#our life fanfiction

[fricking-ur-mom]

So . . . this is love . . ?

Credits to the original artist ofc.

what if i started writing for Our Life? Hitting inspo for it- not sure tho.

Would anyone be interested in it though? I've noticed a lack of such content..

[kriz-smthn]

[iinsomaniac]

love how the moment ao3 goes down we all start acting like housewives waiting for their husbands to come back from war

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[fair-kid]

AO3 Kudos and Comments

For all those beautiful AO3 readers out there...

I get an email notification from AO3 every time I get kudos or comments on my fics. I receive those emails while I'm at my soul-sucking day job.

It is a blinding flash of pure joy and delight and love, that floats me along for the rest of the day (and several days after).

So, if you're reading and enjoying someone's fic on AO3... PLEASE KUDO AND COMMENT telling them how much you love it! You are literally feeding their soul.

Bonus points if you tell them what specifically you love, and why, and how much.

DOUBLE BONUS POINTS if you quote your favorite lines from their work. <-Writers love this

***THANK YOUUUU <3 <3 <3 we don't do it for money, we do it because we LOOOVE to do it and we can't not do it, and we love to share it and talk to others who love it too!!!!!!***

[orange-coloredsky-archive]

a development team that looks like this could not possibly have any preconceived biases against Black people. noooo way. its just a mistake that all of the Black people in fo4 are slaves or named after fascist colonizers or murdered or stereotypical conspiracy freaks. there is no way that the reality of this team is reflected in the art they create over and over and over and over and over and over and

[ID 1: A photo of the Fallout 4 development team taken from above and forward, showing a large crowd smiling at the camera, made up apparently entirely by white people, and almost entirely by white men. End ID.]

[s0ny2k8]

it’s me and my 31 ao3 tabs against the world ❤️

[matcha-milkies]

CONTENT WARNING: Body Horror, Toxic & Abusive Billford

MY "MARRIED LIFE" FIC HAS A FAN ANIMATION NOW?!!!!

PLEASE GO WATCH IT IT'S SO SO SO SO GOOD

(fic link below the cut)

Also: The Tumblr-Posted Version That I Still Need to Update

[mikeysgerard]

You ever clutch your phone to your chest whenever you finish reading a fanfic and you're like, sighing and thinking "yeah, that one's gonna stay with me forever" and smile all content and happy to yourself because you just read the most amazing thing on earth

[irenespring]

One month until the election...holy shit.

Okay, I'm just going to point out that Project 2025 proposes a sweeping ban of "pornography." So if you write or read smutty fanfiction, or want to protect access to sites like AO3 in general, vote for Harris.

[crispyliza]

The one benefit about ao3 being down is that it forces authors to focus on writing their own fics instead of procrastinating by reading others.

So everyone, be ready for mass updates tomorrow 👍

[shamachan]

hehe hii *eats writing*

can i request a step 1 jealous qiu x gn!mc that has an obvious crush on baxter and just follows him around?

I love your writing please don’t die 😔🙏🏼

Jealous Qiu × gn!MC with crush on Baxter.

step 1. enjoy!

— Qiu was used to people liking him. It's just how it is - he had never really questioned it. Usually all people around him want to become his friends. who wouldn't want to hang out with Qiu Lin? That's right, no one!

— You made him feel a bit more interested in you than in anybody else, so he expected this feeling to be mutual. But you were different, so different that it was able to frustrate Qiu by you being not so interested in him, and imagine his surprise when you expressed even more disinterest in his company after meeting Baxter. it made him think about this.

— At first he was thinking it was temporary due to Baxter being a new acquaintance, then thought you were really just busy to hang out with him. When this continued further, Qiu began to not quite understand.

— He didn't even know why he was so fixated on this, but everytime he saw you forgetting about him when Baxter is around, he bites his inner cheek and looks kind of hurt at you for a couple of seconds. or when you constantly walk with Baxter, seeming to look at him with heart-shaped eyes, Qiu only sighs sadly and frowns, even if recovers quickly. Qiu does not really tolerate this feeling in his chest, which makes him seem to shrink inside that his stomach aches.

— He didn't understand where this feeling came from, and he might even talk to his parents about it. Qiu basically experienced this for the first time, and only with you.

— He won't interfere you much though, he still cares enough about you two, so if you enjoy each other's company then be it! But, nevertheless, from time to time he will offer other options for spending time together, those that include Qiu himself. You refuse? Oh, then he'll be kinda sulky. Qiu wants your attention too.

— He can't help but wonder, why did you like Baxter so much? Was it about his looks? Or the fact that he is rich? Qiu can't boast of the latter, but he thinks he looks good too. Or do you like his mystery behaviour? Oh come on, Qiu can be mysterious even better! Just prefer Qiu's company over Baxter, and he'll be the most mysterious person in the history.

