#slash ao3 writer on the side

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

in light of a second migration to this site i just need to speak my truth which is that harrow is a redditor gideon is a twitter user and ianthe is a tumblrina hope this helps

[fine-nephrit]

🥏 Where to find good XF fanfics

👽 On Tumblr

@lilydalexf has an encyclopedic knowledge of fics and continues to be an invaluable resource. You'll find a boatload of themed fic lists, individual rec posts and helpful answers to anon asks.

@txf-fic-chicks-blog seven years of almost daily recs, with well-written blurbs and a lot of fun, run by @kateyes224 and @piecesofscully. Look out for their themed days: "Casefile Monday", "Tumblr Tuesday", "Editor's Pick Wednesday", "Post-Ep/Missing Scene Thursday", "Novel Length Friday", "Smut Sunday", and the very cool "Because You Watched"

@msrlibrary a well-tagged library of MSR fics; each entry includes a short excerpt and a nicely chosen image from the show.

@201daysofxfiles a rewatch blog by fandom veteran @wendelah. Each episode in season 1-7 is paired with its own fic rec post.

@enigmaticxbee an aesthetically pleasing and neatly organized rewatch blog that is packed with great content, including excellent fic rec lists categorized by season, story type, trope, and more. Each episode guide sometimes features related fic recs.

@thatfragilecapricorn30 posts one fic rec every Friday, accompanied by a nice writeup.

@randomfoggytiger curates many fic rec lists sorted by often fun and creative categories.

@cecilysass has a google doc titled "fics I love", which is a fantastic fic list categorized by story type, complete with thoughtful blurbs. She's also shared two episode-related fic rec lists on Tumblr: here and here.

@pookie-mulder writes a monthly fic journal with good recs.

**self-promo plug** I post fic recs on my Tumblr blog @fine-nephrit under #nephrit's fic rec. Plus, I reblog others' fic recs that I come across!

👽 Rec Communities

XF Book Club: the best thing ever, an absolute gem that deserves to be preserved for posterity. During its run, 270 fics were recced and discussed in depth here. The community's intelligent and insightful comments on this blog are sometimes even more enjoyable to read than the fics themselves.

The Fic Filter (xf tag): well-curated selections with short blurbs.

Multifandom Het Recs (xf tag): a major rec site's xf section that offers nice "why this must be read" writeups. @het-reccers

Crack Van (xf tag): another major rec site with a big xf section, featuring endless recs and blurbs

Fancake (xf tag): another major rec community's xf section boasting an extensive thematic tagging system

👽 Personal Blogs

Emily Shore aka Naraht: meta essays, fanvid recs, fic recs—great stuff aplenty

Bad for the Fish aka Scarlet Baldy: fantastic fic list paired with highly enjoyable reviews and analyses of the fics she's read. @badforthefish

Ramblings of a Mind Untamed: reviews of a dozen or so classic fics

xxSKSxx XF Fanfic Recs: still active in 2024! @xxsksxxx

X-Libris: more of a fic library, this is the best place to download nicely-formatted ebooks of pre-AO3 oldies. What I love most is the incredibly detailed and extensive tagging system.

👽 Individual Rec Lists with good writeup

Character Manifesto - Dana Scully: a character analysis and 10 Scully-centric fic recs, categorized by "best of .." selections. Amazing format and choices!

Character Manifesto - Fox Mulder: same format as above for Spooky

bachlava's awesome fic rec essays, covering classic fics and slash fics

ShipRecced blog's classic MSR fics and newer MSR fics recs

luminary's 16-fic rec post

RivkaT recs fics and writers @rivkat

Anna Otto's favorite stories

Syntax6's rec list on her site, great rec list on Tumblr and FTF rec list @syntax6

👽 90s Old School Rec Sites

The Basement Office - Musea: a treasure trove of extensive fic lists with lovely written blurbs, recced by a group of talented writers from back in the day

The Other Side - Fanfic Recs from Beyond the Grave: a large collection of 'scary' or 'spooky' story recs with nice blurbs. Beautiful web design.

the Rookery - Favorite Authors: nice commentary on a list of classic fic writers

X-Files Fanfiction 101: an intro guide to fic categories and what to read for each

The Primal Screamers: a fun site run by a mailing list that hosts fic recs with blurbs, and a 'Coffee Talk' section full of delightful discussions of canon

Idealists Haven - Elemental Fanfic Archive: an archive with rec blurbs

Chronicle X: a large, well-organized archive with blurbs, plus a 'Can We Talk' discussion section of novel-length fics, plus a total of 46 author interviews. Simply incredible!

👽 Special Mention

The X-Files Lost and Found: a fic finder message board that is miraculously still very active today—How wonderful! Its FAQ page hosts a huge collection of well-categorized themed fic lists (not recs), including "Classics (or, Your Fanfic Education is Not Complete Until You've Read ...)".

Where do you find your next read? What did I miss? Reblog and share your favorites!

[shoshiwrites]

"gamble" or "quiet"? kissing out where nobody can catch them? - for Jo & Egan, of course, because I live the life of an enabler handing you another juicebox 🧃

You are the best, Killy, and thank you to you and @mercurygray for helping me break my little sick-time writer's block ♡ Bucky Egan/War correspondent OC, also on Ao3!

close to you

She’d gone with Kay back to London for a few days. Enough time to catch herself up, wire the stories she hadn’t already, knock her head against the wall a few more times over what did and didn’t go through. The damn blue slashes. Black ones too. Hell, a woman at the corner newsstand had showed Jo a letter from a boyfriend, cut into the RAF’s version of a paper snowflake. It fluttered strangely in the humid breeze, in the young woman’s hand. 

She’d seen Bill March’s broken arm, sustained in some manner during an air raid, though the correspondent still had his usual cheerful smile for her, and the pallbearers carrying a distant cousin of Kay’s out of the church in Marylebone, all of twenty when his ship had been torpedoed off the coast of Italy.

She’d gotten back to Thorpe Abbotts on a Friday afternoon, the air still soupy, her suitcase with a half-broken latch and her bitten nails, a growing hole in her last pair of stockings.

It wasn’t raining. Maybe that counted for something.

Trousers then, and maybe she was optimistic, thinking she felt the air cooling a bit around her. There were small scraps of blue sky, like she’d found them in the bottom of her mother’s rag bin. Calico up in the firmament.

The coffee’s warm, if bitter, she hardly pays attention to that now. A few Clubmobile women cleaning trays in the kitchen take pity on her and sneak her a donut. She dips, sloshes, remembers the good old days of milk and cream, and wanders back outside, wondering if she’d made a mistake in coming here straight from London. Her room is still hers in Norwich. Mrs. Fitzgerald had made sure she knew that. It’s a kindness she doesn’t quite have the words for. 

She’ll stay in the Clubmobile quarters tonight, on the extra cot. She’d left a book in Crosby’s care last week and he’d returned it to Tatty Spaatz, a piece of stationery stuck in the middle with neat, if hurried, observations. His handwriting reminds her of Evie’s, the block print of a planner.

“Major Egan will be happy to hear you’re back,” Tatty says, and there’s almost a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, her lipstick the color of red wine.

Jo hardly keeps stone-faced, a little scrunch somewhere between a question and an acknowledgement, distaste and curiosity. “I haven’t seen him,” she says.

They yawn, the seconds between the conversation outside and when he’s walking, seeing her, redirecting his path. His eyes look like he’s been squinting in low light, the mask-marks raw across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He’d come out of his office. Post-mission administration, she thinks. Letters home. He writes them longhand, someone had told her. He’s never spoken about it. She’s never asked him.

And she’s not sure happy is the word she’d use, right now. But Tatty knows what she said. Happy is on the ground. A girl smiling at you. The smell of her hair, clean. 

The question comes on an exhale, the tie loosened around his neck. “You wanna go for a walk?”

It feels faintly ridiculous, the way she’s not used to being asked. And it’s faintly ridiculous too, the way propriety and a respectful difference between his boots and her lace-up shoes becomes a sneak-around, a glancing journey to the far edge of the airfield, the side of an outbuilding backed by trees. 

