#the fandom aka one(1) other person is proud

[swing-crow]

BEHOLD

The very first R is for Removed fanart:

Me and one (1) single buddy I met on f*ing Pony Town are the literal fandom of this short film..

We need to know if more ppl remembers this film

[amogus-real-not-clickbait]

dear NATM fandom. i have returned

after over a month of hard work and totally not fixating on moomins

i present to you the JEDTAVIUS SHIMEJI beta v.1!!!!!!

aka i burned myself out and had to get something out before my motivation completely dies!

mediafire link (lmk if i should add a google drive as well)

some more info:

release notes:

They cannot throw windows or divide yet. Sorry if you were counting on that, but i had to cut down on stuff in order to not abandon the project altogether. I will add more stuff in the future if i have the motivation

There was little to no alpha testing so i don't know if everything is 100% right. Please report anything that looks weird/out of place. Also lmk if i should tweak the chances of actions happening. The one that worries me the most is the hug action, bc i set the number so much lower than in the example. I hope they still can hug naturally

known issues:

Please watch the official FAQ first, I'm not a shimeji expert and can't help you with most problems

There may be gaps when shimejis interact w/ windows, this is an issue with shimejis in general, just felt like saying it bc it bothers me (especially when they climb to the top of the window)

idk if it's just me but they won't jump from window edges. they just stand there awkwardly and trip

personal thoughts:

Woah. This is my first time finishing a project like this. Even if it's cut down and not fully how i imagined it. My brain cannot comprehend this yet, but i will try to be proud of myself for this. I hope you enjoy this creation of mine. Thanks to everyone who was excited about this, i would totally give up without you. Special thanks to people who helped me brainstorm, and @ardent-w who helped a lot with brainstorming and coloring (and emotional support)

i thought it would be good to get these out on valentines so they can keep you company if you're feeling especially lonely today! or any other day, i just hope they can bring people joy, that's all :] now don't mind me, im off to eat lots of overpriced candy

[choicesficwriterscreations]

December Creator of the Month: Coffeeheartaddict2

Please welcome this month’s Creator of the Month: @coffeeheartaddict2

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists. The writer or artist is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page. Past COTMs can be found here.

Tumblr Blog Name: Coffeeheartaddict2

How do you want to be known on Tumblr? Tash

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog

Masterlist

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played?

2020, pandemic. I saw the ad somewhere, so I downloaded it. The first book was The Royal Romance.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

2021, so three nearly 4 years. Fell into it when I created my Tumblr as an outlet to post my work. Writing was literally a way of getting some thoughts out, and it grew from there.

3- How did you pick your blog name?

I am as much of a coffee snob as our favourite pixelated doctor. When I created my blog, I only wrote for Open Heart and put the word addict in. I have the 2there as I had some issues with my original blog, and I had to create a second, so I added the 2 so people knew it was me.

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!

So this was my first work. I thought about how the Leland storyline could have played out and went with it. It was initially a one-shot.

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both?

I write. I can draw but not what one would classify as well enough.

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

I started writing in 2020 and just kept going. I did a few one-shots, and then I felt a little empty at the end of book 2. Well, I decided to rewrite it, and that set the beginning of what I dubbed Tashland.

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Well, Open Heart, obviously. I enjoyed The Royal Romance and Crimes of Passion.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?

I cannot remember the first one I posted with CFWC, nor can I remember exactly when, but I think it was part one of When Egos Collide.

I do like it. I spent a few chapters setting up Leland and his over all plan, putting in the seeds of Tobias coming across to Edenbrook and where Ethan was at. Do I want to go back and tidy up a few bits? Most definitely, but overall, I would not change too much.

Link to part one.

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created?

I will cheat and do a series (or 2).

The first series is When Egos Collide, aka what ended up being a rewrite of book 3. I had started it before book three dropped, so I was going to use some plot points if it worked in my narrative. Well, what bones of a decent story were given fit in well. The whole premise was doing bad for good vs. doing good for bad and what or who would win out and the fallout. I was proud of it, and it is what brought me into the fandom more.

Link to series.

The second was Everybody Hurts Sometimes. Not only a good song by REM. A fellow fandom member received an ask about what she would think happened if Ethan did not talk to Louise and she died. I then brewed a plot in my head and this person was fine with me commandeering the ask, and that series was born.

The series can be found here.

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I eventually rewrote my 14-20 of book two rewrite. I was fairly happy with the basic plot, but as time went on, I felt that it lacked depth, especially since I had written so much in and around the timeline that was not in the original series. I am always happy if anyone reads or comments at the end of the day.

11- If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Angst with a happy end with a side of smut, lol. Angst sometimes seems more real and relatable, and I enjoy writing it. I like to give happy endings, especially as some of my angst can be pretty intense, and we all need a little smut in our lives.

12- Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

My MC likes to cope with bad things by throwing herself into work, which I do, or I distract myself.

13- What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

I know some of you will disagree with me, but fluff. I find it the hardest to write.

14- Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

I feel like I have been neglecting writing in general at the moment. The joys of young children.

15- If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first?

Yes, I would. I would probably start them with my book 2 ch14-20 rewrite, as that sets up my world. Then, I would let them decide on what to do next. I do have book 1 works, but I think they will work better if read after my book 2 ch 14-20 rewrite.

16- Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

I have a diverse reading taste (says she, who is currently reading Harry Potter with my daughter). I would not say that what I have read outside the fandom influences me (unless I did an Outlander AU). I would not say influence, but certainly most encouraging have been @jerzwriter, @cariantha, @jamespotterthefirst and @liaromancewriter, among others.

17- Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series?

Everybody Hurts Sometimes and When Egos Collide would make good series.

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art?

No, I do not.

19- What other hobbies do you have?

Baking. I like baking cakes and biscuits. I tried my hand at fudge, and it worked despite putting the chocolate in too early. I do not have a lot of free time.

[mariailoveyou-guerin]

Claudia being in polin season press with Nic and Luke yet no polin Nic Luke are mad but godforbid charithra was on press interview/stuff with Simone and Johnny 😂 the way they hated her down was crazy OMG the way they jumped on Charithra attacked called her the most vile insane name sh*t while also preaching about racism was strait jacket behavior it was ludicrous and acted like she ki1led their mother was insane should we polin/nic/luke fans act like that have a tantrum like that like we are 5 year kids who didn’t get our toy or a candy thankfully we aren’t insecure miserable CRAZY wackoo weirdo losers like certain stans aka kanthony Simone Kate stans! I’m forever proud of polins for what reason!

Simone Ashley Kate kanthony stans are the worst most vile toxic obnoxious insufferable evil stans worse then Kpop/boy group stans and that’s saying something 😒

Me if I was a kanthony Kate Simone stan seeing an actress from a show I like being part of the press and doing interviews playing games for said show with my fav ship and actors on their season 😂 but thankfully I know she’s just doing her job and I’m a sane nic polin so the insanity is only for kanthonies and Kate stan😔!

‪fcvk U CJ why are u an actress of the show Bridgerton in press with the szn leads 😂 it’s as if she’s the sister of the lead and ex bestie of the other lead character😂 way different from edwina being sister of the other lead girl role and the love interest of the other lead male role😂 kidding it’s exact same role/character‬ yet only one fandom had pitch forks for the actress playing the sis role and it wasn’t Polin Nic or Luke fandom just saying!

Why would we or any sane people or person be angry that an actress is doing her job promoting her and the show we all like and watch? it’s as if Corey or India QC fans would get angry if arsema was in press with them, we learned from this whole drama that only 1 fandom is insecure losers and it’s the Kate Kanthony fans sadly

[inkyu]

Do you have any old art or comics you gave up on?

I have been given the power to go on a super yap... :happy: :happy: :happy:

I have a lot of stories I gave up on because I had too many (20 if I recall right), but the ones I've kept/survived from my middle school story purge were Two Over A Kind, and Shadow Killed. However I have other stories that came after those two after I entered high school such as Mandela's Requiem, Backyard Thursday, Never So Norm, Collidests, and Rose Burnt, (yes I have a lot of stories, but they're not lore heavy so they might seem short/fast)

Although the only official rendition of a comic out right now would be Mandela's Requiem but I want to re-draw it in a different format similar to my ask blog @ask-the-druggieverse and what Homestuck uses because it's easier and I can gather all the images I draw and upload it YouTube for people to read

As for old art? oh geez I have a LOT of old art....

I'll put it under a read more and separate them by year U_U

Also blood warning (gore maybe too? not sure what to label it-) and huge and tiny spoilers for Mandela's requiem!!! (I just felt very proud of those drawings and I also can't help myself but show the future plans I have for MR's story!!) (and also characters that will appear in MR's epilogues!)

Part 2 Post

(Also if you see this in a fandom tag I.E Undertale, The Last Dimension.... Dream SMP. (neutral) then that's why (This was back in 2020 and I was still in 7th-8th grade at this time (I'm a senior right now) so don't judge me(I only drew beeduo and Michael so don't worry it's not those creature (IYKYK)))

(And no, I don't plan on drawing any DSMP in the near future, maybe if requested and the person isn't problematic (I.E Ranboo, Tubbo etc etc) however for the problomatic ones they will get heavy re-design/name change so they don't resemble their og character/persona to seperate the two more because I don't like looking at them knowing what they did. (Especially C!Wilbur, I view him looking different/being named something else)) (sorry if I keep yapping about this I know people hate the DSMP so much and I don't want to get attacked again (I've been attacked before in the past for liking it back in 2021-2022 on my old TT account (deactivated, my current TT account is dead and I never want to return to TT again.) so just mentioning DSMP on my main blog scares me a bit I hope you understand!))

2025 (Hey!! this Year!! :D)

some of these you've seen I'm guessing, I haven't drawn a lot of stuff yet but it's still the first month of 2025 ^w^, as for the first image It's still a W.I.P as there's other batches I need to complete! (If you wanna see them feel free to ask) I'm also gonna change it so that Cream is the son of Nicecream guy because when designing Cream I had the intentions of him being an OC and not an AU, Nicecream guy legit had 0 part to play when making him

Same goes for Hamburg, Calliope, and Basil as they're based of existing OC's mainly and not undertale OC's when they were supposed to (crazy)

Image Order:

1st: Fiddletale mini batch No.3

2nd: A Backyard Thursday trio!

3rd: Consent!Sans

4th: An ATDV Panel

5th: Someone needed help drawing beards so I made a ref to help U_U

2024

None of these I bet anyone has seen unless they're in discord servers I'm in

Anywhos, these are mostly oc's and 1 MAU I've talked about before (slice of pie verse)

Image Order

1st: My first drawing of 2024!! it's for my my OC story "Never So Norm" I was trying to find a design for Aliza AKA Ty's mom!, I'm gonna re-deisgn her again later because I don't see her as skinny anymore but a little more chubby U_U

2nd: Mandela's Requiem's epilogue characters! for any creepypasta fans out there yes... MR is like super/heavily inspired off of CRP characters, plus Ben Drowned was free game sense no one owned him (Nintendo technically own's this character legally but hey, fuck it we ball), and as for Casey I think you can guess who she's a walmart version of (Rina is completely original, I only added the "the killer" part cuz I thought it would be silly)

3rd: Backyard Thursday god silhouette list! I haven't fully drawn them out and needed some silhouette's to see how they would all look like!