— He will try to get your attention in different ways. He will be the very first in the bike races, he will be the best in your favorite subject, he will be just the coolest kid out here, believe me! And Qiu is so unlikely to give up. Maybe he'll learn a few tricks on his bike or how to jump off his "hideout" even more epically.

— He will also try to talk to you on the advice of his parents. Qiu would be worried, not knowing how you would take it and how to tell you properly. He even prepared the speech in his notepad in advance. After all of this, you will solve this misunderstanding, right?

[cooking-with-hailstones]

Statistical analysis of the most popular A:TLA fics on AO3

(All of this is accurate as of May 27 2024)

I like numbers and statistical analysis and for some unfathomable reason I find it calming. So last night I made this spreadsheet!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a judgement of the quality, value, or merits of any of the fics on this list. It's just me being curious about what's popular with the A:TLA fandom on AO3. I was genuinely surprised at some of the results!

Observations and analysis under the cut:

TL:DR, the fandom fucking loves putting Zuko into Situations.

Methodology: I'm including all fics from the first page of results from the most kudos'd, commented, hits, and bookmarks tagged under the Avatar: The Last Airbender (cartoon, 2005) tag on ao3. I am deliberately not including any larger multifandom flash fiction or drabble collections because I don't think they're super relevant. This ended up including 38 fics in total.

I put all the fics into one single spreadsheet in order to compare the differences between fics that are really high on the kudos count but not the hit count, or what has a lot of comments but fewer hits. Basically, I'm throwing a lot of things together to observe what gets engagement and looking at patterns that emerge!

Top 5 most popular fics by hit count:

Salvage - MuffinLance

Fractures - EvieNyx

Embers- Vathara

Towards the Sun - MuffinLance

The Art Of Burning - hella1975

Max: 1,407,170 (Salvage -MuffinLance)

Min: 78,168 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 349,442

Top 5 most popular fics by kudos count:

Salvage - MuffinLance

The Family You Choose - TunaFishChris

where the stars do not take sides - WitchofEndor

Fractures - EvieNyx

The beginning of a new and brighter birth - aloneintherain

Max: 59,947 (Salvage - MuffinLance)

Min: 3293 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 19,868

Top 5 most popular fics by number of comments:

The Art Of Burning - hella1975

Salvage - MuffinLance

Fractures - EvieNyx

Towards the Sun - MuffinLance

War Games - Lovely_Elbow_Leech

Max: 13,469 (The Art Of Burning - hella1975)

Min: 358 (Hallowed - Haircrescendo)

Average: 3634

Top 5 most popular fics by number of bookmarks:

absence of heat, excess of destiny - theycallmesuperboy

Salvage - MuffinLance

where the stars do not take sides - WitchofEndor

The Family You Choose - TunaFishChris

The beginning of a new and brighter birth - aloneintherain

Max: 150,317 (absence of heat - theycallmesuperboy)

Min: 430 (Risking it all - Sreeder)

Average: 9297

Highest kudos/hit ratio: Safety First - Haircrescendo (20.36%)

Lowest kudos/hit ratio: My Heart Burns For You - alwaysZutarian (0.89%)

Average kudos/hit ratio: 8.25%

Fic Ratings:

G: 9

T: 18

M: 6

E: 2

Unrated: 3

Popular authors (people who showed up more than once):

Aloneintherain (3)

Haircrescendo (5)

MuffinLance (4)

WitchofEndor (2)

Characters:

Literally all of these fics are Zuko-centric. Not all of them are Zuko-pov but every. single. one. focuses on Zuko as a main character. At least one of the following tags is on every single fic in this list: "The Gaang & Zuko", "Zuko & Zuko's Crew", "Zuko & Iroh" "Zuko & Azula" and "Zuko & [insert gaang member here]"

Relationships:

Ok this is what actually shocked me the most. I fully expected to see more Kataang, Zutara, etc in the top rated fics, but NO! Only 21 out of the 38 fics had any relationship slash tag, and of those, 20/21 were Sokka/Zuko (shoutout to My Heart Burns For You as the token Zutara fic to make it into this list). I did NOT realize Zukka was so popular! Now I'm super curious about what it would be like to run these numbers on FF.net because I know so much A:tla fanfic was written before ao3 existed and most hasn't been cross-posted, and Zukka wasn't a popular ship until more recently.

Other random observations:

There seems to be a pretty even split between post-canon firelord Zuko fics and canon-divergent "Zuko joins the Gaang early" fics.

Only one modern au as far as I could tell! (shoutout to "The Good Vanilla")

We all seem to love a Dadkoda fic

There is a very strong correlation between one-shots and a high kudos/hit ratio.

Seemingly no correlation between word count and number of kudos. The top kudos'd stories were mostly under 10k words, while all the other catergories were dominated by fics in the 100k+ word count.

I didn't really see much correlation between hits, kudos, and comments overall.

