#the author is nice

[impishtubist]

I've never been explicit about this because I'm a Fandom Old, and back in the day it was simply understood that anything on the Internet was fair game to do with what you wish, but: if you see a story of mine out there and you like it, download it. Fuck if I care. Keep it for yourself, distribute it to friends, print copies for yourself and your friends, mail it to people, I don't give a shit. As long as you're not exchanging money, I couldn't care less. And tbh you should be doing this with all fanfics you love - print them, save them, put them on a flash drive or a hard drive or share them with friends, whatever. Fanfic authors these days are really fucking precious about their fics, but honestly we're probably going to start seeing queer art being disappeared (especially in the US under the next president) so do whatever you can to archive the things you love to read. Even if that means just printing them out and sticking them in a binder for yourself to read as a bedtime story.

[bixels]

I watched Starship Troopers tonight.

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

posting this with absolutely no context

[bababaka]

Yall need to interact with fanfiction author's more.

So. After the ddos attack on ao3.

I was encouraged to write more comments and make my love known to fanfic writers.

I dont really like commenting. Because im a bit shy and soooo lazy.

Now though. I am writing more comments. And dude. This is so heartwarming. Ya'll need to treat writers better. They are doing the lord's work.

Take for an example, couple of days prior, i was searching for something interesting to read, and found an oneshot quite compelling.

I read it. At the end of it, i was blown away by how good it was. It promised me something and it went beyond my expectations. But then i saw a crime, zero fucking comments!

At that moment, i wasn't feeling up to writing a comment. Because, normally i like to write huge paragraphs. But because im lazy i decided to be brief.

Next day, the author answered that the comment lift their mood for the whole day.

That warmed my heart.

Duuuuuuuude! Write comments! Suport the writers of the fics you like! No need to be something super elaborate. Just give your thoughts. Freak out. Ramble. Ask something. Make theories. Compliment. Make a joke about how you wished to give kudos every chapter but ao3 sucks(not true bby) and won't let you.

Truly. Just. Comment. It can make someone's day. And that is part of the apeal of writing fics. Interacting with people.

Just give love to fanfic writers yall. They deserve this and so much more.

[jesncin]

I love ur Lois so much!!! Lois has always reminded me of my mom and so seeing your version of Lois, one that faces similar uphill battle when it comes to work and how you can start sanding yourself down to try and get further, is amazing and touching. Can't wait to see more of this Lois, especially as she works up the ranks!

Thank you! I think that part of Lois (becoming less of yourself in order to move ahead in an industry, especially as a woman [of color]) is so underappreciated and should be explored way more.

[hinamie]

new limited edition firefighter spacesuit hazmat itfs just dropped

[eyra]

I don’t usually do discourse on this blog but that last reblog hit the nail on the head. Reader interaction is at an all time low for fic authors and whilst I’m eternally grateful for any and all kudos and comments that I do receive, I feel as if in the past couple of years there’s been this weird migration of comments - they’ve left ao3 and they’re on tiktok instead. So, rather than people leaving comments on my fics, they leave their comments on the videos of people reccing my fics. I see tiktoks about my fics and they’ll have double, triple the number of comments that the fic itself has. It’s so lovely that people are talking about my writing, but it’s just a very strange phenomenon and a very odd feeling when you have a fic that you assume wasn’t overly well received because it has hardly any comments on ao3, but then you see a tiktok full of comments with people saying that it’s their favourite fic.

And I’m going to say something potentially controversial here but not ONCE have I seen a tiktok creator, whose content relies solely on other people’s fics, say anything along the lines of “leave the author a comment if you enjoy the rec.” Literally never ever seen this. And I think that’s a real shame.

[chimaerakitten]

Making my own post because my thoughts have strayed pretty far from the immediate topic but re: that “ace-friendly” AO3 tag poll

Most comments on that post I’ve seen are agreeing that it’s useless and infantalizing when it means “no sex” and a few comments have mentioned what they would want a tag like that to mean. Many of the ideas are good, but I think they still suffer from “wait what does Ace friendly even mean. Who decides” problem

Which is why I wouldn’t want to see “Ace-friendly” even with another meaning, but there’s a couple more specific tags I would like to see on a fic, once in a while:

Non-amatonormative depiction of romance — self-explanatory. I would love for something like this to be a searchable tag! I sometimes like reading romance, and would like there to be an easier way to find some that I am sure won’t be full of “now that we have kissed once, our relationship is so much more important than it was before, when we were merely friends forged in the fires of battle. Also we now no longer care about our other friends.”