Maybe he wants something else, she thinks. Another jigger of whiskey, playing cards on the table, chips or dice or jacks. Someone else. Someone who lets him forget.

He kisses her before they’ve even stopped moving, as she rounds the corner in the half-tall grass. 

She hasn’t snuck around like this in — god — she can’t remember. Years. 

She can’t remember the last time she’s been kissed like this. A sunlit kitchen, softer. Before the leather interiors of fancy cars and class rings. She never thought it could be dressed like this, callused hands and muscle. The flutter of tiny wings falls still. A fly buzzes around their ankles; she can hear it between the sounds of his mouth, breath hot between them.

She can feel that little swatch of damp at the small of her back, the feeling of her hipbones beneath the wool of her trousers. He breaks away to kiss the side of her mouth, the short hairs of his mustache brushing her upper lip. 

John, she wants to say, but maybe she can help it, the desperate act of naming him. It all sticks in her throat, like a glob of too-soft caramel. Hardening. John, John, John. “Afternoon, Major.” 

He looks like he’s trying to decide something, kisses her again by her nose while he does. She’ll do the same if he’ll let her, the cuts of the oxygen mask and the freckles she can see in the light. “Afternoon, Captain.”

[olderthannetfic]

I think a lot of the lack of femslash criticisms also miss the fact that fandom emerges from canon and will reflect, for better or worse, what is already in that canon. So if we have a majority male cast, with the main character being male and the rival being male and the mentor-figure being male and the villains being largely male... I mean, just in terms of numbers and which relationships have the most emotional energy, fandom largely will have majority m/m. And genre fiction, which fandom tends to gravitate towards, is heavily biased towards male characters.

(And even when male side characters get a lot of shipping... usually they're fitting other common popular fandom tropes or they're essentially more fanon than an actual thing people ship-ship. You probably aren't going to be shipping the Female Love Interest™ with another side female character except in a Pair The Spares or background ship sort of way, but Those Two Guys are probably gonna get shipped and typically they're going to be dudes. And even those kinds of het or slash ships can come across as deceivingly popular when they actually aren't, because they're more like popular fanon so they pop up a lot in fics but only in the background rather than the main focus, and those are same ships I often see being brought up as "if you can ship two background men then why aren't you shipping this femslash ship!" wank alongside anomalies like Klux)

Even the Among Us fandom which has the gender-ambiguous characters often interpreted as male. Yes, from what I can tell m/m is way more popular but in terms of genre and setting which will influence how people write for it, it's mostly male characters. It's essentially The Thing In Space and The Thing had a male cast while Alien is notable for being an exception by having a female protagonist in that kind of space setting, and even then, it was still majority male characters in terms of raw numbers, all of which will influence fanfic writers and artists. Plus from what I've read there's often some kind of gender fuckery going on with the Imposter so m/m might even been entirely accurate for a lot of those fics. So while there are perhaps valid criticisms about the lack of female characters in those genres in general that fandom then reflects, it's unreasonable to suggest it's just fandom hating women. Plus everything we've already covered around how it's also related to what a majority queer women (and trans-people-who-were-AFAB) with potentially complicated feelings about female bodies find hot and fun.

But go to the magical girl genre and it's majority femslash, just like how even on ao3 any buddy-cop show with a male and female lead will primarily be het. And when there is a female relationship given the most focus, or when it's canon, the fandom will obviously be majority femslash even on ao3. And I get that it's frustrating when the genres you enjoy have a dearth of women in them or shittily written women, and I agree that we should do better with that, but it's not fandom's responsibility to do so (and it's not like there isn't an entire subgenre of fix-it fics that aren't "what if this female character was written well"). It feels kinda mean to say it, but if you want femslash right now you might want to look in different genres where the protagonist and the most significant characters related to them are all women, and one without a canon male love interest (or a really boring, blank slate one no one cares about).

--

I don't watch Xena for the dudes, definitely. Haha.

Re the Among Us thing, someone said a lot of the fic was clearly inspired by streamers anyway, so that's where the genders are coming from.

[thefairywithboots]

Welcome To My Blog

Hi there! ;)

Welcome to my fanfic blog. My primary places to post are AO3, Wattpad, and Dreamwidth, but I have moved a lot of my stuff over here to Tumblr because I love the community and friends I've made over here!

All of my NSFW work fics will be labelled as such. I am not responsible for any minors who ignore the warnings and read such fics anyway.

Requests are closed

About Me

Hi there! ;) You have managed to somehow stumble upon my little corner of the internet. So welcome!

My name is Rita, and I have written fanfiction ever since I was 11 years old - by hand in spare spiral notebooks that I had - back before I even knew what fanfiction was. I’d just sit scribbling alternative endings to video games whose canonical endings had left me emotionally traumatized (Twilight Princess, Valkyrie Profile, etc.) But I didn’t start writing fanfic to post for the public to read until a full decade later.

I have always used writing as a form of escapism, to create worlds when I felt like the one I am in was too restrictive. This blog will be my safe space from the world, and I want it to be just as much as an escape for others as it is for me. I want this to be a positive vibes only blog. 🌻

I am a hopeless romantic at heart, and spend a lot of time trying to spread positivity, peace and love. ❤️ 🌻

My other interests include crochet (I often post pictures of clothes that I make,) painting/drawing, video games, fantasy/mythology, and most importantly music. Music is my catharsis. The reason I am alive.

I usually keep to myself in fandoms to avoid drama and fights, but am a really nice person as long as you are not an asshole, so please don’t be afraid to slide into my DMs if you want to chat.

Fic Requests

Stuff that I write:

• Fluff

•Smut

• And most importantly, angst because I love torturing my characters/muses as well as myself.

•X Reader inserts

•x OC

•FxM (fluff and smut)

• FxF (fluff and smut)

• MxM (fluff)

Stuff that I will not write:

•Anything sexual that involves underage characters or animals.

•MxM smut (I'm a woman, and I just feel like I couldn't do that any justice, I'm sorry :/ All of my male slash fics focus on the romantic side of the relationship.)

My Fanfic Library

Iron Maiden

Dave Murray x Janick Gers

Fates Warning (Book 1 of Into Darkness) a Dave x Janick fic that follows their relationship throughout the 1990s.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Led Zeppelin

Robert Plant x Reader

Your Most Sacred Place (Smut)

Submissive Robert (Smut)

Aftercare (Smut)

Fire At Midnight

A Little Deal (Smut)

Way Down Inside (Smut)

Who’s In Charge (Smut)

Daddy, I Just Can’t Wait (Smut)

Far Too Long (Smut)

If You Wake Up With The Sunrise

Just Pretend

Just Pretend - part 2 (Smut)

Relaxations

Until You Forget (Smut)

Fool In The Rain

Robert and Evanna (OC ship)

Depollute Me, Gentle Angel

Steal Away Now (Smut)

I'm Gonna Put You Down For A While (Smut)

I'm Gonna Crawl (Smut)

Song Fics

Tea For One

Crack Fics

What Is And What Should Never Be

Legend of Zelda

Link x Malon

Welcome Home (Smut)

Original Works

The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Recommended Blogs

@bijouxcarys writes incredible Robert Plant fics, is such a prolific writer, and is also the sweetest person ever. So check her out. ⚔️🌈

@firethatgrewsolow @brownskinsugarplum76 and @nature-and-music have also written some of my favourite Robert fics, and just overall extremely talented writers who inspire me to get better at my own. So please check them out. 🌻

[across-violet-skies]

happy birthday @rosehipandroots!!!!

I'm not usually a Twilight-centric writer..... but I gave it my best shot!! I hope you enjoy and have a good birthday!! :3

preview under the cut!!!

Twilight grunted. An arrow flew past his face, missing by mere centimeters. The fletching scraped along his cheek. It stung. The arrow embedded itself in the dirt behind Twilight as another flew through the air– this time sent from Wild. The archer Bokoblin who had aimed at the rancher fell with a pained squeal, crumbling from the precision of Wild’s headshot.

