#proactively communicated

[stigmasochist]

.

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Trust — 2k words

Two for one deal au

-

"Do you really trust them?" Your brother asked you quietly, both of you sitting together on the hidden corner that lately had come to be your new "room". It was not yours by any means, and the both of you only spent three nights in it as of yet, but it had improvised beds for you and was were you were told to rest.

You did not need to ask who he was referring to. You knew he meant Sun and Moon, the two (one?) animatronics this room actually belonged to.

You can guess how that doubt rose up on his mind, with how friendly you had been acting with the two caretakers the last few days and nights you spent stuck on this damned mall. They even gave you your own little whiteboard for you to communicate with them, which you eye from where it lays on the ground near the far wall.

As friendly as you acted, you did not trust them.

Sure, the attention and care was nice, but there was no saying how long it'd last. You'd rather die than trust them — which was probably what would happen if you let your guard down, anyway. As aloof as you played, you were just as observant as your brother. Your lives depended on it.

There was no saying how long they would bother to keep up their show, or if they would turn around and start acting like just the same as the animatronics that hunted you down for sport as soon as you stepped a foot into this place. Of metal or not, as far as you know, they could be just as good as the adults you and your brother are always running from. They were bigger, faster — the best you could do was to get on their good side to give the two of you even the slightest chance.

You blink slowly, and finally shake your head at your brother's question.

He regards you quietly, and sighs with a scowl. You watch as he slowly lifts a finger to his mouth and chews on the tip of his nails — it doesn't look tasty at all, but you don't question him.

"We need to get out," he says in vain. The original plan had been to escape during the day, but the daycare attendants did not give you the chance. You don't know how they managed to keep you hidden for so long (your brother guessed they somehow messed with the cameras, and you don't understand enough to question it), but they take the two of you to the daycare when it's day, and back to this room when it's night. At least you think so, since there's no windows in this place. Regardless, they keep an eye on the two of you at all times. You hate it.

You do not answer your brother. There's nothing for you to say. Not like you said anything since coming here, anyway. Although you were never of much words, you used to at least talk to Star — however, now, the idea of talking to even him made your throat close up. You blamed it on the strange environment.

You pondered for a moment, and leaned forward, much to your brother's confusion. You refused to get up, but wiggled your way through the floor until you were able to reach your whiteboard. It was so incredibly dark you could barely see it, but your eyes were used to it enough to write. Hopefully Star would be able to read.

"And Freddy?" you write and show him. He takes a good moment to read it.

"... he is our safest bet right now," he answers sheepishly, avoiding your gaze. You knew Star trusted him more than you did, but you weren't sure how much you actually believed in what he said. You don't do much but shake your head. Your brother stares incredulously.

"If you've got any other plans I'm all ears," he says frustratedly, voice rising for a moment before he caught himself. You wipe the board and write again.

Or rather, draw.

A simple but understandable drawing: a bunny with a X on top of it.

The bunny lady needs to go.

"And how exactly do you think we should do that?" He asks you sarcastically. You know he already thought of every single option he could in the past two days. You've talked about this before. Plans with exploring at night with Freddy by your side — of maybe following Moon into his patrols, whatever that is. You both are yet to ask either of them to let you. You despise the need to ask, you know your brother does too. The plans were not fail proof, which is why you hadn't done it yet.

You do, however, remember Star's fazwatch getting messages every now and then when you walked around the first night, employees notes and costumers complaints. If you walk around, If you find more, then maybe you two can come up with something.

You just need to be careful with the rabbit lady that goes around at night.

You clean up your board, and write in it again.

"Let's go play in fazerblast tomorrow!! :D" you write cheerfully, expression not even close to match the tone as you turn it for him to read. He squints his eyes for a long moment to try and figure out what you had written. He then stares at you, confused beyond all hell as to where you are going with this.

"...sure, okay," he relents, waving his hand. "If those metal scraps even let us," sighing, he pats you in the head.

For good measure, you write again at the bottom of the board, this time not cleaning what you had written before, instead letting it sit along with the new text. "YAAY! YOUR THE BEST,"  you write big and excitedly, drawing happy faces and hearts along with it. You tried to make it look as if you were the happiest you could've been when writing this.

You don't know how adults work. Or animatronic adults, for what matter. Your bet is on the behavior you watched from far away — maybe if you look excited enough for something, they'll let you? Maybe if you ask really really nicely with the prettiest please and promise to behave your best?