Non-amatonormative Soulmate Worldbuilding — somewhat like the above, but specific to soulmate AUs, to delineate which ones don’t embed monogamous romance for everyone as a law of physics in their universe

[character] open to a-spec interpretation — for when you haven’t explicitly written an aro or ace character, but you also haven’t written anything that would contradict that, and you want to mention it.

Ace Character Not Subject to Interrogation — you have an Ace character. They exist as they want and do not have to justify it in narration or in dialogue to any other character. The same tag for Aro would also be nice.

Signposted Sex Scenes — some authors will leave notes like “hey if you want to skip the smut, it starts after the paragraph about the mushrooms and ends twelve paragraphs later.” It would be great to know if a fic does that! It can make it easier to approach a work, for whatever reason a person might hesitate, without making any assumptions why anyone might do that. (Sometimes I want to skip a sex scene just because I’m reading on my lunch break at work!)

There’s probably others that would be useful but I can’t think of any right now—feel free to add on if you like.

[bizarrelittlemew]

calling it right now that season 3 starts like this

[humming-fly]

It's dark Arthur, pull out your lighter.

(practically I know john is most easily portrayed as a normal hooded guy with a mask but deep down my heart of hearts still belongs to mergo's wet nurse)

[science-lings]

God, I love it when people who clearly have personal experience or expert knowledge on certain things write obscure AUs that incorporate those things so hyperspecifically that I feel like I'm learning something.

I love nurses who write hospital AUs that have accurate medical knowledge just thrown in there because they went to medical school and when people who clearly had a phase where they obsessed over a certain time period write an AU set in that time period or location it's just so fun.

Tell me about the 1950s Chicago culture and history and how the characters are interracial and how that affects their life, I love when the money is accurately converted and the personal histories of the characters are thoughtfully woven to incorporate the new setting they're put in, I love it when people care so much about making something and use their own expertise to aide them.

[frownyalfred]

since I’m in my reporting and shaming era when it comes to ao3 hate now…

(PurpleSnow, I know you’re sad I blocked you and locked comments on that fic. Maybe that was a sign to stop leaving comments like this. It seems, from your other bookmarks, that you enjoy reading many fics — so maybe give mine a break if they keep making you so upset, yeah?)

[ao3screenshotss]

[lloydfrontera]

the webcomic can have one (1) funny "earnest moment interrupted by comedy" joke. as a treat. but also because it is so in character for them ajkshdjkas

yes they will say the most earnest shit to each other and then immediately try to cringe out of their own bodies. they are best friends but they would rather jump out of a window before admitting it. they are incredibly devoted and grateful to one another but you could not water board that out of either of them.

the only thing that can get either of them to admit how much they care for each other is if the other is in life threatening danger and not a second before aakjshdks

[faeriekit]

Writing the Occult: quick notes for non-practicing hobby authors and other nerds🕯️

Hey. Real talk. If you're writing about occult rituals, magic, the works, whatever, there are some great ways to clean up your act and get some better, more aware accuracy in there. A lot of stuff in the wider consciousness of pop culture is kind of...not correct, or, uh. Should be something you're aware of. For instance:

G*psy is still a slur! No, Romani people aren't more likely to be fortune tellers than anyone else. Quit it with the weird stereotypes. The "g*psy fortune teller" thing hasnt even been on trend since the early 1900s. Move on.

"Voodoo" dolls are a racist perspective of an African-derived traditional religious practice. Vodun is a religion. It's not even a gone or far away religion either; Vodun and Santería have followers and priests all over the US, as do other ATRs. Since. You know. Slavery. The word you're probably looking for is "poppet", which is the term for the tool itself (tiny cloth doll for magical use) as opposed to, like, a whole religion.

A wendigo isn't a catch-all cannibalistic creature; it's part of a wider religious worldview of the Algonquian peoples. Native people have requested that you Stop Talking Abou That— yes, even asking that one YouTuber to Stop That, not that he seems to care. White people seem to cannibalize other people all the time anyway, so I don't see why there's a huge need for a Native scapegoat... There are other supernatural creatures and shapeshifters that eat humans. Pick anything else.

A lot of higher-level occult rituals as writ are just. Straight up antisemitic! If you're writing rituals and your magical language of choice is in Hebrew...hey. Stop that. Same thing goes for "elites who eat babies/drink blood." A some of it is a clumsily handled metaphor for the cannibalistic nature of having an upper class in a society, but a lot of it really is just dressed-up antisemitism in a trench coat. If you're looking up real rituals for worldbuilding...FYI, you may want to glance again before adding it to your work.

