dead dove writer, I've made that extremely clear in both my bio and pinned message. However, I have never meant for any of my Ghost writings to come across as this. The only time you may see me going near that would be with my DD fandoms of Boyfriend to Death/The Price of Flesh, that will only and strictly be posted to my AO3. That is the only, only time.

I do write implications and descriptions of sexual assault, yes, but each one I've made sure to tag/trigger warn as much as possible. These instances are never for fetishizing purposes and only explanations of the past, trauma healing, and in other forms of past tense. If I ever write active SA, it won't be in graphic detail, vague, and warned as much as possible.

Majority of these stories are dedicated to "good endings" of the abuser being killed and the survivor continuing to live on in their own peace, which is catered to my own self and how I want to perceive healing. There's been a few times I've written side "endings" where this doesn't happen, and it's strictly for writing purposes and never delved deep into description. Like a one and done situation, and not what I take as my own canon.

I really hope I was able to clear a majority of these things and explain my thought process. I did not purposely intend for any of these to come across wrongly or as fetishizing purposes. I assure that my terminology and writing habits will be double checked and changed to accommodate to make sure these incidents don't happen again.

If you feel like I need to adjust something or explain, I heavily encourage communicating to me wether as an anon or messages! I am always open to feedback, and I want to make my writing space comfortable for everyone to read and interact with. 🩷

[tea-and-secrets]

Okay this one is sorta NSFW but it's not detailed. Anyway I made a tumblr blog about a deeply taboo subject that I am into (it is not illegal or immoral just heavily looked down upon) and since this thing is so taboo and shameful I don't tag my posts with it. I don't want to get harassment or banned yk. Anyway I found some sort of a community and one of them had a confession blog. I submitted an ask related to the content and mentioned a fic I really liked and they deleted my ask and made a post saying not to make asks personal related. Like it was fandom related it wasn't personal??? (The blog was about fandoms so) the community is so tiny and im kind of forced to interact if I want some content tbh. I'm also autistic and a freak so that does not make social matters any better. I just want to talk to more people about my *ahem* interest without getting canceled or shunned is that too much to ask :( anyway I also found a really cool person on Twitter who writes amazing fanfics I like. I feel bad for them because they're going through some mental stuff but they cater to my niche perfectly. I'm going through some mental stuff myself and I think thats what sparked me making the blog in the first place tbh. I've barely slept since making it and feel extremely anxious. Also further rant very off topic. The other day I sent an anon ask to a person that involved me oversharing about my mental illness. It was completely unasked for but said disorder was related to a post they made that upset me. I don't really feel bad abt it because they upset me and made a pretty rude post about a sensitive subject. I have more tea still. I infiltrated this community of insufferable people who had an anon ask blog much like this. People were so mean on there like I was just trying to share my thoughts like this and they kept bullying me :( it's so annoying bc my mental illness is irrational and people just don't Get It. These days I sometimes just pop into random peoples ask boxes and talk about this stuff. I just think way too much and my friends and people irl would think I am literally insane. I kind of am but thats beside the point. Here's to the ramblings of a mental person. Anyway diagnose me im waiting

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[tiffanytoms]

Do you think one of the reasons why (the vast majority) of Jily fics consist of the same recycled tropes and characterizations is because the Jily fandom (or at least a vocal minority) is less receptive to anything different like fics where the characters are more morally ambiguous/not as perfectly brave+good as they’re usually portrayed?

Hello!

Okay, I am going to answer this question like it was asked in good faith and is not a trap - and really hope that one of the 50 trolls I've blocked doesn't come out of the woodwork bc their spidey-senses started tingling and they just can't wait to yell their Karen opinions at me (I've been traumatized... can you tell I've been traumatized? 🤪)

Yes, absolutely yes. And I would agree it is a vocal minority, bc my anon asks and reader stats have never been better than for my darkest fic. Even the ppl who ended up turning on it were some of the biggest fans/reviewers/ask-senders, etc, so, at the end of the day that's their problem with human psychology and not me.

Morally ambiguous content is DEFINITELY popular, but you got some really loud, obnoxious, morally-superior purity warriors who (can't read warnings and tags), I guess, are here to cleanse all our souls by chastising and bullying others (??) whenever they admit that they like anything different, and that (understandably) pushes ppl back into the shadows. You can one thousand percent enjoy something that you know is bad for you or that you shouldn't. (Hello, sugar? Alcohol? Anything fun? Hahaha) Guilty pleasures are not a crime and reading literal crimes is not a crime. Seriously. You can read about murder and no one has to go to jail! 😱

But let me explain myself further: do I think popular tropes are a bad thing? No! Obviously if so many ppl are writing them, ppl like them! I enjoy them too. I think that's great, write away, but I think there's a problem when ppl are actively trying to stop others from writing anything different bc it's not what they personally want to read. We don't cater to entitled narcissists around here. It's the internet. There's enough room for everyone and ppl gotta learn to share their toys, lol. It is really sad bc over the years I have seen other specific writers (weird that this seems to be a recurring theme...) bullying away several amazing, original writers and that's just all sorts of fucked up. You can't tout this perfect utopian community by ostracizing and lying about anyone who dares to think even slightly differently than the norm. It's dumb as hell, and really insecure on those writers' parts. And frankly, I'm pissed they keep getting away with it.