Regardless, you put the board aside. You don't need a clock to tell it's late, and that your brother is tired. Moon should be coming back soon, too, and is for the best if neither of you are awake when that happens.

You push your brother with little to no strength, a way to tell him to lay back down on the improvised mattress. He resists it a first, grumbling and sighing loudly as a way to show his displeasure in having to do, but eventually lays back down. You pull the blanket up to his chest and pat it twice, shooting him a smile. You lay down on his side, hand pressed to his chest for as long as it took for him to fall asleep.

When he did, you sat up, ignoring how offended your brother would have been if he knew. You crawl your way to the tube entrance of the room and sit down in front of it, staring outside. It was pitch black, and you could not see a single thing — still, you felt safer keeping your eyes on it for a while longer.

You doodled stars on the edges of your whiteboard to escape the boredom, the only thing keeping you company being your brother's light snores. There was not even a clock to tick.

Putting your board down to your side eventually, you lay your upper half on the tube entrance, crossing your arms over each other and laying your head on them. You just had to wait for the moon to come back.

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

You're not sure when you fell asleep, you hadn't meant to. Still, you slowly blink awake as you feel soft red light engulf you. Hazedly you open your eyes, only to find artificial ones staring back at you from the other end of the tube.

You startle badly, practically throwing yourself backwards at the somewhat familiar yet unexpected sight. The air catches in your throat as panic builds up steadily at the bottom of your ribcage.

Moon's face plate tilts slowly to the side, and he hold his hands up where you can see them. He glances apologetically at you, even if all your half-awake mind can focus is how there's a red eyed creature staring at you in the pitch blackness of a room you're locked into.

You let out a deep breath, though, once you hear the cling of the bells. You allow your gaze to fall to the small golden-ish circles sew to the ribbons on his wrist, attention caught by the way it reflects the led lights that emanates from his eyes. You don't know when it started or why so quick, but that was a sound you associated with him. With them. And for now, they meant safety, as dubious as it was.

You stared at his optics again, taking another deep breath, shoulders relaxing and letting go of the building up tension in it. You did not flinch away when he carefully, slowly placed one hand at the end of the entrance, looking at you for a moment as if asking permission to enter. When you did not protest, he pushed forward at a turtle's pace, finally stepping into the room after what felt like forever, but you appreciated nonetheless.

After the shock passed, you felt the tiredness pounding on your head all over again. You thought you would've been fine, but seems like taking a short nap got your body craving more rest. You rubbed your heavy eyes, much more reluctant on keeping them open at all now that there was another person with you. You were too tired to think about how bad that fact was to your whole not-trust-them plan.

Moon shushed you gently, metallic fingers running through your braids with care. He tells you that's no place to sleep, and that you should get back to bed — that it's alright now, he's here. As you simply nod at his words, you fail to notice him eyeing the little with board he almost crushed when stepping in. He pays attention to it for only a moment before carefully putting it to the side, out of the way.

You crawl your way back to the improvised mattress, next to where your brother still laid sound asleep, snoring quietly. He twitches slightly as you sit down, eyes opening for a mere second to see who it was — when he confirms it's only you, he's fast under again.

You lay down, stretching your arm to grab a plushie you had been keeping close these past couple of days — it was a Sun plushie, given to you during naptime and that you now claimed as your own. You bring the toy close to your chest as you hug it, and you feel the covers being pulled over you as Moon tucks you in.

Looking at his face, you see nothing but softness reflecting back at you through now white eyes. For that, you give him a smile. You can't tell him goodnight as you would've liked to, so you just pat his hand before yawning and turning to your side.

It takes only a minute for you to fall under into deep sleep. You did not need a music box this time around.

Already asleep, you are unable to see how the animatronic carefully sits itself at opposite end of the room, leaning against the wall. His head clicks curiously as he glanced at your board, which was empty when he left.

Such a silly thing, but the entire board was happily filled into the prospect of it.

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad to let you walk around for a little while.

[asteropescrolls]

"you owe yourself"

don't you dare bring down past versions of yourself. presenting themselves as stepping stones which bring you a bit closer to yourself each single day, they are the only reason you still stand. it is not by chance that grown trees shade young seedlings with their lush crowns, rescuing them from the burning Sun. one of the primary things you owe yourself is to take care of your past versions. when sadness weaves around you like a cloak, when you wish to bring yourself down for past mistakes, when you lay awake at night contemplating each single action you have taken...do not indulge. speak patiently with the version of yourself which yearns for your comfort. have the strength to choose the option of overflowing with love and compassion. it is one of the the most loving acts you can perform towards yourself.