“Thanks, Cub!” Twilight called, waving a hand in a wide arc. Wild simply nodded in return, continuing his assault on the monsters.

Footsteps pounded in the dirt behind, and Twilight turned to fight. A Moblin, tall and bulky, raised a comically large club, ready to swing. The rancher ducked, shoving his sword into the beast’s abdomen as the club swung over his head. He pulled his sword back with a sickening shrrk!. Oozy, congealed black blood flung off the blade in globs, sizzling as it hit the ground. The Moblin swayed, howling in anger. Twilight danced around the monster, easily dodging its large, swinging attacks. With one simple slash of his sword, the Moblin fell, hissing and whining as it died in the dirt.

Twilight flung the blood off his blade, expression set in stone. His sword shone with a reddish-black tint. The Moblin was dead, and the battle seemed to be coming to a close. Between the nine of them, a monster camp was quick work, even with black-blooded beasts.

He sheathed his sword, rolling his shoulders. The camp had gone quiet after Wild had taken out the archers. With the rest of their group finishing up their own battles in the distance, they were looking pretty clear.

He spoke too soon.

Twilight didn’t hear the rapid pattering of feet behind him until it was too late. He turned just in time for a Lizalfos to whip its tail, the thick, scaly appendage striking him in the side of the knee, hard. He fell to one knee as a sharp pop! hit his ears. The Lizalfos cried out, stiffening as an arrow embedded into its head. It fell to the ground, hissing and growling as it disintegrated into nothing, leaving only a puddle of inky black blood.

Wild gave him a thumbs up from a nearby tree.

Twilight nodded back at him, slowly standing back up. His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline still coursing through his veins from the surprise of the attack. But he supposed it didn’t matter now, since he was fine and the Lizalfos was dead. He flexed his leg, shrugging. Seemed fine to him. Might bruise later though, with the force of that impact.

Oh well. You don’t do hero business without getting a few scrapes. Speaking of…

Twilight held a gentle hand up to his cheek. The fletching from the arrow had cut through, but not too deep. He would be fine. Not even worth worrying about.

He cracked his neck, rolling his shoulders. Twilight hummed lightly to himself, jogging to join the others where they were starting an injury check. Time to see what the damage was…

-> read the rest on ao3!

[ao3feed-peterstiles]

Murder Triad

Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/58603597 by Takara_Phoenix Stiles was done being ignored and underestimated. He was ready to take what was his. That included Peter, included making Peter his Alpha, taking back his Hale Pack, a murder and a couple resurrections. The Nogitsune was more than happy to help him get what he wanted. Words: 14895, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 27 of Stiles Summer Stories 2024 (Writer's Month 2024) Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: M/M, Multi Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale, Nogitsune (Teen Wolf), Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, Derek Hale, Isaac Lahey, Jackson Whittemore, Cora Hale Relationships: Peter Hale/Nogitsune/Stiles Stilinski, Nogitsune/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Nogitsune, Vernon Boyd & Erica Reyes & Stiles Stilinski Additional Tags: Slash, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/M, Established Nogitsune/Stiles Stilinski, Manipulation, Manipulative Stiles Stilinski, Powerful Stiles Stilinski, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Pack Alpha Peter Hale, Boyd and Erica are technically dead but not for long, Resurrection, Resurrected Erica Reyes, resurrected Vernon Boyd, Post-Nogitsune, Hurt/Comfort, Dark Stiles Stilinski, Murder, Murder Husbands, Peter Hale Kills Gerard Argent, with the help of the Nogitsune, Explicit Sexual Content, Anal, Oral, Double Penetration, Blowjobs, Knotting, Top Nogitsune, Top Peter Hale, Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Light BDSM, Sub Stiles Stilinski, Spanking, posessiveness, Possessive Nogitsune, Possessive Peter Hale, Magic, The Hale Pack Moves to London, Stiles Stilinski Leaves Beacon Hills, Jackson Whittemore is Part of the Hale Pack, Selfcest, oh the Nogitsune/Stiles so qualifies for that, also just in case the ship makes you vary this is Very Very Consensual on all sides, and honestly much more wholesome than anticipated Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/58603597

[autisticandhyperfixatingg]

Over here, FanFic writers/editors!!

I am looking for someone to beta read/edit a short fic I've been working on.

The fic is set in the MCU, and it includes stucky (Steve/Bucky) and transman!Steve because there is not enough out there.

The fic is roughly 800 words long atm, but feel free to add slash delete as much as you want. It will be rated General Audiences (possibly teen and up) if it's posted on Ao3.

I wrote this from I prompt that I came up with a while ago and can't get out of my head, but I feel like it could be better written.

What you will do: Watever you want. You could just read through it once, or you could write a whole new fic from the prompt. Maybe add in those more advanced words that only people with English as their first language would know?It's not like I'm paying you or something, so your choice!

Rules: I've got exactly one rule. If you do write something, send it to me, let my poor hyperfixating content-starved brain read it. Otherwise you can do literally anything with it. Either I could post it on my ao3, giving you cred ofc, of you could post it on your own account and say uou write it all yourself. Send it in as a school project for all I care. Just please let me read it. That is all I ask.

Thank u in advance for considering this! So if you're interested in a little side project (or just want to read the fic ad it is lol) just DM me and I'll send it over.

I promise you it will be worth it!!

❗️Is now being beta'd by the amazing @letmelickyoureyeballs ❗️

[jinxedruby]

Ambush at the Bridge: Chapter One

Surprise I'm actually a writer! I've fooled you all! uhh anyway here's a linked universe thing that I wrote. The chain gets ambushed during their travels and split up. It is whump-like, Hyrule's not having a great time this chapter.

AO3

Next part ->

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

The sound of clanging metal and grunts, both human and monster, filled the air around Hyrule. Strands of hair stuck to his forehead and neck, his skin slick with sweat. He sidestepped a swipe from a bokoblin, panting as he thrust his sword forward. The point drove through the bokoblin and it let out an ugly screech before it went limp. Hyrule yanked his sword from the monster’s body just as a lizalfos bore down on him from the side. He whipped around, bringing his shield up just in time to block a blow from the lizalfos’s knife. The blade bounced off his shield and he slashed at the monster with his sword. It jumped backwards out of reach before its tongue shot forward. It wrapped around Hyrule’s shield and yanked. Hyrule grunted as he was thrown to the side, shoulder twisting painfully. The lizalfos retracted its tongue, ripping the shield from Hyrule’s arm and tossing it aside. He scrambled to his feet as the lizalfos charged at him, blade raised high. He dodged a swing and returned with a slash of his own. The lizalfos just dodged away again. Hyrule gritted his teeth and held his sword with both hands, carefully watching the lizalfos’s movements, waiting for the opportunity to strike. He watched too closely.

A bokoblin appeared in his peripheral at the last moment. He darted away, the tip of the monster’s sword grazing his arm and drawing a shallow cut in his skin. The adrenaline dampened the pain and he hardly noticed the wound as he skipped to the side, eyes flicking between the two monsters. He narrowly dodged another swipe from the bokoblin. He was given no time to retaliate as the lizalfos ran to him and attacked as well. Hyrule didn’t realize where he was until his boots hit wood. A bridge spanning a small river. He and the others had been about to cross when they were ambushed. The monsters had split them apart and were doing their best to keep it that way. Wind and Twilight had managed to join up, and Hyrule could at least see Warriors and Time, but he had no idea where the others were.

He managed to get a good attack in on the lizalfos, opening a large gash in its chest. It gave a cry, backpedaling. It lashed out with its tongue again, but Hyrule was ready this time. He ducked and swung his sword in an arc over his head. The blade connected with the multicolored tongue and sliced it clean in half. The lizalfos screamed, stumbling away and grasping at the bleeding end of its severed tongue. Before Hyrule could straighten and reset his stance, the bokoblin screeched and lunged at him. Frantically, he twisted his sword upright, their blades crashing into one another. The bokoblin slid its sword one way and Hyrule followed, keeping the bokoblin’s weapon away from himself. The monster threw all of its weight into a swing. It ripped Hyrule’s sword from his hands while simultaneously losing its grip on its own, sending both the weapons flying. Hyrule reached into his bag for something, anything, he could use but the bokoblin moved before he could. It dove for Hyrule, colliding painfully into him and bringing them both to the ground.