Just because ten dudes are standing next to each other in order to do a weird ritual doesn't make them a cult. That's just a ritual. Cults have more specific requirements; ie, whether or not there's religious abuse going on. You can make your weird spooky org have religious abuse, but if they're just, like, high schoolers, they're probably just novice occultists who occasionally hang out together.

I haven't seen anyone use "spirit animal" in a couple years, so that's great! Native people have also requested that we Stop That. Spirit Animal is a specific religious concept we don't have to tread on. Think of a synonym for the concept you're trying to convey; don't steal a word that's already in use for a religious practice. (Same thing goes for totem FYI.)

Hallucinogens often make you throw up. Like. A lot. People do certainly attribute religious visions to them, but also like drink a lot of water and keep a bucket nearby, because the whole scenario is just super disorienting. Most spiritual circles who utilize similar substances will have a trip sitter (someone sober to call 911 if there's an emergency) if they've got the resources.

Making up rituals for your story is totally cool. People invent new rituals all the time. There isn't a standard to be held to on that front unless you outright name a real life religious or occult group they're meant to be part of; THEN people will want standards. Until then, though, you're probably good.

Most TYPES of rituals have, like, a label, though. A ward prevents something from entering a protected space, an invocation brings something forth from within you, a banishment pushes something away from you, a consecration makes something sacred...A lot of these may be obvious to you from pop culture, but if you're going to try and make a character an expert on magic, adding the vocabulary to their lexicon makes their expertise more believable.

There are a ton of ways to exorcise ghosts! Basically every religion has, like, ten of them. If you want to add a little extra flavor on banishing/preventing evil spirits, google [character's religion/culture] [ghosts/spirits] to see what sort of flavor you can add to their specific person.

Occultists and witches and wizards and priests who do magic argue all the time. ALL the time. Interpersonal drama is real and it can Get You.

It's traditional to do certain specific rituals naked. Just FYI. It's not required. Just traditional. Utilize this knowledge for narrative potential... or don't. I'm not your boss.

Yeah, sometimes there's blood; your mileage may vary narratively. Most people don't go for the whole knife thing —you can get lancets at any drug store—but maybe your character is especially dumb or otherwise desperate. Palms and fingers hurt the most knife-wise; if your character knows what they're doing, it won't be their hands.

The keeping skulls around thing is real too, if legally and financially difficult to arrange in many cases. It's usually animal though. Human remains have a lot of laws in the states and, obviously, relatives want to keep their family close to their family — still, narratively, your mileage may vary.

The "White magic" and "Black magic" dichotomy is racialized. No, seriously. The things people demonize about dark magic— soul magic, necromancy, zombies, love/control spells, etc— are all really warped versions of Ancestor worship and other spiritual practices from African Traditional Religious beliefs. Well, the whole Zombie thing is actually a holdover from slavery and it's more about forcing ex-slaved peoples into performing more labor even after their death while White people are afraid of traditional Black spiritual resistance against colonial religious oppression— I'm going too deep into this, just trust me that if a dichotomy says that White is good and Black is bad, there's probably something hinky going on.

And, finally:

Ouija boards are sold at Barnes and Noble by Hasbro for $25, and a tarot deck can retail for as little as $20 from Spirit Halloween or Spencer's. No, they can't summon demons from the astral into your house. Can they talk to ghosts? Up to you; it's your story. Are cheap paper board and plastic planchette powerful enough to murder people, though...? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My magic 8 ball says that the odds are unlikely.

Obviously, you can do whatever you want with your work— I'm not your dad and I can't stop you, but if you're the kind of person who's like, hey, maybe I do want to prune out accidental racial slurs from my vocabulary...hey! This list is for you! Halloween is a time to get spooky! Get scary! Get booped, even; still, if you want to have an underlying thread of what the occult looks like in practice, you might want to dust off a couple of mid Magic/Witchcraft/Spiritual/Occult books from your local library and flip through 'em for ideas. There's some fun stuff in there.

Like the sacred blowtorch ;)

Happy Halloween, everyone! 👻

[finelythreadedsky]

what's that meme that's like *contemporary artist* "i'll never be as good as the old masters" *old master* "i'll never be as good as the old masters" *cave painter* "i'm the best" because homer is the cave painter. uniquely lacking in intertextual anxieties.