[rexscanonwife]

Was thinking about the spiderman kiss,, I drew one with Toshinori years ago and this is the reimagining of it and it kinda makes me think how far things have come since then! 💖💖 (original drawing/close up/etc. under the cut)

Last image drawn in 2016!! Its crazy seeing how I drew myself back then and how I lined and colored things 😭😭

[xomoosexo]

people accuse dream for not doing anything for dsmp and not even showing up when we know he worked on a lot of lore, coded some stuff for it, organized events with mrbeast, showed up on peoples streams a lot and approved a lot of stuff and also all the members came to every little problem to him. while q seems to just stream on it from time to time when there’s an event and has people to do everything for him? like sure maybe it’s good for somw parts and dream probably should have some people help him when dsmp became big but he didn’t plan for it and he had to figure it out when it was happening. but with qsmp it just feels too manufactured at least for me, like I prefer watching sapnaps hardcore world where he just hangs out with his friends

yeah! the scuffedness was kinda what made it so epic anyways.

[constellationcrowned]

Everyone needs to read this post please and thank you!!

Rather than make a poll about this ongoing issue that's impossible to parse bc I can't see who picked what specifically I'll do this another way: Help me help you by telling me why you don't actively interact. I post and reblog plenty of content all day every day that can be sent in, utilized, etc and it's crickets from ya'll all of the time and that's frustrating af and we need to work things out.

It'd be a different situation if I never offered stuff like calls or what have you; that'd be my bad and I'd need to work on being more proactive, but I'm already doing that and it goes nowhere. I'm constantly offering to help you guys---like right now, because I know the majority of you have read a post similar to this from me and you're gonna do it again---and I mean it every single time no matter how many times I offer it but on the flip side of things you guys need to actually take me up on what I'm offering.

I'm not offering to help merely for fun, you know? I'm offering to help because I understand that this shit can be difficult, it can be hard to talk to people, hard to interact with super niche fandoms and characters, and so on, and there's nothing wrong with having trouble but after a certain point if you continuously refuse to step out of your bubble or accept someone trying to help you the fear argument kinda loses validity, at least in regards to rp related stuff. I'm extending a hand and you need to fucking grab on because chances are the thing that's stopping you---be it you need help with the characters or the lore, you need me to type the first interaction, we need to have an ooc chat about what interests us, whatever it is---can be resolved but we need to fuckin communicate. I'm already meeting all of you halfway; honestly I've been meeting you guys more than halfway for awhile now, and now you need to step up and get in here.

Now does this mean that I'm going to stop offering to help, providing opportunities to interact through calls, memes, etc? Absolutely not. That would defeat the whole purpose and, again, I love offering such things and will continue to do so because it's not only part of what I need to do as a good rp partner I also enjoy doing so, plain and simple. All that I'm asking is that my mutuals (and yes, this applies to everyone, because even those who've followed me for months or years across multiple blogs fail to engage, it's not just newer folks) be more proactive in general. If I'm offering to help you or posting a call or whatever else? Engage. Ask questions. Send a meme. Tell me you want to interact even if you don't know how and we'll figure it out together. I'm tired of constantly chasing people or pulling proverbial teeth, especially when it's completely unnecessary. Communicate and engage with enthusiasm; both on your own and when I offer, and we'll be writing together in no time. Stop getting in your own way. Stop depriving yourselves. Let's have fun and actually fuckin write together.

[tomatoluvr69]

What’s up tumblr hope you had a super fun leap day. sparkle on. big news my first seed start sprouted while I was at work ✨

[marxistlesbianist]

New book! Found by my grandmother at a New Hampshire flea market.

[sportsthoughts]

WHY is moving house so stressful

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

not a fan of how performative and reactionary y'all are becoming

[askfallenroyalty]

is the reboot a rewrite as well or did I just not remember chapter 4. also glad to know we are getting a reason for the skeleton brothers disappearance

// yuuup. A rewrite. There's a lot of holes in account for:

-me skipping the other fallen kiddos introduction. I got overwhelmed by so many characters and almost quit

-me making a poorly improvised magic anon storyline with limited deltarune info, cancelling it

╮(︶︿︶)╭

I've grown a ton as a writer and I want this story to have a proper start, middle, and end. Rn it's only got the start and end and that doesn't sit right to me. It'll take time but it'll be worth it.