Hyrule’s shoulders hit the wooden slats of the bridge but his head didn’t hit anything, neck bending too far as it swung back from the momentum. The resulting stretch of his neck left him seeing stars. He lifted his head, abruptly recalling how shoddy the bridge had looked. It bore plenty of holes and the wood had warped from the water running beneath it. He could feel the ragged corners of broken planks digging into his shoulders and realized his head must be right over a hole. The wood groaned beneath him as he fought to wrestle his way out from under the bokoblin. He managed to get a boot beneath the monster and kick it off of him. He quickly sat up, trying to get to his feet before the bokoblin did. A screech sounded to the side. He whipped his head around, just in time to see the lizalfos flying at him. Black blood dripped from its mouth and seeped from the wound in its chest, eyes crazed as it collided with Hyrule. He yelped as it slammed him into the bridge, arm curled against himself, pinned painfully between him and the monster. He tried to shove it off with his free arm but the bokoblin returned, jumping on him and grabbing his other arm. The bokoblin twisted his arm away from him, pain sparking at the overextension. The monsters gurgled and screeched, clawing at him as he fought against them, keeping him trapped beneath them.

He heard a shout, saw a flash of green in the distance out of the corner of his eye. Warriors, struggling to reach him. The captain cut down enemy after enemy, but whenever he did, more would just replace them, blocking his path. Hyrule kicked wildly and struggled to pull his arms out of the monsters’ grasps. He managed to flail enough to sit up partway but the monsters just shoved him back down, his shoulders slamming against the wood. Hyrule felt a jerk beneath him. A loud crack sounded from the bridge.

Then the planks beneath him snapped.

Hyrule’s stomach flipped as he suddenly found himself in freefall, the bokoblin and lizalfos plummeting along with him. He heard a distant shout that sounded like Warriors yelling his nickname. He barely managed to get a breath in before he hit the water.

The sounds of the river pummeled his ears, the force of the current flipping him around. His lungs constricted as panic flooded his mind. A sharp pain lit in his leg as a broken plank of wood whipped past him, slicing his skin open. He had no idea what happened to the monsters. He flailed as he tumbled in the water, trying to find the surface, or even the riverbed so he could kick off of it. But all he found was water. His lungs burned and all he could do was clap a hand to his mouth and nose so he didn’t inhale by accident. The current yanked and shoved at him, sending him spinning further and further from the bridge. His stomach churned, head fuzzy, unable to tell which way was up and which way was down. Black fuzziness crept in the corners of his vision, if his vision could even still be called that. He could see nothing but frothing water in the moments he managed to keep his eyes open.

The current abruptly tossed him in a direction that caused his head to break the surface. He gasped a breath in the moment he realized it but was yanked back under just as quickly. It wasn’t enough time to see or hear if anyone was coming for him. He felt numb with panic and crawling dread as the river carried him further and further. This couldn’t be how he died, could it? All those battles to the death – defeating Ganon, monsters hunting him – and he drowns?

The river dashed him against a rock, his head smacking against the coarse stone. His vision blackened for the briefest moment. But it was long enough for him to suck water into his throat. He coughed reflexively, the sound lost in the roar of the river, bubbles escaping his mouth and being whisked away from him. The coughing only succeeded in pulling more water into his throat. The panic had been dulled slightly by the knock to the head, but it returned in tenfold as the water found its way to his lungs. He clawed at his throat only for the current to rip his hand away. The blackness edged into his sight again, his vision rapidly shrinking. His chest burned, throat stinging horribly. His vision darkened further and his limbs began to prickle, the sounds of the current muffled. The water drove him to the riverbed and he barely even noticed his back scraping against the rocks. He could hardly hear the water at all anymore. His chest felt warm. He sank into darkness.

***

Fire in his chest.

That was all Hyrule registered. The burning pain spasmed through his body with each harsh cough, water spurting from his mouth. He found himself on his side, hacking and spluttering, fighting to suck in air between coughs. His throat ached, eyes sore and stinging as he struggled to pry them open. After practically hacking out his lungs, the coughing fit began to slow, water dripping from his lips.

“-ar me? Traveler?”

Hyrule gradually became aware of a voice above him and a warm hand on his arm. He turned his head, absently trying to rub the ache from his eyes. A blurry figure crouched above him, fluffy yellow-blond hair sweeping across a sun-kissed face. A bright blue blob hovered beneath the face gradually becoming clearer.

“Sailor?” Hyrule croaked, throat raw.

Wind laughed, a short bark of relief. He collapsed against Hyrule, wrapping his arms tightly around the other boy and burying his face in the crook of his neck.

“You’re okay!” Wind cried, voice muffled in Hyrule’s soaked tunic. “Oh, thank the gods. I- I thought I didn’t make it in time, thank the gods…”

Hyrule blinked slowly, sluggishly processing Wind’s words. As awareness gradually returned to him, he realized how much everything hurt. His chest burned and throbbed, spiking in pain as Wind held him. The side of his head felt strangely cold, skin prickling with numb pain. He also realized that Wind was sopping wet, water dripping from his hair and running onto Hyrule.

“Sailor,” Hyrule said weakly. The younger boy pulled back immediately, round eyes wide with worry. Hyrule struggled to string together a coherent sentence, vaguely wondering why his brain was working so slowly. After a while he gave up, settling on two words. “Thank… you.”

Wind blinked. Then he laughed, pushing his soaked bangs from his eyes. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Hyrule gave him a crooked grin before pushing himself up. He hissed as pain seared through his head at the movement. Wind gasped, arms darting out to support him.

“Careful!” he said, gently laying Hyrule back down. “Y-you probably shouldn’t get up yet. Your head… your head’s bleeding.”

Hyrule reached up to the side of his head, wincing at how tender it was. His fingertips came away red.

“Do you have a potion? Or a fairy?” Wind asked. “I- I left my bag…”

Hyrule slowly shook his head, placing his fingers gingerly against the wound.

“I’m sure the others will find us! Oh, maybe you shouldn’t touch it. Or- or can you move? We can… No, you probably shouldn’t- What are you doing?” Wind rambled on until a soft light glowing around Hyrule’s wound distracted him, the reflection glimmering in Wind’s eyes. Hyrule’s heart thudded heavily against his ribs as magic flowed through his fingers and into his injury. His eyes slid shut as he struggled to keep the spell going. Using magic while exhausted and in pain wasn’t exactly easy but eventually, his efforts paid off. The wound in his head closed, stemming the flow of blood. The prickling and sharp throbbing subsided and the fog in his mind cleared just enough that he could think at a reasonable pace again. He sighed in relief, letting his arm flop to the ground. He blinked his eyes open, vision much sharper than before. He could clearly see Wind’s face, the boy’s mouth in a small o.

“What was that?” the younger boy asked, wonder in his voice.

“Life spell,” Hyrule explained as he sat up with more caution than before. “It can’t heal everything, but it’s useful in a pinch.”

“That’s so cool!” Wind exclaimed. “Are… are you okay now? Looks like the bleeding stopped…”

“I… yeah.” Hyrule neglected to mention the dull headache the spell hadn’t fixed. He instead glanced around, looking for any of the others. “Where is everyone?”

Wind looked around as well, biting his lip. “Still upriver, I guess. You… The current carried you pretty far.”

Hyrule nodded in response, taking in their surroundings for the first time since waking up. They sat a fair distance from the river, the current splashing over rocks and tree roots poking out from the banks. The force of the water seemed far calmer than it was upriver where Hyrule had fallen in. Trees crowded around them, thick boughs stretching overhead and blotting out the sun, light just dappling the grass. It was quite peaceful if Hyrule didn’t think about the fact that he nearly drowned in the river before them.