That being said, let's veer into less nefarious waters and say that these ppl didn't lash out due to jealousy and marking their territory, but bc ppl in general are scared of anything new and what they don't understand. Ppl are creatures of habit, so if enough ppl write Jily in a specific way, that way almost becomes canon. For example, I will never forget my complete 'HUH 🤔' moment when someone was sharing my non-problematic, canon story WAYDTM (so they were clearly a fan) and tagged it as 'OOC'. Bc in my head I was like............. how are they out of character? We literally only know xyz about them and THAT'S IT. But it was completely bc so many ppl had written Lily and James in that specific way that that was almost what was expected. Me making James actually be an asshole at the beginning was marked as 'out of character' even if it made complete sense for the way I told the story.

And to that I say, fuck that.

No one here owns Jily, no one here knows Jily, bc Jily does not exist, they are not real, so write them however the fuck you want. It literally hurts no one, it is a story.

If ppl read the story, cool. If they don't, also cool. But at the end of the day, this is fanfiction over fictional characters, and if you're not allowed to play, then what's the fucking point.

I think it boils down to 2 camps: ppl who want to read/write aspirational Jily, and ppl who want to read/write messy, real (sometimes bad) Jily. Both are completely acceptable and wonderful and AWESOME, and we can have both. We just need both camps to mind their own business (but feel free to travel between them! That's cool!) and live and let live and not pretend like either is better than the other.

It just gets so fucking weird when you have ppl trying to tell you what you can or cannot do. Cut that shit out.

Thanks for the ask 😁 Sorry I got a little heated, this has just been a lot.

[rationalisms]

Omg you discord post is exactly what I’ve been thinking as well. I’ve joined it for fandoms and school groups and irl community stuff and each and every time I get so anxious that I end up going ghost. Speaking specifically on fandom though, I recently deleted my account and the app (love being #free) because the one to one feel of involvement is A Lot. I love screaming into the void and shooting off a stupid post way too much so having to think through everything I say is anxiety like I don’t actually want to feel like I’m in a chat room? Idk but it’s the same with twitter, I use it to crack some jokes but the extra sense of familiarity that seems to come with frequent interactions overwhelms me and everyone else just seems to be okay with it. I realize that’s a box of a social anxiety thing in general though. Anyway not that you asked bit this is why I don’t think I’ll ever leave tumblr it caters so perfectly to the hermit in me lol

oh bud i completely feel you, it's an absolute nightmare for people with any amount of social anxiety. pretty much the only reason i use discord is for ttrpg organizational purposes, and for the one movie watching/music league group chat with my group of friends; any servers i've joined that are bigger than that i go through the exact same process every time: agonize over what to say for several days because everyone else already seems incredibly familiar with each other in a way that's so deeply terrifying and intimidating and then eventually just leaving again. which sux! i wanna Take Part In Stuff and meet people who share my interests but i'm a big ball of anxiety and that setting is my nightmare... so i definitely get you. and good on you for deciding that you're no longer getting anything out of it and pulling the plug! it can be hard especially with how much it's assumed that you have certain social media and FOMO and alla dat, so i'm glad you were able to draw a line and i hope it helps make you feel more comfortable.

i don't mind twitter as much because it feels more passive in a lot of ways. like, engagement can just be a driveby fav or even if you do reply or someone replies to you there's an inherent built-in acceptance of delay in response or even just like. Acknowledgement By Fav Can Be Enough. which imo is definitely not the atmosphere for discord at least ime. but it's still not great for fandom stuff for a ton of other reasons including the complete lack of archiving. and honestly, i abandoned my public twitter for my locked down private one for a multitude of reasons and the anxiety around having to keep up some sort of Public Persona is definitely part of it, so i absolutely understand you on that level as well.

tumblr has its own issues obviously, but like you i never felt the same sense of pressure or dread here. a big part of that is obviously the whole reblog system in itself, in that it's totally fine and even encouraged to just, idk , silently curate pretty pictures for a bit and at most commenting in the tags when you have something to say or w/e, but also being able to do the whole shooting random thoughts into the void whenever you want to instead. it's also much, much easier to curate my experience here than anywhere else lol. much more robust blacklisting functions available (albeit reliant on third party extensions) and if you didn't choose to put something on your dash then tumblr won't for the most part force it on you. so that for sure helps.

idk, i don't have the solution! because like, yes in many ways discord and twitter are suboptimal for fandom stuff but in many ways it's also down to the fact that i do obviously have pretty severe anxiety around these things and struggle with it immensely in a way that a lot of people obviously don't. which sucks but isn't their problem.

i still think we should all move to dreamwidth though. if enough of us hermits congregate there other people eventually have to follow, right? that's how we all ended up on tumblr in the first place :x

[whetstonefires]

Yeah I absolutely need to push back against anyone saying that art being bad stops it from being self-expression.