4th: Mandela's Requiem epilogue Chester character sheet! I haven't touched this specific character sheet in a LONG time and need to come back to it as this story is one of the very few stories that has a small cast of characters to work on!!

5th: Slice Of Pieverse unified!Nightmare hehe ^w^ tiny spoilers: In SOPV fusion is a thing after the calamity happened (it's a split timeline of Underverse where Bill!Sans is a bit more important) although this isn't a "fusion" form, families (either blood related or adopted) don't fuse, they unify (essentially they can use each others abilities/their abilities become stronger)

2023 (oh geez, the in-between era of my old and current style..)

All of these are oc's (that includes the DGRP oc)

Image Order

1st: MY SILLIES FROM TWO OVER A KIND!!! ILY GUYS SMMM The main character isn't there but eh, these were re-designs ish as some of them changed from being half-vampire to full human (Duke & Jackey) and some just needed color palate changes or design changes (David & Luu)

2nd: I think my 3rd or 5th attempt at lineless? I don't know but I remember struggling a lot to do lineless so I just kinda just gave up, but hey! Look at me now! I really love lineless art now!!

3rd: My Danganronpa OC Yaku Unmei (or just Unmei) for a cancelled DGRP roleplay (I do not support the creator of the old roleplay. She intentionally or not has groomed minors into being desensitized to NSFW (I was already desensitized to it from the past but it's still fucked up) and wrote proship stuff.(I don't fucking care if it was for "accuracy" that shit was clearly a fetish. I can't believe your friends made me think for a second you weren't a groomer all because you have autism that's fucking insane.)) On a different note because I'm still not over that whole situation and person. (trauma response sorry) Unmei while being the ultimate unlucky student is one of the survivors of the killing game! If it was still ongoing... now she's just a DGRP OC that I might implement into one of my main stories

4th: More Never So Norm doodles! This time of beta-Terezi and Samy interacting! not too proud of how I drew Samy but hey... this is the inbetween era... :3

5th: Our lord and savior Jake Murdalinn who's also from Never So Norm, I love you Jake Murdalinn, my favorite ghost hunter and SFX crew guy

2022 (oh man the nostalgia is kicking in guys) (this folder and before it are so disorganized I cannot tell you which drawing I did after my first one in order U_U)

Oh geez... t h a t e r a... the era where I would just create create create and procrastinate a lot, I'm thankful for all of the characters that came out of it though

Image Order

1st: my Frist drawing of 2022, aka my OC 0-Riguren or Origuren (twas my mash mash words = name era as well), he's from TOAK (and needs a HEAVY re-design and STAT.)

2nd: Fanart of Phillip from the last dimension on webtoon! Also tiny fun fact! Phillip was the other inspiration for my OC Danny (I haven't drawn him yet but I have an idea) (Although the main inspiration was yet again, Karkat Vantas (Homestuck is one of my special interests so I have a lot of stuff inspired from Homestuck))

3rd: a TOAK height chart line up, and my second time trying to make one! my first time was.... augh... heavy note on making a height chart, there are going to be a lot of characters being similar in height and there's no need to worry about that (I worried about it my first time around...)

4th: Ah yes, Fiddletale... and.... Bartertale. (NOTE: Barter is no longer a sans or an AU, he's just an OC that's in BT along with Fiddle(long story but after Fiddletale ends It's no longer an AU however people can still claim it as an AU IDC bc everyone's gonna get re-designs for BT so essentially they're separate characters in a way)), some changes between Bartertale!Barter and Backyard Thursday!Barter: AU: Cis Man, A Sans, Skeleton, Out!Code BT: Trans Man, Half-Human Half-Skeleton no undertale involved, just a regular citizen trapped in a country in a forever winter Also Fiddle and Barter are husbands in BT <3

5th: The very first drawing I've done for Collideists... Also fun fact: This story would have never been made if I never joined an event in a discord server I'm in where everyone was making these species called "Shadow Creatures" I chipped in and created a "Light Creature" concept and things went on from there

2021 (OH HELL NAW JIGSAW GO BACK GO BAAACK :sob: :pray:)

Do you SEE how different my style was back in 2021!? oh lord... I'm like- super proud of my development... heh...

Image Order

1st: Amari Feng, She's from my given up story called "A Fantasized Beginning", I gave up on this story because I had too many stories and this one just had too much stuff going on (In short: It's basically RWBY and MHA mixed into one, kids go to school to become pro-hero's in outer-space because an evil group known as "the dark entropy" were colonizing/taking over planets and the heros had no idea how they kept doing it, and then BOOM!!! PLOT FUCKING TWIST!!! the number 1 pro-hero was the one conducting the evil groups plans all along and the hero get's stopepd by the MC's, although the colonizing and taking over doesn't stop as more villains pop up and hero's continue being hero's but this time the hero's have a easier time saving everyone) I made this story when I was in middle school along with many others, although after I did my story purge the only two stories that survived were Shadow Killed and Two Over A Kind (TOAK had a massive story overhaul and is not like it's OG plotline) I don't have plans to go back to this story, however I might if I complete all of my stories before I die, which I'm sure I will because I'm shortening a lot of them, and if I do I will DEF shorten AFB by a lot because middle school me planned like 16 something seasons (jesus.) (Also Amari was not the MC but an antagonist that later becomes an MC and was heavily inspired off of Himiko Toga(Can you tell?))

2nd: Heh... My first attempt at lineless art.... This is also back when Blipthyn was blue and was named Blueprint, I do not like TOAK's 5th rendition of a story as I was going through a hard time and heavily trauma dumped the shit out of that specific rendition of TOAK and just scrapped a lot of it, only a few things I liked survived in the current 6th? 7th? version of the story and I plan to keep it that way unless it becomes too long in my eyes

3rd: THE CTT!!! CHAOS TIME TRIO!!! Also my fist art/was around the time I met my friends Keter and Geno in the lunime discord server! we all loved undertale at this time and formed this group, a lot of things changed about each character so these are their old/beta designs, however this piece still has a place in my heart because of how special it is to me :hearts:

4th: I'm gonna be for real with you I have no fucking clue who this was for These aren't my characters nor do I remember the person who created these OC's, I do know I was very proud of this drawing because I made the other person super happy, I just dunno who it was so if by any chance you're the creator of these characters hi!!! :3

5th: Heh... Hello Swap <3 ILY <3

????-2020 (I don't know if all of this art was from 2020, all I know is that I shoved a bunch of art in this folder because I didn't wanna loose it XP) (also this only has 4 because I reached the 30 image limit so I will make a part 2 of my yap session U_U)

HEAVY NOTE: I do not support the problematic creators of the DSMP. I am a firm believer in separating the art from artist(s) to an extent. If both the art and Artist are problematic they can't be separated (I.E TCOAAL(I hate this game and creator.))

I do not support Dream, Wilbur Soot, ETC ETC, Even though I don't talk about the DSMP on this blog often I will refer to the roleplay characters with different names to help further separate the RP characters and person I.E: Wilbur: Wynter(Or Winter)(Sorry but ever sense the Shelby stuff my brain magically imagined a different guy in C!Wilbur's place)(i'm being so fucking fr rn, every time someone mentions C!Wilbur I think of someone different same goes for the others too), Dream: Delusion and Ambition(For DreamXD), George: Cogs ETC ETC (In fact I encourage anyone still in the DSMP fandom to do the same cuz Dream is getting a little too close to his DSMP character rn...)

Image Order

1st: Laim! he's also from another cancelled story called 12-15-22-5, or also known as 12-15-22-5 Project: Life this story was a romance between a resurrected angel heading and a human, the resurrected angel's goal from the company he was revived from was to find a way to break someone's heart/love to the point of dying so that they could kill a god (for some reason?? my middle school self never really specified why) However things backfire as the resurrected Angel falls in love with the love interest (heh... not straight BTW...) and other resurrected angels are sent after him and his friends because it'll "sabotage" their plan, I never planned an ending for this story but I do remember that this story was inspired off of HXH and Four Leaf on webtoon

2nd: I'm gonna be so fr I don't know why I made this character (his name is Phrog)

3rd: Ian and Damien's first ever design <33 And also Shadow Killed's first ever concept art! their designs have been changed by now so yeah :(, in fact this art was made back when I was beginning to feel happy again, although that died out because Middle School was super rough for me.

4th: Ah yes.... DSMP.... Beeduo.... and... MICHEAL!!! (This was back when the DSMP was at it's prime from my knowledge... augh...) I'm gonna so fr with you I never saw Michael (Beeduo's adopted child) as white I'm so sorry, I always viewed Michael as black I don't know why I did I just did XP, no hate to anyone who views Michael as white, I just never saw it myself This isn't ship art btw. You will be blocked if tagged as ship. (Not Threatening/Serious)

Part 2 Soon (Mainly for the comics because I reached the photo limit and I wanna show some old comic panels now :( )

[gilbirda]

what are your thoughts on watcher’s new announcement?

So.

I've been watching the Boys since they started back in 2016 (i think around that era), and honestly I'm very conflicted about the decision. I've read so much stuff in favor and against the announcement and I don't know if my answer will satisfy you.

I have managed a community and I have the blessing and curse of being somewhat of a Name, experiencing the ordeal of being Known, and I can tell you that 1)you can never please everyone 2)people will always rush to crush you the second you do something they don't agree with 3)people will always twist everything you do with the worst faith in mind and 4)fandom forget very quickly that at the end of the day you are just human.

I think they made a calculated risk based on a purely economical viewpoint. I think they considered their loyal fanbase and how willing people have been so far with spending extra cash to support them — The live shows, the exclusive streams (like the Valentine's Too Many Spirits) and Patreon. How much of their fanbase was the "broke students" tumblr claim they are and how much was people with spending money willing to pay extra for them.

I also think that the decision seem stupid if you look at it from the perspective of "why the hell would I pay $6 to watch such little variety of content?" and that's a Correct Assumption, but Observe — they have been very slowly pulling everyone that made Buzzfeed famous and enrolling them in. Very recently they gathered the Worth It boys, the second show that kind of carried Buzzfeed back in the day (apart from the Try Guys). I think they can't talk about it right now, but the goal is to relaunch Buzzfeed but without ads and without making it the soulless content machine it became. I think their dream and goal has always been making what Buzzfeed could have been with better management, kind of like "If I was the Management in this company, things would have been better" dream fulfillment. That's why they made the direct jump to a streaming service instead of the logical steps of Patreon-exclusive content or even jumping to Nebula like other youtubers. It was never meant to stay one single channel, it was supposed to be bigger.