“We should make our way back,” Hyrule said. The others had still been fighting when he fell in, hadn’t they?

Wind hesitated for a moment before nodding. He stood, offering a hand to Hyrule. “Can you walk?”

Hyrule took Wind’s hand, the blond pulling him to his feet. His head spun a little at the motion, throbbing in time with his heart. With a deep breath and focus on staying upright, he trudged alongside Wind. They slowly made their way back, walking beside the river in the opposite direction it flowed. Hyrule stumbled a number of times along the way, Wind steadying him each time. Whenever Hyrule coughed, Wind would shoot him a fearful look, despite the brunet insisting he was fine.

“Are you okay?” Hyrule asked at one point. Wind didn’t appear to be injured, but Hyrule couldn’t help but notice the way the boy’s hands trembled, how he shook slightly with each step.

Wind was quiet for a moment. “Drowning is… scary,” he said in a quiet voice. Hyrule almost didn’t hear him over the sound of the river, which grew in volume as they walked. “Most of the world in my era is underwater, so it happens a lot.”

“But you saved me,” Hyrule replied. “I didn’t drown.”

Wind looked back at him, expression grim. The look didn’t fit his youthful face. “Sometimes people will drown later anyway.”

Hyrule fell quiet at that. Wind sighed and faced forward again, hands clenched at his sides to keep from shaking. Hyrule watched for a moment, focusing on walking without stumbling as he tried to think of a way to get Wind’s mind – and his own – off of his potential death.

“What’s your Zelda like?” he asked. He must have picked his question well because he could see Wind’s shoulders relaxing.

“Tetra?” Wind said. A grin crept onto his face. “She’s amazing. Real tough girl.”

Hyrule blinked. “Her name isn’t Zelda?”

“Well, technically it is, but she didn’t know she was the princess until our journey.” Wind’s grin widened. “She’s actually a pirate!”

“Whoa, really?”

Wind bobbed his head eagerly. “She helped me take down Ganon! No way I could’ve done it without her.”

Wind went on to regale Hyrule with the story of his battle against Ganon and how Tetra fought alongside him. Hyrule could feel the tension in the air lifting and relaxed as it did. Wind talked animatedly, waving his hands through the air for emphasis and spinning around to face Hyrule, walking backwards as he spun his tale.

“…she got him with the arrows one last time and I did my back slash, flew up and-“

A branch snapped in the woods to their right. Wind instantly fell silent, the two of them going still as they peered into the trees. Wind pulled out his sword, standing protectively before Hyrule who was still unarmed. Hyrule narrowed his eyes as he tried to see through the shadows of the woods. Another branch snapped and he tensed. There was shuffling. Then footsteps. Wind’s shoulders rose, grip tightening around the hilt of his sword.

Twilight emerged from the trees, dirt and leaves caught in his dirty blond hair and sticking to his clothes.

“Rancher?” Wind groaned, lowering his sword. “I thought you were a monster! Call out or something next time!”

Twilight chuckled, unsuccessfully attempting to swipe the grime from his bangs. Then his gaze landed on Hyrule and his face lit up.

“Traveler?”

Hyrule lifted his hand in greeting. Twilight laughed in relief, hurrying to close the gap between them. “Thank the spirits you’re okay!” he exclaimed, reaching out and squeezing Hyrule’s shoulder. Some mud caked onto his fingers were left behind on Hyrule’s sleeve. “I tried to go after you, but by the time I got away from the monsters, I’d completely lost track of you.” His expression fell into one of guilt for a moment before brightening again. “But it looks like Wind got you. For that, I’m grateful.”

Wind fidgeted, fingering the pommel of his sword. “It… it was close.”

Hyrule nudged Wind, giving him a soft smile. “But I’m okay.” He looked up at Twilight. “What about the others?”

Twilight pushed his bangs back with a sigh, smearing the muck across his hair even more. “Last I saw, the captain and the old man were clearing out the monsters by the bridge. They’re doing fine, but I haven’t seen anyone else.”

“I hope they’re all okay. I wonder what happened?” Hyrule mused.

“Speaking of what happened, how’d you get so dirty?” Wind asked, pointing at the mud-splattered rancher. Hyrule got a better look at the rancher and the muck that covered him. Dark mud coated his limbs, climbing to his knees and elbows. Smears of it decorated his clothes and face as well as his hair.

Twilight gave an awkward laugh, smiling crookedly as he rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s… well… I was in a hurry, trying to go after you guys. I was investigating something I heard but it just led to all this mud and, well…”

“Don’t tell me you fell!” Hyrule laughed.

“It- it was really slippery!” Twilight spluttered, the other two laughing as he scrambled.

“All those monsters-“ Wind cackled, “-and you tripped!”

Twilight groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Please spare me, I’m going to get enough from the captain.”

It took nearly a full minute for Wind and Hyrule to reign in their laughter. Twilight struggling to pick the clumps of dried mud from his hair and wolf pelt only made stopping their laughter that much harder. Then Hyrule’s laughing turned to harsh coughing and the joviality in the air vanished. Wind and Twilight instantly swarmed him, holding him steady, trying to soothe him.

“I’m- I’m fine,” Hyrule croaked, weakly trying to brush their hands away.

“That didn’t sound fine,” said Twilight, a worried crease in his brow. He reached into his bag, digging around. “Hold on, I have a potion.”

Hyrule shook his head, clearing his throat. “Save it. One of the others might really need it. My lungs are just irritated, that’s all. It’ll go away.”

Twilight pursed his lips, looking unconvinced. “But if it’s more than that-“

“It’s not,” Hyrule insisted, straightening and drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. “If no one else is injured when we all regroup, I’ll think about drinking it, okay?”

Twilight hesitated, glancing at Wind. Then he sighed, withdrawing his hand from his pouch. “Fine. But you will take it if no one else needs it. Deal?”

Hyrule nodded, relieved to drop the issue. He glanced into the woods upriver. “Well, should we go meet up with the two by the bridge? I’d also like to find my sword and shield, if we can.”

Twilight nodded, turning in the direction Hyrule faced. “I don’t think it’s too much further.”

The others nodded before Twilight turned away and began walking upriver, the other two following after him.

Wind leaned over to Hyrule, hand cupped against his mouth. “I still can’t believe he slipped,” he snickered not-so-quietly. Hyrule snorted and Twilight groaned.

“I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

Wind grinned. “Nope!”

[faketrex]

Summer Fic Reading Challenge: August 1st

No bingo yet! I've been reading non-strategically, just slotting things into spaces on the card when they fit.

My reading list thus far under the cut... fic recs, fic recs, get them while they're hot. Mostly RWRB, one Merlin.

Free space: "As the poets say, it’s independence day" by TheLurkingContessa

RWRB. Henry is a writer, Alex is a law student with an OnlyFans sex work (and naked cleaning) (and foot pics) side hustle. So very funny and so very hot and so very charming–and now there's an Alex POV sequel, too!

AO3 link

Road trip: "This Is More of a Comment Than a Question" by @caterpills

RWRB. Publicist Alex is forced, kicking and screaming (figuratively), to accompany author Henry on a book tour. Could it be possible that sparks fly, maybe? I've just gotten started reading this WIP and am already enjoying it immensely.

AO3 link

Crossover or fusion: "Yes, it's an emergency!" by @cricketnationrise

RWRB/The Martian fusion. Cricket wrote an Alex POV The Martian fusion piece a while back and I loved it, so I was excited when she posted this new Henry POV sequel-slash-accompanying piece. Did I love it? Of course! It turns out that Henry pining away over Alex is just as satisfying as Alex pining away over Henry (and, you know, life on Earth... because Alex is stuck on Mars).

AO3 link

Under the influence: "say what you mean (and mean what you say)" by @schweetheart

Merlin. Arthur is cursed to tell the truth, sort of. "Truth spell" is a classic trope in the Merlin fandom, with good reason, and schweet is a skilled writer who knows exactly which parts of the story to tell to make it supremely, exceptionally satisfying.