Chapter 4 is a bridge between Asriel becoming a ruler and the proper set up for the time skip. Also, I want the fallen kiddos to have more of a purpose and active role in the story!

[asteropescrolls]

"forge your happiness"

forging your own happiness is no easy task, yet appoint yourself to it. for don't you hear how gleefully your soul sings upon rejoicing? bring your beautiful body outside, bask in sunlight, purchase that lovely cup you've had your eye on, smile at the lady in the corner shop, buy yourself flowers, laugh your heart out (whether alongside someone else or in the confines of your own room). forge your happiness, for that's the least a soul like yours deserves.

[zzuuha]

✨ me not telling my parents absolutely anything about my uni life, even though we're currently living together ✨

[chaos-coming]

Ugh my family here is so unreliable

[mara-xx217]

Whelp, I did it-

I went ahead and made a Patreon! Yay! If anyone is interested, it's right here.

It's bare rn but if anyone follows me there it would really help motivate me to write even more things (longer pieces, more spicy pieces, if you know what I mean ;)).

Things are subject to change on there while I figure out what works best for my and y'all's needs.

If you could share this I'd really appreciate it!

@prettycutebunny, @infinitewhore, @kennbb, @slutwithadegree, @dead-bxxxtch-walking, @space-arsonist, @pink-soft-shadow, @sinlessdesire, @hoemine

[darkfrog24]

Tl/dr: My answer to "can you leave negative feedback on AO3?" is yes, very much yes ...but it's not like leaving a product review.

1) This problem can be solved if all authors just say what they happen to want from readers in their bios or author notes. Fandom differs across age groups and subjects, and assuming that what you want is the default sets everyone up for failure.

2) Some of this confusion might be coming from the fact that Fanfiction.net, a major host of fanfic long before AO3, doesn’t call comments comments. It calls them reviews. Eventually, their function morphed into reader-to-author but for a while they were in fact meant to be reader-to-reader like a product review. When AO3 formed, it wisely gave their response section a name that matched the role that “reviews” had come to play.

3) That name was “comment,” and it doesn’t mean praise. It means comment, a remark expression opinion or reaction. Opinions and reactions are not always positive or flattering. Many of them will end up positive naturally because someone who doesn’t like a story will often stop reading before they reach the comment section at the end of the chapter, but sometimes you keep reading because you’re moved or interested even if it’s not in the way the author intended. That’s not an excuse for the reader to phrase this reaction rudely, but an author who says “leave a comment” is literally asking for reactions.

Comments are also not the same thing as constructive criticism. A reader who says “I liked this part and not that part, and here’s how it made me feel” is not giving constructive criticism or presuming to think that the author wants their help improving. That reader is only telling the author how they reacted, which—again—is exactly what the structure of AO3 invited them to do. For a lot of authors, it’s exactly what they want. I love hearing from someone who got deep enough into what I wrote to have a full-bodied response to it. Sometimes I even love hearing that people hated it.

3a) That means we need to destigmatize the act of saying that you only want praise or giving very specific instructions for the comments section. This author isn’t necessarily a shrinking violet who can’t take criticism (for all you know, they took a lot of it during their beta process); this author is not being picky; this author is a responsible member of the community who is doing their share of the work by communicating clearly. That does not come naturally to everyone, especially not people socialized to believe that their preferences don’t matter or only matter if they match those of some real or imagined larger group.

I say do this:

Remember that your comment is communication to the author. In most cases, it’s sent to their inbox. It’s not like a critic’s column in a newspaper that the author may choose to avoid.

Check the author’s notes for stated preferences about comments.

If you’re the author, state your preferences.

Being asked for your opinion is not an excuse to phrase that opinion rudely. That’s trolling.

Do not disparage authors whose stated preferences do not match your expectations.

If the kind of comment the author wants doesn’t feel natural or authentic to you, consider just using the kudos button. If the author asks why they're not getting more comments, feel free to tell them that you for one are respecting their expressed wishes.

If you DO want to write a review-style response to the story that's meant for other readers and not necessarily the author? You're on Tumblr right now.

Fandom is big. Fandom is diverse. Be proactive. Accept proactivity in others.

AO3 Etiquette

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

Kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished - you kudos.

If you liked it, you should comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it. Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity. Don't ruin that for them.

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLANTONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an implicit rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Avoid deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - orphan it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to you anymore.

This is a creative fanfiction archive. No essays on your insights or theories please. There are other places for that.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.