Is the projection of making a "better Buzzfeed" worth risking this step? Time will tell. I don't know. I personally never cared about anyone except Buzzfeed Unsolved. I still watch Unsolved on repeat. Is my comfort show. Maybe they are overestimating how much people care about other shows not hosted by them.

Although they did hint that "we want shows not hosted by us". This tells me that they are settling down, they want to ramp down a little bit, do the hook with Ghost Files aka Unsolved Supernatural Lite for the streaming service, and once people are hooked, launch more shows by the old-school Buzzfeed people. Won't be as big as a show hosted by Shane and Ryan, but it will still make people feel like they are getting their money's worth.

I would forgive all of this if only they didn't use the excuse of "if we want to do Netflix-level productions we need money". I'm sorry but that means nothing to me. We loved them when it was a powerpoint slide show with 2 idiots in a set. We didn't fall in love with the toys or the trips or the high tech. We didn't fall in love with the fancy animations at the beginning of Ghost Files episodes that they are so proud of. That was all their idea.

I've seen this trend of content creators ramping up their creations to an unsustainable point, completely crash and burn and then having to apologize about having to step back. Then making it the moral trap of an argument that they have been doing their best to bring quality content to their audience, and of course making it impossible to argue against. If you speak up and say "well we never asked you to break your back" then you are ungrateful audience. That's exactly what's going on in here with the Watcher announcement — "true fans" criticizing people who point out the fact that they created this money problem on their own. Is not the fanbase responsibility to cater to a company's bad money decisions. Is not our fault that they decide to scale up their operation to a point they "haven't been making a profit for 2 years". It's unfair that the fans are at each other's throats for daring stepping back and saying "I don't want to be part of this".

I don't think Watcher Entertainment is actively wanting to collapse their fandom like this. I don't think this was a calculated move. But I do think that they are a group of adults trying to make a career of something they enjoy doing. I think they made this move with the perspective that fandom is not end all and they can always rebuild it.

— And that they are planning on making a machine that can work without them, and that requires breaking something in the fans, it requires kicking themselves out of the pedestal fans have put them on. They know they won't be allowed to have a normal life until people stop looking at them waiting for them to say their phrase.

In conclusion I think they made a choice that made sense if they are planning on separating Watcher Entertainment from "The Ghoul Boys" fame, and it makes sense if they are aiming at something bigger than what they've been doing now. Money of course is the goal and the reason presented, but there's a lot that they are not saying and we will not know until it happens.

Until then, it does feel like they have just shot their careers in the foot.

Also I'm salty that I can't join the service because I'm outside the US.

[royal-ruin]

f1 fanfic recs (part 1) sebastian/lewis

other f1 fic rec lists here f1 fic rec masterlist here personal favorites are starred, by the way. everything is complete unless stated otherwise.

yay, i decided to start off with some sewis to spice up your day!

The Kingdom Lights Shine by ingoodcompany (~2k)

They have a loose sort of plan. For some nebulous future time.

And then Lewis wins his eighth World Championship.

Love Wins by 12romy (~3k)

Lewis and Seb have a plan, and nothing will stop them from carrying it out.

swoon over you by penelopes (~3k)

[The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Then Seb’s message pops up. Do you want me to pretend to have an emergency and call you?

Oh, thank God. Would you??? Lewis quickly types out. He’s not bailing on the date if he has an emergency, right? No one would have to know.]

Or, Lewis is on an awful date and Seb comes to the rescue.

you don't know what you want (just tell me what i want) by blafard (~4k)

["You're not listening," Lewis says, but it's not mean. He's simply stating a fact, like that the sky is blue and that Lewis Hamilton is a winner and will collect his eighth championship before the year is over.

(Even though he likes to pretend that this year he's not so sure, and that this year has been different to all the others. Seb's retirement echoes in the space left between him voicing his insecurities.)

"I'm not," Seb agrees, unable to stop a small smile to slip over his lips.

Lewis hums. "You don't sound very sorry."

"I'm not," he agrees once again and then they're both laughing.]

or Seb retires and relearns to fall in love with racing and Lewis.

rumour has it by ambiguouspace (~4k)

It's 2021 and Sebastian Vettel isn’t driving in Formula 1. No one can figure out why he’s still hanging around the paddock every race, though.

aka Seb takes a year off to be an F1 wag.

this love is a strange love by bones_2_be (~4k)

Lewis has a bad crash, and the resulting concussion leaves him in rough shape. 

In which Sebastian does what he can for Lewis in the immediate aftermath of a serious concussion.

stars by the pocketful by ohmygasly (singsweetmelodies) (~4k)

[Lewis holds out his hand, and Sebastian looks at him, clasps it, but then leans in to hug him without letting go of his hand (and Lewis can't help but pause on the fact that out of the whole grid, Sebastian only hugged him. Only him.) 

Lewis closes his eyes, and leans into the touch just a little too much, cameras be damned. This is goodbye, this is the end of an era, and for all that he has always kept a brutal hold on his emotions - he thinks he can afford to let go, just a little, for this. For Sebastian. 

Then, inevitably, Sebastian's hand slips out of his, and Lewis thinks, is this the last time? ]

Seb and Lewis: a first, a last, and then a first again.

he‘s been gone. now he‘s back. by grussell63 (~5k)

The internet goes from not seeing Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton for weeks to getting a bunch of content within a week.

or: Lewis appears at the Race of Champions in 2022 without even competing.

*slow show by ambiguouspace (~6k)

[Lewis is ten kilometres into his ride before his phone buzzes again.

It’s a bad idea to sleep with another driver, right? George’s message says, and Lewis almost falls off his stationary bike.]

Lewis hands out relationship advice. Eventually, Sebastian does too.

ugh one of the first fics that got me into this fandom and it makes me laugh every time.

with the certainty of tides by ambiguouspace (~6k)

[[Image of a magazine cover, with Lewis Hamilton in profile. Cover title “Lewis Hamilton finds his voice”]

Liked by jonathan.reid.94 and 561,205 others

mercedesamgf1 We’re incredibly proud of @lewishamilton and everything that he achieves on and off the track. Link in bio for his game-changing cover story with @britishgq ✊🏾🌈

View all 15,578 comments

mercedesamgf1 While we welcome respectful and constructive conversation, hateful comments on this post will be deleted.

3 hours ago] Lewis Hamilton comes out. The internet has some thoughts on the matter.

ugh i adore these unconventional format fics.

like today wants tomorrow by distressedgremlin (~8k)

One year after they have both retired, Sebastian and Lewis try Le Mans.

one of the tags is "what's more domestic than driving a 24-hour race with a third wheel" and i think it is an incredibly accurate description of this fic.

*come home to me by misonikomi (~18k)

Seb left a 40 million dollar contract to be at Mercedes, and has so clearly been delegated to the number two driver. He must have known how the team was going to treat him, as the new driver and as someone who hasn’t won the WDC in a few years. He had known, and had signed the contract anyways.

Lewis thinks about whether he trusts Seb, and what trust even means, for people like them.

just reread it cuz i completely forgot it, and oh my god, it has so much to do with lewis healing from the trauma that nico left behind in his wake.

Let's try something else by 12romy (~20k)

Seb is tired of the homophobia in F1. Thankfully, Lewis has a plan.

as always i am a sucker for fake/pretend relationship fics.

*The Numbering at Bethlehem by Kaytheologie (~26k)

Yale AU: in which Lewis is a Shakespeare professor, Sebastian is a math professor, and a fuckbuddies arrangement turns into more than either of them could have imagined.

it was truly a vibe to read it on a long train ride.

**the heartbeat is a hunger by withfeathers (~40k)

2019 FORMULA ONE SPORTING REGULATIONS

[Art. 34: BONDING Teams are required to register all bonds between drivers with the FIA at the beginning of each season. New bonds must be formally recognized through a bonding ceremony under supervision of at least one FIA representative [...].

Art. 34.1 [added on 1.01.1993] Bonds between drivers competing for different teams are prohibited.

I'm so unused to being - well, understood perhaps. - Vladimir Nabokov's first letter to his future wife, Véra]

when i say this fic fundamentally changed my brain chemistry i genuinely mean it. it is a must-read.

*Hard Year / Good Time / Socks Up / Foot Down by bestliars (~50k)

Sebastian is thirty-four years old. He went into the barriers on lap twenty-eight of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He doesn’t remember the crash. He remembers being twenty-five, getting ever closer to both the consecutive race win record and a fourth championship. Apparently there’s a lot he needs to catch up on. One pressing question: why is Lewis Hamilton asleep in the chair beside his hospital bed?

oh my god, one of my favorite fics of all time! i've read it twice even though it's pretty long by my standards.

unfortunately, i haven't currently read too many seblewis fics, feel free to recommend me any of your faves. i hope you find something to enjoy here!

btw, if the links to the other f1 fics don't work yet, it's cuz i haven't sorted it out yet haha, it'll prob take me a day to fully organize it.

[hermitzine]

HERMITZINE FAQ

What is Hermitzine, anyway?

Hermitzine is a fanzine, a compilation of illustration, comics and writing based around the long running Minecraft SMP Hermitcraft, with works focusing on the creative projects, collaborations and interactions the creators on the server (aka Hermits) share with their audiences. For each edition, we (the Hermitzine mods) announce the theme we're running with this edition, open applications, and pick our roster of collaborators from the artists and writers who want to be involved. 

Once our line up of collaborators has been selected, we invite all the contributors for the zine to our discord server, and the process of making the zine pieces starts! Contributors brainstorm an idea for a piece they want to do, and run it past our mods for approval, then work on it over the course of about 2 months (to make sure people have time to put together something they're proud of without having to ignore things like sleep, school and work). Hermitzine #9 has a little bit more going on with collaboration and format, but we go through that in the application form.

What's the timeline of events for this edition?

The current schedule for Hermitzine #9 is as follows:

March 02 — Applications open at midnight GMT

March 16 — Applications close at midnight GMT

March 23 — Acceptance / Rejection emails go out

March 30 — Check in 1 (initial sketches / ideas)

April 13 — Check in 2

April 27 — Check in 3

May 11 — Check in 4

June 01 — Final pieces are due

Late June / early July — Zine is published

More questions and answers below the cut! (A lot more. Be glad we added the cut).

How do I apply?

Fill out the form (we'll be posting them very soon)! We have a writers application form and an artists application form, both will be open between the 2nd and the 16th of March.

In your application, you'll be answering a few questions and sharing 3-5 of your best pieces, to let us know what you're about as a writer and/or artist.

Then all you have to do is sit tight and wait for our email on March 23rd to find out if you're in!

Who can apply?

We have three requirements: 1) you’re 15 years or older, 2) you can speak enough English to communicate about deadlines and other important zine-related discussions, and 3) you have a Discord account, as that is how all communications with contributors will be made. A free account is fine — we don’t send files through Discord itself, so there’s no need to buy Nitro.