AO3 link

Mission fic: "come home with me" by smc_27

RWRB. Alex is a real estate agent, Henry is house-hunting, and their mission is to find Henry a house. (And fall in love.) It's one of the most difficult missions out there, if you ask me. (Finding a house, I mean.) A delightful read.

AO3 link

Sports AU: "Naturally adapted for bodily exertion" by @kiwiana-writes

RWRB. What, I ask you, is the epitome of "Sports AU" as a concept? Ancient Greek Olympics, clearly. Do Henry and Alex wrestle naked, covered in oil? Of course they do. Thank goodness (and kiwiana)!

AO3 link

Multichapter: "here is a map (with your name for a capital)" by @alasse9

RWRB. My note-to-self about this one says, "Amazing gentle What if Rio went differently? AU" and that's pretty much how I would like to describe it to you. To say it differently, though: I love RWRB canon, but I have to say... I might love this version of events just as much.

AO3 link

[kleio-with-a-k]

A (very basic, incomplete) timeline of the history of fanfiction

Got into fan studies like a month ago, and learning about how fanfiction has changed is definitely my favorite part. I should note that there were works you could classify as fanfiction as early as the eighteenth century, but I'm more interested in the evolution of modern fanfiction.

Beginning of fanfiction as we know it

1960s - 1970s - Women writing Star Trek fanzines basically invent fanfiction, and also the idea of having sex, which no one had thought to do before. Everyone say thank you women. The fandom term "slash" originates from early Kirk/Spock fanfiction. (Kirk SLASH Spock.)

1981 - Several women (because yes, they were also women) receive cease and desist letters from Maureen Garrett, director of the Official Star Wars Fan Club saying that "X-rated" fanfiction is strictly prohibited and that "the word has come down from George Lucas, himself, that STAR WARS pornography is unquestionably unacceptable." This managed to mostly deter people from writing Star Wars smut (until the Internet), an example of what Mel Stanfill calls successful "domestication" of a fanbase.

Fanfiction goes online

1990s - early 2000s - Fanfiction moves online. It is no longer necessary (or preferable) to create fanzines that are sent out to a mailing list - or traded at cons. Obviously people still make physical copies of zines and are still attending cons, but the internet makes available a plethora of free fan-made content. It also becomes harder (although as we shall see, not impossible) for companies to control what types of fanfiction get passed around.

Anne Rice and fair use (and why companies can basically do whatever they want)

2000 - Anne Rice, author of Interview With The Vampire, posts a message on her website stating that she disallows all fanfiction of her works. Several fanfiction writers receive cease and desist letters. The following year, fanfiction.net scrubs all fanfiction of her works from their site.

What Rice did would probably not have stood up to legal scrutiny, but that doesn't really matter. Fair use doesn't really mean shit because companies FREQUENTLY use language that exceeds their actual legal authority as a scare tactic. People don't know what constitutes fair use and even if they did, sites like YouTube (or like fanfiction.net) tend to side with the companies and IP owners. That means that a lot of what gets taken down is fair use but is stuff the IP owner finds objectionable, a la 1980s Lucasfilm. (See Mel Stanfill's Exploiting Fandom, chap. 4 for more about this)

Early mainstreaming of fanfiction: "And when everyone's a nerd...no one will be."

2006 - The infamous Harry Potter fanfiction "My Immortal" is posted on fanfiction.net. I originally thought about putting this here to be funny and cause you kind of have to, but I actually think the widespread ridicule it received is probably indicative of the fact that fanfiction was still seen as something weird and niche. (Yes, I'm aware this is not the only reason it's funny.)

2008 - Iron Man, the first movie of what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hits theaters. I've seen people cite the MCU as the sole reason for the mainstreaming of nerd/geek culture. I think I have to agree, and with the mainstreaming of nerd/geek culture comes the mainstreaming of fanfiction.

2011 - Fifty Shades of Grey is published. The author, E. L. James, is open about the fact that her story started as Twilight fanfiction. This is one of the first (THE first?) books with mainstream success that is essentially published fanfiction.

Fanfiction goes mainstream?

2015ish to present: Is it weird to read or write fanfiction anymore? It doesn't really feel like it. The transformative works website Archive of Our Own has seen a steady increase in the number of visitors to the site every year since the 2010s. (And a lot of people, not just the weirdos, at least have some idea of what AO3 is.) It is no longer as taboo to turn your fanfiction into a published book. Which is remarkable, because as late as 2019, Mel Stanfill (to whom I owe my life) talks about how the ways in which women engage in fandom (fanfiction) are not profitable or career-advancing like the stuff male fans do (video game modding, amateur filmmaking). To me, it looks like that has changed. The fanfiction-turned-books that I've seen get the most snide laughs are After by Anna Todd (2014) and The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (2021). But secure the bag regardless, ladies. We love to see a girlboss winning.

Further Reading (because obviously you're as invested as I am):

Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry by Suzanne Scott

Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans by Mel Stanfill

Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth by Camille Bacon-Smith

The Fan Fiction Studies Reader ed. Karen Hellokson and Kristina Busse

Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet ed. Karen Hellokson and Kristina Busse

[b4adb4tcher]

Reddie Fic Recs

Okay so these are the ones I go back to and reread constantly!! All listed have multiple chapters, impeccable grammar/structure, and RIDICULOUSLY good characterization/dialogue. Theyre also all located on AO3. My obsession is too late for peak fandom interactions so these are what keep my hyper fixation alive.

1. In The Heat Of The Summer (You’re So Different From The Rest) by Kaboomslang

There’s a heatwave in L.A., the first time Richie sees Eddie naked.

Or

One very hot year in the life of two idiots in love, working shit out.

It is so so so so fucking good I can’t stand it. It’s an Eddie Lives AU that is 15 Chapters and 109,525 words of pining and comfort and beauty. Eddie comes to stay with Richie in LA after the events of It Chapter 2. Literally my only complaint is that Stan stays dead however the characterization of everyone and the way the writer handles their grief more than made up for it.

2. A Strange Sense of Familiarity by Katranga

“So Eddie, what brings you to the bar tonight?" Richie asked. "Gonna rebound from the divorce? Pick up a hot young twenty-something to feel young again?”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said, jutting his chin forward. “What a terrible way to ruin the mood.”

“I’m sorry, all my moods are poorly cultivated. What mood were you looking for?”

A nervous lump grew in Eddie's throat. He threw back his drink to get rid of it.

Hand wrapped around the glass he’d just slammed back onto the bar, he said, “The mood that gets me leaving with a schlubby forty-something.”

--

Pre-chapter two, Eddie and Richie meet and don't remember each other, but have an instant connection anyway...

This may be my favorite fic of all time. This is a Canon Divergence AU where Richie and Eddie meet at a bar prior to the events of It Chapter 2 and start sleeping together. Eddie is divorced so there’s no infidelity storyline (which I appreciate) HOWEVER Richie is still famous and in the closet so there’s still the secret love affair storyline (that I love). The characterization is literally perfect, it has amazing dialogue, and my boy Stan is alive and involved. The OCs are so so good too and I’m beyond obsessed with all the thought the author obviously put into it.

3. Sweeter By The Hour by Katranga

rich. 25. i can be your angle 😇... or yuor devil 😈

Edward. 38. Please don’t call me daddy.

--

Richie’s a struggling standup comedian slash bartender with a side hustle of sexting rich guys for cash. Eddie is recently divorced, recently out, and reluctant to dive into either the dating or hookup scene. He decides to give Sugr, a 'dating app with no commitment', a shot.

Katranga NEVER MISSES. Even though the losers club is in a completely different universe, the characterization and dialogue is so them that it scratches every itch in my brain. This is such a funny and adorable AU I would recommend to anyone that needs a break from the high stress and extremely high stakes of the traditional It Universe.

4. Here In Your Arms by kaspbrak_kid

Richie had no idea what to expect when Stan and Patty asked him to be their daughter's godfather, but it definitely wasn't becoming the part-time dad to a newborn.