There were LOTS of fics that only showed up in one category, which was really interesting! I figured each list would look pretty much the same, and there were several fics that did show up on the front page of every category (Salvage definitely sweeps the board for overall most popular fic), but there was a lot of variation between each list! Some fics had TONS of hits but very few comments, some had truly wild kudos/hit ratios, some were just massively bookmarked.

Thank you for indulging in my nerdiness, and feel free to tell me what I missed or anything you're curious about!

Update: I did it again, this time with Legend of Zelda

[morallysuperiorlips]

Fanfiction Taught Me 90% of What I Know About Writing

That’s the gods honest truth. And I’m saying that as someone who has a literal college degree in writing.

I took SO MANY writing classes in college. All genres. Creative. Playwriting. Screenwriting. Editorial. Journalistic. Business. Technical. I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil correctly, and really started to pursue it in 2nd grade when every teacher following gushed about my writing skills. I can confidently say I’ve been honing my craft for over two decades.

However, I didn’t really git gud at writing until I started really writing fanfiction. Like, joining a fandom and actively writing an ongoing fic for it.

Again, I’d taken years upon years of writing classes. I learned story structure, grammar, theming, POVs, tone, etc. all throughout school. I learned how to receive feedback and edit my work a little more down the road. I learned from professionals in the field. I worked with mentors.

However, none of that helped my skyrocket my skills like writing fanfiction did.

Fanfiction taught me how to actually write deep, nuanced, and compelling characters. I never once filled out a 200-question character sheet for any character I wrote on some silly school assignment. I never knew how to really know my characters until I was writing OCs for a fandom.

Fanfiction taught me the value of being concise. My schooling had drilled the concept of long, purple prose into me over time and in writing for a fandom for a children’s game, I unlearned that real quick.

Fanfiction really taught me the concept of “show, don’t tell.” I never really knew what a penchant I had for info dumping until somebody pointed out to me most of my headcanon’d lore drops happened in exposition and not in action.

Fanfiction taught me how to worldbuild. Eating the canon of my preferred fandom gave me a lot of time to strengthen my chops while I came up with my own answers to canon lore I hated.

Fanfiction taught me consistency. In school, I mostly wrote short stories. I hadn’t really bitten off a longer project until I started writing a longfic, and in doing so, I learned how to keep my characters, plot, and world consistent for a prolonged period of chapters.

Fanfiction gave me a close-knit community to consistently bounce my ideas off of, and give me feedback that actually served me in terms of bettering my skills and the story I was writing. Not just for the sake of meeting the measures of a grade or rubric given by a teacher.

I could go on and on, but tl;dr, I owe my current skillset and understanding of writing to writing fic. I wouldn’t be at the level I am without it. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be writing my current WIP without it.

So, to anyone who might have told you that fanfic is a waste of time, they are just objectively wrong. And if you’re reading this thinking for yourself that fanfic is a waste of time, well, you’re stupid and also objectively wrong :>

Fanfiction is valuable. Don’t underestimate it.

[spookythesillyfella]

remember when i had that dream where you [Y/N] have a sleepover with tumblr sexyman tony and sketchbook where you guys just end up in a polyamorous relationship ??? well . i tried to find a fanfic that would even slightly line up with the description. even if it was only vaguely

but uhhh ....

there were none . so i had to do it myself

[includedisco]

On the sense of shame and secrecy attached to being a fanfic writer

Most fanfic writers are "faceless", right? We write under a pseud, our readers usually don't know our faces, and the people in our real lives sometimes don't know that we write fanfics.

For me this "secrecy" has kind of affected my ability to hype my own fanfics. There is always a lingering voice in my head saying stupid stuff like;

"Be humble, it's only fanfiction, not a novel.

"Why advertise and hype as if you'll make money off it?"

"Its just fanfiction and there must be a weirdness and shame to it that makes you "hide" from your readers and from your friends/family."

...If there are any fanfic writers with that silly voice in their heads, I'm here to tell you that you don't need to be humble. You don't have to post your fanfic on ao3 and be done with it. There is no rule that says we can't be shameless about spreading the word on our works. It's 2024 and fanfiction is as important, respectable, valuable and precious as any other form of art.

The fact that it's not original and that we don't make money off it is irrelevant. There is nothing weird or shameful about fanfics or writing them. Idk about you but for me keeping this life from my friends and family is a way of protecting my joy. This way, fanfic writing is the one beloved thing I get to keep away from the seriousness of real life

If you have the genuine desire to reach out to more people with your stories, then post about them across all social media platforms; post them on several fanfic sites, post and reblog them here every few days; if the celebrity you write fanfics for enjoys reading fanfiction then tag them on twt when you share your story updates; tell that irritating aunt who can keep a secret that you're a fanfic writer; tell your therapist that you updated a chapter. Go crazy

We're not making any money from our works but we're having fun writing them while also delivering joy to readers. So go ahead and advertise the shit out of your own stories like you're your own biggest fan who would go broke for your works.