What do I need to do / have to apply?

For all of our applicants, we ask for a small portfolio of 3-5 pieces of your best finished work. We ask for a small portfolio to keep our views of your work focused on what you think is you at your best. These portfolio pieces don’t necessarily have to be Hermitcraft related, or even belong to a fandom. As long as it’s your personal work and you’re proud of it, we want to see it.

For writers: we ask that the 3-5 works you submit are around 3,000 words maximum, since that is the vague limit you will have to work within the zine. You can submit excerpts from longer works as long as you specify that somewhere within the application piece.

Do I need to be well-known or have a large social media following to be accepted?

Not at all. Social media following does not factor into whether or not you’re accepted. You could have one follower or one thousand — either way, we’re looking at your portfolio. You don’t even need any social media at all! We ask for social media handles in the application in case we want to check out more of your work beyond your portfolio.

What do you look for in the portfolio judging criteria?

We look for several things when judging portfolios. For artists, the list includes:

Your ability to finish zine-quality pieces (fully-rendered, backgrounds, not rushed-looking, etc)

Hard skills: composition, color theory, anatomy, perspective, shape language, etc

Comic paneling skills, if applicable

Solid illustration styles that interest us and we want to see more of

For writers, the list includes:

Your ability to finish zine-quality pieces (complete and concise work, with a full narrative if applicable)

Good grasp on writing basics (grammar, punctuation, spelling, sentence flow, etc)

Solid writing styles / voice / characterization

Ideas and we find intriguing, interesting, or otherwise would like to see written in full

If either of these lists are daunting to you, don’t worry! We are very interested in people who are eager to try new things and push themselves as artists and writers. We’ve accepted many people before based on their apparent eagerness to improve and collaborate with others.

We also like applicants with a unique or unusual approach to artmaking. Some examples include: traditional media, 3D modeling, photo manipulation, graphic design, typography, poetry, etc. While these skills are fun to include, don’t worry — not having them won’t detract from your chance of getting accepted.

Can I apply for both an artist and a writer position?

Yes you can, but if you’re accepted, we’ll choose you for only one of the two options. For example, if you apply to both and we accept you for writing, we expect you to create a written piece for the zine only, no illustration. This decision will be revealed to you in the acceptance email you get once the application period is over.

Can I participate if I’m a traditional artist?

Absolutely! All we require is that you have a scanner in order to submit high-quality images of your work. We work around the 300dpi range, and unfortunately photos taken with phones or webcams usually aren’t high-quality enough for us to include.

How many artists / writers do you accept?

The number of participants (artists and writers combined) we accept depends on several factors — the most important of which are how many mods we have working on the zine and how much we decide we can handle. Historically, our acceptance count ranges anywhere from 35 to 75 participants, with our most recent editions hitting numbers closer to the top of that range.

How do I know my application was submitted correctly? What happens if the link to my portfolio doesn’t work?

If you don’t receive any word from us from the time you submitted your application to when the acceptance and rejection emails go out, then congratulations, your application was submitted correctly! If something is wrong with your portfolio, like if one or more of your links don’t work, we typically request access — which will then appear as an email in the inbox of whatever email is linked to the drive you shared your portfolio from. If the issue persists, you might receive a private message requesting access from one of the mods on a social media handle you included in your application. If you don’t receive an email or message from us, then everything with your application works.

Do you guys send rejection emails?

We do. If you apply to Hermitzine, you’re going to receive an email from us regardless of whether you’re accepted or rejected. If you’re rejected, we give you the opportunity to ask for feedback with your portfolio.

I applied but never got an email. What’s going on?

If you haven’t received an email even though we’ve announced they’ve been sent out on our social media accounts, please check your spam folder to see if it accidentally went there. This has happened a lot in the past!

If I’ve been rejected from an edition of Hermitzine, does that mean I can never apply again?

Absolutely not! You can apply to any edition of Hermitzine you’d like, from now until forever, regardless of the results of previous applications. We love seeing friendly names show up in applications!

Do people who have participated in prior editions of Hermitzine have a higher chance of getting accepted to the newest edition?

No. Applicants who’ve participated in previous editions have the exact same chances at getting into the newest edition than any other participant.

What content is allowed in Hermitzine?

Requirements for a piece are only to feature Hermitcraft and/or the Hermits primarily, follow the theme, be SFW and not have any shipping content. That means that crossover content (ex: the Empires crossover) and hermit-adjacent people can be included, and that pieces can be about content from any season of Hermitcraft.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Hello, hello, have you seen the newest update of JJK? I'm so proud of my best boy, Yuuji....

Can, I ask, why do you think Yuuji is one of the character that is so underated in JJK? He is the mc, but many people (in fandom) treat him like a side character? At first, I don't think so, but I love many shounen, and somehow Yuuji is one of the mc that is underated in their own story....

Sorry if I'm wrong, just I love Yuuji and want him to get the spotlight he deserve....

Sorry it took me so fucking long to reply to this.

If you think that the story doesn’t focus on him enough then I don’t really agree with that but I don’t think it’s wrong of you to feel like that. But I’m not sure this is even what you meant, I just wanted to move this out of the way. And the following paragraphs will explain that a bit. That will be the nice part of this reply.

JJK isn’t a story that mainly follows one character and the plot happens only where that character is. For example, as much as I watched of Demon Slayer (I think up to season 3 and I have no interest in picking it up again ) or read of the Chainsaw Man (first part, I got bored a few chapters into the second), made me think that those stories are too focused on one character. Villains did villain things on the side but the story always came back to the main character and focused on him in the end and plot usually happened where he happened to be, and he was the one to kill the bosses. In JJK even if the story lines feed into each other, they have much more independence and it doesn’t feel that Yuuji is the centre of the universe and the story just waits for him to move. And my personal preference is for the JJK kind of story, as I said CSM and Demon Slayer didn’t manage to hold my interest. 

It’s just a matter of preference. And If you’d like the story to be more streamlined around him there’s nothing wrong with that.

That being said, I think that the JJK story still strongly centres around Yuuji. 

He’s connected to all the most memorable and important villains of his time (aka those that didn’t die before he became a sorcerer). He’s one of the linchpins of Kenjaku’s plan and the only one of their experiments that they seem attached to, he’s Mahito’s obsession, he’s Sukuna’s nightmare and now also obsession. 

Yuuji is also strongly connected to all the major JJK themes: weakness vs strength, human connection vs loneliness, the value of life, bodily autonomy, humanity vs dehumanisation, oppressive systems of power, tradition, gender stereotypes, drive and agency, jujutsu world vs the normie world, family, love and friendship, new vs old. 

I think only Kenjaku also really connects to all of these to the same degree as Yuuji does, though some of the other characters are close like Sukuna, Maki or Megumi. Gojou or Nobara aren’t that strongly connected to some of them. And characters like Getou or Yuuta are even more tangentially connected to some of them or not at all. Yuuji really is the one who brings it all together. 

Here ends the nice part of this answer. Everything that follows will be rather bitter and unkind towards the JJK fandom. Because I’m really fed up with it as a larger group.

__________________________________

__________________________________

So why does the fandom treat Yuuji like shit? There are a few reasons that can be pointed to and they apply to varying degrees to the behaviour of individual fans.

__________________________________

Part 1 - This fandom is the fucking pits

The fandom in itself is absolute fucking garbage. Like interacting with it will make you lose faith in humanity and give you brain damage.

Casual fans 

JJK is a fairly popular title in the west and the fandom is quite big and loud. It’s an ongoing title with a hype anime and there are a lot of casual fans. It’s full of:

People who also like many other things and don’t really follow the story closely and don’t really know the lore. 

People who read/watched JJK once and haven’t really taken the time to understand the story and its world. 

People who as @/cursedvibes says have issues with object permanence and don’t remember what happened a few chapters earlier, and who feel that if the character isn’t in the frame that means that they are dead and/or forgotten and/or were always irrelevant. 

People who don’t really like stories like JJK but have never understood the idea of saying “this is not for me” and moving on. Instead they take it as a personal offence that this popular title doesn’t cater to their specific tastes. And they often have the delusion that their personal taste is the mark of objective quality. 

People who only want flashy fights and/or power scaling. 

A lot of these people feel that they need to shit out content about JJK on social media because that’ll get them into the trending tags. And since they don’t really have any opinions of their own apart from not being satisfied with JJK they find some cold take that sounds clever to them and regurgitate it over and over again until a new clever-sounding cold take becomes popular, rinse repeat. 

Those people should be ignored, blocked or muted. They’re just riding some pathetic bandwagon and clout chasing.

___

Righteous Haters 

The cold takes the casual fans regurgitate usually come from people who just thrive on criticising popular things. Those divide into:

The “Intellectuals” who think they are better than the plebs who like popular things. In their mind popular things can do nothing right and are by default shallow and stupid.

The “Enlightened” who will jump at any opportunity to call something problematic and emerge as the morally pure person.

It’s hard to tell whether these people actually read the story and know it well. Their takes are usually very divorced from the text and I’m always on the fence whether it’s due to genuine lack of reading comprehension or willful misinterpretation. 

If you engage with these people they will argue with fucking manga panels, like they will not accept the text even if it’s presented to them. They are honestly a joke. But a lot of them will die on the hill of discrediting Yuuji and spread that opinion around wrapped in pseudointellectual language. Some of them will even put on the airs of academia without knowing how to academia a text in any of the many possible academic analysis ways. Or how to academia about social issues. It’s an intimidation tactic that makes me disrespect them.

Among the JJK enlightened you will find a lot of terfy pseudo feminism. It will be very conservative flavoured and really misogynistic, usually not overtly queerphobic but the vibe will be there, and it will aggressively bring up the general fandom opinion that Gege is a man (which may even be true but Gege doesn’t officially gender themself) to attack and discredit Gege and their work, according to the terfy belief that all men are dangerous and evil. There will also be a lot of intellectualised transphobia especially in relation to Kenjaku, but also Uraume, Tengen and Kirara. And all so funny homophobia about how in their opinion Gege is attracted to their male characters.

___

The thirsters

JJK surprisingly aggressively caters to the female and queer gaze in ways that most shounen just don’t. I once wanted to make a joke post titled “The Masculine Forearm, the true main character of JJK” just consisting of panel after panel that is angled in such a way to put the skillfully drawn male hands and strong forearms front and centre. (The masculine hand and forearm are often mentioned in relation to the female gaze.)

I gave up, there’s just too many of those, simply look at the covers. It’s really funny because Gege does not hide the forearms of Yuuji or Megumi, but at least in the earlier manga that I analysed from that perspective, the forearm angles of those two are much tamer than for example when Sukuna or Nanami are shown. It almost feels like Gege knows or subconsciously senses that the forearm is thirst, is fanservice, and Gege is very consistent about not sexualising the teenage girls and likely also the boys. 