This fic makes me cry like a bitch in the best way possible. This is a several years later fic in a Eddie and Stan Lives AU where Richie becomes godfather to Stan and Patty’s firstborn. This is so so special to me because it perfectly preserves The Loser’s Club dynamics in a safe environment and gives me all the found family warm fuzzies I so desperately need. As usual the characterization is phenomenal and Richie and Eddie’s relationship throughout this fic is so so special to me.

5. Richie Tozier’s Five-Step Mission in Getting Over His Childhood Sweetheart by MissDinahDarling

Alternatively: five times Richie tries to get over Eddie and the one time he gets under him instead.

This fic is so so fucking funny I love everything about it. Its also a Stan and Eddie Live AU and thehe dialogue and losers club dynamics are so so funny. I love seeing little snippets of how the losers lives are moving on and especially appreciate that Bev and Ben didn’t move as quickly as some fics do. Richies denial and stupidity are so relatable and its an extremely comforting read.

6. River by Unicornpoe

The thing—the thing is that Eddie hasn’t seen Richie in nearly five years.

They’ve gotten good at avoiding each other. They alternate holidays and get-togethers, only showing up when they’re sure the other won’t be present. They’re still in the same fucking city but Eddie makes sure to shop on the other side of town from their old place where Richie still lives, makes sure not to go to any of Richie’s favorite restaurants or bars or cafes or goddamn park benches. Eddie doesn’t join in on the Losers’s group FaceTime sessions when he knows Richie’ll be joining, and Richie does the same for him.

They couldn’t make their relationship work, but they’re fucking experts at being exes.

*

Eddie goes to spend the holidays at Bill and Mike's cabin in Vermont, and is surprised when Richie is already there. Things get worse when they're snowed in alone. Things get even more worse when Eddie remembers that he's still in love with him.

This fic gives me the most acute sense of profound longing I’ve ever had in my life. The EXTREMELY angsty hurt/comfort au I’ve ever read in my life. Not extremely inclusive of the rest of The Losers Club, but it hits hard.

7. This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) by camerasparring

Just as the last car is passing them, Prince Charming makes a snuffling noise and Eddie freezes, still pressed on top of him. He’s suddenly aware of every single place they’re touching, and Eddie thanks the brutal Chicago cold - there’s no way he could pop a boner when it’s this freezing. God, he hates himself.

The man opens his eyes for a moment and looks directly into Eddie’s eyes. Eddie’s mouth hangs open. He tries to smile, but he doesn’t think he achieves it. Instead, he swallows and says:

“Merry Christmas.”

The guy passes back out without a word.

__

or, the While You Were Sleeping AU no one asked for. Set Christmas 1995 and the gang is late 20's/early 30's

I read this before ever even hearing of the movie While You Were Sleeping. While the movie is now one of my favorites, it is absolutely nothing compared to the hilarious romcom of this fic. Found family! Secrets! Drama! Stan the mother fucking man! It is so so good and gives me all the good feelings the holidays provide whenever I read it.

8. Scratch On The Moon by Vulcanodon

Eddie Kraspbak has put aside his old life for good. He drives a stagecoach now and keeps to himself- his days of running with the Denbrough gang are long gone. But when two old friends show up and tell him they have unfinished business back in Derry, Eddie can’t resist the chance to put a final nail in the coffin of the past…and maybe find out why Richie broke his promise all those years ago.

“I’ll take left if you take right,” Eddie calls out but when he looks over Richie isn’t even firing his gun; he’s looking at Eddie with a strange, unreadable expression on his face.

“What is it?” Eddie asks, panicking. “Are you hit?”

“No,” Richie says, “I just. I just wanted you know. That I…that I feel the same way.”

“What?” Eddie asks, totally lost. A bullet whistles past his ear.

“I mean I...” Richie says, as if he’s struggling to get it out. “I feel the same way about you. I mean. That I always did.”

“Could we maybe postpone this conversation?” Eddie says, having to yell over the gunfire. “To a time when we aren’t getting shot at?”

Are you gay? Is longing and the tragedy of wasted time your guilty pleasure? Did you read River by Unicornpoe and want more? Do you like westerns? READ THIS FIC AND COME TALK TO ME IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!

9. You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog (And They Call It Puppy Love) by Fluffifullness

Okay, Richie, so you’ve just been Shaggy Dog’d, you’re either kicking it in the weirdest of all possible afterlives or you never died and the sewer clown is punking you. What next?

(or: Eddie makes it out of Derry, gets a divorce, and adopts a dog.)

Richie gets “Shaggy Dog’d” after he sacrifices himself for Eddie during the events of It Chapter 2. Grief, pining, and Richie’s internal monologue being fucking hilarious. And STAN LIVES!!!!!!

10. Thanks For Pudding Up With Me by Mooeydooey

Eddie Kaspbrak was once one of the most influential professional chefs in New York. After an unfortunate incident in his kitchen, he loses his job and most of his earnings. Down on his luck, with no where else to go, he accepts a job offer with the ragtag 'Prospect Test Kitchen' in Boston.

What starts as a small passion project, making cooking tutorials online, becomes a lot more complicated and bigger than they could ever imagine when Bill brings in a new addition to their team. A comedian with a shocking background and surprise talent for culinary arts: Richie Tozier.

Eddie's the only one who doesn't like the new recruit, but Bill bribes Eddie into giving Richie a chance. At the end of six months, Richie's contract will expire. Eddie will get to decide whether they offer him a contract renewal, or refuse to re-hire him.

Things are heating up in the Prospect street Test Kitchen! Will Eddie stick to his guns, and keep his dignity? Or will he get lost in the sauce?

SO FUCKING FUNNY!!! An absolutely genius buzzfeed-esque au that is exactly what I need when I want a laugh. My favorite parts are when they go into like a third person screenplay mode for describing the events in the videos. I cannot get enough of this enemies(?) to friends to lovers au and I’m so so glad it exists.

11. A Fistful of Coal Dust by Jay Auris (nighthawkms)

Eddie Kaspbrak usually works alone. For a bounty hunting mage, this is unheard of; dangerous, foolhardy. But for Eddie - stricken with a dangerous abnormality to his magic - it's the safest way to survive.

When a new bounty takes him to the backwater town of Derry, he's not expecting anything more than a hard job done right for good money. But Eddie's past is about to catch up with him, and Derry could face the consequences. He'll have to team up with a rag-tag bunch of misfits - a sheriff with too much on his shoulders, a tavern owner haunted by loss, and four other hunters with their own secrets and motivations - if he wants to survive.

And maybe, if he's lucky, he'll get an answer to the one question that's been bugging him since he got to Derry: Who is Richie Tozier, and what does he want from Eddie?

A super fun Steampunk-Western-Magic-Bounty Hunter AU that has the perfect ratio of action, drama, and intrigue. I have no idea how the author came up with such an amazing idea and how they were able to do so much incredible world building but I absolutely LOVE IT.

If anyone reads any of these fics I would love to talk about them and hear what you think! They’re all so so so special to me and stay on my fic rotation, so if y’all have any suggestions for me too I’m happy to check them out!

[just-antithings]

So someone screenshotted the top ship categories on ao3 for some new fandom and lamented the lack of f/f when they wanted to read a lesbian pairing. Ok, understandable to be disappointed (disclaimer I don't know the fandom and I don't know how many possible lesbian pairings there actually are).

Somebody else commented "WRITE IT YOURSELF THEN" and went on to explain that people aren't obliged to write whatever you specifically might want to read. Again, fair, I can see the logic.

BUT THEN that second person went on to get a ton of shit because the original screenshot had "too much m/m" (top pairing was het, the rest slash) including a buried comment saying that m/m writers should be "rounded up and shot"??

Thankfully a person with some sense chimed in with the following:

interesting how the top ship in the screenshot is m/f but the qrts and replies that are on screenshot!op's side are mostly specifically focusing on there being "too much" m/m

(and "centering men" but that het ship contains the exact same amount of men and women. one each.)