Like op you allowed that you might even be 'mediocre' which would suggest your stuff is perfectly readable even if you don't think it's 'good,' but like. It's self-expression even if it's basically incomprehensible to any other person, as long as you wrote it down like that on purpose, with the attempt to capture any kind of thought at all.

Just because you're saying it about yourself does not make it okay to state that 'bad art' is disqualified from being self-expression that is not how that works this is very disrespectful to others; all you need for your work to be 'self-expression' is to be a person.

I'm actually kind of mad at you about this op, please don't say this kind of thing, it's harmful to the community. Whoever gave you this idea is stupid and you should ignore them.

Anyway posting a longfic that isn't very popular is absolutely not spamming a tag as long as the things are tagged accurately. Especially not on AO3, the purpose of AO3 is explicitly to have fanworks on it. People reading them is a desired outcome and what the architecture is intended to facilitate, but it's not the purpose; the site is oriented foremost to people who want to put things on it, who are giving it functionality as an archive.

Readers on AO3 are not customers to be catered toward, wooed, or exploited, they're just fellow community members; it's perfectly normal to want them to like your stuff for you because it's validating, but you have absolutely no obligation to them to produce pleasing content to consume.

You don't have to earn your space on AO3 by producing value. 'Your stuff existing' in the space designated for it cannot fall under poor etiquette. Because it's the point, and you're supposed to.

If it's a niche fic in some way--unusual premise, small fandom, starring side characters--and you don't have an established readership, then low interaction numbers for a long fic don't even necessarily imply it isn't liked, it just means the audience for that specific work is small.

If you're not seeing any feedback, just the numbers, it's not at all inappropriate to put in an author's note saying that you're losing confidence in the worthiness of posting this fic online even though you still want to write it, and asking your readers to drop you a line about their thoughts so you know you're sharing it with other people who also care about where it's going and will feel less discouraged. Sometimes people don't comment because they feel like they'll be bothering you.

If you update really quickly you might do better numbers if you keep writing at the same rate but allow that to stockpile, and post every week or two so people don't get overwhelmed by your output and stop following because keeping up is becoming difficult and new material has begun to lose value due to glut.

Now. If you feel ashamed of the work on its merits and don't want people to see it, now that you feel they may be judging it negatively, then that's a separate issue, but again is about you and up to you.

Anyone who resents the presence of a fic that annoys them is responsible for handling that themselves, and they now even have the ability to render you invisible if they deem it necessary, so they have even less basis to demand you go away, which they already didn't have because that's not how AO3 works.

Don't even think about being obligated to not post a correctly tagged work because people might not like it enough. That's just bullshit.

Personally, I have been known to not bother finishing writing a fanfic because it lacks readership to motivate me through the tedious bits, and I've already done the part that I actively wanted to do for me.

But I've also been known to stop updating a fic because I got stuck on the plot, or stopped liking my own characterization, or thought the story was better unfinished than with any ending I could come up with; because my collaborator lost interest, because the readers were expecting a different thing than I'd intended and I became indecisive, because canon retconned something important and now my fic is irrelevant, because I had a bad month and when I felt like writing again I was fixated on a new concept or fandom, and because I belatedly realized that the careless breezy attitude I attempted to take toward canon to make the fic simpler to write has broken down, on account of I now like the fic too much and care about Getting It Right but it's too late, I included the Incorrect details to get through chapter two more efficiently and now I'm too mad at chapter two to write chapter eleven. For example.

I'm. Not good at finishing things. Fortunately this is common in fanfictionland.

(It's common in writing in general it's just fic is posted serially for free and thus particularly prone to being abandoned in public.)

Fellow fic writers (and readers too, I guess): do you stop posting a multiple chapter fic (or multi part fic series) on AO3 if there is very little interest in it in the fandom? Or do you just keep posting it, especially if you personally like that story and invested too much time and feelings in it?

This is a serious question btw, I'm not trying to be whiny here...because I've got no idea about fandom etiquette in that case. Is it fine to keep posting something that will get almost no hits or is that e.g. considered spamming the tag? Especially when it is about a small fandom with not many active authors.

Any answer would be really appreciated and helpful. (Pleeeeease.)