The forearm is of course the tip of the fanservice iceberg. Everything about the JJK men is very that to the point that JJK is widely known for its sexymen. There are people, including fan creators, in the fandom who have never read or watched JJK, they just learned of the sexymen thirsted hard enough to join the fandom.

These are the people who usually won’t actively attack Yuuji, they will just flood the fandom with the posts about their favs and make it seem that few people care for Yuuji. 

There are also Yuuji thirsters but there aren't that many of them. 

Yuuji is 15 years old in canon and some people just draw a line at thirsting over a character that is underage in canon. And as long as they don’t insult or harass others about that I don’t give a shit what they do. 

But also even if Yuuji was of age, Yuuji is not a prime thirst object. He’s for a slightly more refined palette. And he becomes more desirable if you understand his character better. 

On the surface Yuuji is a himbo, a dumb jock with a heart of gold and a cute face. There’s no mystique to him, no edge. This view of him is very widespread. For some thirsters that is enough but it’s not a popular thirst worthy type.

There are some thirsters who actually know the source material and know who Yuuji is but those are people who are in the JJK fandom for more than just thirst. 

Generally I don’t have a problem with thirsters but the more ignorant ones contribute to the general fandom idea that there’s nothing interesting to Yuuji.

___

Gojou and SatoSugu fans

I ranted about those people a lot and everything I’ve written about them holds up. A large and loud subset of them will spam all the tags, will create posts that boil down to “JJK is about Gojou (and Getou) actually and everything that happens in JJK is about him (them), regardless if it happens to other characters”. If you don’t actually block them on sight, wading through the main JJK tags is nigh impossible. 

Gojou really won the internets and is truly the “strongest” of the JJK sexymen. 

The overabundance of content about him exposes a lot of people to the “meta” his fans produce in droves. I put it in quotation marks because fuck, so many of these people are allergic to canon and what they write is deranged fanfiction tagged as meta or discourse. Gojou exists in the western fandom more as headcanon than canon. And to people who aren’t really invested in JJK, he seems like the main and most important character. 

There are both shippers, thirsters, casual fans and righteous haters (they hate everything about JJK but Gojou (and Getou) in this group.

And of course they influence the perception of what JJK is, including the perception of Yuuji. 

___

Sukuna fans

There are some of them who will spread takes that reduce Yuuji to Sukuna’s skin suit and will generally treat Yuuji as a function of Sukuna, not a separate character. Interestingly enough, Kusakabe is one of them but he pretends to be a Sukuna hater.

___

People who think Kusakabe speaks the truth straight from Gege’s brain

Because the reading comprehension in the fandom is very poor, there are people who take whatever Kusakabe says at face value and will ignore everything else that has happened in the manga thus far. They also haven’t picked up on the fact that Kusakabe has always been deeply biassed against Yuuji. 

Why is Kusakabe still alive? 

And honestly not only Kusakabe, to them any character that discredits Yuuji is always correct and spot on.

___

Megumi and ItaFushi, SukuFushi fans

There is a subset of those fans that despise Yuuji with a passion. They think that Megumi either should be or is the main character of JJK. They think that Sukuna has been obsessed with Megumi from the start because Megumi is special and has incredible potential. They will pretend that the main JJK storyline revolves around Megumi, they will often ignore Kenjaku completely and pretend they are not the main driver of the story. Because admitting that Kenjaku, not Sukuna was the main villain of the story, would just by itself completely discredit Megumi as the main character, because Megumi barely any connection to Kenjaku, only through Tsumiki and Yorozu, and has only a weak, practical, plot related and not thematic connection to Sukuna. He became Sukuna’s escape plan and a tool to kill Gojou.

He has no connection to any other major villains or antagonists in current day JJK. He’s only connected to Touji and Naoya, but it can be argued that Yuuji had more dealings with Naoya than Megumi. 

Yuuji’s connections to Sukuna are:

Practical - being Sukuna’s vessel and cage.

Plot related - he is Kenjaku’s way of controlling Sukuna and being Sukuna’s vessel influences everything about how Yuuji functions in the story and how he relates to other characters.

Emotional - they both harbour strong negative feelings for each other, Sukuna even more than Yuuji. 

Familial - they are related. Yuuji doesn’t know and would just likely compartmentalise it. Sukuna pretends he doesn’t care but it’s clear he cares very much actually.

Philosophical - Yuuji by merely being himself challenges Sukuna’s whole worldview. 

Thematic - strength vs weakness, sorcerer vs normie, humanity, value of human life, family, love, connection and loneliness, tradition, new vs old, bodily autonomy.

If those Megumi fans are shippers they will often push the dumb himbo stereotype on Yuuji. There are a lot of fics in the ItaFushi and FushiIta tags that will treat Yuuji as the necessary evil but you can really feel that the authors dislike him. Finding fics there from his POV or at least exploring him is a fucking chore. And that is or at least used to be the most popular ship tag for Yuuji. Pages upon pages of stereotyping or downright character assassination working hard to replace the canon Yuuji with the fanon one in the general fandom consciousness. 

__________________________________

Part 2 - People say one thing and do/think another

Basically a lot of people are not really self aware or are hypocrites or just repeat things they read and never put any thought into them.

You will see a lot of people criticising shounen tropes. That shounen is formulaic, that the shounen main characters are all the same, that shounen battles are all the same, that shounen main characters are overpowered… and so on and so forth. 

Those same people will latch onto Gojou and crown him the main character. 

Because faced with Yuuji … they have no fucking clue what to do with Yuuji. They finally got a shounen main character that at first glance might seem like the same old shounen main but very quickly it becomes clear he absolutely isn’t that. 

So there are three reactions to that.

Denial

No, Yuuji actually is a stereotypical shounen main. He’s got colourful hair, he’s strong, he fights with his fist, he’s super dumb and kind of a pervert but nice and everyone instantly loves him. He gets power ups and learns everything too easily and too quickly, fights the bosses and breaks the story. And of course he has a sob story and is related to the villain. And his mum has a braid.. She doesn’t, well she does have a ponytail, kinda, in two of her bodies anyway…

And that’s it, there’s all there is to him, there’s nothing more to see. 

Faced with canon they will reject all arguments or block you.

___

Rage

Yuuji is so fucking weak, why is he so weak? Why are there other characters in this story that get focus? Why is everyone more powerful than him? Why doesn’t he power up and destroy all the bosses, what kind of fucking shit is this? Well at least there’s Gojou the fucking GOAT, let’s go the strongest!!! 

Gojou died? Why? Didn’t he say he was the strongest? Why the fuck is Yuuji there? What can he even do? He wasn’t powering up and bodying opponents so we didn’t really pay attention to whatever was happening with him. This is some fucking ass pull.

They also can’t accept that the final battle isn’t a one vs one, that there’s actually a plan with many aspects and contingencies. That the characters are trying to be rational about this thing, they aren’t driven by their egos and desire for glory, well apart from two, and they just want to do everything they can to get rid of Sukuna and stop Kenjaku.

This is not acceptable. If it’s not hard hits and energy flashes but plans and strategy then it’s not a real shounen fight. Gojou vs Sukuna was kinda a fight like that, of course Sukuna was not doing it right because he was scheming too much. But it should’ve ended there, Gojou’s energy balls should’ve concluded the manga.

If you try to suggest to them that he’s just a different kind of character and JJK isn’t that kind of shounen and that it's actually okay for it to take a different route, the rage will spill. They will not accept that shounen can be many things but they will complain that all shounens are the same and predictable. 

___

Condescension 

Yuuji isn’t what they want him to be and that’s “objectively” bad writing. That’s it. They will actually list how Yuuji should’ve been written but more importantly how everything should’ve been written and generally Yuuji should’ve never been put forward as the main character because he really doesn’t make sense as one. Gege is just a bad writer and it’s all mid and doesn’t make sense. 

What’s even the point? Is there even a story in JJK, what is it even about? The magic system surely doesn’t make any sense, who even understands that? Everyone who says they understand is lying.

Sure, there were some interesting parts in it, so people got hyped, like the Hidden Inventory arc and Shibuya but only until Gojou got sealed, everything after that is just boring and awful and did I mention bad writing? 

And all those deaths of fandom sweethearts, pointless. Either they are just for shock value because there was nothing absolutely nothing in the writing that suggested that they might die, od Gege just being mean to the fandom and hating their own characters and Gege should honestly *insert violent ideation*. Or the deaths are too predictable, generally everything is so predictable in JJK, and stereotypical. 

Why do people even care or like it, they are objectively wrong if they do. Because hello the writing is so fucking bad, people have no fucking taste honestly. Who even reads that shit anymore?

Why are those people still in the fandom? Fuck knows.. They will spam the tags though, incessantly. The world must know how much they are better than JJK, Gege and those losers who have anything positive to say about JJK.

___

Honestly there is no winning with any of these people. What they claim they want is not what they are ready to embrace or even tolerate. They can’t also accept that maybe JJK just isn’t for them. There must be something wrong with JJK and with Gege because their tastes are universal and objective. 

__________________________________

Part 3 - JJK may be a shounen but Yuuji is a shoujo main character

I’ve written about it before (some of it is a bit outdated now due to what was revealed in the manga) but I will always stand by this. Because it really explains everything. 

Yuuji isn’t a typical shounen protagonist but if you look at shoujo protagonists you’ll see his type of protagonist. He is of course a mix of both and in the recent chapters he’s leaning a little more shounen but not too much.

He’s not indulging Sukuna, look how little he even speaks in this fight. He’s not revelling in this fight like Gojou had because he’s not fighting for himself. The outcome, not the fight matters. He’s still not ego driven, still two of his win conditions apart from his fighting abilities are his personality and strength of convictions that so deeply unsettle and upset Sukuna. 

Recently everyone in the story, apart from Chousou, Higuruma and Toudou puts Yuuji down, discredits all his accomplishments. He even is starting to believe it. Sukuna is continuing to take everyone away from him. And yet Yuuji is still fighting because this is not about his ego. This is about removing the threat that is Sukuna and hopefully saving Megumi. He really puts himself last and isn’t even given the space to feel bad. All of this will just be there to crush him later.

And the fandom just takes every single insult hurled at Yuuji by the other characters at face value, as if the jujutsu world hasn’t always been hostile to him, treated him as less than human. As if those characters were impartial and haven’t been showing their bias towards Yuuji. They don't pick up on the fact that the jujutsu world is rotten to its core and Gege has consistently used the story to question the values of that world.

So lastly the fandom can’t stomach that Yuuji isn’t 100% stereotypically masculine, that his arc isn’t an alpha male power fantasy. That he isn’t written to perfectly embody the conservative gender norms. This is what the weakness accusation is all about, even if the people hurling it would swear up and down that they aren’t misogynists. Because Yuuji isn’t only accused of losing but also of crying, of breaking down, of being scared. This slight proximity to what is considered stereotypically feminine is a vice. One that for many discredits him completely, makes him not worthy of being the main character. 