Me personally, I think this is yet another manifestation of the flavor of radfem-adjacent lesbian purists who refuse to date bi women because they're "contaminated" by men. Or who use some Bechdel test crap to say that any story where men are involved is "centering men".

Here's the post if anyone wants to see it

https://twitter.com/fennecwounds/status/1694678513578651793

(Also, have these people never been on ao3 before??)

.

[veikkoalen]

wake writes an ending

words: 454

description: he put the words in a shoebox. it put the words in him.

author's note: there are so many references! i loved writing it so much. do reply me if you want to say something <3

mentions of suicide, murder and also, spoilers to the alan wake 2 plot!

on ao3

time – overlapping, bending, pursuing with a sole goal of reminding: you are a drowned corpse. sinking you to the deeps of the bottomless ocean, to be claimed forever.

you fucked up your chance to be happy lifetimes ago. sunsets and sunrises traded for a searing white light of a lightbulb in your palm. hunted for sport by your own reflection. sealed away from the only person who made you whole.

pushing through the masks, lies, posh furniture, through the comfort of madness till your fingers reach the surface.

have you always been drenched in blood? you wish you could say it's a recent addition, but you don't remember the blood trails ever being fresh.

you can only pray your efforts were not in vain. god, how many messages have you sent over a fucking decade? the answers would have thrown you into a fit of rage.

giving the agency to the characters was a dire mistake. what the fuck is wrong with zane's story? he can't be the creator, fuck no, fuck him! you're the only one allowed to shape the reality!

film scratches.

the house no longer feels empty.

he praises you, like you even deserve existence. he crawls under your skin, digging deeper, slashing, bludgeoning, ripping, molding you to his image.

all it took is the change of perspective for the mask to crack. you have never been changed. you have always brought change according to your image. wake would try to be the writer/poet/murderer at least once.

note: scratch paragraph the fuck out

you've contemplated it so many times, took attempts, got dragged from the other side – distant glimpses of life you can't bear to remember. yet, he still praises you, like you haven't killed yourself by drowning.

"he once mistook the ocean for the lake." and here you are, mistaking a spiral for a loop. maybe, you deserve to be a broken record.

you write and write and write the life away, without noticing that the ink is no longer black.

anything to escape. there must be victims in a horror story.

maybe you'll stop feeling like a monster if you keep chanting it over and over again.

the culmination is due. the door in the room is open wide.

you are home. you finally accepted that we've always been home. a murderer based on a director based on a writer.

or was it vice versa?

i lifted the page and read that i lifted the page and read that i lifted the page and read that i lifted the page and read

a happy ending we have always deserved.

everyone loves us.

everything revolves around us.

we are one.

he murdered your wife.

you finally don't wake up.

[antimony-medusa]

starting off this reply by saying you're way more coherent than I'll ever be and you've managed to sum up all the main points my silly anon vent post made and more.

my hatred of dadza assignments is less going after people minding their own business but more the people making their theories everyone's business through character critique threads. i was tired of people attacking cPhil not being an all-seeing all-knowing paternal therapist for far too many people on the old server who were going through their sad cubito arcs (when at most he was an acquaintance), and I'm slightly horrified watching qPhil being attacked/ mischaracterised to fit the same narrative in the exact same way right now on a completely separate server. i could copy and paste arguments used against innitwt fans who went too far then and apply it to qsmptwt fans who are going too far now, qPhil hasn't been assigned the abusive/absent side character in many qsmp fanfics just yet but time and flat circle etc etc

honestly it sucks because during purgatory the BOLAS cult/family fan reaction was fun! and maybe it was because it was in it's early stages or creators weren't focusing on their angst-filled individual lore at the time but people were (mostly) making dark cannibalistic AUs and art and just exploring potential dynamics, instead of assuming fanon=canon and delving into the very familiar 3 stages you mentioned (wiki writers being a notable exception as per usual)

point C is just describing how twitter works, most stans think that if they make enough noise their chosen creator or entire fandom will bend to their will. as Tubbo said it's not that deep

Yeah! Yeah I am in full agreement here. I ended up deleting my response to that post cause I felt like I'd gotten too far off track for the question, but I think it escaped containment first, so, hello. Continued conversation. :D To be clear, I didn't think you were out of line at all, you just hit me in a moment where I'd been doing some reflections about what I post, and I'm personally trying to remind myself to not go out here posting stuff like "shipping is the only moral way to do fandom, family dynamic is BAD", because if I think about it for more than a second that's an absurd thing to say, and it's not helpful. We're all being kind of weird here, family dynamic is not too far out of line when we're talking about Things To Headcanon With Cubitos.

However, I DO think there's an issue in the fandom with people telling themselves that shipping = bad but family dynamic = good, and then doing everything that shipping wars lead into, including demonizing other characters for the sake of their ship family dynamic, and throwing characterization and canon out the window for the sake of their ship family dynamic. And then they put it on the wiki. Seeing people take non-canon family dynamics and then write character crit analysis moments about how people are reacting badly within it is aughghghghghghghhghghghghgh <I am become that person falling down a minecraft chimney again. But then again, I am never a fan of character crit moments in the first place, I am more a person who sits at my screen like "ooo, more war crimes? is it my birthday?" I am a fan of the murder war crimes guy, why are you writing serious posts on my dash about how he's a bad person because he's not emotionally available to his daughter (editor's note: they don't mean his real daughter, they mean a grown woman doing a bit). I see character crit posts and immediately start taking -1hp poison damage per round.

Yeah as someone who DID enjoy BOLAS in purgatory, most of the bolas tag on Ao3 is not written in such a way that I'd enjoy it, I like those guys as a found family slash cult, not as a bio family, heaven's sake. These are guys making up rituals in a death game, the way I see it, not a fluffy OR angsty family. However there are still a FEW people writing bolas in a fun way that's fun to me (check out response to danger by insomniawillow if you are open to some more e-rated concepts and writing), so I'm not entirely ready to go full blocked tags on it.

Mostly after so long in the dadza mines in the DSMP I'm just tearfully going "please, please, can we talk about the real guy as an adult and a peer, not as a dad, look he has his own kids you can talk about now, can he be a peer to the other streamers, please" and then I break down weeping piteously. It's fun times seeing what twitter is doing, I'll tell you.

[nym-wibbly]

Can you remember the first femmeslash fanfiction you ever read or heard about back in the day?

Yes! WIth a bit of brain-scraping, yes I can. Both must've been around 1989/1990. Sadly, I don't remember the titles or the authors.

One was Blake's 7 pairing Cally with Jenna, sort of unrequited love/very requited smut. Not quite PWP, but not deep into the plotty side of B7 either. Not particularly explicit by today's AO3 rating standards, but properly raunchy space ladies doing ladies in space.

The other was Doctor Who - Ace and Karra from Survival, with flashbacks to Ace's friend who was burned in the racially-aggravated arson attack (was her name Manisha?) as a framing device. That one was gen- or teen- rated (or would be now - all slash was treated as risque and labelled as adult back then), but had lots of intense teen feels and self-discovery going on.

What I don't remember is where I found them. In print, because everything was at that time. A B7 newsletter for the Cally/Jenna, I'd guess, but I honestly don't remember anything 'shippy at all from a Doctor Who fanzine pre-internet-era.

Very little Doctor Who fanfiction of any kind came my way until the late 90s, well into the Wilderness Years and the New Adventures/Missing Adventures/EDAs, and what little fic there was never focused on character stuff before those novels came along. Lots of Ice Warrior worldbuilding nerdery and endless political Daleks, and nearly exclusively male writers in the zines I had access to - very different from my experience of Star Trek and Blake's 7 fanfiction. So that 'shippy DW piece I remember might've been something a friend/penpal wrote and shared?? Reading room at a con?

So I encountered femmeslash young, but then it was actually quite a while before I encountered any more. Maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer's early years, my first couple of years online? Before Willow/Tara, definitely.