And if you think that I’m reaching with this… It’s a pattern that repeats itself in the fandom. You will see criticism of the JJK girls for not being soft enough, girly enough. Any proximity for masculinity will be zeroed in on and criticised under the guise of “feminism” with the terfy sentiment that female characters can’t be girly anymore. But girly characters like Hana or Yorozu will be hated for their proximity to stereotypical femininity because that’s considered feeble and shallow and unworthy. And just look how the fandom reacted to Megumi having an ugly and hysterical mental breakdown. To him showing weakness and not manning up. To him showing his emotions in such a visceral way. 

____

These are the three main reasons why I think Yuuji is so underrated and why so many people will go to great lengths to just shit on him.

[brawlina]

For the headcanons, how about Edgar?

Oh boy! One of my favorite characters! ... To write and HC about. I'm not very good with close-ranged brawlers.

Edgar HCs

Quick thing before I get into the bulk of things. I will not be putting any ship headcanons here. I have plenty of HCs without counting them so I'd probably make another post for it instead.

Edgar has always been involved in the park in some way. He's got family in the higher ups with his mother being the CEO of the whole thing. He was fairly confident that at some point HE would become the CEO of Starr Park and of Brawl Stars

He often gets into fights with his mother about his lifestyle choices and attitude (aka. being emo). At some point, these fights somehow ended up with Edgar being both a brawler and a gift shop employee. Probably to try and get him to change.

Edgar was ecstatic to be a brawler cause he thinks the fights are really cool, but he hates the fact that he had to work in the shop as well to keep that position.

Edgar unfortunately plays the straight man to both Colette and Griff's shenanigans.

Actually he ends up playing the straight man to a lot of things because he just keeps geting wrapped up in other brawler projects.

He complains about it but thats just because hes a drama queen. He does enjoy himself a lot, though he wont admit it to keep up with his persona.

He unfortunately knows a lot about the Brawl Stars fandom culture because Colette just wouldn't shut up about it.

Edgar ends up being the fall guy for Griff when he disappears to escape his poor financial choices. Alas, he doesn't have the power to get his boss fired.

He's the Number 1 Bad Randoms Fan. He personally fought Colette for that title. He knows all their songs by heart and even made their band shirt part of his normal wear.

He has actually played for them a few times, mostly as a back up drummer when Stu is unavailable. He loves it when it happens. He thinks this is what Colette must feel like all the time.

Edgar can play the Drums and Bass, though he prefers drums.

He bonds a lot with Poco because of the slight overlap in the Bad randoms and their music. This is why he also gets along well with Draco.

He and Fang have a mutual and healthy rivalry. Though sometimes they both think the other is a little stupid.

He admires El Primo but would rather die than admit that out loud.

Has complicated feelings for Belle and Byron as some weird Auntie and Uncle situations. (Might Elaborate in another thing)

Actually a big comic book fan, though hes not as loud and proud of it as he is with the Bad Randoms thing.

Finds Breakcore oddly relaxing and will even nap to it if given a chance. This is goes well with Colette feeling creatively inspired by Breakcore, so they can spend their break times blasting this music and doing their own thing. Griff hates this a lot.

While Edgar can will his scarf to move however he wants, it can sometimes act out, raging while Edgar maintains an aloof facade. Probably acting out what he truly feels.

His scarf arms are strong enough to hold him up, so sometimes he uses that to help get over large crowds.

He wants to get tattoos, but hes still deciding what he actually wants on him.

He finds all the undead Brawlers cool and sometimes wonders how he'd look undead.

He can eat super spicy food and drink super bitter coffee without flinching. However, sour things are his weakness he will shrivel up like a raisin-

[elizabeth-mitchells]

20 questions for writers

tagged by @sapphicscience thank you! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

135... which is a normal number okay?!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,412,255..... i will not be making any comments about it...

3. What fandoms do you write for?

sooo there's been 22 of them! the ones i've written the most fics for have been Yellowjackets, Stranger Things, Fear Street, and The Old Guard

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Aftermath (Wednesday) - the fic is nice but this is just n° 1 because that fandom was insane (affectionately)

make my menace into someone you'd adore (Stranger Things) - my masterpiece. looking back i can cringe at some d ecisions but people liked it!

through the grief can't fight the feeling of relief (Warrior Nun) - this makes me so happy, this was a really nice one, i wish i had written more of it

five times Deena and Sam met in secret (and one time they didn’t) (Fear Street) - i did Not expect this one to be so popular, that fandom was so active i should've appreciated it more

Elvis cloned by aliens (you never know...) (Stranger Things) - ah how it all started with this ship <3

5. Do you respond to comments?

usually yes! i try to reply to most of them

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i usually avoid angsty endings (i literally wrote an alternate ending bc this one was too sad for me) but out of a handful of sad endings the winner is definitely If I could hold you for a minute (darling, I'd go through it again) aka Laura Lee reincarnates as the bear but that doesn't change her fate (also helloo prev same fic title kinda?)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

so there are many that are just pure fluff and joy and fun but! considering it's the most hearbreaking piece of media on the list and i gave it the best happy ending i could, i'm gonna go for heaven on earth, back again about the movie Gia

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not really! i think two people were a bit annoyed i made a lottienat fic secretly a lottielee fic. but i have no regrets 🤭

9. Do you write smut?

sometimes! 14 times to be exact

10. Do you write crossovers?

two times! and let me tell you i'd say both are at least a bit unexpected

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes once! 【翻译】Being with you (Makes the flame burn good) by R_H_Felidae_Athena

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no :( i tried to but we never finished it

14. What is your all-time favorite ship?

most difficult question ever to me <3 there's always going to be something extra special about dani/jamie from bly manor though!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

all of them 😭😭 or at least most of them. sadly

16. What are your writing strengths?

another difficult question! personally i'd say characterization, hopefully

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

uhhhh probably something along the lines of commitment or confidence

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i think it's okay! i've definitely overdone it in the past though so now i like it a little bit less

19. First fandom you wrote for?

ocean's 8! the milfs compelled me...

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

oohh i love so many of them! God's very simple and love shouldn't burn is my lottielee masterpiece BUT i think the crown should go to If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part?  the Nancy Wheeler Choose Your Own Adventure fic. it took the most work i think! and i'm very proud of it

tagging (no pressure!): @dufrau @ongreenergrasses @lilolilyr @monstrous-femme any any other writers that want to share!

[jehan-d-art]

ao3 wrapped [writers edition]

from this game (and thank you to @clawbehavior for tagging me)

1.  Favorite work you wrote this year?

I have written quite a few fics I am really proud of this year. However, I have to go with the fic which I wrote almost entirely during my train ride back home from Frankfurt after KCon - I had been waiting to see SHINee or even just one of the members live for over a decade and so seeing Key live and getting to meet some of my fandom friends in person (some of them for the first time) was absolutely incredible and of course, I had to capture it via writing a story about it. This story ended up being Geborgenheit.

2. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

This year, I promised myself to just write down everything that would come to mind and to post it without caring whether it could be seen as too dark and moody by readers - to my surprise, there seem to be quite a lot of people who like my writing style and how I keep having my characters ramble on and on inside their heads even during smut scenes, I cannot help it, that's just how my own brain works and it's nice to see there are people who seem to connect with that ^^

3. How many works did you publish this year?

I wrote 44 works and managed to reach a currently total wordcount of 290.984 words this year - it will maybe be a few more works and a few more thousand words since I've got to finish two writing fest fics before the end of December (and I aim to reach the 300.000 total wordcount this year). Edit: Nevermind, it's the same day of me posting this and yet I just added 7.190 words to one of my wips (current total wordcount: 298.174). Edit (08/12/2024): I just posted a oneshot, which I wrote in a few hours, which brings my total wordcount to 301.993 words)

4. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

I still cannot believe my What is wrong with secretary Kim? inspired omegaverse solboo (verkwan) fic forget me not is getting as much love as it does. While I am incredibly proud of this fic having become my most read fic on my ao3 account, I am also really happy about the reactions to my minkey fic just wanna love (it's once again one of those stories I wanted to read so badly so I ended up writing it myself and it's so nice to see there are other people who like it enough to respond to it and to tell me they like it). The thing is, I do not care all that much about kudos and hits but getting comments and getting to talk to people about my fics is a lot of fun and something I really cherish as part of the fanfic community.

5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

I was totally surprised to see a self-indulgent fic, aka flip the script, get so much praise - this story basically just came to be because I was inspired by a post by a fellow minkey shipper over on ex-twitter and by many conversation about minkey and love (and about how they show and express their love) with @little-arcadia. I absolutely did not imagine a story about food as a love language, told via two actors talking about the portrayal of love and devotion and horror as a means to show bare human emotion and the human experience would get so much love.

6. Favorite title you used.

My personal favourite title I've used this year is the one of my soonhoon fic you loved me as I am - it's part of the lyrics of Seventeen's song Fallin' Flower, which just so happens to be one of my favourite songs. It fits the relationship between two queer characters who grew up together and who later on fell in love perfectly in my opinion - it's basically saying something along the lines of: "you have always seen me as the person I am and you are someone who has watched me grow up and vice versa and yet still, you loved me through everything, just as I am".

7. If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most?

Most of my fic title's this year seem to be from Seventeen, SHINee or SHINee's respective members' solo songs. Just to name a few: blend into one color (fandom: SVT, ship: jeongcheol; artist: Taemin, song: Me And You), you loved me as I am (fandom: SVT, ship: soonhoon; artist: SVT, song: Fallin' Flower), unclear in the fog (fandom: SVT, ship: junhao; artist: Jun and The8, song: My I) and sweetly hold my hand and dance (fandom: วันดีวิทยา | Wandee Goodday, ship: Cher/Oyei; artist: SHINee, song: Body Rhythm). Then, there are my The Devil Judge fics which currently all have lyrics by MIKA as their respective titles: no place for me (MIKA - No Place In Heaven), there's bad news coming (MIKA - Last Party), staring at the sun (MIKA - Staring At The Sun), let the devil in (MIKA - I Went To Hell Last Night), free my pain (MIKA - Overrated) - this is all thanks to @little-arcadia, who is a fellow fan of MIKa and who inspired me to actually start writing fics for this fandom. ^^

8. What work was the quickest to write?

That's a tricky question because there are many fics this year which I wrote in one go, ranging from a total wordcount of a thousand words to a few thousand words. However, the fic I've wrote during just one weekend, meaning in about one and a half days, is my friend with benefits minkey fic no strings attached (yes, that's roughly 20k words, kind of, thanks to my insomnia).

9. What work took you the longest to write?

My top three works that are still unfinished and which took me the logest to write are under covers (Ateez, woosan), forget me not (Seventeen, verkwan) and just wanna love (SHINee, minkey).

10. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

I have about thirty fic ideas, wips and many of them exist as random notes, outlines and written down scenes without a full plot. However, I intend to finish some of the currently eighteen wips that are unfinished and currently on a writing break on my ao3 account - like I said, before that I'll have to finish my two writing fest entries first. Edit (09/12/2024): I forgot to add my non-rpf fic ideas/wips, some of them are about Aran and Tattoo (here's a list) and some of them are about other couples from all kinds of other queer series. So all in all, that's basically forty to fifty fic ideas I've got for next year.

11. What’s your longest work of the year?

My longest work of the year is just wanna love, which was meant to be a quick pwp 5k-10k words oneshot and then it kind of developed a mind of its own and it will probably end up having about 50k words total once I've actually finished the last chapter (and maybe an epilogue).

12. What’s your shortest work of the year?

The shortest fic I've written this year is my Cher/Oyei fic sweetly hold my hand and dance.

13. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

Here's all of them (from all my currently 112 fics): Canon Compliant (48), Friendship/Love (32), Friends to Lovers (28), Sexual Content (24), Families of Choice (18), Introspection (17), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics (15), Queer Themes (14), Implied Sexual Content (14), Slow Burn (12)

14. Your favorite character to write this year?

My favorite character in terms of rpf fics is Minho - I obviously love writing from Kibum's POV as well but I just love writing Minho as a chaotic bisexual who knows what he wants. In terms of non-rpf fics, I had a lot of fun writing from Yohan's POV (The Devil Judge).

15. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

The character that gave me the most trouble writing this year was Lee Dongsik (Beyond Evil). He grew up religious (or in a religious setting), is an older twin and he deals with apparently untreated depression or depressive episodes, seemingly family and societal expectations and a lot of grief from his past. Personally, I headcanon him as queer (mlm) and even as a gay transman (which, I assume, would add even more to the pain of having lost his sister, who might as well have been his identical twin) - the thing is, I relate to most of this and while I like Dongsik as a character a lot, I can only write from his POV when I'm in the right headspace for it, otherwise I would just end up making myself really sad and/or needing to give my own twin a call to talk to them.

16. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

I want to finish a lot of my wips, so the included pairings are mostly woosan, verkwan, minkey, taekai and other Seventeen, SHINee and EXO fics (among so many other kpop ships). I kind of want to get back to writing more ATEEZ and Stray Kids fics again. There are also so many ships on my rare trios agenda list (planned trios and fics: Lee Minho | Lee Know/Park Seonghwa/Lee Hoseok | Wonho; Jackson Wang/Jeff Worakamon Satur/Ten Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul; Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Xu Minghao | The8/Yoon Jeonghan).

17. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

The story of mine I have reread the most this year is my fem!jeongcheol fic shining day, aka my mostly fem!Seventeen as Shawols and rpf writers of fem!SHINee or GIRLNee, which is basically a love letter to my friends I've met online via fandom. There are just so many fandom insiders and rpf community things in this story and I'm constantly rereading parts of it to make sure I've managed to acually capture what it feels like, to me, to be a part of the mentioned fandoms in this fic.

18. Did you write any gifts this year?

I kind of wrote my ทำไมต้องเป็นเธอทุกทีเลยวะ | Jack & Joker: U Steal My Heart! or Jack/Joke fic between distrust and devotion and my วันดีวิทยา | Wandee Goodday or Cher/Oyei fic sweetly hold my hand and dance for and/or inspired by @deepbutdazzlingdarkness. Like I've already kind of implied, almost all my The Devil Judge fics exist because of @little-arcadia. In the context of the Fandom Trumps Hate project, I wrote (and am still writing) you loved me as I am as a gift for aceaceaceace and shining day for halotolerant.

19. Did you receive any gifts this year?

I received She Awakens as a gift from Korinoshikkan.

20. Did you do any collaborative works this year?

I did my first collaborative work this year by joining the TDJ Collab: Gahan Edition. It was a lot of fun to take part in this writing project.

21. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? It's so hard to choose since I'm quite proud of a lot of my stories this year and thus one of my favourite passages is this one: "(...) The man, who Jeonghan is thinking about right now, and Jeonghan himself probably weren’t lovers in a past life. Jeonghan isn’t even sure if that word even entails what he feels or what he wants them to be.

They must have been something else. Maybe more but never anything less.

In Jeonghan’s eyes, Seungcheol must have been a leader at least once before. He could have been a great king while Jeonghan himself might have been his most trusted advisor, maybe a general of some kind.

As such, Jeonghan is certain he was tasked with staying by Seungcheol’s side and to keep protecting Seungcheol until his own dying day. It hopefully won’t be as dramatic as that but Jeonghan still vows to himself to keep protecting Seungcheol.

They might not be lovers but whatever they have is close enough.

After all, where one of them goes, the other always tries to follow. (...)" - gone for a while - lorebearleaf - SEVENTEEN (Band) [Archive of Our Own] - - - - - With so many stories I've written and posted this year, there are so many passages I had a lot of fun writing but I am still especially proud of trying to write the way one sometimes has to (subtly) hint at being queer to figure out whether the person one is talking to is not only cool with it but if they also happen to be queer as well:

"(...) Even so, Minho takes the risk of speaking his truth, of putting it out there, in the open when he finally dares to say:

“I realized I’m not straight while watching Coffee Prince.”

There’s a short pause. Minho wishes the ground would open and swallow him whole, meanwhile Dongwook looks not even the least bit surprised but actually utterly delighted by Minho coming out to him. Of course, Dongwook not only knows Gong Jichul’s or better yet Gong Yoo’s filmography by heart, he also has memorized his favorite parts as well. Like one does. Like Minho does when it’s about his members, especially one of them. Maybe it’s caused by the same reason that keeps Minho trying to learn the choreographies and lyrics of Kibum’s solo songs by heart.

Dongwook is not done talking yet and Minho doesn’t mind. He is too busy trying not to find similarities in Kibum’s and his own yearslong friendship in comparison with the famed Goblin/Grim Reaper couple.

“I mean,” Dongwook elaborates, “the whole ‘Call me dongsaeng and allow me to call you hyung to indicate how close we are’ or doing it the other way around does ring a bell.”

Dongwook chuckles, as if he has just shared an insider.

Then, at the very latest, there’s embarrassment and relief making themselves comfortable inside Minho. Those emotions stay right besides the small part in Minho's mind that just wants him to scream at the many surprising turns this conversation just took. (...)" - flip the script - lorebearleaf - SHINee [Archive of Our Own] kudos to everyone who actually reads all or most of this ^^ I'm not tagging anyone so as not to make anyone feel pressured to reply to this but if you do want to play this ask game, please feel free to do so and have fun ^^

[alwaysinstyle]

Sickfic Queen, I implore that you address the masses and inform us of what inspired you to begin the sacred quest that is your resplendent request book?

And how does it feel to know that many others of the same mission that I have seen crop up as of late have explicitly stated that they were inspired by yours?

Hello my dear anonymous asker,

THANK YOU first of all and let me just say “resplendent” is one of my very favorite words so I’m pretty stoked to see it used in an ask LMAO.

And now to address the masses,

When Style brain rot first took over my life, I naturally went searching for Style sickfics because come on, there’s just no better way to see the love and caring and stubbornness and worry and highs and lows of a relationship than in those moments that one physically cannot get by without the other. I love the hurt because I LOVE the comfort. There’s something I especially adore about them worrying over each other with this particular ship. But, I digress. I found a few sickfics when I went looking, but I will shamelessly admit I read them all in two nights and then I was like… “well fuck.”

I decided I would definitely write a few myself, and then a part of me wondered if people would be weirded out and/or judge me for writing NOTHING but sickfics. But then I was like okay (1) it doesn’t matter if people judge and (2) maybe it’s an even better idea to make it a sickfic REQUEST book because there’s no way I’m the ONLY crazy person who wishes many many more Style sickfics would come into existence, right? Yeah, making it ONLY Style and ONLY whumpshots felt niche as hell, but it’s what I wanted to write and there was literally nothing else tied to the account so I had absolutely nothing to lose. So, I went ahead and posted it, and…

Here we are almost 50 chapters later and with FAR more than 50 requests in queue, 20,000 hits and counting! (I still can’t believe that’s real btw). I found out there were MANY other sickfic enjoyers out there, many of whom just needed the right place to request their ideas.

Which leads right into the second part of your question. It has been absolutely MINDBLOWING seeing similar books pop up and having those authors explicitly state that my book was their inspiration. Not only has that motivated me to keep writing and made me feel very proud of my work, but it’s super amazing to see that other people feel the freedom to create in a niche genre I hesitated to put out there simply because it wasn’t something anyone had really done in the fandom. I am SO glad I wasn’t afraid to be a weirdo the day I started my book. It’s been an absolute blast writing the requests and best of all, more sickfic books popping up means MORE SICKFICS FOR ME TO READ!!!! (Yay!!!!)

I love you all and THANK YOU for giving me the space to write what I love writing!

And hey, if you’re new to my blog (AKA Sickfic Hell) you can read the never-ending book in question here!

[rmd-writes]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love❤

Thanks Michelle! Choosing five fics was like trying to choose a favourite child which is to say, it's impossible. Okay, that's a lie, my favourite child is the one who is not sucking the life from my soul at any given moment. Yesterday both of my kids got a turn - first my youngest, because he very sweetly packed me a little fun size Crunchie bar from his personal stash of lollies and brought it to the movies for me and kept checking whether I'd eaten it yet and if I liked it. But then later he was being so loud I couldn't think, so his older sister became my favourite child because she told him to be quiet. Anyway, I'm turning into one of those recipe bloggers who can't give a recipe without sharing their whole life's story, so here is my list of fics I'm proud of in which I absolutely cheat by sharing some fic series:

don't estop me now (RWRB)

(read to the victor, the spoils first and then the prequel, what, like it's hard?)

I'm really so proud of this lawyer AU! I had an absolute blast writing these fics and I think it shows in my writing - it's definitely some of my best. What, like it's hard? is the first really substantial long fic I've ever written and that in itself was a challenge but the snarky rivarly between Alex and Henry is just so fun to write! Whenever I see comments roll in on these fics it just makes me smile so hard to see other people enjoying them

Soon (Tarlos)

PWP but make it bite-sized (aka 37, 100-word chapters). This started as a drabble but then I got the slightly unhinged idea to continue the fic in drabbles (ie precisely 100 words at a time). Was it a challenge to write only 100 words and make sure each chapter told enough of the story in so few words? Yes. Did I have so much fun edging Carlos and the fandom alongside him? Also yes.

Feeling kind of sketchy (Schitt's Creek)

artist!David unwittingly helps Patrick find himself and finds love along the way. This one is a little different in style to my usual writing, and I really leaned into the slightly more poetic style in the second part which I actually structured around a poem.

Precious Love (Tarlos)

A 5+1 exploring TK's relationship with love and self-worth. I don't usually write much angst but I dove into it for this one and I like how it turned out! Don't worry, it has a happy ending, I'm incapable of writing anything else!

Do you even lift, bro? (Tarlos)

aka my Tarlos gym AU - each of these fics (Let's Get Physical, Let Me Hear Your Body Talk, I gotta handle you just right) stands alone as a one-shot but they are part of a planned seven-part series which contains an actual plot, despite the way they read like pwp. The thing I'm most proud of in these fics though, is the coding - with a big assist from @celeritas2997, I learned to code well enough to embed actual instagram posts and DMs with photos in these fics, which for someone who is absolutely not a STEM girlie, is a very big deal.

The Grindr Toolbox: A Guide to Getting Nailed

A Helping Hand (Tarlos)

This Is Not A Drill (David x Patrick)

Are You Screwing with Me? (firstprince)

I set out to write three fics for three fandoms based on one prompt, and while it was a tricky balance to set up three very different fics using the same loose structure, I like how these turned out!

[moonlight-warrior-1316]

How Tox and Neuro Became Friends Part 1

AKA: How Tox Got a Friend and How Neuro Got a Criminal Record.

Fandom: Lego Ninjago

Word Count: 1,487

Trigger Warnings: Swearing, mentions of vandalism, mentions of alcohol, let me know if I forgot anything.

This part is all set-up. It was getting a little long and I decided to break it into parts.

My god I head-cannon these two as the personification of Gasoline and Matches. Should never leave them alone. Things will get destroyed.

Tox has made an executive decision.

Which, mind you, is not a good thing.

Ask anyone who knows Tox personally. The second the words: “I have made an executive decision.” leave Tox’s mouth, those who know her are already mentally preparing for the late night call from the police station to come bail her out. Of course, this is also mixed-in with bets on how many laws she can break while acting upon her “Executive Decision”.

Her record is 47.

Usually, to Tox’s credit, she only ever gets herself into trouble. She doesn’t like to rope others into her shenanigans or exploits. Though there have been times where Pale or Shade or Skylor have been tangled up in the mess in some manner. 

Tox’s “Executive Decision” today involves going to Ninjago City’s Pride Parade and making a new friend, whom she will then try to persuade into playing a practical joke on some random person’s house.

That’s what she’s going to claim anyway when she ends up in the back of a police car by the end of the night.

Tox grumbled to herself as she slowly applied her eyeliner. She wanted to show the world that catching her ex-girlfriend making out with another girl on her couch when she got off work early wasn’t affecting her as bad as it really was.

It didn’t help that Tox didn’t really have “close friends” that she could confide in. However, she supposed she could reach out to one of the other Elemental Masters that she met roughly a week ago. 

She shot that thought down immediately. In the past week, Pale, Shade, and Skylor have gotten caught up in her shit. 

It was Pale who swung by her workplace to let her know he’d seen her girlfriend let another girl into Tox’s house. This then led to Tox rushing home and catching the two and the neighbors ended up calling the cops due to the screaming and breaking shit. Tox ended up spending the night in jail and Pale picked her up the next day and helped her clean up her house.

Then there was the incident with Shade and her breaking into an abandoned mall and exploring, only to end up in handcuffs. 

And the one where Tox set off fireworks in the middle of a drive-up theater and Skylor had to bail her out of jail.

So, no. She was not going to call up one of the other Masters. Word probably spread that she got arrested three times in less than a week. Anyone with common sense would be avoiding her at all costs.

Which led her to Plan B: Going to the Pride Parade today and finding a temporary friend to help her in vandalizing her ex-girlfriend’s house and car.

A great plan if you asked Tox.

Tox heaved a sigh as she put the cap back onto her eyeliner. After doing one more “once over” in the mirror, she left the bathroom, choosing to be satisfied with her make-up. 

Upon entering her living room, she threw on her boots and grabbed her backpack–after double checking to make sure her wallet and house keys were in there. The parade wasn’t too far, so Tox was just going to walk. Of course, not taking her car also alleviated the stress of parking or trying to go back to it once the day was done.

Before leaving, Tox made sure to grab the several cans of neon spray paint, a bag of rocks, a couple knives, and a bottle of whisky.

Satisfied with her plan of the day, Tox locked her door and made her way downtown.

~~~~~

“Holy FSM,” Tox grumbled, plugging her ears as some random woman screamed in delight with her friends before blaring an air horn. “I get being proud, but come on. I don’t want to go deaf.”

The streets were filled with people–all celebrating the year’s Pride Festival. Tox was happy that she could make it, but her joy was dampened by the fact her and her ex-girlfriend were supposed to go together this year.

Tox huffed. She didn’t need Rochelle. She was perfectly capable of having a good time. And finding a friend to rope into helping her enact her revenge.

Scanning the crowd, Tox unfortunately couldn’t see anyone who might be interested in a new, temporary friend. Everyone seemed to have someone, or a bunch of friends, which wouldn’t work since Tox didn’t want more than one person helping her. But near the main area, it was clear that Tox wouldn’t find any solo people. Scowling, she began to shove her way through towards the merchant stalls, in hopes to better her search.

The merchant stalls were just as busy as the main area, if not more so. And again, everyone seemed to be in pairs or groups, no lonely folks to rope into her revenge plan before leaving them by the next morning.

“Ugh! This is bullshit!” Tox hissed under her breath as she stormed past a booth selling pride pins and flags, scouring for anyone who was by themself. She would absolutely do her plan by herself, however she wouldn’t cover as much ground or do as much damage. And more than two made being caught much more likely.

Tox let out a frustrated growl before angrily speed-walking back towards the main area. She was just going to have to figure something else out because clearly she wasn’t going to be able to convince some–

She was cut off as she slammed into someone, the force sending them both to the ground. The person underneath her gasped and shoved her off. Tox let out a “oof” as she found herself lying on her back staring at the sky.

“Damn it. I just bought this shirt,” the person she ran into muttered, male by the sound of it. She turned her head towards him. He, like her, was still on the ground. But he was looking at his Shinedown shirt, which had smears of chocolate ice cream on it. A quick glance to the ground confirmed the man had been enjoying an ice cream cone before she ran into him. The chocolate was now melting onto the pavement.

“You really need to watch where the hell you’re going.” The man spoke again. Tox just glared at the ground. She did not need to be lectured about her life choices. “I’m sure wherever you were planning to go wasn’t that impor–,” he cut himself off. Tox looked up at that, only to freeze up, too.

“Neuro?” Tox croaked. Neuro blinked at her, surprised.

“Tox?”

“Why are you here?”

“Uh, because I want to be? Why are you here?”

“Same reason as you.”

“More like you are trying to rope someone into committing a few crimes against your ex and you got frustrated because there were no easy targets so you tried to leave.”

“Stay the fuck out of my head, Nerdo!”

“You ran into me and ruined my Shinedown shirt. I think I deserve an explanation.”

Tox choked back a scream as she lunged at him. They both went toppling over, rolling on the ground in a tangle of limbs. Tox trying to punch Neuro; Neuro trying to get Tox off.

Several moments of rolling on the ground later, Neuro successfully managed to free himself from Tox. He quickly scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. Tox, on the other hand, flopped onto her back with an “oof” and elected to stay down.

No point in embarrassing herself further.

“Okay. Now that that’s out of your system, mind if I join you?” Neuro spoke, leaning down and offering Tox a hand up.

Tox blinked in surprise. “You…want to help me vandalize my ex’s house?”

Neuro shrugged. “Eh. I’ve been cheated on before. Unfortunantly didn’t have many friends to help me get my revenge so maybe I’m making sure someone else can get theirs. Besides, as you know, more damage and less likely to get caught with two.” 

Tox grinned as she accepted Neuro’s hand, allowing herself to be pulled up. “Well, welcome aboard. I’m sure you’re going to have an absolute blast on the revenge train. If we don’t take a detour to the police station before the end of the night, we can grab pizza and make fun of Hallmark Christmas movies.”

“Sounds like a wonderful trainride,” Neuro grinned. “So, conductor, what’s the first stop?”

“Hmmm…I got some spray paint, rocks, knives, and whisky,” Tox answered. “I think the first stop is grabbing another bottle of alcohol and some fireworks.”

“A wonderful combination,” Neuro acknowledged, starting to pull Tox towards the exit of the festival. “Might I suggest some glitter and liquid cement?”

“You know, Neuro, I think you and I are going to be great friends,” Tox laughed.

Neuro’s laughter joined hers as they left the Pride festival and began to make their way to the store.

[buddiekinard]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers! Spread the self-love 💞

OH MY OKAY this is kind of hard let me start with the 9-1-1 fics im super proud of since that's my current fandom.

(This was actually REALLY hard! I am so critical of my own work I was at first like...am i...proud...of anything????)

as the decade would play us for fools (buck/eddie, met a different way au, teen and up) - This isn't my first fic in this fandom, but it's definitely my most popular, and I reread it the other night and I'm really happy with out it turned out.

Buck and Eddie met in basic training. Buck hasn't seen Eddie since the day he left the army, but he's never forgotten him.

pauses, then says you're my best friend (buck/eddie, sm au, general audiences) This was just a lot of fun to write and it's totally self indulgent but a full SM fic was so new for me that I had a lot of fun and I was just proud of how I could tell a story in this way!

aka swiftie firefighters

Now for the TL fics because I've by and far written more in that fandom, and it definitely has some of my best work.

(with your boots beneath my bed) forever is the sweetest con (jamie/roy, mature, casual hook ups to boyfriends) This is by far my most popular fic to date. It's got almost 3k kudos, which is just wild to me. It's still constantly getting comments which thrills me. People have told me it's a comfort fic for them, and nothing makes me happier to hear. I'm just really fucking proud of this one.

Jamie is truly a fucking enigma. Last night he’d shown up to Roy’s looking like he just needed anyone to be there for him, with no explanation. Today he’s just acting like a fucking twat again, and he’s honestly confusing and messy and Roy doesn’t need it.

Jamie is a 23 year old twat, and Roy is way too fucking old for this.

it's a church of burnt romances (and i'm too far gone to pray) (jamie/roy, mature, banter au, nonbinary jamie, getting together) Nonbinary jamie was just something that really - I'd been thinking about it so long and it was so special to me. I love this one so so much. It's not my most popular, but I'm still really proud of it.

the jamie/roy bantr au no one asked for, featuring nonbinary jamie tartt

but i'm a fire and i'll keep your bitter heart warm (jamie/roy, depressed jamie, marbella trip) This was HARD to write, if I'm being honest. It's the fic I think I've drawn the most from my personal experience for, and it just hit really close. I think I'm so proud of it because it seemed to resonate with people.

It’s tough enough to get through the day while keeping up as much of the old Jamie as he possibly can before he’s just ready to collapse into bed and sleep for twelve hours. He just needs everyone to see that he’s okay. Maybe somewhere deep down he thinks if they believe it, he’ll start believing it. Maybe he just wants to be left alone. He doesn’t really know anymore.